The main teaching though the Holy Scripture is how man fell became sinful and is in need of redemption. That God would one day send a savior that would accomplish this by bringing man back into a one to one relationship with Him.

One would think that if a group calls themselves Christian this is what they would uphold. This is not true for Christian Science, which is neither Christian nor science.

The founder Mary Baker was born in Bow, New Hampshire, July 16, 1821 to a devout religious family (Congregationalists) with 5 other children. Her father, Mark Baker, was a Calvinist whom she strongly disagreed with later on in life. The disagreements were on the main points of Scripture such as judgment and eternal punishment. From this rejection of Scripture and circumstances of ill health she eventually sought out another understanding to the Bible.

Mary was married at the young age of 22 to George Glover in 1843 in Charleston, South Carolina. This was her only happy marriage that tragically lasted slightly longer than half a year as her husband died of yellow fever. She was left a widow, while being pregnant.

Later on after her husbands death a special meeting was convened for the purpose of paying the last tribute of respect to Brother George W. Glover, After interviewing Masonic authorities they found his records, he was honored “for his honorable record and Christian character and said record, with the seal of the Grand secretary.” “His remains were interred with Masonic honors” (p.333, The first Church of Christ Scientist and Miscellany). This may explain the Masonic symbol used on the cover of her book, the cross through the crown, which Christian Science states are their trademark.

After his death Mary traveled back north and gave birth to a son whom she named George after her husband (Sept. 1844). It was from this time on she was in constant pain and became preoccupied with the question of health. Mary was a semi-invalid for years afflicted with a spinal weakness that caused her spasmodic seizures, other complications amounted to her complete nervous collapse.

Ruth Tucker writes, After Glover’s death, she became involved in mesmerism such as hypnosis and the practices of spiritualism and clairvoyance (Ruth Tucker, Another Gospel, p. 152).

In 1853 Mary remarried to a dentist, Daniel Patterson. This marriage was somewhat good, but Patterson was not a good provider; and some called him a womanizer. In 1866 he and Mary were permanently separated. 7 years later in 1873 Mary obtained a divorce on the grounds of desertion. Though her own references to this divorce imply that Patterson had been guilty of adultery.

It was during this time of her broken life and still in pain she heard of a man named Phineas P. Quimby in Portland, Maine. Quimby’s fame was spreading as he was attributed to have done incredible cures without medicine. Seeking relief from her spinal illness Mary decided to go see to him (1862). She believed herself to have been healed by him. (Although she claimed she was cured by Quimby, her symptoms later returned).

Quimby was a metaphysician, he practiced a form of mind-over-matter healing, he called it Christian Science.

Ruth Tucker, in her book Another Gospel writes Mrs. Patterson (Eddy) developed a “psychic dependence” on Quimby, drawing on his spiritual presence, claiming even visitations by his apparition. This is not surprising as she thought highly of Mesmer and his discovery of animal magnetism at first.

She became an enthusiastic follower of Quimby, believing that he had rediscovered Jesus' own healing methods. She writes “In the year 1866, I discovered the Christ Science or divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love, and named my discovery Christian Science. God had been graciously preparing me during many years for the reception of this final revelation of the absolute divine Principle of scientific mental healing.”

“It was in 1866 that the light of Science first came to me.” (The First church in Christ Scientist and Miscellany p.343 1913 ed.) Mrs. Eddy claimed she fell on the ice and injured herself. She later claimed that the fall brought her life with only three days to live (her physician denied such a diagnosis). On the third day she reported that after reading Matthew 9:2 she experienced a miraculous cure, “the healing Truth dawned upon my senses,” and the divine healing ministry was born (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 24; and Science and Health), this supposedly was an affirmation of Mrs. Eddy's own healing which led her to formulate Christian Science beliefs.

After Quimby’s death in 1866, Mary determined to carry on his work. Though Christian Scientists reject the possibility that Quimby had any great influence on Mrs. Eddy’s philosophy, researchers have proven that she did plagiarized his manuscripts and teachings. Mrs. Eddy did attribute most of her ideas to Phineas Quimby, even the name Christian Science did not find its origin in Eddy but came from Quimby who spoke of his system as “the Science of the Christ”; Mrs. Eddy turned the words around and called her system Christian Science. She stated, “We may say at once that, as far as the thought is concerned, Science and Health is practically all Quimby.” (Quimby had even called his system Christian Science some years before Mrs. Eddy adopted the name in Feb. 1863).

In 1877 Mary had entered marriage for the third time to Asa Eddy who became her first disciple and Christian practitioner.

After 9 years Science and Health were first published in 1875 and Church of Christ Scientist was incorporated in 1879. Mary Eddy said, “It brought down a shower of abuse upon my head, but it won converts from the first.” (Miscellany p.343 1913 ed.) She later came to Boston and opened what later became “The Massachusetts Metaphysical College,”  where she said she taught some 4,000 students at $300.00 per student over a period of eight years (1881-1889). She had become an author of numerous writings publishing altogether 16 other books.

Christian Science has set up Reading Rooms through different communities these are small libraries of the local Christian Science, where members can go to read Eddy’s works. If one attends a Christian Science service they will find no pastor, there are no ordinances. They have only lay readers and designated full-time practitioners who are both men and women able to administer the Church's healing techniques. The service will end with a reading of the Lord's Prayer (intermingled along the way with Mrs. Eddy's interpretations.)

At the heart of Christian Science is the power of divine healing. We should be aware that if any healing does occur, one should not interpret it as God’s approval of their beliefs. There are healings that are not from God in various religions, so a change of sick or diseased condition is not the proof of a belief being of God.

Christian Science claims for itself that the Bible is its final source of authority. When one tunes into their TV presentation they will see them read from the Bible and then Mrs. Eddy’s interpretation from her Science and Health. It gives the impression that they are into the Bible. But the fact is if one listens carefully everything that is said is reinterpreted to mean something other than the way it was written. They will “spiritualize” Biblical passages and the final authority always lies in the hands of Eddy’s book.

When someone claims to be Christian there are certain fundamentals that they must adhere to. As a member they are not to belong to another church because theirs is where one would only find the truth. In the case of Christian Science, it has been said it is neither Christian nor science. In fact it only masquerades as Christianity for the individual that does not pursue what is meant by the inventor of this metaphysical system.

In Science and Health a statement is given to answer the question if they have any “religious creeds” “1. As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life” (p. 497). As we will see this is not the case at least to anyone who would apply good old fashion logic, and sound Biblical knowledge.

Mrs. Eddy claimed The Bible has been my only authority. I have had no other guide in “the straight and narrow way” of Truth” (Miscellaneous writings p.129 1917)

Yet Eddy claimed her own divine revelation was equal to the Scripture. This is common with all cult groups who add their own books or interpretations to the Bible. I should blush to write of “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” as I have, were it of human origin, and were, apart from God, its author. But, as I was only a scribe echoing the harmonies of heaven in divine metaphysics, I cannot be super-modest in my estimate of the Christian Science textbook.'“ In her book The first Church of Christ Scientist and Miscellany it states “That Mrs. Eddy organized The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Mass., devised its church government, originated its form of public worship, wrote its Church Manual and Tenets, and always has been is and is now its guide, guardian, Leader, and wise unerring counsellor” (Forward in The first Church of Christ Scientist and Miscellany).

As Eddy began her new religion she was put in an almost immediate position liken to a pope by being called a “wise unerring counselor.” Though she denied those who called her pope she accepted the term mother, and claimed, “she is equal to Jesus Christ, a fulfillment of Bible prophecy of the woman of Revelation 12, the God-chosen revelator for this age, with a superior and final revelation to all that has gone before” (Ehrenborg, Mind Sciences, 1995), 83.)

Divine Science then became the “final revelation” from God to man. Her book becomes the glasses the Bible is to be read through and the final authority for all members of the Christian Science religion. They needed her book to understand and “unlock” the Bibles true meaning. It was her mission to write Science and Health to give the world the “key” to the Scriptures so everyone was able to use them. In Science and Health she writes: “A Christian Scientist requires my work Science and Health for his textbook, and so do all his students and patients. Why? First: Because it is the voice of Truth to this age, and contains the full statement of Christian Science, or the Science of healing through Mind.” So through her dark colored glasses the Bible would be reinterpreted to mean something the writers never meant for it to say. Her position more than insinuated that in 1900 years no one understood the word of God correctly until she came along to enlighten them.

“its members can so protect their own thoughts that they are not unwittingly made to deprive their Leader of her rightful place as the revelator to this age of the immortal truths testified to by Jesus and the prophets”(the Christian Science Journal, May, 1906. 15)

She said, “In following these leadings of scientific revelation, the Bible was my only textbook.” Is it? She had little regard for its contents. She said of the Scriptures “The Scriptures cannot properly be interpreted in a literal way “ (p.169 Miscellaneous writings).

In the place of taking Scripture literally was an allegorizing method or more directly, just plain making it up as you go. She turned the word Adam into meaning a dam or obstruction. This suggests the thought of something fluid, of mortal mind in solution” (Science and Health, p.338). To Eddy there the meaning of Adam as red dirt was not the true meaning in Scripture even though this is the meaning of the Hebrew word. Eddy is bending the words to pour her own exclusive meaning into them. She had taken the route of many before her, specifically the Gnostics. Eddy’s Christian Science denied the clear teaching of Scripture and in its place. She wrote the second chapter of Genesis is was in error “false history in contradistinction to the true”(p.522). Genesis had two distinct documents used in the writing of the early part of the Book of Genesis. The Elohistic and the Jehovistic. Genesis 1, representing the Elohistic document, describes man as having been created in the image of God; this account of creation is called “spiritual” and true. (The Supreme being called Elohim) Genesis 2, derived from the inferior Jehovistic document, represents man as formed of the dust of the ground; this account of creation is called false and in error (p. 523.Science and Health). Elohim of Chapter 1 is the true God and Jehovah of chapter 2 to 5 “becomes a man of war” a tribal God to be worshipped, rather than love, the divine principle to be lived and loved.

That Gen.2 “Which portrayed Spirit as supposedly cooperating with matter in constructing the universe, is based on the hypothesis of error.” That it was “the exact opposite of scientific truth” (Miscellaneous Writings p.521-22). So out went Moses’ record and Jesus ‘ affirmation of the Genesis account being accurate. She even said of Gen.3:22 “Behold man has become as one of us.” This could not be the utterance of truth.

Her understanding of Genesis is seen by the question “Does life, truth, and love produce error, and hatred? Does the creator condemn His own creation?” In this she ignored the fact that the Bible does teach the creator condemning man because of his fallen state and did something about it, (which she further denied). In its place was substituted her solution instead of God’s, and it was done in Jesus’ name.

