Celia Deane-Drummond is Professor of Theology and the Biological Sciences at the University of Chester, and David Clough is Senior Lecturer in Theology at the University of Chester. Together, they have edited a new volume that stresses the fact that doing theology requires a consciousness of one’s creaturely status. To be a creature, they note, is to be aware of one’s finiteness and one’s fallibility. Moreover, to do theology is also to recognize one’s status as merely one creature among many. As such, they argue that any attempt to demarcate a line between Homo sapiens and other species of creation is a false boundary.
Creaturely Theology brings together an impressive array of essays that are interdisciplinary in orientation, broken down into five sections: historical, systematic, and hermeneutical approaches to creaturely theology, a section covering the moral status of animals, and a final section covering ecological perspectives of a creaturely theology. In so doing, the editors bring together a fine group of essays by theologians, philosophers and scientists, some of which will now be highlighted. John Berkman begins the volume with a critical appraisal of Thomistic contributions to the notions of the purpose of human and non-human animals, the ideas of ensoulment, and rationality, arguing that there is continuity between humans and other members of the Kingdom animalia. Directly following Berkman, Clough argues that Luther recognized a close association between animals and humans long before Darwin ever did. Denis Edwards begins the second section of the text, recovering Athanasius’ theology of redemption through incarnation in chapter four, and extending it to all animals, not just the human variety. David Cunningham builds on the theme of imago dei in chapter five, similarly extending it to non-human animals.
The third section of Creaturely Theology includes an excellent chapter (six) from Aaron Gross, which dialogues with Emmanuel Levinas, arguing that our relationships with other animals are stranger, deeper, and more important than we humans generally allow, and that humanity would do well to recognize the common thread between the various species of animalia: vulnerability. Also within this hermeneutical section, Rachel Muers (seven) explores more fully the representation of animals in scriptural texts, drawing especially on the book of Job. Peter Scott begins section four regarding the moral status of animals, proposing the concept of ‘antihuman’ (171) as a way of depicting the differences of capacity between human and non-human animals in order to (re)discover what aspects of life humans and non-humans share together. Deanne-Drummond (ten) argues that since humans are imago dei, they have a moral duty to deal charitably with other animals, particularly those of the non-human type. The final section begins with Michael Northcott’s essay (twelve) regarding the political violence against human animals as represented in animal liberation literature. To close the volume’s constructive essays, Christopher Southgate (thirteen) considers human intervention in non-human extinction, and argues that humans should perhaps assist in the transplantation of non-human species to other environs if their habitats are significantly disturbed.
In a text that is closely related to the emphases of the last two sections of Creaturely Theology, Larry Arnhart (Professor of political science at Northern Illinois University) argues that Darwinian biology sustains conservative social thought by showing how the human capacity for spontaneous order arises from social instincts and a moral sense shaped by natural selection in human evolutionary history. Indeed, in Darwinian Conservatism, Arnhart explores the moral and political implications of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. He argues that Darwin’s biology confirms humanity’s common-sense view that human beings are naturally social animals whose social life depends upon a natural moral sense, inherent within all human species.
Arnhart’s title is essentially a long defence of the following five propositions: that Darwinism supports the conservative view 1) of ordered liberty as rooted in natural desires; 2) of the moral sense as fundamental for the moral order of liberty; 3) of sexual differences, family life, and parental care; 4) of property as fundamental for the economic order of liberty; and 5) of limited government as fundamental for the political order of liberty. In so doing, Arnhart argues that Darwinian biology is at least compatible with a theistic belief in God as the first cause of existence, and that the idea of intelligent design has not refuted the essential premise(s) of Darwinian evolution. Moreover, he asserts that Darwinian evolution does not require a strongly reductionistic paradigm of materialism, and that Social Darwinism is a distortion of Darwin’s theory.
In sum, these two titles are ideal texts in a postgraduate course engaging with the ethics, philosophical theology and politics. Although I am hesitant to affirm all the propositions and implications of either title, one will nevertheless find much material therein for further discussion and research.
Bradford McCall, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA