by Walter Martin
One prominent trait of all non-Christian religions and cults is their pointed denial of the scriptural doctrine of the Trinity and the deity of Jesus Christ. Christian Science ranges high in this category on the basis that it unequivocally denies the true deity of our Lord and the triunity of the Godhead (Colossians 2:9). Eddy said, and most decisively so, that “the theory of three persons in one God (that is, a personal Trinity or Triunity) suggests polytheism, rather than the one ever-present I AM” (Science and Health, 256). Going beyond this declaration Eddy also wrote: “Jesus Christ is not God, as Jesus himself declared, but is the Son of God” (S & H, 361), and she crowned this travesty with the astounding “revelation” that “Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune Person called God” (S & H, 331). Thus it was that with one sweep of an unblushing pen, a vindictive, ignorant, untrained, and egocentric old woman banished the God of the Bible from her religion forever. It is hardly necessary to examine at length the doctrine of the Trinity and the deity of Christ to refute Eddy’s vague ramblings, but it is profitable, we believe, to review those passages of Scripture that so thoroughly unmask the pronounced shallowness of the Christian Science contentions.
“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” (Genesis 1:26). “Let us go down, and there confound their language” (Genesis 11:7). “Who will go for us?” (Isaiah 6:8).
Then we could mention Genesis 18 where Abraham addresses God personally as Lord (Jehovah) over ten times; the obvious plurality of the Godhead is strongly implied if not expressly declared by the use of three angels to represent God. The fact that God intended to beget a Son after the flesh and of the line of David by virgin birth (Isaiah 7:14; 9:6; Micah 5:2; Matthew 1:23; Luke 1:35; cf. Psalm 2:7; Hebrews 1:5; 5:5; Acts 13:33), that this Son in the likeness of flesh was His eternal Word (John 1:1, 14, 18), and that He is true deity (Colossians 2:9; Philippians 2:8–11; Revelation 1:8, 17–18; Hebrews 1:1–4, etc.) and a separate person from God the Father is all indicative of the truth that Jesus Christ was truly the God-man of prophecy and the personal Messiah of Israel. It is fruitful to note also that Eddy recognizes the “true” God not as Jehovah but as “I AM” (S & H, 256), apparently oblivious of the fact that the word “Jehovah” is itself taken from the Hebrew verb form “to be” (Exodus 3:14), literally “I was, I am, I continue to be” or as the Jews render it “the Eternal”—(, the tetragrammaton). Keeping with this vein of thought it will be easily recognized that Jesus identified himself with the same “I AM” or Jehovah—and, in fact, claimed in no uncertain terms that He was that “I AM,” (John 8:58) for which the Jews were ready to stone Him to death on the grounds of blasphemy (John 8:59 and 10:30–33).
As to Eddy’s argument that Jesus was God’s Son, not God, the answer is painfully simple when thoroughly analyzed. The solution is briefly this: Christ was God’s Son by nature, not creation, as we are; hence, His intrinsic character was that of Deity—His attributes were Divine—He possessed “all power,” etc. (Matthew 28:18). He therefore could not be a true Son unless He were truly divine; therefore, He could not be the Son of God at all without at once being “God the Son,” i.e., of the very nature of His Father. The Scriptures declare God’s Son is Deity—“The Mighty God the Everlasting Father (Isaiah 9:6), or the Image of God (Colossians 1:15) Impress of His Substance Radiance of His glory” (Hebrews 1:1–3), etc. Innumerable testimonies as to His divinity are given, far too exhaustive to record here, but evidence nonetheless and beyond disputation. To reduce the Trinity so evident at Christ’s baptism and the Great Commission (“In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” Matthew 28:19) to three of Eddy’s choice terms, “Life, Truth, and Love,” and declare all else “suggestive of heathen gods” (Science and Health, 256) is a prime demonstration of crass indifference to biblical terminology and historical theology—an emphatic Christian Science attitude instituted by Eddy.
