Clough Proverbs Lesson 4

Differences between man & animals; Language; Perceptual & Conceptual Thought

 

We are still in a series that precedes a series and that is that before we undertake to study seriously the book of Proverbs we have to understand the terminology of the book of Proverbs.  That terminology involves words like spirit, flesh, body, soul and so on, terms which many believers know of but very few believers know about.  That is, these terms are used promiscuously and they are used without great definition, a lot of people are sloppy in their use of these words.  And so the original authors of Scripture too were sloppy in their use of those words, but we have found that the men who wrote the Word of God from Moses forward were known to have a great deal of understanding what these terms meant and it’s 20th century man that has lost the meaning of these words.  So in order for Proverbs to means something we have to stop, even before we start, and first go into a series on the terminology used in the book.  This is the psychology terminology of the book of Proverbs, as well as the rest of the Bible. 

 

In Genesis 2:7 we have the crux passage or the classic location for the constitution of man and how to visualize how man was made.  And again I say, as I have said a thousand times before, Genesis is meant to be taken as literal history, not as an allegory.  The reason we say this, and we have reasons for saying this, I am well aware of the problems that this is going to cause but the reason that we have to hold to this position is because this is the position of Jesus Christ.  It can be shown on the basis of New Testament documents that both Christ and the apostles held to a literal historical view of Genesis.  But if we are going to change the view of Genesis we must also, by implication, immediately say Jesus Christ was wrong in this area and if Christ was wrong in this area then logically it follows that He can be wrong in any area.  So it’s a very momentous decision you make when you try to allegorize Genesis out of feeling the pressures from certain theories of science. 

 

In Genesis 2:7 it’s stated that God formed man of the dust of the ground and there we have the first part of man, the body.  The body was finished and into that body God breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives.  That is the acquisition of the human spirit because as we have seen in earlier sessions this exact phrase is used in a synonymous way with the human spirit.  Again, let me warn you, and again let me point out that this phrase is not to be considered in some abstract way that some of you may have thought of in some class in philosophy somewhere or some discussion, that the soul is some abstraction, some thing that you can’t really grasp.  That is not what the people of the Old Testament thought. 

 

The people of the Old Testament did not usually think in terms of abstraction.  The people of the Old Testament thought in terms of something that could be seen, felt, touched and heard; that is how they thought.  And when they thought about the human spirit they didn’t think of some sort of spooky ghost.  When they thought of the human spirit they thought frankly of human breath.  That is the empirical sign of the existence of the human spirit, the breath, the sound of the breath and the feeling of the breath.  This is what the Old Testament man would have said when he said human spirit.  This is what he had on his mind.  Now that’s not to say that there isn’t something immaterial and you might say sort of spooky behind it.  That may be there but the Old Testament man wasn’t thinking just of that; he was thinking of the concrete breath and this verse certainly shows that to his way of thinking breath, the presence or the absence of the human spirit is synonymous with the presence or absence of human breath.

 

We dealt with the human body and last time I dealt with the concept of spirit and then we went one further step and dealt with the animal spirit.  Today we get to the human spirit.  So we’ve kind of approached this problem of the spirit more slowly than we have the problem of the body.  The reason obvious, the body is very easy to understand, the spirit is hard to understand.  And since Christian depends not on your emotions, as a lot of people think, but upon your intellect and how you perceive and understand first, before you can believe, then we have to spend time in understanding “spirit.”  So we dealt first with the basic concept of the word spirit; what is the idea behind the word “spirit?”  And we summarized this by saying spirit is the life-causing force; it is never seen directly, it is seen indirectly by perceiving the results of its existence, that is breath and so on.  So the spirit is not perceived directly, it is perceived indirectly by watching the effects it has. 

 

I thought it would be better to come into the human spirit slowly by first going to the animal spirit, and so last time we showed how in the Bible creation is divided in two parts.  The first part of creation is what we would call the non-reproducing part of creation, that is the rocks, in the chemical and physical makeup of the world you have non-reproducing entities.  It’s true these change, if you think of the stalactites and stalagmites but still these are not reproducing.  Then the reproducing area of creation would be the other parts and the Bible clearly notes this as the characteristic of the two categories.  I create, God says, plants that will reproduce after their kind; I create animals that reproduce after their kind; I create man that reproduces after his kind.  So what is this after its kind reproduction?  Translated in 20th century vernacular this would translate out as non-cellular material and cellular material.  And so we have those two categories of creation as the Bible views it.

 

Now the thing to watch here is that we have not introduced the word “life.”  For example, we have not said nonliving and living.  Notice that.  Now that’s the way it usually is presented in 20th century discussions, but that is not the way the Bible presents it.  And this is a very sharp distinction that has to be kept totally.  If you’re not clear on this watch it.  The Bible does not call all reproducing things living.  For example, plants are never said in the Bible to be living—never!  Just because it’s organic material doesn’t mean it’s living according to the Bible because the Bible has a different definition of life than we do. 

