Creatorem Coeli et Terrae

These created causes or agents of reproduction in this order of generation, do in no sense create.  There merely transmit forms created during the first six days. It is even a misnomer to speak of mankind’s artistic activity as “creative” or “creating” because human artist must necessarily make use of already created materials, such as wood, metals, stones and for the most part, already made materials, that are mad by man (artist’s paint, brushes, and canvases for example). Man merely makes; he does not create.

            It is a very interesting and most instructive exercise in the principles of metaphysics and the natural sciences, to trace all such materials to their substantial forms.  And this will inevitably bring the seeker after truth in the realm of Being, to the difference and distinctions between substantial forms.  This distinction is real and is absolutely necessary for a true cosmology, the only kind that can truly be termed Catholic, that is, as coming from God, from His Holy Spirit, especially from His gifts of knowledge, understanding and wisdom.

            So let’s start with the example of the literary construct, since all of us use language in some way every day. Also, we must confront and solve the ideological, evolutionary objection that the origin of language is explainable as a natural process.

            We must answer:  Science itself proves, by all the criteria of its own method, namely testability as the main one mentioned by Father Spitzer, that language is a given. Just like our existence, as real and our identity as human, having intellect and free will, language comes with being human with only this one proviso:  it must be learned from another human or higher kind of being with intellect and free will.

            Now suppose we consider the evolutionist’s position.  We are told (especially by novelists such as Jean Auel and her cave bear clan) that the first humans developed language from the grunts and gestures of their animal partners.  However, studies of feral children (like Tarzan and Mowgli) have empirically proven by repeated tests with feral children that they never really do learn to communicate with words that they did not learn by hearing in their very early years when most children do actually begin to imitate the words they hear spoken by the people around them. 

            The facts may be explained this way” Just as God created beavers replete with the knowledge of how to build their dams, and the spiders the know-how of web-construction, and the birds how to build their nests, so, too, died He create or form Adam and Eve, fully grown and mature, replete with a language appropriate to the world into which He placed them.  Thus, Adam was able to name all the animals and birds when God presented them to him (Genesis 2:18-20).

            Evolutionist simply cannot explain these things by any natural means.  The only answer is creation.  Only after fully formed and functional, mature adults were created, ex nihilo and in toto (as to form) were the processes of developmental and generational, that is, reproductive functions able to begin.  This demonstrates, also, the absolute necessity for the first six literal twenty-four hour days.

            It may seem odd that language is not an essential property of the human being, as much as are the intellect and the will; however, reflection reveals that language flows directly, but not necessarily as spoken language, from our intellectual nature.  People born deaf and mute, for example, learn to communicate with a system of hand signals or signs.  Helen Keller, born blind, deaf, and mute, eventually learned to communicate in a way that is intellectually, as opposed to an animal.  All of proves the substantial difference, the difference in Kind, between mankind and any other kind of animal.

            Let it be emphasized that language is a conventional system of sounds and meanings. Conventional means a community of persons who possess an agreed upon system of sounds and meanings.  The meanings are spiritual concepts in the minds of the persons speaking; but the concepts are abstractions of the natures of the things in external reality, the real world (see the writer’s “The Cognitive Loop” or consult any good Thomistic book on epistemology).  The concept is derived from the data of sense knowledge.  “All of our knowledge comes first through the senses.”  So what about the origin of language?

            It had to be in Adam and Eve, and according to Genesis 1-2, it was first in Adam because he named the animals before Eve was made from his side.  I can hear objections from all sides and I have been hearing them for some years now.  I’ve written my own answers gleaned from St. Thomas mainly.

            To the question:  How long was it before Adam’s fell, how many days after he was created?  My opinion differs sharply from the French scholar Ferdinand Crombette (d. 1970) and his followers. I answer it could have been after several day, but it could have been weeks before Lucifer, disguised as a Seraph (see Egyptian mythological figure of the angelic “god”) gained entrance into the Garden of Eden.          

            But this passage of time does not preclude the events of Adam’s naming the animals and the making of Eve both on day six.  In fact, I believe it to be necessary because the state of original justice innocence requires it—or to speak more correctly—the state of original justice and innocence required that both Adam and Eve, from the very first moment of each one’s existence were possessed of a complete language.  This means an instinctive knowledge—not learned but infused—by God, which included the correct syllables, words, sentences with correct grammatical construction and both having an intuitive knowledge of the different modes of discourse and their logic.