Is ‘Christian Science’ merely another Christian denomination or is there a sinister undertone to the ‘Reading Rooms,’ scattered throughout the nation? 1st Timothy 6:20, warns of ‘science falsely so called,’ which refutes saving grace through faith, offering salvation via the tree of knowledge instead (Gen 2:17). In this insightful broadcast, Carl explores the origins and philosophy, of the famous occultist; Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the movement. Has the recent popularity of ‘positive thinking’ and ‘mind over matter’ compromised true Christianity in the form of ‘Christian science’? Join Carl now, to find out…
Here is a complete transcript of the broadcast (below)…
“Nowhere in the annals of cultism is there to be found a person who camouflaged so expertly the broad way of destruction under a canopy of apparent serenity, as did Mary Baker Eddy. Nevertheless, beneath this serenity lies a denial of nearly every Orthodox Christian doctrine.” Friend I am quoting from Dr. Walter Martin, the expert on cults. And of course, our discussion today revolves around Christian science. You know, I live in the hills of Colorado, and I see these Christian Science Reading Rooms. They’re quite popular. They’re in strip malls, near idyllic gardens, they’re next to church buildings, and they have this enticement of ‘come on in and read about Christian science,’ whatever the heck that is.
But like Mormonism, Christian science developed initially as a personality cult centered around the personal life of one Mary Baker Eddy. Now I will say that in recent times, this cult by definition, has dwindled. I would say there’s about half a million to three quarters of a million people who adhere to its teachings, exclusively almost in North America, although there are some branches in Northern Europe also. But Mother Mary, as Mary Baker Eddy became to be known, was known by thousands of her followers, and possibly the most influential woman in the 19th century, especially in America. Mark Twain referred to her as the most daring and masculine and masterful woman that has appeared on earth in the centuries. But ironically, Miss Mary Baker Eddy wasn’t exceptionally bright or creative.
Her success in building a religious philosophy and movement denied the reality of physical sickness, which she herself was never able to escape. She had a debilitating physical problem, and was a morphine addict throughout her life, something that was kept under wraps. This dope addiction she could never conquer, and of course it is only by the blood of Christ that anybody can conquer such addictions. Now Mary’s father was a strong Calvinist, and whenever a cult is formed, we have to look at their formative years, the origin of the person. And with a strong Calvinistic teaching, which Mary vehemently rejected, she didn’t believe in the destination, or rather predestination of people for heaven and hell, for example. She rejected that, which is in a way correct.
We don’t want to embrace false teaching, but she sort of went out of the frying pan and into the fire, and then went into other false teachings because of her dogged ideology that was put on her from her religious father. Her mother said of Mary, quote, sometimes I fear I worship Mary instead of the great Jehovah. There was certainly a magnetism about Mary. She was a sickly child. She was frequently bedridden. She had physical ailments, including spinal paralysis and a lot of pain. These chronic complaints, writes Julius Silberger, ‘were as nothing compared to her paroxysmal attacks.’ She had seizures or fits. You could say she was epileptic.
She would pitch headlong on the floor, writhe around, and would lay motionless for hours. It was a puzzle. No one really knew what was wrong with Mary or why she had these seizures. Mary was described as a deeply spiritual person. She attended Methodist church and congregational church. She was married several times, including to George Washington Glover. But she had a strong independent spirit that it was reportedly lamented by one of the local congregational ministers, of which was either her pastor or a colleague. When she was a teenager, it was described that if Mary Magdalene had seven devils, our Mary has ten. But sadly, because of her chronic pain, she began dabbling with such things as spiritualism, the occult, clairvoyance, and mesmerism. And friend, there was a strong attraction. I’ve spoken about this before. Arthur Conan Doyle, of course, of Sherlock Holmes fame.
And towards the latter part of the 19th century, there was a revival of the occult and clairvoyancy, the speaking to the dead, and so on. Making contact with the spiritual world was one of Mary’s cogent desires to rid herself of this chronic ailment. And at one point, as a small child, she heard a mysterious voice calling her. But it wasn’t until Mary encountered a gentleman called, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. When he entered her life, things would never be the same again. Quimby was one of those mental healers, playing his trade during the decades prior to the Civil War. There was tremendous interest in this field, largely as a result of the experiments that the German physician Franz Anton Mesmer was conducting with hypnosis. Mesmer concluded that a mysterious magnetic field was the explanation of the mental power one person could exercise over another. And ironically, of course, Mary throughout her whole life felt that she was subjugated or oppressed by this magnetism of others, or thought projection, that she was under this thought projection and under attack periodically.