She also taught that the Bible has been corrupted, therefore Her own Science and Health is the “first book” which has been “uncontaminated by human hypotheses” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany, p. 115; Science and Health, pp. 99, 139, 456-57). She said the Bible has thousands of errors. 30,000 in the Old Testament, and as many as 300,000 in the New Testament. At times Mrs. Eddy would use the Bible to prove her point at other times she would outright deny it. With such little regard for God’s word one can only wonder why she used the Bible at all. Yet Eddy would claim on the other hand “I therefore plant myself unreservedly on the teachings of Jesus, of His apostles, of the prophets” (ibid. p.269).

Did not the apostles interpret the Bible as literal? They certainly did, and they did not hold the view it was corrupted. Ps.119:160: “Thy word is true from the beginning.” Titus 1:2: “God cannot lie.” Jesus said Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word shall not pass away.” “The Scripture cannot be broken,” “thy word is truth.”

Exalting herself, and her revelation and new found religion she was able to claim “The true Logos is demonstrably Christian Science” (p. 134, Science and Health, 1903 Edition). Here we have her take a term applied to God and exalt her own religion to the status of God. We then can apply this statement to the first verse in the Gospel of John where the logos is found, reading it this manner: “In the beginning was Christian Science, and Christian Science was with God, and Christian Science was God. All things were made by Christian Science, and without Christian Science was not anything made that was made.” And Christian Science has come into the world, when? Not when Jesus was here, but by Mrs. Eddy.

According to The Manual by Mary Baker Eddy, “To become a member of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, the applicant must be a believer in the doctrines of Christian Science, according to the teaching contained in our Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Reverend Mary Baker Eddy. The Bible, together with Science and Health shall be his only textbooks for self-instruction in Christian Science.”

Eddy taught, Man already has everlasting salvation; there is no final judgment. We save ourselves; no one else can. “Universal salvation rests on progression and probation…. No final judgment awaits mortals…” (Science and Health, p. 291). Why call this Christian if every important thing the Bible speaks on is denied or changed. The fact is you can call it Christian but that doesn't mean it is. You can call it science but that doesn't mean its provable.

“Instead, the only hope of pardon and salvation for any person lies in that person eliminating all sin (false beliefs and the behavior they spawn) from his/her life” (Science and Health, 40:8-16. 38:21-24).

She stated “All good ever written, taught, or wrought comes from God and human faith in the right.” (Miscellany 1913 ed. p.292) If this is true (which it is not), then Christian Science must accept that many other religions and philosophies are from God, but they do not.

Question: Is there no sin? Answer- “All reality is in God and His creation. 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” (Science and Health p. 472). So everything is subjectively interpreted, its true to you because you believe its true.

To Eddy salvation was a higher consciousness event and not through the cross “Final deliverance from error,... is not reached through paths of flowers by pinning one's faith without works to another's vicarious effort” (Science and Health, p.22). “In Christian Science it is plain that God removes the punishment for sin only as sin is removed... hence the hope of universal salvation. ...To lose the sense of sin we must first detect the claim of sin; hold it invalid... sin disappears, and its unreality is proven,” (Message, 1901, p.13).  “The Scriptures imply that God is all-in-all. From this it follows nothing possesses reality nor existence except the divine Mind and His ideas” (Science and Health p.331).

“First, God is all in all. Second, God is good, good is mind. Third, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter. Fourth, Life, God, omnipotent good, deny death, evil, sin, disease. Disease, sin, evil, death, deny good, omnipotent God, Life” (p. 113, “Science and Health” 1903 edition.)

If God is Mind, and man is “the full expression of Mind” (as her “Science and Health” claims), there is nothing in us which is not God. God is God in all things animate or inanimate, human or animal.”[This is pantheism no matter how one cuts it, it is a non-Christian worldview, it is an eastern metphysical worldview.]

If “God is all- in- all and God is good” therefore all is good and nothing is evil! Since God is all-in-all, there is no room for what she considered the false belief of sin. Mary Baker Eddy declared that there is no sin and no hell, and that death is an illusion. No one needs to be concerned about salvation because everyone will live eternally...

The Bible says consistently and clearly states “that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) that there is none that do good. According to CS  sin is not a permanent factor in living, one could say you are living in god and what is good according to their philosophy. In other words you do not have to do a thing because all is already good and God is good. 

Like other religions Christian Science has numerous contradictions within its own framework. Eddy claimed she received the revelation of healing when “the healing Truth dawned upon my senses.” But then she rejects anything that speaks of the senses believing God is not communicated in any way through them. She states, “The physical senses can obtain no proof of God. They can neither see Sprit through the eye nor hear it through the ear, nor can feel, taste or smell spirit” (Science and Health p.284). The Bible teaches the opposite, as many heard the voice of the Spirit and saw manifestations of the Lord. Jesus said if you have seen me you have seen the Father meaning you can know God by what he did (by seeing) and by what he said (hearing).  So her belief was internally inconsistent, for if we cannot use the physical senses to know God than how did one become enlightened by hearing or reading Mrs. Eddy’s books? If one did not use their eyes they could close her book to read the book. If one did not have to hear her than they could plug there ears up in her lectures and still receive understanding out of it. One then can be better off being completely incapacitated, deaf and blind. 

