Deane-Drummond Fuentes Human Being and Becoming

Celia Deane-Drummond and Agustn Fuentes
Human Being and Becoming

Situating Theological Anthropology in Interspecies Relationships
in an Evolutionary Context
Much theology ignores anthropological studies and the centrality of evolution-

ary perspectives. Human beings evolutionary changes are envisaged as bound up
Dirk Evers 95.208.135.23 Tue, 29 Mar 2016 16:29:43
with interspecies relationships and theological discourse cannot afford to be nar-

rowly anthropocentric. An analysis of both the differences and the common ground
between humans and other animals in their intertwined and entangled evolution-
Delivered by Publishing Technology
ary histories provides a provocative arena for a theological anthropology that is

cognizant of such relationships rather than isolated from them. Here, we suggest
Copyright Mohr Siebeck
recent anthropological research in ethnoprimatology and human-other animal stud-

ies combined with theoretical advances in thinking about human evolution opens
up new ways of appreciating the deeper history of human becoming in the context
of affiliation and interactions between human beings and other creaturely kinds.
1. Introduction
For much of the history of the Church, anthropology, when considered

from a theological perspective, was not appropriated as a separate area of
inquiry, but was woven into other teachings on salvation, ecclesiology, or
eschatology (e. g., Cortez 2010). While early writers, including the post-
Manichean Augustine of Hippo, reacted against a Gnostic rejection of the
material as some kind of tragic accident, Augustines own focus on human
sin and the means to remedy that fault has cast a long shadow over the his-
tory of Western Christian reflection on what it means to be human. The
beliefs of Irenaeus of Lyon, for example, that human beings in their original
state are immature and that they only attain immortality in their mature
state through an experiential encounter with good and evil, have largely
been forgotten (Behr 2000). But the focus on the human person in con-
temporary theology reflects to some extent a more general cultural turn
to the self, with its associated emphasis on human existential experience.
The prominent voices in Christian theology, at least those emerging from
PTSc 1 (2014), 251275 DOI 10.1628/219597714X14025664303164

ISSN 21959773 2014 Mohr Siebeck
252 Celia Deane-Drummond and Agustn Fuentes
a Western, cultural context, have, accordingly, been those that focus in an

exclusive way on particular questions about who human beings are and the
goals for a fully human life.
Amongst those standing in the Roman Catholic tradition, scholars that
have been particularly influential in this arena are Karl Rahner (1965; 1969,
36570; 1975, 88793) and Hans Urs von Balthasar ([1967] 2010), while
Paul Tillich (1973), Karl Barth1, and Wolfhart Pannenberg (1985) have been
particularly dominant Protestant writers. Even Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
([1955] 1999; [1956] 1966), who was a paleontologist as well as a Jesuit
priest, wrote in a way that focused almost exclusively on the significance
of human beings, albeit in an evolutionary context. Yet their scholarship
was largely crafted in a context where modernity continued to hold sway;
since then the post-modern cultural turn has opened up challenges to the
exclusivist focus on the human, and at least some contemporary theologians

are beginning to challenge humanism understood in narrowly defined cat-
egories (Clough 2012). Post-modern therefore starts to equate with post-

human, opening up a space for a much deeper reflection on the significance
of the lives of other species. For John Gray (2002, 4), Christianitys cardinal
error is in its assumption that humans are different from animals. The newly
burgeoning field of animal studies takes in many different subject domains,
including, for example, animals in geography (Philo 2000), history (Roth-
fels 2002), sociology (Kuzniar 2006; Irvine 2004; Crist 2000; Franklin 1999;
Arluke 1996), anthropology (Striffler 2005; Ingold 2005; Fabre-Vassas 1997),
literature (Kuzniar 2006; Malamud 2003; Fudge 2003; Lippit 2000), as well as
philosophy and critical theory (Fellenz 2007; Steiner 2005; Agamben 2004;
Atterton and Calarco 2004; Haraway 2003; Wolfe 2003; Baker 2000; Mallet
1999; Steeves 1999; De Fontenay 1998). Those engaged in religious studies
are consequently also becoming rather more conscious of the importance of
exploring other animals in terms of their significance for religious belief 2.
1 Karl Barth (19361977) dedicated four volumes of his Dogmatics to a study of creation,
and in this respect paid far more attention to it than some other scholars. His interpreta-
tion of the purpose and meaning of creation in terms of the covenant between God and
humanity is one that has been most influential (see Vol. III/1, 42), even if such interpre-
tations are now beginning to be challenged by theologians such as David Clough (2012,
125).
2 A large volume entitled A Communion of Subjects: Animals in Religion, Science and
Ethics deals with different areas of religious belief and practice (Waldau and Patten
2006). The essays under the subheading Christianity deal with bestiaries in heretical
medieval writing, a philosophically orientated essay on Descartes, and one highlighting
Christian spirituality and animals by Jay McDaniel, who is heavily influenced by process
theology, but also absorbs what he claims is a Franciscan alternative. McDaniel (2006,
13245) largely follows Andrew Linzey in his critique of Aquinas, even while engag-
Human Being and Becoming 253
In the field of anthropology, particularly social anthropology, the focus

on the human, to the exclusion of other animals, has also been prominent.
Ethnographic research often casts other animals as tools, food, symbols,
and other aspects of the human generated landscape (Fuentes 2012b; Mul-
lin 1999). The option that animals may be agents in a human system and/or
participants in joint niches is not a part of much traditional anthropologi-
cal inquiry (Ingold 1994; Cassiday and Mullin 2007). However, because the
multiple subfields within North American anthropology include biologi-
cal, archeological, and zoo-archeological approaches, there has always been
the hint of exchange between the human and other animals (Mullin 1999;
Noske 1993). This takes both the form of investigation of the lives of those
animals closely related to humans (primates) and that of those animals who
show up regularly and functionally in the human past (as archeological
remains). Recently, this small connection has expanded into a large interface
with many (post)modern anthropological approaches increasingly involving
the inclusion of non-human others into the ethnographic and evolutionary