 

So we have to advance a little bit and understand what reproducing part of creation is.  And so we said of the reproducing part of creation we have that divided into two parts, and that in turn is divided into the nonliving and the living.  Roughly speaking, that corresponds to what we call the plant kingdom and the animal kingdom.  We put a question mark between because there is a problem in definition of one-cell beings, and this is why modern biologists have discussed this third kingdom called the Protoctista kingdom for those of you who are interested.  But there is a problem in just marking off the boundaries, we acknowledge that. 

 

However, the Bible seems to list three characteristics of the living things.  And these three characteristics, we said were possession of the characteristic of locomotion, possession of blood or its equivalent, and possession of breath: locomotion, blood and breath.  Those three things the Scripture usually indicates, if you up the word, watch how it’s used, you’ll find these three characteristics usually associated with that word: locomotion, breath and blood.  We said un-dogmatically that there probably is a fourth character­istic that is inferred and I think it’s very critical to see, the central nervous system.  Now this is probably the possession only of living creatures in the biblical sense of the word “living.”  Now what does the biblical word “living” mean?  Why are animals said to live and plants not to live?  The reason is that life in the Bible means possession of spirit in a body; that is the definition of life in the Bible, the indwelling of a spirit in a body.  That is how the word life is used.  Obviously plants do not have spirits; therefore by this definition they do not have life.  So plants are not living in the Bible sense. 

 

But now we come and today we are going to discuss this part; we have divided creation into non-reproducing and reproducing; we throw away the non-reproducing and talk about the reproducing.  We bring the reproducing over here, and divide it again into nonliving and living; throw away the nonliving and now we’re talking about the living and so today we deal with the living part of reproducing creation.  “Living” is divided into two parts again, into animals and man.  And today we want to study the difference between animals and man.  This is not just an academic discussion because this is the discussion that is the battleground over the issue of evolution.  On an evolutionary basis these two cannot be there; on an evolutionary basis there cannot be any significance between man and animal, I don’t care how you argue it, I don’t care how long you argue it, once you go over to an evolutionary definition man basically is no different than an animal… basically.  And this means, of course, if you hunt animals, morally speaking, there is no reason why you can’t hunt people.  If you feel it’s wrong to murder people then why do you hunt animals; why do you make a distinction between how you handle animals and how you handle people?  I have never heard anybody give me a satisfactory answer to this on the basis of evolution. 

 

We’re going to talk about the difference, for the Bible doesn’t say, it goes against the evolutionary thinking at this point.  This is where you can’t be a Christian if you’re going to be biblically grounded and be an evolutionist.  This is where the parting of the ways come, right here.  You can try by holding oil and water together and you can be a born again Christian and hold this false idea, of course, I’m not denying this but to be a consistent Christian we deny its possible because the two ideas collide and here’s the point of collision. 

 

Let’s look first and follow the procedure that we did last week.  Let’s first look at the difference as seen in the Bible, then let’s go to experimental data and see if we can find some experimental data on the difference between man and animals.  Thirdly, let’s combine the Bible and the experimental data and see what we come up with. So we’re going to do three things.  First, we’re going to go to the Bible and we’re going to examine what the Bible has to say about the differences between man and animal.  Then having done that we will move over to the area of the experiments that men have done and on the basis of those experiments try to come up with differences between man and animal.  Then doing that we combine the two together, for if we believe the Bible is the Word of God we must believe that it will be verified by experiment; we combine the two together and then see what we’re left with, what insight this gives into man.

 

First, what does the Bible say?  The first actual Scripture that would deal with this was found in a book written by a skeptic, the book of Ecclesiastes.  Ecclesiastes 3:21, by the way, it’s interesting for 20th century people to look carefully at Ecclesiastes 3:21 because Solomon, who wrote this about 1000 BC anticipated the despair of modern philosophy and in particular that area of philosophy that has led to evolution because in verse 21 he is questioning whether there is a difference between man and animal.  And so he says in verse 21 who really knows, and as I paraphrased this when we studied the book of Ecclesiastes in detail verse by verse it really reads this way, this is the spirit behind the Hebrew language here, “Who really knows whether it’s the spirit of man that goes up, or whether it’s the spirit of the beast that goes down.” 

