The essential history of Christian Science may be reduced to three epochal phases: first, Mary Baker Eddy’s discovery of the principles of Christian Science; second, her establishment of the religion which bears that name; and, third, the cult’s organizational solidification following her death. It seems that after a long period of personal and domestic vicissitudes, as well as ill health, Mrs. Eddy came to believe in spiritual healing through Phineas B. Quimby in 1862. Many non-Scientists argue that she got her basic healing system from him and others, but her followers maintain that ultimately she discovered a radically different system which came by divine revelation and was recorded in her definitive volume, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, first published in 1875. As a result, the Christian Science Church was founded, followed by the establishment of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in 1881. Societies and churches were built, publishing houses were established, and the religion spread around the world. Mrs. Eddy died in 1910 at 89 years of age. Thousands revered her, others respected her, still others condemned her, and all acknowledged that she was one of the outstanding women of religious history. The story of Christian Science after the time of Mrs. Eddy has been told fully, at least in certain aspects, by Altman K. Swihart in Since Mrs. Eddy (1931) and by Charles Braden in Christian Science Today (1958). The books show that the Board of Directors have consolidated the organization which the foundress began into one of the most efficient authoritarian and rigid structures known to religious history.
Christian Science has enjoyed a steady but not uninterrupted growth since the time of its inception. Dr. Braden, who has computed his statistics from the Christian Science Journal, calculates that “the Church of Christ, Scientist, with its total of 3,115 churches and societies, would have a world membership of 367,570.” Below is his table of churches throughout the world.
Christian Science, along with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Church of the Latter Day Saints, and other sects, joins with the traditional churches in affirming the inspiration of the Bible (Science and Health, pp. 126 f., 269 f., and so on). But like the sectarian groups and unlike the evangelical churches, it affirms other inspired sources alongside the Bible which indeed supplant the Bible. If Mrs. Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures is a true key to the Bible, then the historic churches have been in error for 20 centuries. Christian Scientist Arthur J. Todd, in saying that there are four religious groups in the United States, namely, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Christian Scientist, rightly sensed that the religion taught by Mrs. Eddy is something other than what the historic churches have understood to be taught by the Bible. The reason for the difference is that Christian Science does not believe in the inspiration of the Bible only but of Mrs. Eddy also (Science and Health, pp. 560 f.).
DOCTRINAL DEVIATIONS
Let us note then the crucial doctrine of Christian Science, namely the doctrine of God. “God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle …” (Science and Health, pp. 465 f. passim). Mrs. Eddy deduces from the biblical principle of the infinity of God that he is not personal. “Limitless personality is inconceivable” (No and Yes, p. 20; Science and Health, pp. 265, 331). According to George Channing, an authoritative spokesman for the religion, God is not Triune but “Life, Truth, and Love are ‘the triune Principle called God’ ” (“What is a Christian Scientist?,” Look, Nov. 18, 1952, p. 57). The Father tends to be identified with God more than anything or anyone else is, although a common tenet of Christian Science is that All is God and God is All. As for the Second Person in the Trinity, the Son of God, Mary Baker Eddy writes: “The Christian believes that Christ is God … Jesus Christ is not God” (Science and Health, p. 361). By this she means that Christ is the Principle and as such is identified with God; Jesus is the corporeal man with great insight into the Principle but as corporeal man not identified with God. As for the Third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit is Christian Science. “This Comforter I understand to be Divine Science” (Science and Health, p. 55).
Since God is All, and man, the true or spiritual man, is part of God, man possesses the attributes of God. “He is co-existent with God. As far back as the being of God is the being of man. ‘Searching for the origin of man is like enquiring into the origin of God himself, the self-existent and eternal’ ” (Haldeman, Christian Science, p. 112; Science and Health, p. 535). “Hence,” writes Gilmore, another Scientist authority, “the real man as God’s likeness, without material accompaniments, has existed forever. When Jesus asserted, ‘Before Abraham was, I am,’ he undoubtedly referred to his true selfhood as the Son of God, as the Christ-man” (Braden, Varieties of American Religion, p. 163).
Christian Science denies the death of Jesus Christ. Science and Health renders Romans 5:8 as, “… we were reconciled to God by the (seeming) death of His Son” (p. 45). Since Christ did not provide a perfect atonement, it is not surprising that we read: “The atonement requires constant self-immolation on the sinner’s part” (pp. 23, 24).
The most important application of the Christian Scientist doctrine of salvation is, of course, to healing. “Man is never sick, for Mind is not sick and matter cannot be” (Science and Health, p. 393). “Sin and disease,” writes Gilmore, “are figments of the mortal or carnal mind, to be destroyed, healed, by knowing their unreality.” Thus Christian Science is not a system of religious healing through medicine (which presupposes real sickness) nor a system of faith healing (because it does not believe in healing actual sickness by some special power from God) but of Mind Cure or the proving to the Mind, and thereby producing in the experience, that the sickness is unreal.
