Jan 24th Cult Theories: Theological Structure of Christian Science!

In outlining the theology of Christian Science, a series of primary quotations taken directly from official Christian Science books will prove far more useful to the average person than any number of statements made by a non-Christian Scientist.  Therefore, to enable anyone to have this valuable source material easily obtainable, below is listed 16 of the major doctrines of historical orthodox Christianity.  Under each of their respective headings are CONTRADICTORY QUOTATIONS derived from Eddy’s writings.  This will provide more than sufficient documentation should any dispute ever arise concerning the proper classification of Christian Science as a non-Christian cult.

1. The Inspiration of the Bible—Referring to Genesis 2:7  Is this addition to His creation real or unreal?  Is it the truth or is it a lie concerning man and God?  It must be a lie.[i]
   1. The manifest mistakes in the ancient versions; the thirty thousand different readings in the Old Testament and three hundred thousand in the New Testament.  (These facts show how a mortal and material sense stole into the divine record with its own hue darkening to some extent, the inspired pages.[ii]
2. The Doctrine of the Trinity and the Deity of Christ
   1. The theory of three persons in one God (that is, a personal Trinity or Trinity) suggests polytheism, rather than the one ever present IAM.[iii]
   2. The Christian who believes in the First Commandment is a monotheist.  Thus he virtually unites with the Jew’s belief in one God and recognizes that Jesus Christ is not God, as Jesus himself declared, but is the Son of God.[iv]
   3. The spiritual Christ was infallible; Jesus, as material manhood, was not Christ.[v]
3.  The Doctrine of God and the Holy Spirit
   1. The Jewish tribal Jehovah was a man-projected God, liable to wrath, repentance, and human changeableness.[vi]
   2. God. The great IAM; the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving, and eternal; Principle; Mind; Soul; Spirit; Life; Truth; Love; all substance; intelligence.[vii]
   3. (1) God is All-in-all. (2) God is good. Good is Mind. (3) God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter…God:  Divine Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind.[viii]
4. The Virgin Birth of Christ
   1. A portion of God could not enter man; neither could a single man reflect God’s fullness, else God would be manifestly finite, lose the deific character and become less than God.[ix]
   2. Jesus, the Galilean Prophet, was born of the Virgin Mary’s spiritual thoughts of Life and its manifestation.[x]
5. The Doctrine of Miracles
   1. The sick are not healed merely by declaring there is no sickness, but by knowing that there is none.[xi]
   2. Sickness is part of the error that Truth casts out.  Error will not expel error.  Christian Science is the law of Truth, which heals the sick on the basis of the one Mind, or God.  It can heal in no other way, since the human, mortal mind so-called is not a healer, but causes the belief in disease.[xii]
   3. The so-called miracles contained in Holy Writ are neither supernatural nor preternatural.  Jesus regarded good as the normal state of man, and evil as the abnormal.  The so-called pains and pleasures of matter were alike unreal to Jesus, for he regarded matter as only a vagary of mortal believe and subdued it with this understanding.[xiii]
6. The Atonement of Jesus Christ
   1. 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 Fathers business[xiv]
   2. The real atonement—so infinitely beyond the heathen conception that God requires human blood to propitiate His justice and bring His mercy—needs to be understood.[xv]
7. The Death and Resurrection of Christ
   1. Jesus students, not sufficiently advanced to understand fully their Master’s triumph, did not perform many wonderful works until they saw him after his crucifixion and learned that he had not died.[xvi]
   2. 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.[xvii]
8. The Ascension and Second Coming of Christ
   1. Until he himself ascended—or, in other words, rose even higher in the understanding of Spirit, God….Jesus’ unchanged physical condition after what seemed to be death was followed by his exaltation above all material conditions; and this exaltation explained his ascension….In his final demonstration, called the ascension, which closed the earthly record of Jesus, he rose above the physical knowledge of his disciples, and the material senses saw him no more.[xviii]
9. Satan and the Existence of Evil
   1. Hence, evil is but an illusion, and it has no real basis.  Evil is a false belief.  God is not its author.  The supposititious parent of evil is a lie.[xix]
   2. All these vagaries are at variance with my system of metaphysics, which rests on God as One and All, and denies the actual existence of both matter and evil….There was never a moment in which evil was real.[xx]
   3. Sin, disease, and death do not originate in God, good.  They are not ultimate realities of God’s creation and are to be overcome as Jesus taught and illustrated.  These evils result from the belief man is separated from God and that life and substance are in matter, therefore limited and temporal.  Instead, life and substance are seen as Spirit, God, therefore unlimited and eternal.[xxi]
10. The Nature and Existence of Hell
    1. The sinner makes his own hell by doing evil, and the saint his own heaven by doing right.[xxii]
    2. The opinion that hell is fire and brimstone has yielded somewhat to the meta-physical face–suffering is a thing of mortal mind instead of body:  so, in place of material flames and odor, mental anguish is accepted as penalty for sin.[xxiii]
    3. Heaven and hell are not regarded as specific destinations one reaches after death, but as states of thought, experienced in varying degrees here and now, as well as after death.[xxiv]
11. The Kingdom of Heaven—Its Reality and Significance
    1. Definition:  HEAVEN—Harmony; the Reign of Spirit; Government by Principle; Spirituality; The Atmosphere of Soul; The Reign of Divine Science.[xxv]
    2. HEAVEN=Harmony—infinite, boundless Bliss.[xxvi]
12. The Doctrine of Eternal Salvation
    1. Man as God’s idea is already saved with an everlasting salvation.[xxvii]
    2. One sacrifice, however great, is insufficient to pay the debt of sin.[xxviii]
13. The Doctrine of Prayer
    1. Prayer can neither change God, nor bring his designs into mortal modes—I have no object to audible prayer of the right kind; but inaudible is more effectual.[xxix]
    2. If prayer nourishes the belief that sin is canceled, and that man is made better by merely praying, prayer is an evil.  He grows worse who continues in sin because he fancies himself forgiven.[xxx]
14.   The Creation of Matter and Its Reality
    1. There is no intelligent sin, evil mind, or matter: and this is the only true philosophy and realism.  There is no real existence.[xxxi]
    2. There is no life, truth, intelligence nor substance in matter.  All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all.[xxxii]
15. Man, the Soul, His True Nature and Destiny
    1. Man originated not from dust, materially, but from Spirit, spiritually.[xxxiii]
    2. Man is God’s image and likeness; whatever is possible to God, is possible to man as God’s reflection.[xxxiv]
16.  The Existence of Sin, Sickness, and Death
    1. DEVIL, Evil:  a lie; error; neither corporeality nor mind; the opposite of Truth; a belief in sin, sickness and death; animal magnetism or hypnotism; the lust of the flesh.[xxxv]
    2. DEATH.  An illusion, the lie of life in matter; the unreal and untrue; the opposite to Life.  Matter has no life, hence it has no real existence.  Mind is immortal.  The flesh, warring against the Spirit; that which frets itself free from one belief only to be fettered by another, until every belief of life where Life is not yields to Eternal Life.  Any material evidence of death is false, for it contradicts the spiritual facts of being.[xxxvi]

