Christian Science

Matter, sickness, sin, evil, and death are unreal — illusions of 'mortal mind.' Healing comes by understanding this truth, not by medicine.

Their basis
Eddy taught that God (Spirit/Mind) is the only reality, so anything unlike God (matter and its ills) cannot truly exist. She pointed to Jesus' healings (Matt 8-9) and His promise that believers would do His works, and read 'God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good' (Gen 1:31) to mean the material creation described in Genesis 2 is a false, illusory account. Science and Health is offered as the 'Key' that unlocks this reading of Scripture.

Scripture answers
Scripture treats sin, sickness, and death as real evils that God actually confronts — not illusions to be reasoned away. God pronounced the physical creation 'very good' as real, not unreal (Gen 1:31). The Word became flesh — real matter (John 1:14) — and the risen Jesus ate real fish to prove He was not a phantom (Luke 24:39-43). Death is called the 'last enemy,' something real that Christ defeats, not something that never existed (1 Cor 15:26). Sin is real enough to require the cross (1 Pet 2:24), and the sick are told both to pray and to use ordinary means (1 Tim 5:23; Jas 5:14).

Genesis 1:31John 1:14Luke 24:39-431 Corinthians 15:261 Peter 2:24James 5:141 Timothy 5:23

In fairness: They rightly prize prayer, God's power to heal, and the goodness of creation, and they are correct that much suffering has a spiritual dimension and that God still heals. The New Testament does present healing as a real ministry of the church (Jas 5:14-16). The error is not caring about healing — it is denying the reality of the evil being healed, and forbidding the ordinary means (medicine) that Scripture also blesses.

A distinction between 'Jesus' (a man) and 'the Christ' (an eternal divine idea or principle). Jesus was the highest human demonstration of the Christ, but not God incarnate.

Their basis
Eddy defined 'Christ' as 'the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error' — an idea or principle rather than a person. She read titles like 'Son of God' as expressing Jesus' unique understanding of a divine Sonship available in principle to all, and appealed to Jesus' own words 'the Father is greater than I' (John 14:28) to deny that Jesus was Himself God.

Scripture answers
The New Testament makes Jesus and the Christ the same person, and that person fully God. 'Christ' is Jesus' own identity, confessed by Peter and blessed by Jesus (Matt 16:16). In Him 'all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily' — deity in a real body (Col 2:9). John says the Word who WAS God became flesh — not an idea overshadowing a mere man (John 1:1,14). Thomas calls the risen Jesus 'My Lord and my God' and is commended, not corrected (John 20:28); Titus 2:13 names Jesus 'our great God and Saviour.' 'The Father is greater' speaks of the Son's voluntary, self-lowering role in the incarnation, not a lesser nature — Philippians 2:6-7 says He was in the form of God and emptied Himself.

Matthew 16:16John 1:1John 1:14Colossians 2:9John 20:28Philippians 2:6-7Titus 2:13

The atonement is not Jesus paying for sin by His literal blood; the cross demonstrates the power of Love/Spirit over matter and death. Reconciliation ('at-one-ment') comes by understanding divine reality, not by faith in a blood sacrifice.

Their basis
Eddy wrote that '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,' teaching that the atonement is 'at-one-ment' — humanity's oneness with God realized through Christ's example and demonstration, not a legal penalty paid.

Scripture answers
Scripture stakes salvation precisely on the literal blood and finished sacrificial death of Jesus. 'Without shedding of blood there is no remission' (Heb 9:22); we are 'justified by his blood' (Rom 5:9) and 'redeemed... with the precious blood of Christ' (1 Pet 1:18-19). The cross is not merely a demonstration but a substitution — 'he bore our sins in his body on the tree' (1 Pet 2:24; Isa 53:5-6). And salvation is by grace through faith in Him, 'not of works, lest any man should boast' (Eph 2:8-9) — the opposite of a reconciliation attained by one's own understanding.

Hebrews 9:22Romans 5:91 Peter 1:18-191 Peter 2:24Isaiah 53:5-6Ephesians 2:8-9

In fairness: The word 'at-one-ment' captures a genuine and old truth — reconciliation, being made one with God, really is the goal of the cross (2 Cor 5:18-19). Their error is keeping the goal while cutting out the means God appointed to reach it: the real, substitutionary blood of Christ.

Eddy's 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures' is the inspired, final key that unlocks the Bible's true spiritual meaning; it is read side-by-side with the Bible as the church's 'Pastor.'

Their basis
Eddy believed she had discovered the 'Science' of Christ's healing method by divine revelation in 1866, and that her book was needed to reveal the Bible's spiritual (non-literal) sense. In Christian Science services the ordained 'Pastor' is the dual book — the Bible and Science and Health — and lessons are read from both rather than preached.

Scripture answers
Scripture warns against adding a later 'key' that overturns the plain apostolic gospel: 'though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached... let him be accursed' (Gal 1:8-9). The Bible is already able to make us 'wise unto salvation through faith in Christ Jesus' and is itself sufficient (2 Tim 3:15-17). Revelation ends by warning against adding to or taking from the words (Rev 22:18-19), and the noble Bereans tested every teaching directly against Scripture, not against a supplementary key (Acts 17:11). By the standard of Isaiah 8:20 — 'if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them' — a spiritualizing key that makes the Bible deny the real incarnation, blood, and resurrection is teaching another gospel.

Galatians 1:8-92 Timothy 3:15-17Acts 17:11Revelation 22:18-19Isaiah 8:20

In fairness: Christian Scientists genuinely revere the Bible and read from it in every service — more than some nominal churches do. The problem is not neglect of Scripture but subjecting it to an outside interpretive key that reverses its plain meaning.

Jesus' resurrection was not the literal rising of a dead physical body but a demonstration that Life is spiritual and death unreal; the tomb showed the 'nothingness' of matter and death.

Their basis
Because matter and death are held to be illusions, Eddy taught that Jesus did not truly die and rise in the flesh but demonstrated the continuity of spiritual Life, proving the powerlessness of death — His emergence from the tomb showing that mortal, material existence was never the real man.

Scripture answers
The risen Jesus deliberately proved He was physical, not a spirit: 'Handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have' (Luke 24:39). He showed His wounds and ate before them (Luke 24:40-43; John 20:27). Paul makes the bodily resurrection the non-negotiable foundation of the whole faith: 'if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins' (1 Cor 15:14,17). The gospel Paul 'received' and delivered is that Christ died, was buried, rose again the third day, and was seen (1 Cor 15:3-8) — and confessing that God raised Him is the ground of salvation (Rom 10:9). Empty the resurrection of its literal body and, Scripture says, the whole faith collapses.

Luke 24:39-43John 20:271 Corinthians 15:3-81 Corinthians 15:141 Corinthians 15:17Romans 10:9

In fairness: They rightly refuse to make death the final word and insist that life is ultimately spiritual and eternal — a true instinct the resurrection itself vindicates. But Scripture secures that hope in the opposite way: not by dissolving the body into illusion, but by God raising the real, crucified body of Jesus and promising the same bodily life to His people (1 Cor 15:20-23).