This is the fifth article in our series “Man and Woman – Image of the Triune God.” The first was “What is the Real Thing For Women?” The second was “Image of One – Image of Three.” The third was “Gift and Response” and the fourth was “The Oeconomic Kingdom.”
In our series, we have been pondering what it means for human beings to be made in the image of God. We have realized that the angels are created in the image of God as pure spirits, while human beings, man and woman, are created in the image of God as “relationality,” to use the word of Pope Benedict XVI.[1] Human beings exist, and indeed are created for, communion — the mutual gift of love. We have defined love as “the gift of oneself that makes the other more perfectly himself.”[2] We now need to consider how man and woman each live relationality, how each is to love in a way that makes the other more perfectly himself and herself.
In chapter 1 of Genesis, we read that God created man and woman in His image as relationality: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”[3] In chapter 2, we read how that relationality was worked out: “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being…Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’ So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air…”[4]
In this account, man is created alone, but that aloneness is seen to be problematic: “It is not good that the man should be alone.” Each human being is created in the image of God as a communion of persons, and no one can exist in communion by himself. A human being in isolation is a self-contradiction. It is unnatural, and sooner or later, that will become apparent. The inner self-contradiction will be expressed outwardly as conflict. The reality of a single person living in isolated communion is an impossibility , but the idea is not. We human beings can imagine an impossible reality. It is possible to imagine that an individual can live the fullness of humanity separated from human beings. To teach Adam that this idea is unreal, that he cannot be human alone, God created other beings with which Adam can live in relationship: “The Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field.”[5]
In the Bible, the name is the essence of a being in expressible form. It is not just a tag added on to something or someone, as we consider names today. The name is that very being itself presented beyond itself to another. To know the name of something or someone is to know that being, and to know, in the Bible, means to enter into union. The name is the acknowledgment of a relationship with that being. Not to know someone’s name is to remain outside of union with that person. Moses asked God’s name, and God does not reveal it, giving instead a phrase that expresses something about God but does not fully express God as He is, for “’you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.’”[6]
God cannot be known as other beings are known and only God fully knows the name of each being because their name is His very act of creating them. God makes all things by His Word, and that Word spoken individually is the name of that being. “But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel:’ Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine’.”[7]
However, knowing the name of another is more than entering into union with them. It is entering into community, into a coinherence that establishes a social reality. A father names his children, and that establishes them as members of the family. Adam, himself a creature, named the other creatures. He did not create them, but he named them. He thus established them in community. He exercised authority in naming them, but it was a delegated authority, not the authority of authorship, which only God possesses for only God can create. Through Adam, God established His community with His creatures. In this way, Adam confirmed them in their being by bringing them into the community God created. To name is to confirm a being in itself and in community.
In naming the creatures, Adam is acknowledging that they are unique, that they exist in their own right, and that they are in no way some extension of himself. By his act of naming, he confirms them in their autonomy while at the same time bringing them into community. Since love is “that gift of oneself that makes the other more perfectly himself,” Adam’s act of naming is an act of love, for he is using his authority to confirm each being in its own essence and integrity. He loves each creature into a fuller existence in its own right and in its relationship with himself and others.
J.R.R. Tolkien expresses it thus in “The Lord of the Rings”:
“Fair Lady!” said Frodo again after a while. “Tell me, if my asking does not seem foolish, who is Tom Bombadil?”
“He is,” said Goldberry, staying her swift movements and smiling.
Frodo looked at her questioningly. “He is, as you have seen him,” she said in answer to his look. “He is Master of wood, water and hill.”
“Then all this strange land belongs to him?”
“No indeed!” she answered, and her smile faded. “That would indeed be a burden,” she added in a low voice, as if to herself. “The trees and the grasses and all things growing or living in the land belong each to themselves. Tom Bombadil is the Master.”[8]
Adam is the minister of confirmation to the other beings that God created. He confirms each in its own right to existence and to autonomy and by doing so, he draws them into cohesion. He thus establishes community among all the creatures on earth. Yet more is needed for that community to be the full expression of God’s creation. Adam confirmed the other beings in themselves, “but for the man, there was not found a helper as his partner.” Community has been formed but communion has not yet been established. Adam cannot do that by himself. No one can establish communion by himself. Another is needed. We shall study this in our next article, “Woman – The Minister of Communion.”
Notes:
[1] “Caritas in Veritate,” #54
[3] Gen. 1, 27
[4] Gen. 2, 7 & 18-19
[5] Gen. 2, 19-20
[6] Ex. 33, 20
[7] Ps. 43, 1
[8] J.R.R. Tolkien, ”The Lord of the Rings,” “The Fellowship of the Ring,” Bk I, chap. 7
Image: By Roelant Savery – Art UK, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=164823177
Sr. Gabriela of the Incarnation, O.C.D. (Sr. Gabriela Hicks) was born in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in the Gold Rush country of California, which she remembers as heaven on earth for a child! She lived a number of years in Europe, and then entered the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Flemington, New Jersey, where she has been a member for forty years. www.flemingtoncarmel.org.
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