In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

CHAPTER TWO Not of the World Human Exceptionalism in Western Tradition Do not be conformedto this world. Romans 12:2 M A N IS T H E ONLY ANIMAL Man, writes Reinhold Niebuhr in The Nature and Destiny of Man, is the only animal that fears death.' This ambiguous (andempirically questionable ) assertion follows centuries of similar statements in the West, usually beginning "man is the only animal that ..." These claims reflect an ongoing effort to establish, once and for all, a singular and impassable barrier between humans, on the one hand, and the rest of creation, on the other. The actual trait that sets humans apart-the x that only humans have-varies for different thinkers, times, and cultures. As Daisie Radner and Michael Radner explain, "The value of x has to be changed from time to time as more evidence comes in, but there must be an x because humans are unique. Only human beings conceptualize and perform abstractions. They alone make and use tools; have reason; have a sense of humor; practice deceit; count; communicate about things not in the here and now; are aware of their own existence; anticipate their own death; have a sense of beauty; have an ethical sense; have speech. Darwin remarks that he once made a collection of such aphorisms and came up with over twenty, 'but they are almost worthless, as their wide difference and number prove the difficulty, if not the impossibility , of the attempt."l While belief in a radical division between humans and the nonhuman world might be ubiquitous in Western thought, as Darwin's exercise Not of the World 29 suggests, it retains a particular place of honor in Christian theological anthropology. In the Christian tradition, human claims to uniqueness rest on the assertion that humans alone, as Augustine puts it, have a rational soul, the image of God and thus of the t r i n i t ~ . ~ The soul links humans' origins, capacities, and ultimate destiny to God and, thus, forever divides them from the "nonspiritual" part of creation. The soul performs the same function in Christianity that other human qualities, notably conceptual thought and language, fulfil1for secular thinkers: the soul is not just an added piece of equipment but a singular dimension that transforms the meaning of humanness. While the nonempirical nature of the soul causes many secular thinkers to reject it outright, this very quality can support assertions of human uniqueness. While evidence might empirically show that a chimpanzee has learned a human language, there is no way to prove that one has a soul. Christian thinkers most often turn to biblical narratives of human origins as the source of claims about the soul, which they usually identify as the "image of God" in humans. The first ("priestly") account of the creation, in Genesis 1:26-28, firmly anchors biblical understandings of human nature in assumptions of humans' radical difference from the rest of God's creatures. In Genesis 1:26-28, humans alone are created in God's likeness and, not incidentally, given dominion over the rest of creation. According to this version, creation proceeded thus: 26 And God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." 27 So God created man in His own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."4 Here the connection between theological anthropology and attitudes toward nature is clear, as the assertion of humanity's uniqueness is inextricably tied to humans' right to subdue and dominate other animals. The environmental ethic that these verses suggest is especially powerful because it is embedded in a coherent narrative that ties together sacred and mundane history. A simple expository declaration about the distinctiveness of humans and their relationship to God would lack the motivating and staying power of the biblical version. The Genesis I 30 Not of the World account acquires potency because it locates the origins of human (and all other) life in a...

Share