Editorial January 31, 1925 Issue

"A new creature"

Albert F. Gilmore

IN his second letter to the Christians at Corinth, Paul placed great emphasis upon the necessity of approving one's self to the Christ, in order to win salvation. "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature," he declared: "old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." In these words the apostle described the wonderful transformation which follows upon the winning of the "mind of Christ," even the becoming a "new creature." Obviously, this transformation pertains to the revelation of the real man, who becomes manifest as the transformation takes place,—new only to the mortal mind, so called. So marvelous is this change that the apostle declared under its far-reaching influence, "All things are become new." How this extraordinary result obtains is of great interest to every earnest religionist.

Paul's promise of the appearance of a new creature under the transforming influence of the Christ finds its parallel in the words of Christ Jesus to Nicodemus, coming to inquire of the Master. Manifestly, "Ye must be born again" does not contemplate a material rebirth, but rather the revelation in consciousness of the spiritual or real man, that is, the new creature,—not new to God but new to human consciousness. In this process, revealing becomes healing, since thereby thought is changed from a false to a true basis. We commonly think of a new creature as a new creation, something freshly sprung from the creative impulse. But we read in the story of creation, as recorded in Genesis, that God's work was finished,—creation was completed. How, then, could God, having finished creation, produce a new creature? An understanding of creation as spiritual and of its unfoldment in the realm of Mind is necessary to the explanation of this passage. God, Spirit, created all; and all was like Him, spiritual and perfect, expressive of divine qualities. Man, as God's likeness, possesses only spiritual attributes, and these are coeternal with God, that is, they have existed forever. Man coexistent with God could scarcely be new to Deity, man's creator.

In explanation of the true creation, Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 336), "Immortal man was and is God's image or idea, even the infinite expression of infinite Mind, and immortal man is coexistent and coeternal with that Mind." To what, then, can man become new, since God's idea exists eternally with Him? The material or false sense of man, we learn in Christian Science, is the counterfeit of the real, and is, therefore, not in God's image but rather is the supposititious unlikeness of it. This false claimant, however, holds himself to be the real man, and so masquerades until his falsity is exposed. It was to hasten the disclosure of this deception that Paul was so earnestly laboring.

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