Science Informing Theology
Craig L. Nessan, Wartburg Theological Seminary
Amid the polarizing discourse and disintegration of logical reasoning in this post-truth era, making use of consensus findings from the sciences can inform theology through the method of “critical realism.” Ian Barbour views critical realism as “an alternative to three competing interpretations of scientific theories: (1) classical or naive realism: scientific theories provide a ‘photographic’ or literal representation of the world; (2) instrumentalism: scientific theories are mere calculative devices, and (3) idealism: scientific theories depict reality as mental.”[1] Critical realism aims at ever-greater approximations of truth by employing reason as a key source of authority. While language can never fully express the dimensions of reality, explanations based on scientific reasoning can provide better approximations for interpreting the world. By contrast, explanations that fail to reflect—or even contradict—scientific conclusions are inadequate and sometimes aim to deceive.
It is of great value to pay attention to consensus positions in the sciences as a source of authority when undertaking theological deliberation. The fruitfulness of scientific reasoning has been demonstrated by achievements in every area of human knowledge, for example, medicine, genetics, agriculture, transportation, or technology. Social sciences, such as psychology, sociology, political science, or economics, are fields of inquiry also strengthened by conforming to the standards of scientific inquiry. And the humanities, including literature, the arts, and religion are fields awaiting greater attention.
We begin by distinguishing four ways of relating science and theology based on the categories articulated by Barbour: 1) conflict, 2) independence, 3 dialogue, and 4) integration.[2] This chapter then sketches three major topics where theology is strengthened—and understanding reality is enhanced—by drawing not only on biblical-theological resources but also the findings of science: cosmology (the origin and telos of the universe), process (the relationship of God to what happens in the world), and anthropology (who we are as human beings based on both theological anthropology and scientific understanding of the human). After a discussion of these themes, I provide a demonstration of how integrating science with theology in relation to sin and the human condition can enhance our understanding.
Method: Four Ways of Relating Science and Theology
One of the great questions facing theology in the modern period involves whether scientific findings should be rejected by or incorporated into theological understanding. The history of the relationship between theology and science is a long and fascinating story.[3] We focus here on four distinct ways of relating science to theology, following the classic formulation by Ian Barbour.[4]
Conflict. The first approach sees theology and science in irreconcilable conflict. This conclusion can be drawn for either theological or scientific reasons, depending on one’s epistemological presuppositions. From the side of theology, conflict with science derives from a literalistic, and sometimes fundamentalistic, understanding of the authority of Scripture. Stories conveying the relationship of God the Creator with humanity are misinterpreted as making scientific claims. These include the creation stories (Gen 1-3) and the Great Flood (Gen 6-10). From the side of science, conflict derives from a deterministic understanding of humanity based on excessive claims for the authority of science. When scientists claim that all truth must be quantified and verifiable through scientific measurement, this excludes many human fields of endeavor, including literature, the arts, and theology. Scientific findings are misinterpreted through overreach that excludes theological claims.
Independence. The second approach views theology and science as independent from one another. Here the methods employed in theology are incommensurate with those of science. Theology is a matter of faith that knows God through revelation inspired by the Holy Spirit. Scripture, creeds, confessions, and doctrines are sources through which faith gets transmitted from one believer to another through history. These are the primary means for receiving divine revelation. By contrast, scientific method involves the formulation of hypotheses, isolation of variables, and performing experiments to gather data and draw conclusions based on experimental findings. If science is based on what is measurable, theology focuses on the meaning of human life and history. Just as different cultures speak different languages that construct the world differently, theology and science are two independent languages for exploring the world. Because they are distinctive, each contributes its own wisdom and knowledge without the need for them to be reconciled.
Dialogue. The third approach understands that the relationship between theology and science can be advanced through dialogue around themes of common interest. Such themes frequently involve what Barbour calls “boundary questions.”[5] These include the emergence of modern science within the religious sphere of Christianity, the origin and destiny of the cosmos, exploring possible intersections of the world with the divine, and contributions toward complementary understandings of human nature. Dialogue between theology and science cab be especially fruitful when exploring “limit-situations” that deal with the meaning of life in the face of death or ethical questions about the use of technologies to advance or harm creation.[6] In addressing such issues, a method of correlation between scientific findings and theological meanings can provide a constructive approach.[7]
Integration. Building on points of contact in the dialogue between theology and science, integration aims at nothing less than a unified understanding of human knowledge and divine truth. Barbour names three areas for the pursuit of integration: 1) through natural theology, 2) by a theology of nature, and 3) through systematic synthesis.[8] Natural theology argues from nature for evidence of God. In a theology of nature, scientific findings modify theological formulations. Systematic synthesis claims an ultimate coherence between theological claims and scientific findings based on a unified metaphysical understanding of truth. From a theological perspective, one might understand God as the Author of all truth, whether by revelation or through scientific findings. The hypothesis about the unified truth warrants efforts by theologians to inform their views according to consensus positions in the natural sciences, for example, evolutionary science and genetics.
When we think about the intersection of science and theology in pursuit of truth, there are focal themes deserving attention as areas for dialogue and possible integration.[9] In addition to matters of method, three focal areas can guide research and reflection: 1) Cosmology: The Ultimate Origin and Destiny of the Universe, 2) Process: God-World Interaction, and 3) Anthropology: Understanding Human Nature. The chapter continues by outlining some key issues that can inform this effort. The demonstration that concludes this chapter reflects my commitment to the integration of science and theology.
Cosmology: The Ultimate Origin and Destiny of the Universe
There are several directions within cosmology for investigating the ultimate origin and destiny of the universe.[10] The anthropic principle makes an argument for a design to the universe that accounts for the emergence of human beings by referencing, for example, the expansion rate of the universe, formation of elements, and particle/antiparticle ratio. Such features of the universe suggest evidence for divine design at the origin of the universe. Others argue that according to probability, our universe arose by chance in a succession of oscillating cycles, either as one possibility within multiply isolated domains or as one of many possible worlds based on quantum theory. Instead of design or chance, a third direction argues for the necessity of this universe based on hope for the discovery of a Grand Unified Theory or a Theory of Everything, which could unite all physical forces in a singular equation. While theology gravitates toward arguments from design, how might theology account for theories based on chance or necessity?
Uniformity of Nature. The uniformity of nature is a fundamental premise of all science: that the laws of nature are universal throughout the universe. This premise guides and directs all scientific investigation but is not itself verifiable. Already in the early 20th century, Bertrand Russell noted: “The belief in the uniformity of nature is the belief that everything that has happened or will happen is an instance of some general law to which there are no exceptions.”[11] The dilemma is deepened by the problem of inductive reasoning in science, which makes assumptions about what has occurred in the past without empirical verification. The sense of order reflected in the first creation story (Gen 1:1-1:4a) accords with belief in an orderly and therefore measurable creation, an assumption that underlies the practice of science as a source of knowledge. This biblical worldview, in contrast to circular understandings of the origin of the cosmos in antiquity, provided a foundation for the emergence and development of scientific reasoning.[12] If …”we compare the support given to the study of nature by the early church it will become apparent that the church was one of the major patrons—perhaps the major patron—of scientific learning.”[13] John Polkinghorne has advanced these arguments in contemporary discussion.[14]
Singularity. In the beginning was the Big Bang, and the Big Bang was with God, and the Big Bang was God. This rendering of the creation story seeks to integrate faith and science in our imaginations. Scientists employ the term “singularity” to describe the origin of the universe. Within this cosmic singularity and before the Big Bang, space-time was confined by infinite gravity. The laws of physics, as we know them, do not yet apply. This original singularity corresponds to the conditions of a black hole. Space-time is contained within the infinite mass of a single point. Here we arrive at the limit of our scientific explanations of the universe’s origin. In the Bible, the singularity at the origin of creation is the Word of God: “When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light” (Gen 1:1-3). The singularity of God’s Word set everything in motion. God speaks and creation begins to evolve. The scientific and the biblical origin stories converge at a singularity: the conditions of the Big Bang and the Word of God that sets all in motion.
