Eschatological Vacillation in Mary Baker Eddy’s

Presentation of Christian Science

John K. Simmons

Abstract: This article clarifies a number of terms used in end-time theology with a view to illuminating the theology of Christian Science. “Eschaton continuum” refers to a range of eschatological expectations in which a prophetic religious leader vacillates between the polar extremes of apocalyptic eschatology and ethical eschatology; and between catastrophic apocalypticism and progressive apocalylpticism. The author tracks the eschatological vacillation in Mary Baker Eddy’s conceptualization of Christian Science in the hope of introducing a typology useful in analyzing other emergent religious movements.

When contemplating the life and teaching of Mary Baker Eddy, historians of new religious movements—not to mention more than a few former Christian Scientists—remain perpetually perplexed.[i] Confusion, often the better part of controversy, has engendered a voluminous production of biographical, historical, and theological materials on Eddy and her religious movement as followers or critics struggle to understand the worldview of this complex late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century religious leader. Almost as soon as the Christian Science movement took institutional form and gathered speed as a legitimate, if controversial, alternative religion in America, biographers cast Eddy in the role of mediocre metaphysician or Christ-like prophet.2 It seems when it comes to Christian Science and this religion’s beloved or embattled founder, there is no neutral territory to be found.

For the most part, these analytical works have focused on Eddy’s tormented life, her convoluted metaphysics, or her struggle to create an enduring religious institution in a decidedly patriarchal world. Little has been written, however, about her sense of the eschaton or the process by which authentic spiritual transformation might be attained through the “practical application” of Christian Science in a person’s life. Omitting end-time ruminations from an analysis of charismatic prophets may actually be the source of the aforementioned confusion. To some degree, all leaders of new religious movements vacillate on a continuum between apocalyptic eschatology and ethical eschatology. Knowing where a leader such as Mary Baker Eddy is on that continuum in both life circumstances and the all-important expression of her worldview may make the difference in how one understands and, for believers, successfully adapts her spiritual vision to meet existential needs.

This article, then, attempts to track eschatological vacillation in Eddy’s initial presentation of Christian Science with hopes of creating and applying a typology useful in analyzing other new religious movements. The body of the essay will address each component of the typology in more detail as it is applied to Eddy’s spiritual revelation. However, for the sake of clarity, terms and their immediate application within Christian Science follow.

TERMINOLOGY

I am using “eschaton continuum” to refer to a continuum of eschatological expectations on which a prophetic religious leader vacillates between the polar extremes of “apocalyptic eschatology” and “ethical eschatology” in the outward dynamic or type; and “catastrophic apocalypticism” and “progressive apocalypticism” in the inward dynamic or type.

“Eschatological vacillation” refers to a process in which, due to their own inner struggle towards spiritual transformation, leaders of new religious movements will vacillate on a continuum between apocalyptic eschatology and ethical eschatology. The stated vision of the end-time may confuse the goal of attained transformation with the process and accompanying struggle to attain that goal. Means are often expressed as ends, and vice versa, in the presentation of the worldview. For Eddy, apocalyptic eschatology focuses on the annihilation of the material world, expressed variously as error, moral mind, or malicious animal magnetism; ethical eschatology is “knowing” the “allness” and perfection of spiritual reality

Institutional/Outward Vacillation

“Apocalyptic eschatology” is an outward dynamic or type of eschatological vacillation on the eschaton continuum, which is expressed institutionally in the world. It is an unveiling of the process leading to an ethical eschaton, though in Eddy’s writing, apocalyptism often seems like an end in itself. In Christian Science teaching, apocalyptic eschatology represents the struggle to overcome the illusion of existence in matter. Consistent with historical apocalyptism, Eddy’s apocalyptic eschatology is dualistic, totalistic, combative, paranoid, and collective. Here we see Eddy’s outward struggle to claim institutional territory and biblical, theological, and personal authority. Because the apocalyptic expression of her religion is necessarily dualistic yet her ethical eschaton is unitive, this dynamic generates most of the controversy and confusion surrounding Christian Science and its founder.

“Ethical eschatology” is a second outward type or dynamic of eschatological vacillation on the eschaton continuum. It is attained transformation. In Christian Science teaching, ethical eschatology represents the attainment of an aesthetically-perfect life in spiritual reality, the goal of Christian Science practice, being a “perfect reflection” of God; unitive, totalistic, peaceful, safe, and collective. Best expressed in Eddy’s hymns, it is the spiritual vision that empowered and sustained her during the apocalyptic struggle to conceptualize her vision, and then institutionalize it in Christian Science. For believers (meaning followers who manage to replicate her spiritual experience), attaining the “allness of spirit” in consciousness is the reward for undergoing their own apocalyptic struggle.

Personal/Inward Vacillation

“Catastrophic Apocalypticism” is an inward dynamic or type of eschatological vacillation on the eschaton continuum. It is the actual inner struggle endured by the religious prophet as she/he goes through a unique process of spiritual transformation, and refers to personal, psychological and emotional conflicts. Spiritual transformation necessitates the “end” of the old self, a process, like any death, that includes pain, paranoia, fear, doubt, insecurity, anger, frustration, and a host of other disturbing emotional/psychological moods or states of consciousness. In terms of eschatological vacillation, catastrophic apocalypticism is the inner motivating dynamic for outward institutional or theological presentations that range closer to apocalyptic eschatology on the continuum.

“Progressive Apocalypticism” is the second inward dynamic type of eschatological vacillation on the eschaton continuum. It is the exalted unveiling of spiritual certainty within the transformative process during which the prophet is able to clarify her spiritual vision in an empowered, accurate, moving, and authentic manner; process meets goal; means meet ends; the ethical eschaton is “realized” by the prophet, and in those moments of spiritual perception, fully-expressed. In terms of eschatological vacillation, progressive apocalypticism is the inner motivating dynamic for outward institutional or theological presentations that range closer to the ethical eschaton on the continuum.

Eschaton Continuum Typology

	Process/means		Goal/ends

Outward:	Apocalyptic eschatology	ß -- à	Ethical eschatology
Inward:	Catastrophic apocalypticism	ß -- à	Progressive apocalyptism

Believers may claim eternal truth for their teachings and build impenetrable fortresses to house mercurial sacred space, but religion is as much about transformation as it is about the quest for security and control in life. Is it possible that conflicting portraits of Mary Baker Eddy as a person and contradictory interpretations of her spiritual vision result from the fact that her life and her teaching embody and manifest both an apocalyptic eschatology and an ethical eschatology? Furthermore, what may have been natural for the charismatic, prophetic Eddy, may actually have confused and continues to confound followers who, rather than embodying both eschatological forms, tend to reach out for the promised ethical eschaton of Christian Science while ignoring the apocalyptic eschaton that precedes any authentic spiritual transformation. If a worldview change (meaning the emergence of a new religious movement) implies an “eschaton,” can we explore an interconnection between apocalyptic eschatology—a violent end of the old preceding the revelation of the new—and ethical eschatology—the transformation of the old into new and more efficacious ways of perceiving, even creating reality?

Eschatology, Apocalypticism, and Ethics

Eschatology, apocalypticism, and ethics, of course, are three words worthy of their own library. In order to avoid confusion, these terms need to be put in a context that relates to Mary Baker Eddy’s thinking as well as the basic teachings of Christian Science. As Norman Cohn notes, eschatology refers to divinely revealed teachings about the final events of history.3 Rather than an end to history, it would be more appropriate, from the perspective of Christian Science, to speak of the end of all limitations produced by mortal mind, including a false and constricting sense of time.4 The sense of imminence, associated with an eschatological perspective, results from a Christian Scientist’s knowing or expressing the truth of spiritual reality in the here and now. An author in the Christian Science Sentinel, a journal of short articles read weekly by Christian Scientists, captures this end-of-time perspective in article entitled “Completeness Within”:

Man is complete now. He needs nothing. He has all. There is nothing more to be added. There is never a moment when it could be correctly said, “Ye are incomplete.…” It is possible to find our completeness here and now because completeness is within.5

For the practicing Christian Scientist, the eschaton is imminent in that it is only a thought away. Metaphysical truth ends mortal error, to put it in the words of Mary Baker Eddy.

