Science in Christian Perspective

 

 

Darwin and Contemporary Theological Reflection on the Nature of Man
JOHN C. GIENAPP
Coneordia Senior College 
Fort Wayne, Indiana 46825

From: JASA 27 (March 1975):12-17.

I am sorry that I have no 'consolatory view' as to [the] dignity of man: I am content that man will probably advance, and care not much whether we are looked at as mere savages in a remotely distant future.1


So wrote Charles Darwin to Charles Lyell in 1860 and in so doing introduced his own views on perhaps the most difficult theological issue connected with the development of evolutionary views-the question of the nature and dignity of man.

This, of course, was not the only religious or theological question raised by Darwin's work, The controversies have been extensively explored2 and variously described. In essence, however, there were three important questions: the question of how to interpret the Bible; the question of the role of natural theology in supporting belief in God; and the question of the nature and dignity of man. Of these three, it seems to me, the last question was the most important. This becomes clear, I think, if we examine each of the questions from the perspective of the present.

Biblical Interpretation

The first question in which Darwin was embroiled was the question of the interpretation of the Bible. After the Reformation, Protestants tended to interpret the Bible literally-that is, to avoid much of the allegorizing and spiritualizing of patristic and medieval exegesis. Moreover, as prose styles during the 17th and 18th centuries became simpler, emphasizing the narrative or expository content, people tended to interpret the Bible as similar narrative or exposition. In so doing they often failed to see the great cultural distance between the Scriptural writers and themselves. As a result, the so-called 'historical books" were treated as straightforward narrative and, with a few exceptions, as literally true. Doctrines of revelation and inspiration then needed to be elaborated to account for the special knowledge that writers of such documents seemed to possess. Darwin's work, of course, carried the implication that at least the early chapters of Genesis could not be literally and historically true.

Yet Darwin neither initiated criticism of the literal interpretation of the Scriptures nor alone caused it to he swept away. Within the sciences the development of cosmology, geology, and paleontology had already suggested changes in the interpretation of the Bible before Darwin's work. Moreover, the gradual extension of the concept of a law-bound system of nature made many of the miraculous elements in the Scriptures appear dubious. In response to this there had been at least a century of higher criticism before 1859 aimed at revising the understanding of Scriptural documents. In his autobiography Darwin attributes his own doubts about the truth of Christianity as much to the impact of higher criticism as to the development of the evolutionary theory itself.3 In short, the question of the interpretation of Scripture was raised by the development of science in general, and by literary considerations, which I have not detailed here, not merely by the development of the evolutionary theory. All these factors together, especially a better understanding of the literary and cultural background of the Biblical documents, induced changes in the way Scripture is interpreted but they have not at the present time destroyed theological claims about the authority of the Scriptures or about their central message.

Natural Theology

The second religious question seemingly exacerbated by Darwin's work was the question of the natural knowledge of God, or natural theology. Natural theology in England, based in large measure on the views of the "virtuosi" of the Scientific Revolution,4 was later shaped by William Paley into physcio-theology, a particular form of the argument from design. Its most important characteristic with reference to evolution was that it emphasized adaptation and functional structure in living creatures as evidence of the wisdom, power, and benevolence of God. By its lights Darwin's work seemed "atheistical," for in explaining adaptation as the result of random variations and the operation of natural selection, Darwinism undermined the foundations of physcio-theology. Darwin agreed, for he could not see how a natural process which produced adaptation through struggle, suffering, and extinction could indicate the benevolence of God.

There seems to me too much misery in the world [he wrote]. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidac with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a eat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand, I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion of oil satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can.5

It is possible, however, to overemphasize Darwin's challenge to natural theology. As Loren Eiseley points out, "Darwin did not destroy the argument from design. He destroyed only the watchmaker and the watch....Only a certain kind of design argument had been eliminated by Darwin, namely the finalistic one. "6

While Darwin and even more so Huxley felt that the overthrow of physico-theology rendered discourse about God nearly meaningless,7 their view today seems overly pessimistic. As James Collins points out, they failed to see that the Paley position "falls pitiably short of encompassing all the resources of the philosophy of God, and hence that it does not deserve to be treated as natural theology without qualification."8

The argument from design could be reformulated in a way that appealed to many, including the Americans Asa Gray and John Fiske, although it then required the removal of God from a role of active benevolence. In addition, natural theology could be cast in other forms. Most importantly of all, Christian tradition could be cast in neo-orthodox forms that had little dependence on natural theology at all. Thus Darwin's work, devastating as it was to physico-theology, had a more modest effect on other types of Christian discourse.

