Resources Discussing Metaphysical Concepts

The Mary Baker Eddy Library examines Eddy’s correspondence and documents related to the 1881 chartering, development and fruition of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. The College, an institution meant to teach Eddy’s metaphysical healing method, accepted both sexes regardless of age or gender. Eddy intended her students to practice what they learned back in their own communities.

Mary Baker Eddy’s approach to the weather is the topic of research, including stories of how threatening weather and the laws of nature were made subordinate to God’s divine law. One student of Eddy’s explains how she instructed them not to try to control the weather. Rather, their prayers were to affirm that God, not outside influences, governs the weather.

Voorhees offers new scholarship on a broad array of topics related to Christian Science identity focusing on reception history. With attention to fully resourced details and modern scholarship, Voorhees outlines the reception history of Christian Science in fields of religion, women studies, American history, politics, medicine, and metaphysics. She probes Mary Baker Eddy’s relationships with contemporary scholars, religion leaders, and students.

McNeil’s extensive research of all the original papers of Phineas P. Quimby in conjunction with the vast holdings of The Mary Baker Eddy Library has brought resolution to the complex questions about the alleged influence mental healer Quimby had on Eddy’s later founding of Christian Science. McNeil also covers other important 19th-century figures as well as other relevant subjects, such as Mark Twain and Christian Science and early animal magnetism in 1830s and 1840s America.

O’Brien’s interfaith reflections illustrate how sympathy can help bring heaven to earth—as evidenced in four women: Mary Baker Eddy, Emily Dickinson, Sarada Devi (wife and mission partner to Ramakrishna) and Simone Weil. O’Brien finds a basis for this sympathy in the common conviction found in many religions of “the experience of oneness between the supreme Spirit and everyday empirical reality.”

Steckler and Bartkowski seek to contribute to the scholarly understanding of how religious culture can be transformed through the lived experience of devout adherents. Using theories of subcultural identity and cultural repertoires to understand how Christian Scientists engage social challenges, they conclude that healing treatment options are more flexible and nuanced than often publicized, and other high-tension religions can benefit from a comparison.

Zamparutti claims that Mary Baker Eddy employs Plato’s dialectical method (defining terms by reference to their opposite) to transform the Platonic idea of ‘substance’ into a spiritual principle, God. From Platonist assumptions, Eddy re-conceives substance as the one immaterial Spirit. Burke, as an agnostic, developed his philosophy of language by converting some of Eddy’s ideas learned in childhood, to secular usage.

Mina Loy’s Christian Science faith with its views of the body, along with 19th-century spiritualism informed her poetry. She conceptualized in her poetry a non-binary kind of embodiment—away from body/soul or life/death—to life as beyond the body. Loy saw death and the physical as illusory and thereby able to break with biological determinism and personality.  

The metaphysical nature of the religious belief and practice of Christian Science triggered theological, ecclesial, legal, medical, scientific, and moral controversies. Mary Baker Eddy also dealt with stress and trauma throughout her life. The metaphysical aspect of Christian Science does not detract from its practicality in human experience, as the metaphysically induced healing is evidence of the full salvation to come.

The focus of this article is an explanation of Christian Science within the religious context of its American origin and development. Melton claims that Mesmerism, Spiritualism, Swedenborgianism, and Transcendentalism prepared the way for two important religious movements of the 19th- century: Christian Science and New Thought. The author also gives relative importance to the role of independent Christian Scientists.

Petersen has made a paraphrase revision of Mary Baker Eddy’s 19th-century textbook, Science and Health, with the purpose of elucidating divine Science for the 21st century. In her Preface she avows her great efforts to keep Eddy’s original meaning of divine Science intact, while using more current (and inclusive) language and illustrations, and quoting from modern Bible versions.

This book examines the relationship between American literary history and Christian Science by looking at Christian Science as an influence on the restitution narratives in the writings of Mark Twain and others. Civil War, Reconstruction, and industrialization had left American society searching for how to restore and heal the nation, and Christian Science influenced restitution narratives and stories of recovery.

