Where are we from? How did we get here?

In this essay, I attempt to address questions on what it is to be human. I do so as an interested non-expert and as a Christian believer. It is quite possible I have missed important parts of the story. I wrote it as my own research project. It contains two parts. First, I look at what the fossil record and palaeoarchaeology can tell us about our earliest ancestors, both what they looked like and how they behaved. I then turn to anatomically and behaviourally modern humans. Secondly, I look at how religious texts reflect on our humanness.

Where do we come from? How did we get here? These are questions that have exercised the minds of philosophers for millennia. As they thought about them, the ancients liked to tell stories. Some of these stories are recorded in holy writ. The most widely known is that found in the Hebrew Bible, together with the broadly similar version in the Quran.

Traditionally, the Book of Genesis is held to have been written by Moses during the second millennium BCE. Nowadays, both its supposed Mosaic authorship and its early date of composition are almost universally rejected. While details of its composition are debated, it is usually now dated to just after the Babylonian Captivity when Jewish people began to return to Jerusalem. All the same, it is widely acknowledged that Genesis contains much earlier traditions, potentially going back as far as the 13th century BCE^[1]. (Interestingly, Gordon Wenham takes a mediating position in the tenth century BCE^[2]). Other well-known Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) creation and creation-related stores are found in the even older Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic (c. 2100 BCE) and in the Sumerian Flood Story (c. 1600 BCE). These are the oldest known recorded creation narratives. In addition to these ANE stories, creation stories are also found in virtually every other civilisation on earth. Examples are known from all six inhabited continents. Some are similar to the Bible story, while others are very different. The key thing is that the stories typically posit a first pair of humans that appear almost from nowhere. In the Bible account, the first humans were Adam and Eve. We are lead to believe that there were no humans before Adam and Eve were created.

Old though the known stories are, they are not a patch on the length of time over which modern humans have existed. Of course the Quran was written during the life of the prophet Mohammad, between 610 and 612 CE. Famously, or infamously, Christians have traditionally believed the earth, and therefore humans, are only a few thousand years old. Muslims tend not to be so hung up on the date of creation.

The earliest humans

In contrast to traditional Christian belief, radiometric dating shows that the earliest documented member of the genus Homo, i.e., species related to us that bore distinctly human-like as opposed to the more ape-like characteristics of our earlier ancestor Australopithecus, was Homo habilis, dates to around 2.3 million years before present (BP)^[3]. However, the first hominids, a family that today includes all the great apes (orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and humans) appeared around 15- 20 million years ago, while the first hominins, a sub-family of the hominids that includes today’s humans and chimpanzees and humans, emerged around 8 – 10 million years ago. The split between humans and chimpanzees is thought to have occurred 5 – 6 million years ago. Note that these dates are approximate, subject to debate and to modification as further fossils are discovered^[4].

Timeline of human evolution showing the split from gorillas and chimpanzees.

H. habilis was small in stature but had a larger brain than its ancestors. They probably spent at least some time in the trees although recent thinking is that they were also able to walk long distances and may have been capable of endurance running^[5]. Importantly, they bipedal. This is widely acknowledged to be a characteristic of humans^[6]. H. habilis made stone tools, a skill also seen in our Australopithecine ancestors as early as 3.4 million years ago. Of course even today, tool making is not unique to humans. Not only do we find evidence of tool making in the archaeological record, we also find that a surprising number of non-human species use and even modify tools. Chimpanzees provide a good example^[7]. As we think about what it is to be human, we need to bear in mind that while tool making was once thought to be a specifically human activity, we now know that this is not the case.

Reconstructed Homo habilis skull, dated approximately 1.8 million years. Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Smithsonian Institute.

H. habilis and other early members of our genus did not look that much like humans do today. I mentioned that they were small. They were also more agile than we are. H. habilis had a flat cranium and lacked a distinct forehead. The major difference between us and them was brain size. Modern humans have a typical brain volume in the range 1,125 and 1,740 cm³. H. habilis had a brain capacity of only around 510 – 690 cm^{3 [8]}. This represents a brain to body weight ratio of around 1.7%. For modern humans, values in the range 1.9 – 2.25% are typical. For comparison, modern chimpanzees have an average brain to body weight ratio of 0.88%^[9]. The subsequent history of human evolution is that of rapidly increasing brain size as the figure shows.

Human evolution based on skull endocasts of fossil archaic primates and early hominids

Note that the brain to body weight ratio is a relative rather than absolute measure that can be useful for making comparisons within similar groups of organisms. It is much less useful for comparisons between groups. An ant’s brain, for example, represents around 15% of its body mass!^[10]

The oldest known H. sapiens fossil comes from Jebel Irhoud in Morocco and is dated to roughly 300,000 years BP^[11]. The skull looks a little different from the skulls of people today, particularly in its more elongated and sloping forehead, but is otherwise very similar to our own. It is thought that humans that the first humans to look exactly as we do today, referred to as anatomically modern humans, had appeared by at least 200,000 years BP. Significantly, this find suggests that humans had migrated some distance across Africa by this time.

