The Atonement Of Christian Science
Chapter two of "Science And Health" is titled "Atonement And Eucharist" and deals with Mrs. Eddy's confused conception of these subjects. The chapter is a long one, and contains more error than we can possibly isolate for examination in a single article. I have therefore selected just a few of the statements, not at all out of context, which will serve to expose the falsehood of the Christian Science system.
Mrs. Eddy does not accept the idea that the death of Christ had anything to do with the reconciliation of man to God, for the very good reason that she teaches He did not die. The whole business was spiritual from her point of view:
"Jesus bore our infirmities; he knew the error of mortal belief, and 'with his stripes (the rejection of error) we are healed'."
That is to say that the stripes of Jesus amounted to nothing more than His rejecting the erroneous belief that man is mortal. No real blows were inflicted upon Him — He just rejected error! In fact the idea of the suffering of Christ is itself an error:
"The atonement is a hard problem in theology, but its scientific explanation is, that suffering is an error of sinful sense which Truth destroys."
Thus, when Jesus discovered that He was not really suffering, this discovery constituted the stripes by which we are healed. Are we to believe that His discovery of truth was so painful (but of course pain is not real) that it must be called an infliction of stripes? So it seems. The only trouble with this is, that later on Mrs. Eddy informs us that man himself must suffer, thus perpetuating the error that suffering is real. In fact this suffering may continue after death, we are told:
"Divine Science reveals the necessity of sufficient suffering, either before or after death, to quench the love of sin."
This casual statement comes as somewhat of a shock, for we have previously been told that suffering is an error, but now we find that we must have sufficient error to make us quit loving sin. And if necessary we must suffer even after death. But I am not too worried about this latter part, since there is no death anyway according to Christian Science doctrine.
The point wherein Christian Science most clearly contradicts the teaching of the Bible concerning the atonement, is their insistence that we are not saved through the merit of Christ:
"Christians do not continue to labor and pray, expecting because of another's goodness, suffering, and triumph, that they shall reach his harmony and reward."
"One sacrifice, however great, is insufficient to pay the debt of sin."
We must quit singing "The debt of our sin, on the cross was all paid, through His suffering on Calvary." We must quit preaching that text which says, "For Christ hath also once suffered for sins the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." (I Pet. 3:18) No longer can we believe that "by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." (Rom. 5:19) Mrs. Eddy joins the infidel in flatly denying the vicarious atonement of Christ. In fact she denies even His death and resurrection, referring to these as His "disappearance and reappearance," and informing us that He merely hid away, alive, in the tomb while He mentally patched up His wounds, which He never received in the first place! Of course it does not matter that the Bible says that His body, while in the grave, was dead, and had to be quickened or made alive. (1 Pet. 3:18; Rom. 8:11)
Inasmuch as the suffering of Christ was spiritual, naturally the bread which we eat in memory of His crucified flesh is spiritual also:
"The disciples had eaten, yet Jesus prayed and gave them bread. This would have been foolish in a literal sense; but in its spiritual signification, it was natural and beautiful?'
"This (Passover) supper closed forever Jesus' ritualism or concessions to matter."
"Their bread came down from heaven. It was the great truth of spiritual being, healing the sick and casting out error. Their Master had explained it all before, and now this bread was feeding and sustaining them. They had borne this bread from house to house, breaking (explaining) it to others, and now it comforted them."
If this makes any sense at all (of course sense does not exist) it must mean that the only way the followers of Christ can break bread is to explain to others the truths of Christian Science. Their text-book states explicitly that no memorial feast is necessary:
"If Christ, Truth, has come to us in demonstration, no other commemoration is requisite, for demonstration is Immanuel, or God with us; and if a friend be with us, why need we memorials of that friend?"
Since everything must be spiritualized away, Christian Science must find an explanation for the ascension of Christ, which proves to be not too difficult:
"His body was not changed until he ascended, or, in other words, rose even higher in the understanding of Spirit, God."
We must take Mrs, Eddy's word for it that Jesus was not high enough in understanding to get rid of the physical body until after His resurrection — all that He could do was patch it up when it was wounded. But He finally rose to the plane where He could change the physical to the spiritual, which plane Mrs. Eddy's followers hope to reach, that they may ascend like Jesus and Mrs. Eddy before them.
The chapter we are reviewing closes with a statement off the subject:
"In the words of St. John: 'He shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever.' This Comforter I understand to be Divine Science."
To believe this, we must ignore the fact that the Comforter is called by the pronoun "He." Also we are not supposed to notice that if the Comforter was to be sent after Jesus left, and if the Comforter is Christian Science, then there was no Christian Science while Jesus was here, and the Master Himself did not practice Christian Science.
— Culver City, California