A response to my colleagues

After teaching at Princeton Theological Seminary for almost 23 life-fulfilling, happy years, this wonderful institution honored me with an outstanding academic symposium to celebrate my tenure there. I am deeply grateful to President Craig Barnes for taking the initiative in supporting this marvelous idea, and for making this event such an excellent academic occasion. I also want to thank my former student, Dr. Kenneth Reynhout, for the creative leadership in planning every aspect of this special international event, and together with Dean James Kay, for inviting a stellar panel of international scholars who presented five excellent papers and took part in four exciting panel discussions. I can only say that I was thrilled and humbled to be part of all of this, and I now feel happy and very honored to briefly respond to the papers of my colleagues.

In the very first paper, presented at the banquet preceding the symposium, Niels Henrik Gregersen, in a paper entitled “Exploring Venues for an Interdisciplinary Theology,” presented an impressive intellectual history of the evolution of my own thinking covering almost five decades. What was remarkable about this paper is that it not only reached out to my earliest work in body phenomenology in the mid-1960s, but also managed to show how fundamentally important this methodology remained right through the changing contexts and developments of my own interdisciplinary work in philosophy of science, epistemology, theology, and quite specifically in the theology and science discussion. The strong influence of interactionist phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty) indeed stayed with me over the years, strengthened by the powerful influence of intellectual mentors like Paul Ricoeur and Maxine Sheets-Johnstone. It again surfaced strongly, as Gregersen points out, in my Gifford Lectures and other essays from this past decade. ¹ In fact, the influence of body phenomenology and methodology are not only very much guiding my most current (as yet unpublished) work on the evolution of morality and religion, but for me also facilitated an important return to the theology of Friedrich Schleiermacher.

Gregersen succeeded remarkably in arguing that the “chronology of my own thinking” over the years—that is, topics focusing on biblical hermeneutics, the theology of Wolfhart Pannenberg, critical realism, postfoundationalism, evolutionary epistemology, evolutionary anthropology, and paleoanthropology—actually evolved to express the earliest as well as later (and current) research themes of my work. More importantly, he carefully showed how these themes are “retained, transformed, and calibrated” as my thinking shifted from a hermeneutical to a more pragmatist orientation in doing interdisciplinary theology.

I have indeed, at every stage of the development of my own thinking, argued strongly for the importance of context in my own interdisciplinary theology. In a very creative manner, then, Gregersen decided not to focus on chronology, but rather on the different geographical locations and intellectual venues that so profoundly shaped my own thinking over many years. Indeed, space and context matter, also (especially?) for philosophical theologians working on methodological and epistemological issues while investigating the possible interdisciplinary role of theology in the context of the natural sciences. I was, therefore, intrigued that Gregersen could tentatively discern, already in my earliest work, the future program of postfoundationalism that came to define so much of my past and ongoing work. What Gregersen does not mention (with typical humility!) is that he and I independently, and together, emphasized the “semantic surplus” of theology in relation to the sciences: a theological redescription of the world can never be a mere mirroring of the world of science.

I was very grateful that Niels Henrik Gregersen lifted up the important influence of Wolfhart Pannenberg on my work. During my doctoral years in Amsterdam I was a student of Pannenberg’s in Munich, later followed by various sabbaticals there. Our discussions at the time very definitively shaped the earliest phase of my work, especially my Theology and the Justification of Faith. ² However, Gregersen is correct—and astute—in pointing out that my version of critical realism at the time differed significantly from what Pannenberg saw as the ongoing task of theology. I saw Pannenberg’s program as implying that specific theologies have proved themselves only if they succeeded maximally in solving and meaningfully integrating problematic data in humankind’s experience of reality. The important work of philosophers like Larry Laudan, and later Calvin Schrag, shaped my own views as I was developing a theological methodology that openly exemplified a more pragmatic orientation by focusing on theologians as rational agents who progressed in their thinking by optimally solving empirical and conceptual problems. To this day the idea of conceptual problem-solving, as I will argue in my response to Michael Welker, is still at the heart of what I would define as a methodology for theology. Against this background, as Gregersen points out and references, I have challenged Pannenberg exactly on the important epistemic role of religious commitment and on the way it shaped—or did not shape—his views on truth and objectivity in theology. In this way I deconstructed Karl Popper’s reinterpretation of the distinction between the “context of discovery” and “the context of justification” and thereby moved beyond Pannenberg’s methodology by accounting for the subjective element precisely in the process of ongoing theological reflection.

I greatly appreciate the nuanced way in which Gregersen dealt with my move from critical realism to a more sophisticated form of postfoundationalism, which specifically incorporated insights from evolutionary epistemology. Gregersen correctly shows that a postfoundationalist theological methodology succeeded in emphasizing my earlier hermeneutical orientation, but now in my argument that traditions are inescapable as epistemic starting points, the fluid boundaries from which we approach and know our world(s). However, a new pragmatist orientation now allowed me to grasp that rationality no longer resided first and foremost in the capacity to open up interpretative horizons, but rather in the more comprehensive capacity of rational agents to form responsible judgments and to seek optimal understanding.