Destiny. Whereas theology speaks of eschatology at the end of creation, science reckons with entropy according to the second law of thermodynamics at the end of the universe.[15] Scientific theories explore whether the future of the universe is open (leading to the dissipation of energy in an exhausted system of dead matter) or closed (eventuating in the collapse of matter into an infinite black hole). If the universe is closed, the possibility of oscillating universes emerges, wherein the Big Bang consummates in a Big Crunch that becomes the occasion for a next Big Bang. Christian eschatology is grounded in a linear understanding of God’s ultimate future, which is challenged by cyclical models. Physicists, such as Frank Tipler, have also speculated about a future for human evolution through intelligent, information-processing simulations of human being that transcend bodily finitude.[16] Regardless of these hypotheses, Christian eschatology claims that the future is encompassed within God’s eternity. Eternity names the transcendent presence of God before the singularity of the Big Bang at the origin of space-time. Eternity also names the transcendent presence of God after the death of mortal creatures at the end of the cosmos. Eternity entertains all that has been, is now, and ever will be, making precious our ultimate destiny that is contained within the eternal presence of God.
Process: God-World Interaction
If God exists and is active in the universe, including in human life, how can theology explain and describe the nature of this interaction? This has been called the God-world problem.[17] If science can interpret the world through imminent explanations based on scientific measurement, is there any room left for the participation and activity of God in the lifeworld of humans and other creatures? In early modernity, deism reduced the activity of God to working through the laws of nature like a divine clockmaker. God does not intervene in the world but operates through natural laws of divine origin. Much earlier, Thomas Aquinas distinguished between primary and secondary causes. God is the Unmoved Mover and primary cause without whom nothing could take place. God also works through secondary causes in a chain of events that God initiates and guides. These traditional models of God-world interaction, like contemporary explanations, must be able to deal with two problems: God’s role in the existence of evil and the possibility of God’s intervention in the natural world through miracles. Three fruitful approaches to God-world interaction include process theology, quantum theory, and the role of symbolic language.
Process theology. Based on the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, process theology has become one of the most influential ways of construing the relationship of God to the world.[18] For Whitehead, “God is the great companion—the fellow-sufferer who understands.”[19] God is intimately involved in the world process, not in a controlling way, but as One who with empathy entices and coaxes reality forward to realize lifegiving outcomes as they unfold over time. An analogy can be drawn that the relationship between God and the world is like that between the self and the body.[20] God is deeply involved in the joys and suffering of the world at every point in time. Whitehead understands the world as the unfolding of a series of intricately interconnected events. With every event, there could be multiple outcomes. Amid these events, God acts through persuasion upon creatures who enter the future by exercising the freedom afforded them. In relationship with humans, God lures us forward toward best possible outcomes while honoring the integrity of the human agent either to act in accordance with divine desire or to disregard it. Barbour describes this as “the self-creation of every entity.”[21] Responsibility for moral evil therefore belongs to the earthly agents, however, God is always affected by our chosen path—but also always poised to exercise persuasion in the next unfolding event. God’s primordial nature seeks to influence and persuade toward the good; God’s consequent nature names how God becomes affected by the actualizing world process. In this way, God is both the ground of order and the ground of novelty in relation to the world, divine providence through loving care.
