ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

beast. But so far is this opinion from being universal, that S. Thomas Aquinas does not hesitate to say that it is unreasonable to hold that the beasts which are now carnivorous had originally lived on vegetable food.' We need not enter into the question whether God originally intended man only to eat vegetable food, although the exegete may unhesitatingly deny this also. But with regard to the animals, we may reconcile the opinion of S. Thomas Aquinas with the words, "to every beast," etc., by supposing that God gave the plants and herbs for meat to the animal world in general, but not to each kind of animal. Karl Vogt's stumbling-block does not lie in the way of the Bible, but at most in the way of those exegetes who hold the other opinion. They may remove it; to us it is of no importance.

2

1 q. 96, a. 1, ad 2. Cf. Pianciani, Erläuterungen, p. 211. Cosmogonia, p. 445. Kurtz, p. 404. S. Augustine speaks doubtfully on this point. Retr. i. 10. 2. In the Op. imperf. c. Jul. i. 3. c. 147, he says of Paradise (therefore not of the animal world before the fall in general) : Si beatitudinem loci illius Christiano cogitaretur affectu, nec bestias ibi morituras fuisse crederetis sicut nec sævituras, sed hominibus mirabili mansuetudine subditas, nec pastum de alternis mortibus quæsituras, sed communia, sicut scriptum est, cum hominibus alimenta sumtura. Aut si eas ultima senecta dissolveret, ut sola ibi natura humana vitam possideret æternam, cur non credamus, quod auferrentur de paradiso morituræ vel inde sensu imminentis mortis exirent, ne mors cuiquam viventi in loco vitæ illius eveniret?

2 E.g. Hengstenberg, Christologie, ii. 138 ("Where there was as yet no Cain, there was no lion "), and also apparently Delitzsch, System der Christlichen Apologetik, Leipzig 1869, p. 148 seq. For the right view, see Vosen, Das Christenthum, p. 747.

IX.

EXPLANATION OF THE SECOND CHAPTER OF GENESIS.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

.

"So God created man in His own image male and female created He them." This is all that is told us in the Hexameron about the manner of the creation of man. 'Man" here does not mean the individual, but the genus; for after God has said, "Let us make man," He adds at once, "and let them have dominion." The words, "male and female created He them," signify that God created mankind in different sexes. The extraordinary theory held by certain Jewish interpreters, and also by a few ancient and modern philosophers,' that the first man was originally created by God androgynus, is not only unsupported, but directly contradicted by this verse. If Moses had said, "God created man in His own image. . . male and female created He him," this might leave room for the idea that God had created the first man as man and woman in one person; but even this mode of expression would not oblige us to assume it, for in Hebrew the singular "haadam" may have the collective meaning "men," and after such a collective noun the pronoun may be in the singular or the plural. But as Moses did not make use of the singular, which would have been

1 Böhme, Oetinger, Bader, Pabst, Hamberger, Ennemoser, de Paravey (Annales de philos. chrét. vi. S. t. 2. 1871, p. 405).

did not say,

grammatically allowable, but of the plural, as He "man and woman created He him," but "created He them,"-every meaning except the one we have stated is shut out. Delitzsch's remark, therefore, that "it seems as if the author had written 'otham,' them, instead of 'otho,' him, which last expression would have been quite allowable, in order to prevent this androgynus theory,"1 is quite right; and I need only add that the same remark occurs in a like form in the works of S. Augustine, but this is probably unknown to Delitzsch. S. Augustine says: "In order to prevent the supposition that both sexes were united in the same individual, Moses shows that he only used the singular on account of the unity of conjunction, propter conjunctionis unitatem, because the woman was formed from the man. He therefore adds the plural directly after: He created them." 2

It does not follow from the first chapter of Genesis that God only created one man and one woman; Moses only tells us this, and also teaches us the manner in which they were created, in the second chapter. In ver. 7 it is said: "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul;" which means, stripped of anthropomorphic and pictorial expressions, that God forms the body of man from already existing matter, and makes it human by giving or providing for it a soul. The

3

1 Genesis, 2nd ed. p. 112. In the 3rd ed. p. 124 (4th ed. p. 103), Delitzsch himself inclines to the other view.

2 De Gen. ad lit. iii. 22. 34.

3 Cf. Theol. Lit.-Bl. 1869, p. 90.

anthropomorphic term "breathed into" implies that the soul is something incorporeal, and not an emanation from the Godhead.

The breath of life is breathed

into his nostrils, or as the Vulgate has, it into his face, because the breathing of man conveys to the perception of the senses that he is a living being.1

The Hebrew expression which is translated "breath of life," in the Vulgate " spiraculum vitæ," and in the Book of Wisdom in a passage referring to this verse, πveûμа Swτiкóν, spiritus vitalis, breathed by God into man,—is used in another place in Genesis for the principle of life in animals. It cannot therefore be said that this expression denotes the reasonable soul of man as such. It is rather the technical name for that which constitutes men and animals living beings.* Moses does not assert in this passage that the principle of life in man is essentially different from that in

1 "We must not suppose the formation of man from the dust of the earth, and the inbreathing of the spirit of life, to have been merely mechanical; that God first formed a human figure from the dust of the earth and then made the humanly shaped lump of earth into a human being by breathing into it the breath of life. The words must be understood sexpss. Man was produced from the dust of the earth by an act of divine power, and in the same moment as the dust took by this divine power a human form, he was penetrated by the divine breath of life, and created as a living being, so that it cannot be said that the body was created before the soul. The saying: 'The Lord God . . . breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,' evidently refers only to the phenomena of life, the breath which is the outward sign of life. Consequently the breathing into the nostrils can only mean that God by means of His breath brought forth and united with the bodily form that principle of life which then became the origin of all human life, and which shows its existence continuously by the coming out and going in of the breath through the nostrils." See on this passage Keil.

2 Wisd. xv. 11.

3 Gen. vii. 2.

...

♦ Et animam viventem et spiritum vitæ etiam in pecoribus invenimus, sicut loqui divina scriptura consuevit. Aug. Civ. Dei, xiii. 24.

animals, but he asserts it plainly enough elsewhere. Man is created in the image of God, and made the ruler over all other visible creatures; according to the further account given in this chapter, God gives him a command; he also names the animals, and recognises the essential difference between himself and them. All this clearly points to the fact that man is endowed with intelligence and freedom, and is therefore animated by a higher principle of life than are the animals. The account of the creation demonstrates this; the animals are created by the word of God, and several of each kind are created; while, on the contrary, God creates first only one man, and the formation of the body and the imparting of the soul are distinguished from one another as a sign that the soul of man is self-existing, and that the soul is separate from the body and can exist without it.

After the creation of the first man God says: "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an helpmeet for him." God created first a human individual, a man, but the divine plan of creation was not yet fully realized, for God wished to create man in separate sexes; the actual condition, in which only one man existed, did not correspond to the divine idea, and was therefore according to the usual expression in Genesis "not good;" for before it can be said, "God saw that it was good," the divine idea must be fully realized, and therefore the man who has been first created must have in woman an adjutorium simile sibi, an adequate helpmeet, the completion which the divine idea considers necessary for him.

After his creation God brings all the animals to

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »