Catholic Thought discussion

Third Homily: The Creation of the Human Being
Genesis 2:4 - 9

The Human Being – Taken from the Earth

We are told that God formed the man of dust from the ground. There is something at once humbling and consoling. Something humbling because we are told: You are not God, you did not make yourself, and you do not rule the universe; you are limited. You are being destined for death, as are all things living; you are only earth. But something consoling too, because we are also told: The human being is not a demon or an evil spirit, as might occasionally appear. The human being has not been formed from negative forces, but has been fashioned from God’s good earth. […] Throughout all the highs and lows of history the human being stays the same – earth, formed from earth, and destined to return to it.
Thus the unity of the whole human race becomes immediately apparent: We are all from only one earth. […] We are all one humanity, formed from God’s one earth. It is precisely this thought that is at the very heart of the creation account and of the whole Bible. In the face of all human division and human arrogance, whereby one person sets himself or herself over and against another, humanity is declared to be one creation of God from this one earth. What is said at the beginning is then repeated after the Flood: in the great genealogy of Genesis 10 the same thought reappears – namely, that there is only one humanity in the many human beings. The Bible says a decisive “no” to all racism and to every human division.

Well, I'm in between ereader devices and having some issues. I just downloaded the book to my new device and all of my annotations are gone. These little technological issues really drive me up the wall.

Without my notes and highlights I'm kind of at a loss. The only thing I can definitively say is that he had made some excellent points in this homily, lol!

Oh how annoying. I never got into the habit of making notes on my kindle. I've done it on the laptop with the kindle app when I'm moderating a book I only have electronically. It is easier to cut and paste.

Image of God

It says that the human being is created in God’s image and likeness (Genesis 1:26-27). In the human being heaven and earth touch one another. In the human being God enters into his creation; the human being is directly related to God. The human being is called by him. God’s words in the Old Testament are valid for every individual human being:”I call you by name and you are mind.” Each human being is known by god and loved by him. Each is willed by God, and each is God’s image. Precisely in this consists the deeper and greater unity of humankind – that each of us, each individual human being, realizes one project of God and has his or her origin in the same creative idea of God. Hence the Bible says that whoever violates a human being violates God’s property (Genesis 9:5). Human life stands under God’s special protection, because each human being, however wretched or exalted he of she may be, however sick of suffering, however good-for-nothing or important, whether born or unborn, whether incurably ill or radiant with health – each one bears God’s breath in himself or herself, each one is God’s image. This is the deepest reason for the inviolability of human dignity, and upon it is founded ultimately every civilization. When the human person is no longer seen as standing under God’s protection and bearing God’s breath, then the human being begins to be viewed in utilitarian fashion. It is then that the barbarity appears that tramples upon human dignity.

The technical and scientific attitude has produced a particular kind of certitude – namely, that which can be corroborated by way of experiment and mathematical formula. […] But now there is a temptation to view as reasonable and therefore as serious only what can be corroborated through experiment and computation. This means that the moral and the holy no longer count for anything. They are considered to belong to the domain of what must be transcended, of the irrational. But whenever we base ethics on physics, we extinguish what is particularly human, and we no longer are liberate the human being but crush him or her.

Thus the image of God means, first of all, that human beings cannot be closed in on themselves. Human beings who attempt this betray themselves. To be the image of God implies rationality. It is the dynamic that sets the human being in motion toward the totally Other. Hence this means the capacity for relationship; it is the human capacity for God. Human beings are, as a consequence, most profoundly human when they step out of themselves and become capable of addressing God on familiar terms.

Human beings are the creatures that can be one with Christ and thereby be one with God himself. Hence this relationship of creature to Christ, of the first to the second Adam, signifies that human persons are beings en route, beings characterized by transition. They are not yet themselves; they must ultimately become themselves. Here in the midst of our thoughts on creation there suddenly appears the Easter mystery, the mystery of the grain of wheat that has died. Human beings must die with Christ like grain of what in order to truly rise and stand erect, to be themselves.

Creation and Evolution

The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, which we just heard, dies not in fact explain how human persons come to be but rather what they are. It explains their inmost origin and casts light on the project that they are. Ane, vice versa, they theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments. But in doing it cannot explain where the “project” of human persons comes from, nor their inner origin, nor their particular nature. Tho that extent we are faced here with two complementary – rather mutually exclusive – realities.

Ratzinger then goes into a segment where he mentions the scientist Jaques Monod (1910-1976) who wrote a book Chance and Necessity where he explores evolution and that the human being is a chance development. There is also the postulation that in evolution you can have mistakes taking place from generation to generation, out of which then arise something totally new. Logically speaking, this is quite absurd.

Now the astonishing conclusion follows: It was in this way that the whole world of living creatures, human beings themselves, came into existence. We are the product of haphazard mistakes.[…] The great projects of the living creation point to a creating Reason and show us a creating Intelligence, and they do so more luminously and radiantly today than ever before. Thus we can say today with a new certitude and joyousness that the human being is indeed a divine project, with only the creating Intelligence was strong and great and audacious enough to conceive of. Human beings are not a mistake but something willed; they are the fruit of love. They can disclose in themselves, in the bold project that they are, the language of the creating Intelligence that speaks to them and that moves them to say: Yes, Father, you have willed me.

The question about what the human being is finds its response in the following of Jesus Christ. Following in his steps from day to day in patient love and suffering we can learn with him what it means to be a human being and to become a human being.

