Are Neanderthals saved?
Our friend Ruth (not daughter Ruth!) asked a good question today, in the comments to a previous post, and I thought it deserved its own post. Her question was this:
Went to a dinosaur park today and saw models of neaderthal man. They got me thinking. They made tools and fires and things. But was God their God? I know that we didn’t evolve from them. But at what point in evolution did God become the God that he is for human-kind?
Good question! The first thing to say is that we don’t know the answer, and can’t this side of heaven. But I do have a few thoughts.
It’s usually been held by the Church that the thing setting humanity apart from the animals is the possession of a rational soul. That is, the power to think, speak and reason is what makes us human. If so, we would have to suggest that Neanderthals were also human in this sense. And so, yes, God would be their God, too. Of course, God is the God of the animals and the rocks and the stars, too, so in that sense it’s trivial. But, if the Neanderthals sought any God then the triune God would the One to whom they would be reaching. And I believe that God would reach back to them.
If the Neanderthals had no soul then, we’d have to suggest, they would have no desire for God, no experience of the numinous. And that problem would solve itself. It raises issues, though, of what then really distinguishes us from animals – if Neanderthals thought and spoke and reasoned and crafted and created, why are we any different?
However, there’s one final thought that makes sense to me and might help. If Neanderthals and other hominins were en-souled (had the divine spark that makes us different) then their story and salvation is the same as ours. Just as, we are told in the Bible, salvation was available to those to died before Christ was born, so these others would partake in that salvation. And if they weren’t en-souled, there’s nothing to worry about.
To answer your question, then, I personally suspect that we aren’t the only species to have had souls. I’ve no evidence for this, but there’s no evidence against it either. Insofar as we have any idea of what the soul is, we relate it to ideas of self-awareness, of rationality, of awareness of personal death, of creativity. All of these things appear to have been present in Neanderthals and possibly other hominin species. So, either souls were given once, a long time ago and shared among many species, or they were given several times, as a few species came into the place in God’s plan where they needed one.
Perhaps not very satisfactory, but an answer, at least!
pax et bonum
Follow comments using Co.mments.com
Add to your del.icio.us bookmarks
I ask the questions I do precisely because I share your aversion to believing ‘made-up stuff’.
You say that God’s relationship with man began with Adam, but here again I meet with confusion. Genesis has two stories of creation – the 7 day sequence (Genesis 1) and the Garden of Eden version (Gen 2.5 – 3.24) Both contradict each other. Man, beasts and plants are created in two different sequences and man and woman are made in two different ways. At 2.5 God takes the earth/dust and fashions Adam (a male creation). Here, man exists before vegetation. But at 1.12 the grass, herbs and trees have been created on the 3rd day and human kind (male and female) on the 6th.
So what is real and what is made up?
Does it matter whether God’s relationship began with Neanderthal Man, Homo Sapien Man, ‘Adam’ (Gen 1) or Adam (Gen 2)?
And does it matter where Adam lay on the evolutionary scale?
Yes and no. Yes, if fathoming this out is necessary to your belief in the existence of God in the first place. Questions like this make me wonder all over again whether there is a God, and I have to grapple with them – even if doing so makes me sound like an atheist.
The fact that I do not believe that either version of creation given in Genesis is literally true doesn’t shake my faith one iota, and I get very frustated with atheists who base their arguments against God solely on what they see as ‘flaws’ or ‘fiction masked as truth’ within the bible.
But the fact that we now know that humankind evolved from blue-green algae does make me wonder upon which day God started entering us into Heaven.
Ruth ()
7:26pm on 06 April 2007
‘God created man in his own image’
‘Did he create Neanderthal man in his own image?’
‘But Neanderthal man differs from Homo sapien man – so they can not BOTH have been created in God’s image. Can they?’
________
Tomorrow evening I shall attend the Easter Vigil at church. The service will begin with the lighting of a fire outside of the church. We will light our candles from the fire and take them into the dark church. The service will develop into a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. There is something mysterious about the whole joyful event – it totally accords with my ‘something happened school of theology’! No matter that the bible… ooh… I dunno…. repeatedly describes a flat earth, Jesus’ life and death and resurrection meant something and changed everything.
