Joel Goldsmith's Christianity

It's interesting as a blogger to see what gets commented on most.
And for me it is my posts about Joel Goldsmith.




There are obviously many dedicated readers and students of Goldsmith's work out there.
One of the comments I got on the blog yesterday prompted me to do this post, as it addressed a question I have myself been considering for many years: Can Joel Goldsmith be called a Christian?
Rhoberta, the commenter, mentioned that Goldsmith himself rejected the label. This doesn't surprise me, as almost all of the New Thought teachers saw themselves as universalists who drew on all the world's religious traditions and whose teachings were in turn accessible across the board. And while this sentiment was admirable, in practise the written work and the rhetoric of Goldsmith, Fillmore and others was so rooted in Christianity and in Biblical reflection that it makes their work very difficult for the non-Christian to negotiate.
I worked for many years in a New Age bookshop, and Goldsmith was always shelved there in the "Christianity" section. I had not read him at this stage, but was fascinated by his books because they were among the only ones that ever sold from that section. I remember asking customers on several occasions what Goldsmith was all about and they suddenly grew very mysterious, and so I was left none the wiser. I read at some stage a passing reference to him in another book as a "Christian Sience writer" and this made him even more mysterious, as Christian Science was by that stage (in mid-90s Australia) an almost entirely forgotten tradition, and I was intrigued as to why we sold so many copies of The Infinite Way.
I'd actually be really interested to see some specific references to Goldsmith's denial of his Christianity, as I have been unable to find any in the books in my collection. I would suggest that his teaching is entirely grounded in the Christian tradition, via the heterodox theology of Mary Baker Eddy. Like his predecessor Charles Fillmore (who had also emerged out of Christian Science), he invoked the Christ ideal in his writing. Australian journalist Tess Van Sommers, in her quaint 1966 overview of Religions in Australia, sums up this theology perfectly, writing "Jesus Christ is not regarded...as a Divine personage. He is looked on as the man who developed the power of divinity within himself to the fullest possible extent. Christ is regarded as the power of God within Jesus, and potentially within all humans, which can enable them to demonstrate their oneness with God."
Goldsmith writes frequently about this idea of an inner Christ, of "the Christ in each one" (Gift of Love, 1975). While it is far from orthodox Christian theology, it is nonetheless an idea entirely focused on the Christian ideal, employing Christian language, and it is rarely expressed in any other way (unlike, for example, in the work of Ernest Holmes, which occasionally makes reference to Buddha-nature and other Eastern spiritual concepts).
Goldsmith describes Christ, or the Christ-ideal, as the ultimate in spiritual attainment, the summit of spiritual perfection, writing in Practising the Presence:

"I was led ultimately to that grandest experience of all, in which the great Master, Christ Jesus, reveals that if we abide in the Word and let the Word abide in us, we shall bear fruit richly..."

Finally, I wanted to make the point firmly that Goldsmith was for many years a conventional Christian Science practitioner, as described so interestingly by Lorraine Sinkler in The Spiritual Journey of Joel Goldsmith, Modern Mystic. One of my other readers, Jean F., rightly castigated me for previously dismissing Goldsmith's Christian Science period as a brief blip in his spiritual development.
So yes, I would suggest that, in all outward forms and for all basic purposes, Goldsmith was a Christian. Certainly, if you pressed one of his books into the hands of an average 21st century secular reader they would be incapable of distinguishing his writing from that of the devotional tracts of more conventional Protestant clergymen - which is why you will normally find his books mouldering away in the "Christianity" section of second-hand bookstores. But I absolutely accept that, on a a more careful analysis, he was a deeply heterodox religious thinker who, perhaps, saw himself as a universalist and whose personal theology was so removed from conventional Christian thinking as to be rejected by most mainstream-Christians as entirely heretical and outside the fold.

The Importance of Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures

Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures, which Mark Twain famously described as “chloroform in print,” is one of the most tremendously influential texts in the histroy of self-help literature. These days, with Christian Science fading from public consciousness, it is easy to forget the tremendous influence this philosophy had on the popular cultural imagination, and just how many of the ideas contained in the book were absorbed into the understanding of alternative health, spirituality and self-help. Its author, and the eventual founder of the Christian Science Church, was Mary Baker Eddy, an impoverished New Englander with a patchy matrimonial history and a lifelong history of largely psychosomatic illness.