John tells us that Christ was by His own admission equal in deity to God the Father (John 5:18; cf. Philippians 2:8–11; Colossians 2:9; Hebrews 1:3), yet inferior in position and form during His earthly ministry (John 14:28) as a man. The Eternal Word voluntarily humbled himself, became human and subject to our limitations, even to the death of the cross, the Bible tells us, but never for a moment did He cease to be what by nature and inheritance He always was and will be, God the Son, second person of the Trinity, eternal Creator and Savior of the sons of men.
Therefore, let us remember most clearly that 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.
The Scriptures hold forth as a ray of inextinguishable light the deity of our Lord and the Trinity of God. We must therefore be ever vigilant in our defense of the personal Jesus who is our personal Savior, lest the impersonal Christ of Christian Science be allowed further opportunity to counterfeit the Christ of the Bible. This counterfeit, so widely taught in Christian Science, is merely another false theory that masquerades under the banner of the Christian religion and attempts to subvert the true Christian faith.
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The Figment of Divine Authorship
Let us return, however, to Eddy’s explanation of how she “discovered” Christian Science. According to an authorized statement published by the Christian Science Publishing Society of Boston, Eddy, after a fall on a slippery sidewalk February 1, 1866, was pronounced “incurable” and given three days to live by the attending physician (Dr. Alvin M. Cushing). The third day, allegedly her last on earth, Eddy (the statement makes out) cried for a Bible, read Matthew 9:2, and rose completely healed. Thus the statement claims “she discovered” Christian Science.
Corroborating this new story, Eddy in her book Retrospection and Introspection (38) declares that in February of 1886 (one month after Quimby’s death), she was mortally injured in a sidewalk fall and was not expected to live. She, however, vanquished the angel of death in this skirmish, and on the third day emerged triumphant over her bodily infirmity.
This is the story maintained by the organization today, as a comment on the First Church of Christ, Scientist web site states:
In 1866 [Eddy] was severely injured in a fall, and turned to the Bible as she had been accustomed to doing. All she had pondered in the past came strongly and clearly to her as she read an account of one of Jesus’ healings. She was immediately healed. Convinced that God had healed her, she spent the next several years searching the Scriptures to understand the principle behind her healing. She named her discovery Christian Science and explained it in 1875 when she first wrote Science and Health.
Eddy’s two statements, the interested reader will note, substantiate each other in every detail; it is therefore most unfortunate that they should both be falsehoods. Eddy never discovered Christian Science in the manner claimed, never was in danger of losing her life in the manner described, and never “rose the third day healed and free,” as she maintained. Two incontrovertible facts establish these truths. They are as follows: (1) Dr. Alvin M. Cushing, the attending physician at Eddy’s “illness,” denied under oath in a 1,000-word statement that he ever believed or said that she was in a precarious physical condition. Moreover, Dr. Cushing stated (contrary to the claims of Christian Scientists that Eddy always enjoyed robust health) that he further attended her in August of the same year four separate times and administered medicine to her for bodily ailments. (2) Julius Dresser (pupil of the late “Dr.” Quimby) received a letter from Eddy dated February 15, 1866, two weeks after her alleged “recovery” from the fall on an icy sidewalk. In this letter Eddy alludes to the fall and claims Dr. Cushing resigned her to the life of a cripple. Eddy wrote:
Two weeks ago I fell on the sidewalk and struck my back on the ice, and was taken for dead, came to consciousness amid a storm of vapors from cologne, chloroform, ether, camphor, etc., but to find myself the helpless cripple I was before I saw Dr. Quimby. The physician attending said I had taken the last step I ever should, but in two days I got out of my bed alone and will walk; but yet I confess I am frightened? Now can’t you help me? I think I could help another in my condition that yet I am slowly failing.
Barring the obvious medical error of a doctor administering chloroform and ether to an unconscious person, Eddy’s account once again demonstrates her ability to think in paradoxes and contradict all reason and logical expression. The accounts are therefore spurious and complete fabrications. Horace T. Wentworth, with whose mother Eddy lived in Stoughton while she was teaching from the Quimby Manuscripts (1867–1870), has made the following statement, and no Christian Scientist has ever refuted it:
As I have seen the amazing spread of this delusion and the way in which men and women are offering up money and the lives of their children to it, I have felt that it is a duty I owe to the public to make it known. I have no hard feelings against Eddy, no ax to grind, no interest to serve; I simply feel that it is due the thousands of good people who have made Christian Science the anchorage of their souls and its founder the infallible guide of their daily life, to keep this no longer to myself. I desire only that people who take themselves and their helpless children into Christian Science shall do so with the full knowledge that this is not divine revelation but simply the idea of an old-time Maine healer.
Further than this statement, Wentworth has also recorded as incontestable evidence the very copy of P. P. Quimby’s Manuscripts from which Eddy taught during the years of 1867 through 1870, a copy which also contains corrections in Eddy’s own handwriting. Note, please, all this is undeniable fact—yet Eddy maintains that she alone “discovered and founded” the Christian Science religion. What a historical perversion the prophetess of Christian Science has attempted to perpetrate. Let it also be remembered that Eddy claimed for Quimby’s theories, which she expanded, Divine import, owning that she only copied what God Almighty spoke. Let us return now to the personal history of the central figure of this analysis, Mary Baker Eddy—the still-reigning sovereign of Christian Science.
From the home of the Wentworths in Stoughton, Massachusetts, where, as we said, she taught from the Quimby manuscripts, Eddy went on to Lynn, Massachusetts, where she completed her “writing” of Science and Health, which she published in 1875. After leaving Lynn, largely because of the revolt of most of her students, Eddy came to Boston and opened what later became “The Massachusetts Metaphysical College” (571 Columbus Avenue), where she allegedly taught some 4,000 students at $300.00 per student over a period of eight years (1881–1889). One cannot help but wonder what would induce a reasonably intelligent person to spend that amount of money for a course that never lasted the length of a college half-semester and which was taught by a staff hardly qualified intellectually to instruct the ninth grade. Eddy herself knew nothing of biblical history, theology, philosophy, or ancient languages. Christian Science sources have attempted for years to prove that Eddy was a scholar in these fields, but the Rev. J. H. Wiggin, her literary adviser for some years, and himself an excellent scholar, has gone on record saying that she was grossly ignorant of the subjects in question.
When Eddy left the thankless community of Lynn, Massachusetts, she was then sixty-one years old and had less than fifty persons she could call “followers.” As the calendar neared 1896, however, the indomitable will and perseverance of Mary Baker Eddy began to pay sizable dividends. Her churches and societies numbered well over 400 and the membership in them eventually increased from 800 to 900 percent. Considering what she had to work with, Eddy accomplished a financial miracle and a propaganda goal unrivaled for its efficiency and ruthlessness. From her ceaseless efforts for deification and wealth, there flowed continual revisions of Science and Health, which the “faithful” were commanded to purchase and sell, or stand in danger of excommunication from the Eddy autocracy. Should the skeptical reader wish proof on this point of history and on Eddy’s insatiable greed for the comforts of financial security and power, we quote her announcement to that effect in its entirety:
Christian Scientists in the United States and Canada are hereby enjoined not to teach a student of Christian Science for one year, commencing on March 14, 1897.
Miscellaneous Writings is calculated to prepare the minds of all true thinkers to understand the Christian Science textbook more correctly than a student can.
The Bible, Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures, and my other published works are the only proper instructors for this hour. It shall be the duty of all Christian Scientists to circulate and to sell as many of these books as they can.
If a member of the First Church of Christ, Scientist shall fail to obey this injunction it will render him liable to lose his membership in this church.—Mary Baker G. Eddy.
Please pay close heed to what Eddy said in the above quote. She did not ask, she commanded all Scientists as their duty to her church to “circulate” and “sell” her works and “obey” her “injunction” under penalty of loss of membership. If, perchance, a method of blackmail is ever rendered legal, it could not be stated in more compelling terminology than this encyclical from the Eddy throne.
But let it be observed that her religious pandering was not limited to one edition of Science and Health—no, Eddy extended her tactics to other fields, as well. For example, in February of 1908 she “requested” all Christian Scientists to read the “new” edition of Science and Health, which contained on page 442, beginning at line 30, information she affirmed to be of “great importance.” Said Eddy:
Take Notice
I request Christian Scientists universally to read the paragraph beginning at line 30 on page 442 in the edition of Science and Health, which will be issued February 29. I consider the information there given to be of great importance at this state of the workings of Animal Magnetism, and it will greatly aid the students in their individual experiences.—Mary Baker G. Eddy.
One would assume from the tone of the language she used that here was a new revelation imperative to the defense against “Animal Magnetism” (the fiend all Christian Scientists continually ward off mentally), but such was not the case; instead, Eddy merely wrote what she had written a hundred times previously in different language. Said the material of “great importance”:
Christian Scientists, be a law to yourselves, that mental malpractice can harm you neither when asleep nor when awake.
Imagine paying $3.00, a healthy sum for a new book at that time, for these two sentences—the same old volume, excepting this “new” sage advice. And countless loyal Scientists obliged her wish by dutifully pouring their money into the Eddy treasury. It is no wonder that at her death Eddy’s personal fortune exceeded three million dollars. None of this, unfortunately, was left to charity.
Current Christian Science esteem for Science and Health is still as great. Today Christian Scientists call the Bible and Science and Health their only “pastor,” noting, “With the Bible and Science and Health as our pastor, Christian Scientists turn to prayer and these two books for counsel and healing.” Christian Scientists are promised, “Your dual and impersonal pastor, the Bible and Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures, is with you; and the Life these give, the Truth they illustrate, the Love they demonstrate, is the great Shepherd that feedeth my flock, and leadeth them ‘beside the still waters.’ ” Christian Scientists have no problem adding Eddy’s book to the Bible as having equal divine authority:
Humanity had the Bible for close to two millenniums without fully understanding how to use its truths in a scientifically provable way to heal and regenerate people like Christ Jesus did. To arrive at that kind of understanding, humanity needed to comprehend the Bible on a deeper level. They needed to “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.
Eddy’s reign had very little internal opposition and hence went unchallenged during her lifetime, but after her decease a definite scramble for control of her empire ensued. All but the most exacting students of Christian Science history have overlooked this battle for the vacated throne of Christian Science, but it is an important historical conflict and one that deserves consideration. Upon the death of Eddy, the Christian Science Board of Directors, in good business fashion, assumed control of her thriving empire and consolidated this coup by obtaining from the Massachusetts Supreme Court authority for their self-perpetuating directorate. It was over this issue that a schism appeared in the ranks of Christian Science, and after assuming the title “The Christian Science Parent Church,” under the leadership of Annie C. Bill of London, the struggle commenced hot and heavy. John V. Dittemore, a member of the Christian Science Board of Directors, left the Boston camp and joined Bill in editing the Christian Science Watchman and acclaimed her as Eddy’s successor. It was the contention of “The Parent Church” that Eddy intended to have a successor within a half century of her demise and never intended a self-perpetuating board of directors. The directors, no doubt for good financial reasons, stoutly rejected this view and defended their newfound gold mine. On February 6, 1924, Eddy’s name was taken off The Manual’s list of active officers and thus The Watchman claimed the board had proven its original intentions by fully occupying the most powerful position in the Christian Science Church, forever eliminating the danger of a successor to Eddy. The claim by Bill and Dittemore that the directors had usurped the authority of Eddy and acted contrary to her expressed wishes went unchallenged for the most part by the Christian Science Board of Directors, for Dittemore had strong evidence from The Memoirs of Adam Dickey, which the board suppressed, and excerpts from the unpublished writings of Eddy’s secretary, Calvin A. Frye, that she expected a personal successor within fifty years. Wrote Eddy:
In answer to oncoming questions I will say: I calculate that about one-half century more will bring to the front the man that God has equipped to lift aloft His standard of Christian Science.
