Christian Science:
Mary Baker Eddy and the Bible
Kris Samons
Introduction
The
First Church of Christ, Scientist is a towering presence in the city of
Boston. It owes its centrally located architecture and nationwide
Christian Science "reading rooms" to the ingenuity of Mary Baker
Eddy. She's credited with being an entrepreneur in religion, journalism,
education, and women's rights. Her innovation as a religious leader
remains impressive to this day, being that she began such a large movement
before women were even allowed to vote. But what of this faith she's so
known for?
Mary
Baker Eddy grew up in 19th century New England, a time and place that saw
tremendous religious dissatisfaction. Out of this same time and locale
Joseph Smith started Mormonism and Charles Russell founded the Jehovah's
Witnesses.
Eddy
was a sickly woman from early on. She was well versed in general Bible
knowledge. At the age of seventeen she joined the Congregational Church.
She had somewhat of a rocky social life. She had three husbands by the
time she was in her fifties. In her early forties, after her second
marriage, Eddy met a man named Phineas P. Quimby.{1}
She seems to have learned at least some of her healing concepts from Mr.
Quimby.
Her
adult life appears to have been characterized by great paranoia and
outrageous allegations. She even blamed her third husband's death from
heart disease on poisoning from enemies of the Eddy's.{2}
She also related to one of her associates just before her death that she
wished to be remembered as being "mentally murdered."{3}
The
followers of Mary Baker Eddy say she loved God and His word so vastly that
she was given revelation about the truths of scientific healing hidden
beneath the surface of the Bible. She recorded these truths in her Science
and Health with Key to the Scriptures. With this newfound ability to
heal came the birth of Christian Science. Christian Scientists claim to
possess basic spiritual methods for healing and comfort for participants
of any and all religions.
Eddy
founded the Church of Christ, Scientist in 1879. She established such
periodicals as The Christian Science Journal, The Christian
Science Sentinel, and the Pulitzer Prize winning Christian Science
Monitor. By the time of her death in 1910, she had even founded the
Massachusetts Metaphysical College. Her amazing initiative in the face of
poor health for most of
her
life is not to be questioned. However, what ought to be challenged are the
conclusions she arrived at due to such extreme initiative Eddy claimed
that "the Bible was her sole teacher" for developing the
methodical treatments for sickness as well as sin.{4}
If this is so, then it's appropriate to use that same source as a measure
of her claims. Here we will examine the claims of Christian Science and
weigh them with the established standard of God's word. We will see that
Christian Science is neither Christian nor science. Let's see how
Christian Science measures up to biblical Christianity.
Prayer
Mary Baker Eddy founded
the First Church of Christ, Scientist upon the notion that everything she
taught came from her examination of the Scriptures. Today we'll begin
evaluating her assertions according to the standard of those same
Scriptures. Let's first look at the subject of her first chapter in Science
and Health: prayer.
She
deduces from Scripture that audible prayer is a meaningless attempt to
draw attention to one's pretentiousness. Prayer changes nothing. True
change comes from putting Truth into practice. Eddy robs prayer of its
true effectiveness in communicating with God. For instance, Eddy says that
prayer for the sick is not what will lead to one's healing, only
enlightened understanding heals.{5} Otherwise, why
would some people remain sick after prayer and others get well? Surely if
God is consistent and willing to heal He wouldn't withhold healing from
one and grant it to another.
But
God's wisdom is infinitely beyond our attempts to understand why He heals
some and doesn't heal others. Paul pleaded for God to take the thorn in
his flesh from him and Christ responded, "My grace is sufficient for
you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians
12:7-9). God allows us to experience difficulty in order to fulfill His
grander purposes, of which we often know very little (1 Peter 4:19).
