Are sin, sickness, suffering, matter, and death real?
Christian Science teaches that ultimate reality is entirely spiritual — God, Mind, Spirit — and that matter, along with what it calls "error" (sin, sickness, and death), is not part of that ultimate reality. This does not mean Christian Science simply denies that people experience pain, illness, or loss.
What it teaches is more specific: these things seem completely real to ordinary human belief, but according to Christian Science's own official sources, they are not part of the lasting, spiritual reality it describes.
Scripture describes something different: a material creation God himself calls good, a real body he personally formed, and sin, sickness, and death as genuine features of a world that has actually gone wrong — not beliefs to be corrected, but conditions Scripture promises God will one day undo.
What Scripture says instead
- Creation, including matter, is real and called good. "God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" (Genesis 1:31).
- Sin is real moral rebellion, not a mistaken belief. Romans 3:23: "all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God" — examined at length on this site's dedicated humanity-and-sin page.
- Sickness is something Jesus actually took up and removed. Matthew 8:16-17 describes Jesus healing "all who were sick," bearing real diseases — not correcting a mistaken belief.
- Death is a real enemy, still to be defeated. "The last enemy that will be abolished is death" (1 Corinthians 15:26) — real, and not yet undone.
Nothing here implies that a person who is sick, grieving, or suffering has misunderstood something, or that more faith would fix it. Scripture takes suffering seriously as real, and its promise of God's ultimate victory over sin, sickness, and death is a future hope, not a present claim that these things are already unreal.
Examine it for yourself
The evidence, the interpretations and the conclusion, separated so you can examine each step. Every passage is linked; read them in context.
Why official, current sources
Every claim on this page about what Christian Science teaches is quoted directly from Science and Health's own Glossary and chapters. Where an earlier research pass turned up secondhand phrasing that could not be verified against the actual text, it was left out rather than presented as a confirmed quotation.
What they teach
Stated accurately, on its own terms, then examined against Scripture.
Science and Health's Glossary defines matter as "illusion" and "intelligence, substance, and life in non-intelligence and mortality." On sin, it teaches: "All reality is in God and His creation, harmonious and eternal... the only reality of sin... is the awful fact that unrealities seem real to human, erring belief." Sin, in this framework, has no lasting existence of its own: "Sin has the elements of self-destruction. It cannot sustain itself."
Genesis records God's own verdict on the material creation he made: "God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" (Genesis 1:31) — matter called good by its maker, not illusion. The same account has God personally forming the first human body "of the dust of the ground" and breathing life into it (Genesis 2:7) — embodiment as God's own deliberate act, not a mistaken belief to be corrected. Sin, meanwhile, is treated throughout Scripture as real moral rebellion with real consequences, not a misperception: "all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). Scripture's own case for sin's reality — and why denying it is itself named as self-deception — is examined at length on this site's dedicated page on humanity and sin.
- Genesis 1:31
God's own verdict on the material creation he made: "very good."
- Genesis 2:7
God personally forms the human body from the ground — embodiment as his deliberate act.
- Romans 3:23
Sin as a real, universal condition — "all have sinned."
That Science and Health's Glossary defines matter this way, and that its "Recapitulation" chapter states sin's "only reality" is that "unrealities seem real to human, erring belief," are plain textual facts about the book, quoted directly. It is worth stating precisely rather than flattening: Eddy does not simply say sin and sickness "don't exist" in a way that denies anyone experiences them. She says they seem entirely real to mistaken human belief while having no lasting reality in the actual, spiritual order of things she describes. That is a real, specific metaphysical claim, not a caricature of one.
Science and Health teaches: "The cause of all so-called disease is mental, a mortal fear, a mistaken belief"; "Matter cannot be sick, and Mind is immortal"; disease "is the objective state of mortal mind, though it is called matter." Healing works by correcting the belief: "The physical affirmation of disease should always be met with the mental negation." Eddy states plainly: "The author never knew a patient who did not recover when the belief of the disease had gone."