She took it upon herself to reform what she called “myths” of traditional Christian belief. This preconceived notion going back to her uncomfortable belief from her childhood. Her premise was that man is actually perfect and able to obtain the same Divine Mind that Jesus attained. Sickness can be eradicated once a person sees that pure thoughts will dispel the illusion of disease. As the one true church, members are encouraged to affirm that God is good and therefore good is God. In such a system evil cannot exist since matter (evil) does not exist. This is a Hinduistic concept that there is no good or evil, that life is an illusion. Her main concepts promoted had more an affinity to Hinduism than Christ’s teachings. It is also docetic teaching from the gnostics, that matter is not significant and it is the spirit only that counts. An example of this is her teaching of man did not fall; death is an illusion. This is the very reason Jesus came to die for sin, it is reality and all of life’s circumstances prove this, as did Eddy when she died in 1910. Mrs. Eddy’s faith did not help her overcome death as she taught. Yet some of her followers did not think that she had died; Mrs. Augusta Stetson, in fact, wrote a letter in which she indignantly rejected newspaper accounts of her death, declaring in italics, “Mary Baker Eddy never died.” (James Snowden, The Truth About Christian Science, 1920, p. 154, n. 1). Others hoped for her to resurrect, which never came. From her concept of matter being an illusion flowed out a direct denial of everything Christ came to earth, and suffered the consequences for.

Death is defined in the Glossary of Science and Health as follows: “An illusion, the lie of life in matter; the unreal and untrue. (Science and Health, p. 584). The definition continues: “Any material evidence of death is false, for it contradicts the spiritual facts of being.” Death is only a “belief” which must finally be conquered by eternal Life (p. 380). Life is real, and death is the illusion (pp. 427-28). It was described by her as a dream. “Man is incapable of sin, sickness and death”(Science and Health, p.475). On the other hand she would say, “Christ came to destroy the belief of sin” which was interpreted as false belief. So for a healing to occur one only has to remove the false belief of the sickness.

If it is true that man lives, this fact can never change in Science to the opposite belief that man dies...Death is but another phase of the dream that existence can be material... The dream of death must be mastered by Mind here or hereafter life is real, and death is the illusion (pp. 427-28).

This is diametrically opposed to Scripture as Jesus and Paul called death an enemy, it was very real. If it was not real then there would be no need for a resurrection.

After she quotes the words of our Lord to His disciples, “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go that I may awake him out of sleep” (John 11:11), (Science and Health, 1903 Edition, p. 75). Mrs. Eddy states that “He restored Lazarus by the understanding that he had never died,” which contradicts the very words of Jesus a few verses later as Jesus finds that the disciples do not understand His use of the figure of sleep, He “said unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead” (John 11:14).Christian Science is also unable to understand but for a different reason.

“This then affected the way she saw the fallen nature in man and the world around her. She proclaimed sin, sickness, and death must be deemed as devoid of reality” (p. 525). “There is no disease, when the supposed suffering is gone from the mortal mind, there can be no pain”(p.421). Disease is an image of thought externalized. The mental state is called a material state. Whatever is cherished in mortal mind as the physical condition is imaged forth on the body (p.411). “Man is never sick, for Mind is not sick and matter cannot be” (p. 393).

This is found not to be true as people do become sick, even in their mind (not just the brain) and it is not because of the way they think. It is not removed because they don’t believe they are sick. Many people who are deathly sick walk around unaware thinking they are in good health, and they die.

“Sickness and disease are illusory, the product of a false belief, and not an actual result of sin” (Science and Health, pp. 348, 386). “The cause of all so-called disease is mental, a mortal fear, a mistaken belief…” (Science and Health, p. 377). Sin, which may in most cases be equated with evil, is a delusion (p. 204), an illusion (p. 494). “What is termed disease does not exist. It is neither mind nor matter.” (Science and Health p.188)

If something does not exist in both mind and matter it cannot have any affect on us. But then she contradicts this absolute statement by saying Disease is an image of thought externalized. “That all is mind, and that we too can overcome the false beliefs of mortal mind.” If Sickness, and sin are the product of a false belief, to believe something means the mind is involved. Which she does at times agree, “his imagined disease is only the result of a false belief.” “The cause of all so-called disease is mental, ..a mistaken belief…” (Science and Health, p. 377).

“sin, illness, and disease are all illusions of the mind” All these statements show her confusion in saying something does not exist in “mind nor matter” and also saying they do. This was the dichotomy of her belief system in trying to erase the reality of sin, and evil in the world.

She summed up everything that is good is God, everything that is not is an illusion. She dismissed half of reality, the very one that Jesus came to rectify, the one that marred the human condition. She held that matter is not real but “the objective supposition of the Spirits opposite”( Science and Health p.287).

Christian Science claimed as absolute truth that evil is nothing (p. 287), unreal (p. 71), an illusion and a false belief (p. 480). She also stated sin, sickness, and death has no real existence, they are only illusions, and that man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death. Yet she would also say that the Master “wrought a full salvation from sin, sickness, and death” (p. 39), “Christ came to destroy the belief of sin” and that salvation means “sin, sickness, and death destroyed” (p. 593). To her view this was all only a false belief that needed correcting. If this is so then why did she die? “The way to escape the misery of sin is to cease sinning, there is no other way” (P. 327). Her solution is to cease sinning which she believed is not real in the first place! The sin that is said to bring suffering, is just a false belief, and does not really exist yet one is to overcome sin which is not there in the first place. All by correct thinking.

