Editorial October 25, 1947 Issue

REFLECTION OR DEFLECTION?

John Randall Dunn

In all religious lore there is not a more colorful story than that of Adam and Eve in the opening chapters of the Bible. That this account is allegorical is evidenced in such metaphors as "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil," a woman fashioned from Adam's rib, and a talking serpent; but literature has not produced for humankind a more gripping object lesson of the mischief wrought when creation is based on Adam's dust, instead of Spirit's substance.

In her book "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." in the remarkable chapter on Genesis, Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 502): "Spiritually followed, the book of Genesis is the history of the untrue image of God, named a sinful mortal. This deflection of being, rightly viewed, serves to suggest the proper reflection of God and the spiritual actuality of man, as given in the first chapter of Genesis."

Here let two words in the foregoing paragraph be considered— reflection and deflection. Who but the inspired author of Science and Health has properly evaluated the two records of creation set forth in chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis? In the first chapter we find this definite statement (verse 26): "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion... over; all the earth." Here is man as God's reflection. In the second chapter, however, with the beginning of the Adam and Eve allegory, there appears another, so-called man, formed of dust or, strictly speaking, inglorious mud, since the face of the earth had just been watered. He typifies this material sense of creation, or a supposed deflection or turning aside from spiritual truth. He is far from having dominion "over all the earth;" in fact, godless, material sense, with its limitations fears, and laws of disease and death, would appear to have dominion over him.

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