God gave many wonderful gifts to Adam and Eve, the first humans. Among the gifts were physical life and soul life that included self-awareness and free will. The couple were also gifts to each other, and together they were given a perfect world to explore, to regulate and to govern. But their greatest gift after life itself was speech.
Speech enabled them to move beyond instinct, to form thoughts, to imagine things and possibilities, to develop knowledge and wisdom, to communicate with God and with each other. Without speech Adam and Eve would have experienced one-dimensional consciousness on the level of animals; with it they were able to enjoy fellowship with God, to rule the natural world and to govern themselves.
When they rebelled against God, they lost everything but speech, for God would continue to communicate Truth to Adam’s race until fellowship was restored.
Larry P. Arnn of Hillsdale College explains about speech that it grows out of the ability to perceive and to use the common noun, the key to all speech. It is the thing that makes us what we are and differentiates us from animals. Arnn sees it as a miracle parallel to the miracle of Creation.
He explains that whenever we identify a thing, and name it, we are identifying the “good” and the “being” of the thing. Arnn quotes Aristotle who observed that there are many functions for a human being, and many of worth, but there is one that is the highest—to be interested in understanding and holding within, the good and true and beautiful; to know what beautiful things are; to describe them, to appreciate and contemplate their beauty; to develop wisdom. Through this process we become aware of things which give purpose and direction to our life, and it is all based on the common noun as an integral part of human speech.
Aristotle believed that a well-ordered human soul is one that appreciates beauty and has its life in order. The ancient Greek philosopher would be repelled by the disorderliness of life in modern America—the indiscipline, the self-centeredness, the greed, and the debasement of speech that debases everything else. Foul language is commonplace in the public square, and the hypnotic rhythm of virtually subhuman rap music with its grotesque focus on violence and perverted sex permeates all, from the ghetto to the White House. We are forgetting our history and forgetting our God. Our children are uneducated and feral, and our leaders believe only in themselves.
It may be too late to restore America the Beautiful when only a shell remains of the promise it once offered, but while there is a remnant who remain faithful to the Scriptures and to the Savior upon which this nation was founded, all is not lost. These repositories of Truth will continue to shine as beacons in the darkness, holding to the good and true and beautiful as they bear witness to the Light. They will educate their children, they will contemplate beauty, they will speak as the oracles of God. They are the hope of tomorrow.