God's first partnership with man

Gen 2:19 Now out of the ground the LORD God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

This was the first collaborative effort between God and man. God partnered with man and invited him into the creative process. God created and then gave Adam the privilege of naming what He had just made. Though nothing on the scale, *or in the absolute sense of what God had done, it was nevertheless no small act. To name something or someone is to assign *identity/uniqueness and particular significance to that which is named. This was left solely up to Adam.

Though naming the animals seems small in comparison 
to creating physical/material **out of nonmaterial, man too was creating something out of nothing merely by speaking -- speaking something (a name) into existence that didn't exist beforehand. This was not only like what God had done but was in response to it. By this simple act God identified himself with man, illustrating how man was in His image. God was tying man's identity to Himself and His to man's. God partnered with man in creation by doing what He does, create; and man doing what he could do, naming the creatures. 

This is an indication of the sameness as well as the difference between God and man. Man could do this because he was in Gods image but also because of what God had  already done first, create. Naming the creatures was a kind of creative effort/process and not an insignificant one. Whatever Adam called them was how they be would be identifed from then on. Man was behaving like God, only on a finite level. 

So we see in this one act the contrast between the infinite God and finite man and at the same time the sameness of man and God; man being in his image. 
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* Just as God out of His heart and mind spoke everything into existence, so man, out of his heart and mind, spoke the identity of all creation into existence. Both spoke into existence something that was not previously there, so in this way it was the similar process with a different result i.e. creation is tangible, a name is not, though it has a material effect on the tangible. 


** ex nihilo