The New Thought Movement of Christian Science

I was wandering about in Seattle this past weekend and came across a "Christian Science Reading Room". Curiosity got me so I stepped in - it was curious, as they combined readings from the Bible and writings from their founder, Mary Baker Eddy, a woman who lived in the 19th century. Basically, she was healed of an illness by changing her thoughts through prayer, and developed a religious system around that.


Afterwards I talked to one man there, and many of the beliefs was similar to my own - such as God is Divine Love, and condemns no one to hell. Punishment stops when sinning stops, for the law of order dictates that each sin contains within it its own punishment. It is our own conscience which will judge us. Moreover, they treat the Bible allegorically, and not literally. A woman then told me that Mary Baker Eddy gave an allegorical interpretation of Genesis and Revelation. At that point a light bulb turned on and I said, "Oh, she borrowed her teachings from Swedenborg." All I got was a blank stare. "Who?"


In Swedenborg's visions, he saw God as the Light of all of heaven, full of Love, who condemns no one, who desires all nothing but happiness. He is Love and Truth, and the truth we know from our conscience is that which will judge us. Those who lived a life of hate will turn away to dwell in an area of darkness. Moreover, Swedenborg gave an allegorical interpretation of the entire Bible, one revealed to him by God through angels. And it took volumes, as he gave the proof for the symbolic meaning to each word he came across in scripture. Instead, Christian Science conducts their services across the world based on the opinions of this woman, who never had any direct revelation, but based them on the beliefs of her healer, apparently. However when I mentioned Swedenborg to them the woman was quite curious. So I may stop by again. If anyone is curious I will ask them to give me a thumb drive and just copy all of Swedenborg's writings on that, for them to examine.


Obviously, Christian Science reading rooms are perhaps more popular than Churches based on Swedenborg's writings because Swedenborg, quite frankly, wrote in a dense style, originally in Neo-Latin. Mary Baker Eddy is easy to understand. But her grasp of the symbolic meaning behind the Bible is simplistic, yet another human attempt to grasp the Divine spirituality behind the literalism of the words.


After doing research, I discovered that Christian Science, along with the writings of Swedenborg (which forms the foundation of the "New Church") are both classified as belonging to the "New Thought Movement". These are movements that treat scripture in a more metaphysical way, and includes the Unity Church. The first person to write on Christian Science was a man named Warren Evans - and guess what - he was a Swedenborgian minister! He had compared Christian Science with the revelations given to Swedenborg. So it was quite likely a borrowing occurred. But after a superficial glance at Mary Baker Eddy's writings, it could have been an indirect borrowing. Then again, she could have arrived at some of her thoughts independently, but I believe there is some influence there. The Christian Scientists, honestly, were quite open to this, they stated no one has a monopoly on truth.


Like Warren Evans, I thought I would take a brief look at some of the beliefs of Christian Science, and compare them with what Swedenborg had to say. I will borrow from wikipedia concerning their beliefs:


In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Eddy argues that given the absolute goodness and perfection of God, sin, disease, and death were not created by Him, and therefore cannot be truly real. She bases this reading on Genesis 1, calling that the true record of creation in contrast to Genesis 2, the false record of creation obscuring the true (which occurred when "a mist went up from the face of the ground"). Rather than being ontologically real, in Christian Science evil and its manifestations are instead terrible lies about God and His creation. This, it contends, is what Jesus meant when he said that "the devil is a liar and the father of it" (John 8:44). The demand for Christians, therefore, is to "unmask" the devil's lies through Christ, revealing the true and eternal perfection of God's creation. Eddy therefore called evil "error" and felt it could be remedied through a better spiritual understanding of one's relationship to God. She contended that this understanding was what enabled the biblical Jesus to heal and accords with the Scripture: "We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error." (I John 4:6)


Concerning the absolute goodness of God, Swedenborg goes further: God is good itself. He is the origin of Goodness, and Love. If any person does good, that good originates from God working through that person. But before a person can receive this good, he/she must eliminate the evil that he/she has accepted through a belief in error. Like Eddy, Swedenborg stated that God did not create evil, but rather, evil came about through man's abuse of free will. This is described in the Fall. Evil exists, but can only exist when one is in darkness and error. However, at higher spiritual levels, the highest angels of heaven regard evil as "nothing". Their thoughts do not dwell upon it, so for them, evil does not exist. Swedenborg does warn, however, that people who are in evil do not believe they are committing evil: evil is only revealed through the truth. Thus it is important to go through a period of self examination once or twice a year.


Christian Science believes that sickness and ill health is brought about through false thinking. This actually is quite true. The origin of most illnesses - up to about 80%, doctors estimate - comes from stress. The link between ones' thoughts and ones' illnesses is known in the medical community as psychosomatism. So they emphasize prayer as a healing method. Scripture also recommends laying on of hands - some research indicates that auras of healers grow during the healing process, which can be captured through the process of Kirlian photography. The meaning of the auras in photographs is still disputed.


