CHRISTIAN SCIENCE, Mary Baker Eddy says on page 235 of "Miscellaneous Writings," "lays the axe at the root of the tree of knowledge, to cut down all that bringeth not forth good fruit." In Scriptural symbolism "the tree of life" typifies eternal being. "The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations." However, life which is supposed to originate in matter ends in so-called death; hence the admonition in Genesis, "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." In her exegesis of the book of Genesis Mrs. Eddy exposes the fallacy of the theory that life was ever in or of matter, and she shows how this false concept of creation conflicts with the inspired record of creation wherein it is stated that God, Spirit, made everything like Himself, spiritual.
Under the marginal subtitle, "Record of error," found on page 526 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy writes, "The 'tree of knowledge' stands for the erroneous doctrine that the knowledge of evil is as real, hence as God bestowed, as the knowledge of good." She characterizes the second account of creation beginning in the second chapter of Genesis as "a picture of error throughout." But scholastic theology has attempted to superimpose this false picture upon the true idea, and has thus apparently obscured it.
In one of his Messianic prophecies Isaiah predicts that "the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good." When Christ Jesus appeared he rebuked the false theology of his time and declared, "Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up."
