Abstract
In this anticipated work, Celia Deane-Drummond draws together themes she has been writing about over the last five years or so in various publications. Her main goal is to rearticulate a Christian theological anthropology in the context of a renewed understanding of the place of the human in relation to nature and other animals. In order to do so, she engages in a fruitful dialogue with evolutionary science, yet with trepidation. She notes particularly with regard to evolutionary accounts of human behaviour, how some presentations have been over-simplified and presented as monistic and holistic explanations of why we feel and act the way we do. She suggests that evolutionary accounts of human behaviour have generally been presented as insular, but acknowledges that such insularity is often reciprocated by theologians who continue to build anthropologies from purely theological sources. This strategy, she feels, is doomed to failure as it denies our God-given creatureliness (p. 18). Therefore, although she worries about evolutionary depictions of human behaviour being presented as hierarchically supplanting psychological and other dimensions of the human, she sees clear value in such accounts, as they appreciate our creatureliness and kinship with the animals.
Emphasizing our relationship with the animals is a theme that runs throughout this book, and she therefore (ironically) critiques most Christian anthropologies for being too anthropocentric. For example, Deane-Drummond takes the Augustinian anthropology of humanity as originally sinful which has been dominant in Western Christianity, and points out how Augustine’s reflections on the goodness of creation has been often overlooked (p. 296). Aquinas too, she notes, adopted aspects of Augustine’s platonic influences, noting the goodness of creation, and thus she feels ‘wider-than-human’ elements of their theologies need to be recalled. Her wish to emphasize the commonalities between humanity and animals, however, does lead her into a tension that she struggles with. Deane-Drummond admits, for example, there are only very dubious suggestions that animals act out of anything other than concupiscence, and consequently, human morality and behaviour can be signalled as something ‘other’ in an anthropology (p. 297). In these senses, she acknowledges that though she keeps trying to get away from it, she keeps coming back to human distinctiveness—the kind of Teilhardian understanding of evolution as humans breaching a certain boundary. There are of course problems with an emphasis on human uniqueness, but with regard to morality, it does seem clear we have breached something—indeed, this is the basis for Deane-Drummond’s only substantive criticism of evolutionary accounts of morality as far as I can tell.
Another tension that emerges in this work is her want to appreciate evolutionary accounts of goodness but at the same time balance her metaphysical presuppositions which stem from Aquinas. She is forthright about her theological presuppositions and comes across sympathetic to Aquinas’s metaphysical priority of revelation (p. 25). Deane-Drummond also comes across enamoured by Andrew Pinset’s adoption of Aquinas and an understanding of morality that is intricately bound together with the concept of grace (p. 149). In this sense, one expects that she adopt at least in part, an identifiable idea of morality as coming ‘from above’: that human beings ‘act out the moral life in accordance with the perfected moral sphere …’ (p. 150). This would seem to resonate with critiques of sociobiology, including her own in previous works, which worry that an abstract notion of the good is absent from purely scientific accounts of human morality. In parallel however, Deane-Drummond suggests that Aquinas’s notions of morality as infused gift can be interpreted in the context of emergence, ‘rather than a dualistic version of grace as an alien force working in opposition to natural forces’ (p. 84). This seems to indicate a moral perfection almost evolving, creating an ideal of perfection as it goes, rather than seeking to meet an abstract notion of the good half way. This is a difficult dialectic to maintain, but Deane-Drummond argues that it is necessary in order to appreciate the scientific depictions of our animal heritage.
Another central theme of this book is a newly envisioned relational model of humans and nature. Deane-Drummond feels that even environmentalist writers who write positively about nature still treat it as an object, and such accounts are therefore suspect. She sees instead humans and nature in a relationship, and indeed a relationship that is analogous to that of the human relationship with God (p. 301). The last chapter of the work outlines her view on shalom or an eschatological good. She feels that interestingly, the telos of human becoming is bound together with the idea of agape. Although she prudently engages in a discussion on agape and other forms of love noting their differences, she feels that an extension of agape from neighbours to animals and nature will be the pinnacle of moral evolution. She speaks interestingly about an interspecies friendship/love (pp. 300–301; 317).
There are two issues which pose significant challenges to her framework of human becoming. Firstly, the question of whether animals or nature can reciprocate human love/friendship could be raised—though perhaps a one-way relationship will suffice. Another issue is how the naturalist understanding of morality can be linked with theological representations of abstract morality or right. It seems Deane-Drummond takes important points from both theology and evolutionary science regarding an anthropology, but there is no solid connection. Deane-Drummond acknowledges both of these issues, but no simple answers are provided. Again, it is a difficult dialectic that Deane-Drummond seeks to maintain. Yet within the religion and science dialogue, these are the kind of ideas that have yet to be fully explored. Her efforts to re-imagine the human in the context of evolution is an important endeavour and indeed this work makes a strong contribution to that end. Particularly in the context of climate change and rapidly increasing rates of animal extinction, how we envisage the human theologically will, one expects, become a vital issue in the coming years.