It was this important pragmatist shift, fueled now by a developing notion of transversal rationality, which allowed me to avoid epistemologically withdrawing from more substantial interactions between science and theology and to directly engage the “large-scale applicative cycle” constituted in my Gifford Lectures in a direct interaction between paleoanthropology, evolutionary epistemology, and theological anthropology. In this sense, Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology, for me at least, became the defining test case for the very specific interdisciplinary methodology that I have been developing over many years. This project has yielded at least two important themes that are now of central importance to my ongoing work: first, the space opened by religious awareness and imagination, for reasons of consistency, should indeed be treated as fully on a par with other outcomes of evolutionary cognition, which means that religious imagination is a natural propensity of the cognitively fluid human mind; and second, the interactionist structure yielded by evolutionary epistemology for all of our knowledge is clearly directly consistent with contemporary discussions of niche construction in evolutionary anthropology (cf. my response below to the paper of Agustín Fuentes). This not only allows for rethinking the idea of evolution itself, but also the interactionist way in which central theological themes are developed in interdisciplinary theology. I am enormously grateful to Gregersen for elucidating so much of this so clearly, and for his wonderful support for my work over the years.

In his seminal paper, Michel Welker lifts up with great clarity the all-important question “What Makes Theology Theology?” and points to one of the great privileges of my own academic life. Both of us have, individually and together, engaged for at least the last 20 years in projects that brought theology directly into international and interdisciplinary dialogue and cooperation. The dialogue with the sciences was indeed of particular importance here, and our common conviction has been that such projects require a strong sense of theological identity. Moreover, in this venture theological topics should be carefully selected in order to be really fruitful for the interdisciplinary dialogue.

Welker starts out by asking: What would be the minimum requirements for any statement or argument to be acknowledged as theological? He answers this question by identifying two important requirements, with which I find myself in complete agreement. First, a theological statement about God must show at least a minimum level of conviction and a minimal degree of having been existentially grounded. As my response to Niels Henrik Gregersen has shown, it is exactly on this point that I challenged the basic point of departure of Wolfhart Pannenberg’s theological methodology. Second, for a statement to be considered theological it should be articulated in words and arguments that are comprehensible. It is against the background of this second requirement that I want to try to respond to Welker’s question, How do theological insights reach the level of what we regard as “theology” in the strictest sense in the academy and the churches?

Welker impressively responds to his own question by providing us with “nine interdependent levels of normative impact” that are all necessary in order to answer the question, What makes theology theology? It is interesting that Welker in his level 4 strongly warns against a “purely academic theology,” but later also cautions us against an exclusive “church theology.” I am, of course, in complete agreement with this approach, but it is interesting that Welker here mentions the “testing and articulation of theological claims” either in the context of the church or in the context of the academy. Earlier he warns against a totalitarian metaphysics, which reduces theological God-talk to empty “first causes,” the transcendent, or a “ground of being.” With all of this I basically agree, but I was somewhat puzzled by the fact that he would narrow the concept of philosophical theology to these kind of abstractions. Since I have always seen my own interdisciplinary theology as a form of philosophical theology (and myself as a philosophical theologian), I want to explain why I so much appreciate Welker mentioning the “testing and articulation of theological claims.” In fact, in expressing my appreciation of the nine normative levels of “what makes theology theology,” I am wondering if this kind of conceptual problem-solving might not be so crucial for the question of theological identity that one might actually, in terms of Welker’s structural presentation, add, as a tenth level, the dimension of progressive problem-solving to his nine normative levels of theological identity. I would like to try to show that a definition of philosophical theology that includes and exemplifies interdisciplinary theology will actually strengthen Welker’s robust model for theological identity.

The crucial problem for a theology located in the broader interdisciplinary conversation is, of course, the following: Is it at all possible to make sensible and rational choices between different viewpoints and alternative, competing research traditions? At this point Larry Laudan’s admonitions to scientists and theologians again comes to mind. Unless we can somehow articulate criteria for choice between diverse research traditions, we neither have a theory of rationality nor a theory of what progressive growth in knowledge should look like. ³ In theology, as in other forms of inquiry, providing warrants for our views thus becomes a cross-contextual obligation. ⁴

On this view, remarkable parallels surface between the rationality of theology and other modes of knowledge. A good example is found precisely in reasoning strategies as different as theology and the sciences. In both strategies we are called to trust our traditions as we reach out beyond them in interdisciplinary conversation. In both theology and the sciences we should be able to identify some criteria to warrant our theory choices, and neither scientific nor theological knowledge can ever claim demonstrably certain foundations for making these choices. Epistemic similarities between theology and the sciences do not mean, of course, that scientific knowledge is “just like” theology, but they do mean, and Welker agrees with this, that methods in science do not provide us with a uniquely rational and objective way of discovering truth. In both theology and the sciences, good arguments should be offered for or against theory choice, or for or against the problem-solving ability of a specific research program (Welker asks how theological truth claims are “best articulated” and “best tested”). Obviously, our good arguments and our value judgments rest on broader assumptions and deeper commitments that can always again be challenged. This does not mean, of course, that any opinion is as good as any other, or that we can never critically compare radically different points of view.

Problem solving and progressive theory choice, therefore, go together closely in a postfoundationalist theology. Implied in this claim is, for me at least, precisely one of the most important criteria for “good theology.” Through our theological statements we should be able to critically identify and analyze real problems, and to construct theories that might provide valid and adequate solutions to those problems. This not only includes a critical analysis of the process of theorizing in all theology, but also challenges the theologian to think anew about some of the following questions: ⁵

What would qualify as a problem in theology?

What constitutes a shared interdisciplinary problem in theology and the sciences?

How would scientific problems be similar and different from problems in theology?

What exactly constitutes conceptual problem-solving in theology?

What criteria would be valid for a converging process of problem-solving in theology?

How are interpretative styles of problem-solving in theology similar or different from explanatory styles of problem-solving in the sciences?

