Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Re-imaginando a imagem de Deus: Natureza humana, evolução e outros animais

2014; Escola Superior de Teologia; Volume: 54; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.22351/et.v54i1.1102

2237-6461

Celia Deane‐Drummond,

Religion and Society in Latin America

The image of God has, for much of the history of Christian theology, sought to defi ne the meaning of human uniqueness by stressing human superiority over against other animals. Many environmentalists and other scientists now argue that we have entered a new era, the Anthropocene, where humans dominate the life on planet earth, reinforced by a restricted interpretation of Neo-Darwinian human evolution in terms of survival of the fittest. Against such separation narratives, the importance of acknowledging the fluidity of the human/other animal boundary surfaces in literature, philosophy, religious studies and current anthropology. I will draw on current anthropology to present a case that even prior to the emergence of symbolic religious capabilities humans evolved in cooperative communities that recognized the signifi cance of other animals as part of a wider community niche. I argue in this lecture that a constructive theological anthropology needs to be sensitive to such insights, while offering its own distinctive voice. In order to do this, I press for an interpretation of the image of God in terms of theodrama, one that has some analogies with current anthropological understanding of hominid evolution through community niche construction. Theodrama does not eschew human distinctiveness, but it places greater emphasis on an enlarged vision of community of creatures. Theodrama is, in this view, about the specifi c performance of humanity in relation to God, but it is responsive in evolutionary and ecological terms to the active presence of other creatures.