Today’s trend is to emphasize how biologically similar humans are to other animals and to make light of all differences. Proponents of the Great Ape Project propose that the near genetic identity between humans and chimps establishes that there is really no difference between humans and apes. Any difference in intelligence or moral outlooks is due solely—they say—to humans having made greater progress along the path of evolution.

Divine revelation provides a different answer to the deepest of questions, “what is man?”

The ancient testimony of Genesis reveals that when the first human being was created, he was “alone.” Adam beheld all of creation and there was “no helper fit for him” (Gen. 2:20). Was he not with the apes? How could he be alone with so many other animals to keep him company?

If the man had simply examined his own body and the bodies of the apes, he would have immediately realized that he was substantially similar to these creatures. Could he not be satisfied with his ape companions?

But this is not the conclusion man arrived to. Standing before all the animals, he became even more convinced that he was “alone,” in a situation of solitude. Let it be supposed for the moment that God had a purpose in allowing the man to find himself “alone.” What could this purpose be? Could it reveal something about what makes a “human” to be human?

Examining the sequence of the creation narrative provides a key to solving the puzzle of man’s identity. God creates the world; He separates the sea from the land; He creates the plants, then the animals. Finally, He makes man.

Then something unique happens. God brings all the animals before the man to “see what he would call them.” Is God playing a joke on man in watching him exercise his new nomenclature abilities? Rather, God is giving the man an opportunity to discover his own identity by seeing how different he his from all the other animals.

When the man finds that there is “no helper fit for him,” he becomes conscious that “he cannot be put on a par with any other species of living beings on the earth” (TOB 5:4). God—presenting the animals before the man, one after the other—confirms for the man that he is a unique creature set apart from every other created thing. In this situation, the man finds himself turning towards God in search of his own identity, for he cannot identify himself essentially with the visible world or with other living beings (TOB 5:5).

The purpose that God created the man “alone” becomes more clear. God created the man in a situation of solitude so that the man would come to recognize his identity as founded upon a “unique, exclusive, and unrepeatable relationship with God himself” (TOB 6:2). Man must turn away from the world, from the animals, and towards God to discover who he is.

It is in this unique fashion that God reveals to the man his difference from every other creature. The man ultimately finds his identity, not from the apes in the visible world, but from God Himself, who created man in His own “image and likeness.”

Human beings, created in the “image and likeness” of God is what makes the difference between humans and every other living thing. The human creature is the most highly exulted creature among all creatures because God, the master artist, allowed more of Himself to pass into human creatures than into any other creature.

No amount of scientific research on apes will ever make up this difference.

Review

“I listened to your CD twice just for the enjoyment of it. Then a few more times to allow its spirit and message wash over me.

I expect that each successive listening will be filled with newness, revelation, wonderment and healing.

You have a wonderful gift. Thank you for sharing it.”

-James Malloy, Milford DE, USA.

Read more reviews.