But Eddy never picked her successor, and with the advancing years the Christian Science Parent Church and The Watchman faded into obscurity, and the controversy has long since been forgotten.
Continuing further into the Eddy legend, we are once again confronted with the cold, impartial testimony of history where Eddy’s boundless “generosity” and “selflessness” are concerned. Shortly after the famous “Woodbury Suit,” wherein Eddy was accused of slandering a former disciple, the Christian Science treasury showed a marked decrease in volume, the result of large legal fees due in consideration of services rendered during the case. As a result of this, Eddy perpetrated on the faithful the infamous “Tea Jacket Swindle,” calculated to draw from her gullible followers the revenue with which to further strengthen her treasury. In line with this scheme she drafted the following solicitation to her church universal, which appeared in the Christian Science Journal, December 21, 1899:
Beloved, I ask this favor of all Christian Scientists. Do not give me on, before, or after the forthcoming holiday aught material except three tea jackets. All may contribute to these. One learns to value material things only as one needs them, and the costliest things are the ones that one needs most. Among my present needs material are these—three jackets, two of darkish heavy silk, the shade appropriate to white hair; the third of heavy satin, lighter shade, but sufficiently sombre. Nos. 1 and 2 to be common-sense jackets for Mother to work in, and not overtrimmed by any means. No. 3 for best, such as she can afford for her dressing room.—Mary Baker Eddy
The key to this whole financial angle is to be found in five short words, “All may contribute to these.” Notice Eddy does not request two hundred thousand tea jackets, merely “contributions” toward them. No one was to send them—only send the money to buy them. “Mother” Eddy must have enjoyed this neat trick of replenishing her gold reserve, and none can deny that it was carried off with a finesse that rivals any confidence game ever conceived. All this, mind you, in the name of Jesus Christ and under the banner of Christian Science, allegedly the true religion. Judge Rutherford of Jehovah’s Witnesses could not have had Christian Science too far out of mind when he said, “Religion is a racket.” Compared to Eddy, “Pastor” Russell and Judge Rutherford of The Watchtower Society were rank amateurs at collecting money. She played for the highest stakes at all times, and with Mary Baker Eddy it was always “winner take all,” and she did!
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Inspiration and Authority of the Bible
Christian Science, as a theology, and all Christian Scientists, for that matter, both affirm that the Bible is God’s Word and quote Eddy to “prove” that their whole religion is based upon the teachings of Scripture. Eddy said:
The Bible has been my only authority. I have had no other guide in “the straight and narrow way” of Truth (Science and Health, 126).
However, Eddy and Christian Science have repudiated and contradicted this affirmation numerous times (see Miscellaneous Writings, 169–170, and Science and Health, 517, 537, etc.), and in reality have perverted the clear teachings of the Bible to serve their own ends.
In Psalm 119 we read: “For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven thy word is very pure thy word is true from the beginning.” The prophet Isaiah reminds us: “The word of our God shall stand for ever” (Isaiah 40:8), and Christ himself confirmed these great truths when he said: “The scripture cannot be broken. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall never pass away” (John 10:35; Matthew 24:35). It will be remembered also that the apostle Paul stamped with divine authority the testimony of the Scriptures when he wrote: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). Coupled with these unassailable voices of testimony as to the Bible’s authority, it is evident from the words of Jesus himself and the writings of His disciples and apostles that He believed in the authority of the Old Testament most emphatically, and even alluded to Old Testament characters and events as being within a historical context, thus establishing the authenticity and trustworthiness of the Old Testament.