Nature of Man

The third religious or theological question was the question of the nature of man. This question was particularly troublesome because there was no obvious Christian tradition that could provide the basis for an evolutionary, yet orthodox view of man, Such a position would have to he a new formulation. To many this seemed impossible. In the first place, the nature and dignity of mats was grounded in the Biblical accounts of creation and allusions to them. Theologically formulated, these accounts led to the doctrine of the imnago del. What separated man from the animals was that man had been created in a special way in the image of God. However this image was interpreted, it was difficult to reconcile with the evolutionary development


Darwin's work raised three important questions: how to interpret the Bible, the role of natural theology in supporting belief in God, and the nature and dignity of man. The last question was the most important.



of man. As Origen conceived it, the imago dei consisted of an immortal soul, but an immortal soul that evolved gradually was philosophical nonsense. Perhaps more commonly the image of God was thought of as man's humanitas, those things that make him distinctly human, such as his rationality, his moral responsibility, and his freedom of will. But if these had developed gradually, man could hardly he said to have a nature or dignity different from any other living creature.9 In the second place, orthodox Christianity held man to be a fallen creature, marked by a perversion of his originally perfect nature. This too was difficult to conceive of in an evolutionary way. Thus Darwin and most of his religious opponents would have agreed: if the evolutionary theory was correct, there seemed to be no consolatory view of the dignity of man. The point was emphatically made in the review of the Descent of Man in the Edinburgh Review of 1871.

Mr. Darwin does not confine his argument to the origin of man's body from pre-existent loran; he ventures to carry it into the region of mind, and to account for man's spiritual powers by a process of natural selection from rudiments in the lower animals. It is indeed impossible to overestimate the magnitude of the issue. If our humanity he merely the natural product of the modified faculties of brutes, most earnest-minded men will he compelled to give up those motives by which they have attempted to live noble arid virtuous lives as founded on a mistake; our moral sense will turn out to he a mere developed instinct identical in kind with those of ants and bees; and the revelation of God to us and the hope of a future life, pleasurable daydreams invented for the good of society. If these views be true, a revolution in thought is imminent, which will shake society to its foundation, by destroying the sanctity of the conscience and the religious sense; for sooner or later they must find expression in men's lives 10

Darwin did not stress his view of man's origin in the Origin of Species. But in the Descent of Man, published slightly more than a century ago, Darwin addressed himself to man's origin. Darwin's main purpose was to marshal] additional biological evidence that man was indeed descended from an earlier anthropoid-evidence that would complement Lyell's Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man and Huxley's Mart's Place in Nature. In addition, Darwin hoped to show that natural selection (with some help from sexual selection) could explain nearly everything about man, including the gradual development of his mental, moral, emotional, and religious faculties. In so doing he developed (partly explicitly and partly implicitly) an anthropology that today appears somewhat inconsistent. A necessary corollary of the gradual development of mail was that man differed only in degree, not in kind, from other animals. Thus, according to Darwin, he had no special nature or dignity by virtue of his origin.

To support the idea of man's gradual evolution Darwin developed shat he felt were plausible accounts of mail's intellectual, moral, and religious development. In the case of intellectual faculties Darwin emphasized mainly the gradation in mental powers in various animals to make plausible the idea of development.

If no organic being excepting man had possessed any mental power, or if his powers had been of a wholly different nature from those of the lower animals, then we should never have been able to convince ourselves that our high faculties had been gradually developed. But it can be shown that there is no fundamental difference of this kind. We must admit that there is a much wider interval in mental power between one of the lowest fishes, as a lamprey or lancelet, and one of the higher apes, than between an ape and man; yet this interval is filled up by numberless gradations.11

Darwin went on to enumerate various mental faculties, such as imagination, curiosity, reason, and to give examples of animals supposedly exhibiting these traits.