Michael Welker’s “nine interdependent levels” that ultimately define theological normativity are excellent guidelines in any attempt to answer these questions about problem-solving in theology. Importantly, Larry Laudan has argued persuasively that scientific and other problems, including theological problems, are structurally not all that different, and that the differences that are there are often not a difference in kind, but largely a matter of degree. In fact, he has shown that his perspective in scientific problems could, with a few qualifications, be applied to all forms of intellectual problems. ⁶ On a postfoundationalist view this would mean that the focus now is on the analysis of problems as the true focus of scientific as well as theological thought. Theories, then, are important only insofar as they offer adequate solutions for real problems. On an interdisciplinary level this means that if problems constitute the real questions of science (and of theology) then it is theories (and in theology, theories and doctrines) that constitute the answers or solutions.

For theologians this means that we have to learn to identify real problems that arise out of religious and spiritual experience, and intellectual problems that emerge out of a reflection on these experiential problems. This implies a deeply liberating move for theological reflection: by reclaiming a broader postfoundationalist notion of rationality, theologians are now freed from reductionist models of rationality. Instead of having to ask whether a given theory is provable, correct, justified or true, we can now first ask whether a theory offers adequate solutions for meaningful, real problems in real concrete situations.

On exactly this point, I think theology has much to gain in thinking more pragmatically about the concrete capacity of theories for finding adequate and meaningful solutions for interdisciplinary problems, instead of obsessing about truth claims per se. From a postfoundationalist viewpoint this means finding the best available interdisciplinary reasons for making the most progressive theory choices, thus guaranteeing a theory of intellectual growth.

Laudan has also further refined his notion of conceptual problems by helpfully making a further distinction between internal conceptual problems, which arise from apparent inconsistencies or ambiguities within a particular theory, and external conceptual problems, which may arise from direct philosophical conflicts between two theories (the most notorious example being the ongoing conflict between Darwinian evolution by natural selection, and “biblical theories of creation”). These broader problems may have scientific, philosophical, ideological, methodological, or specifically religious or theological causes. Laudan’s useful distinction between internal and external conceptual problems would need even further refinement, in the sense that what normally could be defined as an empirical problem in theology often hides a more profound conceptual or ideological problem; what may appear to be internal conceptual problems often reveal more profound external conceptual problems. ⁷ This gets us as close as we can get to a definition of “progress” in postfoundationalist, interdisciplinary theology. In the progressive and constructive quality of interdisciplinary theories it will be the solving, however provisionally, of empirical and conceptual problems that will be at the heart of a model for advancement or “progress” in interdisciplinary theology. We may also put it as follows: in interdisciplinary theology a theory gains if it can offer provisional solutions to empirical and conceptual problems, but it loses if it raises more conceptual problems.

I was very happy to reread Agustín Fuentes’s excellent and exciting paper on “Evolution, the Human Niche, Imagination, and the Evolution of Religion.” Our recent increasing interdisciplinary collaboration has been one of the true highlights of my ongoing interdisciplinary work. This specific paper contributes directly to two salient interdisciplinary contemporary themes. First, it gives us a crystal clear evaluative overview of the most recent developments in evolutionary anthropology, and quite specifically takes us to the cutting edge of contemporary discussions on the important issue of human evolution. Second, Fuentes turns the current discussion on the evolution of religion on its head by arguing persuasively for a direct link between human evolution, the evolution of imagination, and the imaginative as our permanent perceptual state, and in this way lays the groundwork for the emergence of metaphysical ideas, and, ultimately, the natural emergence of the religious sense.

Fuentes understands very well that, epistemically at least, many of the goals that interdisciplinary theologians and anthropologists possess do in fact overlap. This is especially true as we are seeking to understand the ubiquitous human tendency to believe, to imagine, and to hope. Fuentes’s strongest argument, however, is that the reality of imagination, ritual, and some form of metaphysical engagement with the world is inextricably entangled with our having become human beings. This dovetails closely with my own earlier argument that there is an evolutionarily naturalness to the emergence of religious imagination. ⁸ With this similar move Fuentes also avoids the epistemic trap of finding the origin of religion either in adaptations via natural selection or in seeing religious belief as only a by-product of our cognitive complexity. On the contrary, the origin of and capability to have religious beliefs do not lie wholly in the power or the content of religious beliefs as such, nor only in underlying neurological structures themselves, but by the interactive way in which humans all through prehistory have negotiated the world. Agustín Fuentes and I, in spite of our radically different disciplines, approaches, and methodologies, completely agree that a necessary prelude to having religion is the emergence of a human imagination and the embodiment of a quest for meaning as part and parcel of the distinctive human niche that has facilitated our flourishing as a species.

This should not be surprising, since Fuentes is playing a leading role in advocating a more complex understanding of human evolution. For a scholar like Fuentes, the real success of humans as a species can be attributed largely to our tendency towards extreme alteration of the world in and around us. ⁹ We not only construct material items, we engage in the creation and navigation of social and symbolic structures, space, and place in a manner unequalled by other organisms. For Fuentes anthropologists should, therefore, incorporate theoretical and research perspectives that do not just have interactive but also creative, constructivist evolutionary elements. ¹⁰ For anthropology and theology to become more familiar with “post-neo-Darwinian” evolutionary perspectives, this kind of mutual enrichment will certainly reveal a significant space for mutual enrichment and overlaps between anthropological and evolutionary approaches. I believe that the same would be startlingly true for interdisciplinary theology.

For this reason, and importantly, some evolutionary anthropologists actually now find the distinction between “Darwinian” and “neo-Darwinian” unhelpful for many of the current evolutionary theories of interest, and argue that we should recognize that there is an expansive body of research and theory that is not captured by these headings anymore. Basic Darwinian theory prioritizes natural selection and sexual selection as the prime factors in evolutionary change and the emergence of adaptations. Natural selection is generally seen as the process by which certain phenotypes (morphology and behavior) that are most effective at reproducing themselves (and thus their genetic basis or genotype) in a given environment become more frequent in a population across generations. Sexual selection is the over-representation of specific phenotypes across generations as a result of mate choice and intrasexual competition. Those traits that lead to the success of particular phenotypes and become the predominant traits in subsequent generations are termed adaptations. These traits, and the individual possessing them, are then seen to be more “fit.” And it is these “fit” phenotypes that will strive for optimality and rise to a majority status within the population over evolutionary time. ¹¹

Without discounting the important role of natural and sexual selection in biological systems, some anthropologists want to emphasize that scientists are now expanding on Darwin’s contributions, and invite us to focus on more recent, emerging trends in evolutionary theory. Notably Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb’s important work, Evolution in Four Dimensions, calls for the renewal of evolutionary theory by arguing for “evolution in four dimensions” rather than focusing on just one, namely the genetic. To this important inheritance system, Jablonka and Lamb now argue for adding three other inheritance systems that may also have causal roles in evolutionary change. These other systems are the epigenetic, the behavioral, and symbolic inheritance systems. Epigenetic inheritance is found in all organisms, behavioral in most, and symbolic inheritance occurs only in humans. ¹² This constructivist view is exactly the context from which Fuentes works, and it should come as no surprise that these scholars now move beyond standard neo-Darwinian approaches and acknowledge that many organisms transmit information via behavior. Thus acquisition of evolutionary relevant behavioral patterns can occur through socially mediated learning. Symbolic inheritance comes with language and the ability to creatively engage in information transfer that can be complex and contain a high density of information. What makes the human species so different and so special, and what makes us human, lies in the ways we can organize, transfer, and acquire information. It is, therefore, our ability to think and communicate through words and other types of symbols that makes us different. ¹³

On this view there is much more to evolution that simply the inheritance of genes. Importantly, this interactionist perspective blurs any clear prioritization in inheritance systems and thus requires a clear move away from approaches that are limited to either social or biological foci. On this view “evolution as construction” is the idea that evolution is never only a matter of developing organisms, but of organism-environment systems interacting and changing over time in a dynamic interactive process of “niche construction” as a significant evolutionary force alongside natural selection. ¹⁴ For an understanding of human evolution this is extremely important. Most anthropologists would agree that humans are constructed by and involved in the construction of contexts that are simultaneously physiological, behavioral, historical, social, and symbolic. In this sense, human behavioral evolution must be seen primarily as a system evolving, rather than a set of independent or moderately connected traits evolving. ¹⁵ On this view, niche construction is a core factor in human behavioral evolution. The startling implication, however, is that we should consider the potential impacts of a diverse array of processes that affect inheritance and evolutionary change, and the possibility that natural selection can occur at multiple levels and may not always be the only, or main, driver of change. ¹⁶ No surprise then, that Fuentes can state in his essay that the human ability to deploy multiple and distinctive modes of responses to evolutionary pressures and their concomitant influence on evolutionary landscapes indeed facilitated the emergence of Homo sapiens—thus, the way that we construct the narrative of this evolution is indeed central to our ability to understand it.

In my book Alone in the World I already argued, from an evolutionary point of view, for the naturalness of religious imagination. ¹⁷ If there is an evolutionary naturalness to religious imagination, or to the propensity for religious belief, then it would be a valid question to ask how such an imagination, as a system, emerged over the course of human evolution. Against the background of a broader, more robust view of the many dimensions of evolution that included extensive, interactive niche construction, we can say that Homo sapiens sapiens is a species that had a hand in making itself. From this follows the central theses of anthropologist Agustín Fuentes’s work. Fuentes first argues that an evolutionary assessment of a distinctively human way of being in the world includes the capacity and capabilities for the possibility of metaphysical thought as a precursor to religion. Second, this can be facilitated by recognizing the increasingly central role of niche construction, systemic complexity, semiotics, and an integration of the cognitive, social, and ecological in human communities during the Pleistocene era (roughly two and a half million years to twelve thousand years ago). ¹⁸

Following up on my own quest for understanding the naturalness of the propensity for religious imagination and for our aesthetic, creative capacities, Fuentes now believes this idea can be aided significantly by investigating more fully the core role of the evolutionary transition between becoming human and being human. ¹⁹ This transition itself can be understood better by a broad assessment of hominin evolution over the last 6 million years. ²⁰ And here the focus should be on the terminal portion of that epoch, meaning the final transition from the archaic form of our genus Homo sapiens into the current form of Homo sapiens sapiens. The focus on this transition, which is a shift to a wholly human way of being in our current socio-cognitive niche, will add to our insight into how we, as humans, experience the world in the here and now. Fuentes now suggests that we can connect this emergence of a distinctly human socio-cognitive and ecological niche to existing in a meaning-laden world, and to the emergence of an imagination that facilitates the capacity and capabilities for the possibility of metaphysical thought. Moreover, this process is intricately connected to our success as a species.

