# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 03 14_S114
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

114

The Holy Scripture says, Gen. 2:19, 20: "He brought them (the beasts) unto him, to see what he would call them; for whatsoever he would call them, that was to be their name.

And Adam gave names to every cattle and fowl of the air and beast of the field."

The Hanoverian Cat. says (Short Religious History, p. 161):

"His wisdom and love provided that they might soon attain to some speech and through it to the most necessary concepts."

and further (ibid.):

"He set them in a region where they could gradually develop the faculties of their reason and speech upon various animals."

The Holy Scripture ascribes to the first men not merely speech in general, but such a use of it that Adam—and indeed before the creation of the woman—was able to give to every cattle and fowl of the air and beast of the field its name.

The Holy Scripture lays a special weight upon this, in saying that God brought the animals to Adam, not merely that Adam should name them, but that He (God) should see what he (Adam) would call them, that is, that He should observe carefully and with pleasure how excellently Adam would solve this great task.

How great this task was can be recognized to some degree if we consider that God, after the creation of the animals in the days of creation, did not undertake a second creation of animals. Accordingly, from the very beginning as many pairs of animals were created as there were to be kinds, and as many kinds as there were afterward to be under all the climes of the earth; for however many they are, they all have their origin from the creation and in the cradle of creation, Paradise. For since the animals were all good at first, there was need of no particular selection, as though man had had anything to fear from any kind of animal for body and life. It was also fitting that the whole animal world in its paradisal outline and compass should be presented to man, who was set as lord over all animals.

Now although we are not able to state their number, we must yet imagine their number to be much greater than, say, that of the domestic animals, and at least not smaller than the number of the kinds of animals which Noah afterward was to provide for in his ark. Nor may we measure their variety by some of the larger animals, but must count the smaller ones in as well. If one but thinks of a single realm of animals, for example that of the birds—what a variety and diversity is found there! And for all this Adam was to know a name, which no one had yet told him.

The ability to speak words was in this the very least; Adam had first to invent the words, and what a measure of inventive and discriminating gift was required, if the names were not to give out on him at the first dozen.

Adam was also to solve this task not bunglingly and clumsily, but to hit the right thing, for "whatsoever he would call them, that was to be their name." And he solved this task so masterfully that the Scripture bears him witness: "And Adam gave names to every cattle and fowl of the air and beast of the field."

This naming of the animals was therefore not child's play, but a worthy spectacle for the eye of God, and not merely an honor for Adam, but for God the Lord, who is Adam's Creator and who also in this particular wills to be honored by us. For it is for this reason that this seemingly trifling feature from the history of Adam is recorded in the Holy Scripture, and in this sense it ought to be presented, and has also been so presented by God-fearing and enlightened men.

Let us hear our Father Luther on this. He says in his exposition of the first Book of Moses, which he himself declares to be his masterpiece (Walch edition, vol. I, pp. 216 and 217):

"Here we are again reminded to consider the excellent understanding and wisdom that was in Adam, who, after he was created in innocence and righteousness, looks upon all the animals and knows, without any special inspiration and new illumination or revelation, solely by the excellence of his nature, the nature and property of each one, whereof he gives to each one a name suited and fitting to its nature."

and further in the same place:

"There are indeed many kinds of books which describe the kind and property of trees and animals; but how much time and how long attention has been required before one has come upon it by experience? But in Adam there was another light and knowledge, who, as soon as he had looked upon an animal, understood its whole nature and power, much better than we, even if we search and inquire into such things through our whole life."

And further in the same place:

"What an excellently rich knowledge and wisdom there was in the one Adam! Although he lost very much of it also through the Fall, yet I hold that all that is still in the books of all wise men, who for so many hundred years, since the time that the arts were invented, have written, taken together—could not be equal to this wisdom, which nevertheless remained in Adam after the sin, but afterward was by degrees obscured in his descendants and is now almost wholly extinguished."

So far Luther.

Ah, what a poor, meagre, spiritless spirit it is that speaks out of the Hanoverian Cat.!

It says, to be sure, that man came to speech soon, that is, somewhat earlier than, say, our children, but only to some speech, that is, to an extremely scanty one, which hardly deserves the name of speech, and only to the most necessary concepts. It would be saying very little if it said "to the necessary concepts"; but even that is still too much for the author, therefore he says to the most necessary ones. Which are these? They are those without which even the dullest man cannot subsist, the concepts of eating, drinking, sleeping, and the like.

And all this is not yet enough for the author. He cannot bring himself to omit the doctrine that all this proceeded only in a gradual development.

We ask now: What ground was there for imagining the speech of the first men so gradual and so imperfect, since the Holy Scripture has the naming of the animals precede the creation of the woman, and Adam will not have gone about long in his solitude, because God says of it: "It is not good that the man should be alone"?

What ground was there for a notion which indeed resembles the spirit of the heathen sages, but not the spirit of the holy writers, since the Scripture teaches that the first men bore the image of God upon them in such a measure that before the Fall they needed no redemption, for they were so far removed from sin that they did not even know what sin was?—

an image of God according to which the mental and spiritual powers stood in the most perfect proportion with a body that was not to be subject to mortality, and in conformity with God Himself, in whose image man was created in Adam and Eve—

an image which, as it was well struck, was also to be recognizable?

Of this the speech of the first men is now an example, of which to know is not a matter of indifference, since it serves to recognize the greatness of the loss which the human race suffered through the Fall of Adam.

It would therefore be a slight reproach if the account of the Hanov. Cat. merely suffered from poverty; but it suffers also from historical unfaithfulness, from unbelief, and from the derogation of the honor of God and of the saving truths,—

from historical unfaithfulness, for the Holy Scripture teaches such a presence of all powers in Adam as were necessary to accomplish, before the creation of the woman, a work such as the naming of the animals was,—to which it must be added that the author of the Hanöv. Cat. had upon him the obligation not merely of a historian in general, but of a Christian teacher,—