The development of the moral sense, which Darwin seemed to regard as the chief attribute of man, presented Darwin with peculiar difficulties. Darwin seemed to think that man's social instincts coupled with his superior intelligence would lead to higher morality.

It must not he forgotten [Darwin wrote] that although a high standard of morality gives . slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other own of the same tribe, yet ... an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard of Morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another. A tribe including many mrnsbers who from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would he natural selection. At all times throughout the world tribes have supplanted other tribes; and as morality is one important element in their success, the standard of morality and the number of well-endowed men will thus everywhere tend to rise and increase ... Looking to future generations, there is no cause to fear that the social instinct will grow weaker, and we may expect that virtuous habits will grow stronger, becoming perhaps fixed by inheritance. In this case the struggle between our higher and lower impulses will be less severe, and virtue will be triumphant.12

The difficulties with this view become apparent when one tries it in any known historical context. One hardly thinks of the European supplanting the American Indian because of his higher degree of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy. Studies of animal behavior suggest that aggression and a killer instinct may he selected for as well as "virtue." Darwin's difficulty was that he operated with moral categories not grounded in the evolutionary process. If man indeed has no special nature or dignity apart from the animals, how can lie he said to he in struggle-his higher nature against his lower? Darwin, it seems, retained some contemporary values without realizing their conflict with his evolutionary anthropology.

Development of Religion

In his discussion of the development of religion Darwin encountered similar difficulty. As an anthropologist he could place the origin of religion in the dreams and superstitions of primitive people; and he could suggest how these led to other beliefs: fetishism, polytheism, and various superstitions and customs. But he also described the belief in a universal and beneficent Creator arising in "high" cultures. In addition he said "the question of whether there exists a Creator and Euler of the universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed." But on what criteria did Darwin know that the intellect that affirms a Creator is higher? Certainly not because of the actual existence of a Creator, since his own ideas seemed to cast doubt on the existence of God. As he said, "the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?" Here, too, Darwin seemed to have accepted values that were not grounded in the evolutionary process as he elsewhere described it.


There was no obvious Christian tradition that could provide the basis for an evolutionary, yet orthodox view of man.


Besides the idea that man differs only in degree from animals, Darwin's anthropology contained a second assertion-the assertion of universal human progress. "I am content that man will probably advance and care not much whether we are looked at as mere savages in a remotely distant future," Darwin wrote to Lye]]. He echoed this view in the Descent of Man.


Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future. 13


Darwin faced a similar problem with the concept of progress as he did in his discussion of human morality. There was nothing in the evolutionary theory itself that required progress of the sort that Darwin envisioned. In fact, he felt that the ultimate disappearance of man, which his view of nature implied, was intolerable.

Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than lie now is, it is an intolerable thought that lie and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long continued slow progress.14

If the evolutionary process is a matter of randotn variations, natural selection, and increasing adaptation, and if it involves specialization, and often over-specialization and extinction, then, bow can one determine whether man really is the line on which the evolutionary future depends? Darwin never conceived of the possibilities we know today, that man can easily cause his own extinction, that the history of the human race, instead of being a glorious pathway to the future, may be simply a cruel hoax of nature, an evolutionary blind alley.

In short, Darwin made a strong case for the evolutionary origin of man. The balance of probability now lay heavily with the idea that man had developed slowly long ago from a precursor anthropoid form. However, if man was only different in degree from the animals, as Darwin argued, then Darwin had no easy way to sustain the goodness of the moral values he advocated or the truthfulness of the knowledge he asserted. Even more difficult to support was his confident belief that the evolutionary process led to human progress-that higher cultures emerged and supplanted lower ones while morality was everywhere on the rise. Finally, Darwin had little concern for what the Christian tradition has called evil or sin-the capability of man to pervert his own nature and destroy himself and his society. Thus Darwin's anthropology presented several puzzles to theologians. If it was in fact true that there was direction to the evolutionary process, then exactly how was this progress to he understood in a theological sense? And how was the nature of man to be understood if it was in fact changing? How was man related to Cod, if not by direct creation and subsequent fall? What meaning, if any, was there in the traditional doctrine of sin?

Contemporary theological traditions have not all agreed that these are valid questions. Two contemporary theological traditions that have addressed themselves to these questions are process theology and the theology of the future.