A composite reconstruction of the earliest-known Homo sapiens fossils from Jebel Irhoud, based on micro-computed tomographic scans of multiple original fossils

The Morocco find suggests that since this individual lived, human brains have continued to change. It is thought that human brain size fell within modern limits by around 300,000 years ago although brain shape and arrangement continued to evolve between 100,000 and 35,000 years BP^[12]. We would expect to see these changes reflected in their behaviour.

Human language

Perhaps the clearest difference between humans and other animals is our ability to communicate with one another in extremely sophisticated ways using spoken language. The scientific study of language, or linguistics, has become highly specialised. Well known practitioners, both of whom have made important contributions to the subject as it pertains to what it is to be human, include Noam Chomsky and Steve Pinker.

We know that many animals, birds and even insects communicate with one another and that their communication may be relatively sophisticated. Bees, for example, communicate using a form of dance that alerts other bees to the direction of and the distance to nectar producing flowers. We know that dolphins communicate using a series of non-verbal gestures and a vast array of sounds that include whistles, clicks, and loud broadband packets of sound called burst pulses. Whilst attempts to decipher what these sounds might mean have been made – and even to communicate with dolphins directly – they remain largely mysterious. Similarly, while we immediately recognise a crow (corvid) by its caw, we know that crows are highly intelligent – they are capable of analogical reasoning – and live in complex social hierarchies. It turns out that while its characteristic caws may all sound the same to us, a caw can mean different things, depending on how it’s used, the energy put into it, the timbre, the number and speed of repetitions^[13].

Closer to home, non-human primates also communicate with each other in relatively complex ways. One of the most famous examples of primate communication is that of vervet monkeys. These primates belong to the taxonomic family Ceropthecidae, or old world monkeys. The family includes baboons, macaques and rhesus monkeys. They are not particularly closely related to humans, our last common ancestor having lived around 30 million years ago. Vervet monkeys are social animals that communicate with each other via a series of distinct alarm calls. What is most interesting is the fact that vervets have four confirmed predators (leopards, eagles, pythons, and baboons) and that the sighting of each predator elicits an acoustically distinct alarm call. In 1980, this occasioned the suggestion that vervet monkeys are capable using language-like communication^[14]. But what is language?

At its simplest, language is a structured means of communication. As a minimum, we identify semantics, i.e. units of meaning expressed in words and sentences, and syntax. Syntax reflect the way in which units of meaning interact with other units of meaning. We are familiar with syntax in grammar lessons at school. If they even teach grammar, still less spelling, nowadays! It was claimed that the calls of vervet monkeys possessed these characteristics to a greater or lesser extent. This claim has since been retracted by the original authors^[15] although it appears to have somewhat lodged itself in people’s imagination. Why did the authors think that vervet calls can be considered to represent a form of language? Principally because they exhibit the property of arbitrariness. In linguistics, arbitrariness is the absence of any natural or necessary connection between a word’s meaning and its sound or form. It is the opposite of sound symbolism where a word is somehow related to what it represents. Onomatopoeias like meow or woof are obvious examples. But language also has structure and this is lacking in vervet communication. Indeed, it is now considered that supposed vervet calls do not even possess semanicity. This is because while a vervet can respond to a particular predator with a specific call, it cannot say “I saw a leopard yesterday”.

Another characteristic of (human) language is intentionality; that is, the ability to use language to express mental states. More prosaically, intentionality is about the ability to inform others. We use language to describe what we think and feel, reminding us that we would expect language to be present only among social animals. However, notwithstanding the initial excitement in light of studies of vervets and other primates the 80s and 90s, we now believe that language as we conceive it is very much limited to humans because the examples of conjectured language noted among other species lack intentionality as well as semanicity and structure. Saying that, it is worth noting that the limitedness of a species’ ability to communicate in ways that might be considered language in the strict sense does not imply a lack of cognitive ability (although humans can, in principle, communicate whatever is in their mind. The effectiveness of animal communication is limited by the constraints I have discussed^[16]. A further caveat here is that while human language is without equal, it does not follow that the study of communication among primates and other species cannot tell us something about how human language may have evolved. Either way, the heights to which human language can ascend – think of the magnificence of Shakespeare’s sonnets or even the exalted poetic language of the account of creation in the Book of Genesis – are without parallel. Noam Chomsky thinks that “human language appears to be a unique phenomenon, without significant analogue in the animal world.” ^[17] This is surely one of the things that makes us human.

