NOTES for Gen 2:4-19

What, then, is a human being: earthly dust or the image of God? Or perhaps the two do not contradict each other at all? If God creates a human being “from dust”, there is clearly nothing wrong with that. All the more so because, according to the testimony of the Book of Proverbs, the whole universe consists of “the tiniest particles of dust”. If so, then to consist of dust means, in short, to be part of the universe God created. No more and no less. There is certainly nothing degrading in that. But where, then, does human uniqueness lie? It might seem that a human being possesses something unique called a “soul”. Yet other living creatures have one too. In the sense in which the biblical books speak of it, the soul is a kind of vital force inherent in every living creature. Does this mean that a human being is not unique in this respect either? Where, then, is the uniqueness? A human being receives his soul, his vital force, together with the breath that God breathes “into his nostrils” (this is the literal meaning of the Hebrew text). On receiving it, the human being comes alive. According to Genesis, the soul of animals is linked to blood; it is a purely natural principle belonging entirely to its possessor. With a human being it is different: his soul, his life, does not in essence belong to him. It belongs to God and is entrusted to the human being for his use. In a certain sense one could say that a human being lives for as long as God breathes within him. Yet the human being does not thereby become a god; he remains a human being who has, nevertheless, received from God such freedom that, if he wishes, he can even forget the One in whose hands his life rests. But if he does not forget, human life becomes a truly divine-human process in which the Creator's breath is united with human will and consciousness. Just as it was intended from the beginning.