Alone In The World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology by J. Wentzel Van Huysteen

J. Wentzel Van Huysteen teaches theology and science at Princeton Theological Seminary, and Alone In The World? is the collection of his Gifford Lectures, given at the University of Edinburgh in 2004. While most readers will find this work to be intellectually challenging, it is a substantive reflection on the nature and meaning of the “image of God” (Genesis 1); in addition, it speaks to the broader question of the place of humanity within history and the wider creation, and the work is an example of faithful theological engagement with the sciences. For these reasons, van Huysteen’s writings are very much in the spirit of the Gifford Lectures, which were endowed for the “promotion, advancing, teaching and diffusing the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of that term.”

Van Huysteen responds to the scientific questioning of human uniqueness, particularly through the challenge of Charles Darwin. He then traces reflection on the imago dei in the Christian tradition, noting the intellectual development of the concept in light of “cultural pressure.” In Genesis 1, humans are created in the image of God and are “alone among all creatures” in being invited into a personal relationship with God. This image is distorted by human sin, however, and is thus an ambiguous designation. In the New Testament, Jesus Christ is given the role of image of God, and the term is later developed in relation to Trinitarian and eschatological doctrines. These developments gave a richness to the concept of the image of God, but also lured the church, at times, to what Van Huysteen describes as a “twilight zone of abstraction.” He laments the missed opportunities to fully grasp the meaning of the image of God for human rights and just relationships within human beings and in the larger creation. “The imago dei, he insists, “points to reconciliation, justice and liberation; the issue of human rights is strikingly revealed to be at the heart of any discussion of the imago dei”(317).

At the heart of the book is a series of cave paintings from the Ice Age, discovered in France and Northern Spain. These paintings display emerging traits of human uniqueness, and provide van Huysteen with paleoanthropological evidence for the origin of language and consciousness. These learnings help us to see the image of God as an embodied experience; as later theologians argue, “the image of God is not found in humans, but is the human; and for this reason imago dei can be read only as imatatio dei; to be created in the image of God means we should act like God , and so attain holiness by caring for others and for the world” (320).

This interdisciplinary conversation on a crucial biblical and theological idea—the image of God—illustrates the possibility of scientists and theologians inhabiting a shared space in which each is enriched. While each discipline has its limitations, our human existence and uniqueness is only fully described in the complementarity of the two disciplines.