Sonnet 16. William Shakespeare.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

As an interesting aside, it might be worth speculating as to why humans are so interested in the possibility of language among other species. Two possible reasons have been suggested ^[18]. One relates to our tendency towards anthropomorphism, i.e. our tendency to apply human-like characteristics to other animals and even inanimate objects. This is particularly easily done in the case of other primates that resemble us in so many ways. We also anthropomorphise our pets. Some people argue that belief in gods is a consequence of this human tendency. Various reasons based in our evolution have been suggested arising from empathy and our tendency to find patterns where none exist. Of course as scientists, we need to be as objective as possible and not carry our human biases into our research. The other reason given relates to very laudable desire to understand and preserve other species. It is easier to argue that other species ought to be conserved for their similarity to ourselves than simply for their own sake.

Neanderthals, our not so distant cousins

I want to say something about H. neanderthalensis, more commonly known as Neanderthals. They are thought to have lived between around 250,000 to 40,000 years BP, although much older bones dating to 430,000 years BP could possibly be Neanderthal (or an intermediary between our ancestor and theirs)^[19].

The relationship between Neanderthals and modern humans is debated. Based on recent genetic evidence, it has been argued that H. neanderthalensis and H. sapiens, or H. sapiens neanderthalis and H. sapiens sapiens, are subspecies of the species H. sapiens. Conventionally, a species is defined as the largest group of organisms in which mating individuals can produce fertile offspring. A mule, for example, which is the product of mating a male donkey and a female horse, which are separate species, is always infertile. A mule is a hybrid of two species, not a separate species. Subspecies represent two or more subdivisions of a species population that could interbreed but that also can be distinguished from one another morphologically. We know that modern humans and Neanderthals interbred before the latter disappeared. Clearly their offspring were not infertile.

Subspecies often form when a geographical barrier splits a species population, making interbreeding less likely. They may well diverge but not to the extent that they form separate species. Separate species may emerge if the subspecies remain isolated under different conditions for a sufficient amount of time. In general, Neanderthals were confined to Europe and Asia while H. sapiens initially remained largely in Africa. Teeth and a jawbone from a Neanderthal boy, dated 230,000 years BP, have been found in Bontnewydd in Wales. It is thought that their particular characteristics, which included a very large, wide nose, evolved in response to the much cooler climate of the areas they occupied, particularly during periods of cooling^[20]. It had been thought that H. sapiens did not reach Europe until around 45,000 years ago but more recent data has pushed this date as far back as 210,000 years BP, i.e. around the time that anatomically modern humans first appear in the fossil record, suggesting that humans and Neanderthals co-existed and interbred for a very long time indeed^[21].

Neanderthals became extinct 40,000 years ago, apparently without leaving descendants. The reason for this is unclear and various suggestions have been made. One suggestion is that humans formed an alliance with wolves giving them an advantage over their Neanderthal cousins in hunting^[22]. Alternatively, humans were just more successful in breeding than Neanderthals, eventually outnumbering and outcompeting them. Most likely, several factors conspired together to ensure their ultimate demise.

It has been suggested that even though Neanderthals interbred with H. sapiens, Neanderthals constitute a separate species on the basis of their distinct appearance. Those taking this view note that a number of modern mammals classified as separate species also interbreed, as do a large number of birds. In the end, it is really an argument about terminology and the definition of a species. I should note in passing that all modern humans belong to the same species. There are no differences between them that would warrant classification of different human populations as separate subspecies. Either way, modern humans and Neanderthals were contemporary and very closely related. Some people find this disarming.

Neanderthals and modern humans are different but not that different

One of the great difficulties with piecing together the story of human evolution is the paucity of the human fossil record. This is a consequence of the process of fossilisation. It takes an amazing number of fortuitous events for a fossil to form. To stand a good chance of producing one, you ideally want still water with few scavengers, and soft sediment. Humans are terrestrial creatures. Unless their remains end up in a lake or in slack water where they become buried in mud, fossilisation is unlikely to occur. Clearly this happens but it its occurrence is always serendipitous. Many important hominem fossils from the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania used to piece together the story of our evolution were formed in that way. The other great source of human fossils, Lake Turkana in Kenya, is found in fine volcanic ash that also came to be laid down in still water. Bear in mind also that relatively speaking, we have not been around that long and that during our earliest history there were not that many of us about. The upshot is that the likelihood of even forming a human fossil, still less finding close to surface one, is remote. In general, the fossil record for human ancestors between circa 4 and 10 million years is particularly sparse. After this date, fossils become more common. Interestingly, none other than the Institute of Creation Research agrees that this is the reason why so few human fossils exist. Sort of!^[23]

