Editorial March 10, 1962 Issue

Reconciliation

Helen Wood Bauman

Groping mortals have attempted for ages to reconcile their gods to mankind. On altars men have laid gifts and sacrifices, thinking thus to appease wrathful deities and to make propitiation for offenses against them. The ancient custom has lingered on in Christian theology in the doctrine that the self-sacrifice and brutal death of Christ Jesus were for the purpose of satisfying divine justice and effecting a reconciliation of God to man.

This theological doctrine of atonement arises from the false assumption that God is a magnified human being, aware of sinful mortals and needing to be reconciled to them by the sacrifice of His innocent Son.

Christian Science, by revealing God as supersensible Being, absolute Mind, infinite Spirit, conscious only of Himself and His universe of perfect, spiritual ideas, gives a truly scientific explanation of atonement. Mary Baker Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 18), "The atonement of Christ reconciles man to God, not God to man." And a little later she adds, "Jesus aided in reconciling man to God by giving man a truer sense of Love, the divine Principle of Jesus' teachings, and this truer sense of Love redeems man from the law of matter, sin, and death by the law of Spirit,—the law of divine Love."

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