Genesis 2:4-7 When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens — and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no man to work the ground, but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground — the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
What is sometimes called the second account of creation is actually an account of the creation of human beings. This story is unself-consciously anthropocentric; mankind is at the centre of this account as the earth is at the centre of the first story. The modern scientific mind, which is hopelessly literalistic, may rebel at these notions, but in doing so it misses the point entirely. It’s “literally” true, of course, that the earth and mankind are not respectively the centres of the cosmos and life on earth, but “literally” is the only sense in which they are not. The earth is our only home, and probably the only home we’ll ever have; and mankind is our most central problem and concern, and probably always will be.
These are not “scientific” histories or inventories of the universe or the biosphere. They are neither cosmology nor ecology. They are poetic reflections on what it means to be human in a universe and world that we did not create and do not control. Where do we fit? How should we behave? To whom, if anyone, are we accountable. These are questions science can’t even ask, let alone answer. But they are the contextual questions in which science itself makes sense.
So, what do we see in these first few verses of the story of mankind?
On first reading we may get the impression that, as the story begins, nothing is growing on the earth, but if we read more carefully we note that it is the shrub and plant of the field that is missing. These are the plants for which you need rainfall and people. In other words, these are domesticated plants; plants of the farm and garden.
The writer’s focus is not on the creation of Homo erectus, or Homo sapiens, or Neanderthals, or any other “scientific” category of human beings with which we do not have to deal in our daily lives. The focus is on what a scientist might call Homo cultivatus, to coin a phrase. By this I mean the sort of human creatures that cultivate plants and till the soil; the sort who would live in a garden if they had the rain, and the land, and the security to do it; the kind that might even build a city if they really had to.
For this biblical writer human beings are in partnership with God, and we will see this idea developed as we go along. God sends the rain and the man tills the soil. This is a very high view of the place of human beings, but it is a strictly limited place. Human beings are dependent on God, but also necessary to him. If man is to have a creation he needs a creator; if God is to have a garden, he needs a gardener.
This is the view of mankind that George Eliot takes in her poem God Needs Antonio. In honest humility the great violin maker, Antonio Stradivari, calculates his place in the economy of God.
"When any master holds
'Twixt chin and hand a violin of mine,
He will be glad that Stradivari lived,
Made violins, and made them of the best
...For while God gives them skill
I give them instruments to play upon,
God choosing me to help Him.
...If my hand slacked
I should rob God -- since he is fullest good --
Leaving a blank instead of violins.
I say, not God himself can make man's best
Without best men to help him.
‘Tis God gives skill,
But not without men's hands: he could not make
Antonio Stradivari's violins
Without Antonio." – George Eliot
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