Implementing feminist rhetorical criticism, Tencza examines Mary Baker Eddy’s strategic use of rhetoric to create meaning in her writings, reinforced by the integrity of her character. Tencza sees Eddy working within three frameworks: an ethic of care [mother-like pathos], extreme utilization of ethos [her character integrity], and logos [ability to make meaning]—all of which coalesce into her rhetoric of confidence.

Introvigne reviews 19th- and 20th-century artists to understand how their Christian Science beliefs and convictions influenced and inspired their art. James Franklin Gilman, Violet Oakley, Evelyn Dunbar, Winifred Nicholson, the ‘Group of Seven,’ and James Cornell are featured artists in this review. Cornell, considered by Introvigne as the most important, was famous for his collages and ‘boxes.’

Kramer’s well-researched critique on Christian Science makes her arguments easier to understand than most critics. She grasps the fundamental teachings and history of the religion well, but she left it for doctrinal reasons. Most of Perfect Peril describes her emotional and intellectual struggles with doctrinal issues. Following a crisis of faith, she concluded that Christian Science is a dangerous mind control. 

The section in this book devoted specifically to Christian Science is relatively brief, but the descriptions of the teachings and church structure accurately portray the issues most commonly affirmed by adherents. Topics of criticism also reflect the most common concerns from religious, medical, and social perspectives.

This essay by an adherent of Christian Science accompanies the main article on Christian Science. Paulson describes her childhood experience and how her religious practice was her primary source of comfort and healing. She recognizes distinctions between Christian Science and orthodox Christianity and explains why she thinks the typical orthodox view of Christian Science’s similarity with Gnosticism is misleading. 

This essay on Christian Science is one of many descriptive introductions of various religions and their relation to evangelical Christianity. Simmons notes that the ‘Christian’ element in Christian Science involves a radical reinterpretation of Jesus and his role in the New Testament. Mary Baker Eddy stressed the practical nature of her ‘science’ in human challenges, thus highlighting the focus on healing. 

Hutchinson defines New Thought as any American metaphysical religion affiliated with Phineas P. Quimby, Mary Baker Eddy and Emma Curtis Hopkins. They expanded from their emphasis on healing to a focus on prosperity theology; and Hutchinson observes that since Eddy rejected materialism, the New Thought emphasis on prosperity—while popular in mainstream Christian America—differentiated it from Christian Science.

Horowitz assigns Christian Science a prominent place in the development of American affirmative-thinking (his term) philosophical systems. Although he acknowledges Mary Baker Eddy’s interest in Quimby (a 19th-century mesmerist) and her debt to him during a prolonged time of illness, Horowitz believes that Quimby was not the founder of Christian Science. Instead, Eddy herself created a brigade of spiritual freethinkers.

Voorhees explains that Eddy never intended to become a role model for gender parity, but it emerged naturally as a by-product of her larger purpose and project of revealing the nature of Christian salvation. In contrast to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Voorhees illustrates how the ‘Woman Question’ for Eddy is emphatic and radical, yet qualified and ultimately subsumed by her soteriology.

Scalise explores the widespread public debate surrounding metaphysical healing in the late nineteenth-century, especially through the study of rhetorical theories and practices of Mary Baker Eddy and Emma Curtis Hopkins. They were both part of the conciliatory project of liberal Christianity during the period, challenging the assumption that the rhetorical practices exhibited in the liberal and Christian traditions are inherently contradictory.

Ivey presents historical context for the 19th-century emergence of metaphysical religions and their evolution into the 20th century. He highlights the inter-relationships between the practice of Phineas Quimby, Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science, and the ensuing movements. Ivey differentiates the theology of Christian Science from Quimby and New Thought—with the human mind acting as a conduit between spirit and matter.

Armstrong claims that Cornell infused elements of a Christian Science worldview, including the denial of the substantiality of matter, into his art. Also poet/novelist Loy, a close friend of Cornell’s, read Eddy, and infused ideas traceable to Christian Science into her poetry, fiction and correspondence with Cornell. They both grappled with the notion that by embracing Mind, material error would dissolve.

Four women— Emma and Abigail Dyer (daughter of Emma) Thompson, Janette Weller, and Annie M. Knott—were selected as representative of the pioneering work of early Christian Scientists due not to their gender, but to the available historical evidence, the range of their contributions to the history of Christian Science, and the relative familiarity of that person among today’s Christian Scientists.