When my mother and father and I visited my mother’s extended family, her stepfather, from whom my mother had inherited her religion, would offer a blessing before dinner:
Love be with us at our table
Make this food upon our board
Strengthen us and make us able
Work to do for thee, oh Lord
I haven’t been able to find any information about the origins of this blessing online. Perhaps it is somewhere in the texts; perhaps it was of his own composition. In any case, the identification of God as love itself has always been, for me, one of the more compelling aspects of Christian Science, and this may have influenced my decision to embrace pantheism. After all, love is real. The metaphysics and ontologies behind that identification may be somewhat more dubious, but there is at least, in Christian Science, solid grounding for believing in and worshipping God.
Sometime when I was very young, my mother began bringing me to church. The church was of the Christian Science denomination, in which she herself had been raised. She (now an atheist) did not adopt the doctrine of the religion wholesale, but rather maintained a loose and abstract belief in God and Jesus. She told me many years later that she was not trying to indoctrinate me into the religion, but rather only to expose me to religion in general and to give me some moral grounding (she now rejects entirely the notion that morality must come from religion). My father was already at that time interested primarily in Taoism, Zen, and the philosophy of Alan Watts, and I think it likely that he opposed this exposure to Christianity to some degree. He had been raised Methodist in a strict and abusive religious household and was, while not contemptuous of Christianity, at least dismissive of it.
While my mother attended the services, I went to Sunday school. I found it a boring distraction. Worshipping and loving God and Jesus seemed entirely sufficient to me. God loves us, we love Him back, just as my parents loved me and I loved them. I had no context for the stories I was being told, and so they seemed meaningless. But I remember walking into the large, domed teaching room, filled with round tables where small groups of children would sit with a teacher and learn about the stories of the Bible and the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy. Mounted on one of the walls, in letters perhaps two or three feet tall, were the words “GOD IS LOVE.” It seemed a grand place. On holidays, when I joined my mother for services, we entered the circular sanctuary, divided into three sections of pews. At the end of each aisle, in front of the dais with its podium and massive church organ, stood one of the ministers, arms outstretched in welcome, wearing a beaming smile.
Mary Baker Eddy, born in New Hampshire in 1821, founded the religion of Christian Science with the publishing of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures in 1875. I have a copy of the book that belonged to my mother. It’s a small, beautiful, leather-bound softcover book with gossamer pages and a golden seal on the front cover, the seal of the Church of Christ, Scientist: a tilted cross passing through the center of a crown, together surrounded by a circle in which are inscribed the words “HEAL THE SICK RAISE THE DEAD CLEANSE THE LEPERS CAST OUT DEMONS.” It came to me paired with a similar book, Prose Works Other Than Science and Health, on the inside cover of which is a mark of ownership written in pencil, giving the name and address of its onetime owner, and the year: 1957.
Christian Science is widely known for its adherents’ practice of refusing medical care — even denying it to their children — in favor of healing through prayer. I saw none of this in my early exposure to the religion and I was fully vaccinated and given all the medical care I ever needed as a child, but it does indeed seem a tragic and unavoidable element of the doctrine. It is tragic in that there does indeed seem to be something beautiful and insightful about the religion, while at the same time its faithful practice has resulted in the harm and death of children. And this is unavoidable in that this interpretation and its resulting practice are both a part of the church’s teaching and its history. Mary Baker Eddy’s inspiration for the religion came after she suffered a spinal injury in a fall in 1866. She was bedridden, but after a few days made a supposedly miraculous recovery when she read in the Bible of Jesus healing a sick person in Matthew 9:2-8:
And just then some people were carrying a paralyzed man lying on a bed. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.” Then some of the scribes said to themselves, “This man is blaspheming.” But Jesus, perceiving their thoughts, said, “Why do you think evil in your hearts? For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he then said to the paralytic—“Stand up, take your bed and go to your home.” And he stood up and went to his home. When the crowds saw it, they were filled with awe, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to human beings.