theorizing.
As a result of this expansion, data from primatological, biological, and

anthropological endeavors are making it progressively clear that for hun-
dreds of millennia humans have interacted with other animals as food,
foes, and friends, and that these interactions tell us something about being
human. These interfaces have often taken the form of inclusion in human
communities and integration into important facets of social and religious
life. Today most human societies exist in complex forms of multispecies
relationships (Cassiday and Mullin 2007; Mullin 1999) and there is growing
interest in the role that such relationships have played across human evo-
lution (Shipman 2011). Widening interest in animal studies, ecology, and
evolutionary science demands further scholarly and explicit engagement
with inter-species relationships and the human niche by anthropologists and
theologians (Deane-Drummond 2014b).
In spite of these developments across the social and biological sciences,
the tendency for theological anthropology is still doggedly (!) to resist taking
account of the importance of other animal lives; if their importance is taken
into account, then it is limited to consideration of how humanity needs to act
in the light of current environmental problems, or through contemporary
ing with Elisabeth Johnsons neo-Thomist approach. His essay is important in as much
as he weaves in ecological concerns through the notion of eco-justice. More recently,
religious studies scholars have begun to think about not just the attention to animals in
religious traditions, but also the religious significance of subjectivity of other animals
(Deane-Drummond, Artinian-Kaiser, and Clough 2013).
debates on sexuality and the body (e. g., Ross 2012). While this is of course
an improvement on not considering such wider questions at all, the basic
premise of human meaning and becoming is still much the same.
The argument of this paper is that there remains a glaring gap in standard
theological anthropology such that we need to be far more cognizant of the
importance of other animal lives in the very shaping and meaning of human
becoming and being. Here, we suggest, more recent anthropological research
in ethnoprimatology and human-other animal studies combined with theo-
retical advances in thinking about human evolution opens up new ways of
appreciating the deeper history of human becoming in the context of affilia-
tion and interaction between human beings and other creaturely kinds.
2. Negotiating Anthropology and Theology

Theological traditions, while themselves highly diverse and often contested

in methodological starting points, are more often than not interested in the
way a particular account of the human or the soul has come to be accepted,
even if it was first developed in a particular historical context. Non-reductive
evolutionary anthropological and biocultural anthropology investigations
(e. g., Fuentes 2009, 2013a) are interested not only in particular paradigmatic
accounts of changes in human behavior and morphology across time, space,
and cultures, but rather seek to include as diverse a toolkit and data source
repertoire as is demonstrably implicated by the central questions at hand. In
as much as both anthropology and theology are interested in the significance
of history, human community, and the salient aspects of being human, there
is some common ground between us.
Moreover, for a theologian, the evolutionary insights of anthropology
can inform the way a particular tradition is interpreted, so that if a tradi-
tion is reclaimed for a contemporary context it is understood through the
hermeneutics of new knowledge arising from the sciences. Such a practice
that could be broadly summarized as an engaged faith seeking understanding
is not original but is common to all theological traditions that have sought
to weave in some insights from philosophy and other sciences, while being
critical of others. In a post-modern cultural context, the deconstruction of
both the authoritative basis for faith traditions and the universalist claims
of science open up the possibility of what might seem unlikely collaborative
partnerships3. While we recognize there can be tension in methodological
3 Wentzel van Huyssteens (2006, 1721) plea for transversality in a post-foundationalist

starting points, we argue that the points of interaction are creative for both
disciplines, and that a trans-disciplinary approach (Fuentes 2013b) opens
up new perspectives on a particular problem, in this case, human becoming
and being. As an example of the potential for this type of engagement, we
explore the potential impact for theology of interfacing with recent innova-
tions in anthropology, namely, the human community niche and multispe-
cies relationships.
3. The Community Niche and Human Evolution
Human experience of the world, our Umwelt (von Uexkll [1934] 2010),
both constructs and is constructed by the interface between our social and
ecological lives. This view, via the perspective of niche construction the-
ory, is becoming common in modeling the evolution of human behavior
(Fuentes 2009, 2013a; OBrien and Laland 2012; Barton et al. 2011). Niche
construction is the mutual malleability between organisms and their envi-
ronments. It recognizes the agency of organisms in their evolutionary pro-

cesses, the construction, destruction, and modification of local ecologies,
the inheritance of those modified ecologies, and the central role of feedback
dynamics in evolutionary systems. Fuentes (2013a) connects this perspec-
tive with a diverse array of fossil and archeological evidence to propose a
model system called community niche; an evolutionary meta-system that
encompasses positive feedback systems at individual, subgroup, and com-
munity levels, demographic processes, and local ecologies.
The community niche is the spatial and social niche that includes the
primary social partners, contexts, and ecologies with which humans inter-
act. It is a group with shared kinship (biological and social) and social and
ecological histories. It is the primary source of shared knowledge, security,
and development across the lifespan. Community members share cognitive,
discourse is relevant in this context. However, what we are attempting here is arguably
rather different, in that it is the depth and richness of each disciplinary tradition that
needs to be brought to bear in the discussion, even at the risk of opening up differences.
Transversality, in as much as it tends to rely on rhetorical and performative tools that
certainly resist too seamless a unification of knowledge or imperialisms of any kind, has
distinct advantages over, for example, too ready acceptance of rather simplistic evolu-
tionary forms of theism. However, the temptation for transversality is that it is herme-
neutically bound to the common space between disciplines, rather than an exploration
of the richness within that tradition. An alternative hermeneutical basis for interdisci-
plinary dialogue may need to be sought, for example, drawing on Paul Ricoeur, as pos-
tulated by Kenneth Reynhout (2013).
social, and ecological bonds even in the absence of close spatial proximity
through symbol, language, memory, hopes and shared beliefs. The advent of
symbolic and metaphorical ways of thinking about the world, and eventu-
ally religious belief, brings the possibility of a shared religious life that would
further cement these bonds. It is in the context of this distinctively human
community niche that members of the genus Homo interfaced, interacted
with, modified, and were modified by, social and ecological worlds during
the course of our evolution.
A central characteristic of this human niche is an obligate interdepend-
ence where being in community with one another is fundamental to success-
fully becoming and being human physiologically, socially, psychologically,
(Brewer 2007; Fuentes 2013a) and, we would add, eventually religiously.
For humans, even early ones, their social relationships, landscapes, and the
biotic and abiotic elements they encounter are embedded in an experiential