Let me add to Kerstin's comments here. I may be going over the same ground.

Given I had to restart reading the Third Homily after such a long break, this time I was really struck with his introduction:

What is the human being? This question is posed to every generation and to each individual human being, for in contrast to the animals our life is not simply laid out for us in advance. What it means for us to be human beings is for each one of us a task and an appeal to our freedom. We must each search into our human-beingness afresh and decide who or what we want to be as humans. In our own lives each one of us must answer, whether he or she wants to or not, the question about being human.

What a fascinating question, and why would this question be posed to every generation? Have I ever thought on this question before? I don’t partake in a lot of philosophical reading, so I would have to say I have not. He says we must also decide “who or what we want to be as humans.” Drawing from the first Genesis creation account, Pope Benedict comes to this conclusion:

It says that the human being is created in God’s image and likeness (cf. Genesis 1:26–27). In the human being heaven and earth touch one another. In the human being God enters into his creation; the human being is directly related to God. The human being is called by him. God’s words in the Old Testament are valid for every individual human being: “I call you by name and you are mine.” Each human being is known by God and loved by him. Each is willed by God, and each is God’s image. Precisely in this consists the deeper and greater unity of humankind—that each of us, each individual human being, realizes the one project of God and has his or her origin in the same creative idea of God. Hence the Bible says that whoever violates a human being violates God’s property (cf. Genesis 9:5). Human life stands under God’s special protection, because each human being, however wretched or exalted he or she may be, however sick or suffering, however good-for-nothing or important, whether born or unborn, whether incurably ill or radiant with health—each one bears God’s breath in himself or herself, each one is God’s image. This is the deepest reason for the inviolability of human dignity, and upon it is founded ultimately every civilization. When the human person is no longer seen as standing under God’s protection and bearing God’s breath, then the human being begins to be viewed in utilitarian fashion. It is then that the barbarity appears that tramples upon human dignity. And vice versa: When this is seen, then a high degree of spirituality and morality is plainly evident.

The whole moral universe is packed into this one sentence, “I call you by name and you are mine.” Humanity is God’s property and no one has the right to besmirch it with barbarity or any other indignity. Whatever a human being may be, he is directly related to God.

What is a human being? He is a creature made in the image of God.

The essence of an image consists in the fact that it represents something. When I see it I recognize, for example, the person whom it represents, or the landscape, or whatever. It points to something beyond itself. Thus the property of an image is not to be merely what it itself is—for example, oil, canvas, and frame. Its nature as an image has to do with the fact that it goes beyond itself and that it manifests something that it itself is not. Thus the image of God means, first of all, that human beings cannot be closed in on themselves. Human beings who attempt this betray themselves. To be the image of God implies relationality. It is the dynamic that sets the human being in motion toward the totally Other. Hence it means the capacity for relationship; it is the human capacity for God. Human beings are, as a consequence, most profoundly human when they step out of themselves and become capable of addressing God on familiar terms. Indeed, to the question as to what distinguishes the human being from an animal, as to what is specifically different about human beings, the answer has to be that they are the beings that God made capable of thinking and praying. They are most profoundly themselves when they discover their relation to their Creator. Therefore the image of God also means that human persons are beings of word and of love, beings moving toward Another, oriented to giving themselves to the Other and only truly receiving themselves back in real self-giving.

“To be the image of God implies relationality.” What is a human being? A human being is a creature that is relational both with God and with other human beings.

Thank you, Manny. Excellent, as always.

I found Ratzinger’s discussion on the distinction between creation and evolution to be fascinating.

“We cannot say: creation or evolution, inasmuch as these two things respond to two different realities.”

As I’ll quote in a second, “two different realities” refer the distinction between the underlying purposes of the creation story and the understanding of evolution. I don’t think “realities” is really the precise word. I would have chosen “categories.” There is only one reality but there is a category for the creation story and there is a category for the scientific explanation of the formation of man. Perhaps it was a translation flub, I don’t know. Ratzinger explains:

The story of the dust of the earth and the breath of God, which we just heard, does not in fact explain how human persons come to be but rather what they are. It explains their inmost origin and casts light on the project that they are. And, vice versa, the theory of evolution seeks to understand and describe biological developments. But in so doing it cannot explain where the “project” of human persons comes from, nor their inner origin, nor their particular nature. To that extent we are faced here with two complementary—rather than mutually exclusive—realities.

Science—evolution in this case—explains how things change and become themselves. The creation and formation stories explain why they came to be and what they are. Ratzinger dispels the notion that man is mere product of pure random creation.

[We] must have the audacity to say that the great projects of the living creation are not the products of chance and error. Nor are they the products of a selective process to which divine predicates can be attributed in illogical, unscientific, and even mythic fashion. The great projects of the living creation point to a creating Reason and show us a creating Intelligence, and they do so more luminously and radiantly today than ever before. Thus we can say today with a new certitude and joyousness that the human being is indeed a divine project, which only the creating Intelligence was strong and great and audacious enough to conceive of. Human beings are not a mistake but something willed; they are the fruit of love. They can disclose in themselves, in the bold project that they are, the language of the creating Intelligence that speaks to them and that moves them to say: Yes, Father, you have willed me.

If evolution is true, then the development process of man, nature, and the universe has been guided by a rational, creating will.