Process Theology

Process theology takes as its starting point the metaphysical system of Alfred North \Vhitehead. In Vhitehead's system reality is one universal process systematically governed, according to certain laws, by a cosmic mind or Cod. While God in his primordial nature is unchanging and complete, the source of all ideals and new possibilities, God in his consequent nature, as Whitehead describes it, shares in the creative advance of the world. The world is not mere flux and change, because somehow God is the ground of all becoming and moves toward greater and greater integration with his primordial nature. Religion is the vehicle by which men get some understanding of the direction of this process, although their understanding of it will never he complete.


Besides the idea that man differs only in degree from animals, Darwin's anthropology contained a second assertion-the assertion of universal human progress.


Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to he realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final goon, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.15

Whitehead's system gives a good account of the evolutionary process and indicates a kind of progress in it. However, even some of his most sympathetic interpreters admit that Whitehead had very little to contribute to the understanding of the nature of man. Thus theologians within the process tradition have attempted to elaborate Whitehead's philosophy to incorporate facets of Christian anthropology.

John B. Cobb, for example, has attempted to show that two Christian doctrines, namely the doctrine that man is a responsible sinner and the doctrine that personal existence continues beyond this life, can be incorporated into a Whiteheadian scheme, The doctrine of man as a responsible sinner is vulnerable to scientific-philosophical criticism on two counts, Cobb says. On the one hand, if man is completely determined by natural forces, to talk of his responsibility is meaningless. On the other hand, if there is no objective claim upon man to terms of which right and wrong can be defined, it is equally meaningless. In response to the first criticism Cobb argues that Whitehead's concept of freedom permits the understanding that man has freedom "within the context of cumulative individual and social relations," thereby retaining the view that men cannot escape the causal nexus. The objectivity of moral standards can also be maintained within a Whiteheadian scheme, Cobb asserts. Such a formulation, he feels, is in fact preferable to Kantian or existentialist formulations. We shall not here detail Cobb's view on personal existence after death.16 However, it can he seen that Cobb attempts to develop an anthropology that is traditionally Christian in accepting the reality of man as sinner. What is less clear is how Cobb would integrate traditional redemptive and Christologieal elements into his scheme.
Another process theologian who deals with the question of man's nature is Daniel Day' Williams. In his book The Spirit and the Forms of Love, he makes full-length interpretation of the concept of love based to a large extent on the categories of process thought. Its so doing, he discusses the traditional concept of the imago dei in man. According to Williams the bongo (lei in man is not all ontological quality; it is a relationship. It must he conceived "in dynamic terms as the relatedness which God has established between himself and man and to which man can respond." In Williams' view

the imago dei should not he conceived as a special quality, hot as the relationship for which man is created with his neighbor before God. The image of God is reflected its every aspect of man's being, not as a special entity, but as the meaning of the life of man in its essential integrity. But surely this can be most clearly grasped it we say that love is the meaning of the imago dei. 17

By describing the concept of the ioiogo dci in this way Williams call easily formulate a concept of sin. "The root of sin is the failure to realize life is love." Williams can then provide an analysis to correlate his position with traditional doctrines about the sinfulness of man without, however, resorting to a concept of a historical fall. Willianis admits that his view of the imago dci as a relationship is not new or unique to him, but he asserts:

the process theology which informs our interpretations of the Christian faith proposes a distinctive addition to the doctrine (of the image of God), for process theology sees love disclosed in a history in which the spirit of God creates new forms. In this history God is involved with the world both as its eternal ground and as the supreme participant in the suffering which his creativity involves. In process theology therefore the 'analogy of being' which holds between God and the creatures must be related to a fully historical conception of wlsat being is. Man bears the image of Cod in his temporality as well as his participation in eternity, in suffering as well as in peace. His loves are in prqeess.18

From this conception of human nature set in the image of God, Williams is able to make a strong plea for ethical behavior and for social action. Man himself ought to live out the purposes of God and in so doing his nature and his society will change, as it "participates in the infinite life of communion within the everlasting creativity of God.19

In summary, the process theologians have been able to give a view of man that sets him within an evolutionary framework and yet grounds that framework upon a concept of God, albeit not a very traditional concept of God. In addition, they have argued for many of the traditional anthropological doctrines within Christianity, the imago dci, man's responsibility for sin, and the moral claims upon him, while rejecting the ontological categories and (circular) urzeitendzeit typology in which these were traditionally expressed.