reality that is infused with a consistent potential for meaning derived from
more than the material substance and context at hand. This results in a dis-
tinctive way of being in, and perceiving, the world for humans relative to
other mammals, primates, and even Hominins: the human community niche
(Fuentes 2012a, 2013a).
One can develop the idea of community niche further, in order to include
in a more explicit way both inter-species relationships and insights from
the particular wisdom emerging from theological discourse. This is argu-
ably an explicit discourse about how human communities eventually came
to consider themselves to be in relationships not only with each other and
with other species, but also with God. Further, that relationship could have
served to re-define other relationships in the community in a way that was
distinctive for human beings. In this way, theology is prompting anthropo-
logical investigations into the community niche in new ways that would not
otherwise have come so clearly into view.
The community niche perspective provides a novel manner in which to
consider the relationships between humans and other species and their sali-
ency in our social and evolutionary processes. If humans incorporated other
beings into the community niche as central actors, then they become impor-
tant features of the ecological and social landscape. These other beings must,
therefore, be considered as agential factors in the investigation of the evolu-
tionary and social processes involved in being and becoming human in com-
munity. There is mounting evidence that this is indeed the case (Shipman
2011) and that examining the relationships between humans and certain
other animals offers a particularly relevant key to understanding not just
other animals but human beings. The significance of inter-species dynam-
ics for developing a contemporary theological understanding of the human

cannot be underestimated (Deane-Drummond 2014a).
If this is the case, then we need to create some degree of connection
between anthropological/evolutionary approaches and theological ones in
order to understand adequately the relationships between being human
and being in inter-subjective relationships with other species. In this vein,
the relationship between two central foci stands out: multispecies ecolo-
gies as part of the community niche and the theological articulation of the
grounded distinctiveness of the human through a revised concept of the
human soul and divine image bearing (Deane-Drummond 2012).
4. Other Species as Core Components of the Community Niche

Both anthropological and theological perspectives have a diverse set of con-

siderations to take into account when it comes to understanding the mean-

ing of the nature of humans and other beings. Well-known anthropological
work in this area has focused on the examination of perceptual and cos-
mological ecologies of small-scale societies and their common tendency to
include other animals in metaphysical descriptions of basal selves and pro-
cesses of being in the world (Ingold 1994; Ingold and Palsson 2013; Viveiros
de Castro 2012). In fact, Viveiros de Castro (2012) effectively demonstrates
that, at least for many Amerindian groups, the subset of beings that are con-
sidered basally (or intrinsically) human, or ensouled, in the cosmological
sense, often extends well beyond just Homo sapiens. Recent turns in anthro-
pology have also become focused on the interrelatedness of humans and
others in multispecies ecologies with an eye towards how humans envision
and experience the nature of non-human beings and how that frames the
social, political, and economic contexts of interaction (Baynes-Rock 2012;
Kirksey and Helmrich 2010; Kohn 2007; Fuentes 2012b). In certain Chris-
tian theological discourses the focus on other animals has interfaced with
diverse traditions on the role of the soul and image bearing in thinking about
non-human beings.
Humans are able to engage in intensive physiological, behavioral, and
emotional bonding with diverse members of their community, going well
beyond the mother-infant or male-female friendship bonds in other pri-
mate societies (Fuentes 2009; Quinlan 2008; Spikins et al. 2010). Humans
have expanded on basal primate social bonding behavior (Silk 2007) and
amplified its importance in creating an intricate structure of social bonding
involving complex social cognition (Hermann et al. 2007), which makes use
of neuroendocrinological, symbolic, and behavioral processes (Mackinnon

and Fuentes 2011; Fuentes 2013a). This is proposed to be a major adaptive
process in our evolutionary history (Chapais 2009; Fuentes 2009; Spikins et
al. 2010; Sussman and Chapman 2004) and is central in the human com-
munity niche (Foley and Gamble 2008; Fuentes 2013a; Gamble et al. 2011).
However, humans, unlike other social beings, regularly extend this physio-
logical, social, and symbolic bonding pattern beyond biological kin, beyond
reciprocal exchange arrangements, beyond mating investment, and even
beyond our own species (Fuentes 2009; Haraway 2003; Mullin 1999; Olm-
ert 2009; Shanklin 1985). This very ability has recently been proposed as a
significant factor in human evolutionary success (Shipman 2011).
Humans in many parts of the world regularly invest significant social, eco-
nomic, and energetic efforts in, and participate in real physiological bonds
with, their non-human companions (Haraway 2003; Kohn 2007; Olmert

2009; Shipman 2011; Solomon 2010). There is substantive evidence that the
inclusion of non-human others into the human community is relatively old

in human history and that other species make up key aspects of the human
social worlds (Shipman 2011). We suggest that these social, symbolic, and
physiological relationships between human and other animals are a wor-
thy focus for the anthropological and theological gaze as our histories and
futures intertwine in the community niche.
5. Human Co-ecologies/Co-existence in Community with Other

