Creation as generally understood means the making of something new, which after being created begins an existence of its own apart from the cause or the creator. The creation of the universe and man is usually thought of as having taken place a long time ago—just how is a mystery; on one point, however, all pretty much agree,—that with this mysterious, "once upon a time" occurrence an external condition began which is to remain essentially unchanged for another long time. The Christian Science view of creation is entirely different from this. It is stated by Mrs. Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 502): "There is but one creator and one creation. This creation consists of the unfolding of spiritual ideas and their identities, which are embraced in the infinite Mind and forever reflected." This view shows that creation is not an event of a distant past, the results of which are beyond control, though they may bring untold suffering; it is an individual, contemporaneous experience.
Creation is to us either the realization of the glorious spiritual fact or merely the flat tone of material nonentity—the one or the other to the extent that perception, aroused from the illusions of material sense, grasps the truths of the divine Mind. So fixed, however, is the habit of classifying experiences under the category of time, that even the trained student of Christian Science, when, for instance, reading about creation in the first chapter of Genesis, must constantly remind himself that it is the account of an ever present mental and spiritual experience. Otherwise, he will think of it as the story of a past event and not as the description of a recurring mental illumination; he will view it as a happening rather than as an unfolding or a revealing of the spiritual idea.
In "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 67) there is a profound metaphysical statement by our Leader, which because of this habit of time thinking is sometimes not readily comprehended. The statement is as follows: "Sin existed as a false claim before the human concept of sin was formed; hence one's concept of error is not the whole of error. The human thought does not constitute sin, but vice versa, sin constitutes the human or physical concept."
