Lesson 44 –
What Does Genesis Tell Us About Adam and Eve?

God included human beings in his divine plan, creating them as the pinnacle of the visible and material creation. We have material bodies, made from the dust of the earth – and this makes us unlike angels, who are pure spirits. But in another sense, we have a dimension to our being that does not come from below: God made us in his image and likeness.

​​​​​​​As St. Thomas Aquinas would later explain, human beings are made in God’s image above all because God gave us spiritual souls: he gave us minds with a capacity to know and to love. That is, we are the material creatures, special animals endowed with reason, who are therefore capable of spiritual acts – and thus of entering into a personal relationship with God himself, transcending what any mere animal is able to do.

Course Reading

Summa Theologiae I q. 94, aa. 1-2 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Summa Theologiae I q. 94, aa. 3-4 | St. Thomas Aquinas

Excerpt from the Summa Theologiae I q. 94, a.1:

[I]t is written (Eccles. 7:30): "God made man right." And man was made right by God in this sense, that in him the lower powers were subjected to the higher, and the higher nature was made so as not to be impeded by the lower. Wherefore the first man was not impeded by exterior things from a clear and steady contemplation of the intelligible effects which he perceived by the radiation of the first truth, whether by a natural or by a gratuitous knowledge. Hence Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. xi, 33) that, "perhaps God used to speak to the first man as He speaks to the angels; by shedding on his mind a ray of the unchangeable truth, yet without bestowing on him the experience of which the angels are capable in the participation of the Divine Essence." Therefore, through these intelligible effects of God, man knew God then more clearly than we know Him now.

Course Listening

How True is the Bible? Reading the Bible Intelligently and Faithfully | Fr. Joseph Koterski, S.J.

Is the Bible True and Accurate? | Fr. Terence Crotty