Species: A Few Examples
Recent anthropological work provides a particularly important insight into

the role of other animals in the human community. In order to think effec-
tively think about our relations with others and how this resonates with and
influences our evolutionary, anthropological, and theological approaches to
a multispecies reality, a few examples of the depth and prevalence of such
interfaces are necessary.
a) Humans and Other Primates
Humans and other primates share diverse and complex relationships

(Fuentes 2012b). The geographic spread of human-other primate overlap is
broad, occurring throughout sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Northern Africa
and the circum-Mediterranean region, South and Southeast Asia, Japan
and Southern China, Central and South America. Fossil evidence demon-
strates deep overlap between humans and other primates: We have coex-
isted and interacted throughout these regions from the initial emergence of
our own genus (Homo) (>2 million years). Recent and ongoing research on
the human-other primate interface includes sites in Asia, Africa, and South
America, even Europe, and there are a number of cross site studies includ-
ing those involving foci on co-ecology, spatial and behavioral overlap, and
bidirectional pathogen transmission (Cormier 2011; Fuentes 2012b).
For example, macaque monkeys (genus Macaca) and humans share a par-
ticularly intensive relationship and interact in a dynamic, and deep, ecosys-
tem across much of South and Southeast Asia (Fuentes et al. 2011; Fuentes
2010; Fuentes et al. 2005). This examination of the human-macaque inter-
face reveals a range of behavioral, physiological, ecological, and cultural
contexts that influence and shape the relationships. The cultural modifica-
tion of the landscape by humans impacts pathogen transmission patterns for

both species and the population genetics of the macaques. After millennia
of overlap between human populations and macaques, it becomes evident

that the relationships between anthropogenic landscapes, including their
economic and political histories, are central factors in the macaque distri-
bution, behavior and ecology, and that the co-ecological processes influence
human health, livelihood, and even religious practice (Fuentes 2010, 2012a;
Jones-Engel et al. 2008).
b) Humans and Dogs
Humans share a particularly long and intensive intertwined history with the
genus Canis (dogs) (Haraway 2003; Olmert 2009; Shipman 2011). From the
camp following wolves almost 30,000 years ago, to fully domesticated dogs
hunting and living with human populations 14,000 years ago, to the canine
family members common across many human societies today, canids have
been a central aspect of the human community. Across this time frame,
humans and dogs have co-domesticated one another, impacting and being
impacted by mutual ecologies, behavioral processes, and even physiological
interfaces: We have played mutual roles in each others evolution (Fuentes
2009; Hare et al. 2002; Haraway 2003; Olmert 2009).
Dogs are highly attuned to human gestural communication, so much
so that they do better than chimpanzees or other primates in interpreting
and following the human gaze and in extracting information from human
action (Hare et al. 2002; Hare and Tomasello 2005). Dogs exhibit strong
recognition of human empathic states, experience empathic contagion from
humans, and are able to effectively elicit interaction and empathic responses
from humans, even those with various neurological and socio-cognitive

deficits (such as autism) (Solomon 2010). While the social bonds between
humans and their companion animals is well documented in industrialized
societies and many in the developed world see their pets as family mem-
bers (Nagasawa et al. 2009), these intensive and deep relationships between
dogs and humans are not limited to the urban or industrialized pet-owner
context.
Work by Eduardo Kohn (2007) shows us that dogs are an important
aspect of the spiritual and daily lives of many peoples. Dogs are an impor-
tant aspect of Runa life, assisting them with hunting, being part of the daily
social interactant sphere, and acting as important members of a shared spir-
itual ecology. For the Runa, dogs, like many living things, have a soul and
are considered to have a form of consciousness. Because of this ensoulment
and their central social and practical context in daily life, the Runa practice a
form of relation with dogs that involves talking to them and including them
in aspects of their spiritual-ethnopharmacological practices (via hallucino-

gens). As particular, and ensouled, co-members of their society, the Runa
expect certain kinds of moral and ethical behavior from their dogs (i. e.,
not be lazy, not be violent, not overly waste energy on sexual activity, etc.).
Also, as dreams are central to the Runas understanding of the communica-
tion between diverse aspects of the world, and dogs are part of the Runas
social sphere, the interpretation and appropriate reaction to dogs dreams is
an aspect of Runa society. Specifically, Kohn demonstrates a mutual inter-
face between dogs and an Amazonian ethnic group, the Runa, wherein their
social, spiritual, and ecological lives are inextricably intertwined in what is
for both species a natural system4.
Such evidence points to the range of research that shows that the bond-
ing between humans and dogs is both historically and physiologically deep
rooted. Dogs and humans share a deep and evolutionarily relevant relation-
ship; in many locations and in many ways dogs are members of the human
community (Olmert 2009).
c) Humans and Large Predators
In most ecosystems today, humans are considered top tier predators and
across much of the planet, competition with humans has led to an overall
decline in large predator populations. However, this pattern of relation-
4 This type of multispecies cosmology system is fairly ubiquitous in Amerindian, espe-

cially, Amazonian groups (Viveiros de Castro 2012).
ship was, and is, not always the case. We know a relationship with preda-
tors played a significant role in shaping the evolutionary pressures favoring
specific behavioral and ecological adaptations against predation, including
extremely high levels of cooperation (Fuentes et al. 2010; Hart and Suss-
man 2005). We also have reason to believe that our ancestors began to track
and follow predators and to interface with them behaviorally in a manner
beyond a predator-prey relationship as part of their foraging strategy. As
humans began to emerge as top tier predators themselves in the last few
hundreds of millennia and as our population densities grew more recently
(in the last ~10,000 years), the ecological relationship balance tipped in our
favor and the overall size and density of large predators decreased across
the globe. The fossil record firmly supports the notion that humans and
predators have mutually influenced one another, co-evolving over millions
of years (Hart and Sussman 2005; Shipman 2011).