In other words, Solomon is saying who really knows if there is any difference between man and the animals.  And he’s done this because this book starts out “under the sun,” operating on a naturalistic basis by 20th century men who deny the possibility or even want input of information from infinity, that is from God, who cut themselves off and wrap themselves up in their own intellectual cocoons and then try to work out from there.  On this basis they must come to the same position Solomon comes to in verse 21, who really knows whether there’s anything significant between man and the animals.  But I do want you to know the way he raises his despair is phrased the way an Old Testament saint would have thought about the difference between man and an animal.  The Old Testament saint expressed this difference between man and animal as “the spirit of man goes up and the spirit of animal goes down.”  That’s the way he had.  Or phrased in another way to bring the meaning more clearly to you, he is saying who really knows whether the spirit of man returns to God and the spirit of the beast is dissipated somehow in nature. So man, then, his spirit is associated with that which is upward or that which is godly; God-associated. 

 

That’s one passage of Scripture.  We have three other passages of Scripture, one is found in this chapter but I want to come back to it but logically we must go back to Genesis 1 again.  So let’s go back to Genesis 1:26; again, we’re looking for the difference between man and animal; for the difference, not the similarities now, the difference.  In verse 26 something is said about man that is fresh, it is new here.  “[And God said] Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” 

 

In that sentence God has said at least two things that is unique about man.  The first thing is that man is made in God’s image, whatever that means, we’ll deal with that in a moment.  Man is made in God’s image.  The second thing he has said is that man will rule over all animals; that man is the lord over them.  Notice also in verse 26 the introduction of something that disappears in verse 27 because in verse 26 you have God announcing the idea, announcing the plan, notice how He announces it in verse 26 and then notice what happens in verse 27 when that plan is carried out into action.  “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.” 

 

Now if you’ll look carefully in verse 27 God is a singular, God made, that’s singular.  But if you look at verse 26 it’s God plural, and there’s a shift that has occurred between verses 26 and 27.  What does that mean?  Verse 26 has been taken by scholars down through the centuries to be the first hint in the Bible that God is Triune, that there is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, there is a plurality within the Godhead.  Now oftentimes people will try to counter this and say well, the word God is a plural, in the Hebrew God is like this: Elohim, the “im” is a plural ending.  So in the Hebrew language the very word “God”… odd isn’t it, a monotheistic race developing a pluralistic name for God.  But it’s there.  Now the fact that the Christians down through the ages have said it’s no accident the Jews picked a plural name for God because God has a plurality within Himself, a plurality of personality. 

 

And this verse has been used to support the position because not only is Elohim plural in verse 26, but if you read it says “Let us make,” the verb is plural.  If you read further on you’ll see the pronoun, “our,” that’s a plural pronoun also.  So why these plurals?  These plurals support the contention that Elohim means plurality of something in God.  And later on the Bible reveals, in the progress of revelation, what the plurality is: the plurality of personality, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. 

 

Now in the entire creation narrative doesn’t it strike you as a bit odd that God’s plurality never becomes an issue in the text except this verse?  Why only verse 26?  Why not all the other verses?  This means that there’s something about the plurality of God that is connected with the image of God in man.  Now if the plurality of God has reference to God’s personality, which the doctrine of the Trinity later shows, the plurality really is related to the concept of God as personality, this tells us what image of God is.  Man made in the image of God means that man shares that which is like God Himself, that man too is a personality.  And in this way we have something very, very startling and you have to be careful how you say it or you’re going to be in trouble, and that is you have a distinction between God and man in the Bible; that distinction is absolute.  God alone is the Creator, He is infinite.  Man is the creature and he is finite.  That is an absolute distinction that cannot be removed.  But here we have a distinction that seems to blur it and that is both man and God share personality.  This makes man the most God-like of all creatures.  Man and man alone possesses personality.  This is what is God-like in man.

 

Now some have gone further than this; some have gone further than this and down through the ages we have had a heresy known as anthropomorphism, or the anthropomorphites.  This began in the 4th century and it is a heresy that says the image of God not only refers to man’s personality but it refers to man’s body, that is, that man is made in God’s image, including not just the spiritual personality but in his actual physical body so that God too has a body and man’s body is the image of God’s body.  Today this reappears in the writings of the Mormons.  So down through the history of the church there has been this anthropomorphite heresy.  

 

The reason you have to be careful here is that in part this not a heresy; in part it is and in part it is not.  In part it is a heresy in the sense that God is not limited to a body; “God is a spirit,” John 4:24 says, “and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth.”  He is not a body, and yet when God incarnates Himself He doesn’t become a plant; when God incarnates Himself He doesn’t become an animal like all the other ancient near eastern gods; if you go into the ancient east, isn’t it interesting, when the gods appear they appears as Horus, think of Horus in Egypt.  Horus appears as a falcon.  Think of the winged bull in Assyria, the god appears as an animal.  But in the area of Hebrew culture of the Old Testament God can only appear in one form and only one form—man.  No idol can be ever made of God because man is the closest thing that comes to representing what God is like.  So you might say this: if God would appear in a finite form He would appear as a man, and He did, in Jesus Christ, the incarnation. 