Apocalypticism is a form of eschatology that, unfortunately, has acquired a rather confusing connotation. In an article discussing various forms of millennialism, Catherine Wessinger points out that “apocalypticism” has become so synonymous with universal “cataclysm” that the original sense of an “unveiling” has been lost.6 Eddy clearly envisioned the destruction of mortal mind in apocalyptic terms but distinctly as an unveiling of spiritual truth. In fact, she frames her spiritual revelation in apocalyptic terms in a Science and Health chapter entitled, “The Apocalypse.” Musing on the meaning of the great red dragon described in Revelation 12:3, Eddy writes,

The Revelator lifts the veil from this embodiment of all evil, and beholds its awful character; but he also sees the nothingness of evil and the allness of God.… That false claim—that ancient belief, that old serpent whose name is devil (evil), claiming that there is intelligence in matter either to benefit or to injure men—is pure delusion, the red dragon; and it is cast out by Christ, Truth, the spiritual idea, and so proved to be powerless.7

The illusion of a reality encompassed in matter or locked into the spatial and temporal limitations of a material world is destroyed, and if we conceive of violence as denoting an abrupt end, then, metaphysically speaking, Eddy’s apocalypse is cataclysmic. However, it might be more useful to apply Wessinger’s descriptive categories of millennialism—catastrophic and progressive—to apocalypticism.8 Might we not also differentiate between a catastrophic apocalypticism that indeed does include a pessimistic, violent end to the world as we know it and a progressive apocalypticism that “unveils” a startling new reality that, nonetheless, also contains a clear eschatological vision? This typological subtlety may be helpful in that catastrophic apocalypticism becomes the process by which the actual apocalyptic eschaton is achieved. In other words, catastrophic visions of death, warfare and destruction, cosmic monsters, demons or evil portents in the sky, as bad as they all may be, provide evidence of the coming violent end of an evil world. In the same manner, progressive apocalypticism reveals the steps and stages in spiritual transformation—whether it is conceived as changes in belief or behavior—leading to an ethical eschaton. As noted in the opening typology, the apocalyptic and ethical eschatons are outward, institutional, and collective while catastrophic and progressive apocalypticism are inward, personal, emotional, psychological and lead to the outward expression of the religion, in this case, Christian Science. Using these two “sub-types” may help scholars track the progression of a new religious movement through the usually tempestuous first and second generations.

For instance, in Christian Science, eschatological vacillation—which often makes its metaphysics seem contradictory—is evident in Eddy’s obsession with Malicious Animal Magnetism (MAM) as an almost demonic, evil force in contrast to her oft-expressed understanding of God as All in All, perfect, loving, harmonious, and the source of all goodness in the universe. It would seem that Eddy’s monumental struggle to create an enduring religious institution in a decidedly hostile world brought out a more cataclysmic variety of apocalypticism. However, the unveiling of the metaphysical truth she so wished to institutionalize soothed the day-to-day torment of being a prophetic leader. In that mode of thought, her vision is progressive, if still apocalyptic in nature. The extent to which a charismatic leader like Eddy frames her spiritual insight as catastrophic or progressive may well determine the ultimate success of the movement, a topic raised in the concluding remarks.

In her more progressive apocalyptic mode, Eddy did contemplate and describe for her followers the reality of an all-good, all-perfect universe. This leads us to a discussion of ethics and ethical eschatology. In order to accurately place the ethical dimension of religion in a Christian Science paradigm, the operative word is aesthetics. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein observed, “Ethics and Aesthetics are one and the same.”9 Another way of putting this existential truth is to say that the perfect world—beautiful and good—is found in the harmonious reciprocity between identity and behavior. One’s self-understanding is mirrored in experience. Identity, in Christian Science, is grounded in God’s eternal perfection, thus, human beings who reflect the Divine Mind—one of Eddy’s seven synonyms for God—embrace ethical patterns of action that exemplify this perfection.10

In his exploration of ethics and aesthetics, David Chidester offers an eminently usable explanation of the ethical dynamic in Christian Science:

Religious ethics is essentially a creative enterprise striving for harmony between images and actions. It begins with images of who we are and who we could be. These images, symbols, and metaphors are given within religious traditions. Systems of religious ethics create the conditions within which there might be an aesthetic fittingness between a person’s sense of identity—the self-image that is shaped through religious symbols, myths, and rituals—and behavior that visibly manifests that self through action. People try to act in ways that fit their self-image. Religious ethics is a living drama: It provides a stage upon which human beings create a dynamic sense of self through the medium of action.11

Chidester’s use of the word “image” captures the ethical eschaton in Eddy’s metaphysical world. Mortal, material perception is rather like looking in a broken mirror: images are inevitably distorted. Eddy’s revelation, however, presents a granite-strong stand on this issue: the mirror is not nor has it ever been broken. Ethical perfection is obtained when a human being fully understands her or his identity as a perfect reflection of an eternally perfect Divine Creator. Jesus, as the Christ, recognized his divine identity, and, thus, becomes the exemplar for a “Science” that defines proper ethical patterns of action that lead to an aesthetic paradise. Having placed these three key terms in a Christian Science context, we can now explore apocalyptic and ethical eschatology in Eddy’s spiritual vision.

APOCALYPTIC ESCHATOLOGY IN MARY BAKER EDDY’S

LIFE AND TEACHING

The story of Mary Morse Baker-Glover-Patterson-Eddy’s life and her extraordinary accomplishment in launching the Christian Science movement is well documented.12 Though it is not necessary to retell the fascinating story of her rise to metaphysical stardom in its entirety, a few key milestones in her life should be noted. Born on a farm in Bow Township, near Concord, New Hampshire, this imaginative and attractive but emotionally tormented child would grow into an adulthood that was a study in misery. Sickness, bad and broken marriages, and emotional disturbances turned her life into an unceasing quest for mental and physical health.

An advanced degree in clinical psychology is not needed to detect the familial roots of catastrophic and progressive apocalypticism in Eddy’s childhood encounter with religion. She provides ample evidence in her autobiographical work, Retrospection and Introspection, while describing her admittance into communion at her parents’ Congregational church. The Calvinist doctrine of Predestination overwhelms the twelve-year-old Eddy, and she succumbs to one of her frequent “fevers,” during which, she reflects on her parents’ spiritual influence:

My father’s relentless theology emphasized belief in a final judgement-day, in the danger of endless punishment, and in a Jehovah merciless towards unbelievers; and of those things he now spoke, hoping to win me from dreaded heresy.… My mother, as she bathed my burning temples, bade me lean on God’s love, which would give me rest, if I went to Him in prayer, as I was wont to do, seeking His guidance. I prayed; and a soft glow of ineffable joy came over me. The fever was gone, and I rose and dressed myself, in a normal condition of health. Mother saw this, and was glad.13

In observing Eddy’s conceptualization and institutionalization of Christian Science, it would appear that she never “overcame” the influence of her parents. Rather she internalized their disparate perspectives on the nature of divinity as poles on an inner-eschaton continuum between catastrophic and progressive apocalypticism.

In 1866, following what she believed was her own miraculous healing after a fall on ice, she became convinced that her purpose in life was to reveal the truth of Christian Science. For nine years (1866-75), she lived in poverty while thinking, writing, and percolating her eschatological vision. 1875 was a pivotal year in the emergence of Christian Science because not only did Eddy then establish the first “Christian Science Home” in Lynn, Massachusetts, but she published the first edition of her textbook, Science and Health.

For Eddy, the years 1875 to the turn of the century were spent building what would become a centrally controlled religious organization without rival in the rigidity of its restraints upon branch churches and members. And it is in Eddy’s outward flow of creative energy—the building of the religious institution known as Christian Science—that her embrace of an apocalyptic eschatology is most evident. Christian Science teaches a unitive worldview. In fact, the “Scientific Statement of Being,” recited at the end of every Sunday service, captures the oneness of Divine reality:

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.14

Yet there was something “out there,” as pernicious as any old cloven-hoofed, horned devil, tormenting Eddy’s world. Eddy described this “no-thing” as Malicious Animal Magnetism, a concept she acquired during her metaphysical study with a popular New England mesmerist and healer, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (1802-66). For the practicing Christian Scientist, MAM (as Eddy referred to this non-dualistic, dualism in her worldview), may be the most confusing concept in her religion. It appears to be a very real evil force, which can affect just about anything on earth for ill. Yet Eddy describes MAM as powerless:

Animal magnetism has no scientific foundation, for God governs all that is real, harmonious, and eternal, and His power is neither animal nor human. Its basis being a belief and this belief animal, in Science animal magnetism, mesmerism, or hypnotism is a mere negation, possessing neither intelligence, power, nor reality, and in that sense it is an unreal concept of the so-called mortal mind.15

Malicious Animal Magnetism may be better understood as catastrophic apocalypticism within Eddy’s own journey from matter to spirit. Drawn, no doubt, from her strict Calvinist upbringing, Eddy retained an intense, often suffocating, awareness of evil; not as a reality in God’s perfect creation, but as a definite and dangerous presence in mortal mind, the perceptual error which was the collective consciousness of all human beings who had not yet attained her realization of humanity as the perfect, ever-unfolding reflection of Divine Mind. Though she had defended Quimby against the charge that he practiced mesmerism soon after their first meeting in 1862, by the time of the first publication of Science and Health, she had come to associate mesmerism, or animal magnetism as she synonymously used the term, with any conscious projection of one human mentality upon another. Though MAM had no ontological presence in the ethical eschaton, in Eddy’s apocalyptic world, it clattered about like a bus from Hell, driven by the anti-Christ, and hauling all the demons mentioned in Revelation.16

In reflecting on Jesus’ own spiritual journey, it is clear that Eddy understood that apocalyptic pain precedes ethical paradise. In a discussion of biblical atonement, she writes:

Jesus rose higher in demonstration because of the cup of bitterness he drank. Human law had condemned him, but he was demonstrating divine Science. Out of reach of the barbarity of his enemies, he was acting under spiritual law in defiance of matter and mortality, and that spiritual law sustained him. The divine must overcome the human at every point. The Science Jesus taught and lived must triumph over all material beliefs about life, substance, and intelligence, and the multitudinous errors growing from such beliefs. 17

Her interpretation of the life and teaching of Jesus reveals the dualism inherent in any apocalyptic view. The old world, old age is characterized by a mistaken perception that delineates a mortal, material world; the new age, initiated by Jesus, reveals the allness of spirit. As in classic apocalypticism, there are only two kinds of human beings just as there are only two epochs of world history and two levels of existence, material and spiritual. The “conflict” in Eddy’s thinking is really not so confounding when one considers the way she used MAM to express what must have been an intense and often frightening transformation from an apocalyptic dualism to ethical unity.

ETHICAL ESCHATOLOGY IN MARY BAKER EDDY’S LIFE AND TEACHING

Eddy’s apocalypticism is progressive in that she envisioned a process—not unlike the apostle Paul’s call for the development of a celestial body—by which human beings would become more spiritual and finally attain “at-one-ment” with God, in Christian Science, the perfect, eternal reflection of a perfect Divine Being. Further ruminations by Eddy on the doctrine of atonement illustrate how the spiritual “blood of Christ” does indeed “purchase” humanity’s place in an ethical paradise:

The real atonement—so infinitely beyond the heathen conception that God requires human blood to propitiate His justice and bring His mercy—needs to be understood. The real blood or Life of Spirit is not yet discerned. Love bruised and bleeding, yet mounting to the throne of glory in purity and peace, over the steps of uplifted humanity, this is the deep significance of the blood of Christ. Nameless woe, everlasting victories, are the blood, the vital currents of Christ Jesus’ life, purchasing the freedom of mortals from sin and death.18

“Purchasing the freedom of mortals from sin and death” requires progressive apocalypticism, and it is primarily in Eddy’s hymns that a progressive path towards the ethical eschaton is “unveiled.” Put simply, MAM is to catastrophic apocalypticism as hymn writing is to progressive apocalypticism within the spiritual world of Mary Baker Eddy. The fact that this often-tormented religious leader found a spiritual oasis in the act of writing the lyrics to her most famous hymns is not surprising. In the quiet of her room, centered on the Divine Mind for guidance, and, more importantly, apart from friend and foe whom she perceived as enemies towards her mission, the demons of catastrophic apocalypticism were temporarily put to rest. Is it any wonder that practicing Christian Scientists rely on her hymns in times of physical or mental challenge? Even a perfunctory exegesis of her most popular hymns reveals that Eddy was at times motivated to provide her followers (and herself) with a variety of progressive apocalypticism leading towards a metaphysical ethical eschaton.