The Bible declares that it, not Eddy and Christian Science, is the supreme authority on the activities of God and His relationship to man. Christian Science employs every art and method of paradoxical reasoning to escape the dilemma with which it is faced. It switches terminology around until the terms in question lose all logical meaning, and it spiritualizes texts until they are milked dry of any divine revelation whatsoever. To the average Christian Scientist, the Bible is a compilation of ancient writings “full of hundreds of thousands of textual errors. Its divinity is uncertain, its inspiration questionable. It is made up of metaphors, allegories, myths, and fables. It cannot be read and interpreted literally” Consequently, Christian Scientists believe, owing to the utter and hopeless confusion that 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. Through Science and Health, she, they affirm, “rediscovered the healing principle of Jesus and His disciples, lost since the early Christian era,” and has blessed the world with Christian Science—the “Divine Comforter.” 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” (Miscellaneous Writings, 170).
The reader is asked to compare this supposedly “Christian” view with the foregoing scriptural references and the words of Christ and the apostle Paul, who said and wrote respectively:
Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth (John 17:17).
But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:14–15).
We are told in the words of Peter:
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost (2 Peter 1:20–21).
By these things, of course, we do not mean that God dictated or mechanically reproduced the Bible, or even that He wrote tangibly, using the hands of men as an adult guides the hand of a child, but that God spoke and caused to be recorded truly and without error those things necessary for our salvation and an understanding of His sovereign purposes and love. The Bible is the inspired Word of God, and is wholly dependable in whatever fields it speaks. This, of course, holds true only for the original manuscripts of the Bible of which we have excellent reproductions. No scholar to our knowledge, however, holds to the infallibility of copies or translations, which sometimes suggest textual difficulties. The Bible, therefore, stands paramount as God’s revelation to man, the simple presentation of infinite values and truths clothed in the figures of time and space. Christian Science, by denying many of these truths and the 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.”
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The Personality of God the Father and the Holy Spirit
In Christian Science theology, if it be properly understood, the term “God” is merely a relative one and bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Deity so clearly revealed in the Bible. As has been amply shown, Eddy interchanges the terms “Life,” “Truth,” “Love,” “Principle,” “Mind,” “Substance,” “Intelligence,” “Spirit,” “Mother,” etc. with that of “God”; thus, Christian Science contends that God is impersonal, devoid of any personality at all. Biblically speaking, of course, this is a theological and historical absurdity since the core of Jehovah’s uniqueness was His personal nature—I AM—indicative of a reflective and constructive Mind. Jesus repeatedly addressed His Father as a direct object, “I” and “Thou,” postulating a logical subject/object relation in communion, and at least twice the Father answered Him (see Matthew 3:17 and 17:5), establishing His independence of person. This would have been impossible if God were circumscribed by Eddy’s theology, for only a personality or cognizant ego can think reflectively, carry on conversation, and use the personal pronouns “I” or “He,” etc. The God of the Old Testament and the New is a personal, transcendent Being, not an impersonal spirit or force, and man is created in His image, that of a personal, though finite, being. The higher animals, to whatever degree they “think,” are incapable of rationality and, also unlike man, of the faculty of “knowing,” as Descartes once put it: “Cogito ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”). But far surpassing this elementary distinction between the God of Christianity and that of Christian Science is the inescapable fact that the God of the Bible does what only a personality can do, and these traits forever separate Him from the pantheistic god of Christian Science, which is incapable by definition of performing these things. Briefly, God is described as capable of doing the following things:
1. God remembers. “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins” (Isaiah 43:25; also compare Psalm 79:8; Jeremiah 31:20; Hosea 8:13).
2. God speaks. “I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images” (Isaiah 42:8; see also, Genesis 1:26; Isaiah 43:10–13; 44:6; Matthew 17:5; Hebrews 1:1).
3. God hears, sees, and creates. “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth” (Genesis 6:5); “God heard their groaning” (Exodus 2:24); “and when the people complained and the Lord heard it” (Numbers 11:1); “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).
4. God “knows,” i.e., He has a mind. “The Lord knoweth them that are his” (2 Timothy 2:19); “God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things” (1 John 3:20); “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord” (Jeremiah 29:11).
