Mrs. Fillmore’s doctrine of God can be summed up in one word—Omnipresent! A cursory look at chapters 1 through 3 of How to Let God Help You reveals that
Mrs. Fillmore makes reference to God on every page and in almost every
paragraph of this book. From the onset,
she admonishes readers to “Let us forget all that has pressed itself in upon
us, to make us sometimes feel that God the Good is not all in all.”
Mrs. Fillmore wants readers to know God as she knows him;
she wants readers to experience God, to live the life He has planned for
us. She acknowledges that from her
experience in Unity, she knows there is “almost a universal lack of
understanding of the Truth of Being.” The
Truth is that we are children of God, and as such, we are beneficiaries of his
wisdom, his love, his power, life and substance.
The real purpose of our life, according to Mrs. Fillmore, is
to express the creation of God, to live the life God has planned for us. We are, after all, created in the image and
likeness of God. God has given us faculties and powers which we are to use
rightly.
God the Father - Mrs. Fillmore makes reference to God as her
Father after all she is a child of God, as are we all. However, she has had a love for and a close relationship
with God since her youth; He is familiar to her. She goes on to say that ‘God my Father has
made me to know that no matter what I have done or what others have done to me,
He has implanted within me the pattern of perfection.”
God the Giver - He has given us the gift of life, a gift
that is never withdrawn, never lessened never limited by the Giver. What greater gift is that! According to Mrs. Fillmore, “He has given me
the life, power, intelligence, and substance out of which I may recreate my
soul qualities and my physical structures and so come forth a new creature.“
God is the Source of our being – Mrs. Fillmore acknowledges
God as the Source of our being. “Just as
surely as there is God the one Presence and one Power, we shall find that all
is well and that we are but going from one room, as it were, into another,
larger and lighter room.”
Mrs. Fillmore wants readers to not harbor any misgivings,
but rather to “leave past, present and future in God’s hands.” We are to keep our thoughts on God’s presence
and power!
God establishes order – According to Mrs. Fillmore, God’s
law of equalization is effective everywhere.
“For everything that has its place upon the earth, there is righteous
satisfaction, and there is plenty for all under divine law. “
God is Love - God’s love draws together and holds all the
elements of our being in perfect harmony.
I love the thoroughness of your summary here. It matches how my mind likes to organize what I learn! :) As you set forth Myrtle's discussions about God here, I'm also noticing how much of what she is saying in these chapters is about how what God is necessarily relates to us--i.e., to what we are, what we deserve/are entitled to, to the purpose of our lives, to how we can be healthy/happy, etc. Of course, this makes sense given that this book is about How we can help God help us! At the same time, as Dr.Tom indicated, this title was given after the fact.
ReplyDeleteThank you Nhien. Guess that's the way to do it--title after the fact! I agree, what God is does relate to us and on so many levels.
DeleteYou write: "Mrs. Fillmore wants readers to know God as she knows him; she wants readers to experience God, to live the life He has planned for us."
ReplyDeleteThis quote seems to represent, if not your whole understanding of Myrtle Fillmore's theology, a summary of the I-Thou relationship which she experienced between herself and God the Father. Your summary appears to show Myrtle was a thoroughgoing monotheist, a believer in the Creator-God Who wants us "to live the life He has planned for us."
Anthropologically, your view of Myrtle's theology makes humanity a subordinate creature, wholly dependent upon the Creator-God, who is consistently referred to with the masculine pronoun.
Note: I am not saying this is YOUR theology. But reading your summary of Mrs. Fillmore's thought suggests you find monotheistic markers clearly placed throughout her work.
Most Unity thinkers today are inclined to spiritualize or in some way reinterpret Myrtle's thought to bring it on line with a cosmic monism that does not acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being "out there." My repeated challenge to the whole class has been to read Mrs. Fillmore and discover HER theology, not fix hers.
So, I repeat the pesky question. What is Myrtle Fillmore's actual doctrine of God? Is she a monist, monotheist, pantheist, panentheist, or something else?
DrTom
Leah- I also hear Myrtle as a lover of God, completely in thrall with with ‘him,’ like a God groupie or as God being the object of cultish devotion. She attributes all this doing to God. She is ready to relinquish nearly all concerns of self. In answer to Dr. Tom’s ‘pesky question,’ I want to eliminate “monotheist” (philosophy of there being only one God) and “pantheist (everything in the universe is God),” but remain confused as to whether Myrtle is indeed a cosmic monist (all things being one--us and God) or panentheist, where God is somehow greater, but not separate, from us. It’s hard to pick through Myrtle’s verbiage because she’s not intending to be clear about her beliefs. Rather, she’s wrapped up in the emotion of her experience, desperate to share what she’s found in order to ‘fix’ us. You summarize her rapture beautifully, finding what I also found--an underlying activity of God that unmistakably portrays that traditional “man upstairs” that makes me say ‘ugh.’
ReplyDeleteThanks for responding, Lesley. Hopefully by the end of this class we will be closer to knowing which "category" Mrs. Fillmore should be placed.
DeleteHi Leah,
ReplyDeleteAfter reading your paper, I'm led to ask just this: Is Myrtle's God Principle? Or is God something else? God the Father doesn't feel like Principle to me. Nor does God the Giver. However, God the Source does feel like Principle. Similarly, God is Love and God establishes Order feels like Principle. I'm not posing the question to draw a conclusion - yet. Maybe by the time we arrive at the last chapter things will be more clear.
Hmm. Perhaps Mrs. Fillmore defies the hole that the pigeon fits in.
ReplyDeleteHmm. Perhaps she does! LOL!
DeleteLeah - I like your comparison to Myrtle's reference to God as Father: "God the Father - Mrs. Fillmore makes reference to God as her Father after all she is a child of God, as are we all. However, she has had a love for and a close relationship with God since her youth; He is familiar to her. " He is familiar to her. That makes sense to me and helps place the reference to God, the "Father" in content. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteLeah,
ReplyDeleteLove this one sentence in particular. "Mrs. Fillmore’s doctrine of God can be summed up in one word—Omnipresent!" There you go people!!! Any questions? I believe that you hit on something else too when you used Myrtle's quote “He has given me the life, power, intelligence, and substance out of which I may recreate my soul qualities and my physical structures and so come forth a new creature.“ That makes sense since God is the giver of life.