Quantum theory. An emerging field for imagining and describing the God-world interaction derives from quantum theory. The Copenhagen model of quantum mechanics developed by Nils Bohr has been reanimated in contemporary thought by Karen Barad. This scientific model holds that there is indeterminacy at the most basic quantum levels of reality. Barad affirms; “For Bohr, phenomena—entanglements of objects and agencies of observation—constitute physical reality; phenomena (not independent objects) are the objective referent of measured properties. Complementarity is an ontic (not merely an epistemic) principle.[22]This finding has launched a robust discussion about the implications for philosophy and theology. Has God created the world in such a way as to subtly influence the unfolding of events as claimed by process theology? What we once believed about matter as fixed entities now discloses itself as the entanglement of forces. Phenomena have their own material instantiation always in the act of becoming, never before: “’Matter’ does not refer to an inherent, fixed property of abstract, independently existing objects; rather, ‘matter’ refers to phenomena in their ongoing materialization.”[23] Discussion of these implications of quantum theory for understanding God-world interaction are only beginning.[24] Barad’s own contribution appeals to Jewish mysticism, especially to the work of Walter Benjamin on the appearance of the messianic: ”the flashing up of the infinite, an infinity of other times within this time—it is written into the very structure of matter-time-being itself.”[25]
Symbolic language. The capacity of human beings for symbolic language—different not in kind but rather degree from other animals—is another focal area for interpreting God’s interaction with the world. Language gives voice to human self-consciousness that includes awareness of and communication with God. Religious experiences apprehend things occurring in the world around us as divine and these are interpreted through language as signs or messages from God. Revelation is a theological category that names what we learn from God through God’s own self-communication. In the Bible, creation happens as God speaks and the universe comes into existence (Gen 1). Not only did the Word of God create at the beginning, but the Word of God is the power that continues to sustain creation (Isa 55:10-11). Jesus is identified as the incarnate Word of God (John 1:1-4). At the end of the universe, God will create a new heaven and a new earth by the power of the divine Word (Rev 21:3-5). God creates through speech events that enact what they say. Language has the power to summon new things into existence. This happens, for example, when the judge speaks to finalize the adoption of a child into a family. So also, one generation speaks the Word to the next and faith happens. The Word of God comes to us both through the Book of Scripture and through the Book of Nature, interpreted through science. Symbolic language is a way that God interacts with the world through words. The Word of God brings life by sustaining creation through natural processes and creating faith through sacred words.
Anthropology: Understanding Human Nature
A third focal area for the dialogue and integration of science and theology is anthropology, the nature of human being. How can theology arrive at a more complete understandings of humanity by taking account of consensus positions from the sciences? How can science honor the complexity of human reality by reckoning with the human capacity for symbolic language, culture, literature, the arts, and religion? Through scientific method scientists explore all things that are measurable. Science calculates the dimensions of the universe, the earth, and all its creatures to discover how all things function and interconnect. By contrast, the humanities and religion explore questions of meaning, especially through written texts, cultural materials, and artistic artifacts. How can the joining of scientific findings with the liberal arts help us to arrive at a more complete understanding of the human endeavor? In this section, we introduce three distinctive approaches: sociobiology, cognitive science, and cultural studies. This is followed in the final section by my own contribution to the integration of science and theology focused on anthropology as the dislocation of the human animal.
Sociobiology. Sociobiology has claimed to be a comprehensive science for interpreting human behavior. Indeed, many facets of the human phenomenon have been illuminated by the modern synthesis uniting natural selection with genetics. The original thesis of sociobiology is that animal behavior (including humans) can be understood according to the measure of what best contributes to propagating an individual’s genes.[26] This materialist view of sociobiology led Richard Dawkins to interpret belief in God as a delusion.[27] Other sociobiologists like E. O. Wilson, have moved beyond genetic determinism to explore the human story with recognition of the unique place—and unique responsibilities—belonging to humans in the evolutionary story.[28] Wilson recognizes that cognitive science has accomplished much to understand the mapping of the brain, yet human consciousness has given rise to a freedom that remains beyond scientific explanation. Human beings have tremendous responsibility for shaping the future of the planet through their capacity to intervene in natural processes with science and technology. This calls for the exercise of ethical responsibility to set limits on implementing all what human beings are capable of, for example, the use of nuclear weapons or the curbing of carbon emissions. Wilson notes the dilemma between the Paleolithic emotions and godlike powers of human beings. While he acknowledges the value of religion for human bonding, the great religions have also contributed ethical wisdom, such as the Golden Rule, to promote peace, social justice, human dignity, and ecojustce. The wellbeing of creation benefits from scientific understanding of the human and the ethical wisdom of theology.