How can we overcome this if “man is incapable of sin, sickness, and death” (p. 475). Are not beliefs real, and affect the way we live. This can only be attributed to the foreign factor of sin entering the human condition.

Then how can one know what she is saying is true? We would have to ignore all that we see and feel with the senses to live in this way. This all falls apart very quickly in even the simplest of things. For how could only the good be real and not the evil. Eddy was trying to deal with what befell her in her life and explain it all away without God’s clear word. She literally stepped over God to come up with an alternate explanation. Like the three monkeys “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil”, Christian Science minimizes sin by denying its reality and its real affect on the human condition, yet sin is ingrained in its teachings. The salvation from sin which she offered man is to not believe in it. There are many people who do not believe in sin or that they are sinners, yet they still are in sin according to the Bible. The Bibles proof, the wages of sin is death.” Everyone dies proving sin is a reality. She died as well.

So what of Eddy’s denial that there is no such thing as evil or sin (p.447,71). The Bible records God saying there is and this is the very reason He sent His Son into the world (please read Jn.3:16-21).

She poses the question, “if God made all that was made, and it was good, where did evil originate?”' Mrs. Eddy answering her own question says, “It never originated or existed as an entity. It is but a false belief” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 45) She says there simply is no explanation in their unbiblical system for these questions.

Really! Are there are no answers suitable or that any answer contrary to her belief would be rejected? The Bible says there is a literal fallen angel called the Devil that evil originated from. She denied this as well.

“It is the divine principle of man and never sins.” ( Science and Health p. 421) “The soul is sinless.” (Science and Health p.288) The Bible says we have all have sinned (Rom.3:23), Ezek. 18:4: “the soul that sins shall die.” Sin affects every part of man. If we say we have not sinned, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us “If we say we have not sinned we make Him (God) a liar, and his word is not in us”( 1 Jn.1:8,10). By Mrs. Eddy’s own admission the word was not in her and she fulfilled this Scripture to a ‘T’. Scripture says it is “ fools that make a mockery of sin.”(Prov.14:9) What does this make Mrs. Eddy and her “new revelations.”

“God be merciful to me a sinner” (Luke 18:13) is a prayer which our Lord Himself tells us, the publican went home from the temple forgiven and justified. While the one who did not recognize his sin still had it.

“That life is God and God is omnipotent.”(p.394) She wrote: “God is devoid of any personality. (p. 465 Miscellaneous Writings) Christian Science explains the nature of God as both Father and Mother,” (Messages to The Mother Church, 1901, p.10). She started the first women's liberal movement as she addressed God as “Our Father-Mother God, all harmonious” (p. 16, Science and Health, 1903 edition). “These refer not to personality, but present the type and shadow of Truth's appearing in the womanhood as well as the manhood of God, our divine Father and Mother” (Miscellaneous Writings, p.33). Maybe she had herself in mind being the mother of this new truth, after all if God is all things, its not illogical to reach the conclusion of a mother and father God, as well a man or woman being God. The Bible has nothing to say about a mother God.

No place in her writings does more harm than her changing the biblical Christ. To Eddy Jesus was just a man, the perfect example for us to follow. He didn't die for our sins. The Christian Science Christ is not the same as Jesus but equal to “The divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error “(Eddy, 583).She even stated “Jesus is not the Christ” (Miscellaneous Writings p.84). “ Jesus meant; not that the human Jesus was eternal, but that the divine idea or Christ was and is so and therefore antedated Abraham, not that the corporeal Jesus was one with the Father”(p.333 Miscellaneous Writings). I don’t know of anyone who claimed Jesus‘ flesh was eternal before his incarnation (until after he is risen). But certainly it was not a divine idea that conversed with Abraham and others.

Her Christ was the “Way-shower”, the first human to understand the Divine Mind. “Jesus taught the way of Life by demonstration. There is but one way to heaven, harmony, and Christ in Divine Science shows us this way” (Science and Health, p. 242).

“The Christian who believes in the First Commandment is a monotheist: thus he virtually unites with the Jew's belief in one God, and that Jesus Christ is not God, as he himself declared, but the Son of God” (Message for 1902, p. 12). Scripture teaches that to make this declaration meant he was equal with God. Jn.10:30. Since no human being is equal with God, this meant he was declaring himself as God. This is exactly what the apostles taught (1 Tim.3:16;2 Pt1:1; Phil2:5-8).

The Christian Science Christ is the Spirit, the Divine Truth, Life, and Love which animated the man Jesus. The Christ is the Way, while Jesus was the “way-shower.” (Ibid., 26:10-33; 30:10). “Christ as the true spiritual idea, is the ideal of God now and forever” (Science and Health, p. 361).

She held the view that Virgin Birth was a spiritual idea; and in agreement with other cults the Trinity is pagan: “The theory of three persons in one God (that is, a personal Trinity or Tri-unity) suggests polytheism, rather than the one ever-present I Am” (Science and Health, p. 256). God the Father-Mother; Christ the spiritual idea of sonship; divine Science or the Holy Comforter” (Science and Health, p.331-332).

