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I would say that human reality is a difference of kind, not of degree, vis-a-vis insect reality. This ought to be self-evident: I haven't noticed any insects around devising scientific theories...

They live in their own reality, defined and made possible by their nature.

If there's "not much difference" between a man and an insect, then why don't we routinely find insects doing such things?

For the same reason you don't find humans weaving spider webs. It's their nature.

But it appears that only man possesses self-consciousness and rational mind.

To a greater or lesser degree. I am not sure to what degree a Neanderthal, 60,000 years ago, possessed self-consciousness and rational mind.

When you say that God "must" communicate with us in human terms...

It must be something we can detect and understand, in agreement with our nature, i.e. something we can see, hear and comprehend.

You seem to be saying that there's nothing man can do to "enlarge" his terms

Sure he can, within his nature. It can't be something that requires organs he doesn't have, something above his auditory frequency or outside of his visual spectrum, or his mental capacity; it must be in the language he understands, etc. The message must conform to the "measure of man" for man to receive it and understand it.

Even God communicating to us via four great revelations — only one of which is language-based, by the way; i.e., the Holy Scriptures — cannot enlarge our terms?

What four great revelations?

You have a bad habit of telling God what He ought and ought not to do. Thus you do make of yourself His "measure" — in your own mind.

You mean like God cannot lie? Even God cannot be what he is not by nature.

BTW, I also take issue with your remark that Plato "reduces" man to "a cosmos in miniature." How can this be a reduction, when it vastly expands our concept of man's nature?

It does?

E.g., that man recapitulates in himself all aspects of cosmic life — psyche, the organic world (animal, vegetative), and the inorganic world (compounds out of which physical bodies are composed). And at the same time that he exists eternally in the tension between the two divine "poles" of Limit (divine Nous, Epikeina) and Unlimited (the unfathomable depth of divine becoming, Apeiron)?

What cosmic life? Where in the cosmos do you find life except here on earth? Last time I checked, the divine Nous was not part of the cosmos, but rather its maker.

What four great revelations?

Quoting my dearest sister in Christ, Alamo-Girl:

God the Father has revealed Himself in four ways: in the Person of Jesus Christ His only begotten Son, in the Person of the indwelling Holy Spirit, in Scripture and in His Creation both physical and spiritual. And His revelations do not contradict each other.

You wrote: "Even God cannot be what he is not by nature."

Well that may very well be so; on the other hand, the point seems moot, since you yourself confess you do not know who or what God "is." So how can you speak of His "nature?"

You wrote: "What cosmic life? Where in the cosmos do you find life except here on earth?"

So far, we know of no life forms in the cosmos other than on earth. But this is to miss the point: What if the entire cosmos were a single, dynamically integrated living system? It's an intriguing question, with an ancient heritage. And it is being reconsidered by certain theoretical biologists in recent times.

Here's a question I find interesting: Which provides the "largest model" of the universe — physics, or biology? Until very recently, it's been taken for granted that Newtonian physics is the "largest model," and biology is but a "special case" of physics. This supposition is due to the comparative rarity (as far as we know) of life forms in the universe.

But if biology were to turn out to be the "largest model," and physics then relegated to a "special case" of this model, this may indicate that the entire universal system is in some fashion alive, that the Creation itself is a living creature....

I have a friend, a Hungarian astrophysicist and theoretical biologist, who has written a book on this subject — The Book of the Living Universe, by Atilla Grandpierre of the Hungarian Academy of Science. [Now available in Magyar and German, but hopefully coming soon in English....]

Personally, I think my friend is really on to something here. The ideas are fascinating.