I think we have hugely underestimated the cultural power that Eddy’s movement maintained over Western culture up to the 1960s, including here in Australia. Writers, celebrities and Hollywood stars were all drawn to this religion that validated women and denied the dogmas of the traditional churches. This was the case, too, in Australia, where Christian Science churches and reading rooms popped up in every capital city. In Science and Health... Eddy sets forth her theological understanding that all that is good is of God, and all that is bad is illusion, for God is the only reality:

"all real being is in God, the Divine Mind, and that Life, Truth, and Love are all-powerful and ever-present."

This huge, prolix and immensely difficult book became almost an instant bestseller, establishing the market for spiritually-inspired books of self-help healing that continues till this day. The success of the book and of the religious movement it inspired meant that by the end of the nineteenth century Mary Baker Eddy was ver rich, powerful and influential.

The crest on the front of the book reads:

"Heal the Sick, Raise the Dead, Cast Out Demons, Cleanse the Lepers."

These, of course, being the miracles of Christ, which Mary Baker Eddy believed all of her followers should be able to emulate. To this end she forbade the use of conventional medicine, though she herself famously visited the dentist towards the end of her life.

Eddy’s empire was, however, not without its critics. In Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality, Leigh Eric Schmidt makes the old point that Eddy's book was largely influenced by the work of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, a travelling New England healer who was immensely popular in the middle of the nineteenth century and who was responsible for many of Eddy's own cures. Eddy later rejected this notion, claiming that all of the ideas in the book were her own, divinely inspired. She said that the book was "hoplessly original," perhaps hinting that even she was aware of some of it stylistic shortcomings. And in denying sin, suffering and evil, the book was, of course, entirely heretical and opposed to any mainstream theology. In rejecting the notion of original sin, Horton Davies, in his book Christian Deviations, wrote that:

"Christian Scientists are tone-deaf to the tragic notes of our human symphony. Life's foes demand to be faced with bracing realism, not evaded by Christian Science escapism."

Harmony in The Science of Mind

Christian Science and the diverse New Thought movements that sprang out from under it have been described by theorists as the Harmonial religions. They are described thus because they claim that the human's central purpose in this life is to be at harmony with universal laws. This harmony, once established, is representative of the pattern of the entire universe. God did not create chaos, but complete harmony - it is up to the believer to realise this and to fall into line with it.
Unsurprisingly, 'harmony' is a concept that arises regularly in The Science of Mind, and Holmes' concept of it is revealed bit by bit as the massive book unfolds. Just as the theorists contend, Holmes is convinced of the inherent harmony of the universe, though such harmony is hidden from our clumsy, unrefined eyes. It is, however, a mere moment away, and could be ours, "Would that some Voice were sweet enough to sound the harmony of life" (p. 512). With this wistful statement, Holmes seems to be suggesting that no human voice is capable of properly capturing the beauty of the Universal essence, and so this beauty remains hidden to the bulk of humanity. Our all-too-human voices succeed only in obfuscating or denying the harmony that is at work even as we deny it. Life itself, despite how it might be characterised in scientific literature, is an exercise in harmony. As always, those in the world mischaracterise it.
In his book This Thing Called You (1948), Holmes writes: "Love is the fulfillment of the law, that is, it is only through love that the law can fulfill itself in your experience, because love harmonizes everything, unifies everything. It gives to everything, flows through everything" (p. 93). Love, then, is the cause of harmony that is so essential to a sacred life. Unless we are loving we cannot be operating in accordance with the dictates of divine law, and so are doomed to a disharmonious existence. In our own worldly existence we, through the gift of free will, are inclined to make clumsy errors and to experience pain and suffering. On the divine level - a level which we are all capable of inhabiting in the here and now - there is none of this erroneous thought and belief. Once we are channeling divine love we are operating according to law, not error, and "There is no over-action or inaction in Divine Law, for everything moves according to perfect harmony" (Science of Mind, p. 524). It is worth noting that the promise is not of a largely happy life, or a mostly happy one - harmony will be present in all that we do, once we are operating in accord with the laws of the Universe. Such a promise is quite attractive.
The last part of The Science of Mind is taken up with meditations and affirmations for all kinds of problems and conditions. The meditation "On Being One With Perfect Action" asks the practitioner/reader to declare daily that "God's own harmonious actions can operate through us" (p. 525). This notion is, of course, essential to the harmonial project - it is not enough that God in heaven experiences perfection. We are capable of being agents of that same perfection, thatt harmony. We pray not to be delivered to God, but to become a part of Her. Thus mankind is capable of this evolution into Divine being in the here and now, where "'Universal harmony' is an attribute of God, and so a definition of spirituality" (Living the Science of Mind, p. 33).
More and more I am beginning to realise that the demands made upon the practitioner and student of New Thought are incredibly demanding, and these examples point out that what is expected of the truly spiritual person is no less than Divine Perfection. Far from being the light-weight religious option that it is characterised as being by its critics, it would seem to me a particularly gruelling path, leaving the follower no room to call on the mercy of shared human foibles. Reading the history of Holmes' movement, however, exposes many who were all-too-human in their conduct, however, and fell short of the Divine ideal they were meant to be modelling. Even this microcosm of harmonial understanding was filled with people who, according to Holmes' lifelong companion Reginald Armor, "were not infrequently out of harmony with the vocabulary of metaphysics..." (That Was Ernest, p. 162). This lack of a unified front pained Holmes, though he always insisted on the freedom of choice of all beings, including those who were members of his own church.
In The Sciene of Mind harmony seems to be the codeword for all that is positive in the Spiritual universe. It is an embodied quality, and also a section of the great goodness we can all expect in our lives when we increase in spiritual knowledge and practice. It is a gift from God, and "It is the Father's goodpleasure to give me the Kingdom of Heaven, or harmony and abundance..." (SOM, p. 556).