This is exactly why Fuentes can argue that evolutionary narratives alone will not get us a full explanation of why we are the way we are. This is also why the interaction between anthropology and theology can potentially provide a more robust narrative when we consider our human niche, our perceptual life-world. A better understanding of cooperation, empathy, compassion, the use of and engagement with materials, symbols and ritual, and the notion of a semiotic landscape in which humans and our immediate ancestors existed, do indeed move us along in our analysis of what it meant to become human. And the understanding of all of this is a true interdisciplinary process. The insights we gain via the fossil and archeological record, and behavioral, neurological, and physiological systems, provide a more robust understanding of how humans perceive and experience the world. It is this process that creates the possibility for an imaginative, potentially metaphysical, and eventually religious, experience of the world. This should lead to a better understanding of the ubiquitous importance of the propensity for religious imagination and the reality of religious experiences for Homo sapiens sapiens. Again, this does not imply an argument for any particular adaptive function of religiosity, but rather we have an argument that in an evolutionary context neither religion nor religiosity could suddenly have appeared fully blown, and it is, therefore, valuable to search for the kind of structures, behaviors, and cognitive processes that might facilitate the eventual appearance of such patterns in human beings. If having an imagination is a central part of the human niche, and this imagination is a basal element in the development of metaphysics, one could indeed see how both adaptive and imaginative, creative perspectives could employ that fact as part of their understanding of the human.

For Christian theologians this provides an exciting bottom-up view of the spectacularly complex way in which God has shaped and prepared our species to be physically, mentally, and spiritually “ready” for faith. I believe that my original intuition that there is a naturalness to human imagination, even to religious imagination, that facilitates engagement with the world in some ways that are truly distinct from other animals—even closely related hominins—thus becomes even more plausible. As Fuentes argues, if this is the case, it provides a small, and hopefully fruitful, addition to the toolkit of inquiry for both evolutionary scientists and interdisciplinary theologians interested in reconstructing the long, winding path to humanity.

Celia Deane-Drummond’s highly imaginative and very original contributions to theological anthropology are now directly challenging many of her colleagues working in the field as she responsibly deconstructs the age old boundary between humans and animals. Working in theological anthropology for Deane-Drummond means also constructing a “theology of God’s creatures.” In focusing on the human–animal relationship as well as the ambiguous role of animals in Christian theology, Deane-Drummond now presents a radical revision of theological anthropology. ²¹ In developing a philosophy and theology for nonhuman animals in her latest books, she goes beyond ethical challenges and presents her readers with a theological recognition of animal rights, based on a clearly defined moral priority for the weak in our care for animals. Thus we find a theology of compassion for animals where animals might become agents of justice and we are forced to rethink and recover our liturgies of animal care. This kind of theology clearly raises important questions, especially whether or not this could lead to a complete theology of inclusion, where even notions of morality and the image of God could be extended to animals in a contemporary theology of redemption for all animals.

For anyone wondering how to think religiously about animals, this kind of paradigm shift will be a serious but exciting challenge. On a more interdisciplinary level it proposes a very provocative philosophical and theological challenge to how we conceive of the boundary between the human and the nonhuman in evolutionary terms, precisely the kind of questions that are now fully engaging primatologists, philosophers, archeologists, and paleontologists, as they too probe the morality of animals. In so doing, she not only recognizes the way we humans use evocative religious symbols and powerful metaphors to construct meaning around the active but often silent presence of God, but also how theologians can engage with powerful and complex updated versions of evolutionary theory precisely to explore the depths of the human condition. On this view, human reason, morality, freedom, and language move into the direct purview of this revised theological anthropology; not, however, as a means to enhance human superiority over other animals, but rather to recognize how our evolutionary closeness to other animals created a bio-sociocultural niche which ultimately also should redefine theological anthropology.

In this specific presentation Deane-Drummond pushes the question of how moral capabilities evolved in the earliest hominin communities, how this might include similar capacities evolving in other animals, and—most importantly—the interspecies moral effect of how we actually interacted through the ages with animals. She finally argues that a shift from an individualistic to a wider community understanding of human morality is crucially important, not just for discussions about the evolution of morality, but also for how we see the meaning of human personhood and the theological grounds for moral action. Drawing in biblical exegesis of Genesis 2 and recent, ongoing anthropological research, Deane-Drummond uses interspecies illustrations from contemporary contexts including, human–elephant, human–hyena, and human–puma affiliations.

What Deane-Drummond initially is concerned about, however, is that as we ask about the origins of morality we still seem to need an irrational explanation for the persistence and existence of evil as we hang on to notions of the so-called “Fall” and the mythical idea of Satan. And Deane-Drummond is right, of course, that evolutionary explanations for the origins of morality do swim against this cultural tide by proposing purely naturalistic interpretations of human morality and its mirror image, immorality. And she is also correct in that instead of taking a rather defensive stance against naturalism in the face of supernatural explanations, I have argued for a postfoundationalist approach that takes seriously what evolutionary biologists are saying. I reject an ontology of ethics: humans are not born evil, but we are rather born with a capacity for good and evil. Thus I affirm an evolutionary ethics that should not be used as a basis for the justification of moral codes, but should rather open up the view to finding the roots of our morality—the building blocks for our own sense of right and wrong—in our closest sister species in the nonhuman world.

The work of evolutionary ethicists are, therefore, of great importance for theologians because of their direct interest in why humans behave the way they do, how the evolutionary origins of human behavior are to be explained, and in which way our behavior has been constrained by biological factors. In this sense, one could say that the starting point of evolutionary ethics is the insight that morality has a biological, evolutionary basis. Ethical behavior is a product of our biological evolution, but this fact by itself does not entail any normative assertions. From the fact that morality has developed we cannot conclude that any particular trait of human behavior is good or bad (right or wrong) in an ethical sense. Put differently, an evolutionary account of ethics does not support any particular moral code, but it may help us understand why such codes have developed. We should therefore be careful to always distinguish between the evolution of moral awareness and any attempt at the evolutionary justification of moral codes.