Eddy’s hymns are thematically framed as spiritual journeys, often fraught with danger and fear, from material error to spiritual truth. The journey itself can be conceived as a progressive one, revealing in sometimes-catastrophic apocalyptic terms, the sting of existential alienation in material consciousness and the hope and peace present in the allness of spiritual reality. “Mother’s Evening Prayer,” arguably her most popular hymn, provides the model for progressive apocalypticism:

O gentle presence, peace and joy and power;

O life divine, that owns each waiting hour.

Thou Love that guards the nestling’s faltering flight,

Keep Thou my child on upward wing tonight.

Love is our refuge; only with mine eye

Can I behold the snare, the pit, the fall:

His habitation high is here, and nigh,

His arm encircles me, and mine, and all.

O make me glad for every scalding tear,

For hope deferred, ingratitude, disdain!

Wait, and love more for every hate, and fear.

No ill, - since God is good, and loss is gain.

Beneath the shadow of His mighty wing;

In that sweet secret of the narrow way,

Seeking and finding, with the angels sing:

“Lo, I am with you always,”—watch and pray.

No snare, no fowler, pestilence or pain;

No night drops down upon the troubled breast,

When heaven’s aftersmile earth’s tear-drops gain,

And mother finds her home and heav’nly rest.19

Read autobiographically, this hymn brims with poignancy. No doubt Eddy experienced the terror of a fledgling bird in a storm, the tempestuous times during which her life reflected a more catastrophic apocalyptic journey. Yet she calls upon herself and her followers to bear up under the trials and tribulations of spiritual transformation, uplifted by the promise of an ethical eschaton: a safe haven, a nest, a place of “heav’nly rest.” As the journey “progresses”, it may include catastrophic experiences. However, no negative event, be it illness, death, or other “mortal illusion,” can ultimately prevent “His mighty wing” from carrying the persistent traveler towards spiritual reality.

Similar progressive patterns are captured in apocalyptic verses in other popular hymns. Notice the continuation of the “bird-in-flight” metaphor or other parables drawn from experiences in and observations of nature.

From “Love”, first verse:

Brood o’er us with Thy shel-t’ring wing,

’Neath which our spirits blend.

Like brother birds, that soar and sing,

And on the same branch bend.

The arrow that doth wound the dove,

Darts not from those who watch and love.20

From “Communion Hymn,” third verse:

Sinner, it calls you,

“Come to this fountain,

Cleanse the foul senses within;

’Tis the Spirit that makes pure,

That exalts thee, and will cure,

All thy sorrow and sickness and sin.”21

From “Feed My Sheep,” first and third verses:

Shepherd, show me how to go,

O’er the hillside steep,

How to gather, how to sow,

How to feed my sheep;

I will listen for Thy voice,

Lest my footsteps stray;

I will follow and rejoice,

All the rugged way.

So, when day grows dark and cold,

Tear or triumph harms,

Lead Thy lambkins to the fold,

Take them in Thine arms;

Feed the hungry, heal the heart,

Till the morning’s beam;

White as wool, ere they depart,

Shepherd, wash them clean.22

From “Satisfied,” third and fourth verses:

Aye, darkling sense, arise, go hence! Our God is good.

False fears are foes,— truth tatters those, when understood.

Love looseth thee, and lifteth me,

Ayont hate’s thrall.