Behavioural modernity

The great difficulty with the fossil human record is that it tells us nothing about how the individuals we find as fossils actually lived. Should we conclude that because a skeleton looks less clearly human than a modern human that it did not behave as modern humans do? After all, do not modern humans manifest some diversity, albeit within fairly defined limits? We all behave in broadly similar ways. But how did Neanderthals behave? Might they have behaved in similar ways to us? I mentioned above that Neanderthals were tool makers. Their tools consisted of stone flakes and stone axes. They appear to have been made by skilfully knapping flakes off a pre-prepared stone core. The technology, which was once thought too be limited to H. sapiens, is called Nubian Levellois^[24]. It was not until modern humans arrived in Europe and Asia in the Late Stone Age, and Neanderthals were on the way to extinction, that we find something of revolution in tool making technology amongst H. sapiens. Up until that point, there are good reasons to suppose that there was not a great deal of difference in tool making between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans.

Various other similarities between Neanderthal and human behaviour have been suggested. Perhaps most interestingly, as we think about what it is to be human, it has been claimed that Neanderthals produced art. This would suggest rational and symbolic thinking. Many of the claims made are controversial. Nevertheless, ladder-like shapes, dots and handprints painted and stencilled deep in caves at three sites in Spain have been dated to 65,000 years BP., well before when it had been thought modern humans arrived in Europe^[25]. Some archaeologists currently doubt the dating and remain unconvinced. Moreover, as I have noted, it has recently been suggested that humans arrived in Europe much earlier that previously though. If validated, however, the discovery challenges the way in which Neanderthals are often envisaged as knuckle-dragging dimwits. They raise further difficult questions about what makes us unique. It has even been claimed that Neanderthals buried their dead and that they did so with some ritual. The presence of pollen alongside a Neanderthal skeleton found in Kurdistan is held to suggest that a ritual burial with flowers had taken place^[26]. Other supposed Neanderthal burials have been claimed although all are disputed. More disturbingly, there is evidence that Neanderthals practiced ritual cannibalism although this too is disputed.

The ladder-shaped figure on this cave wall in Spain are thought to date back at least 65,000 years.

What about early humans? When did our ancestors start to behave like modern humans? To answer that question we need to define what anthropologists call behavioural modernity. We need to identify characteristics that are universal among modern humans and that set us apart from related species. While subject to some debate, they are held to include traits such as:

• Abstract thinking, i.e. the ability to find rules and patterns in a series of events that allows us to make predictions.
• Planning, i.e. the thinking process required to achieve a particular goal.
• Symbolic behaviour. Symbols are more than what they appear to be. The represent something beyond themselves. This may or may not be associated with religious ritual. It may include art and ornamentation.
• The control and use of fire.
• Music and dance.
• Blade technology representing a leap forward in tool manufacture.

I want to focus on religious ritual for the very simple reason that if we’re asking what makes us human from a Christian or religious point of view, religion is likely to be a key element in my exploration.

The appearance of religious behaviour

Most of us will be familiar with ‘religion’. But what is it? It is not that easy to define. Definitions tend to be functional or philosophical. One well known definition of religion is that put forward by Emile Durkheim in his The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1915) where he wrote, “A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden–beliefs and practices which unite in one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them”. Of course that community need not be a Christian Church. Other definitions focus more on the metaphysical elements of religion than on its practices. Obviously, we do not know how our ancestors thought although we do have evidence of have they behaved. So how might religion reveal itself in the archaeological record? I mentioned burials in connection with Neanderthals because, arguably, they are one of the the clearest indicators of religious belief and practice, particularly if burials are accompanied with grave goods. This can be taken to suggest a cognitive distinction between the present world and a world to come, as well as an element of continuity between the two. It is all but impossible to conceive that this kind of burial had anything other than a religious purpose. The oldest undisputed human burial is that of a child, dated 78,000 years BP, that was found in Kenya^[27]. The individual had apparently been buried in a purposely dug hole, and the body placed with legs drawn up to the chest. It is thought that the head may have been laid on a head rest, which no longer survives. The burial is evidently more than merely perfunctory and suggests a degree of care in arranging the body. Louise Humphrey, a researcher in human origins at the Natural History Museum in London, suggests the burial conveys a sense of personal loss. Even here, however, there is a degree of dubiety in that other animals show evidence of loss in the face of death and a degree of care over how the bodies of the dead are treated.