NRSV
The foundation of the religion is a kind of semi-pantheist dualism: all things are Spirit, which is the infinite mind of God, who is identical with Love, and our experience of a physical, material world is illusory. Sickness and death are components of that illusion; neither are real, and both can be removed (or, rather, realized as not really existing in the first place) by aligning oneself with the true Spiritual world through prayer. One might note here a particular similarity to Gnostic Christianity, which likewise regarded the material world as a baneful illusion, but I could find no evidence that Mary Baker Eddy was influenced by or at all familiar with Gnosticism.
As to where the “science” part of the name comes from, I’ll let the Church’s website answer that:
Christian Science is also a science because God is understood to be unchanging Love—the infinite Principle that is constant, universal, inclusive, eternal, the only true power and source of all good. It explains the spiritual laws of Love that enabled Jesus to heal sickness and sin. This divine Science also answers our fundamental questions about evil, reality, and eternal life. And as the word science implies, it is reliable, consistent, and provable, bringing healing to individuals and humanity through a deeper understanding of God.
https://www.christianscience.com/what-is-christian-science/beliefs-and-teachings
So then, it is “science” ostensibly because it is an eternal and unchanging truth, based on laws, which act predictably and answer metaphysical questions. It seems more that it is “science” by way of appropriating the term to convey a certain authority regarding matters of truth. Do a Google search for “Christian Science experiments” and you get results about science experiments for Christians, which are eyebrow-raising in themselves but don’t at all reveal any sort of scientific process, or even the barest understanding thereof, within the Christian Science denomination.
Mary Baker Eddy’s prose is elegant and moving, but also exposes Christian Science as a striking example of the tragedy and lunacy that mysticism can bring when subjective, phenomenal experience is applied to metaphysics. When I was given the book by my mother, I found it bookmarked on a page which contains the “scientific statement of being,” which we recited at the beginning of all Church activities:
There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual.
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 468:9-15
This sort of cosmic pantheist language is characteristic of the documentation of mystical experience (cf. William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience, which contains extensive examples), and taken in itself, I have no problem with it. It’s poetry: an imperfect attempt to convey some deep and transcendent spiritual experience through language. It’s even sensible in that regard. Subsequent paragraphs delve into her meanings of “substance,” “Life,” “intelligence,” and “Mind,” and these are likewise quite striking in terms of their expression of experience without attempting to convey any concrete metaphysics. I really find them quite beautiful and inspiring. But we see elsewhere in the book that Mary Baker Eddy has taken these experiences out of the context of her personal experience and applied them metaphysically:
Theology and physics teach that both Spirit and matter are real and good, whereas the fact is that Spirit is good and real, and matter is Spirit’s opposite. The question, What is Truth, is answered by demonstration, — by healing both disease and sin; and this demonstration shows that Christian healing confers the most health and makes the best men. On this basis Christian Science will have a fair fight. Sickness has been combated for centuries by doctors using material remedies; but the question arises, Is there less sickness because of these practitioners? A vigorous “No” is the response deducible from two connate facts, — the reputed longevity of the Antediluvians, and the rapid multiplication and increased violence of diseases since the flood.
Preface to Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, viii: 9-23
And we see here a religious nihilism which people have followed to self-deception and self-inflicted suffering. The question she is asking is simply, “If physicians cure the sick, why is there still sickness?” Which is infantile.
My question in all this is, what is the origin of this supposed illusion of the material world? Some sects of Buddhism and Hinduism, which make similar metaphysical claims, have extensive ontologies on the matter; Mary Baker Eddy seems to have nothing of the sort. There is at least one step towards this ontology in her description of error:
Error is a supposition that pleasure and pain, that intelligence, substance, life, are existent in matter. Error is neither Mind nor one of Mind’s faculties. Error is the contradiction of Truth. Error is a belief without understanding. Error is unreal because untrue. It is that which seemeth to be and is not. If error were true, its truth would be error and we should have a self-evident absurdity — namely, erroneous truth. Thus we should continue to lose the standard of Truth.
