How is he formed and created, and by Whom? Why and for what purpose?
When does the individual Man start existing?
Here I will attempt to answer the Who, What, When, Where and Why questions about Man. The only way that this can be does in writing - ever - is very, very briefly. Indeed, when all the books about the first fully-human Human would fill the whole world, to describe those who are not (or, please God, not-yet) fully human would fill an entire galaxy or the whole internet. It would take eternity to discern what it means to be human; it will take eternity to discern what it means to be human. Thus, this brief post will start with the questions of the creation of Man, the How, When and by Whom Man is created and then discuss Why he was made. From this we will venture into the nature of Man and What he is. It may take several posts.
This particular post will deal with Man’s Creator: God. [1]
God’s main, in fact only, business is God. The One who holds everything in existence and in Whom all things exist has nothing better to think about than Himself. He is totally worthy of all the thought and attention of an infinite mind, which He possesses. Even while God is only thinking about Himself, He is in fact actually thinking of everything that ever has been or ever will be created since it all exists in Him and He is eternal.[2] Thus, God thinks only of Himself and in doing so necessarily thinks of all that is, was, ever has been and ever will be.
God has perfect intellect, everything that God thinks about - that is, the thought of the thing - contains everything that He knows about it. We already know that God is omniscient (all-knowing) and so we can reason that any idea of God’s will contain in it the totality of the thing itself. That is to say, God’s idea of Himself will (and does) include its very nature. When God thinks about Himself, His idea contains His very nature. His Idea is God; it is the Divine Logos; God the Son. But there is only one God because He is infinite and you cannot have two infinite beings.
God, being so immensely Lovable, loves His Idea which, in turn, returns that Love. Since God is Love, the exchange of the Love between the Father (the One who Thinks) and the Son (the Logos) is in fact another Person, yet still the One God. We call the Third Person the Holy Spirit.
What is God? God. Who is God? Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
God is a Communion of Persons.
Man (as in mankind) is created in the image and likeness of God and, yet, is individual. From the knowledge that God created Man in His own Image and Likeness, we can gather that he - that is, Man - is created through, with and in relationship and cannot be as he is intended to be away or apart from relationship, apart from a community that reflects the intimacy of the Godhead. This will be the topic of the second post in this series.
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1. It is important to note that of all the topics covered in this series, this will be the least complete since we, being finite, can only know a finite amount of anything. That is, if we can know everything it is humanly possible to know about God (Who, remember, is infinite) we still know basically nothing. A finite number taken away from the infinite may as well be taking nothing.
2.Eternal, in this sense, meaning the experience of all of time in the moment.
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