Adam’s Ancestors

A review of David N. Livingstone, Adam’s Ancestors: Race, Religion and the Politics of Human Origins (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008)

In this volume, the historian David Livingstone offers us a fascinating history of an obscure view of human origins: pre-adamism. Now confined to the margins of religious conservatism, it was once part of mainstream intellectual thought, and before that it had its roots in a sceptical perspective on the biblical account of human origins.

In eight chapters, Livingstone traces the idea from obscure roots, through its hey day in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and back into obscurity. This structure is at once both chronological and thematic as he traces the transformation of the idea through its historical trajectory.

Although he sees tantalizing glimpses of the idea in writings prior to the seventeenth century, he identifies its first clear exposition in the work of the seventeenth-century author Isaac La Peyrère. Impressed by the diversity of humankind revealed by early ethnology, and particularly his own studies of Greenland, La Peyrère sought to explain this by postulating the existence of human beings long before the time of Adam. His inevitable denunciation as a heretic doubtless played a part in his pre-adamism becoming part of the armoury of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scepticism in its assault on biblical orthodoxy.

By Chapter 3 Livingstone is ready to trace the first of the transformations in the fortunes of pre-adamism: the politicization of human origins in the eighteenth century. If as early pre-adamism suggested, there are distinct human races only one of which is adamic and therefore blessed by God, it is but a short step to using it as a justification of imperialism in general and the institution of slavery in particular (since the dominion of the adamic race clearly extends to a paternalistic position vis-à-vis the ‘lesser’ races).

Move on another century and the idea has undergone further transformations. It saw increasing use as a strategy for reconciling science and religion. But at the very same time that it was becoming established in orthodox Christian apologetics, a more secular version was playing an important role in the emerging sciences of anthropology and ethnology.

With the advent of Darwinism, the idea underwent yet another transformation. This time it was pressed into service as a theological device for reconciling the new science of evolutionary biology with the biblical view of human origins. In the process it cast off its polygenist roots and embraced a staunch monogenism – the human race is one in origin but that origin is now pushed back into the deep past of evolutionary prehistory.

But even as pre-adamism was evolving from polygenism to monogenism, a parallel development was exploiting its racist potential to the full. Chapter 7 explores the role of pre-adamism in the developing politics of racial supremacy.

In Chapter 8, Livingstone explores continuing traces of pre-adamism in twentieth-century thought. Specifically, he identifies three contrasting uses of the idea. It plays a part in some anti-evolutionary apologetics. More importantly, it is still used by both evangelicals and Catholics as a device for harmonizing evolutionary biology with a (relatively) conservative reading of the Bible. But, as he points out in his conclusion, such harmonizing strategies have a tendency to transform the very things they seek to unite. On a more disturbing note, the third contemporary use of pre-adamism is its continued deployment to justify the vicious racism of extremist groups like Christian Identity and Aryan Nation. However, Livingstone reminds us that this racism results from a rereading of pre-adamism in a particular social setting rather than being inherent in the idea itself.

In conclusion, this is a well-written and thought-provoking study of an interesting and unjustly neglected strand in the history of the relationship between science and religion.

(This review originally appeared in Science & Christian Belief 22, no. 1 (2010), pp. 99–100.)

Creation’s Diversity: Voices from Theology and Science

A review of Willem B. Drees, Hubert Meisinger and Taede A. Smedes (eds), Creation’s Diversity: Voices from Theology and Science (London: T&T Clark, 2008)

Creation’s Diversity is a selection of papers from the 2006 ESSSAT meeting in Romania. The title indicates that the editors have chosen them to offer the reader a variety of perspectives on the diversity of creation. After two introductory chapters, the papers are organized into two sections of six chapters each: ‘A Diversity of Visions of Creation’ and ‘Sustaining Creation’s Diversity’.

The first introductory chapter, by Willem Drees, simply offers an overview of the book itself. Its companion piece, by Patriarch Daniel Ciobotea of the Romanian Orthodox Church, is an interesting call for dialogue between science and religion. Unlike many similar calls, this one is rooted in Eastern Orthodoxy and specifically the theology of Dumitru Staniloae (whose work deserves to be much more widely known among Western Christians).

