Editorial August 16, 1975 Issue

Christian Science and Nonmedical Healing

Geoffrey J. Barratt

Superficial judgments and limited information may mislead some into classifying Christian Science with other nonmedical methods of healing. This misses its distinctness. Christian Science is unique in its teaching and methods.

This tendency to loosely classify Christian Science is not new. Misconceptions that would deflect the recognition of its uniqueness and bury it among systems less spiritual and scientific have been around almost as long as has Christian Science. Mary Baker Eddy makes reference to these misunderstandings in her Preface to Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "Many imagine that the phenomena of physical healing in Christian Science present only a phase of the action of the human mind, which action in some unexplained way results in the cure of disease. On the contrary, Christian Science rationally explains that all other pathological methods are the fruits of human faith in matter,—faith in the workings, not of Spirit, but of the fleshly mind which must yield to Science."^{Science and Health, p. xi;}

The healing method of Christian Science rests on purely spiritual premises—that God is Spirit, that He is good and infinite, and that man and all creation are entirely spiritual and ideal. The reader is not invited merely to accept these spiritual assertions as dogma, but is encouraged to set about proving their truth and effectiveness for himself.

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