Cognitive science. Cognitive science has developed interdisciplinary approaches to religion drawn from developmental and evolutionary psychology to explore the nature of religious phenomena.[29] Much of this research investigates the cognitive processes behind religious beliefs and behavior, often bracketing out relational and cultural influences. Religious thoughts are understood as natural phenomena that manifest in 1) concepts about supernatural actors, 2) the acquisition of religious beliefs, and 3) the relationship between religious beliefs and religious rituals. In this regard, religious experiences are interpreted in the most general way to encompass a broad range of faith traditions. This leaves open the question of whether religion is merely a social construct or something that has a real transcendent referent. One theory about religious experience is that human beings possess an “hyperactive agency detection device” that is related to primal self-protection from predators and other kinds of danger.[30] Such a theory does not entertain the possibility that religious experiences originate from actual encounters with the holy or divine, such as indicated by Augustine: “…You have made us for Your sake, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”[31] The current state of research by cognitive science is more useful therefore for raising the possibility of God’s existence through the phenomena of human religious experiences than addressing claims about what or whom might be experienced.
Cultural studies. One distinctive characteristic of human beings in comparison to other animals is the extent of development both of language and culture. Culture refers to the entire way of life of a people, everything about a particular group that distinguishes them from others, including social habits and institutions, rituals, artifacts, categorical schemes, beliefs and values.[32] All cultures have structural features that characterize it over the passing of time: symbols, language, norms, values, rituals, and artifacts. Yet these forms manifest in dramatically different expressions in each distinctive culture. For example, while every society has rituals, these always involve novel patterns and meanings. Each culture exhibits originality that shapes its unique values and norms in contrast to other cultures. The components of culture— institutions, rituals, artifacts, beliefs, and values—can be exercised in two possible directions, either towards death or towards life. On the one hand, cultures can be constructed to build upon and exacerbate the human tendency to discriminate based on differences. Cultural elements, for example, through the media (TV shows, videos, radio, songs, movies, newspapers, internet, social feeds, podcasts) or in the arts (music, painting, sculpture, poetry, literature, theater, film, photography, architecture), can be constructed to reinforce hierarchies between superior and inferior people. On the other hand, a culture can be constructed to build mutuality and community across characteristics that would otherwise divide us into opposing groups. Religion is crucial for contributing cultural elements to build understanding and solidarity across human differences, while religion also can become demonic in pursuing harmful ends.
Sin as the Dislocation of the Human Animal: Toward the Integration of Science and Theology
Sociobiology emerged in recent decades as a scientific approach for interpreting human behavior.[33] Theology has only begun to fathom the implications of sociobiology for theological anthropology. As a theological discipline, theology interprets human being primarily from the scriptural accounts of creation and fall in Genesis 1–3. The claim that human beings are imprinted by their evolutionary past can offer new insights and a more adequate explanation of human reality, should theologians engage with the research of sociobiologists. This section offers a demonstration of the integration of theology and science in relation to the concept of sin.
It is vital to state two presuppositions. First, from the side of theology, the arguments of sociobiologists regarding human behavior are to be taken seriously. This goes beyond the false alternatives of either ignoring the findings of sociobiology or seeking to refute them. Theology continues to be written as though other disciplines, particularly those as threatening as sociobiology, have nothing constructive to offer. Second, this approach rejects the materialist claims of sociobiology. While biological inheritance plays an enormous role in shaping human behavior, the capacity of human mind for reflective self-consciousness enables human beings to transcend sociobiological reductionism. This proposal navigates these two aporias.
