“Gen 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth
living souls after their kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the
earth, after their kind. And it was so. Gen 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after its
kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing of the ground
after its kind. And God saw that it was good.” All beasts
of the earth, with cattle and reptiles, were created on the same day, namely
the
sixth day. This was the penultimate stage in the creation, namely the one that
immediately preceded to the creation of man.
As we read animals / beasts of
the earth, we think directly to the class of mammals that includes about 5,500 currently
living species, which are distributed in 1200 genera, 150 families and about
thirty orders (although there are few mammals living in water or flying in the
air). The most advanced order among the thirties is that of primates in which
we find the mammal that seals the measure of perfection, that is full of wisdom
and perfect in beauty, namely the homo sapiens. In zoological classification,
homo sapiens is an animal species of the genus Homo, the family Hominidae
(hominids), in the suborder of Anthropoidae (anthropoid), in the order of
primates, class of mammals, phylum of vertebrates, among the living beings.
But this animal has marked the
earthly creation by his unparalleled genius and inventive capabilities. Let us
dwell a little on the natural and consider the information that naturalists,
primatologists and ethologists give us in terms of distinctive features of this
unique animal among all other earthly animals, before returning to the
observation of the scriptures:
The first thing is the sense of
humor: the second degree or the offset from reality. Only Homo sapiens among
all the beasts of the field that God has created, is able to design imaginary
things, invent fables and legends. For example, when God says in his word that
no one has ascended into heaven except our Lord Jesus Christ (Jn 3: 13), Homo
sapiens is able to set off from this biblical reality and invent a legend which
states that Mary ascended to heaven. A second characteristic is the
consciousness of good and evil: all other animals have no moral sense. A third
feature: only Homo sapiens knows he will die, hence he wonders about himself.
Already the combination of
these three characteristics shows that only homo sapiens is a religious animal:
he has the ability to invent precepts, dogmas or creeds, he needs to clear
himself before his conscience, but also he thinks of his fate after death. So one
will never see a chimpanzee that buries its dead or organizes funerals; never a
gorilla will knowingly commune with spirits; one will never hear that a dog is
a witch, a hippopotamus magician or a snake soothsayer, etc. Of all the
animals, only Homo sapiens is endowed with such abilities.
And this sense of religion in
this animal will be supported by a fourth very fundamental characteristic: Homo
sapiens is a "language-gifted animal." Language is the prerogative of
Homo sapiens over all other beasts of the fields that God has created. The
chimpanzee that is now considered the closest animal to Homo sapiens uses in total
some thirty sounds to communicate. But if we consider the French language, Homo
sapiens used in 26 letters, 37 phonemes and over 130 different graphemes. Combining
them, we get an almost infinite number of sounds that Homo sapiens is able to
handle in this language to form words and construct a wealthy vocabulary. And he
may also learn other foreign languages.
Add to this that he is a
"political animal" with a warrior penchant that cannot be found in
all other animals. He is the only “economic animal” with developed concepts on the
production, consumption, savings, credit, etc.
The reason for this remarkable
distinction between this animal and all the others is that he has a unique
brain activity. While saying brain activity, this confirms that it is
indeed an activity at animal level and not the spiritual or divine dimension,
for God is not the brain but is spirit.
So
to speak, that Homo sapiens, although he is called man, including also by God
Himself in the Bible – and we will have to examine the specific biblical
context in the epistles that follow – and despite all the exceptional
socio-religious capabilities that are unique to him, he is not the man that God created in his image so that he really
looks like him. When God says “Gen 1:26 And God said, Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and
over the fowl of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over the whole earth,
and over every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth.” And then, “Gen 1:27
And God created Man in his image, in the image of God created he him;
male and female created he them;” it is not of this animal, this primate however
superb and great he may be.
A primate pulled out of dust
consists of a skull with a brain that controls the entire body through the
nervous system, and of muscles, arteries, bones and blood; and cannot be like
God who is spirit. God said these words when that Homo sapiens was already created
with all other field animals. By his brain activity far higher than that of all
other animals he was already prince over all earthly creation. Indeed, how an
animal, whatever his evolution, can really be like God? God is spirit (John 4:
24), the animal is flesh, the seed of God is the Word (Luke 8: 11), the animal seed
is the sperm cell, God makes children by fertilizing the earth through his word
(Isa 55: 10-11), the animal makes children by fertilizing the ovum through the sperm
cell (spermatozoon); and the dissimilarity or parallelism remains eternal, so that
the two can nowise resemble.
After creating all the animals
whose reign was crowned with the most advanced primate, God decided to create
man in his image and in his likeness: man spirit as God is spirit, man carrying
in him the seed of God, the Word, and man that multiplies the divine way,
namely by means of the word. Later, in the sovereignty of God, he resolved to
form an animal body pulled out of the dust of the ground (Genesis 2: 7). That
body which Paul calls the "terrestrial" (1 Cor 15: 47), as he was
taken from the ground, had the same structure and the same physiological
function as the supreme primate that was on earth, unlike that he lived the
life of God that he had blown into his nostrils. In other words, the man God
had created in his image and likeness and who was so far in the bosom of God,
God made him to dwell in an animal body formed by God himself.
And, behold, this will trigger
jealousy, resistance, and even a struggle from him that was prince or elite among
all animals of the field that God had created on earth. He said in his heart, this
one is the heir of all these things, I have to start all batteries to make him
lose this heritage so that it may be mine (see Parable of the Wicked Tenants in
Luke 20: 14). We will read later several biblical passages describing this guy longing
for domination that was with Adam in the Garden of Eden in various expressions
revealing his greatness in creation, but also his lust for power.
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