CHRISTIAN SCIENCE IN THE LIGHT OF THE SCRIPTURES
By Harold J. Berry
[Excerpt from Good News Broadcaster, Sept. 1964]
Mary Morse Baker was born at Bow, New Hampshire, in 1821, the youngest of six children. She was very frail physically and suffered much from her illnesses. At the age of 17, she joined the Congregational Church, and at 22 she married her first husband, Col. George Washington Glover. He died of yellow fever just seven months later. After ten years, Mrs. Glover married Daniel Patterson, an itinerant dentist. Theirs was an unhappy marriage which ended when he deserted her in the summer of 1866, though it was not until seven years later that she divorced him. Four years following her divorce, she married Asa Gilbert Eddy. He was the first to advertise himself publicly as a Christian Science Practitioner and was also the first to conduct a Christian Science Sunday school. Six years following their marriage, Mr. Eddy died. After denying for many years the reality of sickness and death, Mrs. Eddy died in 1910 at the age of 89.
During her life, Mary Baker Eddy experienced much physical suffering. It was while she was married to Dr. Patterson that she visited the then famous P. P. Quimby at Portland, Maine. Mr. Quimby was a drugless healer who practiced a type of mind-cure which included dipping his hands in water and then rubbing the patient’s head. “He told her that her ailments—and all diseases—were traceable to causes in the invisible world of mind; that mental factors produced powerful changes in the fluids and processes of the body; and that he was able, by some sort of electrical transference, to take his patient’s ills upon himself and destroy them. While at this period he did not consider himself a mesmerist (hypnotist), the methods he used would today be considered a form of mental suggestion” (The Christian Science Way of Life, pp. 142, 143). Mrs. Patterson received a great deal of benefit from Mr. Quimby’s treatment and within a week her physical condition showed much improvement. Although she lapsed back into her poor physical state, Mrs. Patterson was very much intrigued by Quimby’s method of treatment. After her visits she would spend much time writing the things she had learned from Quimby and also giving her own conclusions. In fact, although she and her followers later denied any similarity to Quimby’s findings, the Christian Science “Bible,” Science and Health, seems to build on the same basic foundation that Quimby had. In the book, The Christian Science Way of Life, the author goes to great length to show how different Mary Baker Eddy’s teachings were from Quimby’s (pp. 151-156). Granting that there are differences in the teaching of Mrs. Eddy and P. P. Quimby, it is doubtful that these differences are as great or as significant as the author of this Christian Science book would like to have us believe. He says there are only “superficial resemblances” between Christian Science and Quimbyism, and he cites the fact that both teach “there is no intelligence in matter” and “sickness is ‘error’ or ‘belief’” (p. 152). These two statements are basic presuppositions of both Christian Science and Quimbyism, and therefore, the two systems have much more than “superficial” similarity.
Mary Baker Eddy’s discovery of Christian Science came in 1866. She had been injured by a fall on the ice and was experiencing intense suffering from an apparent spinal injury. Three days after her injury she turned in the Bible to the account in Matthew 9 which records the healing of the palsied man by Christ. “Like a shaft of light when the sun flashes briefly through black and heavy clouds, there came in this hour of suffering a spiritual illumination. It was a clear view of Life totally apart from earthly scenes, wholly separate from matter and material living, a new world of spiritual consciousness” (The Christian Science Way of Life, p. 144). This experience caused her to study more diligently the record of healing in the Scriptures. Toward the end of the year, 1866, Mary Baker Eddy, (then Mrs. Patterson) “reached the scientific certainty that all causation rests with Mind, and that every effect is a mental phenomenon” (The Christian Science Way of Life, p. 148).
In her instruction to practitioners, Mrs. Eddy tells them how to deal with sick people: “If they ask about their disease, tell them only what is best for them to know. Assure them that they think too much about their ailments, and have already heard too much on that subject. Turn their thoughts away from their bodies to higher objects. Teach them that their being is sustained by Spirit, not by matter, and that they find health, peace, and harmony in God, divine Love.
“Give sick people credit for sometimes knowing more than their doctors. Always support their trust in the power of Mind to sustain the body” (Science and Health, p. 416, line 27—p. 417, line 5). It is true that many people think too much upon their ills and that a great many of their problems could be taken care of by transferring their thoughts from these ills to something more important; however, such a transference of thought does not cure organic diseases.
Denies Christ’s Atonement
Christian Science differs greatly from the Scriptures. Concerning the atonement, Mary Baker Eddy wrote: “One sacrifice, however great, is insufficient to pay the debt of sin. The atonement requires constant self-immolation on the sinner’s part. That God’s wrath should be vented upon His beloved Son, is divinely unnatural. Such a theory is man-made. The atonement is a hard problem in theology, but its scientific explanation is that suffering is an error of sinful sense which truth destroys, and that eventually both sin and suffering will fall at the feet of everlasting love” (Science and Health, p. 23, lines 3-11).