 FOUNDER OF THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE RELIGION—Mary Baker

Mary Baker was born in 1821 in Bow, New Hampshire, on a farm.  At 22, she married George W. Glover in 1843.  Seven months after their marriage, George died of yellow fever.  Mary, pregnant, became an emotional and highly unstable invalid, dependant on morphine on and off for the rest of her life.

In 1853 she married a dentist, Dr. Daniel M. Patterson, divorcing him several years later.  At 56, Mary married Asa G. Eddy.

In 1862, Mary Eddy met Dr. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, Portland, Maine.  In the 1850’s Dr. Quimby had a system of mental healing he called “THE SCIENCE of MAN.” In Quimby’s writings he used the terms, “The Science of Christ” and “Christian Science”.  Mary Eddy claimed Dr. Quimby cured her of her infirmity with a week.  Eddy studied Dr. Quimby’s work and after his death she plagiarized his writings and called his terminology her own.

The New York Times published parallel columns of Eddy’s and Quimby’s writings.[xxxvii]  These writings are virtually identical proving that Quimby is the author of much of Eddy’s “revelations” called “Science and Health”.  She plagiarized almost an entire selection in her “Miscellaneous Writings” (1895) from a book titled “The English Reader” written by Lindley Murray in 1823.

Eddy also plagiarized from a third source named Francis Lieber, a distinguished German-American publisher and Scholar.

A minister named Walter Haushalter in his book titled “Eddy Purloins From Hegel” made this illegality public in 1936.  Lieber had written “The Metaphysical Religion of Hegel” in 1866.  Eddy wrote her “Science and Health” in 1895.

In Eddy’s “The First Church of Christ”, Scientist and Miscellany she wrote “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.  I should blush to write of “Science and Health” as I have were it of human origin and I apart from God were its author”.