Ruth ()
8:53pm on 06 April 2007
Genesis 1 and 2 do not contradict. You believe that because someone told you so or you read it, and it supports your desire to reject Scriptural authority. I could tell you or point you to resources that explain why it isn’t even remotely so, but as you demonstrated when you asked for a book about God, you’ll buy and read what says the things you already believe. You certainly have that right, but once you do, you are making up “Christianity”. Flat earth? Try Isaiah 40:22.
You should asks questions. No one should believe “blindly”. God gave us reason and demands we love with with all our heart, soul, strength…and mind. Failing to love with our mind is failing to love. However, excluding Scriptural authority because it doesn’t conform to our preconceived notions is a failure in all areas. Adam didn’t want to obey God either. As a fellow I dislike (Rob Bell) said, “It isn’t important that it happened in the garden, but that it happens.” Our rejection of God’s precepts continue to this day.
The Mrs. and I still pray for you. May you come to know Christ and His peace.
Hammertime () (URL)
03:21am on 11 April 2007
It’s irritating to read you declaring that I arrive at the conclusions I reach “because someone told me so or I read it”. You seem to be suggesting that I’m unable to form an opinion of my own and so have to go lifting other people’s – and pretend they are mine. It’s patronising and it’s absolutely not true.
And I can’t believe you suggest that I only read things that support what I already beleive. For a start I read your blog for many months – and blogs you link to. And furthermore you know nothing of the books I’ve been reading over the past six months.
I am getting to know Christ and his peace -thank you for your prayers, and please give my love to Mrs Hammer.
Ruth ()
5:31pm on 11 April 2007
Genesis 1 and 2 aren’t contradictory. No one comes in with a blank slate and comes to that conclusion. When you would send me links you were reading, all of which denied biblical authority, they would have those kinds of assertions.
I’m certain you would have told us if you read the J.I. Packer book we suggested when you asked about books. You bought and read the Borg book immediately from out of the same conversation and gleefully told everyone.
I do, however, retract my statement about your reading in general. You are completely correct – aside from this one specific instance where you chose to immediately purchase and read a book you expected to support your preconceptions and did not pursue the other with the same fervor – I have no idea what you have read, and you were a regular reader and commenter at my blog. My oversimplification and overgeneralization was uncalled for and unfounded. Please forgive me.
Hammertime () (URL)
8:48pm on 11 April 2007
It’s a bit of a shame that you see no inkling of a hint of a possibility of any contradiction between the account of the creation of mankind in Gen 1 and the creation of mankind in Gen 2 as I was hoping to explore that with someone. Can’t discuss a contradiction with someone who doesn’t think that a contraction exists!
Ruth ()
4:24pm on 12 April 2007
Anyhow, to the point. First, Hammer, you have to admit (surely?) that there is a contrast between the two stories. They relate things in a different order with quite different emphases. They talk about the creation of human beings, in particular, quite differently. No one is disputing the fact that one can synthesise the two stories into a coherent account. The question is whether there are two contrasting narratives in the first place. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that when someone says that the narratives “contradict”, they mean “disprove one another”. The intended meaning would (usually!) be rather closer to the word I’ve used here – contrast. They are different, not the same.
To Ruth’s question about “power to the arm of atheists”, you seem to be thinking about the classic “God of the gaps” style argument – that, as science answers more questions about the world, there’s less room for God as Creator and Sustainer. If so, that’s not at all what I was thinking, because (in this instance) “in God’s image” doesn’t mean anything physical. God, after all, has no real physical part except Jesus’ human body. And that, let’s remember, was created in human likeness! No, “in God’s image” refers to those characteristics I discussed – creativity, love, rationality etc. These are the things that make us human. And, if Neanderthals, or other hominins had these characteristics, they had the spark of God within them – they had souls and the potential to be loving creatures who worship their Creator.
pax et bonum
[John] () (URL)
6:58pm on 12 April 2007
I am often guilty of believing that words mean exactly what they mean, because I am very careful with my words. Contradict does in fact mean “cannot be reconciled”. If you, Ruth, had said something to the effect of, “How do you reconcile the contrasting (good word!) initial chapters of Genesis creation accounts, my reaction would have been quite different.”