The relationship between humans and predators has been, and is, com-
plex, but it is not always conflictual and at times might even be mutualistic.
For example, Yirga et al. (2012) focused on hyena and human overlaps in
Northern Ethiopia, which showed a mutual relationship involving domestic

animals, carrion, the hyenas, and local peoples. Marcus Baynes-Rock (2012)
found an even more intertwined relationship between humans and hyenas in
the Ethiopian city of Harar. His research documents a mutualistic relation-
ship between humans and two clans of hyenas in the old city of Harar, where
for generations humans have tolerated the nocturnal presence of hyenas in
the city itself and have integrated hyenas into their mythos and socio-eco-
nomic realities. Simultaneously, the hyenas structure their activity patterns,
behavior, and social lives around the pace and patterns of the Harari. In this
case, rather than in competition or ubiquitous conflict, hyena and human
coexist in an entangled, multispecies ecology.
d) Thinking with Other Animals
Borrowing from the ethnoprimatological approach (Fuentes 2012a, 2012b),

we can posit a core suite of assumptions about human-other animal linkages.
It is a reality that humans and other animals have participated in a myriad
of interfaces and that these relationships form a key aspect of being human
and are directly relevant to understanding the processes in human commu-
nities. Rapid and monumental niche construction by humans in the last few
millennia has altered ecosystems ushering in the Anthropocene, meaning
that basic ecological parameters for all life must include the interface with
humans as a central factor. In order to effectively study such human-other
animal relationships, multi-disciplinary approaches are central. If we are

particularly interested in human perceptions of, and entanglements and
communion with, other beings then integrative approaches that include
other animals can be brought to the fore and integrated with an evolution-
ary approach wherein community is a central locus.
The anthropologist Pat Shipman argues that the connection to other ani-
mals should be considered as a central aspect in what makes humans human.
She argues that a
defining trait of the human species has been a connection with animals that has intensi-
fied in importance since at least the onset of stone tool making some 2.6 million years
ago. Our connection to animals is so deep, so old, and so fundamental that you really
cant understand human evolution and nature without taking it into account (Shipman
2011, 1213).
While part of her intent is to focus on the patterns, processes, and impacts
of domestication, this statement also encompasses the broader mutual ecol-
ogies that are increasingly common across our histories. We suggest that
this view is enriched if we consider the inclusion of other animals into the
human community niche.

If the community niche is the spatial and social context including pri-
mary social partners and ecologies with which humans interact, then the
ethnographic record demonstrates that in many cases other species are an
intrinsic part of it. If the community shares kinship and social and eco-
logical histories, then the members, humans and otherwise, are potentially
substantive contributors to its shape and action. This view provides a mode
of modeling the agency other species might have on evolving human sys-
tems. Here certain other animals cannot be simply seen as an aspect of the
environment that provides some form of selection pressure or as part of the
human exploitation of the environment, such as a crop raider, a vector for a
pathogen, or a source of protein. Rather, other animals share in the mutu-
ally mutable interface between individual humans, their social networks,
and their ecologies as central actors who both impact and are impacted by
the evolutionary processes at play. If this is the case, then the development
of understandings of human behavior and beliefs in human communities
where other animals are members will be more robust when those other
animals are more agentially included in the assessment.
We suggest that seeing humans and other animals as co-participants in
shared ecologies, evolutionary trajectories, and communities can enable
enhanced understanding and interpretation of current theoretical and epis-
temological approaches. Employing such an approach may also create a
better chance for arriving at significant and comprehensive answers to ques-
tions about sustainable co-existence for humans and other beings in the 21st
century. However, a key question emerges: How are we to interpret this in
theological terms?
6. The Animal and Theological Anthropology:

Context and Cautions
There are, of course, perceived dangers in surmising too close an associa-

tion between human beings and other animals in a way that has alarmed
more traditional Roman Catholic writers. So, the late Roman Catholic
Archbishop Jzef yciski vigorously denied that either religion or ethics
could be evolved capacities and accused secular writers like Peter Singer
and post-human authors such as Gregory Pence and Thomas Regan of put-
ting humans and other animals on the same continuum in the name of anti-
speciesism. Crucially, he argued that once this boundary is weakened then

humans lose their special place and dignity, and he supplemented his argu-
ment by a long list of advanced characteristics that he believes are specific

to human cultures, including altruism (yciski 2006). But if humans and
other animals have co-evolved, shared, and influenced each others ecolo-
gies, and existed in community, as we illustrate above, there are consider-
able scientific flaws in this position. There are also theological ones as well.
Following traditional Roman Catholic teaching, Karl Rahner suggested
that in the human person something new and original appeared on earth,
but he also firmly believed that this should not jettison the basic meta-
physical framework of how God acts in the world. Rahner holds that in the
ensoulment of the first human, and indeed of every human person, God
actively enables finite beings to transcend themselves, in a transcendence
that is self-transcendence, so, coming from that person, but at the same time
involving God such that its becoming moves beyond and above itself.
Rahner is attempting to envisage infinite reality as constituting finite real-
ity without becoming an intrinsic constituent of the finite reality as such.
So, on the one hand, the infinite reality is free and detached from the act
of becoming, but also providing the foundational ground for human self-
transcendence. But Rahner is also a clear enough thinker to recognize the
paradoxical elements in making such a statement, for how can divine real-
ity be both free and belonging fully to the finite? Accordingly, he takes up a
different slant in his argument and presses for a new way of thinking about
human cognition, such that human beings are cognitively ordered towards
a horizon of transcendence, rather than a specified object as such (Rahner
1965, 83). He believes, further, that such an orientation towards transcend-