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 472: 14-22
What then is the ontology of error? It seems that, given her description, the mind is not even capable of such. It is not true, nor is it real, nor is it a faculty of the mind, nor is it of mind. Where did we come by this supposition? And where did matter come from? There is a glossary in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures that contains this definition:
Matter. Mythology; mortality; another name for mortal mind; illusion; intelligence, substance, and life in non-intelligence and mortality; life resulting in death, and death in life; sensation in the sensationless; mind originating in matter; the opposite of Truth; the opposite of Spirit; the opposite of God; that of which immortal Mind takes no cognizance; that which mortal mind sees, feels, hears, tastes, and smells only in belief.
Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 591: 8-15
Can we avoid that our existence is material? I do not know whether there is a spiritual component to it, but the essence of my being seems to me to be very much material. And there are wonders in the material beyond my ability to describe. I’ve often heard the material described as being base, even sinful, but I’ve experienced my entire life either as a body or as an inhabitant of one, and those experiences have often been entirely wondrous.
If I am to experience in any way the salvation of Christ, how else can it be than through my body? What was sacrificed of Christ but the body of Christ? It was not the soul, if it can be said that the soul of Christ is living and eternal with God in heaven. Was it not the body of Christ that was nailed to the cross for our salvation? I have heard that people crucify themselves just to experience this intimacy with the Savior.
The Mary Baker Eddy’s glossary is quite interesting in general. Here are a few other samples (all taken from the glossary section of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures):
Hell. Mortal belief; error; lust; remorse; hatred; revenge; sin; sickness; death; suffering and self-destruction; self-imposed agony; effects of sin; that which “worketh abomination or maketh a lie.”
Jerusalem. Mortal belief and knowledge obtained from the five corporeal senses; the pride of power and the power of pride; sensuality; envy; oppression; tyranny. Home, heaven.
Jesus. The highest human corporeal concept of the divine idea, rebuking and destroying error and bringing to light man’s immortality.
There is no entry for “Satan,” but there is one for “Serpent:”
Serpent (ophis, in Greek; nacash, in Hebrew). Subtlety; a lie; the opposite of Truth, named error; the first statement of mythology and idolatry; the belief in more than one God; animal magnetism; the first lie of limitation; finity; the first claim that there is an opposite of Spirit, or good, termed matter, or evil; the first delusion that error exists as fact; the first claim that sin, sickness, and death are the realities of life. The first audible claim that God was not omnipotent and that there was another power, named evil, which was as real and eternal as God, good.
And as well there is an entire chapter titled “The Apocalypse,” which reinterprets the Book of Revelation symbolically by way of this system of thought. It’s good reading, elegant and symbolically rich, and I’d like to return to it at some point for further exploration. It seems that Mary Baker Eddy may have written this chapter, and perhaps even the entire book, for similar reason to mine in writing these essays, reinterpreting scripture through her own system of thought. But I am not writing any of this intending that readers take up the mantle of Satanism as a Hegelian dialectic or through the phenomenological pragmatism of William James as I have done. The notion of anyone taking any of my writings as doctrine would be entirely antithetical to my intent; I hope only that my writings serve as inspiration for others to explore and reinvent religion for themselves. Mary Baker Eddy, on the other hand, seems to intend that others take up the mantle of Christian Science and speak the scientific statement of being regardless of whether they themselves have personally experienced the unreality of matter and the truth of Spirit.
I truly think that Mary Baker Eddy understood something remarkable, noetic, and beautiful. Her writing speaks to me and I feel almost as if she is a kindred spirit. I think that she likely had a spiritual experience which she correlated with physical effects that may very well have been entirely coincidental. Who am I to say either way, but there isn’t enough for me to take her at her word on the matter. In that sense, the story of Christian Science becomes something of a tragedy. A woman suffers a grievous injury in Massachusetts in the 19th century and writes of her mystical experience in the wake of that, and a century later children die of curable ailments because their parents believe that the material world is illusory. I don’t pretend to understand it. It’s as if a person pointed to the sun, and in subsequent years those who had seen the person’s pointing sought to huddle around the pointing finger for warmth and light, and so starved and froze in the dark.