Perhaps one reason I claim that no one with a blank slate thinks the two are contradictory is that no such contradiction was claimed until liberal Bible deniers made it up in the 18th century. For 1800 years people studied the Bible and didn’t accuse it of being contradictory in Genesis 1 and 2. It is one thing to be perplexed with the advent of evolutionary theory as it relates to creation – that can obviously be a challenge. To claim they are contradictory requires previous influence by liberal theology.
The short explanation is this – Genesis 1 is a time line, at least in terms of order, and Genesis 2 is not. There are different ways that many interpret how long things took, and one needn’t be a six 24-hour day creationist to believe Genesis 1 is a factual account of creation (although I am). Genesis 1, with its use of “first, second, third”, etc, is a time line. Genesis 2, is not. In fact, the first time we know for sure that an event described is happening after another is verse 18, where, after the man has been placed in the garden and given his tasks, we read, “Then the Lord said, It is not good that man should be alone.”
Genesis 2 narrows the focus to man, his creation, his relationship, and his authority and duties. Above John discussed how the image of God has been thought of as reason (rational soul). Curiously, he left out Barth’s postulate that it is relationship (especially curious because John has said that man is not truly human when alone), as well as the aspect of work or dominion held by others. Personally, I hold to all three – that the image of God includes a rational soul, relationship to God and each other, and a possession of dominion given by God to work the earth and make it the best we can. A Neanderthal would need to possess all of those to be the image of God that is mankind, and since we agree that we did not evolve from them, and that we are made in the image of God, then there were one or more aspects of that image that Neanderthals must not have had.
I hope that was more helpful!
Hammertime () (URL)
05:11am on 13 April 2007
“Contradict” is indeed a stronger word, but needn’t mean “cannot be reconciled” (this is actually the meaning of “irreconcilable”). The OED, for example, offers “denying that a thing stated is completely true”, “that contradict or are at variance with each other” or “containing elements opposed to each other” (my emphases). This indicates that the normal understanding isn’t total opposition but partial inconsistency. If we understand the word in that sense, I don’t think you would find it too much of a stretch to allow it. There are clearly “variances” between the accounts, elements that are “opposed”. The fact that the two stories are told for different purposes explains this, but doesn’t discount it. They relate things in a different order, implying different sequences of events.
Your implication that the contrast between the accounts was made up in the 18th century is a bit disingenuous, because (as with most of the evangelical-liberal fights) one side came up with a line in reaction to the perceived excesses of the other side. So, the liberals started talking up the contrast because the evangelicals were starting to apply the creation accounts in a new, Modernist fashion. However, this isn’t really the point here – none of us grew up prior to the 18th century, and we all inherit the language as it is now.
The idea of relationship is, as you note, one that is important to me. It was this element that I was seeking to capture as “loving”. I’m not sure about including dominion as an aspect of the soul – it’s not an intrinsic attribute but a gift given from outside. Dominion is a permission to exercise our will and abilities in a certain way, it’s not itself an ability. That said, it’s part of the human state (albeit impaired in these post-Fall, pre-Heaven times).
I’m not so sure that your logic holds – just because we didn’t evolve from Neanderthals, that doesn’t prove that they lacked a soul. If, as I suggested, our common ancestor had a soul, so would Neanderthals and other hominins. Whether that’s something we want to suggest happened, I’m not sure. Certainly, it’s something we have no evidence about one way or the other!
I think that the only coherent positions are:
Which of these we choose is hard to tell. I’d lean towards the second (given the evidence that Neanderthals were rational, creative and loving, and even understood death and carried out burial rituals). Hammer, I think, leans towards the first.
pax et bonum
[John] () (URL)
2:01pm on 13 April 2007
When Hammer said that man’s relationship with God began with Adam, I was intrigued to hear how he could support the existence of Adam given what I saw as the ‘contradictions’ between Genesis 1 and 2. To me, these ‘contradictions’ make it very difficult, if not impossible, to support a belief in a biblical creation.