ence is an essential factor in all intellectual knowledge, and a precondition
of its possibility. In this way, he claims that the orientating term of tran-
scendence moves the movement of the mind; it is the originating cause, the
fundamental ground and reason for the minds transcendental dynamism
(Rahner 1965, 86). But at the same time, Rahner still somewhat tenuously
holds to the idea that the absolute Being is the cause and ground of human
self-transcendence, even if intrinsically immanent in the finite, and even if
not therefore considerable as a movement within absolute Being as such. He
is therefore able to claim that in self-transcendence the person attains its
own proper nature; humans become, in other words, themselves (Rahner
1965, 89). Hence, on the one hand, Rahner argues for a measure of both con-
tinuity between human beings and other animals, but also a measure of dis-
continuity as well. His argument resonates to a degree with anthropological

approaches that emphasize both evolutionary continuity and similarity and
also highlight the adaptive divergences that make particular species, such
as humans, distinctive. But while his approach is interesting in pointing to
how human beings can be thought of as distinctive without introducing a

dualistic notion of a separated soul, his stress is on the transcendent human
person in a way that is still decidedly Kantian and does not take sufficient
account of the lives of other animals, their subjectivity, and the possibility
that they are agents in the humans niche and thus integral points of connec-
tion for the human person.
On the other hand, we might consider Thomas Aquinas who was heavily
influenced not just by the work of Aristotle, but also by his teacher, Albertus
Magnus, who devoted a major work to the study of other animals (Magnus
1999a, 1999b). In thinking about how a theological anthropology can inter-
face with anthropological approaches and include other animals as signifi-
cant aspects of the human experience, it is instructive to explore the original
Summa Zoologica of Albertus Magnus. His account is meticulous, for the
time, and includes a commentary on morphology, physiology, and anatomy.
Far less space, comparatively speaking, is spent on an explicit discussion of
the human animal, so that human animals are discussed in a way that is
interwoven with aspects common with other animals. He discusses the Aris-
totelian idea that the soul is in the semen, meaning that through it animals
have the power of generation. But this sets up a contrast in that the rational
soul is caused by the intellect, rather than through the generative powers
of the semen, characteristic of the sensible soul (Magnus 1999b, book 16,
chapter 12, 65). According to Albertus Magnus, human beings are excep-
tions to other animals in having a rational soul. What is interesting here is
that Albertus seems to want to separate the rational soul, which has noth-
ing in common with the operation of a bodily organ in any way whatever
and the intellect, which is divine, that is perpetual and uncorruptible (book
16, chapter 12, 67). But like Aristotle, he departs from Plato in naming the
vegetative and sensible soul as having a form of potency in the material as
such, rather than an external potency.
Although only a small fraction of the book is devoted to an explicit study
of human beings, he has no problem in speaking of animal virtues, for every
perfection and imperfection in animals exists in accordance to their per-
fect or imperfect participation in the animal virtues (book 21, chapter 1,
1). But there is a qualification: For him, perfection is measured relative to
human beings, so that we should first determine what the true nature of
the most perfect animal is (book 21, chapter 15, 1). The perfection of the
vegetative soul and the sensible soul comes, for Albertus Magnus, through
participation in reason in some way. He is prepared, however, to label virtues
according to the gradations of the soul, so that:

Temperance and chastity are present according to the functions of the vegetative soul;
humility and gentleness, however, and likewise fortitude and many other virtues, are
present according to the desires and angers of the sensitive soul. This could only be the
case if the vegetative and sensible souls were in the human according to the being (esse)
of the intellectual soul, for otherwise the soul would not be receptive to a good rational
order (book 21, chapter 1, 2).
The idea of a nested hierarchy makes sense, so the triangle to a quadrangle

is the relationship of vegetative to sensible soul. The perfection of humans,
then, was perceived in relationship with the powers shared with other ani-
mals that are taken up and transformed by reason.
For Aquinas the particular reasoning powers of humans that leads to
the idea of a rational soul impacts on the claim that only human beings are
capable of bearing the image of God. Hence, while Aquinas does seem to
acknowledge that other animals weakly bear the image of God in the man-
ner of a trace, for Aquinas only the rational creature that has an intellect or
mind is the resemblance sufficient to be termed true bearers of the image of
God, and this is such that those areas of human life, such as spiritual, bodily,
or imaginative ways of knowing, are only ever capable of bearing a trace
of the image (Aquinas 1964, qu. 93.6)6. He also, in a fascinating way that
reflects at least in part a common evolutionary understanding of human
5 This chapter is headed, significantly, On the Highest Perfection of Animal Which is

the Human.
6 Charles Camosy (e. g., 2013) has argued that other animals need to be included in the
category of image bearing.
origins, suggests that one of the prime differences between humans and
other animals is in relation to their ability to walk upright; they have a pos-
ture more suited to contemplation of the heavens (qu. 93.6). In this way, he
concludes that image bearing in the rational aspect of human nature bears
the image of the divine in two ways. First, in relation to the divine nature,
rational creatures seem to achieve some sort of portraiture in kind, in that
they imitate God not only in his being and his living, but also in his under-
standing. Second, in relation to being an image of the uncreated Trinity,
the rational creature exhibits a word procession as regards the intelligence
and a love procession as regards the will (qu. 93.6). Other creatures cer-
tainly bear a likeness to God, in having a certain trace of intelligence that
produced them and a clue that these realities may exist when it comes to
word and love, in the way that a house shows something of the mind of the
architect (qu. 93.6).