The need for healing and salvation continues into the next world. “If the change called death destroyed the belief in sin, sickness, and death, happiness would be won at the moment of dissolution, and be forever permanent; but this is not so.… The sin and error which possess us at the instant of death do not cease at that moment, but endure until the death of these errors.… Universal salvation rests on progression and probation, and is unattainable without them. Heaven is not a locality but a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal.… No final judgment awaits mortals, for the judgment-day of wisdom comes hourly and continually …” (Science and Health, pp. 290 f.).
CRITIQUE OF TEACHING
1. The fundamental fallacy of Christian Science teaching which vitiates its entire theology is the doctrine of God. As indicated above, its basic proposition is that God is All, which is all wrong. The first verse of the Bible refutes it. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. There is a temporal allusion here in the words “in the beginning,” for the reference is to the beginning of the heaven and the earth. But God has no beginning any more than he has an end. The universe, therefore, being temporal is other than God who is eternal. God is said to have created or made the world. But God himself is not made or created. The universe, therefore, being created is other than God who is uncreated. Barah (create) indicates a making out of nothing or ex nihilo. God is pure Being. The universe, therefore, being created from nothing is other than God who is eternal Being. The biblical doctrine of God does not teach that he is All, but that he is in all. This is a vastly different teaching for if God is in all he cannot be all. “In” all does not identify him with the all, but, on the contrary, distinguishes him from it.
2. “Mortal Mind” is the bastard offspring of the illegitimate union of God with All. And like all bastards Mortal Mind is a source of perpetual embarrassment to its parents. Mortal Mind is used by Christian Science to explain away all evil; that is, all evil, which is supposedly nonexistent, is said to be the illusory product of the Mortal Mind. But Mortal Mind itself is never explained away. It is, therefore, the ultimate source of “evil” in this world. It is itself the most evil thing in the world. The Scientists dare not explain it away because it is necessary for explaining all other evil away. So this ultimate evil must be real in order to explain the unreality of all other evil. If it is said to be unreal then all other evil comes alive again. Mortal Mind is the nemesis of the cult’s theology: Christian Science cannot explain it or explain it away; it cannot affirm it or deny it; it cannot live with it or without it. Mortal Mind is mortal to Christian Science—the Frankenstein which destroys its creator.
3. Christian Science has taken away our Saviour and we know not where it has laid him. His body is not real, being physical: his death is not real, being physical and evil; his humanity is not real, being limited and capable of ignorance; even his divinity is not real (in the true sense of the word) for all men are essentially divine and God is essentially human because God is All and All is God and man and everything. To preserve the terms of orthodox theology so as to deceive, if it were possible, the very elect, is a vain effort to cover the nakedness of this Christology with the fig leaves of empty verbiage.
4. Lastly, we mention the weakness of the Christian Science theory of Mind cure. On the surface the system must be fallacious since it derives from a theology which is fallacious. Is it possible to get good fruit from a bad tree, sound therapy from unsound theology? Manifestly not. Still, let the reader not jump to the wrong conclusion that we have now denied any and all Christian Science healings. We deny that any true healing could come from a fallacious premise such as Christian Science. But this is not the same as saying that no healing may come by Christian Scientists. From their own viewpoint, sickness (a form of evil) is erroneous, that is, nonexistent. Christian Scientists may thereby bring about some cures, not because Christian Science is true but because its formula happens to fit particular patients. Many patients have nothing wrong with them. Their pains are imaginary, their ailments subjective. If you convince such patients of this by sugar pills, suggestion, Spiritualism, Christian Science, or whatever, you will likely cure them. But there is as much connection between your Christian Science and his cure as there is between the famous rooster’s crowing and the rising of the sun. The sun rose when the rooster crowed, to be sure, but the event gave the rooster nothing to crow about.
SELECTION OF BOOKS FOR STUDY
The main sources for information about Christian Science are of course the writings of Mary Baker Eddy: Miscellaneous Writings (1896), The Science of Man (1870), Essays on Christian Science, Church Manual (1895–1910), and especially, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1875). The Christian Science Sentinel and Christian Science Journal are authorized periodicals. The authorities stamp certain volumes “authorized,” which is the Christian Science Imprimatur. The authorized lives of Mrs. Eddy are by Sibyl Wilbur and Lyman P. Powell.
Many other books make for profitable reading:
Edwin Franden Dakin, Mrs. Eddy, The Biography of a Virginal Mind (1930)—a penetrating critique.
H. A. L. Fisher, Our New Religion (1930)—the work of an able and slightly amused Englishman.
Georgine Milmine, The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (1909)—difficult to find, but invaluable.
James H. Snowden, The Truth about Christian Science (1920)—the best full-length historico-theologico-philosophical examination.
Walter R. Martin and Norman H. Klann, The Christian Science Myth—the latest evangelical study.
Wilbur Smith, “The Bible in Christian Science Literature (Sunday School Times, Feb. 9, 1952)—should be consulted along with the chapters in general works on The Sects.
Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.