Christmas (1884) shows pictures and captions of Eddy and Christ.  The two considered on the same spiritual level at the least, if not, Eddy to be regarded higher.  Deity had no part in Eddy’s writings.  Deity would not condone theft from others.

Eddy has her own explanation as to how she discovered Christian Science in her book “Retrospection and Introspection”.  In February, 1886 (one month after Quimby’s death) she was mortally injured in a sidewalk fall and was not expected to live.  She was given three days.  On the third day she read Matthew 9:2 and rose completely healed.  She had vanquished the angel of death in this skirmish and on the third day emerged triumphant over her bodily infirmity.  Christian Science today on its web site has this story as a comment on the First Church of Christ, Scientist.  Eddy’s attending physician denies she was ever in mortal danger.

Eddy taught from the Quimby manuscripts from 1867-1870.  She first published her “Science and Health” in 1875 in Lynn, Massachusetts.  Most of her students revolted against her so she moved to Boston and opened “The Massachusetts Metaphysical College” where she allegedly taught over 4,000 students at $300.00 each from 1881-1889 ($1.2 Million).  Eddy herself knew nothing of Biblical history, theology, philosophy or ancient languages.  Her literary adviser for some years, Rev. J. H. Wiggins, an excellent scholar, is on record as saying “Eddy was grossly ignorant of the subjects in question”.  Eddy had less than 50 followers when she left Lynn, Massachusetts.  But when Eddy died, she had over $3 Million in assets.  Interestingly, none of it was left to charity.

By 1896 Eddy’s following had grown to 400 churches and societies.  The membership in them increased from 800-900%.  She ran a tight ship and demanded or commanded her followers to circulate and sell her books or lose membership in her church.  “Science and Health” and her other published works are the only true instructors for this hour, that no other instructional data is to be used.[xxxviii]  (Pretty good way to make lots of money).  A racket she had to make money is called the “Tea Jacket Swindle”.  She personally desired and claimed to need three tea jackets.  She ordered all of her members to contribute towards the purchase of the jackets so that “Mother” Eddy could do her work more comfortably. Thousands of dollars flowed into her treasury.  Today the Christian Science Church has 2,300 branch churches worldwide—1,600 in the USA and 60 in Canada.

Each branch church maintains a Christian Science Reading Room.  Many publications on Christian Science, Bible lessons, journals and newspapers are available to seekers of Christian Science coated by a veneer of scholarship and hefty compassion.  Newcomers are urged to attend a mid-week testimony meeting where experienced Christian Scientists share testimonies of spiritual healing through Christian Science meditations and prayer.

According to the average Christian Scientist the Bible is a compilation of ancient writings “full of hundreds of thousands of textual errors.” It’s divinity is uncertain, its inspiration questionable.  The Bible is made up of metaphors, allegories, myths and fables.  It cannot be read and interpreted literally.  Consequently, Christians Scientists believe, owing to the utter and hopeless confusion, the Bible allegedly engenders without a qualified interpreter, that it is necessary to have someone interpret the Bible for them.  Eddy is the divinely appointed person to fulfill this task.  To all Christian Scientists then, since they swear allegiance to Eddy, “the material record of the Bible is no more important to our well-being than the history of Europe and America”.  Christian Science, by denying many the truths and veracity of the Bible itself, in favor of Eddy’s interpretations, disobeys directly the injunction of God to study and believe His Word which alone is able to make us wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

Eddy said “the theory of three persons in one God suggests polytheism rather than the one ever present I AM”.  Eddy wrote “Jesus Christ” is not God but is the son of God and she crowned this travesty with the astounding revelation that Life, Truth and Love constitute the triune person called God.  Thus, she swept and banished the God of the Bible from her religion forever.

To reduce the Trinity so evident at Christ’s baptism and the Great Commission to three of Eddy’s choice terms Life, Truth and Love and declare all else suggestive of heathen gods is a prime demonstration of crass indifference to Biblical terminology and historical theology, an emphatic Christian Science attitude instituted by Eddy.  Christian Science Offers a dual Christ, a great man inspired by the “Christ idea” as Eddy would have it, one who never really “died” at all for our sins.  It is really sad that Eddy did not believe that Jesus died for our sins, since she has propagated this false theory to so many people.

Christian Science theology interchanges the terms Life, Truth, Love, Principle, Mind, Substance, Intelligence, Spirit, Mother, etc. with that of God.  This makes God impersonal and devoid of any personality at all.

Biblically this is not true.  God, in the Bible is unique in his personal nature.  He is the IAM showing a constructive mind.  The God of the Old and New Testaments is a personal transcendent Being because He:

 

Remembers	Speaks
Hears	Sees
Creates	Knows
Judges	Personal Spirit
Has a Determined Will

True Christians know all these things about God.