An artist’s rendering of the burial of Mtoto, the oldest-known grave in Africa. The child died some 78,000 years ag

A more grisly indicator of possible religious behaviour is ritual killing. The oldest suspected example relates to so-called Peking Man, a subspecies of H. erectus dated as early as 700,000 years BP. Homo erectus itself lived from around 2 million years to at least 250,000 years ago. Note the probable overlap in time between H. erectus and H. neantherthalensis and early H. sapiens. This is an important fact to keep in mind. The point with Peking man is that a fossil skull found in a cave in northern China supposedly shows evidence of having been subject to ritual behaviour, during which part of the cranium was removed. It had been thought in the past that this was evidence of ritual cannibalism, although nowadays, it is thought more likely that the skull was cleaned and venerated after death. A further example of so-called skull cult was found in a fossil of H. heidelburgensis that evidenced post-mortem defleshing. This particular example dates to a skull around 600,000 years old^[28]. These apparently religious or ritualistic behaviours clearly extend a long way into the depths of human history.

As noted above, there are several elements to behavioural modernity. I already mentioned burial and religion in connection with Neanderthals. Music is widely regarded as another key indicator.

The key thing about symbolic or religious behaviour and music and dance is that they provide no obvious survival advantage. They appear to exist for their own sake. The question of when music first appeared is also an interesting one. Some researchers believe it first appeared in the Middle Palaeolithic period, i.e. sometime between about 300,000 and 40,000 years BP, while others insist it was during the Upper Palaeolithic, around 40,000 years ago. The earliest known musical instrument is part of a presumed bone flute dated to 43,000 years^[29]. It has been suggested that the spacing of the holes is consistent with four notes of a diatonic scale. It would have required a significant advance in technology to make such a thing. As if this was not enough, it has been suggested that the flute is more closely associated with Neanderthals than with modern humans, although as with a great deal concerned with the supposed behaviour of Neanderthals, this conclusion is disputed. If true, this further closes the gap between Neanderthals and modern humans. The precise significance of this object remains somewhat elusive since only another four possible bone flutes, all of which are doubtful, have been discovered. No other Palaeolithic musical instruments are known.

Are we special?

Having thought briefly about the science and archaeology, and having noted some interesting and disconcerting similarities between modern humans and Neanderthals, I want to turn to theology. How is humanness defined in the Abrahamic faiths? In the Bible, the key affirmations are that humans were created by God and that they were created in God’s image. There are two sides to this. First, there is continuity with the rest of creation. In being creatures of God, humans share something with every other created thing, animate and inanimate. Carl Sagan was right: “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” (Cosmos, pub. 1980). This commonality with the rest of creation is brought out in the Book of Genesis, where we are told that God formed man from the “dust of the ground” (Gen. 2:7). According to this text, God took pre-existing material and formed (Heb. yatsar; formed as a potter) the man. Unlike other living things man was not created ex nihilo. The woman is said to have been formed from the man. This continuity between ourselves and the rest of creation reminds us that we do not act in isolation. No man is an island. We are part of a much larger system; the system James Lovelock describes as Gaia. For Lovelock, the earth and its biological systems act as a single enormous entity in which humans are connected to the dust and to other organisms.

According to Genesis 2, having fashioned the man from the dust of the earth, God is said to have “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Gen. 2:7). Again, this is not said of any other creature, although clearly, other creatures are alive. Of the other creatures, we are told either that God simply created (Heb. bara is usually assumed to refer to creation ex nihilo) or that the earth brought forth or produced. But again man is different. The language is interpreted to imply that man has two natures: a physical nature that is continuous with all the other matter in the universe, and a spiritual nature that connects mankind with God. We also find this idea in Islam. For example, commenting on the Quranic phrase, “And when He had made him upright and breathed into him of His spirit” (Q. 38:72)^[30], Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (1150 – 1210CE) says, “This indicates that the creation of the human is only complete with two things: first of all, his [physical] uprightness, and then the breathing of the spirit into him. This is true because the human is a composite of body and soul.” This discontinuity with the rest of creation, this God breathedness, is often taken to imply that whatever else we might think about evolution in general, humans cannot be held to be simply the result of the same evolutionary process that led to other animals. Instead, there is something else that comes by divine fiat. This is where the Bible introduces the idea of the “image of God” (imago dei).

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
(Gen. 1:26,27).

In Biblical terms, the fact that humans were created in the image of God is the single most important fact about them. Their creation comes at the end of the creation week. The suggestion is that as bearers of the divine image they represent the very pinnacle of creation. The rest of the creation week was building up to the creation of humans in their unique dignity and unique role. Shakespeare’s Hamlet puts it this way: “What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculties! In form and moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god! The beauty of the world! The paragon of animals!” The key point here is that according to the Bible, humans are substantively different in their nature from the rest of creation. I think most of us feel instinctively there is something special about humanity even if we cannot always put our finger on what it might be.

