A Significant symbol found in the Bible is that of a woman. Through Christian Science we learn that this symbol stands primarily for generic man, the image, or idea, of our Father-Mother, God. One of the first mentions of the woman, as this figure assumes spiritual meaning, appears in Genesis (3:15). Here the Lord God is pictured as saying to the serpent, which appeared in the garden of Eden and which is the Scriptural symbol of evil, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel."
Interpreting this verse in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy says (p. 534), "The serpent, material sense, will bite the heel of the woman,—will struggle to destroy the spiritual idea of Love; and the woman, this idea, will bruise the head of lust." According to Christian Science, evil is nothing more than a false sense, which makes man and all creation appear to be mortal and material. But this evil sense, while claiming ego and entity, has neither identity nor reality. The effort of error to substitute its false mentality for real consciousness falls before divine Science, with its revelation that man is God's pure reflection, the idea of divine Mind.
In the wilderness, Christ Jesus successfully resisted error's effort to substitute material sense for his real selfhood, the Christ —God's perfect idea. Through divine Science he bruised the head of lust; he destroyed carnal instincts. We read that after his victory "the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him" (Matt. 4:11). In overcoming the three temptations, the Master was dealing with the three phases of lust that claim embodiment in mortals: the lust which is false appetite, the lust to destroy flesh, the lust to possess matter.