‘A Diversity of Visions’ offers six quite disparate perspectives on creation/nature. First we are offered a Gaian perspective of the biosphere by the feminist theologian Anne Primavesi. While I am sympathetic to the holistic view of the environment she presents, I was disturbed that there was no acknowledgement of the potential for ecofascism in this approach. In contrast to Primavesi’s focus on the history of nature, Regine Kather offers a philosophical exploration of humans as the products of nature, concluding that value is intrinsic to nature. David Goodin offers a fascinating Eastern Orthodox perspective on the Leviathan passages of the Old Testament from which he gleans a timely ecological message about the intrinsic value of creation. With his chapter, Christopher Southgate draws our attention to suffering within the evolutionary process. He revisits the concept of kenosis to suggest how the suffering of creatures might be reconciled with the notion of a benevolent creator. Alfred Kracher explores the popular myth that technology and nature are in opposition. The section ends with an article by Tony Watkins on new cosmologies and sacred stories, which calls for a re-imagining of our relationship with the environment by means of metaphors drawn largely from deep ecology and a new transcultural creation myth based on evolution.

The second section focuses on ‘Sustaining Creation’s Diversity’. Again it consists of six chapters from a variety of perspectives. It begins with Sam Berry objecting to the concept of ‘sustaining diversity’, which appears in much of the current literature to suggest the maintenance of a status quo. He prefers to speak of ‘developing sustainably’. Unfortunately, this concept also has a track record in the literature. Perhaps we should be speaking instead of nurturing diversity. In the next chapter, current threats to biodiversity are picked up and explored in some detail by Jan Boersema. Having been presented with a call to nurture diversity and dire warnings about threatened loss of the same, there follows a short paper in which Chris Wiltsher plays devil’s advocate. He argues, contrary to popular opinion among environmentally minded theologians, that nurturing the diversity of creation is not a clear theological virtue. Peter Kirschenmann explores the more general question of whether there are moral principles that would oblige us to maintain biodiversity. His conclusion is that such ‘sustainable development’ has to be rooted in an ethic of responsibility. Zbigniew Liana shifts the emphasis from biodiversity to cultural diversity. He proposes a Popperian approach to pluralism, which would allow an acceptance of the kind of philosophical and religious diversity apparent in this volume without descending into relativism or scepticism. Finally Dirk Evers draws the book to a close by examining the nurturing of diversity as a theological task in a climate of religious pluralism.

The editors have certainly succeeded in representing the diversity of opinions as to how to relate environmental engagement in the context of religious convictions. The contributors are certainly not of one mind, nor do their papers direct the reader to a particular set of conclusions. But this lack of an overarching argument does have the virtue that the book allows a view into an ongoing discussion. Sadly, there is little evidence of interaction between the chapters. I think the book could have been made more useful by allowing the authors to write short responses to each other’s papers.

My main reservation about the book is that it doesn’t really live up to the title. The emphasis is all on diversity, but judging by the content of these papers most of the authors seem blithely unaware that ‘creation’ is not merely a synonym for ‘nature’. For a book of this kind to ignore the very real theological distinction between the two is a major shortcoming. However, in spite of that reservation, this book remains a useful contribution to the continuing dialogue between theologies and the sciences on environmental issues.

Against natural theology

Natural theology, at least as traditionally understood, seeks to prove the existence of God (and possibly give an account of some divine attributes) solely by drawing on evidence from the world around us. A classic example would be Thomas Aquinas’s five ways.

Of course, not all Christians would approve of such a rationalistic approach to theology. In particular, many Eastern Orthodox theologians have questioned the value and validity of such an approach.

