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Home > Books > The Seven Synonyms for God: An analysis of the concept of God in the Christian Science textbook
The Seven Synonyms for God: An analysis of the concept of God in the Christian Science textbook
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Product Code: 0-942958-09-8
Manufacturer: Kappeler Institute Publishing
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Cloth, 361 pages
Level:
SUBJECT(s):
The 7 Synonyms for God
The 4-fold Operation of Being
The 4 Levels of Science (Ch. 7)
Matrices (Ch. 8+)
RELATED RECORDINGS:
A-6I, Syllabus I (31 hours, audio)
X-6, The Tonality of the 7 Synonyms for God (5 hours, audio)
SYNOPSIS: In the Christian Science textbook, God is defined as Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love , the 7 synonyms for God (see S&H 465:8–15). A thorough understanding of this 7-fold nature of God is central to understanding the Science of Being. This book offers a comprehensive account of the 7 synonyms—including their history, their individual tonality, and how their 7-fold nature operates dimensionally on every level of spiritual consciousness. Through the scientific method of synonym research explained in this book, we gain a divinely objective understanding of God.
CONTENTS:
Preface
Chapter 1: Analysis of the 7 Synonyms for God
Chapter 2: Correlation Between Synonym-analysis and the Orders Discovered by John Doorly
Chapter 3: The Synonymy-principle
Chapter 4: The Language of Spirit
Chapter 5: The Consciousness of the 7 Synonyms for God
Chapter 6: The Four Fundamental Orders of the Synonyms for God
Chapter 7: The Dimensional Character of the Synonyms for God
Chapter 8: The Subjects of the 7 Synonyms for God in the Textbook-chapters
Chapter 9: The 7 Synonyms for God in the 4-fold Divine Operation (Synonym-matrices)
Chapter 10: The Oneness of Being
Appendix
EDITED EXCERPT:
From Max Kappeler, The Seven Synonyms for God, pp. ix–1.
Preface
In the year 1938, my Christian Science teacher, John W. Doorly C.S.B., London (England), gave me the opportunity to join a small research team he had gathered together for the purpose of undertaking a scientific analysis of the 7 synonyms for God. Today I realize that this was the turning point in my life. Why?
As a young university graduate, I was keenly interested in the investigation of Christian Science as a science. Nothing could have convinced me more completely of the scientific nature of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, than the scientific work on the Textbook under John Doorly's guidance. To someone familiar with scientific methods of thinking and working, nothing could have given clearer proof of the difference between the Science of God and all other sciences than this intensive investigation into the question "What is God?". Again and again, the work demanded that scientific sense obey divine logic, which together with spiritual sense provided the necessary foundation for further unfoldment. In this way, both spiritual and scientific sense were challenged beyond measure, eventually proving to be the twin factors central to shaping and determining the course of the rest of my life.
I have always regarded it as an immeasurable gift of grace that I was led to the study of the 7 synonyms for God. What bigger subject could there be than to know what God is? Through this study, it became clear that new insights fundamental to Christian Science would unfold only from the Word of God as revealed in the Textbook—from the 7 synonyms for God. As the work of the last half-century has shown time and again, spiritual progress and advancement become possible only when the foundation on which Mary Baker Eddy based Christian Science is scientifically understood. The truly productive discoveries, which have brought the subject forward spiritually, have consistently been the outgrowth of a consecrated and thoroughly refined understanding of the synonyms.
Such rewards are not, however, reserved for only a few; because Christian Science is a science, progress and discovery are available to all whose search begins with the Word of God, to all who strive for a scientifically based, spiritual understanding of Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love.
The way to this understanding has unfolded directly from the work of those early years with John Doorly. Only from the scientific analysis of the synonymous terms for God in the Christian Science textbook could the further unfoldment of the understanding of the synonyms that we witness today evolve. The purpose of the present book is therefore to show this way, to show the line of spiritual development of the subject, the spiritual logic that pioneered the way forward, as well as the anomalies, difficulties, obstacles, dangers, and pitfalls that had to be overcome. It is a story of pioneering achievement, filled with the exaltation that came with each step of understanding more about the nature of God, as well as the challenges that came with facing apparent impasses and having to wait until the subject became ripe for further unfoldment.
Anyone who not merely reads but actually studies this book and follows this way individually can experience what I experienced when I was introduced to the study of the synonyms. Through the ordered line of unfoldment, everyone can be taken with the subject as the single, most compelling issue, aim, and purpose of one's life. As it was for me, so it can be for everyone the turning point from which one's life is fundamentally changed, transformed by the step-by-step, divinely scientific way of understanding more about the nature of God in its Science….
The development of the concept of God in the Bible and Christian Science textbook
The most fundamental question in Christian Science is the eternal question: What is God? In the year 1907, Mary Baker Eddy answered this question in her Textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," as follows: "God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love" (465:9). This is the most momentous sentence ever written. How did this vitally important definition of God ever come to be written? To understand this, let us look briefly at the long quest for the meaning of God, of which this is the culmination.
Development of the concept of God in the Bible. For thousands of years mankind has sought an answer to the question: What is God? In all religions this search has been at the center of spiritual endeavor. From earliest times man has felt intuitively that there must be some reality beyond the visible, a governing power to which man and the universe are subject, and he gave it the name "God." But how was man to conceive of God? The most varied views of Deity evolved. Human characteristics, both good and bad, were used to describe God, so that God came to be regarded by the more literally minded as a super-human being. The ancient cultures of China, India, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Americas, and Africa all wrestled with concepts of Deity, attempting to describe God through various names and functions. Unfortunately, in their degenerate forms, these cultures fell prey to polytheism, separating each distinct aspect of God into a multitude of deities. The gods of such pantheists were seen as more powerful but often less moral than mortals, warring with each other and holding men at their mercy.
It was in the context of and in contrast to such a pantheistic belief that the Judeo-Christian religion emerged.
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