The Gospels treat sickness as something genuinely wrong with a person's body, not a belief to be corrected in the mind alone. Matthew records Jesus healing "all who were sick," specifically identifying this as fulfilling Isaiah's prophecy that the Messiah "took our infirmities and bore our diseases" (Matthew 8:16-17) — sickness as a real burden he took up and removed, not a false perception he talked someone out of. First Peter draws the same connection between Christ's suffering and physical healing in a way that assumes the sickness was real: "you were healed by his wounds" (1 Peter 2:24). Nothing on this page implies that a person who remains sick despite prayer or faith has failed spiritually or lacks understanding — Scripture itself, examined further below, does not promise healing on demand and does not diagnose an unhealed person's faith as the cause.
- Matthew 8:16-17
Jesus "healed all who were sick," fulfilling the prophecy that he would take up real infirmities and bear real diseases.
- 1 Peter 2:24
"By his wounds you were healed" — healing tied to a real physical event, Christ's own suffering.
That Science and Health states disease's cause as "mental, a mortal fear, a mistaken belief," and that healing follows when "the belief of the disease" is gone, is Eddy's own stated position, quoted directly from her "Christian Science Practice" chapter — not an outside characterization of Christian Science healing practice. This is the primary-source basis for the practice itself, not an inference from silence.
Science and Health's Glossary defines death as "an illusion, the lie of life in matter; the unreal and untrue; the opposite of Life," and states elsewhere: "Death is not the result of Truth but of error, and one error will not correct another."
Scripture treats death as a real event with real consequences, entering the world through sin and passing to everyone: "sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death passed to all men because all sinned" (Romans 5:12) — an actual event with a traceable cause, not a lie told by matter. Paul does not describe death as something already unreal in the present; he describes it as a genuine enemy still to be defeated in the future: "the last enemy that will be abolished is death" (1 Corinthians 15:26) — an enemy that must be actively abolished is not the same thing as an illusion that only needs to be seen through. Scripture's fuller picture of death's present reality and future defeat, held together rather than collapsed into one, is examined on this site's dedicated pages on humanity and sin and on Christ's return.
- Romans 5:12
Death enters the world through sin, as a real, traceable event — not an illusion already seen through.
- 1 Corinthians 15:26
"The last enemy that will be abolished is death" — a real enemy still to be defeated, not a lie already exposed.
That Science and Health's Glossary defines death as "an illusion" and "the lie of life in matter" is a direct quotation from the book's own Glossary, not a paraphrase or hostile summary. Compared with 1 Corinthians 15:26's language of an "enemy" still to be "abolished," the two accounts describe death differently at a basic level: one as something already false that right understanding sees through, the other as something real that has not yet been undone and will be undone specifically through resurrection, examined on this site's dedicated resurrection page.
What the evidence supports
Christian Science's official teaching treats matter, sin, sickness, and death as ultimately unreal — convincing to mistaken belief, but without lasting reality. Scripture treats all of these as objectively real, while promising God's future victory over them.
Science and Health's Glossary and chapters define matter, sin, sickness, and death as "error," illusion, or products of "mortal mind," while affirming these things seem entirely real to human belief. Genesis 1:31 and 2:7 present a material creation and a real body as God's own good work. Romans 3:23 and 5:12 present sin and death as real, historical realities. Matthew 8:16-17 and 1 Peter 2:24 present sickness as something Jesus genuinely bore and removed. 1 Corinthians 15:26 presents death as a real enemy still to be defeated, not an illusion already seen through. Therefore The Berea does not accept Christian Science's teaching that these things lack ultimate reality.
Examine further
- Revelation 21:4
God's future promise to end death, mourning, and pain — a promise about what is not yet true, not a claim that these things are unreal now.
- John 11:33-35
Jesus weeps at Lazarus's tomb — grief at a real death, not a demonstration that death was already unreal.
Discuss and study
- What is the practical difference between "sickness is not ultimately real" and "sickness is real now, but God promises to end it"?
- Why might Jesus's own grief at Lazarus's death (John 11:35) matter for how Christians should think about the reality of loss?