Theology of the Future

Another contemporary theological movement that has attempted to express Christian faith in categories that are evolutionary is the theology of the future-a theology that has ties with the Marxian philosophy of Erisst Bloeh. Bloch's philosophy develops an ontology of the future. "It is only the horizon of the future," he suggests, which gives to reality its real dimension." A thing is not what it is, but what it will be, To be human then is to have a utopia, to be in hope, ahead of oneself, to he in quest of one's essence to establish it in the future. Bloch, however, does not expect the future to he eschatological in any traditional Christian sense. According to Carl Braaten, one of Bloch's American interpreters, Bloeh demythologizes the eschatological myths of messianic religion. "Man," Bloch says, "is the God of Christianity, and anthropology is the secret of Christian theology. "20

In spite of the anti-theological tone of Bloch's philosophy some theologians have found the category of the future exceptionally useful in illuminating the eschatological content of Christian faith. Drawing on Biblical material they have emphasized in the Hellsgesc/siehte of Israel and the Christian Church the continual cycle of promise and fulfillment in which the fulfillment gives new dimcnsioss to the promise and foreshadows in turn further events. The process is grounded in the nature of God himself who continually make all things new. As Jurgeo Moltmann says,

God is the power of the future and is heliesr'd in as the creator of a new world. Out of this qualitatively new future, new power already forces its way into the present so that man can find possibilities for rebirth and renewal, personal and revolutionary social change. We are confronted here with an escathatologically oriented faith. It is not interested in an event that took place at the beginning of time or in explaining why the world exists and why it is as it is. It wants to change the world rather than explain it, to transform existence rather than elucidate it.21

Thus the theology of the future, while not in explicit dialogue with Darwin, has taken up the claim of progress and attempted to ground it on a wholly different level. There is a direction to nature and to butnan history not because laws of nature determine it, not because the evolutionary structure of the cosmos is inherently creative, but because God continually creates things anew.

Anthropology within the theology of the future is explicated by Wolfhart Pannenberg in his book Was ist dcr Mcnsch? According to Pannenberg, the characteristic of man-that which makes him really man, which distinguishes him from animals, and lifts him out above non-human nature in general-is his "openness to the world." Mass has a world that can take an almost infinite variety of forms, rather than a mere environment like animals. Man transforms his world from a natural world to a world of culture, but he is never satisfied with it; he is always searching for something beyond. Urged ms by a multiplicity of drives, he relentlessly seeks to master nature and the world of his own making, and then to inquire beyond. The reason for this, Pannenberg argues, is that man's "openness to the world" presupposes a relation to God. "The necessity that man inquire beyond everything that he comes across as his world. . . is understandable only as the question about Cod." "What the environment is for animals, God is for man. God is the goal in which alone his striving can find rest and his destiny be fulfilled."22 Pannenberg here picks up a thrust in evolutionary anthropology-that man must ask about his destiny; indeed, more than that, that man must shape it-and suggests that ultimately the shape of that destiny can only be discovered in God.

Pannenberg deals with the traditional Christian doctrine of sin by saying that man's nature as "openness to the world" can he contradicted by self-centeredness. In fact, man constantly lapses into selfcenteredness. He cannot by himself solve the conflict between openness to the world" and self-centeredness. Here Pannenberg would probably take issue with Darwin's confident belief that moral virtues and hence man's nature are constantly improving. According to Pannenberg, it is only beyond death that the conflict between self-centeredness and openness to the world call he overcome. For Pannenberg the Christian tradition mediates this life beyond death in the union of believers in the death and life of Jesus Christ.