This is an open denial of the fact that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ was a “propitiation [satisfaction] for our sins: and not for our’s only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (I John 2:2). The Scriptures teach that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God; that Jesus Christ left the glory He had with the Heavenly Father in order to come to the earth and take on Himself the form of a man, so that He might die on the cross and pay the penalty for sin (Rom. 3:23; Phil. 2:5-8). The Scriptures also teach that the Heavenly Father placed the sins of the human race upon His Son in order that Jesus Christ might die for our sins (Isa. 53:6; II Cor. 5:21). It is not a man-made theory to state that God’s Son suffered the wrath of the Father in our place, because the Scriptures teach this truth. This is the good news of salvation: Christ suffered condemnation in our place and paid the penalty for our sins so that we might, by faith, receive Him as our Saviour and pass from death to everlasting life (John 5:24).
Christian Scientists do not believe that sin exists, and therefore, they believe it is not necessary to accept Christ as the sinner’s substitute. Mrs. Eddy taught, “Final Deliverance from error, whereby we rejoice in immortality, boundless freedom, and sinless sense, is not reached through paths of flowers nor by pinning one’s faith without works to another’s vicarious efforts” (Science and Health, p. 22, lines 23-27).
Mrs. Eddy’s statements reveal another crucial flaw in her theology—salvation by works. It is a characteristic of false systems of religion that they always teach salvation on the basis of works rather than on the basis of our accepting what Christ has already done for us and receiving Him as personal Saviour. But it is the clear testimony of the Word of God that “by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast” (Eph. 2:8,9).
Denies Existence of Sin
One of the reasons the Christian Scientists explain away the doctrine of the atonement is that they also explain away the reality of sin. They teach, “If God, or good, is real, then evil, the unlikeness of God, is unreal. And evil can only seem to be real by giving reality to the unreal” (Science and Health, p, 470, lines 13-16).
In answer to the question “Is there no sin?” Mary Baker Eddy states in Science and Health: “All reality is in God and His creation, harmonious and eternal. That which He creates is good, and He makes all that is made. Therefore, the only reality of sin, sickness, or death is the awful fact that unrealities seem real to human, erring belief, until God strips off their disguise. They are not true, because they are not of God” (p. 472, lines 23-30).
Therefore, Christian Science would also have us to believe that sin is just a figment of the imagination rather than a reality with which we must reckon and for which we will be judged unless we accept Chris as our Saviour.
The very fact that Christian Scientists experience physical death like everyone else is proof enough of the reality of sin. “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12).
As to the Christian Scientist’s belief about the Godhead, Mrs. Eddy denies the Trinity with her statement in Science and Health, “Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune Person called God—that I the triply divine Principle, Love. They represent a trinity in unity, three in one—the same in essence though multiform in office: God the Father-Mother; Christ the spiritual idea of sonship; divine Science or the Holy Comforter” (p. 331, lines 26-31). Of Christ, Science and Health states, “Jesus is the human man, and Christ is the divine idea; hence the duality of Jesus the Christ” (p. 473, lines 15-17).
By denying the reality of matter, Christian Science must logically deny that Jesus Christ had an actual body while He was here on earth. The Scriptures state, “For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist” (II John 7).
Christian Science also teaches that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross but that He remained alive all the time, even while in the tomb. “His disciples believed Jesus to be dead while He was hidden in the sepulcher, whereas He was alive, demonstrating within the narrow tomb the power of Spirit to overrule mortal, material sense” (Science and Health, p. 44, lines 28-31). However, the Scriptures give abundant testimony to the fact that Christ died on the cross. Such Scriptures are John 19:33 and Romans 5:6, 8, 10. It is the testimony of the Scriptures that Christ not only died but that He died for our sins, for Paul stated: “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures” (I Cor. 15:3).
In comparing the teachings of Christian Science with the Scriptures, we see that Christian Science is so far removed from the obvious meaning of the Scriptures that it cannot be considered a movement that is founded on the Word of god. Simply because a group uses the Bible in some of their teachings and applies some of its verses to their beliefs, does not mean that the group has God’s approval.
Mary Baker Eddy taught that Mind is All and that matter does not exist. A Christian Scientist trying to persuade himself that matter does not exist is comparable to a fish out of water trying to persuade himself that he really does not need water to live—it is only that he thinks he does. And yet, no matter how thoroughly the fish might convince himself, he dies anyhow.
We can think of no better way to conclude our discussion of Chritian Science than to quote J. K. Van Baalen’s statement about Christian Scientists and their beliefs: “Most assuredly, the apostles would not have approved, and the Early Church would not have tolerated, a ‘religion’ that, in veiled language and much double talk, teaches that Jesus was laid down, as a result of an apparent death, into a fictitious tomb, in an unreal body, to make an unnecessary atonement for sins that had never been a reality and had been committed in an imaginary body, and that He saves from non-existing evil those headed toward an imaginary hell, the false fancy of erroneous Mortal Mind” (The Chaos of Cults, p. 97).