The fundamental premise of sociobiology is that animal behavior—including that of humans—should be understood according to what best contributes to propagating an individual’s genes.[34] To demonstrate the value of sociobiology for theological anthropology, we consider two types of animal behavior: sex and aggression. In both instances, evolutionary biology contributes to comprehending human behavior. Yet, in each case, the capacity for reflective self-consciousness adds a new dimension to human existence that can accent either the destructive or the redemptive possibilities of sociobiological directedness.
Science interprets human behavior through our evolutionary history. Human beings exhibit both embedded instinctual mechanisms belonging to other animals and a distinctive capacity for reflective self-consciousness. When describing human phenomena, one does well to speak not of the brain alone but of the “brain-mind.”[35] Failing to understand consciousness and mind as integral to the functioning of the human brain leads to serious misunderstanding.[36] This means that the human being is capable of both “bottom-up” behavior, based on the operation of drives and instincts, and “top-down” actions, based on conscious intention and decisions. To use a homely example, when my dog’s nose itches, she will scratch. If my nose itches, I can choose to scratch or not.
Reflective self-consciousness refers not only to the human capacity for awareness of the self as one who knows, but also to the capacity to recognize another human being as a reflecting self who has the same ability for other-awareness that I do. This leads to infinite complexity in human relationships. Not only do I know my own thoughts and feelings, but I search to know your thoughts and feelings. Moreover, I can search to know what you are thinking and feeling about me and about others. To extend this regress one more step: you in turn search to know what I am thinking and feeling about what you are thinking and feeling about me. The possibilities for insight (and for misinterpretation) are immense.
Reflective self-consciousness finds expression in the human capacity for symbolic language.[37] Human beings employ language not only as signs to describe concrete circumstances but also as symbols to communicate multivalent levels and nuances of meaning. One of the most fascinating capacities of human language is the ability to lie and deceive. Furthermore, reflective self-consciousness gives rise through language to the construction of culture. Culture is a system of learned and taught behaviors whose symbol system is expressed in myth, music, art, and rituals that give meaning to and guides these learned behaviors.[38]
While recent studies stress the continuity of primate and human behavior, interpretations of the human that fail to reckon with human capacities for reflective self-consciousness, symbolic language, and the construction of culture are inadequate. Even a thoroughgoing sociobiologist like Richard Dawkins could not interpret the complexity of human behavior solely on the basis of sociobiological mechanisms. Instead, Dawkins introduced the fruitful concept of “meme” to adequately explain the phenomenon of human self-transcendence through language and culture.[39]
When humans engage in reflective self-reflective thought and symbolic language, the biological inheritance from our animal ancestors remains an inextricably part of our human identity. The neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean imaginatively construed the structure of the human brain according to its evolutionary development.[40] According to this heuristic, the human brain is understood according to three distinguishable antecedents, those deriving from reptilian, mammalian, and human stages of development. While in human beings these three portions of the brain are intricately interconnected, each contributes distinctively to human functioning. The reptilian inheritance is located at the base of the brain, just above the brain stem. This portion is responsible for life support, self-preservation, and procreational activities.[41] The reptilian brain functions to establish and defend territory, forage and hunt, establish social hierarchy through ritualistic displays, direct courtship and mating, grooming, and migration. Although these behaviors can be modified by reflective self-consciousness, these instinctual behaviors persist in human beings.
The limbic system, or mammalian portion (which surrounds the reptilian brain structure), constitutes a further evolutionary stage of human brain development. The limbic system provides the capacity for emotion and social behaviors: eating, mating, fighting, play, and care for the young. Emotions motivate and mobilize the animal into action. “To a greater or lesser degree, depending on their complexity of development, mammals exhibit anger in competition, emotion-laden cravings for food, and lustful drives to mate.”[42] Ethologists study how human sex, aggression, appetite, nurturing young, and play have antecedents in the behavior of animals.
