Cathal BarryCathal Barry takes a look at what the Church teaches about the creation of man
The Church teaches that of all visible creatures only man is able to know and love his creator. He, according to the Church, is the only creature on Earth that God has willed for its own sake, and he alone is called to share, by knowledge and love, in Godís own life. It was for this end that he was created, and this is the fundamental reason for his dignity, the Catechism states.
Being in the image of God the human individual possesses the dignity of a person, who is not just something, but someone. He is capable of self-knowledge, of self-possession and of freely giving himself and entering into communion with other persons. And he is called by grace to a covenant with his Creator, to offer him a response of faith and love that no other creature can give in his stead.
God, according to Church teaching, created everything for man, but man in turn was created to serve and love God and to offer all creation back to him. God attached so much importance to his salvation that he did not spare his own Son for the sake of man. Nor does he ever cease to work, trying every possible means, until he has raised man up to himself and made him sit at his right hand.
The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that ìthen the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living beingî (Gen 2:7). Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.
In Sacred Scripture the term ësoulí often refers to human life or the entire human person. But ësoulí also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him, that by which he is most especially in Godís image: ëSoulí signifies the spiritual principle in man.
The human body shares in the dignity of ìthe image of Godî: It is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit.
The unity of soul and body, according to the Church, is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ëformí of the body. It is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.
The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God ñ it is not ëproducedí by the parents ñ and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.
The spiritual tradition of the Church also emphasises the heart, in the biblical sense of the depths of oneís being, where
the person decides for or against God.