Mary
Eddy accentuated Jesus' call to "go into your room and shut the door
and pray to your Father who is in secret."{6} To
her, this was not a simple command to be humble in prayer. She believed
this statement communicated that true prayer is not to be spoken or have
anything to do with the physical senses. She said,
In
order to pray aright, we must enter into the closet and shut the door. We
must close the lips and silence the material senses. . . . Practice not
profession, understanding not belief, gain the ear and right hand of
omnipotence and they assuredly call down infinite blessings.{7}
Not
only does prayer become suspect in Christian Science, but so do the
orthodox concepts of belief and confession, which are necessary components
of prayer and the Christian faith. Eddy misses the point of prayer
altogether. Christians don't pray to manipulate fate. We pray in order to
verbally express our hearts to God and communicate our concerns. Jesus
said that our Father already knows our needs before we ask of Him, but we
are to pray nonetheless (Matthew 7:8-9). Eddy's Christian Science has its
roots in Gnosticism, saying that salvation is obtained through some sort
of secret knowledge. That flies in the face of the historic Christian
truth that simple belief in Christ as Lord and confession of faith in Him
leads to justification (Romans 10:9). This issue, of faith versus
understanding, is what we will address in the next section of this
article.
Belief and Disbelief
Basic to Christian Science is belief and disbelief in
error. Once again, like the Gnostics the Christian Scientists see all
things in the physical world as an evil opposition to the virtue of the
spiritual world. So error comes from an infiltration in the mind by the
material. Eddy wrote, "We treat error through the understanding of
Truth, because Truth is error's antidote."{8} If
one denies the reality of pain, due to its material nature, one may be
delivered from such pain. We read in Science and Health, "The dream
that matter and error are something must yield to reason and revelation.
Then mortals will behold the nothingness of sickness and sin, and sin and
sickness will disappear from consciousness."{9}
Basically, Christian Scientists believe that pain is an illusion. If you
deny the existence of this deception, it will go away.
As a
matter of fact, material things are evil, because they don't really exist.
Remember, to a Christian Scientist error is the embodiment of evil. To
think something exists that doesn't is error. So anything resulting from
the physical is also evil. This is the context for understanding sickness
and death from a Christian Science perspective. It's inaccurate to
Christian Scientists to say only that sin, death, and sickness are results
of a fallen world. They believe sickness and death are intrinsically evil
themselves. This explains why Christian Scientists reject drugs and human
medicine. Drugs are a material attempt at curing what only the spiritual
can heal.{10}
Christian
Scientists oversimplify sickness and death. Regardless of whether we like
to admit it, death, brought on by sickness or suffering of some sort, is
inevitable (Hebrews 9:27). Wouldn't belief in spirituality or
"disbelief in error" have rescued at least some from such human
suffering? From what I can gather, even Christian Scientists still suffer
and die. What about Eddy herself? If she was right, then why did she die?
Sickness
and death result from the sin that we all answer for in Adam (Romans
5:12). Therefore, God has opted to rescue us from this fallen world
through the means of faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Knowledge does
not relieve one's sinful predicament. Faith in Christ is the sole
deliverer from this condemnation (Ephesians 2:8-9). Even deliverance does
not always come in this life, but we have a hope that in the life to come
there will be no sickness, no pain, and no death (Revelation 21:4). We
have this hope because of that one event in history to which all
Christians ought to find unity, the death of Christ. Next, let's look at
the Christian Scientist's perspective of the atonement.
The Atonement
As we look at Christian Science we are measuring it
according to the standard of God's Word, which it claims to use as the
source for its beliefs. In this section, we will discuss Christian
Science's perspective on the atonement of Jesus Christ.
Mary
Baker Eddy's unique view of the atonement of Christ has supreme bearing on
the supposedly biblical nature of Christian Science. To Eddy, the cross of
Christ was not meant to save sinful people from death by Christ's death in
their place. She stated "The material blood of Jesus was no more
efficacious to cleanse from sin when it was shed upon 'the accursed tree,'
than when it was flowing in his veins as he went daily about his Father's
business."{11} Instead, Jesus' death and
subsequent resurrection was a sign to His followers that the type of life
He lived was effective in overcoming death.