(Image from nonprints.com)

Evil in the Science of Mind

Probably the greatest theological problem faced by New Thought is the question of the existence of evil. This same problem dogs orthodox Christianity, of course, but at least itcan fall back on the doctrine of original sin. That doctrine is rejected by New Thought, which teaches that we are all created perfectly, not just in the image of God but as manifestations of God - a part of creation which is eternal, wholly good and perfect. The existence of bad thinsgs in such a schema would seem to be a fundamental stumbling point. It was exactly this point that many of the early critics of Christian Science (most notably Mark Twain, to the consternation of his devoutly Christian Science daughter) harped on, and it continues to be the achilles heel of New Thought philosophy. If God is Good and good is our natural state of being, why do we witness so many bad things in our world?
"Evil is man created," says Ernest Holmes in The Science of Mind (p. 499). He goes on to explain "God - the eternal goodness - knows nothing about it. He is too pure to behold evil and cannot look upon it. Evil is the direct and suppositional opposite to good, and has no reality behind it, or actual law to come to its support." This is the standard explanation, and is pretty much the same thing you'd hear from a Christian Scientist or, for that matter, a Swedenborgian. God is only goodness, so anything that we might interpret as evil is created by us, and is, in fact, an illusion. This seems an adequate response, but I always want to ask, "Yes but why? Why do we have to suffer these delusions? If God is Good and wants only happiness for us why has he allowed us to create these phantoms of unhappiness?" The response to this is that we have been afforded free will - that free will is, in fact, the one essential aspect of our being as humans, the thing with which God has gifted us. This is an idea which derives clearly from the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. We are free to choose at any moment between good and evil. Interestingly, this same notion of free will is essential to most Buddhist thinking - that conditions, circumstances and karma are all very real, but equally real is that moment of volition when we can choose between a wise or a foolish action.
It is interesting to note, as well, that in this passage Holmes seems to be anthropomorphising God, something strictly frowned upon in New Thought theology. This turn of phrase is undoubtedly reflexive, but it betrays an older way of thinking about God, creation and the problem of evil. God in this description is definitely a pure deity, one who knows only good, and cannot see imperfection. But to my mind it begs the question - because it is unseen, does it mean it doesn't exist? In the rest of his writing (and in New Thought in general) Holmes absolutely rejects a dualistic vision of the universe as divided between good and evil. The problem is always in human perception, in our own misunderstanding of circumstances. In an essay on The Impersonal Face of God, Holmes writes:

"We are not dealing with a negative as well as a positive Power—not two powers but one; a power that sees neither good nor evil as we see it. It knows only that it is all, and since it is all, it creates whatever is given it. From our limited standpoint we often think of good and evil; not realizing that, as yet, we do not know the one from the other. What we call good today, we may call evil tomorrow, and what we think to be evil today, we may tomorrow proclaim as the greatest good we have known. Not so with the Great Universal Power of Mind; It sees only Itself and Its infinite ability to create."

To further refine his explanation in The Science of Mind, Holmes goes on to make a distinction between God, which is all good, and Universal Law, which is objective and unchangeable. "The law is no respecter of persons and will bring good or evil to any, according to his use or misuse of it" (SOM, p. 500). So God is the source of all good, but his agency is the action of Universal Law. It is the duty of the human to work with these immutable laws and fall into harmony with them - thus bringing ourselves the promised perfection.
So serious is this question of evil (and, probably, so recurrent were the questions surrounding it) that Holmes devotes a whole section of The Science of Mind to it. Here he underlines the notion of evil as an unwise use of life's laws and conditions. It is nothing in and of itself - it is a fiction. It is the word we use to describe a whole host of results, the causes of which are mysterious to us. Evil is a destructive meme, and the student of Religious Science can leave the concept behind forever. "To turn from evil and do good is the desire of every soul who is consecrated to the Truth; this we can do only as we cease talking about, believing in, or doing evil."