 

So man then becomes very important and from this we can amplify “what image” of God means in man.  It means that man was created to be the vehicle for God’s incarnation; that God could not incarnate Himself in any other area of creation; He could only incarnate Himself in man.  Man becomes the vehicle for God’s incarnation.  This means that man is more, even, than personality.  Think of this for a moment; angels and demons have personalities but man is more than even just personality; man is living personality, that is, personality expressing itself in a physical body.  So more than just the angels, man is a living… remember the definition of life; life is a spirit indwelling a body and so man is a living personality.  Why does a living personality have the advantage over non-living personality; why is this?  Living personality can express itself and express love as nonliving personality can’t and this is shown in the life of Jesus Christ.  What did Jesus Christ do that showed a characteristic or attribute of God that could never have been shown in any other way, that could never have been shown at any other point in history but that was only shown by Jesus Christ on the cross?  All of you know John 3:16, what does John 3:16 do?  “For God so loved the world that” what?  “He gave His only begotten Son,” therefore what is living personality able to do?  It is able to give up its life for others, and therefore living personality can express love as nonliving personality can never do.  No angel can express the love of God; only man can express the love of God because only man can give up his life for somebody else.  Personality can give up its life for someone else, and so a living personality, as man is and the angels are not, is able and is the only part of creation that can fully express God’s moral character. 

 

So we come back again, what is the image of God and man?  It is the characteristics of man that make him alone, of all the beings in creation, I don’t care whether you go to the galaxies or somewhere else, it is not true that there’s ever going to be found some creature, Martian or non-Martian that will be closer to God than man.  The proof we have is that Christ incarnates Himself as man and at the end time, in Revelation 21-22 God’s temple is not set up on Mars, it’s set up on the earth.  The earth, with man, is the center of all existence.  And so this is a fantastic and very, very powerful concept.  The “image of God” means that man is a living personality, as a living personality He can choose to die for His brethren.  This is why in 1 John 3:16 John says, “Hereby perceive we the love…” the love, the King James it says “the love of God,” but in 1 John 3:16, not John 3:16, 1 John 3:16 it says, “Hereby perceive we the love,” no other way can you see it except here, John says.  “Hereby perceive we the love because He laid down His life for us, and therefore we are to lay down our lives for the brethren.”  So living personality has the image of God and this means living personality can express God’s moral character, in particular the love of God, like no other part of creation. 

 

So that’s one thing we learn about man that’s different from the animals.  The animal has a body but he doesn’t have personality, so the animal can’t be a person that dies for somebody.  The angels have personality but they don’t have a body so they can’t give up anything by way of life for anybody.  So only man can give up his life for something else, the supreme sacrifice. 

 

Now Genesis 2:19-20, another thing that differs between man and animals, a very, very important thing.  Those of you are troubled a lot with the evolutionary problem, those of you taking anthropology, those of you taking sociology, Genesis 2:19-20, pay very careful attention here because there’s something that you’ll run into in your field.  “And out of the ground the LORD God had formed,” Genesis 2 does not conflict with Genesis 1, if you want a discussion about the so-called two creation accounts, read Gleason Archer, Introduction to Old Testament Survey, R. K. Harrison, Introduction to the Old Testament, Kenneth Kitchen, Ancient Orient and the Old Testament, this is clearly discussed if you have problems with various things in the classes.  These [can’t understand word] are not individual creationist [can’t understand word].  It’s just a fundamental misunderstanding of the Hebrew concept of history. 

 

Verse 19, “Out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field, and had formed every fowl of the air; and He brought them to Adam…”  Now why did God bring some, now He’s not bringing the whole animal creation to Adam for naming here; this process of naming in verse 19 is still going on today by the biologists.  Verse 19 didn’t stop with Adam; verse 19 is being completed by taxonomy, modern science, still working on verse 19.  But Adam at least named a sample of creation.  But notice what He says: God says we wanted to see what Adam would call them.  Notice why, because there’s another reason given in the next verse.  Don’t read the next verse yet; in verse 19 just look at the one reason given: to see what Adam is going to name them.  So you have Adam using what?  Adam is using language… Adam is using language!  Now there’s something associated with this because in verse 20, “And Adam give names to all the cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field,” this does not mean literally every beast of the field because kol in the Hebrew can mean every kind of beast and so on, “but for Adam there was not found an help,” and sometimes we read this helpmeet but it should be just help, and then the word “meet” means suited for him.  So this is another reason for naming that’s involved; it’s not just that all the animals came and Adam put a little tag on them, said you are this, you are this, you are this, you’re a dog, you’re a cat, you’re a bird and so on.  It’s not just that Adam is putting labels on them.  So more than just putting labels on them he’s trying to understand their being and having understood there being he comes to the conclusion that he cannot have personal relationship with any of them.  And then comes along woman, and then he stopped naming animals, then he names her.  But the point is that “name” means not just labels but understanding.  So we have, then, man using language for the purpose of understanding his environment.  This the animals do not do.  Language is not used to understand the environment by animals, only by man. 