One part, which I found odd, is that the sacraments of baptism, the eucharist, etc. - are all treated metaphorically, as mental ideas. In Swedenborg thought, symbols and rituals are important - in fact, one's thought can not be focused on something unless there is an image or symbol formed in the mind. Ancient religions understood this well. The highest form of symbolism was achieved in the human body itself - for the human body is in fact the image of God. Symbols and images are used for God to communicate to man through visions and dreams. The Christian Science reading rooms are thus quite bland. There are no symbols to elevate the natural thought into spiritual thought. I once told a Muslim, the Koran is somewhat boring since it is not rich in symbolism like the Bible is. Of course I risked the appearance of being sacriligous but I did so to make a point. The danger of symbolism, I admitted, is that it could lead to false doctrines.


Here is Christian Science's belief concerning Jesus Christ:


"Christ Jesus is both "Wayshower" and savior in Christian Science theology. Eddy distinguished between the corporeal Jesus, the human man in the flesh (the Son of Man), and the incorporeal Christ (the Son of God). According to Christian Science, Christ is "the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error" (Science and Health 583). This incorporeal Christ is the "spiritual selfhood" (or spiritual identity) of Jesus (Science and Health 38). In Eddy's Message to The Mother Church for 1901, in the section titled CHRIST IS ONE AND DIVINE, she writes:

The Christ was Jesus' spiritual selfhood; therefore Christ existed prior to Jesus, who said, "Before Abraham was, I am." Jesus, the only immaculate, was born of a virgin mother, and Christian Science explains that mystic saying of the Master as to his dual personality, or the spiritual and material Christ Jesus, called in Scripture the Son of God and the Son of man — explains it as referring to his eternal spiritual selfhood and his temporal manhood. (Message for 1901, p. 8)

This accords with a basic plank in the platform of Christian Science:

The invisible Christ was imperceptible to the so-called personal senses, whereas Jesus appeared as a bodily existence. This dual personality of the unseen and the seen, the spiritual and material, the eternal Christ and the corporeal Jesus manifest in flesh, continued until the Master's ascension, when the human, material concept, or Jesus, disappeared, while the spiritual self, or Christ, continues to exist in the eternal order of divine Science, taking away the sins of the world, as the Christ has always done, even before the human Jesus was incarnate to mortal eyes. (Science and Health 334)"

This doctrine of Christian Science is quite similar to what Swedenborg said concerning Jesus Christ - in Him, his soul was Divine, in fact, His soul was the Father Himself. With the ressurection, the human body was absorbed into the Divine, but Swedenborg goes further - Jesus rose as to the flesh, in a Divine human body. There was a complete transformation. By resisting all sin and temptation in his human body, Jesus removed the sins of the world - for to fight against sin, one has to fight againt the thoughts that tempt one to sin - and these originate from Hell itself. It is in this manner that Jesus saved the world, for the spirit that now proceeds from his body is available to all, to enlighten, to heal, and bring us into union with the Divine.


"Christian Scientists are trinitarian, but in an unorthodox way. One plank of the platform of Christian Science says:

Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune Person called God, — that is, the triply divine Principle, Love. They represent a trinity in unity, three in Divine one, — the same in essence, though multi-form in office: God the Father-Mother; Christ the spiritual idea of sonship; divine Science or the Holy Comforter. These three express in divine Science the threefold, essential nature of the infinite. They also indicate the divine Principle of scientific being, the intelligent relation of God to man and the universe. (Science and Health 331)

Here, Eddy calls God "Father-Mother," signifying not an androgynous God but a God "without body, parts or passions," as in the Westminster creed, who nevertheless functions both to govern and comfort. She calls the Holy Ghost "divine Science or the Holy Comforter," the spiritual law of God operating as the Holy Ghost in the world."

The above belief is a bit different than what Swedenborg taught: the trinity is in fact the soul, body and spirit that was formed in Jesus Christ. God incarnate was the triune God. Before that, the Trinity per se did not exist: only God and the Logos, that is, only Divine Love and the light that proceeds from that Love: Divine Truth. God, in fact, is a Divine Man, but outside of time and space. As this is impossible for a finite mind to conceive, Jesus Christ came to become the image of the invisible God.

Christian Science holds to the following belief:

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. (p. 468)

At this point, Christian Science comes close to the ancient heresy of Gnosticism, which went as far to declare that all matter is evil. I am not so sure why they emphasize the "unreality" of matter, but it may be related to changing one's thoughts to bring about healing. To Swedenborg, matter is obviously real, but it is a manifestation, or container, of higher spiritual realities. Man in his external form is material, but in his internal form he is spiritual. We put off this external material form only at death. All of matter, and all of nature, is in fact a manifestation of the Divine, although an imperfect lower manifestation. God, in fact, is substance and form itself, because at the center of all things, in its simplist form, is the most complete form, God Himself, in his Divine Light which ever expands to keep order in the material universe.