Something that she would express to her dying day. You see, Quimby’s objective was to actually deny the physical sickness. We know that physical sickness is real, of course. We know that Christ atoned for it, and we have the capacity to be healed from sickness and disease through the blood of Christ. Yet in Quimby’s case, he actually denied it. It’s mind over matter. Effectively, if you don’t think about it, it doesn’t exist. And this really laid root in Eddie Baker’s heart, because that began one of her teachings. Yet it was in one of these treatments that Mary was cured of one of her ailments or physical pains, and she was convinced that Quimby’s idea of denial of sickness is effectively the way to rid it in the human race.
Yet not everybody was accommodating to this doctrine, friend. Mary had to move at least eight times during the year of 1866. She was driven by dwindling finances and the exhaustion of her host’s patience. She was without a home. She had been married multiple times. There was seemingly no blessing on this teaching of mind over matter and denial of physical matter. Yet, ironically, she was blessed of the physical matter, charging up to $300 per conference or session to be witness to the teachings she inherited from brother Quimby. So for someone who didn’t believe in physical matters, she certainly lived high on the hog from it. But throughout her lifetime, as I’ve said, she insisted on those who were causing her physical torment through a form of black magic or, quote, malicious animal magnetism, unquote.
It was officially termed this by a gentleman called Kennedy, but she felt like she was constantly oppressed from this magnetism. It was during 1875 that the Christian science cult actually gained steam. They purchased a piece of property, and the first edition of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures was published. Now there were several cases where plagiarism was thrown against Mary, and particularly with the teachings of Quimby, that she had plagiarized his teachings, which you could argue is true because if you look at comparisons of Quimby’s teachings and Eddie Baker’s writings, they almost parallel in unison with small word changes. Yet it was in 1875 that Mary had formed the Christian Scientists Association. It was located in Boston, and Mary traveled every Sunday to preach to a small group of followers.
In 1881, at the age of 60, she was officially ordained and installed as the pastor of the Christian Science Church. Once again, her health declined even after forming the church, and she blamed this MAM, this animalistic magnetism, or thought attack, I guess you could call it, for the rapidly deteriorating condition that she had. But friend, it is true that a lot of ladies gravitated toward Christian science, because this new thought offered opportunities for women that gave them an influence comparable to their male counterparts. And for that reason alone, women may have gravitated towards the movement, because they saw the success of Mary Baker Eddie. By the turn of the century, that is the turn from the 19th to 20th centuries, Mary had tens of thousands of loyal followers, and Boston First Church of Christ Scientists was founded. There was a near idolization of Mary in the minds of her followers. They all contributed very significantly to the public perception of her as the epitome of a cult leader. Yet in her own writings, she was quite bullying of her subordinates. Let me give you a quote here.
This is Mary speaking herself. Quote, no greater mistake can be made than to fail to obey or delay in obeying a single command of mine, she penned to a student. God does speak through me to this age. This I discern more clearly every year of my sojourn with you. When you declare that you’re a mouthpiece for God, oh, well, well, should we step in your way? Of course not. How could we disobey the mouthpiece of God? Friend, this is why the ultimate authority is always the Bible. It is never a person. When people put other people on pedestals above Christ and his word, you’re going to allow cults to propagate. By 1891, Mary was collecting some $100,000 in tuition.
And in that day, that was a fortune friend. She lived in mansions in Brookline, Massachusetts. She had one at Pleasant View outside of Concord, New Hampshire. She had several residences. And she lived off this matter that she was in denial of. But even up to her death, she was in intense pain. She was taking morphine. But she was a fearful woman, friend. And she testified that if she died, it was because of this malicious animal magnetism rather than natural causes. I believe, friend, that in the early years of her life, because she opened the door to the devil through spiritualism, through the occult, through wrappings on the table, whatever they did, the contacting of the dead, they opened a door, and that plagued her for her whole life. But she elevated the soul above the spirit, that the mind, will, and emotions are almost a means of salvation rather than the spirit. She did not embrace the belief that the blood of Christ is the means to salvation. She denied it. Mary viewed liturgies and creeds as man-made documents. She didn’t believe in any kind of communion, even though it’s symbolic in the eyes of the Protestant.
And it certainly isn’t transubstantiation from the Catholic view, which we reject. Mary did not believe in any form of communion. I believe that the rise of this Christian science cult was because of the, in This gentleman, P. P. Quimby, had taught that disease was a result of wrong thinking, and Mrs. Eddy’s adaptation of that line of reasoning, combined with her interpretation of the Bible in Science and Health, one of her writings, had a compelling attraction to many people who had personally found the health profession utterly inept in its treatment of disease. And so, they gravitated towards the aspect of the mind-controlling disease. She kept saying that the source of my authority is the Bible. But if you look at her teachings, clearly it was not her source. She believed that God had given her a special quote-unquote revelation. She said, God has been preparing me, during my many years, for the reception of this final revelation of the absolute divine principle of scientific mental healing. But like I’ve said before, friend, there is no new revelation. The canon has been closed. There is only illumination on existing revelation. There is no new revelation. Everything must conform to the holy writ, and there is only public interpretation, not private interpretation of the Bible. She said often that there were mistakes in the Bible, and it could not be trusted. But her own interpretation was the true spiritual meaning of the passage.
