Where did we come from?
By Rod Dreher
Rawlings School of Divinity
CLED 800: Biblical & Theological Foundations of Education
Genevieve Hamer
July 3, 2022
Where did we come from?
Christian Theism offers a very distinctive and significant story of origins. Human were
created by God; more precisely, human were specially created by God. God did not create us
indirectly via natural evolutionary processes. As the creation account in Genesis plainly affirms
(and as scientific knowledge increasingly confirms) there is a clear ontological boundary
between mankind and other animals, rather than an evolutionary continuum.
According to the biblical view, all humans are descended from one man (and one woman):
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does
not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed
anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made
from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined
allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place… (Acts 17:24-26)
The ethical implications of this biblical monogenesis can hardly be understated—to
highlight but one example, consider the pressing issues of racial equality and reconciliation. (It
also has equally important theological implications for the Christian doctrines of the fall, sin,
and salvation.)
What value do we have?
We have enormous value, not merely as creatures but as creatures made in the image of
God. We see this illustrated in Scripture in at least two ways. First, in the institution of capital
punishment:
And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from
man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. “Whoever sheds the
blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” (Gen. 9:5-
6)
This point is underscored in the Mosaic Law by the different penalties assigned for human
death and animal death. If an ox gores a man to death, the ox is put to death, but if a man kills
his neighbor’s ox, the man isn’t put to death; rather, he has to make restitution to his neighbor.
[16]
Secondly, we see the great value ascribed to mankind in the incarnation and the
atonement. The value God places on human life is nowhere demonstrated more dramatically
than in the fact that our Creator was willing to assume a human nature and make an atoning
sacrifice to save human beings from an eternal hell and bring them into eternal fellowship with
him. (To put the point rather pointedly: God did not take on a canine nature and make an
atonement for dogs!)
How should we be treated?
It follows from the above that we ought to treat our fellow human beings with the greatest
respect, dignity, and care. We should make every effort to protect and preserve human life, and
to promote (as the current lingo has it) ‘human flourishing’.
Certainly we must treat our fellow humans as having immeasurably more value than
animals (never mind plants). Yet at the same time, we must treat each other as fellow
creatures, not as gods. We are created in the divine image, but we are not divine. We may be a
little lower than the heavenly beings, but we are still lower.
Some readers might be asking at this point, “What is distinctively Christian about any of
this? Shouldn’t we just call this ‘Theism’ or ‘the Theist worldview’? Don’t all monotheistic
religions—at least the so-called Abrahamic ones—share the same basic anthropology?”
Those are understandable questions, but I want to challenge their premise by briefly noting
some important differences between Christianity, Islam, and Judaism.[17]
Consider first the Islamic worldview. Unlike Christianity, Islam offers no doctrine of the
imago Dei. The Qur’an nowhere echoes the affirmations of Genesis 1:26-27. In contrast, the
Qur’an and subsequent Islamic tradition stress the absolute transcendence of God: Allah cannot
be compared to anything in the creation.[18]
To be clear, my point is not that Islam reflects a low view of human beings. Consider, for
example, the somewhat odd account in the Qur’an in which God, after creating Adam,
commands the angels to bow down to him. When the angel Iblis (Satan) refuses to do so, God
asks him why, and the reply comes forth, “Because I’m better than him: you created me out of
fire and him out of dirt!”[19] Such protests notwithstanding, the idea that the angels should bow
down to a human, rather than the reverse, hardly suggests a low view of mankind.
Nevertheless, the fact remains that Islam lacks a doctrine of the imago Dei and therefore
humans simply cannot bear the kind of significance they enjoy in a biblical worldview. If there is
any categorical distinction among creatures in the Qur’an, it isn’t between humans and animals
but between believers and unbelievers.[20]
Unlike Islam, Judaism acknowledges the doctrine of the imago Dei, sharing with Christianity
a commitment to the creation account in the Torah. What Judaism lacks, compared with
Christianity, is a doctrine of redemption through divine incarnation and atonement. According
to Christianity—and Christianity alone—the infinite God has united himself with a fully human
nature, both body and soul!
Indeed, what we find in the New Testament is that the original theme of the image of God
in man is transposed into a new key. The redeemed are not merely renewed to the image of
God but conformed specifically to the image of Christ, the God-man. Christ is the archetypal
human—the final Adam—the true Adam. And thus, through our union with Christ by faith, we
are conformed to the divine image and brought into the divine life in a way that Adam never
experienced.
St. Athanasius famously declared of Christ, “He became man that we might become
God.”[21] Needless to say, there are orthodox and unorthodox ways to understand that
statement! (Similar statements can be found among the early church fathers.) If we understand
Athanasius’s aphorism along orthodox biblical lines, I believe we can understand why
Christianity ascribes a dignity and value to human nature that Judaism simply cannot.
Conclusion
Our fundamental anthropology—our view of human nature and human origins—will
inevitably have huge implications for how we view other people, how we value them, how we
relate to them, and how we treat them, both individually and as a society. Moreover, our
anthropology will in turn flow out of our broader worldview. The worldviews of Naturalism and
Postmodernism hold considerable sway in our culture today, but they can offer no meaningful
basis for human dignity, human rights, human equality, and human solidarity. They are sterile
soils—nothing good can grow in them.
But to underscore once again the indispensability of a sound anthropology, consider this
selection of recent news headlines:
“Woman Has Abortion Because She Couldn’t Fit Into Her Wedding Dress”
“First Child Dies by Euthanasia in Belgium”
“Transgender Man Gives Birth after Conceiving With Transgender Wife”
“First Baby Born Using ‘Three-Parent’ Technology”
Clearly there are deep divisions and highly-polarized debates in our culture today on the
most basic matters of morality and public policy. I am convinced that there can be no resolution
of these issues while people hold such radically divergent views of human nature, situated in
such diametrically opposed worldviews.
What then can Christians do? Reams could be written in answer to that question; I will
restrict myself to one concluding observation. Worldviews cannot be imposed from the outside.
They have to be planted and grounded in the heart. In reality, these divisions and debates will
never be resolved without real gospel transformation. So our first priority as Christians must be
what it has always been: to proclaim the gospel and pray for revival.
Notes
1. Alvin Plantinga, “On Christian Scholarship,” in The Challenge and Promise of a Catholic
University, ed. Theodore M. Hesburgh (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1994), 267–95.
2. Alex Rosenberg, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality (New York: W. W. Norton & Company,
2011), 26, 162.
3. Ibid., 21.
4. Some Naturalists find a strict scientism too narrow, but they will still affirm empiricism:
one can only know what is perceived through the senses. This allows for non-scientific
knowledge; on this more permissive view, science is understood to be an extension of
ordinary empirical knowledge.
5. Richard Dawkins was once invited to express his view of what happens after we die. His
answer: “We decompose.”
6. George Gaylord Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution, rev. ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1967), 345. One might quibble that cultural evolution is not undirected
and purposeless, since it is driven by human minds, but cultural evolution presupposes
the arrival of human beings on the scene. Recall that our focus here is on human origins
according to Naturalism.
7. As someone once quipped, trying to define ‘postmodernism’ is like trying to nail Jell-O
to the wall.
8. I think this is a fair generalization, although there are exceptions. Richard Rorty, for
example, attempted to justify his anti-realist epistemology on the basis of a naturalistic
Darwinian account of human origins. Rorty’s worldview thus represents an intriguing
case of a Naturalism-Postmodernism hybrid.
