Origin Story #3 of 5

Thoughts on David Christian’s Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

What makes us different?

        Above all, human languages…

How and why our species acquired linguistic power…

        remains unclear (Origin Story, p. 173)

Out of the ground, the LORD God formed

        all the beasts of the field and

        all the birds of the air.

Then God looked on to see what Adam would name them;

        and whatever Adam called each living creature,

        that was its name. (Genesis 2:19)

Threshold #6 is about us. What makes us different? “Chimps and humans,” science informs us, “share well over 96 percent of their genomes” (p. 151). He’s got a point. When you go to the zoo and look one of those chimps or apes or monkeys in the eye, you can’t help but notice similarities. We eat and excrete and procreate like all the other animals, only we do it different. Why this difference?

The difference is language. Other animals like baboons and Orcus whales can warn others in their group of approaching predators. Some researchers have even trained chimps to respond to some two hundred words. But only humans use immense vocabularies with grammar rules “that allow us to generate a huge variety of meanings…” Only humans tell stories. For Christian, the wonder of language brings his Origin Story to a new threshold where something new in the big history of everything, suddenly shows up. Like all his “Thresholds”, the how and why remains a mystery. How did language happen? Why did language happen?

“Language”… here our two stories, the one told by “modern science” alone—the one Christian tells without god or spirit, just “mechanisms”; and, the other story about how on the sixth day God decided to, along with all the other animals, create humans with something of the image of God in them. It’s this image of God that accounts for the mystery of language among other things. When we eat and excrete and procreate just like all the other animals, we do it different—we do it with self-awareness, and self-regard. We don’t do what animals do simply to survive. There’s more going on. We do it with an awareness of self—of personhood in us and in others. So we reflect, and care about how we do whatever we do. This mystery of how we reflect on our self—this wonder of human conscience has to do with the image of God. We not only have a brain, but we have a mind, a soul. That’s why we can somehow stand outside our self, and wonder about our self and the world and the universe where we find ourselves. That’s why humans alone write books like Origin Story.

This “image of God” in us equips us for our human task. God has deputized us alone to care for his creation and to give names to all the animals. God seems to delight in our abilities: “God looked on to see what Adam would name them; and whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name” (Gn 2:19). If we call monkeys, “monkeys”; that’s okay with God. He doesn’t second guess us. He just looks on and sees how we do. He takes the Image and our deputyship seriously. No pretending. We really do, out of our freedom, give names not only to all the animals, but to all manner of creation. Humans are incurable namers. We can’t help ourselves. It’s the Image of our Creator in us.