 

Now here’s an interesting point that we throw out to those who would pooh-pooh the Genesis account of creation and who would whole heartedly assume that evolution must be correct.  The question we throw out for your thought is this: Language is non-instinctive; language can never be a product of instinct.  Language is always taught to you by someone who has spoken the language before you.  The question is, then, who taught Adam to speak.  If language must always be taught and is a non-instinctive thing, then who taught Adam how to speak?  Those of you would like to do more reading on this, I refer to Arthur Custance’s paper, Who Taught Adam to Speak it’s available from Box 291, Brockville Ontario, Canada, and on page 2 of this he points out this little interesting fact.  “We have on record the case of two feral children,” feral is the word for wild, raised in the wild.  There’s an actual case of two children that were raised, don’t ask me how they were raised in the wild, apart from human means.  So, “We have on record the case of two feral children, brought up entirely in the wild, without any human companionship except that which they were themselves companions in isolation.  These two feral children never between themselves spoke a single word of any form whatever.  Thus we find that even in the presence of another human being and the possession of a human brain still does not cause language.” 

 

This is interesting because the evolutionist always says you just have to have a big enough brain and then suddenly language automatically comes.  That’s not the case.  Why, then, did the feral children who have the brain potential, are they not able to speak, even with the brain.  So the mere possession of the brain is not sufficient to speak.  So they have to have, not even another human being, they have to have another speaking human being.  So these two children they had the possession of a human brain but they did not in themselves constitute the necessary framework within which speech must inevitably appear.

 

So therefore if speech requires the existence of someone else who is there who speaks first, then who taught Adam to speak, and the answer, of course, is given in the text.  In Genesis 3:8, after the fall this is but still it refers back to a custom, notice what Adam and Eve did.  After they fell, then in verse 8 it says, “And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden,” this is Jesus Christ in His preincarnate form, “walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.”  Very physical, not some fairy story of allegories and [can’t understand word], this is very physical, we are visualizing the God Himself in human form walking in the Garden.  That is how Adam learned to speak.  God, the Son, taught him how to speak.  This is why, if you go back to Genesis 1, you have such a strange emphasis by the writer of Genesis 1 on speech. 

 

For example, look at Genesis 1:3, what does it say?  “God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”  Verse 5, “God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night.”  Why the emphasis on language?  Because God is the first speaker, God is the first understander, God is the One who speaks, who describes by means of language and understands.  He is the one who initiates the process.  Verse 6, “And God said, Let there be a firmament,” His idea is expressed in language.  Verse 8, “God called the firmament Heaven.”  God understands and linguistically describes creation.  Verse 9, “God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together.”  Verse 10, “God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas.”  Verse 11, “God said.”

 

And by the way notice at verse 11 something stops, in verse 11 He no longer calls; it seems as though up to verse 10 God has called, He has given man the structure of night and day, darkness, light, earth and sea.  That’s the framework in which life occurs.  Now beginning with the plants God does not name them; this is left to man to name, as though God has developed a basic vocabulary, He teaches man how to speak, how to reason, and then from this time forward it’s up to man to call the things.  So in verse 11 “God said.”  Verse 14, “God said.”  Verse 20, “God said.”  Verse 22, “God said.”  Verse 24, “God said.”  Verse 26, “God said.”  Verse 28, “God blessed them and said.”  Verse 29, “God said.”  So you have language, language, language, language, language, and then after all of God’s language, then Adam speaks, and God brings the animals and says Adam, now you speak, I taught you how to speak, you go to it, use your language as the tool by which you conquer the earth.

 

Language, then, becomes the means of man’s conquest of his environment.  So we have two things according to the Bible that man differs from the animal.  The first thing is that he is made in God’s image, meaning that he has living personality, capable fully of expressing God’s moral character.  The second thing about man that differs from the animals is that man and man alone speaks and because he speaks, he and he alone can understand. 

 

A third verse in the Bible to show the difference between man and animals, Ecclesiastes 3:11.  In Ecclesiastes 3 we have one of the most critical basic verses describing man in the entire Bible.  If you understand Ecclesiastes 3:11 you can understand the problem that man has and why man’s problem can never be solved except by divine revelation.  I don’t care how many years you spend in the academic pipe you come out the end, if you have not been in touch with divine revelation all you come out with is a pile of miscellaneous disorganized facts.  That’s all you have; you have no framework whatever for understanding it. 