There life is light, and wisdom might,

And God is All.23

If the creative activity of hymn writing drew from Eddy her most emotionally-balanced and, consequently, most spiritually-prescient presentation of Christian Science, it is in her hymns that progressive apocalypticism is most evident. Yet her struggle to achieve a balance between catastrophic apocalypticism and progressive apocalypticism is present throughout her other literary works. For example, Eddy opens Science and Health, her foundational textbook, with the following passage, “To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings.”24 Assurance is a metaphysical stream that runs through more than a century of popular religion in America. The “power of positive-thinking” undergirds faith that increases the blessings from God. For Eddy, her ethical eschaton, the aesthetically-perfect world, manifests as infinite blessings from a God who guards, guides, and governs human beings. The day, indeed, is “big with blessings” for Christian Science followers who, through spiritual evolution, come to understand their very being as the unchanging reflection of a beneficent Creator. Eddy captures this sentiment in her communion address to The Mother Church in 1896:

For “who is so great a God as our God!” unchangeable, all-wise, all-just, all merciful; the ever-loving, ever-living Life, Truth, Love: comforting such as mourn, opening the prison doors to the captive, marking the unwinged bird, pitying with more than a father’s pity; healing the sick, cleansing the leper, raising the dead, saving sinners.25

Elements of progressive apocalypticism are evident in yet another passage from Science and Health in which she declares that normal, sensory perception can not grasp “man” in “his” true spiritual form. She writes:

The true idea of man, as the reflection of the invisible God, is as incomprehensible to the limited senses as is man’s infinite Principle. The visible universe and material man are the poor counterfeits of the invisible universe and spiritual man. Eternal things (verities) are God’s thoughts as they exist in the spiritual realm of the real. Temporal things are the thoughts of mortals and are the unreal, being the opposite of the real or the spiritual and eternal.26

For practicing Christian Scientists, here is the inescapable reality check. To enter the ethical paradise called forth by Eddy, a follower must, at the very least, greet the world as if it already expresses God’s perfection. There is no back door, no short cut, no “lazy man’s guide to enlightenment.” Only through the apocalyptic disintegration of the ego can spiritual perfection be mastered. God is the source of human consciousness, and the tendency to perceive oneself as being apart from that source creates the ethical nightmare Eddy ultimately dismisses as error. Notice the aesthetic tone, not only in the previous passages from Science and Health but in the following recognition of the allness of God:

To grasp the reality and order of being in its Science, you must begin by reckoning God as the divine Principle of all that really is. Spirit, Life, Truth, Love, combine as one, and are the Scriptural names for God. All substance, intelligence, wisdom, being, immortality, cause, and effect belong to God. These are His attributes, the eternal manifestations of the infinite divine Principle, Love. No wisdom is wise but His wisdom; no truth is true, no love is lovely, no life is Life but the divine; no good is, but the good God bestows.27

The quest for ethical paradise begins and ends with Eddy’s ethical eschaton. When error is destroyed through apocalyptic transformation, nothing exists but God’s perfection, which is made manifest in His/Her creation, including humankind.

Considering, then, what we have explored in terms of the quest for ethical perfection; where does Mary Baker Eddy stand? Is she guilty of “metaphysical malpractice” as biographers such as Georgine Milmine or Caroline Fraser would have us believe? Or have some of her followers then and now been ill-prepared spiritually to follow the pattern for Christian Science treatment set forth in a key passage in Science and Health? “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Savior saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick.”28

In the early years of the twentieth century, when the greatest expansion of her movement occurred, Eddy actually seems to have expressed some concern that her metaphysical vision—our ethical eschaton—might be misused, to the detriment of Christian Science. She wrote that “the growth of the cause of Christian Science seems too rapid to be healthful,”29 and set policy that there be no proselytizing or raiding of other denominations for new converts.

In her chapter entitled “Christian Science Practice,” Eddy makes it quite clear that the apocalyptic journey from ego-consciousness to spiritual awareness, from a dualistic point of view to a unitive vision of reality, is a progressive one. First, a potential healer must be spiritually pure; second, she or he must realize that reaching the ethical eschaton requires realizing the aesthetically-perfect world as God’s reflection. She admonishes the would-be Christian Science healer:

In order to cure his patient, the metaphysician must first cast moral evils out of himself and thus attain the spiritual freedom which will enable him to cast physical evils out of his patient; but heal he cannot, while his own spiritual barrenness debars him from giving his patient’s thought, yea, while mental penury chills his faith and understanding.… No possible thing do I ask when urging the claims of Christian Science; but because this teaching is in advance of the age, we should not deny our need of its spiritual unfoldment. Mankind will improve through Science and Christianity.30

