The oneness, or unity, of God and man, of divine cause and effect, is basic in the teachings of Christian Science. Christ Jesus stated this truth clearly when he said (John 10:30), "I and my Father are one." Jesus proved this fact by overcoming everything that claimed to separate him from God, and he made this practical for us. He said that the works that he did we should do also.
Christian Science teaches that God is Principle, Spirit, Mind; that man is His reflection, the expression of His perfect being; that the divine and perfect cause produces an effect that is its exact likeness; that Mind brings forth its idea to reveal Mind's pure and loving nature. Man is this perfect effect, this idea by which Mind identifies its purity and love. Mind's only mode of expression is through its ideas. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" its author, Mary Baker Eddy, writes (p. 475): "Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas." Therefore man, in his true spiritual being, includes the understanding of his oneness with God, good.
For centuries the teaching has prevailed that Adam's sin, typified by his eating the forbidden fruit of knowledge in the garden of Eden, separated him and his progeny, all mortals, from God. Some have been taught to believe that when Adam was expelled from the garden of Eden, he was banished from God's presence, and that men cannot hope to be received into God's presence except through the experience called death. They have been told that some are destined never to see God, that their misdeeds on earth consign them to an eternal hell. With what comfort Christian Science comes to reveal that the spiritual man is indissolubly at one with his creator. He is forever God's image and likeness, or reflection—not coming into His presence or going out from it, but forever at one with the Father.