The other day, I came across a useful summary rejection of natural theology from the pen of St Gregory Palamas. Interestingly, Palamas (who was no fan of Aquinas) does not attack Aquinas directly but looks instead at the pagan Hellenistic roots of natural theology:

By examining the nature of sensible things, these people have arrived at a certain concept of God, but not at a concept truly worthy of Him and appropriate to His blessed nature. . . . For if a worthy conception of God could be attained through the use of intellection, how could these people have taken the demons for gods, and how could they have believed the demons when they taught man polytheism? In this way, wrapped up in this mindless and foolish wisdom and unenlightened education, they have calumniated both God and nature. They have deprived God of His sovereignty (at least as far as they are concerned); they have ascribed the Divine Name to demons; and they were so far from finding the knowledge of beings – the object of their desire and zeal – as to claim that inanimate things have a soul and participate in a soul superior to our own. They also allege that things without reason are reasonable, since capable of receiving a human soul . . . they have classed among things uncreated and unoriginate and coeternal with God, not only matter, and what they call the World Soul, but also those intelligible beings not clothed in the opacity of the body, and even our souls themselves. (The Triads I.i.18)

Einstein and Religion by Max Jammer

Here’s a book review I wrote for the journal Science and Christian Belief some years ago:

Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion: Physics and Theology (Princeton University Press, 1999)

Everyone with an interest in the relationship between physics and theology will welcome the publication of this volume by the distinguished philosopher of physics, Max Jammer. In spite of the general recognition of the importance of Einstein’s thought both for modern physics and its relationship with religion this is, as far as I am aware, the first comprehensive account of Einstein’s own views on the relationship.

Jammer has organised his material into three main sections. The first of these deals with ‘Einstein’s Religiosity and the Role of Religion in His Private Life’. As the title suggests, this chapter deals with Einstein’s personal attitude towards religion from childhood until his death. It is a detailed and roughly chronological account in which Jammer documents Einstein’s apparently self-contradictory attitude towards religion. On the one hand, he had a lifelong aversion to authority that was expressed in a distaste for organised religion (culminating in his request not to be given a Jewish funeral). On the other hand, as a personal response to the cosmos, he experienced what can only be described as profound religious feelings. In short, Einstein’s personal religion is shown to be typically late modern – affirming personal spirituality while disavowing organised religion.

In his second chapter, Jammer turns from Einstein’s personal attitude to what he has written about religion and its role in human society. The chapter is entitled ‘Einstein’s Philosophy of Religion’ and sets out to be a logical justification of the attitudes described in the first chapter. I must confess that I felt rather suspicious of this (re)construction of Einstein’s philosophy of religion. Jammer’s interpretative approach seems to have been to assume that it must always be possible to reconcile apparently contradictory statements. The result is a superhuman degree of consistency. Frankly, I doubt whether even someone of Einstein’s stature could achieve such consistency outside his own field (and, indeed, his vacillations about the implications of relativity theory for the nature of time suggest that he did not always achieve it within his own field). That criticism apart, this chapter offers a valuable summary of Einstein’s articulated views about religion. In particular, it explores his lifelong admiration for Spinoza and sets his well-known determinism, realism, and insistence on the impersonality of God in that context.

The final chapter is devoted to ‘Einstein’s Physics and Theology’. Here Jammer moves on from Einstein’s own views to explore some of the ways in which his contributions to science have been received by theologians and philosophers of religion. These explorations are organised logically (following roughly the order in which the ideas on which they are based appeared within the development of relativity theory) rather than chronologically. Among the issues tackled are the implications of Einstein’s redefinition of simultaneity for our understanding of eternity, determinism, and omniscience; theological uses (and abuses) of time dilation; T.F. Torrance’s use of mass–energy equivalence as an exegesis of Incarnation; and, more generally, Pannenberg’s assignment of theological significance to Einstein’s concept of field. Finally, he explores some of the theological implications of quantum mechanics (on the grounds that Einstein’s criticisms played a major role in shaping its development). Some readers may find this final chapter both confusing and inconclusive. In part, this is due to the fact that Jammer distances both Einstein and himself from the discussions he is reporting. Thus it reflects the current status of theological efforts to appropriate Einstein’s ideas.

Jammer has done an excellent job in bringing together and making accessible the scattered evidence for Einstein’s views about religion. Unfortunately, the work is marred by the extreme length of the chapters (Chapter 3 runs to 110 pages!) and the complete lack of internal divisions. This makes reading the book a more daunting task than is necessary. Nevertheless, this is a valuable contribution to the subject.