In scripture, humans alone bear the image of God and it is only with humans that God communicates with in the following chapters. This sets us apart. Calvin comments, “In order for us to come to a sure knowledge of ourselves, we must first grasp the fact that Adam, parent of us all, was created in the image and likeness of God” (Institutes of the Christian Religion 1536). The question we need to ask is whether there is any truth in our feeling that we are special, or is it so much hubris? What is the image of God? And does it shed any light on the scientific discussion of when we actually became distinctively human?

What is the image of God?

There are three main ways in which the image of God is understood. Traditionally, the substantive view is adopted. This amounts to the view that there are certain similarities between ourselves and God. Principally, this is thought of in terms of our spiritual nature. Mankind shares in the spirit as God does. In that sense, humans mirror God, who is himself spirit (John 4:24). Further, we find our fulfilment in God. As Augustine wrote in his Confessions (397 – 400CE), “Our hearts are restless until they find rest in [God]”. In Martin Buber’s language, we are created for “I – Thou encounters”. The “I” is seen not to make sense in isolation. As humans, we find our meaning and fulfilment in our relationship to God. Without that relationship we are diminished, incomplete. When the Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647) asks “what is man’s chief end”, it answers that it is “to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever”.

Humans have always sought meaning in something that is beyond the here and now. We see it in the evidence of ritual burial I wrote about above. All societies, after all, seem to possess religion of some sort or other. Some people may deny this but the truth is that we all try to find meaning in something. Of course, non-religious evolutionary reasons related to a need for social cohesion and hegemony are often given for this.

A related way in which to humans are understood to bear the Image of God is linked to an original state of innocence that was lost at the Fall when, according to the narrative in Genesis, we find Adam and Eve, our first parents, giving into temptation and disobeying God. This second way of understanding God’s image is attributed to Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) although it also finds widespread acceptance among Protestants more generally. John Calvin puts it this way: “In order for us to come to a sure knowledge of ourselves, we must first grasp the fact that Adam, parent of us all, was created in the image and likeness of God. That is, he was endowed with wisdom, righteousness, holiness, and was so clinging by these gifts of grace to God that he could have lived forever in Him, if he had stood fast in the uprightness God had given him”. Calvin goes onto say that  “Now God’s image is the perfect excellence of human nature which shone in Adam before his defection, but was subsequently so vitiated and almost blotted out that nothing remains after the ruin except what is confused, mutilated and disease ridden” (Institutes). The idea that man fell from a state of innocence is an important emphasis in scripture I shall return to on another occasion. For now, I want to note that while the imago dei may have become corrupted, it is not lost. We retain the dignity the image confers on us. This ought to regulate how we treat one another. So, for example, the apostle James says this: “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness…My brothers, this should not be” (James 3:9, 10). How can we both bless God while cursing his likeness in other people? Peter also tells us to show proper respect to everyone (1 Pet. 2:17).

A third way in which the image of God is understood is in terms of dominion. This has become the dominant in many circles. According to this view, as God reigns over the universe, mankind his representative or viceregent, rules over the earth. This is particularly manifest when God tells Adam to “fill the earth and subdue it;” and to “rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Gen. 1:28). Henri Blocher (In the Beginning 1984) notes that in the context in which Genesis was written, a conquering king would erect a statue in the conquered city to signify or represent his power. Blocher asks, “Is not mankind, then, the image of God in so far as he represents him and governs on his behalf? This ties into what I said above about man being part of the same stuff as the rest of creation. Our roll as viceregent is to manage creation on behalf of God. We are responsible to God when we fail to do that justly and to his glory.

It may be worth pausing here to note two contemporary objections to the image of God understood as dominion. The first comes from the perception that it legitimises oppressive patriarchy. This is a valid concern given that even today women are often treated as inferiors to men. This includes in the church where sexism and even physical and sexual abuse of women are far too common^[31]. The other objection is that dominion has often been linked to the environmental crisis. While it is difficult to give a full response this in this essay, I think we go part of the way if we note that the opening chapters of Genesis fulfil a polemical role. This is discussed at length by Henri Blocher and is picked up in a paper in Christian Scholars Review^[32]. The key point is that Babylonian society at the time (I’m assuming Genesis is exilic although the general point holds if it is much earlier) was a highly structured and layered society. While the gods occupied the highest position, the king was their image. This is the background to Nebuchadnezzar’s image, before which Daniel and his friends refused to prostrate themselves (Daniel Ch. 3). The king represented as imago dei legitimised oppressive rule over the rest of society. Of course, slaves and peasants were at the very bottom of the pecking order. Taking this view of the context of Genesis, it could be argued that in Genesis the imago dei serves exactly the opposite purpose of that found in Babylon by exalting every human being. “Thus, far from constituting an oppressive text, Genesis 1 was intended to subvert an oppressive social system and to empower despairing exiles to stand tall again with dignity as God’s representatives in the world”. As we have seen, that dignity is not limited to the exiles of Israel; it applies to us all. I think a great deal more can be said, and ought to be said, about the scandal of abuse of women and environmental despoliation but these are big subjects in their own right.