I’ve heard creationists argue against the theory of evolution, but I’d never had teh opportunity to hear them comment upon what I see as contradictions within the biblical account of creation.
So it has been interesting to have this debate – although I don’t think Hammer accepts that the two passages contradict each other,and that is a necessary starting point for the discussion.
Ruth ()
7:52pm on 13 April 2007
Mark Olson () (URL)
01:14am on 14 April 2007
I think that we were discussing two slightly different aspects of humanity. You, as best I can tell, hold to a “soul” as the defining element of the relationship with God, while I hold it is our being made in the image of God. Yet, I’m not sure those are separable.
God breathed the breath of life into Adam, yet this act is not recorded for any other creature – only the one made in his image. Most of the kinds of things you mention – “rational, creative and loving, and even understood death and carried out burial rituals” are observed in other areas of the animal kingdom. Penguins mate for life and take care of each other and their young (love). Birds pick up sticks and use them to poke insects out of hard to reach places (as rational as anything we know Neanderthals did). Elephants have burial rituals. Creativity is not, as far as I know, yet it does not beg the presence of a “soul”.
I honestly don’t know the relationship between modern man and the species designated “Neanderthal”. I honestly don’t think it is important enough to spend much time on. What I know is that man is made in the image of God, and we are beholden to Him for our lives. Whether Neanderthals had “souls” or not, God is the giver of life, and is the God of all.
Perhaps you all think that when your child lies to you, that as long as a portion of the lie is true, than they are not lying. “True” and “false” are mutually exclusive. When you refer to a passage as “mostly true” then obviously it is “partly false”. A written text is either true or false, taken as a whole. Thus, to claim that the texts are “contradictory” by definition means that they cannot be reconciled. Read it here. I demonstrated pretty easily how they are reconciled (lack of time structured language in Genesis 2), yet you two still hold on to “contradictory” as a viable term.
We were not talking about “worthless or without value”. “Contradictory” has nothing to do with worth or value, and everything to do with true and false.
Hammertime () (URL)
5:18pm on 17 April 2007
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/c..
Hammertime () (URL)
5:19pm on 17 April 2007
I suspect, too, that “soul” and “image of God” are effectively the same concept. They both speak of the human being as spiritual as well as animal. The attributes I mention as indicating that image are, as you suggest, also found in nature. But that should be expected, given that the same Creator made both! There’s something more, something extra, about the human being that distinguishes it from the rest of God’s creation but exactly what that is has never satisfactorily been reduced to a phrase.
“A written text is either true or false, taken as a whole.“
I guess so, but only if we reduce all truth to the most simplistic level of naked factuality. And yet, even then, we may have accounts of events that are partially true. Take courtroom testimony. This is (in the vast majority of cases) the honest and best recollections of the witnesses, and yet it is almost never consistent. There are always differences and even outright contradictions. So much so, in fact, that police and judges regard testimony that’s completely consistent as probably fraudulent! So, I don’t think your simplistic reduction (insisting that we keep “true” and “false” as a simple binary choice applied globally) is tenable. However, all this is not really relevant to the point here!
You fail to admit, still, that what you’re doing in reconciling the two accounts is interpretation – and loose interpretation, at that. You are adding something to the story that’s not there (chronology). I hold to “contradictory” as a viable term because of what that word really means (see my comment above) and because we do not accept that a story (or anything else) must be true in every detail or else it is false in every detail (which is what you’re saying). You seem to be saying something that is logically untenable and conflicts with experience, which doesn’t seem likely, so I assume you’re mis-spoken. Can you explain more clearly why you believe that a story cannot be partly true – or, at least, why two contrasting stories cannot both be equally true?
I think that part of the problem here is that you are wanting the Genesis accounts to be factual – to be journalistic recountings of the events that actually occurred when the world was made. One problem I have with this is that you have already said that you don’t believe that the world was created 6000 years ago, as a literal reading of the genealogies and chronologies of the OT would require. So, if those are not factual and the world can actually be orders of magnitude older than that (not trivially older), how do you reconcile this with your insistence on full factuality?
