Some thoughts on "Man"

                                                              John Robert Howell



        Genesis l:27 reads:  "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him".  It is worth noting that the Hebrew word here for "man" is "adam", which became, of course, the proper name of our putative forebear "Adam".  In Genesis 2:7 man is said to be formed of the dust of the ground, and that "man" is also "adam".  Around that fleshly axle theological material mindedness and slavish literalness to the text have been wrapped and tangled for over two millenia.

       Without Mary Baker Eddy and her glorious Discovery, we might never have known better.  Her inspired and inspiring definition on pages 475-77* of her "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" is alone worth the cost of that priceless volume.  Students of Christian Science are thus blessed with the knowledge that the man of our heavenly Father-Mother God's creating is something much more glorious than the descendant of a couple of wardrobeless sinners cavorting about the Garden of Eden skimpily clad only with "napkins" made of fig leaves.



*Let me quote for you some of the passages therein:


"Question. -- What is man?
"Answer. -- Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements.  The Scriptures inform us that man is made in the image and likeness of God.  Matter is not that likeness.  The likeness of Spirit cannot be so unlike Spirit.

A mortal sinner is not God's man.  Mortals are the counterfeits of immortals.  They are the children of the wicked one, or the one evil, which declares that man begins in dust or as a material embryo.  In divine Science, God and the real man are inseparable as divine Principle and idea.

When speaking of God's children, not the children of men, Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you;"  that is, Truth and Love reign in the real man, showing that man in God's image is unfallen and eternal.  ...Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is intact, universal, and that man is pure and holy."