The birth of morality and the Fall of Adam through an evolutionary inter-species lens

Abstract

I begin by suggesting that the Christian metanarrative about the Fall of Adam has overreached its confines in Christian theology, becoming a leitmotif in Western culture more broadly. While sympathetic to aspects of Wentzel van Huyssteen’s post-foundationalist approach to the evolution of morality, I argue that a reinterpretation of the Fall through an evolutionary inter-species lens takes proper account of cultural attachment to the Fall narrative, but breaks it open theologically in radically new ways. In particular, I suggest that the Fall marks a theo-dramatic transition to the propensity for sainthood or sin that is highly distinctive for human beings, but one that is also conducted in the context of a community of others, including other animals. These creaturely others are not anonymous, but show up their own distinctive agency and virtue (and sometimes vice) in ways that intersect and overlap with moral capabilities emerging in the earliest hominin communities. Drawing on biblical exegesis of Genesis 2 and recent and ongoing anthropological research, I will use inter-species illustrations from contemporary contexts, including human–elephant, human–hyena and human–puma affiliations. I argue that a shift from an individualistic to a wider community understanding of human morality is crucially important, not just for theoretical discussions about the evolution of morality, but also in envisaging the meaning of human personhood and the theological ground for moral action.