To
Eddy death is an enemy to Truth, another deception. Jesus was not subject
to death, nor are we. She writes, "To him, therefore, death was not
the threshold over which he must pass into living glory."{12} Jesus is alleged to have survived the cross
through the mastery of mind over matter.{13} This
was the ultimate example of Christian Science in practice. Jesus healed
Himself with no medicine, bandages, or surgery. Only the disciples thought
that Jesus was dead.{14} But Jesus overcame all laws
of matter in healing Himself from a near-death experience and He shed His
material existence to reveal only the "Soul."
Eddy
contends that the disciples originally misunderstood Jesus' appearance
after the crucifixion by calling Him a ghost. But soon after they realized
that He never died at all. If this is so then why is the tradition passed
on to Paul by those same apostles in a sequence of events detailed here in
1 Corinthians 15:3-4?
For
I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that
Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was
buried, that he was raised on the third day. . . .
In
that same chapter Paul defends the idea that Christ was raised from the
dead, and that if this were not so then we're all still in our sins
and of all people most to be pitied (15:17,19). Hebrews 8:12 says of Jesus
"he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the
blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an
eternal redemption." To imagine that Jesus did not die, but simply
healed Himself, is biblically and historically preposterous.
To
Mary Baker Eddy, Jesus' death is no longer the redemptive sacrifice that
gives life to all who believe. Instead, she establishes Jesus as the first
Christian Scientist, a sort of "way-shower," leaving a prime
example of how we all can conquer sin, suffering, and death.{15}
Human Suffering
As we've been discussing the biblical nature of Christian
Science, we conclude with some final thoughts. The central issue in
Christian Science seems to be human suffering. Sin, sickness, and death
are real threats to the human condition. Mary Baker Eddy was truly
bothered by this. Instead of leaning on the God of the Bible for His
comfort in times of crisis (2 Corinthians 1:3-4), Eddy devised her own
plan to serve as an immediate solution to the burdens she carried.
Contrary
to Eddy's charges, Christianity does not deny the reality of Jesus'
healing ministry. In fact, healing is still a valid way for God to
show Himself to a generation of hurting people. Nevertheless, healing,
even in Jesus' ministry was never intended to be the end all. It was a
means for all who witnessed the event to credit Jesus with the Father's
seal of approval. The kingdom of God had come. Jesus affirmed this in
Matthew 11:4 when He sent John's messengers back to him to respond to the
question of whether He was the Messiah with the message, "Go and tell
John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame
walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up,
and the poor have good news preached to them."
Healing
of suffering, as well as sin must be recognized for what it truly is: God
bringing glory to God. When we put humans and their suffering at the
center of Jesus' ministry or even our own ministries we are doomed to
misunderstand God's mercy and compassion in relation to human suffering.
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my
ways, declares the Lord" (Isaiah 55:8). The Master Architect who is
also orchestrating all of history to end the way He planned it has to have
latitude in bringing this about. That means many of the problems that may
not make sense to us will go unanswered until He has the final word.
Compassion
is an essential requirement of the Christian message. But too many, like
Mary Baker Eddy, have confused godly compassion for humanistic ideology.
We ought to pray that none of us are found guilty of imposing our own
circumstances upon the Word of God, in order for it to better address our
perceived problems. God is faithful. He won't do anything without purpose.
But His purpose in our suffering cannot always be obvious. Remember, He
loves His creation and will do all that's necessary to bring about
"good, for those who are called to his purpose" (Romans 8:28).
Often pain, suffering, and death are a means of God's character
development in His children. "[H]e disciplines us for our good, that
we may share his holiness" (Hebrews 12:10). It takes eyes of faith to
see His good in our difficulties. He who has eyes to see, let him see.
Notes
1. She
credited Quimby with healing her. She became a huge proponent of Quimby's
abilities. Quimby claimed to have rediscovered Jesus' very own methods for
healing. Later this relationship went sour. There is a great deal of
controversy over whether Eddy taught the same things as Quimby or not.
Both Quimby and Eddy claimed originality and that the other was borrowing
his or her ideas. Hoekema, Anthony A., Christian Science.(Grand
Rapids MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1963), 10-11.
4. Science
and Health with Key to the Scriptures, viii.
15. Ibid., 26.
© 1994 Probe Ministries