God, as the only author of man, has a perfect idea of man. Mary, according to Christian Science, was able to give birth to Jesus while a virgin because she was able to conceive of this perfect idea, this divine Principle dwelling in the bosom of God. Fully recognizing that “being is Spirit,” Mary understood that the manifestation of God’s perfect idea did not require a flesh and blood father. Born out of Mary’s “self-conscious communion with God,” Jesus was “endowed with the Christ,” and was “the offspring of soul” rather than “of material sense” (29:14-30:25). The spiritual Christ was infallible; Jesus as material manhood was not Christ” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 84). “Christ as the true spiritual idea, is the ideal of God now and forever…” (Science and Health p. 361). “The Christ is incorporeal, spiritual…” while, “The corporeal [physical] man Jesus was human” only (Science and Health, p. 332).

Eddy succeeded in the first modern attempt to blend Christianity and what is known today as New Age philosophy. She distinguished between the man Jesus and the Christ. The man Jesus suffered on the cross; the Christ did not suffer anything. In the first two centuries of the Christian era there were individuals and groups who distinguished sharply between Jesus as a mere man, and Christ, as the divine spirit who descended upon Jesus at the time of his baptism and then left him again before He died.” The Ebionites, Cerinthus, and other Gnostics all held this view and they were not considered part of the Church. Though the Gnostics believed the world was evil, Mrs. Eddy still maintained many similarities. Christian Scientists, may not agree on all points with them, but the teaching of separating Jesus and Christ, as the divine idea is the very much the same. The Christ spirit simply inhabited the body of the man Jesus. The Christ spirit had come to teach man the gnosis whereby he could free himself from bondage to the evil material world. Some even taught that Jesus did not actually have a body of flesh, but was pure spirit, and Christ did not die. The physical death and resurrection of the body were denied by the Gnostics as it is by Christian Scientists. Like the Gnostics to escape the illusion of the material, Eddy believed that knowledge of her revelation explained in her books became their salvation. Christian Scientists unknowingly find themselves in the company of a ancient heresy from the first century. 

The Death of Jesus on the Cross- Not Really

In her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, she wrote a revealing statement that absolutely denied the Bible and the very words of Jesus “The material blood of Jesus was no more efficacious to cleanse from sin when it was shed on ‘the accursed tree,’ than when it was flowing in his veins as he went daily about his Father’s business” (Science and Health, p. 25).

“One sacrifice however great is insufficient to pay the debt of sin.” (Science and Health p.23) This is true if the Jesus who went to the cross was Mrs. Eddy’s, but not the sinless Son of God from the Bible. The Bible makes it perfectly clear without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of Sins. This is taught from Genesis throughout. Since Mrs. Eddy did away with the sin factor there really was no need of the blood. Not only was there no need of God’s cleansing she also stated, “Prayer is not to be used as a confessional for sin. Such an error would impede the true religion.” Science and Health, p.5) “If prayer nourishes the belief that sin is cancelled and that man is made better merely by praying, prayer is an evil.” (p.5) Yet God encourages us to confess our sins so he can cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 Jn.1:9), not deny that we have no sin. Since she did not believe she was a sinner so she had no need to pray for forgiveness.

She in its place taught, Jesus demonstrated the unreality of matter, that all is mind, and that we too can overcome the false beliefs of mortal mind.... sin, illness, and disease are all illusions of the mind to be corrected by right thinking. The Jesus of Christian Science does not offer mankind redemption from sin by His death paying for sin in our place He “demonstrated; that divine Truth casts out suppositional error and heals the sick.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p.472).

In place of the atonement “Jesus came to rescue men from these very illusions to which he seemed to conform: from the illusion which calls sin real, and man a sinner, needing a Saviour; the illusion which calls sickness real, and man as invalid, needing a physician; the illusion that death is as real as Life. From such thoughts mortal inventions, one and all Christ Jesus came to save men, through ever-present and eternal good” (pp. 59-60). In other words Jesus of Christian Science came to correct the teachings of Jesus of whom the Bible speaks of.

Eddy states, “Christ was not crucified... Jesus, being the man who possessed the Christ consciousness, was the one who went to the cross and who appeared to die. Thus, when the Bible appears to say that Jesus died on the cross and His body was laid in the tomb, it must be understood, according to the theology of Christian Science, that Jesus actually never died but was rather in the tomb denying death's reality.”

“When “Jesus' students ... saw him after his crucifixion and learned he had not died.”(p.46 Miscellaneous writings 1917) Really! Then why did John say to the church “from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth ”(Rev.1:5). And why did Jesus say to John in Rev.2:9 'These things says the First and the Last, who was dead, and came to life.” Also in Rev. 1:17-18 “I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.” Notice Jesus was dead and is alive again and it is He who has the keys to life, not Mrs. Eddy.

“The fleshly Jesus seemed to die, though he did not.” (Unity of God, p.62) This is the point of the gospel yet Eddy ignores the clear teaching of the eyewitnesses opting for her Gnostic view that denies anything in the physical realm as real.

Mrs. Eddy argued that “His disciples needed this quickening, or soon their dear Master would rise again in the spiritual scale of existence and fly far beyond their apprehension. As a reward for His faithfulness He would disappear to material sense, in that change which has since been called the ascension” (Science and Health, p. 339). This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). Christ did bodily ascended into heaven in a literal form.

This view is probably related to her position that “the physical senses can obtain no proof of God" (Science and Health, p.284).

Christian Science denies the Holy Spirit is a personal being who is God. Baker transferred the person of the Holy Spirit to be her inspiration and philosophy. The comforter that Jesus promised was “Divine Science.” (Miscellaneous p.309) “This Comforter I understand to be Divine Science” (Science and Health, p. 55). It is the unfolding of the thoughts and infinite mind of God (Science and Health, p. 502-503).