When I use the term “evolutionary ethics” I use it to characterize specifically the view that morality has evolved and there are clear pointers to the biological roots of moral behavior in pre-human history, as the work of primatologist Frans de Waal, scientist Donald Broom, and philosopher Richard Joyce have clearly shown. ²² However, from the evolutionary genesis of our moral awareness we cannot derive moral codes for right or wrong. Accepting that our moral awareness has evolved also means accepting that our moral codes may not be fixed forever as unchangeable entities. As humans, therefore, we are free to find our own moral goals in this world and an evolutionary approach to ethics and morality helps us understand under which circumstances we have created the kinds of values and moral codes that we have. Certainly, some traits of our moral behavior may be derived from archaic behavioral patterns and from the intense drive to survive. If moral codes have regulated the interactions among individuals in a society, then these codes must also have been useful for survival. In fact, to our phylogenetic ancestors there must have been some survival value to believe that moral codes are simply given, and, therefore, authoritative and objective—as is still found today in the belief that ethical norms are unchangeable and derivable from some set of eternal, divine principles. In an evolutionary approach to ethics, the status of these kinds of beliefs will rightly be challenged, and the creation of moral norms, in an a posteriori sense (to use Kantian terms), will be found to lie on a constructive, cultural level. This means that humans, in principle, are free to change their moral codes, but this also means that humans carry great responsibility for themselves and that this responsibility cannot and should not be easily delegated to “objective divine moral codes” (in this sense, for example, even the Ten Commandments and Jesus’ love command are historically revealed as a posteriori moral laws, even as they have acquired over time the authority of biblical truth). This also frees us from the foundationalist need for an idea of absolute moral truth; our idea of truth is relative to our historical and social contexts and their histories, and only a coherentist, postfoundationalist approach can sufficiently explain this. What we find here, then, is an open view of evolution. Basic patterns of our behavior depend on, and have been developed through, our evolutionary past. But this is not a deterministic view, because we have the responsibility to make our own decisions on what counts as the norms and limits to our own behavior. We are, therefore, constrained, but not determined by our evolutionary past.

Exactly the fact that through discernment and moral judgment, pragmatically embedded in concrete cultural contexts, we come to agreed upon moral codes and the a posteriori affirmation of our seasoned “moral laws” provides the pragmatic “clout” and postfoundationalist justification for our moral convictions. Evolution by natural selection can explain our tendency to think in normative terms, that is, our innate sense of moral awareness. However, evolutionary explanations of this moral awareness cannot explain our moral judgments, nor justify the truth claims of any of our moral judgments. Why and how we make moral judgments can only be explained on the level of cultural evolution, and by taking into account the historical embeddedness of our moral codes in religious and political conventions. This argument, I believe, helps us to avoid committing the so-called genetic fallacy; that is, the mistake of thinking that tracing a belief’s evolutionary origins automatically undermines its epistemic warrant. Or, put differently, it helps us to avoid the mistake of thinking that the evolutionary origins of our moral awareness necessarily explain away, and make impossible, the possibility to hold onto moral truth.

The important distinction between an innate, evolutionary moral awareness and the evaluative discernment needed for making intelligent moral judgment does not have to lead to moral skepticism or relativism. ²³ On the contrary, each and every one of our beliefs does have a complex causal history, but it would be absurd to conclude from evolutionary, neurological capacities, and from historical, philosophical, or broader cultural reasons behind the history of our beliefs and belief-systems, that all our beliefs are unjustified, including also our religious and moral convictions. On a postfoundationalist view, some of our religious beliefs are indeed more plausible and credible than others. This also goes for our tendency to moralize and for the strong moral convictions we often hold. On this view, we do not only get to argue for some of the enduring moral codes and laws within the context of the Christian faith, but also for why it may be plausible to think that at least some of those moral beliefs are more reasonable than others.

We have now seen that, in spite of a powerful focus on the evolutionary origins of moral awareness, ethics emerge on a culturally autonomous level, which means that the epistemic standing of the particular moral judgments we make is independent of whatever the natural sciences can tell us about their genesis. The evolutionary origin of the human moral sense tells us nothing about how we get to construct moral decisions, codes and laws. That, however, does not mean that we cannot give a philosophical account of how we arrive at these informed judgments, codes, and laws, without having to fall back on supranaturalist or sociobiological “rules” for moral behavior.

If we take into account what we have learned so far about so-called a priori accounts of knowledge or morality, our moral codes or “laws” in the fullest and deepest sense of the word are, in an evolutionary epistemological sense of the word, a posteriori. For Christian theology the choice will not be between a moral vision that is inherent in revelation and is, therefore, “received” and not invented or constructed. Instead, on a postfoundationalist view our moral codes and ethical convictions of what is “received” is itself an interpretative enterprise, shaped experientially through our embeddedness in communities and cultures. Through our intellectual and language abilities, we have created cultures, vast bodies of knowledge, and moral codes, which can all be seen as cultural evolutionary artifacts that enable us to benefit from the trials and errors of the moral instincts of our ancestors. Evolutionary ethics helps us understand how such moral codes have developed, even if this does not yet lead to an evolutionary explanation for the formulation of specific moral codes, laws, or norms. In this sense, then, there is a clear difference between an evolutionarily developed moral sense and the actual making of moral judgments.

However, moral judgments, and eventually moral codes and laws, have what Richard Joyce called “practical clout” in terms of the formal, social, and conventional ways we come to make moral judgments and decisions, and as such they make inescapable and authoritative demands on us. Moral codes are the core components of religions, also of the Christian faith, and in an evolutionary sense religions can be seen as seen as part of the cultural, social structures that underpin our morality. ²⁴

I do not believe that a postfoundationalist theology in this way disintegrates to everything post-modern or post-human; a revised interdisciplinary Christian belief system should still be able to tell the story about revelation and salvation, including salvation from sin, suffering, and death. I do not, therefore, believe that it is the “Fall” that is at stake. On the contrary, it is the horrifying reality of evil and suffering that needs to find a Christian answer, and it is the way the world has emerged through evolution that now challenges us to rethink human freedom, purpose, and ultimate hope.