As for the link, if you read the small print (below), all HTML except for a couple of tags is stripped from comments. If you try Textile formatting (see the link above the comments box), that lets you do formatting safely. Or you can do what you did in the second comment and just paste the URL in.
pax et bonum
[John] () (URL)
11:00pm on 17 April 2007
Let’s not beg the question, ok? Claiming that “part of the problem is that you are wanting the Genesis accounts to be factual” is no more useful than saying “part of John’s problem is wanting the Genesis accounts not to be factual”. Both are likely true, both surely influence our interpretation. However, we are discussing the text and its meaning. The meaning of the text does not come from us, it comes fom the author. Since we can’t read Moses’ mind, and he can’t explain any more than he has written, we must discern the meaning from what he has written. Genesis is not written in “myth” form. It is a narrative. it is intended to be “factual”. We can honestly debate whether we think it is factual or not, but I would hold that to claim that it was not intended to be factual is disingenuous.
Furhtermore, I did not insert the chronology. The author did. Chapter one has chronology – first day, second day, etc. Chapter two does not. It addresses the subject matter in detail as it arises. Chapter one doesn’t tell us that it didn’t rain and how God watered the plants to make them grow – chapter two does. Chapter one doesn’t tell us where the man lived, how the Garden came about, or how the animals were named – Genesis two does.
You can probably attack my premise on exegetical grounds or from an extra-textual perspective. However, to claim that the text means something other than it does, or to claim that there is chronological language when there is not, is pretty weak.
I never explained my earth-age position. I honestly don’t know how old the earth is. I am as willing to believe that it is 6,000 years old as I am 4.2 billion. What I deny is that the genealogies are intended or meant to convey time to determine the age of the earth. They certainly (unlike Genesis two) do convey an order of the generations. An examination of the genealogies of the Bible will confirm that they are neither exhaustive nor intended to demonstrate a number of years had passed. I simply can’t hang my hat on something the Scriptures do not intend.
Hammertime () (URL)
6:07pm on 19 April 2007
OK, that was perhaps not the best phrasing. I really meant “part of my problem” – the reason that we tend to talk past one another sometimes on these issues and, at least, to disagree.
But Genesis is not written factually. It’s absolutely written as myth (which, let me say again lest we get at crossed purposes, is not the same as saying that it’s fictional, or even mostly fictional). Most particularly, the idea of history as an impartial record of facts was totally unknown when the Genesis stories were first told, and when they were first written down, and even until well after the time of Jesus Himself. The Romans were learning about history as we understand it, but even they still saw the exercise as being as much about making a point as about the facts. (Not that they made up the facts, mostly, but that the facts weren’t the point.)
So, we can’t say that it’s “factual” in the same sense as we would say that the news on the BBC (or MSN or CBS or whoever) is “factual”, still less in the way that we would say that academic history books are “factual”. The idea of a “fact” in the current sense is relatively recent.
As to the chronology issue, I’m going to leave it there – it’s not the point of the original post and we have (to some extent) been here before. Sorry if I misrepresented you. I was sure I’d heard you say before that you weren’t a Young-Earth Creationist, which was all I meant – you wouldn’t hang your hat on the factuality and completeness of the genealogies to date the Creation in the same way as you seem to do with the accounts themselves.
pax et bonum
[John] () (URL)
6:30pm on 19 April 2007
I agree that we do not hold the Scriptures to the same journalistic standards that we have today. I also agree that the Scriptures, written as history, were not intended to be “impartial”. What I could not diagree more with is your assertion that they are written as myth. Your claim that no one had written a factual account of anything (granting the different standards of journalism at the time) is,well, made up. It sounds rather like the liberal theory that Moses could not have written Genesis because there was no writing at all at the time (disproved) or that the Hittites never existed because there was no physical evidence of them (later found). You are claiming that no one wrote factual accounts of events – an improvable claim.
