Adam’s solitide

In one of the early meditations in his Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology Of The Body , John Paul II mused on the anthropological import of Adam’s initial solitude in the garden. He notes that the story of Adam’s naming the animals points to the fact that “self-knowledge goes hand in hand with knowledge of this world, of all visible creatures, of all the living beings to which man has given their names.” This is self-knowledge, and not merely knowledge of the other creatures because in naming the animals Adam discovers “his own dissimilarity before them,” so that “with this knowledge, which makes him go in some way outside of his own being, man at the same time reveals himself to himself in all the distinctiveness of his being.”

The naming of the animals, which takes place before the differentiation of Adam into male and female, is thus a way of displaying humanity’s distinction from the animals, the fact that “he cannot identify himself essentially with the visible world of the other living beings.”  And this, in turn, places man in his fundamental relation, with God: “the created man finds himself from the first moment of his existence before God .”

And yet (beyond John Paul): It is not good for him to be alone before God.  Before God, not merely in his “cultural” work of filling and subduing, man needs a helper suitable to him.  He needs a liturgical partner.