To her there were no angels or evil spirits “That there are good and evil spirits is a mistake” (Science and Health p.70) 

Once again she denied the clear teaching of the Bible “and certain women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities” (Luke 8:2) “and their diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them” (Acts 19:12) “And that very hour He cured many of infirmities, afflictions, and evil spirits; and to many blind He gave sight” (Luke 7:21). Those who witnessed what Jesus did and Paul who recorded what the apostles did, healed and cast out what Eddy said did not truly exist.

Her explanation-She said that Jesus did not cast out evil spirits but “false beliefs” (Science and Health, p.79). “The belief that man had existence or mind separate from God is a dying error. This error Jesus met with divine science and proved its nothingness” (P. 43). “The true man is governed by God-by good-, not evil-and therefore is not mortal but immortal.” As they affirm God is good and therefore good is God. The denial of evil also means they deny a real being called the devil who was the author of evil along with all his fallen and decieving angels.

That the devil was a “illusive personification” of the human mind (Science and Health, p.187).Yet Jesus spoke to him and he spoke back, was Jesus not enlightened according to Eddy? He thought the Devil was a real person, and he was real enough to start other false religious beliefs that countered his. 

The core of Christian Sciences' teaching is their doctrine of healing. Nothing else the church propagates draws more potential members. Mrs. Eddy was constantly challenged by the medical leaders of her day to produce evidence of one bona fide healing of a medically diagnosed case of organic disease. She did not and could not. After all they were all an illusion and the divine idea was all in her mind. In other words it was in the eye of the beholder. It is not necessary to prove it, for physical proof would be an illusion as well.

Though Eddy perceived pain as non-existent, we find that she did not sit still and ignore it when she had it, she went to relieve herself of it. “Some years ago Mrs. Eddy herself had a tooth removed under local anesthesia. It caused her theories to be held up to ridicule in a good many quarters. In her reply she gave out this ingenious explanation: that the dentist's belief in the means he employed was a mental force which combined with her own-exerted in a different direction-and produced a painless operation as a logical, mathematical “RESULTANT OF FORCES” (Brooklyn Eagle Library, 1901).(from The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, Biblesoft) 

Why go to a dentist in the first place, the pain was not there, it wasn't real.What would be the purpose of anesthesia to one who is enlightened, knowing that pain is an illusion.

“The sick unconsciously argue for suffering, instead of against it, they admit its reality, whereas they should deny it. They should plead in the opposition to the testimony of the deceitful senses, and maintain mans immortality and eternal likeness to God” (Science and Health, p.395). Is the body lying when one feels pain or is it trying to tell you something is wrong. Imagine ignoring the signals of the body, such as when its hungry or when it is near a flame that can burn. Admitting pain is a God given reaction to relieve one of it. The fact that even Jesus hungered and felt weak proves that the physical world does affect us, its called reality. 

For her kind of reality it would be hard to find any valid proof. Her proof of this revelation was destroyed when she turned to doctors and they treated her with the painkiller morphine. She died in 1910. Christian Science continues to uphold her belief that Jesus revealed to people their illusion of illness and thus cured them, even though she was not cured and sought out a medicinal illusion. What is termed disease does not exist. It is neither mind nor matter.” (Science and Health, p.188)

Eddy stated “A man drinks poison and dies; but it is not the poison that kills him; vicious belief, or mortal mind, sends him to his long home. If he only had been able to convince himself that the poison was pure, clear spring water, it would have done him no injury. (NOTE: “If a dose of poison is swallowed through mistake, and the patient dies, even though physician and patient are expecting favorable results, does human belief, you ask, cause this death? Even so; and as directly as if the poison had been intentionally taken” (p. 177, Science and Health, 1903 Edition.)

So lets get this concept straight; if you believe you drank poison but did not, you would die as if you did? Let me put this another way, If you thought what you drank was pure water and it was poison you would not die? How many people have died like this in history? I would think many.

The infant when he utters the first wail has an “inherited” belief in pain! The horse when left standing without his blanket on a bitter winter day takes cold because there is a sort of universal horse conviction that this will happen.” (p. 179, Science and Health, 1903 Edition).

Her solution was not to think about it, “The less mind there is manifested in matter, the better. When the unthinking lobster loses his claw, it grows again. If the science of life were understood ... the human limb would be replaced as readily as the lobster's claw-not with an artificial limb, but with a genuine one” (p. 489, “Science and Health”). While the lobster's claw can grow again, many animals tails do not. They certainly are not thinking of it growing anymore than a lobster. Maybe we should all get a third set of teeth since we don’t think about it.

“The cause of all so-called disease is mental” organic disease does not exist, and it is blamed on the belief in sin They say that since our physical bodies do not exist, disease and death are only illusions. She went as far as to say “the danger of prayer is that it may lead us into temptation.” (Science and Health, p.7)

The Bible again disagrees, the truth could not be clearer as spoken by Jesus himself who said pray for God’s will and that you enter not into temptation.

“What is this healing prayer? A mere request that God will heal the sick has no power to gain more of the divine presence than is always at hand the beneficial affect of such prayer for the sick is on the human mind “(Science and Health, p.12).

This was not prayer as Christian who reads the Bible would interpret it. It is not bringing a request to God, but it is more a thing of the mind that one would see the illusion of sickness and allow their healing.

