Article November 14, 1988 Issue

"God created man in his own image"

Why does it help to know that we are the image and likeness of God? Can this understanding be practical and useful?

Erna Correll

The plain, simple statement from the first chapter of Genesis, used here as the title, is certainly one of the most-quoted verses in all Christian Science literature. In one form or another it appears in a great many of the articles published in the Christian Science periodicals. This is not surprising. The understanding that man's identity is really spiritual, the likeness of his creator, is the nucleus of Christian Science teaching—as contrasted with the symbolic account of Adam and Eve, where mankind originates from the dust of the ground.

To many inquirers into Christian Science, the thought that God is Mind and that, in His infinite intelligence and love, He creates perfect ideas, revealing His nature, has immediate appeal. Many find it comforting to know God as the perfect cause of all creation rather than a manlike Jehovah who takes dust, molds it into the human shape, breathes life into it, and tempts it with a choice of good or evil, life or death. And what of woman, made from Adam's rib and quickly causing his downfall? The first account in Genesis says that God created man male and female and gave them dominion. He made both man and woman "in his own image."^{Gen. 1:27.}

Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health: "The Science of the first record proves the falsity of the second. If one is true, the other is false, for they are antagonistic. The first record assigns all might and government to God, and endows man out of God's perfection and power. The second record chronicles man as mutable and mortal,—as having broken away from Deity and as revolving in an orbit of his own."^{Science and Health, p. 522.}