“The Idealism of Mary Baker Eddy”
Cocks, Matthew. “The Idealism of Mary Baker Eddy,” Essentia Foundation, 2026-07-17.
Cocks presents a 21st-century perspective on Mary Baker Eddy’s idealism that takes into account contemporary philosophical attitudes, ancient Christian writings discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945, and the reception history of Christian Science healing practices. He explains Eddy’s distinction between Divine Mind, the source of spiritual reality, and ‘mortal mind’ or material sense, which produces the experience of a physical world. Cocks compares this cosmology with the Secret Revelation of John, in which a perfect divine creation is counterfeited by a lesser creator, while noting that Eddy could not have known the Nag Hammadi text. The American philosopher William James illustrates conflicting responses to Eddy’s ideas. He considered her proposal that evil is unreal a “bad speculative omission,” yet maintained that interfering with investigation of reported healings would be “a public calamity.” James himself unsuccessfully sought healing of heart disease through Christian Science treatment and attributed the failure partly to his own thought. Cocks concludes by emphasizing the practical implications claimed for Eddy’s idealism. He points to the extensive historical record of Christian Science healing as a body of case-study material that, he argues, warrants further consideration in broader discussions of the relationship between mind and body.
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