Well, after several months of thought, and being a bit dense, I figured out that Christian Scientism was a new Gnosticism. I suppose other people have known this, but I have been in discussion with a friend who is a Christian Scientist and it finally dawned on me. She thinks that all reason is empiricism, so that is a confusion immediately seen.
To the Catholic, reason and faith are two pillars of our spiritual life.
For the Gnostic, the material world is evil. God is not part of the material. What the CS does with Genesis, in which we read that God created the world and everything in it and saw that it was good.
For the Catholic, creation was created good by a good God. For the Catholic, Christ was Incarnated, became Man, became material. The CS does not accept this. To them, God is a principle not a person.
CS emphasizes God as there to heal us, but says nothing about us loving God with all our hearts, minds, souls. Christ is not the Center, but the individual is.
All things material for the CS are not real, but fantasy. As I wrote earlier on this blog, all pain and all discomfort for the CS is not "real".
That is because such things are of the material. CS does not believe that suffering is real or that it is a result of Original Sin.
CS does not believe that suffering is God's Will. This is a denial of the Crucifixion.
The CS would not understand Blessed Mother Teresa, whose call was not to heal but to help people die with dignity.
The CS do not accept the Salvific Death of Christ on the Cross.
All spiritual ways either accept or reject the reality of Who Christ Is.
Christ is both True God and True Man.
Christ's Body is not a fantasy or a phantasm. This is the great Gift of God to us.
The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, Whose Birth we await with penance and mortification in Advent, is the great sign of God the Father's love for us.
Pray for my CS friend, please. So many people who are CS are good, generous, kind people.
But, like the Greeks, their stumbling block is Christ Himself.
But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness 1 Corinthians 1:23 DR