All of this, I believe, does closely converge with Celia Deane-Drummond’s strong contribution to the current discussion and her focus on interspecies involvement in thinking about the origins of the moral sense. The idea that other creatures were involved with emerging traits of morality coheres closely with Deane-Drummond’s position that other animals might have been instrumental in the appearance of a distinctive human morality. I, too, believe that human becoming—including the making of human moral life—has not happened in isolation from other species, but in co-evolutionary contexts. Recognizing that “companions on our way” have helped to shape and reshape human communities and their moral lives not only opens the way to living with an interspecies recognition of proto-morality that has shaped our own behavior, but is, in fact, completely consistent with the reality and role of a bottom-up evolutionary ethics in our lives. This not only opens up a recognition of a convergence in behavior with our nonhuman sister species—behavior like grieving, empathy, attachment, and sometimes even a high degree of Theory of Mind (elephants and primates)—but also leads to the realization that only on an interdisciplinary level can theology adequately deal with the emergence of morality. For me, the challenging question remains: Does a morality of co-existence with other animals lead to a full-fledged interspecies morality, or does it rather lead to a recognition of a remarkable evolutionary convergence of various degrees of proto-morality in different species, with our species still carrying the great responsibility of a full-fledged morality?

Celia Deane Drummond points the way when she states she is “prepared to argue that morality of a kind is found in other animals, including the possibility of ill.” Interestingly this “ill” becomes “proto-sin” and opens up widely the possibility of the distinction between proto-morality and morality that I am arguing for, even as I support Deane-Drummond in her quest for a wider community understanding of human morality that is inclusive of other creatures.

It was a great honor for me to hear that David Fergusson had chosen to focus his closing lecture of the symposium on the published version of my Gifford Lectures, Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology. With great insight, Fergusson managed to tease out of this text dimensions of the ongoing discussion on human personhood that is still at the heart of my current research and publications. This is especially true of issues touching on the evolution of morality and religion, as well as the complex relationship between theological anthropology and christology. Fergusson understands well that the reality of the capacity for symbolic thought in humans, as now recognized in both theology and the sciences, necessarily leads to a further shift in recognizing the capacity for self-awareness and consciousness by which humans are capable of reflecting on their experiences in categories of meaning, intention, and purpose. Fergusson is correct in describing this as “a kind of natural theology.” As I have argued in my book and elsewhere, the emergence of human symbolic activity as the site for religious awareness and expression—so clearly witnessed by various sciences today—does indeed mesh with theological claims about creation, providence, and creatures who reflect the divine image. At the heart of my Gifford book, then, is the argument that, “for the theologian this interdisciplinary move implies that God used natural history for religion and for religious belief to emerge as a natural phenomenon.” ²⁵

The idea that religious imagination might not be an isolated faculty of human rationality, and that mystical or religious inclinations can be regarded as an essentially universal attribute of the human mind, has recently also been taken up in interdisciplinary discussion by some theologians. On this view the “naturalness” of human imagination, as I have pointed out in my response to Agustín Fuentes, also applies to religious imagination, and religious imagination should not be seen as something extra or esoteric that can be added or subtracted from other mental states. Religious imagination should, therefore, be treated as an integral part of human cognition, not separable from our other cognitive endeavors.

As far as specifically Christian theology is concerned, I have argued that Christian theology traditionally always assumed a radical split between human beings, created “in the image of God,” and the rest of creation. This split was mostly justified, as David Fergusson points out, by cognitive traits like human rationality or intelligence, or by more abstract notions of relationality which served to define what was meant by “human uniqueness,” even as it floated free above nature and the human body. Within the transversal space of interdisciplinary conversation, however, theology quickly learns that crucial to the prehistory of the human mind is the amazing emergence of what Steven Mithen has called “cognitive fluidity.” Science, art, and religion are all indeed deeply embedded in the cognitive fluidity of the human mind/brain. As such, these rich cultural expressions rely on psychological processes that originally evolved in specialized cognitive domains and only emerged when these processes could actually work together. Of perhaps of even greater significance, the cognitive fluidity of our minds allowed for the possibility of powerful metaphors and analogy, without which science, religion, and art could not exist. ²⁶ What becomes clear, then, is that the potential arose in the mind to undertake science, create art, and to discover the need and ability for religious belief. Clearly, early human behavior is not understood if we do not take this symbolic, religious dimension into account.

For these reasons, I suggested that a theological appropriation of these rich and complex results of science at the very least should inspire the theologian to carefully trace and rethink the complex evolution of the notion of human distinctiveness, or the imago Dei, in theology. Interpretations of the doctrine of the imago Dei have varied dramatically throughout the long history of Christianity. ²⁷ Theologians are now challenged to rethink what human uniqueness might mean for the human person, a being that has emerged biologically as a center of self-awareness, identity, and moral responsibility. Personhood, when reconceived in terms of embodied imagination, symbolic propensities, and cognitive fluidity, may enable theology to revise its notion of the imago Dei as an idea that does not imply superiority or a greater value than animals or earlier hominids, but which might express a specific responsible task and purpose to set forth the presence of God in this world. I would, therefore, call for a revision of the notion of the imago Dei in ways that would not be overly abstract and completely disembodied. The imago Dei should instead acknowledge our embodied existence, our close ties to the animal world and its uniqueness, and to those hominid ancestors that came before us, while at the same time focusing on what our symbolic and cognitively fluid minds might tell us about the emergence of an embodied human distinctiveness, consciousness, and personhood, and the propensity for religious and moral awareness and experience.

