Creation Moment 4/5/2025 - Language Makes Humans Human

And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. Genesis 2:19

"Of all the animal world, only humans have the ability to perceive current circumstance in 

--the context of time and space, 

--make moral judgments about right and wrong, 

--and therefore be culpable for intent, which requires premeditation. 

Man’s ability to reason is one aspect that fundamentally sets this “rational animal” apart to uniquely reflect the imago Dei (image of God). 

Finite human rationality is responsible for these differentiating

characteristics, which will be demonstrated to be necessarily dependent on language. 

Language, then, becomes a necessary but insufficient condition for thought, serving as the fabric or material out of which rational thoughts are constructed. 

*Our worldview, in a global sense, is consequently constructed out of our accumulated knowledge, which is based in language and thereby circumscribes our worldview’s boundaries. Denied language, then, man’s ability to think would be reduced to immediate, animal-like reasoning.

However, our ideas are both described by and constrained by the words we have available to define and describe those ideas. 

Only by way of language are we able to form higher-level cumulative thought.

Language gives man the unique ability to recast the immediate in light of a larger context by framing current circumstance in the context of time, space, relationship, principles, and logic." 

AIG