Almost as a side note, note that according to al-Razi, who was writing in the twelfth century, our humanity is revealed in our permanently upright posture as well as in our possessing the spirit. This view is also held by some Christian theologians. One possible difficulty with this is that we now know that the earliest humans were largely bipedal and that Homo erectus (c. 1.9 million years), for example, walked fully upright. That said, it is widely acknowledged that bipedalism is in fact unique to humans, as I noted above. Moreover, it is very likely that language is related to bipedalism because by walking upright changes in the larynx, which in humans is lower than in other animals, were possible. Without these changes, accompanied as they were by marked increase in brain size, it would not have been possible to produce the wide variety of sounds the human voice is capable of ^[33].

Perhaps as we reflect on this, we might note the importance of language as a key human distinctive and that God himself is a speaking God. In Genesis, God does not simply will the universe into existence with a thought or a gesture; rather, he speaks: “Let there be light”. In the New Testament, the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, is the divine Word. The background to this is both the Greek idea of logos, or reason , as well as God’s self revelation in words (“the LORD said…”). The first thing God does at the start of the gospel age is to send John the Baptist, the last of the Old Testament prophets, to testify that the Word had become flesh. And so as God speaks to us, we respond in words of worship and prayer.

Mankind the altruist

One of the really interesting facts about religion is that it commends and often gives rise to extremely costly behaviours such as altruism and, at times, even self-sacrifice. This is clearly evident in Christianity where Christ makes the ultimate sacrifice in offering himself to God as propitiation for the sins of believers. His sacrifice then becomes the model for all those that follow him. This is put most memorably in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians where we read that Jesus,

Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

In Christian thinking Jesus makes the ultimate sacrifice, the greatest sacrifice that was ever made. And Paul wants us to follow his example.

The idea of sacrifice is not unique to Christianity. In Islam, there is a story about Umm Sulaim (d. 650CE), one of the first female converts. In the story, a man complains of hunger to the Prophet. The Prophet sent a message to his wife who said they had nothing to give the man except water. Muhammad then turned to his companions and asked whether any of them would host the as his guest. Abu Tallah, the husband of Umm Salaim, said that he and his wife would take in the man. But they had very little – only enough for the children. The story goes that Umm Sulaim put the children to bed and prepared a meal for the visitor. As the visitor ate, Umm Sulaim pretended to adjust the light but extinguished it. That way, the man did not see that his hosts were not eating with him, as there was insufficient food for them as well. Then next, the man told Muhammad. It is said that God then revealed to him the following words:

They give preference over themselves, even if they too are poor: they who are saved from their own souls greed are truly successful (Quran 56:6).

The story from the life of Umm Sulaim strongly resonates with stories in the Old Testament, particularly perhaps that of the widow of Zarephath where Elijah asks a desperately poor widow to give him bread. The widow says that she has no bread, only a handful of flour and a little oil. She says, “I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it – and die” (1 Kings 17:12). The widow’s son does die but Elijah prays for him and he is returned to life. Perhaps most famously there is the incident of the widow’s mite where Jesus notices a widow give two small coins to the Temple collection. “I tell you the truth,” Jesus said, “this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything – all she had to live on” (Mark 12:44).

So all the Abrahamic religions commend self-sacrifice and we find tremendous examples of self-sacrifice in the lives of their adherents. That is not to say that non-religious people make great sacrifices to help other people: sacrifices for their country at times of war, or out of love for their families, or even the sacrifices doctors and nurses have made throughout the Covid pandemic. Sometimes, sacrifice takes a violent streak as in suicide bombing, but I think it is true to say that sacrifice is more evident in countless acts of kindness done for others than in horrible acts of violence. Where does such altruism come from?

One evolutionary explanation is that altruism ultimately helps the altruistic person individually, or perhaps the group to which they belong. Either way it succeeds in passing on the genes of the individual or of the group. Game theory, particularly the prisoner’s dilemma, is thought to explain a good deal of human altruistic behaviour. By this explanation, altruism and the religious belief that often supports it provides a positive evolutionary advantage. Humans have evolved to be social animals. Given that religion is present in every society, it is conceivable that it somehow helps to bind societies together, improving our survivability. This view is favoured by Richard Dawkins in his The God Delusion.