5. God will judge the world. “Therefore I will judge you saith the Lord God” (Ezekiel 18:30); “Therefore thus saith the Lord God unto them; Behold, I, even I, will judge” (Ezekiel 34:20); “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:10).
6. God is a personal Spirit. “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24); “I am the Almighty God; walk before me, and be thou perfect” (Genesis 17:1); God’s Son is declared to be the “express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3), therefore God is a person.
7. God has a will. “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10); “Prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2); “He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever” (1 John 2:17); “Lo, I come to do thy will, O God” (Hebrews 10:7, 9).
From this brief résumé of some of God’s attributes, the interested reader can doubtless see the vast difference between the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and the “Divine Principle” of Eddy’s Christian Science. Psychologically speaking, a principle cannot remember; “Life, Truth, and Love” cannot speak audibly; nor can “Substance, Mind, or Intelligence” hear, see, create, know, judge, or will. The God of the Bible does these things; the god of Christian Science cannot. Christian Science may admit that a mind or an intelligence can do these things, but Eddy does not recognize the existence of personality in the Deity, and only a personality has a mind or an intelligence. Eddy’s god (Principle) cannot create nor can it exert a will because Principle or even a principle, if you desire, does not possess a will by any logical definition. The god of Christian Science is an it, neuter in gender—merely a name—incapable of metaphysical definition or understanding outside of the maze that is Christian Science theology. The apostle Paul triumphantly reminds us, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (2 Timothy 1:12). The true Christian has a personal relationship with his Lord; he prays through Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit; he asks that it might be given; indeed, personal contact is the very source of the Christian’s life and spiritual peace. Christian Scientists have no such contact and consequently no real spiritual life or peace, only the riddles and incoherencies of Eddy and a basic uncertainty about good health. Concerning the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the attitude of Christian Science toward it, little need be said since Eddy’s attitude was so obvious, but at the risk of repetition a short review may be profitable. As a matter of course, Eddy denied both the personality and office of the Holy Spirit and for His exalted ministry substituted “Divine Science” (Science and Health, 55).
To refute such a decided perversion of Scripture and historical theology one need only recall who the writers of the Bible, and Christ himself, considered the Holy Spirit to be in respect to personality and power. In the sixteenth chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus instructed His disciples about their new ministry and duties and promised them a “Comforter” who would strengthen and guide them after His ascension. To quiet their fears Jesus told them that it was essential to the coming of the Comforter, who issued forth from the Father, that He (Jesus) go away. The Lord said:
If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment (vv. 7–8).
It is useful to observe that the Greek text uses the masculine pronoun “He” and also “Him” for the Holy Spirit and ascribes to Him a will (v. 7) and the power to “reprove” the world of “sin, righteousness, and judgment” (v. 8). “Divine Science” has not, will not, and cannot do any of these things because it denies the reality of sin, hence, excluding the need for righteousness, and teaches in place of judgment the pernicious unbiblical doctrine of man’s inherent goodness. The Holy Spirit, therefore, is a person with a will and divine power to regenerate the soul of man (John 3) and glorify Jesus Christ. It should also be remembered that He does what only a person can do—He teaches us (Luke 12:12), He speaks to us (Acts 13:2), He thinks and makes decisions (Acts 15:28), and He moves us to do the will of God as He has moved holy men of God to serve in the past (2 Peter 1:21). Further than this the Holy Spirit can be lied to (Acts 5:5), He can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30), and He is often resisted (Acts 7:51). All these things denote dealings with a personality, not an impersonal force, and certainly not “Divine Science.” Beyond these things the Holy Spirit sanctifies and separates us from sin and prays to the Father for us that we might be freed from great temptations (Romans 8:26).
Certainly these points of evidence disprove the meager attempts of Christian Science to reduce the third person of the Trinity to a metaphysical catchword (“Divine Science”), and reveal clearly for all to see the semantic deception Eddy has utilized in attempting to undermine this great scriptural truth.