The Infinite Way

The Infinite Way is one of the great classics of self-help literature - indeed, it is one of the books on the 'Timeline of Self-Help Writing' that I put together for my thesis.
Based largely on the teachings of Christian Science, it is a slender book, quite poetic in its content and deeply mystical. Though not a formal exponent of Christian Science, Joel Goldsmith was influential in Christian Science circles. His works were great favourites of Doris Day, who said she went to bed every evening listening to audio recordings of Goldsmith's lectures. But in rejecting the formal affiliation with the church, Goldsmith places this, his most famous and enduring work, in the canon of New Thought, and it's is still read and enthusiastically recommended by serious students of New Thought.
Though short, it is reasonably dense, and is really meant to be read slowly and reflectively. Indeed, since its publication groups have sprung up devoted to the reading and study of the book, establishing around Goldsmith a quasi-religious structure. Such groups were active in Sydney well into the 1990s, though I'm not aware that there are any still going.
The central message of the book is the basic Christian Science doctrine that we are merely expressions of God, and therefore perfect. Goldsmith tells us that God's reality is all-good, and so the only truth is in abundance, health, happiness and prosperity. The only truth is God, expressed in many different ways. "God, Consciousness is forever expressing Itself and Its qualities. Consciousness, Life, Spirit, can never fail. Our task is to learn to relax and let our Soul express itself" (38).
The book is really an extended meditation in that same style - there is little that is practical here, for Goldsmith returns again and again to his central theme: we need only awaken to God, who is already in us. It is a devotional text rather than an instructive text. And as such it frequently transports the reader with great gusts of hope, and with a carefully constructed mystical longing. This is Goldsmith's power as a writer - he can make his particular philosophy, singular as it may be, distinctly beguiling.
"We must begin our days with the inner reminder of our true identity. We must identify ourselves as Spirit, as Principle, as the law of Life unto our affairs. It is a very necessary thing to remember that we have no needs: We are infinite, individual, spiritual consciousness embodying within ourselves the infinity of good..." (80). The Infinite Way (Goldsmith's first book), then, serves as a textual way to remind us of this heavenly identity. There is much of Swedenborg in this, as of course there is in the work of Mary Baker Eddy.
There is some discussion of healing in the book, and it seemed as though healing was a central part of Goldsmith's lectures, but he tends not to be too specific in The Infinite Way. The book takes an extreme position: there is no illness, and all healing is but the return to the promised spiritual state of perfection.
Goldsmith was a prolific author, and many of his books remain in print. The Infinite Way remains his greatest achievement, however, and is an absolutely intriguing exercise in New Thought absolutism.

God in Humanity in The Science of Mind

Chapter 11 of The Science of Mind goes into great detail about the spiritual treatments that practitioners of Religious Science are meant to administer. Such treatments have always been an important part of the church structure of Religious Science, and some Practitioners in the church have gone on to great fame - most notably Louise Hay and Marianne Williamson. I have never had such a treatement, though I really would like to experience it. I know of only one practitioner at work in Sydney, however .
According to Holmes the purpose of a treatment is to help the subject once more become a properly functioning channel of God's perfect energy. The Practitioner never actually cures anything - she merely reminds the subject of their own innate perfection. With Holmes (as with most of the schools of New Thought), God lives in us, and we live in God. Perfection, abundance and perfect health are our natural states of being, and spirituality is merely re-aligning ourselves with that perfection.
No-one can possibly be separate from the Divine, according to The Science of Mind. People may be confused, they may have forgotten their real being, but the spark remains in us always, no matter how separated we may feel.
My knowledge of conventional theology is really not sufficient to know whether or not this is all heretical, but I suspect it might be. I'd love one of my readers to enlighten me. But as a personal theology it seems deeply comforting and spiritually satisfying - and, as usual, it doesn't seem to be too far removed from Christian Science.
Cure is effected by the practitioner refusing to see bad in their subject. Holmes seems to be saying that the God that is within us can be brought back to the fore merely by being recognised and affirmed. Any other state of being is illusory.