 

Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has made everything beautiful in its time;” that wasn’t taken from the popular song, “God has made everything fitting,” the word “beautiful” means fitting and it’s a word for rational order, “beautiful in its time” means everything in the universe fits together in a logical functioning theme.  That’s what that essentially is saying in verse 11, “God has made everything functioning together,” and then he says a second assertion, “also God has set wholen,” and the word translated “world” is h-o-l-e-n, actually “w-h,” and wholen is a word that means eternity, the sense of absolute universals, eternity.  And so it says God not only has made all things functioning together logically and rationally but in addition to that He has put something in the heart of man, and only in the heart of man, not in the heart of animals, only in the heart of man this is, and what is it that He has put into the heart of man that He has not put in the heart of animals, it is wholen, eternity. 

 

“God has set eternity into their heart,” but then there’s a paradox in verse 11 and verse 11 ends with a paradox.  Two assertions, everything fits together logically with a purpose for the word “time” can mean way or purpose; the second assertion is that man has been given this sense of eternity in his heart.  But then the third thing and this is a very sad thing about verse 11 and I must say it’s a very sad thing about 99.9% of your education today, He has done this “so that no man can find the work that God makes from the beginning to the end.”  Now the phrase, “the work that God makes from the beginning to the end,” what is the beginning and the end?  It’s wholen, eternity, from the beginning to the end, from the alpha to the omega; no man can find it out.  And so here’s the paradox; man is a finite creature but there’s something in man’s heart that says man, you must be anchored to an infinite source of reference. 

 

And so Solomon says here’s my dilemma, and Solomon, remember, he’s operating with a naturalistic presupposition, “under the sun,” he throws out revelation here, he’s throwing it out, no revelation, no Bible, get it out of  here, the Supreme Court doesn’t like it so get it out.  Then we come over to the naturalistic presupposition and on the basis of this Solomon says now what do I do?  Here I am, I’m finite, I’m limited, but on the other hand I have this crying in my heart that I must know something that is absolute.  And I’m left there… I’m left there.  Verse 11 teaches, then, God-consciousness.  All men are God conscious.  That means they want to know what is the total picture?  What is the meaning of it all?  When you ask the question it can only be answered with the word “God.”  That is God-consciousness and here is where it’s taught in the Bible; it’s taught many other places but it’s taught here to.

 

So let’s stop with this and move over to the second area. We’ve dealt with what the Bible teaches, we’ve said that the Bible teaches at least three areas where man differs from animals.  (1) He is the image of God, meaning he’s a living personality capable of expressing God’s moral character.  (2) Man and man alone uses language, not just to signal that he’s hungry but he uses languages to understand.  Think of Adam, he’s not putting labels on the animals; he’s trying to understand them.  And (3) the third thing about man that is not true of the animals is that man and man alone has a sense and a crying need to anchor himself in the face of eternity; he needs an eternal infinite anchor.

 

Now let’s come to the work of the experiment and see if the experimental results suggest that the Bible is in fact true; maybe the Bible isn’t true, maybe it’s false, it has to be tested.  And so therefore let’s see what some of the experimental results are between man and animals.  Let’s go back to a diagram we used last week.  By the way, the terminology and much of the sources of these experiments I am indebted to Mortimer Adler from the book, The Difference of Man and the Difference it Makes.  I’m making slightly different use of it than he does but nevertheless that’s the source for those of you who are interested. 

 

Plants, animals, man; let’s see how they differ.  Plants receive a stimulus and there’s an immediate response; think of the ivy growing up the wall, if you want to train you ivy you constantly put the stimulus to make the ivy grow in the shape that you want it; you know that if you remove the stimulus the ivy will not follow that form.  So a plant requires continual stimulus.  [Tape turns]

 

…recognize patterns, you can train dogs to recognize number, you can train dogs and so forth, and so that’s why we said that with animals we have something different than with plants.  Animals can acquire learned behavior patterns.  That’s what’s different between animals and plants.  Animals can acquire learned behavior patterns.  And we’ve associated the acquisition of LBP, learned behavior patterns, this will be the abbreviation from this time forward, if you see this it’s learned behavior patterns.  And animals have learned behavior patterns, the plants do not.  This we have associated with the animal spirit.  It is the spirit in animals that allows for the development of learned behavior patterns.  Follow this because actually today we’re going to come very, very close to the heart of the book of Proverbs.  Men also are not simple like plants; between the stimulus and the response of man lies another process and that process is not perceptual thought; that process in man is called conceptual thought.  I will try to show you the difference.

 

Conceptual thought, obviously if you look at the word it has something to do with concepts, and that’s the difference.  Animals think but with no concepts; man thinks and he has concepts, meaning ideas.  There’s the difference between animals and plants.

 

Now let’s take, for example, language. Animals do not use language.  Some of you may challenge and say oh yes they do, a dog barks, bees have a certain system, the honey dance of the bee in the hive, don’t animals have some sort of language with which they communicate one to another?  No, not as we use the word language. The two are divided by the following words; animals use signals, man uses language. 

