Giovanni Pico della Mirandola believes that man is God’s greatest and most unique creation. “Enosh hu shinnujim vekammah tebhaoth haj” — “man is a living creature of varied, multiform and ever-changing nature.” said Chaldean. Man was created by the immediate hand of God, and is genetically different from all other creatures. His complex nature is composed of two elements, two distinct substances, body and soul according to the bible.
Man was created in the likeness of God as to the perfection of his nature, in knowledge,righteousness and holiness,and as having dominion over all the inferior creatures. Giovanni Pico suggests that what truly makes humanity remarkable is that, unlike all else in God’s creation, humans are not fixed in state or form, nor tied to a particular course or destiny, but rather have both the potential and the free will to choose what they do and in what condition they end up”. He says “that man is the intermediary between creatures, that he is the familiar of the gods above him as he is the lord of the beings beneath him; that, by the acuteness of his senses, the inquiry of his reason and the light of his intelligence, he is the interpreter of nature, set midway between the timeless unchanging and the flux of time; the living union (as the Persians say)” According to Genesis 5: 1-2 “This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created”. Man will always be God’s greatest creation.
God put man here to have dominion in place of Satan. “We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.
” God, who is depicted as a demiurge one who is responsible for the creation of the universe and as an architect. God solved this problem by putting man at the center of the world so that he could better see what is there and by giving him the ability to choose his own place, which then gave him the opportunity to determine his own destiny. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola also proposed that magic has two forms. “One consists wholly in the operations and powers of demons, and consequently this appears to me, as God is my witness, an execrable and monstrous thing. The other proves, when thoroughly investigated, to be nothing else but the highest realization of natural philosophy.” He called those who have obtained the divine truth, magicians and that the magician is the minister and not the maker of nature. “Oration on the Dignity of Man” is pretty much saying that people have free will and are able to make decisions affecting their destinies. Man has the opportunity to take control of his life and live it how he wants to.
Pico believed that men were the last thing created by God and that God’s purpose was to fulfill his desire for someone to appreciate life with. According to Merriam Webster Dictionary humanism, is a doctrine, attitude, or way of life centered on human interests or values; especially : a philosophy that usually rejects supernaturalism and stresses an individual’s dignity and worth and capacity for self-realization through reason.