Though Christian Science has become associated with the healing of physical illness, practicing Christian Scientists, from Eddy to today’s adherents, are quick to claim that healing is only one inevitable harmonious manifestation of growing spiritual awareness. In 1990, during a time of intense attack on the movement due to the much publicized death of children under Christian Science care, the Church felt compelled to bring out a powerful piece of apologetic literature, Christian Science: A Sourcebook of Contemporary Materials. The fundamental message of this book is that Christian Science is about realizing God’s allness and perfection and, in doing so, tearing away the ontological trappings of human limitation be it expressed in dis-eases of the mind, soul, or body. In defense of the healing arts of the Christian Science practitioner, one contributor admits that it is impossible for the practitioner to divide healing of the physical illness from dealing with emotional problems such as family dysfunction, questions of employment, schooling, professional advancement, environmental adjustment, theological confusion, existential anxiety, and so forth. “The important thing is that the word healing be understood to apply to the whole spectrum of human sins, fears, griefs, wants, and ills…” 31

In fact, bodily conditions are not the cause of illness in Christian Science. They are the effect of a deeper alienation from God. The goal, then, is not to change the evidence of a material situation, but to heal the ontological gap between God and His expression, a chasm that, ultimately, does not exist. For the Christian Scientist who, with steely resolve, decides to walk this path, then even death does not change the rules of the game. Thus, Christian Scientists who are not quickly healed through their own or a practitioner’s work may well stay the course and “shuffle off this mortal coil” without calling in the assistance of a medical doctor.

CONCLUDING REMARKS

If apocalyptic eschatology and ethical eschatology are both evident in Christian Science, can the same be said of other alternative religions? Once recognized as integral, if sometimes conflicting, dynamics in most emerging religions, to what extent is the success of an alternative religion based on finding a productive balance between expressions of apocalyptic eschatology and ethical eschatology? Concurrently, if catastrophic apocalypticism, as process towards the “end-of-the-old-way,” precedes progressive apocalypticism in the overall presentation of the emerging religion, what inner mechanism inspires a charismatic leader to turn off the catastrophe switch and turn on the progressive visions of paradise?

In the case of Christian Science, one might argue that Eddy left the catastrophe switch on a little too long. In Christian Science as in most religions that demand radical reliance on the Divine, the road to the ethical eschaton winds through a howling wilderness of apocalyptic transformation. This is the road Mary Baker Eddy followed. To be fair, thousands of Christian Science testimonies regularly listed in The Christian Science Journal attest to the fact that Christian Science has been, is, and likely will be an efficacious spiritual path, for those who are spiritually adept. However, the well-meaning spiritual novice is presented with a serious challenge; does Christian Science metaphysical teaching provide a reliable map on the journey from apocalypse to paradise? History tells us that many followers could not read Eddy’s map. When a pernicious illness would not be healed and the sting of death was quite real, many a disgruntled metaphysician put aside Christian Science for the less-catastrophic, more progressive expressions of the same ethical paradise: the alternative religious movements that have come to be called New Thought, including Unity School of Christianity, Divine Science, Religious Science, and many others. Further studies might compare degrees of catastrophic apocalypticism and progressive apocalypticism in successful, moderately successful, and unsuccessful new religious movements in American history. Can patterns be discerned? Is it possible to construct a model that illustrates the appropriate eschatological balance in the first and second generations of a given emerging religion?

One final observation. As Amanda Porterfield has eloquently underscored in her recent book, The Transformation of American Religion, American religious expressions—at least the successful ones—fall back on a key Protestant instinct which is pragmatism.32 Even in a post-Protestant era, an emerging religion is wise to lean towards progressive apocalyptism. Catastrophic visions of the end-time may draw in the followers, but the astute prophet knows that the audience will find the back door to the church and be gone unless it is clear from the start that the ethical eschaton is not only appealing but attainable. In American religiosity, heaven can wait, but knowing how to get there cannot. One senses that the current leadership in the Christian Science movement is well aware of this fact and busily employed at creating a map for future travelers.33