Spirit in The Science of Mind

Holmes says that "The spirit of man, which is his self-knowingness, is the only part of him which has volition or self-choice; all else acts as automatic law." Basically he is making a standard Christian Science-inspired division here between the Spiritual, which is of God, and therefore the only real thing, and the material body, which is gross and must fall victim to the material laws of the Universe, as must all material things. The spiritual being is eternal, the physical only fleeting, and doomed to decay.
He seems to be implying here that the spiritual is conscious of itself, but in other parts of his book he says that this spiritual consciousness is subtle and difficult to cultivate. Indeed, many people may lead a whole lifetime ignorant of the reality of their spiritual self - they may even virulently deny such an entity.

Salinger and Christian Science

In this week's Spectator, Christopher Hitchens tells the following fascinating story about J. D. Salinger:

My friend Roger Lathbury, a literary publisher working across the river in Virginia, wrote to J.D. Salinger in 1988 asking if he could reprint his last published story, ‘Hapworth 16, 1924’, in book form. Eight years later Salinger wrote back to agree. He even proposed coming down to Washington, where the two had a meager snack at the National Gallery of Art. Over lunch he asked Roger if he, too, was fond of the Christian Science classics of Mary Baker Eddy. Two things arise from this trashy recommendation. It undermines the frequent comparison of Salinger to Twain, who wrote a hilarious demolition of Mrs Eddy. And it rather suggests that we won’t find much of value in any undiscovered manuscript.

It's interesting how so many critics and commentators have such a difficult time dealing with Salnger's interest in religion and mysticism. Like Hitchens, they use it as a means to belittle him, to imply that he couldn't have been all that great because of his crazy interest in matters metaphysical. Like those other literary lightweights Yeats and Blake, Dante and Milton, Christina Rossetti and Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Apparently Salinger's interest in Christian Science was longstanding, with his daughter accusing him of neglect because his beliefs meant he never took her to a doctor when she was ill. The fact that he was born Jewish leads me to compare him interestingly to that other great Jewish Christian Scientist Joel Goldsmith.

Joel Goldsmith

Joel Goldsmith is an enigmatic figure in the history of self-help. While never a real superstar of the movement, his books always had a cult following, and many of them remain in print to this day. His great classic was a slender book called The Infinite Way, which layed out his basic philosophy. Its brevity does not denote ease of reading, however, because it's a dense little volume. After its publication groups emerged all over the US and the world (up until the late 1990s there were still groups meeting here in Sydney) devoted to the study of the book and Goldsmith's philosophy.
He is often characterised as the great modern reformer of Christian Science, and he seemed to have attracted many followers from that camp. My favourite Christian Scientist, Doris Day, was a fan of Goldsmith's work, and claimed to go to sleep every night listening to his tapes.
Certainly Goldsmith's books present a more overtly religious - and by that I mean Christian - aspect than most of the other modern New Thought books. I suspect this is what stopped him from becoming a genuinely popular literary figure. The Jesus talk was simply too unpalatable for the general reader.
That said, once you begin to examine the books' underlying theology you quickly realise that we are not in the realm of mainstream Christianity here. Beside the fact that he was a great advocate of meditation, Goldsmith's own religious life was quite fascinating. he was born into an Orthodox Jewish family, and was educated in a Hebrew School. Quite when he began healing in the name of Jesus no-one knows, but Goldsmith described his emergence as a spiritual leader as a slow process, something that happened in stages until one day he realised that no-one came to see him any longer for business purposes - 100% of his days had been taken up by healing work. Taking this as a sign from God, he allowed his business to go broke and instead set himself up as a fulltime Christian Science practitioner. Later, of course, he was to reject the dogmas of that church, as so many had before him, and instead he established his own school based on similar principles, but allowing its students more intellectual and spiritual freedom.
Much of The Infinite Way seems to be pretty standard Christian Science minus the dogma and the insistence on exclusive truth. Goldsmith was at heart a Universalist, and recognised the name of Jesus as a concept and spiritual symbol more than a defining point of religious difference. He said that we need to develop an exclusively spiritual mindset, and once we did that the world will fall in line with the perfection that is the law of spirit.
To my mind Goldsmith's most readable book was Practising the Presence. Indeed, it is quite beautifully written, an extended meditation on the necessity to be always at prayer, always "showing forth the health, harmony, and wealth, which are our spiritual birthright..." (55).
There is a fascinating (and quite rare) biography written by one of his closest assistants which describes Goldsmith as a "Modern Mystic," and he certainly is entitled to that description.
As an example of mid-20th century self-help, The Infinite Way stands out as being among the most overtly religious in its vocabulary and concepts, but it was a religious view so unorthodox that it separates Goldsmith from those other great populist clergymen Norman Vincent Peale and Fulton J. Sheen.