Aquinas did not have the knowledge that we now have of the relative
sophistication of the cognitive acts of intelligent social animals, nor the

understanding of co-ecologies and evolutionary histories that we now have
access to. He also did not have access to the diverse and substantive literature
on the interwoven lives of humans and other animals across multiple soci-
eties and histories, nor the evolutionary literature demonstrating humans
phylogenetic connections with other primates, and mammals. It behooves
us then, in a theological anthropology, to fill some of these gaps and create
the link with evolutionary and anthropological discourse that acknowledges
other animals agency in the ecosystems and social lives, in the community
niches, of human beings.
Wolfhart Pannenberg (1985, 2731) opens his discussion of anthropol-
ogy in a promising enough vein by acknowledging the problematic nature
of body/soul dualism and the person in nature, commenting on Konrad
Lorenz synthesis of empiricism with a Kantian transcendental approach,
and thus leading to his idea of innate behavioral patterns in all living things.
It is in this context that Pannenberg (1985, 3335) turns to the pioneering
work of Jacob von Uexkll, who, more than other scientists at the time, rec-
ognized that an animals experience of the environment was a crucial ele-
ment in response patterns. Importantly, he recognized that in von Uexkll
the Umwelt or environment is not simply the surroundings as such, but the
subjective and interactive experience of creatures in regard to those key fea-
tures of the environment that were most relevant. But in human beings, this
world is largely shaped not so much by the innate characteristics that define
responses in other animals, but by the cultural world in which human beings
exist, influence, and are influenced by. For Pannenberg (1985, 3435) this
then leads once more to a gap between human beings and other animals,
where the instinctive drive in human beings is thought to be suppressed or
deficient, and such that Arnold Gehlen, Max Scheler, and Helmuth Plessner
all developed anthropological theories based on the particular openness to
the world in Scheler or Gehlen, or exocentricity in Plessner. But all these
theories presuppose that human beings are somehow in their self-conscious-
ness free from their environment, and in Scheler this is joined with a formu-
lation of that freedom in terms of God and the interjection of spirit. Gehlens
solution was more secular, but he spoke in terms of the deficiencies of the
human instinctual realm that had to be compensated by civilization. Pan-
nenberg (1985, 4379) was sufficiently well versed in contemporary research
of his time to recognize deficiencies in these models, and so turns instead to
J. G. Herder, who laid out an alternative based on a theological interpreta-
tion of the human through the category of the image of God. But this takes
Pannenberg on a trajectory of consideration of the social world of human
beings understood eventually in cultural and religious terms, leaving the

world of other animals, co-ecologies, and their significance for the human
condition far behind.

The challenge, then, for a theological anthropology, and for any sincere
anthropology, is to find a way of taking the evolutionary history of human
beings and our enmeshed world of other animals sufficiently seriously. For a
theological anthropology, the key is to not simply conform theology to secu-
lar norms in a way that removes the particular contribution of theology to a
discussion of the human person. This is extremely difficult in practice, not
least because the aims of anthropological research and theological research
on human beings are different. But we suggest there is a way of incorporating
the insight of what might be termed the new wave in anthropology outlined
above such that other animals become recognized in their distinctive variety
and forms of flourishing in their relationships with human beings, especially
as part of the human community niche.
One possible theological interpretation is therefore to situate all crea-
tures, human and other animals, in a theo-drama where human beings are
distinct in that they are capable of a high degree of self-consciousness, but
where they are envisaged as one actor alongside other actors (Deane-Drum-
mond 2009, 2013, 2014). The inspiration for the basic concept of theo-
drama emerges from the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar, but in extending
it out into the wider creaturely world, his overall anthropology takes on a
very different emphasis. Such non-human actors are not, then, denied the
possibility of subjectivity, but the overall intent of the drama is one that is
guided by the central act, namely, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus
Christ. According to this perspective, during the long path of evolution-

ary change there is a combination of both contingency, as in the meander-
ing path of evolutionary change, and constraint, as witnesses in features of
constraint within which that change takes place7. But further, it is in the
encounter of human beings with each other, with God, and with other ani-
mals that human becoming is shaped. The religious life could be thought of
as the culmination of the trajectories through different community niches,
perhaps now for the first time showing the ability to disconnect from the
very world from which humankind has emerged. But if religion does take
this step it could lead to the undoing of humanity, for, set free from recogni-
tion of a bounded life, humans become free to reinvent themselves according
to an imagination that is detached from the creaturely world. Instead, that
imagination needs to be inspired in and through knowledge of ourselves as
creatures with other creatures, recognizing the unique capability for self-
transcendence, but guarding that gift with care, lest in its pulling away from
the natural world it become humanitys greatest weakness.

7. Conclusions: Implications of the Multispecies Interface

in the Community Niche
While human-other animal overlaps are deep in time and rich in diverse
outcomes, current evidence suggests that human economic and political
realities influence habitat alterations and ecosystems in ways such that other
animals are increasingly forced into more intensive contact with humans.
While a few such systems are potentially sustainable, most are not and most
other animals are more and more likely to end up on the negative end of the
benefits of our mutual interfaces (Fuentes 2012b).
As humans, we are a particular type of animal a mammal and a par-
ticular type of mammal an anthropoid primate. If we consider humans
as animals in our thinking about ecosystems, then our relationships with
other animals in those ecosystems become part of the intellectual landscape
for any anthropology (sensu lato). As noted above, there is no doubt that in
many human societies, and across human history, other animals have played
central ecological, physiological, and symbolic roles. However, because of
our particular adaptive histories, including our special ability to modify
and alter ecologies and our complex theory of mind and obligate linguisti-
7 Here we are considering the dialectic between Stephen Goulds views and that of Simon
Conway Morris. For discussion, see Deane-Drummond (2009, 1024, 283).
cally-mediated perceptual lifeways, we commonly perceive a structural and

objective distinction between human beings and other beings: Too often in
both anthropology and theology, we attempt to ignore a central part of our
Umwelt. This distinction creates difficulties in understanding the organi-
zation and salience of naturecultures and mutual ecologies (Fuentes 2010;
Haraway 2008) that characterize the multispecies relationships we exist in. It
also constrains our abilities to think together and individually as disciplines
about what it means to be human in the world. One possible mechanism to
ameliorate this conflict is to provide a more substantive space for other ani-
mals in our understandings of the human community.
What we are proposing in this paper is different from the classic anthro-
pological approaches that look at the relationship between humans and their
domestic animals, or animal totemism, and symbolic relationships between
animals and religious practice. In those approaches, animals are core parts
of the environment incorporated and used by human groups to achieve par-
ticular ends (consciously or not). Few and far between are studies that grant
some agency to the animals involved, as the intellectual gaze, the point of
orientation, assumes an anthropocentric reality wherein humans, as a spe-

