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Home > Books > Epitomes for the Spiritually Structured Interpretation of the Christian Science Textbook
Epitomes for the Spiritually Structured Interpretation of the Christian Science Textbook
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Product Code: 0-942958-06-3
Manufacturer: Kappeler Institute Publishing
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Cloth, 110 pages
Level:
SUBJECT(s):
Structure of the Christian Science Textbook
RELATED RECORDINGS:
C-1 series, The Structure of the Christian Science Textbook—Our Way of Life (275 hours of audio, 51 hours of video)
C-2 series, The Christian Science Textbook: A workshop on text-interpretation (102 hours of audio, 102 hours of video)
SYNOPSIS: Anyone who strives to understand either the Bible or Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, faces the challenge of reducing thousands of words to the simplicity of divine categories. To this end, one important tool for scientific text-interpretation is the method of working with epitomes based on the 3 fundamental categories of Being. Through the structure of divine categories, we can discern the basic spiritual laws taught in the Textbook. The ultimate discernment of universal, spiritual laws underlying a text is one of the greatest values in interpreting the Bible and Science and Health through the categories of God, divine Being. This book is a companion to Kappeler's book The Structure of the Christian Science Textbook—Our Way of Life: Vol. I: Revelation of the Structure.
CONTENTS:
Introduction: The Method of Working with the Epitomes
Chapter 1: Prayer
Chapter 2: Atonement & Eucharist
Chapter 3: Marriage
Chapter 4: Christian Science Versus Spiritualism
Chapter 5: Animal Magnetism Unmasked
Chapter 6: Science, Theology, Medicine
Chapter 7: Physiology
Chapter 8: Footsteps of Truth
Chapter 9: Creation
Chapter 10: Science of Being
Chapter 11: Some Objections Answered
Chapter 12: Christian Science Practice
Chapter 13: Teaching Christian Science
Chapter 14: Recapitulation
Chapter 15: Genesis
Chapter 16: The Apocalypse
EXCERPT:
From Max Kappeler, Epitomes for the Spiritually Structured Interpretation of the Christian Science Textbook, pp. 1–2. THE METHOD OF WORKING WITH EPITOMES
Epitomizing: a scientific method
Anyone who strives to understand either the Bible or Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy faces the challenge of reducing thousands of words, sentences, paragraphs and pages to a comprehensible simplicity—without oversimplifying. To this end, one important tool for scientific text-interpretation in the Science of being is the method of working with epitomes. In brief, this method summarizes the main points of a text in a few short sentences, showing in a simple, concise form the substance and logic of a text. John W. Doorly first used this method of epitomization mainly in his work on the Bible and on a few chapters of Science and Health. Since then, experience has shown that this method provides an invaluable tool for understanding and teaching the Science of Christian Science. Accordingly, with this volume of epitomes for the first 16 chapters of the Textbook, it may be helpful to present a brief discourse on the aims and ends of this method: what it is, where it leads and how the student can best make use of this method and of these findings.
This method of reducing a voluminous text to a few short epitomes is scientific. Why? Science—as with all sciences—aims at reducing an infinite range of phenomena to a few key concepts, which identify those few points that represent the whole. Nothing fundamental should be left out; nothing extraneous should be put in. The character of the whole should be represented in its main lines without oversimplification.
For interpreting revealed texts, the only way to do this is through Science: to identify the few fundamental categories of the subject—namely, of divine Being—and then to interpret the text through these few comprehensive categories. Through the ordered interrelation of the categories, we see the structure that underlies the text and binds it together as one ordered, coherent whole. It is the purpose of epitomes to indicate these categories and their structure as they appear in different forms consistently throughout the text.
Epitomes: working aids. Given this scientific nature of the method of epitomizing, we can most value the following epitomes on the chapters of the Textbook if we approach them with a scientific, that is, a searching, investigating, and researching attitude. Our desire must be to study deeply the Science of Christian Science and not to be satisfied with the first flush of inspiration. Because epitomization is a working method—a method of researching the Science of the Textbook—these epitomes are working aids. They are not intended to comfort or uplift thought, but rather to show the means and methods by which the students can unlock for themselves the treasures in the Textbook, giving an infinite and impersonal source of inspiration and understanding.
A divinely structured understanding of revealed texts. What kind of understanding does such an interpretation through epitomes give us? A scientific interpretation of the text is not a human interpretation but an interpretation based on the categories of divine Being. Accordingly, an understanding of the text through Science is not a matter of simply accepting or believing one particular interpretation over another. Rather, understanding an interpretation means letting our consciousness be restructured according to those same categories that underlie and give form to the revealed text. We must read the text with the same Mind that dictated it. Since the purpose of epitomes is to focus these categories specifically as they appear in the text, the more we work with epitomes and learn to detect the categories represented, the more we in fact culture a divinely restructured understanding of the subject.
An impersonal interpretation. What kind of interpretation can we expect to find if we work with epitomes in a divinely scientific way? In working with epitomes scientifically, we are not interested in pursuing human, personal, or merely inspirational interpretations of the text. Instead, the focus is wholly on discerning that interpretation which comes from divine Principle, from the system and categories of Science. We seek to discover the spiritually scientific interpretation implicit in the text itself by letting Principle be its own interpreter. Thus, the epitomes do not reflect the changing personal views of a human interpreter—either another person or ourselves—but rather give an impersonal, divinely objective interpretation, disciplined according to what the text itself conveys through the categories of Being. As a result, anyone working systematically with this method can trust the scientific value of the results. Just as Science cannot be understood through personal views, so the texts which present Science do not yield their treasures except through impersonal, scientific means. "Science is … alone able to interpret God aright" (S&H 127:26).
What is the method of epitomizing?
The Textbook presents the system of divine metaphysics. What does the Textbook fundamentally give us? Its subject—the Science of all being—is infinite. What the Textbook presents is this infinitude in 600 pages, without oversimplifying and therefore distorting the nature and character of the infinite whole. How is this possible? Mary Baker Eddy gives the answer: The infinite can be reduced to comprehensible simplicity through the system of Science. "Divine metaphysics is now reduced to a system, to a form comprehensible by and adapted to the thought of the age in which we live" (S&H 146:31). By presenting infinite being through the ordered structure of the first sixteen chapters, the Textbook provides a means for understanding that perfectly reflects the spiritual structure of divine being.
Category-based understanding and interpretation. With this key of the system of Science, our main interest shifts from trying to understand many details and truths to understanding the fundamental system itself. What is a system? "System" is defined as an ordered, differentiated whole, in which all elements gain their meaning through their relationship with the whole. The system of divine metaphysics presents the whole of being as a whole system of ideas, differentiated through categories and ordered through spiritual laws. What are these categories of divine Being? Science presents three fundamental categories:
1. The seven synonyms for God (Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love) defining the nature of God;
2. The four modes of divine self-operation (Word, Christ, Christianity, Science) giving the dynamic operational sense of Being;
3. The four levels of spiritual consciousness (Science itself, divine Science, absolute Christian Science, Christian Science) showing the multi-dimensionality of divine self-consciousness.
Without the framework of these categories, we would never be able to understand the Bible or the Textbook in their deeper structure and divinely objective meaning. As long as we try to read these revealed texts without an interpretive framework based on the divine, we read the text through our human categories in the same way that we would read any humanly written book. We read words, not spiritual tones and meaning. By contrast, since the Bible and the Textbook reveal the structure of Being itself, our task in interpreting them must be to see the spiritual deep structure underlying the many words, illustrations and examples; we must discern those few fundamental categories inherent in the text and in Being itself.
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