“Prayer to a corporeal God affects the sick like a drug, which has no efficacy of its own but borrows its power from human faith and belief. The drug does nothing, because it has no intelligence. It is a mortal belief, not divine Principle or Love, which causes a drug to be apparently either poisonous or sanative. (Science and Health, p.12)

This prayer is not dependence on God for his sovereign grace to be granted but through the changing of the mind for healing.

What is the most inconsistent practice is that they pray for physical healing while they deny that the physical has any reality!  For  “Sickness and disease are illusory, the product of a false belief” (Science and Health, pp. 348, 386). Then they are in a false belief trying to remedy what does not exist to them. For those of us who live in the real world this is an evidential contradiction of their whole religion. To the enlightened Christian Scientist it does not exist. How can one claim something is not real and then do what they can to change that very same condition? 

In divine Science, where prayers are mental, all may avail themselves of God as “a very' present help in trouble.” Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and bestowals. It is the open fount which cues, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.” (Science and Health, pp.12-13) To Eddy love cured wrong thinking which then cured the false belief that one was actually sick.

Christian Scientists reject doctors of all kinds drugs and even vitamins and nutrition supplements. To Eddy this was breaking the first commandment. What they do is deny the material testimony of their senses. There body is lying to them as it it is not the true reality.

The faithful Christian Scientist, when experiencing the “error” of illness, is to call upon the practitioner rather than a physician. If you go to a doctor you have no faith. While there are some cases of reported of healings there are many deaths as well. The Christian Science Church had 28 child deaths between 1975 and 1995, according to one study. (Asser's)

In the 1950’s, there were 11,000 practitioners of this healing religion with about one million members, and by 1972 they had grown to 3200 churches. In 1976, scandal shook the cult with charges of financial, moral, and spiritual corruption among the top leaders. A major internal controversy occurred as some of the high ranking leaders of the Mother Church were accused by longtime members of “gross mismanagement, inexperience and lack of Christian ethics.” (Todd Ehrenborg, Mind Sciences 1995, 11). One high-ranking CS consultant on security at the Boston headquarters, Reginald G. Kerry, accused the leadership of “an alleged lack of financial accountability and alleged instances of lesbianism among the top echelon.” (Cf. Ehrenborg, Time Magazine, March 15, 1976 and Los Angeles Times, January 16, 1978, part 2, p.4.)

In the late ’80s and early ’90s, the church once again experienced more difficulties due to negative media coverage of lawsuits, and financial difficulties. Then in the 1990’s it was discovered that the church had secretly transferred millions of dollars from endowments and pension funds to help cover huge losses on their Monitor Channel [TV], which resulted in a reported loss of over several hundred million. “civil lawsuits brought against Christian Scientist parents who allowed their children to die of curable diseases by neglecting medical treatment A number of them went to court and some were publicized on TV by the parents who felt duped by this religious healing system and wanted to warn people. The members who practiced their religion were charged with manslaughter, murder, and child abuse for choosing prayer instead of medical treatment for illness.” (Walter Martin, Kingdom of the Cults, p. 245.)

In Minnesota, one four-week trial in 1994 levied a $14 million punitive damage award against the Mother Church, which a judge later reduced to $10.4 million. In 1995, the Minnesota Court of Appeals overturned this judgment. This court left intact $1.5 million in compensatory damages against the parents and two Christian Science practitioners. Now the Mother Church, has ruled contrary to it’s founder’s strict philosophy, having revised its strong prohibition against medical treatment (Martin, p.246).

With a major decline in membership the future of Christian Science looked grim although they seem to be on a slight comeback as of late. The number of practitioners has dropped nearly 50 percent in the last three decades. The Christian Science Church has a national membership of 170,000 way less numbers then they had first enjoyed. On their web page the group has approximately 2,200 branch churches in over sixty countries throughout the world. The majority of branch churches are in the United States (Approximately 1,600) and about 60 are found in Canada

Mrs. Eddy prophesied that, “in fifty years or less, Christian Science will be the dominant religious belief of the world.” This certainly has not come true. However in the early twentieth century, the Mind Science religions as Unity School of Christianity, Religious Science, and the word /faith movement in the Christian Church can all attribute their theology in some way to Mary baker Eddy. One of the former practitioners was Emma Hopkins who was an independent Christian Science leader she taught Charles and Myrtle Fillmore who founded the unity school of Christianity. Christian Science never grew to the numbers by its contemporaneous movements such as Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses probably because of its metaphysical slant easily identified as not biblical even by other cults.

Their publications are The Christian Science Monitor, The Christian Science Sentinel, The Christian Science Journal, The Herald of Christian Science, published in 12 foreign languages as well as in English Braille; (which seems to be an oxymoron from their own beliefs) and The Christian Science Quarterly, containing the Bible lessons studied daily by Christian Scientists. Mrs. Eddy's Science and Health is found published in a dozen languages besides English. Various other materials appear in numerous languages other than English.

Christian Science has a weekly nationwide radio and TV program, which is also broadcasted outside the United States.

It is a fact that certain illnesses which are emotional or stress related in nature can be removed by the psychologically soothing effect of the practitioner's therapy. A good or new attitude seems to do wonders for some people. But the organic sicknesses do not have the same results. Again any seemingly miraculous results do not validate the belief system.

for an article on the toll of those who do not seek medicine.

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/xsci/suffer.htm 

Kingdom of the Cults By Walter Martin