The third portion is the neocortex, a structure which actuates the thought and behavior peculiarly human. The two hemispheres of the neocortex contribute to spatial relations and depth perception. The left hemisphere especially contributes to language ability and mathematical understanding. The two sides of the brain work in concert to provide humans with capacity for verbal, mathematical, and symbolic thought. Neuroscientists refer to the “organic plasticity” of the cortex to describe its potential for learning something new.[43] The frontal lobes provide ability for evaluating information, emotional awareness, empathy, moral responsibility, long-term planning, and the integration of all other functions. “The frontal region, as the locus of planning, imagining, and deciding, regulates attention.”[44] In its complex functioning the neocortex gives rise to the search for the meaning of life and the question of God.
Human beings face distinctive dilemmas about whether and how to act on the instincts and drives emanating from the reptilian and mammalian impulses of the brain. Whereas other animals naturally survive by acting upon these instincts and drives, the human animal is confronted to an unprecedented degree with the acute moral problem of knowing how such actions will affect others. There is an innocence about animal behavior that no longer belongs to humankind. Now inherited behaviors—such as defending territory, mating, killing prey for survival, and self-propagation—are fraught with moral responsibility. What is adaptive behavior for other animals becomes for humans a matter of culpability. Much of the glory and the shame of human existence derives from the challenges of negotiating the boundary between inherited animal behaviors and the possibilities of reflective self-consciousness.
Can we fathom the dislocation from the natural cycle that we see with the emergence of human beings? Our reflective self-consciousness makes the moral decisions we face different from every other animal. While other creatures have consciousness (even self-consciousness among primates), the capacity of the human mind is qualitatively different. Not only do I know things, but I know that I know. And I also know that you have a mind like mine that thinks about what I am thinking about you. And you have a mind that wonders about what I am thinking about you thinking about me. Human existence in the world has become exquisitely complex. This is due to our reflective self-consciousness.
With this kind of mind, we have an unprecedented capacity for ethical thought and ethical responsibility. As a human, I can know that my words and actions have consequences for others, not only physical but mental, emotional, and spiritual consequences. Unlike any other animal, the human being can realize and feel responsible for the suffering imposed on others. This makes the human being a moral creature without peer.
What comes naturally to other animals, for example, hunting and eating prey, now has become a moral problem for humans. What the lion does by instinct and drive has become for us an ethical dilemma. There is a moral hiatus between thought and action for which human beings must take responsibility for what they do. This makes sin a condition of being human and not just specific acts. It is our sinful condition that leads to sinful deeds.
There is yet another wrinkle, however, that makes human existence both tragic and glorious. As humans, we continue to have many instincts and drives from our evolutionary inheritance. For example, we have aggressive impulses and sexual drives that we share with other animals emanating from our nervous system. Given our moral capacity either to act upon or resist these impulses, our lives become marked either by tragedy when we succumb to what we know to be harmful behavior or by glory when we act to constrain our behavior to prevent the suffering of others.
This dilemma faced by human beings can be understood as a kind of “fall.” We have fallen from the “dreaming innocence” (Paul Tillich) belonging to other creatures into the dilemma of ethical responsibility. Harmful words and actions begin with how we think about the world and those who inhabit it with us. The fall into sin can be seen as the unprecedented dilemma facing human beings due to the emergence of reflective self-consciousness. What is highly programmed behavior for animals (sex or aggression) requires moral deliberation by human beings due to our capacity to either act upon or sublimate these sociobiological inclinations. It is sinful for humans to follow sociobiological impulses in the knowledge that doing so inflicts harm on others. Human beings demonstrate their fallen condition when they fail to redirect sociobiologically driven behaviors away from doing harm and toward the wellbeing of the neighbor.
Human beings from earliest times have exhibited evidence of religious concern.[45] Humans live in lifegiving relationship with God, others, and all creation through their capacity for reflective self-consciousness. Reflective self-consciousness, however, also has given rise to the hiatus between instinct and thought, making human beings responsible for their sociobiological drives and instincts.[46] When interpreting the concepts of theological anthropology—good creation, natural evil, fall, and sin—sociobiological insights lead to more adequate formulations.
