Re: What is "human" - the grey zone (was Re: [asa] Two questions... (biological bottlenecking with Adam and Eve))

Murray:

You raise an interesting theological thorn that I can remember being
addressed only once in Perspectives.

You believe that God will not condemn anyone unless they are morally
accountable. I presume this view is consistent with the view, e.g.,
that infants are not morally accountable and therefore not in need of
forgiveness.

You ought to know, however, that the vast number of Christians do not
agree with this presumption. What of those who believe that all humans,
even ones still in the womb, require the forgiveness of God through
Christ?

So what exactly is the problem if we cannot identify whom Christ died
for? Did He need to die for a primitive human race that never heard of
Christ and knew nothing of God? Yes. Did He need to die for some
species of human-like race? We say that Christ did not die for cats and
dogs. We say that because we believe they have no ability to sin.
Yet, does a unborn infant have the ability to sin? Probably no. Yet
it seems a child from the earliest of ages sins. I suppose to get a
handle on this we need to have a grasp on what it is to not sin. Once
having that in hand, we can say what sin is. The notion of infant
accountability is linked to a "racial" guilt. As such, there are
problems if we cannot identify the "race."

So it seems that Christians, independent of evolutionary theory,
disagree upon whom Christ died for. It seems that different theological
traditions face different challenges with regard to evolutionary theory.
This would make evolutionary theory not religiously neutral. If we
intend to concord science and religion, does this entail that some
traditions must be abandoned?

bill powers
White, SD

On Tue, 17 Feb 2009, Murray Hogg wrote:

> Hi Moorad,
>
> I guess the bottom line is that I simply don't see WHY we need a sharp
> human/non-human distinction when we already have a theological tradition
> which allows that God takes into account the moral ability of an individual
> before judging that person's moral accountability on the basis of (1) that
> person's moral ability; and (2) that person's ability to respond to God.
>
> The way I figure it, for any particular individual creature -- whether we
> adjudge that individual to be "human" or not -- my view is that God can well
> determine the extent to which that creature does, or does not, "measure up".
> Here I'd suggest that actually giving far more credence to Christian theology
> than you perhaps recognize. The fact is that I think that our primary
> theological datum ought to be God's revelatory and redemptive work in Christ.
> And what matters to me is not where some far-distant biological ancestor
> stands in respects of Christ, but where we who are fully human by any
> definition stand in respects of Christ.
>
> I realize, of course, that for many people the question of human origins is a
> major one - all I'm saying is that I personally don't feel it to be even a
> minor problem.
>
> This is because it seems to me that the central objection seems to be this
> issue of establishing moral accountability. And the basic argument seems to
> boil down to the claim that unless we can establish the moral accountability
> of our ancestors then we have no grounds for claiming moral accountability
> for ourselves.
>
> But to me, our own moral accountability is so obvious that any such argument
> is entirely redundant. I simply don't need a hypothesis about what
> constitutes the "human" (hence the "morally accountable") as opposed to the
> "non-human" (the "morally non-accountable") and when the transition took
> place. All I need to know is that we are (or more significantly *I am*)
> morally accountable.
>
> By way of some small analogy, I think a parallel can be drawn with our use of
> language. To argue that unless we can identify a point at which our ancestors
> became morally accountable we are rejecting moral accountability for
> ourselves makes no more sense to me than to argue that unless we can identify
> when our ancestors developed language (or abstract reasoning, or whatever) we
> therefore are not capable of using language (or abstract reasoning, or
> whatever). It just seems to me a non-sequiter.
>
> In short the central claim -- that we need to identify a point of non-human
> to human transition in order to make sense of that which God has done in
> Christ seems to me little more than a theological red-herring, although I of
> course recognize that a great many people see it in quite a different light.
>
> Blessings,
> Murray
>
> Alexanian, Moorad wrote:
>> It seems that when you say that “I don't see this as raising any
>> particularly thorny theological problems (!)” you are giving more credence
>> to evolutionary theory than the Christian faith. Why don’t you say that
>> there is a thorny evolutionary problem in the continuity of the
>> evolutionary process that does not allow for a sharp nonhuman-human
>> discontinuous transition that fails it to be reconciled with the Christian
>> faith?
>> Moorad
>
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Received on Mon Feb 16 17:53:37 2009