Vol. 10, No. 8, 1993

Articles on Cults and New Religions

by Rick Branch

Anytime an attempt is made to witness to someone in a cult, the first hurdle that must be overcome is the terminology barrier. This is the problem experienced when a Christian uses a term such as Jesus Christ, and the cultist uses the same term. Yet these two terms, while they will sound the same to the ear, will have radically different meanings for the two speakers.

The cults use Christian terminology, but they impose their own unique definitions on those terms. Such is the case with Christian Science, a forerunner to many of today's New Age groups.

It is imperative at the outset to understand the Christian Science dualistic nature as it relates to Jesus Christ. It is actually quite simple, anything that is material is unreal and only the spiritual has reality. This helps explain the Christian Science theological understanding of who Jesus is and what Christ is.

Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, explained this duality in the following way: "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, of 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 With Key to the Scripture, p. 334).

Not only does Christian Science separate the man Jesus from the spiritual idea of Christ, they also deny the biblical truth that Jesus was and is co-equal with God the Father.

During her message to The Mother Church, Eddy rejected the fact that Jesus and the Father were one in nature and eternally God as the Bible and historical Christianity very clearly teach. She explained, "The Christian who believes in the First Commandment is a monotheist: thus he virtually unites with the Jew's belief in one God, and that Jesus Christ is not God, as he himself declared, but the Son of God" (Message for 1902, p. 12).

Contrary to Eddy's mistaken ideas, Jesus did claim to be God. (See related articles elsewhere in this issue).

This dualistic concept has caused Christian Science to completely corrupt the atoning work of Jesus on Calvary's cross. "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 Father's business. Jesus presented the ideal of God better than could any man whose origin was less spiritual. The divinity of Christ was made manifest in the humanity of Jesus" (Science and Health, p. 25).

If, as Eddy says above, Jesus' blood did not bring freedom from sin, what then is salvation and what was Jesus' purpose for coming to mankind?

In her 1887 book, Unity of Good, she proclaims, "Salvation is as eternal as God. To mortal thought Jesus appeared as a child, grew to manhood, to suffer before Pilate and on Calvary, because he could reach and teach mankind only through this conformity to mortal conditions; but Soul never saw the Saviour come and go, because the divine idea is always present.

"Jesus came to rescue men from these very illusions to which he seemed to conform: from the illusion which calls sin real, and man a sinner, needing a Saviour; the illusion which calls sickness real, and man as invalid, needing a physician; the illusion that death is as real as Life. From such thoughts mortal inventions, one and all Christ Jesus came to save men, through ever-present and eternal good" (pp. 59-60).

If Jesus came not to forgive sin, but to teach its unreality and to expose death as an illusion, then how is Jesus death on the cross explained? In her magnum opus, Eddy dispelled the myth of Jesus death. "His disciples believed Jesus to be dead while he was hidden in the sepulchre, whereas he was alive, demonstrating within the narrow tomb the power of Spirit to overrule mortal, material sense" (Science and Health, p. 44). Thus, rather than dying on the cross for the forgiveness of sins as the Bible teaches, Jesus was, according to Eddy, actually alive and simply hiding in the tomb.

According the Christian Science, Jesus was not the Christ and His death was an illusion for sins which do not exist. Is this the Jesus of the Bible?