Christian Science denies that Christ performed miracles.  There is no support for their view.  The miracles of Christ were real as recorded in Matthew 8:14,15, 26-27; 9:2-7, 27-30; Mark 1:32-34; John 2:1-11;6:10-14.

The hungry that Christ fed from a few loaves of bread and fishes certainly witnessed the miracles of Christ.

Throughout the Bible, God used blood for cleansing and sacrifice, for saving the lives of many during the plague of 1^st born in Egypt.  Jesus was called the Lamb of God which “taketh away the sins of the world”.  His blood shed upon the cross is our atonement or covering for all the sins of mankind.

We as believers are saved by grace alone through faith in Christ’s sacrificial blood.

Eddy said it was a pagan sacrifice and the material blood of Jesus was no more efficacious to cleanse from sin when it was shed than when it was flowing through his veins.  Eddy claimed that Jesus, the disciples and apostles and the early Christian theologians did not understand the meaning of the atonement, but she did.

Eddy and Christian Science deny that Christ died upon the cross.  Nor did he rise physically from the grave, just spiritually.   The Bible, which is the Christian authority, confirms the truth as it really happened not as Christian Science imagined it happened.

Despite the graphic Biblical portrayal of Satan available for all to see, Eddy and Christian Science energetically deny his existence, further establishing her contention that evil is non-existent.  Romans 6:23 says, “the wages of sin is death—the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

What Bible are the Christian Scientists reading to back up their point of view?  Are they going to pay for leading so many astray?  God will be the judge of that!

Jesus prayed to the Father, He taught the disciples how to pray.  Jesus said to always pray.  The Bible is very clear on this doctrine.  Christian Science says that audible prayer can never do the works of the spiritual understanding which regenerates.  Prayer may lead us into temptation.  Prayer cannot change the science of being, but it tends to bring us into harmony with it.

To the Christian prayer is the lifeblood of spiritual existence and personal communion with their personal God, our ever-present help in trouble, a relationship no Christian Scientist will ever enjoy as long as he or she does not know the God of the Bible or Jesus Christ:  both of whom, Biblically speaking Christian Scientists unreservedly deny.

 ETERNAL SALVATION

The Christians reward for accepting Jesus and having faith in His resurrection and return in the future is eternal life.  We must be “born again.” John 3:3

Christian Science says “Man, as God’s idea, is already saved with an everlasting salvation.”  They do away altogether with the necessity of Christ’s death on the cross for sin.  Christian Science offers no eternal life and no salvation for the soul, denying as it does, sin and hence the necessity of redemption from it.

All rational persons will admit the reality of their physical existence.  Three reasons:

1. Man is capable of perceiving his corporal form;
2. The demands of the body such as food, clothing, etc. prove that it has a material existence;
3. The human mind is capable of discerning the difference between concrete and abstract ideas, the body being easily discerned as a concrete proposition.

Christian Science denies all physical existence.[xxxix]  Man is purely spiritual, the reflection of God and since God is perfect and incapable of sin, man must also be perfect as His reflection and hence incapable of sin.  This is exactly what Eddy taught.[xl]

This is not what the Bible teaches.  The body is physical but the soul is immaterial and created in the image of God.  It was the soul that sinned against God in the person of Adam.  Through the gospel of Jesus the soul can be cleansed and regenerated to eternal life.

How can Christian Science deny all this?

According to Christian Science, Eddy restored to Christendom the power of healing.  In their literature they say that Eddy healed as Jesus did and demonstrated through Divine Science.  Eddy herself claimed to have healed cancer, tuberculosis and diphtheria.  The only witnesses to her miraculous cures were her followers, no one with any medical training verified her miracles.  She never healed the same disease twice.  She refused to treat identical cases of diseases.  During her life she allowed her own granddaughter, her brother’s wife and her close friend, Joseph Armstrong, all die painful deaths.  There is no record of her even lifting a finger to help them.  She could have visited them and healed them if her claims were true.  Even the president of the Mother Church in Boston said he did not know of any healing produced by Eddy in her entire life , of any organic disease.  Yet she professed to succeed Jesus Christ as the great healer of our age.

She used real doctors and allowed anesthetics to be used in surgery, orthopedics for breaks and fractures, etc.  Quite the opposite to what she professed at the start of her career.  Her followers have souls that are poverty stricken, barren and destitute, robbed of the true Christ, the true healer and His Gospel of Life.[xli]

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