cies and as beings, do not share an evolutionarily, or perceptually, relevant
mutualistic agency with the beings they interact with (Deane-Drummond,
Artinian-Kaiser, and Clough 2013; Fuentes 2012a).
One way to ameliorate the tendency to ignore the depth and resonance
of the human-other animal relationships might be to provide a more open
and enriched understanding of the perceptions, contexts, and ensoulment
in other beings, and what that might mean to a Christian theology and
to an applied anthropology. We have argued in this paper that integrating
anthropological insight into theological reflection on the meaning of the
human opens up in a new way closer consideration of why, and how, mod-
ern humans experience the world as they do. In future work, we hope to
demonstrate that the corollary to this, the opening of some anthropologi-
cal approaches to influence from the theological perspectives on the human
experience and the inquiry into what it means to be a human person, can
enrich anthropologys methodological toolkit and expand the kinds of inter-
faces and exchanges between the disciplines.
The analysis of both the differences and common ground between humans
and other animals in their intertwined and entangled evolutionary histories
provides provocative ground for a theological anthropology that is cognizant
of such relationships rather than isolated from them. Perhaps, surprisingly,
contemporary theologians have rather too readily ignored such anthropo-
logical studies and focused simply on individual Homo religious in isolation
from the community niche in which human beings are based and the wider
evolutionary community with other evolving beings. If our becoming is so
much bound up with interspecies relationships and responses to what it
means to shape and yet be shaped by a particular way of being in the world,
then theological discourse cannot afford to be narrowly anthropocentric in
its orientation. Rather, theology, if it is to be genuinely humanizing, needs
to reflect upon and contribute to building diverse forms of living in a com-
munity niche that is aware of its deep roots in evolutionary history.
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Celia Deane-Drummond
University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN, USA)
celia.deane-drummond.1@nd.edu
Agustn Fuentes
University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN, USA)
afuentes@nd.edu

Deane-Drummond Fuentes Human Being and Becoming

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Celia Deane-Drummond and Agustn Fuentes

Human Being and Becoming

Much theology ignores anthropological studies and the centrality of evolution-

with interspecies relationships and theological discourse cannot afford to be nar-

ary histories provides a provocative arena for a theological anthropology that is

recent anthropological research in ethnoprimatology and human-other animal stud-

For much of the history of the Church, anthropology, when considered

PTSc 1 (2014), 251275 DOI 10.1628/219597714X14025664303164

a Western, cultural context, have, accordingly, been those that focus in an

exclusivist focus on the human, and at least some contemporary theologians

egories (Clough 2012). Post-modern therefore starts to equate with post-

In the field of anthropology, particularly social anthropology, the focus

the inclusion of non-human others into the ethnographic and evolutionary

As a result of this expansion, data from primatological, biological, and

2. Negotiating Anthropology and Theology

Theological traditions, while themselves highly diverse and often contested

3 Wentzel van Huyssteens (2006, 1721) plea for transversality in a post-foundationalist

3. The Community Niche and Human Evolution

ronments. It recognizes the agency of organisms in their evolutionary pro-

biotic and abiotic elements they encounter are embedded in an experiential

ics for developing a contemporary theological understanding of the human

4. Other Species as Core Components of the Community Niche

Both anthropological and theological perspectives have a diverse set of con-

siderations to take into account when it comes to understanding the mean-

of neuroendocrinological, symbolic, and behavioral processes (Mackinnon

with, their non-human companions (Haraway 2003; Kohn 2007; Olmert

inclusion of non-human others into the human community is relatively old

5. Human Co-ecologies/Co-existence in Community with Other

Recent anthropological work provides a particularly important insight into

a) Humans and Other Primates

Humans and other primates share diverse and complex relationships

tion of the landscape by humans impacts pathogen transmission patterns for

of overlap between human populations and macaques, it becomes evident

b) Humans and Dogs

from humans, even those with various neurological and socio-cognitive

in aspects of their spiritual-ethnopharmacological practices (via hallucino-

c) Humans and Large Predators

4 This type of multispecies cosmology system is fairly ubiquitous in Amerindian, espe-

of years (Hart and Sussman 2005; Shipman 2011).

Northern Ethiopia, which showed a mutual relationship involving domestic

d) Thinking with Other Animals

Borrowing from the ethnoprimatological approach (Fuentes 2012a, 2012b),

animal relationships, multi-disciplinary approaches are central. If we are

human community niche.

6. The Animal and Theological Anthropology:

There are, of course, perceived dangers in surmising too close an associa-

speciesism. Crucially, he argued that once this boundary is weakened then

ment by a long list of advanced characteristics that he believes are specific

1965, 83). He believes, further, that such an orientation towards transcend-

continuity as well. His argument resonates to a degree with anthropological

how human beings can be thought of as distinctive without introducing a

according to the gradations of the soul, so that:

The idea of a nested hierarchy makes sense, so the triangle to a quadrangle

5 This chapter is headed, significantly, On the Highest Perfection of Animal Which is

architect (qu. 93.6).

sophistication of the cognitive acts of intelligent social animals, nor the

beings understood eventually in cultural and religious terms, leaving the

condition far behind.

Christ. According to this perspective, during the long path of evolution-

the natural world it become humanitys greatest weakness.

7. Conclusions: Implications of the Multispecies Interface

cally-mediated perceptual lifeways, we commonly perceive a structural and

orientation, assumes an anthropocentric reality wherein humans, as a spe-

ford: Stanford University Press.