Because for theology truth is ultimately grounded in God and of divine origin, claims to truth based on scientific findings can also be understood as the work of the Creator. People of faith have nothing to fear by incorporating scientific information into their theological worldview. Faith is strengthened, not undermined, by alignment with all sources of truth. As scientific paradigms shift, the task of theology is to expand its understanding by incorporating new discoveries, especially consensus positions in the sciences. What we know about God becomes more expansive by paying attention to scientific knowledge about the world God has created. Reason has a crucial role to play as an ongoing source of authority for theology.
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[1] Robert John Russell, “Ian Barbour’s Methodology in Science and Religion,” in Dialogue: Theology and Science. https://www.theologie-naturwissenschaften.de/en/dialogue-between-theology-and-science/editorials/barboursmethodology/.
[2] Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures, 1989-91, Vol. 1 (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), Chap. 1.
[3] Gary B. Ferngren, Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017).
[4] Ian G. Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science: The Gifford Lectures 1989-1991, Vol. 1 (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), 3-30.
[5] Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science, 17-20.
[6] Cf. David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1998).
[7] Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 1:59-66
[8] Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science, 24-30.
[9] Cf. Nancey Murphy, Theology in an Age of Scientific Reasoning (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990).
[10] For the following, see Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science, 135-40.
[11] Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (London: Oxford University Press, 1912), 99.
[12] Alister E. McGrath, Science and Religion: A New Introduction 3rd ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2020), 134-35.
[13] David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 151.
[14] John C. Polkinghorne, Science and Creation: The Search for Understanding (Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2006).
[15] For the following, see David William Worthing, God, Creation, and Contemporary Physics (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 159-98.
[16] Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality (New York: Doubleday, 1994).
[17] For the following, see McGrath, Science and Religion, 112-15. See also Thomas Dixon, Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 37-57.
[18] John B. Cobb Jr. and David Ray Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976).
[19] Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1929), 532.
[20] Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1987), 68-78.
[21] Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science, 222-23
[22] Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 309.
[23] Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway, 151.
[24] Catherine Keller and Mary-Jane Rubenstein, eds., Entangled Worlds: Religion, Science, and New Materialisms (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017).
[25] Karen Barad, “What Flashes Up: Theological-Political-Scientific Fragments,” in Keller and Rubenstein, eds., Entangled Worlds, 63, commenting on Benjamin. See also Karen River Barad, Energetics of the Otherwise: A Laboratory of the Possible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2027).
[26] Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene 40th Anniversary Ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
[27] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion: A Study of Religious Belief and Skepticism (Boston: Mariner, 2014).
[28]For the following, see Edward O. Wilson, The Meaning of Human Existence (New York: Liveright, 2014).
[29] For the following, see McGrath, Science and Religion, 213-18.
[30] McGrath, Science and Religion, 215-16.
[31] Augustine, Confessions: A New Translation, trans. Peter Constantine (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2018), 1 [1.1].
[32] Katherine Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 27.
[33] Edward O. Wilson, On Human Nature, Rev. Ed. (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2004).
[34] Dawkins, The Selfish Gene.
[35] James B. Ashbrook and Carol Rausch Albright, The Humanizing Brain: Where Religion and Neuroscience Meet (Cleveland: Pilgrim, 1997), xxv.
[36] John Searle, Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
[37] Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1994).
[38] Cf. Philip Hefner, The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 147–48).
[39] Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 189-201.
[40] Paul MacLean, “Brain Roots of the Will-to-Power,” Zygon: Journal of Religion and
Science 18 (Dec 1983): 359–74.
[41] Ashbrooke and Albright, The Humanizing Brain, 55-62.
[42] Ashbrooke and Albright, The Humanizing Brain, 75.
[43] Ashbrooke and Albright, The Humanizing Brain, 114-15.
[44] Ashbrooke and Albright, The Humanizing Brain, 136.
[45] Hefner, The Human Factor, 170-72.
[46] Arnold Gehlen, Man: His Nature and Place in the World, trans. Clare McMillan
and Karl Pillemer (New York: Columbia University Press,1988), 45-46.