Pannenberg sees both individual destiny and the destiny of the human race as something that can never he adequately fulfilled or disclosed within the world as we know it. It will only be fulfilled when the world is transformed. This cannot come about of itself; it can he effected only by God. The Christian hope that such a transformation will take place is grounded in action that Cud has already taken in the historical person of Jesus. "The unity of history as it is established in Jesus' fate niakes it possible for each individual to attain the wholeness of his own life by knowing that he, together with all men, is related to that center. "23

Pannenherg's anthropology is an attempt to deal seriously with man's possibilities for changing his future -with man's progress, as Darwin might put it. He has moved away from the traditional expressions of Christian anthropology that talk of a perfect beginning, a fall into sin, and an ultimate restoration to perfection. Yet he retains the traditional Christian concept of the radical sinfulness of man in his assertion that man cannot by any of his own powers overcome the conflict between his self-centeredness and his 'openness to the world." Furthermore, he maintains a traditional Christian position in asserting that change in destiny (of a much more profound sort than Darwin described in his suggestions of moral improvement) comes only at the initiative of God, an initiative that Pannenberg grounds Christologically.

Summary

What I have tried to show here is that of the three religious questions connected with Darwinism, the question of the nature and destiny of man was the one on which Darwinisn had the greatest effect. The positive findings associated with the evolutionary theory required changes in the formulations of Christian anthropology, if the Christian doctrines of sin and redemption were to he related to an evolving human nature. But beyond that, the difficult claim of individual and social progress required attention. Darwin's formulation of the claim was not profound, but the idea persisted. Process theology and the theology of hope each attempt to ground progress in the nature of God; each in its own way attempts to understand traditional Christian anthropology in a framework in which man is continually changing. Each requires a philosophical framework developed in the post-Darwinian era.

The question remains whether these are "consolatory views," whether they are improvements on Darwin's strange blend of scepticism about human dignity and naively confident belief in human progress. Certainly they provide religious alternatives to Darwin's view, grounding human nature in its relationship to God, without denying some of Darwin's insights. Whether they are views that satisfy men deeply cannot now he answered; that answer can only he estimated in the future by the power of these views to move men to highest human actions. Ultimately the question of human nature will puzzle men until that hoino novus, that new man, anticipated each in its own way by both Christian tradition and evolutionary biology, is fully formed.


Two contemporary theological traditions that have addressed themselves to these questions are process theology and the theology of the future.




REFERENCES


lAs quoted in John Greene, The Death of Adam (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1959), p. 308.
2A handy bibliography, although by no means complete, is in Evolution and Religion, ed. Gail Kennedy (Boston: D.C. Heath and Co., 1957).
3Charles Darwin, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882 with Original Omissions Restored (New York: liarcourt, Brace and Co., 1959), pp. 85-86.
4See Richard Westfall, Science and Religion in Seventeenth Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959).
5Charles Darwin, Life and Letters (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1888), 11, 105.
6Loren Eiseley, Darwin's Century (Garden City Anchor Books, 1961), p. 197.
7See, for example, T. H. Huxley, Collected Essays (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1917), IX, 147.
8James Callios, "Darwin's Impact on Philosophy," Thought, XXXIV (1959), 188.
91 am indebted to unpublished work of my colleague, Prof. James Childs, Jr., for a taxonomy of the concept of the imago dei.
10Edinburgh Review, CXXXIV (1871), 195.
11Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (New York: Modern Library Edition, nd.), p. 445.
12Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man in Relation to Sex, new edition, revised and augmented (New York: Appleton, 1886), p. 145-6.
13Darwin, Descent of Man, Modern Library Edition, p. 920.
l4Charles Darwin, Autobiography with Omissions Restored, p.
15N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Free Press Paperback, 1967), pp. 191-2.
16John B. Cobb, Jr., "Whitehead's Philosophy and a Christian Doctrine of Man," Journal of Bible and Religion, XXXII (1964), pp. 209-220.
17Daoiel D. Williams, The Spirit and the Forms of Lace (New York: Harper and Bow, 1968), p. 134.
18Williams, p. 135.
19Williams, p. 138.
20The above is drawn from Carl Braateo, "Ernst Bloch's Philosophy of Hope," The Futurist Option, ed. by Carl Braaten and Robert Jensen (New York: Newman Press, 1970), 59-78.
2lJurgen Moltmann, "What is 'New' in Christianity," Religion, Revolution and the Future, trans. by  Douglas Meeks (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969), p. 5.
22Wolfhart Paonenberg, What is Man, trans. by Duane A. Priebe (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1970). p. 12f.
23Pannenherg, p. 149.