Myths were intentionally fiction. They do not involve historical figures in historical acts. Take a modern myth (you may not be familiar with it) – George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and not lying about it as a child. There is no year or place associated with this. Compare the creation account with its specific location of Eden; the travels of Abraham from specific places, speaking with historical figures during historically verifiable times (“In the days of Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim – Gen 14:1”); Joseph settling his family in Goshen. Compare this with myths of the Greeks and Persians, of whom there is no evidence they ever existed, all having superhuman abilities, operating in times unknown with people unknown, fighting monsters that never existed, copulating with gods who do not exist, receiving gifts that never existed. Heracles, a human, tricks Atlas, some nonexistent entity, into taking back the support of the earth which Heracles held for a bit. Yes, that is just like the account of Joseph’s brothers, historical figures, selling him into slavery in Egypt, a historical place.
Perhaps I misunderstand. What is your evidence for calling Genesis myth? It can’t be an exhaustive knowledge of literature in 1500 B.C., since no such thing exists. The form of the writing, with historical places, times and people doesn’t indicate it is mythical writing. My minimal research indicates that there were historical records at the time, to include the Anitta tablets of the Hittite Empire.
Hammertime () (URL)
8:40pm on 19 April 2007
“Myths were intentionally fiction“
But that’s what I’m saying – they’re not at all. A myth is a story that explains a culture’s worldview or where people fit into the world. Myths may be true or untrue, factual or non-factual. For example, a scientific account of the Big Bang serves as a creation myth for rationalist materialists – it explains where human beings fit into the Universe. In this case, it’s also about as factual as the storytellers can make it. If you can understand the use of science as myth, perhaps you can see what I’m getting at by saying that the Creation story in Genesis is also myth – I’m not at all saying that it’s untrue, rather that its purpose is not to record events but to show where human beings fit into the Universe.
And the same is true for other myths – they are intended to be true stories, not merely stories. But the factuality of the story isn’t what’s important about it for those who tell or hear it. The important thing is what it says about the meaning of life.
So, when I say that Genesis is myth, I’m meaning (as I’ve said repeatedly, including above) that it’s a genre of storytelling that is intended to tell us where we fit into the world. It is not primarily reportage. The very idea that pure reportage could be important is what’s recent. Before very recent times, accounts of history were always propaganda. Records of events were intended to show how wonderful we are, how hateful our enemies are.
So, the historical records from Ancient Greece and Egypt (which I do know something about) aren’t always, even usually, reliable history (as we now use that term). The events may not have played out as described. The characters may not have acted as the storyteller claims. The records show how splendid a warrior and leader the king is – whatever actually happened.
(Of course, this still happens now. It’s just that we have the idea of recording what really happened as being important for itself.)
I hope that’s a little clearer.
pax et bonum
[John] () (URL)
9:50pm on 20 April 2007
That said, we certainly have common views of some genres of Scripture. A proverb, for example, is not written to be factually true. It has this in common with your myth. It is merely a statement of probability. A good example is “I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor their children begging for bread.” That proverb, found in the book of Psalms, is not meant to say that no child of a righteous man will ever beg for bread. It reflects the general rule of life that avoiding sin often leads to avoiding misery. Yet even the writer certainly did not believe that every beggar was one because of their parents’ sins!
This is why authorial intent is so important, and relevant to our discussion. The literary form of Genesis does not display a mythical intent. It is written as a narrative, a narrative that is treated by the New Testament writers as factual enough to base theological points upon. Paul writes, “For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression” (1 Ti 2:13-14). It’s safe to say that Paul, a Jewish scholar second to none, had a pretty good understanding of authorial intent in the Torah.
My contention isn’t to say whether Genesis is factual or not (although it is coming across that way). It is to state that the text and any apparent authorial intent do not give any indication that it is not intended to be factual. It is only with a predication that it must follow modern scientific agreement to be factual, or another external basis for discernment that lead to that conclusion (i.e. “the idea of history as an impartial record of facts was totally unknown”).
If you disagree, which i suspect you do, I would be interested in seeing this internal evidence. You can even justifiably use other Scriptures demonstrating that Genesis is meant to be taken mythically,since that would show a knowledge of it in the group that knew it best.
Hammertime () (URL)
04:49am on 21 April 2007