 

Let’s take one example to see if we can understand the difference between language operating as a signal and language operating just as language.  Take the ringing of a bell; you ring a bell and over the years your dog has been conditioned so that when he hears the bell he knows food is there.  So you ring the bell and immediately the dog has replaced in his mind, in his thought processes for he has them, he replaces meal with the bell; the stimuli has been shifted.  He can recognize there’s a pattern that connects the bell to the food.  A dog can do that, he can recognize patterns because he has perceptual thought; he perceives the bell by audio sense.  He perceives the food because he smells.  He perceives the food because he tastes.  So he has sensory input and the dog can take these two stimuli and work them together and come out with a reaction.  He reacts to your bell because he has been trained that bell means food. 

 

Now let’s take the same thing with a man.  He hears the bell; now he may react the same way the dog does, he may come in and eat because he says the bell is something to eat.  But the man, at the same time, can in his mind think of other words; he can think of the word bell, he can think of the word my, what a bad noise that is, horrible sounding bell, we ought to get another bell, that bell sounds bad.  Or he may think of gee, that’s a nice gadget my wife has to let me know that supper’s ready.  In other words, there can be many thoughts run through his mind beside food.  He can also think of food, he can say hmmm, Tuesday night, this is when my wife usually has my favorite dessert.  In other words thoughts and concepts can run through his mind in addition to just the word bell. 

 

And so these are various thoughts an they have various meanings and they can’t be derived from the bell.  He didn’t learn those; he didn’t learn about his wife’s dessert because every time she fixed the dessert she rang the bell.  There might have been other times she fixed the dessert and the bell didn’t ring.  So that wasn’t taught, all of his ideas weren’t taught like the dog is caused to respond to the bell.  Man has meaning, man has concepts.  Now this means that man in his use of language, signals may just be a reaction or a learned behavior pattern.  For example, in the service when you give various commands, you have various commands; people are taught in the military largely to react almost on an animal-like lever.  Command, reaction; command, reaction; command, reaction, you don’t think, you just react.  And this has to be because of the crudeness of war.  In the warfare situation you’ve got to react and not think, you haven’t got time to think it through. 

 

However, man normally uses language and in language words do not get their meaning just from usage.  A lot of people in the 20th century think words get their meaning just from usage. That is not true; usage helps but there are concepts that do not come from mere experience.  And so words gain their meaning from concepts, or ideas and these the animal does not have.  Therefore we have the following process that distinguishes language: we have a word, we have an idea and we have the object.  Going back to our dinner bell analogy we have the word “bell,” we have the object “supper,” but we have the idea, we can have various ideas, and so the word, through the idea can cause us to understand. 

 

Going back to Genesis we can now understand what Adam was doing, he wasn’t just attaching words to objects.  Adam was not attaching words to object!  Adam was taking the word “deer,” the word “bird,” the word “dog,” the word “cat,” and he wasn’t just attaching them to objects, he was discovering categories that were there.  And since he was discovering categories that were there he was using concepts and ideas and meaning.  So therefore he was not using language as a mere labeling device; Adam was using language as a tool of understanding.

 

And so we come very rapidly, if you want to read all the details, there’s a grand philosophical discussion, I don’t want to bore you with the details, I suggest you read Adler on this.  The key difference from experiments is this, that in order to explain what we observe between animals using signals and man using language we have to say that man uses meaning and has ideas and concepts.  There’s no other way of explaining the data, I don’t care what you are, Christian or non-Christian, it doesn’t make any difference, you’ve got to come up with an explanation of why animals use signals and man doesn’t.  Man uses something more than just signals.  And the only explanation for this is that man has concepts.

 

Now let’s tie these together and use this to understand the book of Proverbs.  We said the Bible teachers there are three things about man.  Instead of reviewing those three things let’s tie it altogether into one and draw our little chart: plants, animals and man.  Plants—stimulus, reaction.  Animals—stimulus, learned behavior pattern, reaction.  Now man has stimulus and reaction but he doesn’t just have a learned behavior pattern, he has something else; we call that understanding.  Man has something different than just learned behavior patterns; he’s not just trained to react like a dog.  Man has understanding besides learned behavior patterns, that is what man has and animals do not.  Man understands and he has learned behavior patterns. 

 

Now this has something important for your Christian life, though you may not think so.  All advanced understanding hangs on one thing, that we can anchor it in the face of eternity.  If he can’t anchor his categories so that they will be everlastingly there, he can never say I understand it.  It’s only as he anchors his categories against eternity that he can say “I understand.”  I understand what it is.  Only when he has a God who reveals the categories, only when he has a God who provides the reason, provides the framework, then only does he have understanding.  So therefore man being God-conscious, and because he is God-conscious, demands to understand.  He needs understanding. 

