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Your Questions & Answers

Following the example set by the question-and-answer columns in the early Journals, when Mary Baker Eddy was Editor, this column will respond to general queries from Journal readers with responses from Journal readers. You’ll find information at the end of the column about how to submit questions. Readers are also encouraged to go to Chapter III of Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896 by Mary Baker Eddy — “Questions and Answers.”

Are all material objects simply ideas, or is matter altogether nonexistent?

By Ron Ballard, C.S.B.

From the December 2011 issue of The Christian Science Journal

Are all material objects simply ideas, or is matter altogether nonexistent? If matter doesn’t exist, how can material objects express beauty, or be reflections of ideas? — From a participant at the Portland, Oregon, Youth Summit  A:  The relationship between material objects and spiritual ideas is clearly delineated in Mary Baker Eddy’s answer to a similar question posed on page 60 of her book Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896 . There she says, in part: “.