Progress is usually thought of as having to do with time—moving toward something. And completeness is usually thought of as the end result of progress—a time when things are finally complete. But the discovery of Christian Science by Mary Baker Eddy revealed completeness as the starting point of all that is real, and progress as the unfolding of completeness in all its multifarious details.

This, of course, is the spiritual reality—and I have found it to be exceptionally practical. To the degree that one understands it, and consents to it as reality in any given situation, it becomes manifest in very tangible ways in one’s human experience. So, let’s take a look at what there is to be understood about completeness and progress from the spiritual standpoint taken in Christian Science. It has to do with the spiritual record of creation in the first book of the Holy Bible.

The very first verse in the Bible says, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). It doesn’t say anything about how God began, because God never had a starting point; He just is, and always has been. And it doesn’t say anything about God finding something outside of Himself to create the heaven and earth, because everything is, and always has been complete, within His own being as infinite Spirit; it only needed to be revealed to humanity. 

Christ Jesus demonstrated spiritual completeness as the actual state of man’s being.

As Mrs. Eddy writes in her exegesis of the book of Genesis in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “The infinite has no beginning. This word beginning is employed to signify the only,—that is, the eternal verity and unity of God and man, including the universe” (p. 502). So the account of creation in this first book of Genesis is actually a revealing—or progressive unfolding to human view—of the completeness of God, Spirit, and the universe of spiritual ideas included and forever expressed in multifarious forms within God’s being. Completeness, then, is the only condition of being. As is recorded in Ecclesiastes, “I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it” (3:14).

In the Genesis account (see 1:26, 27), God’s, Spirit’s, image and likeness, man, is the culmination of the revelation, or spiritual creation. Man is the complete reflection of God—the compound spiritual idea of God, including the whole universe of spiritual ideas in the divine Mind. The progress of spiritual man, then, is not toward completeness; it is the progressive unfolding of all the details of spiritual completeness—in never-ending freshness and variety.

Christ Jesus demonstrated spiritual completeness as the actual state of man’s being by healing the sick, transforming the sinner, and raising the dead to life. One time, when Jesus and his disciples saw a man who had been blind since birth, the disciples asked Jesus how this came to be; had the man or his parents done something sinful to cause the blindness? Their question exposed their belief that the man was material and incomplete, that the blindness was real, and that some sin must have caused it. 

Jesus’ spiritual view was that the man was spiritual, complete, and good, that the blindness had no cause because God, good, is the only cause, and therefore the blindness wasn’t true. He said that this was simply an opportunity to “see the works of God manifest” in the man. His consequent words and actions led to the washing away of that which had no cause—the blindness. The man “came seeing” (see John 9:1–7).

Jesus didn’t see man as having a starting point in matter, and having to struggle toward an illusory state of perfection, or completeness. But Jesus did have a starting point; he started with the completeness of God and His spiritual creation, and he stayed with that reality in the face of every claim of material and moral imperfection. To Jesus, healing the sick and reforming the sinner had no time element; it wasn’t a matter of progressing toward completeness; completeness was already the reality to be proved. And the practical result was healing. 

Christian Science healing is based on the same premise, as Mrs. Eddy makes clear throughout her explanations of Christian Science practice in Science and Health. She writes, “The starting-point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind,—that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle” (p. 275). 

My first healing in Christian Science of lumps in my breast, and every other healing I have had in the years since, came from understanding and consenting to the reality of Spirit’s completeness, and man’s completeness as His spiritual reflection. Whenever we gain a clear glimpse of spiritual completeness, and consent to it as the reality in a given situation, that’s when false belief yields to Truth—just as darkness yields to light. That’s when healing comes. 

The progressive unfolding of spiritual completeness can be compared to the progressive expression of musical composition and performance. All the elements of music have always existed, but the freshness and variety of musical expression go on forever. The principle and elements of music are not progressing toward completeness, but they are being progressively revealed as individuals consent to the infinite possibilities and proceed from that standpoint. 

In the same way, God and His spiritual creation are not progressing toward completeness, but are being progressively revealed to human consciousness. Because of that, through prayer we can discern the infinite possibilities of Spirit and spiritual man, consent to them, and proceed from that standpoint in order to bring God’s healing power to bear on any given human need.

Nothing is impossible when we consent to the spiritual completeness of God and man as the only reality of being.

Barbara Vining