 

Now we can see this in another way.  Animals can have some learned behavior patterns…some learned behavior patterns but most of animal behavior is instinctual; most of animal behavior is not learned behavior patterns, most is like the plants, its instinctive… it’s instinctive!  Now, think through your own life, think through the life of people, how much of human behavior is truly instinctive?  And you have to come up with the answer very, very little.  Dr. Custance points out and I have to take him as the authority that man alone is the only animal… the only animal that will drink when he’s not thirsty, and he’s the only animal when his body is dehydrated he will never drink enough.  In other words, man even in his eating and drinking is non-instinctive.  Man, unlike the animals, has to even learn consciously how to eat and how to drink.  The animal largely does not, with some exceptions, largely does not. 

 

So what am I saying, this last illustration?  All I’m saying is this, that man is distinguished from the animals because he has very little instinctive behavior… very little!  Most of what you call behavior patterns and I call behavior patterns is learned behavior patterns, not instinctive behavior patterns.  See the animals, most of it is IBP, instinctive behavior pattern and a little bit is learned behavior pattern.  But with man very, very little, we’ll draw it very little here so you can hardly see it, very little of man is instinctive behavior pattern and very, very much is learned behavior pattern. 

 

Now let’s tie this with man’s God-consciousness.  Why do you suppose God made man with so little instinct and so much to learn?  Because every time you and I have to learn something we must learn it with understanding and learn it, therefore, before God who is there so that our entire life must be lived in the face of eternity, and the face of the understanding we have of God.  And so man is made this way; he is deliberately made so he has to learn everything, details, details, details, details, details, details, details, and this is one reason why as babies in the human race have to be left with their mother far, far longer than babies in the animal kingdom.  The mother, particular, must teach every little thing to man because his behavior is so very little instinctive; it’s all learned, and learning with a man involves not just training but learning with understanding and therefore also obedience.

 

Let’s turn in conclusion to Proverbs 1:23, here is an expression, an expression that is misused in many circles today simply because men have not taken the time, and it does take time, to understand.  Some of you who have been around certain fundamental circles for any length of time will recognize this expression.  “Turn you at my reproof; behold, I will pour out my spirit unto you, I will make know my words unto you.”  Now isn’t this interesting, because most of the time when you hear this word, “I pour out my spirit” it’s in the context of so-called Pentecostal movement where in the latter days we’re going to have a pouring out of the Spirit of God and that pouring out of the Spirit of God is always associated with some emotional, ecstatic type experience.  But isn’t it interesting that where this phrase is first used, here, it doesn’t refer to emotions at all; it refers to language, because the synonymous parallel with pouring my spirit is “let my words,” language, “be made known to you.” 

 

What does it mean, then, God is going to pour out His spirit?  It means He is going to open the canon once again and begin revealing; it has nothing to do with emotions and ecstatic; it has to do with the re-opening of the canon of Scripture.  The pouring out of the Spirit of God in the latter days does not have anything to do with ecstatics; it has to do with God once again speaking language to the human race, that’s what it has to do with.  And it doesn’t mean gobbledy-gook language either.  It means literal language that can be understood as I would speak to you face to face. 

 

So notice, please, in verse 23, that the human spirit that Solomon pours out to his son, let me so son pour out my spirit to you.  How do you pour out your spirit to somebody?  The last phrase tells you, you communicate concepts that are rooted in your spirit into their spirit, the transmission of ideas and concepts.  That is a spiritual move; that is a spiritual process, that’s what it means, and this is what distinguishes man from animals: he can pour out his spirit as language, communicating ideas that are rooted in the existence of God.  And he can turn around and say I don’t believe God exists, but he has to, as it were, always replace God with an idol.   This is most unique and this has been proven. 

 

I refer, for example, to the Calvinist philosopher, Herman Dooyeweerd who’s written four volumes, very deep writings, but I’ll tell you one thing, he certainly shows you on a shadow of a doubt that no matter who you are, you can do away with God, yes, but immediately when you try to do away with God you can’t help it but pops up an idol, and you try to push the idol down and you turn around and another idol pops us.  And Dooyeweerd proves that it’s the process of concept always to evoke an idol because the idol is the anchor for all the concepts.  So no matter who you are today, whether you are a Christian or a non-Christian, whether you believe the Bible, whether you don’t, whether you think it’s all a bunch of bull or whether you think it’s the real absolute truth, whatever your idea is, you must have a god; you have to because you are made in God’s image, whether you believe in Him or not, you are a functioning spirit that uses language and all language requires concepts and concepts require and anchor and an anchor is an idea as an idol or God.  So no matter who you are, you have to have a God.

 

And we conclude with the challenge to you, is your God the person of the Lord Jesus Christ is He not.