A friend, Paul Buckley, has this to add to my comments about the image of God:
“This is coal to Newcastle, but: To your suggestion that what makes human making and speaking unique is their frequent gratuity, I’d add this (building on remarks from Sister Miriam Joseph’s The Trivium ), Human making and speaking are also uniquely progressive, developmental; they have an eschatology. Beavers have built dams for millennia, but there has been no development; beaver dams are what they were in the beginning. Whales and birds sing their songs, but they never move from plainsong to polyphony to Bach and beyond. Human beings, however, keep saying ‘Let us make . . . ’— to themselves or to one another — and the result is cultural development and new technology. Their speaking and making usher in new worlds. This is true at the micro level — ‘Marry me!’ ‘I do!’ — as well as the macro.”
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