This is classic eisegesis, putting in something into the text that does not exist. She also denied the physical in this sense. She argued that the material world or realm was so filled with pain and desolation that it could not have been ordained by God. But what you’re seeing, friend, are the after-effects of sin in the spiritual and natural realms. We live in a fallen world. Sickness and disease came in through sin. She was in denial of the reality staring her in the face. It was a make-believe cult, this Christian science cult. She once said, quote, it is unchristian to believe that pain and sickness are anything but illusions, unquote.
Friend, it is not an illusion to see a sick child dying of cholera on a hospital bed. This is not an illusion. This is denial of reality. And we have to live in the realm of truth, friend. The blame or the burden of responsibility for all who died or were sick was placed on the individual. And if that individual did not receive her teachings, she would just callously leave that person to die. And it was as if, hey, that’s your problem. It’s all in your head. Friend, there is no compassion in this. Her philosophy was, I guess you could say, related with transcendentalism or pantheism. She rejected the belief that Jesus was God. She said that Jesus was the model of perfect spiritual sonship and a human being with extraordinary conditions surrounding his birth, yet denied the immaculate conception.
She described the comforter instead of the Holy Spirit as the divine science, her cult instead of the true personality of the Godhead. Friend, Christian science offers peace without any form of the unappealing aspects of traditional Christianity. For the Christian scientist, there is no heaven, there is no hell, there is no doctrine of the trinity or incarnation or the resurrection or atonement of Jesus Christ. It is a denial of so much truth. When you compare the teachings of Christian science with the religion of Hegel, that’s George Hegel, the great German philosopher. And I’m quoting from Francis Lieber here, quote, for Hegel and his true disciples, there is no truth, there is no substance, life or intelligence in matter. All is infinite in mind. Thus matter has no reality. It is only the manifestation of spirit.
Therefore, science is spiritual for God is spirit. Friend, it is an denial of sin that entered the world. Instead of using our faith to overcome sin by the blood of Christ, they would apply their mind to deny the reality of sin and its effects. Modern day proponents of Christian science would include Marilyn Monroe, Ellen DeGeneres, Robin Williams, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Kelsey Grammer, Ginger Rogers. The list is long here, friends. Joan Crawford, Henry Fonda, Robert Duval, Val Kilmer, Jim Henson, Alan Shepard, Daniel Steele, Carol Channing, Ernest Hemingway, Doris Day, Bruce Hornsby, James Hetfield, Paul Feig, JD Salinger, Jean Stapleton, and the list goes on of people who still follow these teachings today.
Baker’s biggest claim was that she restored to Christendom the power of healing that was lost since the days of the early church, but it was never lost. Those who have been through the Pentecostal barrier, those who have been baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire and the evidence of speaking in tongues, they have the power to lay hands on the sick today, as do nominal believers who believe in the name of Jesus Christ. There’s just a greater endearment of power with the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But Eddie never believed in a personal God. God was never personal, but always impersonal. Friend, the Christian scientists elevate Eddie’s books on equal divine authority with the Bible, and I’m quoting here, “…humanity had the Bible for close to two millenniums without fully understanding it, how to use its truths in a scientifically provable way to heal and regenerate people like Jesus did, to arrive at that kind of understanding, humanity needed to comprehend the Bible on a deeper level.
They needed to, quote, unlock the Bible, so to speak. It was the specific mission of science and health to give the world this key to the scriptures to open up their treasures and enable everyone to use them.” Friend, this is private interpretation, that somehow there’s a special knowledge that the Christian scientist has that we don’t have access to through the Bible. These are lies, friend. Whenever there is special revelation, this is a form of Gnosticism, salvation through knowledge instead of saving grace through faith in Christ and His blood. Do not think that Christian science is just another branch of Christianity. No, it is separate, it is distinct, and it is the way of perdition, as Walter Martin spoke at the beginning of this broadcast.
Bibliography:
Ruth A, Tucker, Another Gospel: Alternative Religions and the New Age Movement (Academic Books, Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids Michigan, 1989) pp. 149-176,
Walter Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults: Bethany House Publishers, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2003) pp. 149-191.
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