As Fergusson points out, our distinctively human capacities also have a shadowside, and our lives are entangled in violence, sin, misfortune, and suffering. It is here, I believe, in interdisciplinary conversation, that theology can actually help to significantly broaden the scope of what is meant by “human distinctiveness.” Homo sapiens is not only distinguished by its remarkable embodied brain, by the stunning mental cognitive fluidity expressed in imagination, creativity, linguistic abilities, and symbolic propensities. As real-life, embodied persons of flesh and blood, we humans are also affected by hostility, arrogance, ruthlessness, and cunning, and, therefore, are inescapably caught between what we have come to call “good and evil.” This experience of good and evil, and theological distinctions between evil, moral failure, sin, tragedy, and redemption, lie beyond the empirical scope of the fossil record, and, therefore, beyond the scope of science. It certainly is our evolutionarily developed bodies that are the bearers of human distinctiveness, and it is precisely this embodied existence that confronts us with the realities of vulnerability, sin, tragedy, and affliction. For the scientist drawn to the more comprehensive, complementary picture of the dimension of meaning in which Homo sapiens has existed since its very beginning, theology may, therefore, provide a key to understanding the proufoundly tragic dimensions of human existence, but also why religious belief has provided our distant ancestors, and us, with the promise of hope and redemption.

At the same time, as Fergusson points out clearly, anthropocentrism remains a problem for theological anthropology. In fact, the biblical view of a unique and special status for humans actually seems to be theologically affirmed by the incarnation, where the Word of God becomes enfleshed as a human being, Jesus of Nazareth. To this may indeed be added eschatological claims that are traditionally focused on the judgment and final destiny of human beings. In Alone in the World? I concluded that arguing for human species specificity instead of “human uniqueness,” and for a more gradualist approach in hominid history, may actually help to avoid any anthropocentric bias in the discussion about the imago Dei. The work of colleagues to which Fergusson refers (Clough, McFarland, Moritz) can only stimulate, strengthen, and shape this very challenging and creative discussion. I am hoping that this will reflect my own more phenomenological and “bottom-up” view of Homo sapiens, and thus of the “image of God,” as emerging from natural history with all other living creatures. As Fergusson puts it, “we may be alone as the last hominid group standing, but our deep affinities with other species together with our ancestral and genetic links to extinct evolutionary relatives places us firmly within the natural world, its haphazard processes and forms of animal life.” In a more phenomenological, descriptive approach this “weak” anthropocentric view will reflect a more cumulative and uneven evolutionary approach in which, both biologically and culturally, Homo sapiens, initially at least, is accompanied on its historical evolutionary journey by other hominid groups. All claims to human uniqueness or exclusivity can then be abandoned without disturbing our own particular course, and our own distinct species specificity, in evolutionary history.

Finally, as far as David Fergusson’s comments on incarnation and providence goes, it has always been my strong conviction that an interdisciplinary reflection on the imago Dei is but a small step removed from questions about the evolution of morality and its implications for christology, and especially the rather perplexing issue of whether and how christology should relate to ethics. For me, this can only be resolved by first asking how, exactly, in the case of Jesus, God’s revelation can be located not just in history, but specifically in evolutionary history. The evolutionary history of our species, as well as those characteristics that we normally see as defining the distinctiveness of Homo sapiens (consciousness, imagination, moral awareness, religious propensities) should not only directly impact notions of our own embodied personhood, but also what it would mean to understand Jesus’ embodied mind, his consciousness and self-awareness as defining his personhood. In this sense, a focus on the identity of Jesus will shape the ethical relevance of who he was, what he did, what he said, and why we today might feel compelled to follow that example. ²⁸

I cannot develop these ideas further here, but I do believe that against this background any theological discussion of anthropology and christology should start with an interdisciplinary conversation with the sciences and philosophy on what we are learning today about the evolution of consciousness and morality. Both methodologically and substantially, these seem to be the necessary building blocks for revealing, first, an evolutionary link between christology and ethics, and, second, a theological link between christology and ethics. Ultimately, I would like to argue that viewing our christologies less as foundationalist frameworks and more as epistemic pointers for a constructive interdisciplinary theology creates space for both an awareness of mystery in christology as well as discerning reasons why “we should do what Jesus did.” We should ask: What do we learn from evolutionary history about the evolution of morality and moral awareness in humans? We should also ask: What do we learn from evolutionary history about the way we construct our moral codes and our ethical systems? An answer to these two questions will enable us to pose two final questions: Are there plausible links that might be explored between the person of Jesus and the evolution of human cognition? We should also ask: Might there be evolutionary and theological reasons why what Jesus said and did are normative for us today as we construct our moral codes and ethical norms? Theologically, the ultimate question here will be, Does the interdisciplinary dialogue with the sciences make intelligible the kind of person that Jesus was, and can this notion of an integrated self provide us with the heuristics for discovering or reconstructing, healthy and integrated notions of personhood?

It is this kind of bottom-up christology, I believe, that will begin to help us theologically to answer the question of providence. David Fergusson expresses it well when he holds that theologically we can argue for a notion of providence that works in and through the natural processes of the world. In this way we can avoid both a deterministic outlook and also a deism that merely allows the world to run its course. An evolving world in which not all outcomes are fixed may be open to the presence of God.