“Christian Science (‘Szientismus’)”

Holl, Karl. “Christian Science (‘Szientismus’),” Pages 460–79 in Gesammelte Aufsâtze zur Kirchengeschichte. Tübingen, Germany: J.C.B. Muhr, 1918.

This article (1918) by Karl Holl (not a Christian Scientist) was a response to a critical review of Holl’s theological defense of Christian Science in a court case. As Stephen Gottschalk notes in “Theodicy after Auschwitz and The Reality of God”, Holl and Karl Barth were the only two early 20^th-century theologians who addressed Mary Baker Eddy’s work seriously, and Holl did so with understanding and respect. He challenged scholars who did not follow its logic and religious teachings sufficiently, who found it easier to scoff than to analyze. Holl’s essay is neither apologetic nor polemic. Science and Health, he claimed, is “not a methodically worked out textbook, … nonetheless what she intends to say as a whole is plain and expressed clearly” (4). Although Eddy’s founding of a new Christian religion was a radical departure from orthodoxy, Holl argued that she had not handled her task superficially. “Even when trying to become acquainted with the practical and religious aspects of Christian Science, it is not easy to approach it from the generally accepted Christian or religious basis” (13). Christian Science leads one to conclude the unreality of the corporeal world, while still having to adjust to the concept of suffering and retributive justice by God.

Read “Christian Science (‘Szientismus’)” on the Marlène F. Johnson Fund website.

See also annotation:

“Freedom for Life,” by Karl Barth

“Theodicy after Auschwitz and the Reality of God” by Stephen Gottschalk