Altruism and the image of God

Recently, I came across a paper that suggested that altruism is foundational to what it is to bear the image of God^[34]. The paper, which is by Jesuit moral theologian, Jack Mahoney, takes as its starting point that Jesus himself is conceived of by Paul as image of God ne plus ultra. Paul says as much in his letter to the Colossians. Specifically, “the Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation” (Col. 1:15). Note the emphasis here on dominion, which is also found in the Genesis narrative in relation to the creation of man. There are three elements in Mahoney’s argument. First, Mahoney states that we are ourselves the product of divine altruism. He notes the Latin maxim taken up by Aquinas bonum est diffusivum sui, i.e. “the good spreads itself”. The goodness of God also spreads itself. We are, Mahoney says, “entirely the product of divine altruism, the effect of the sheer creative generosity of the Supreme Being”.

Secondly, we have become aware that God is essentially social as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As God shares his life with us, that is as he breathes into us his spirit, we share in that dynamic love that is, as it were, circulating in the Trinity. It is the divine perichoresis into which we are to be caught up. This social aspect of bearing God’s image has also been taken up by others. We are made for fellowship not just with God but with one another. Indeed, even the very fact that God said of Adam that it was not good for the man to be alone and so created Eve as a helper and companion points to this.

Thirdly, Mahoney notes that altruism is epitomised in the life and death of Jesus, God become man, who continually proclaimed the Father’s unconditional love to all that would hear. Not only that, he demands that we too show mercy without measure, love without limits. This is the love and self-giving we read of in Philippians 2 as I noted above. Now while there are, as I have said, possible evolutionary explanations for the development of altruism – and we should not ignore the fact that apparently altruistic behaviour is seen among other species – there is something sui generis in the sheer extravagance of the love of God as it is revealed to us in Christ. Significantly, it is a self-conscious love. Paul says “let this mind that was in Christ Jesus also be in you” (Phil. 2:5). It is not simply a response of instinct and neither is it in anyway self-interested as models for altruism based on reciprocity and mutual benefit would suggest.

So what, then, constitutes the image of God in humans? I think we may struggle to find the answer scientifically. Instead, we recognise the Biblical affirmation that we were created for a relationship with God that expresses itself in a number of ways although I am most draw to the idea of the imago dei as dominion, which seems to me to include the other ways in which the image is conceived. I do not think that altruism is intrinsic to the image of God although the other-centred person does reflect a key aspect of God’s essential character. However, I want to avoid giving the impression that any human being lacks the image of God – albeit, as Calvin suggests, that the image may be in ruins to a greater or lesser extent. The psychopath retains God’s image as surely as anyone else, which is why our judicial system ought to treat them with as much dignity as possible. When the apostle Peter wrote that we are to show proper respect to everyone, he also said to honour the king. At the time, the king was none other than the emperor Nero, a narcissist and psychopath if ever there was one, that was considered by many of the earliest Christians to be the Antichrist. Of course the gospel imperative to love even one’s enemies takes this a stage further, again reminding us of the other-centredness of God in his love for a world estranged from him.

Whether earlier hominins also enjoyed a relationship with remains mysterious. We simply do not know – cannot know – what their relationship to God may have been. Is it possible that mankind’s awareness of God was a developing one over thousands and even millions of years? I ask this question because we see evidence, albeit contested evidence, of religious behaviour in Neantherthals, with whom we had a close relationship, and even in H. heidelbergensis. Or do we limit the image of God to a state of original righteousness, as Luther suggests? In that case, perhaps the image of God was something conferred directly by God on a primordial human pair, who then stood in a special relationship with him as covenantal head of the human race. For me, what is certain is that H. sapiens stands in relationship to God. We are incorrigibly religious and inclined towards great acts of altruism, of self-sacrifice. Are these things part of it? Perhaps. But as to how we developed these characteristics, and what part evolution played, I remain unsure. Did Neanderthals, and even some of our earlier ancestors bear something of God’s image? Needless to say I fully accept the truth of evolution, including that of human evolution, and am not averse to the possibility that God used that process (theistic evolution) to get us to where we are. What does seem apparent is that while we are quite different from extant species in many ways – in cognition, language, culture, etc. – it is less clear that modern humans are as unique as we like to think. Our hominem ancestors may have possessed some of the characteristics we believe set us apart from other species, at least in some degree. In any event, our classification of organisms into separate species and sub-species is often quite arbitrary. Just how different were H. sapiens and H. neanderthalensis really? Especially given we know they interbred. This continuity with other hominems, as with other much more distant animal relatives, should both excite us and challenge us. It should not surprise us. After all, we are, like everything else, made of star stuff. But not only must we ask where we came from, we should also ask where are we now. Because regardless of how we got here, we are set apart from the rest of creation and, as far we know, are alone in bearing the image of God.

I want to leave this here. There are many unanswered questions. These include what we do with Genesis 2 and how it relates to the New Testament. For example, what is the significance of the Fall? I intend to address this in a follow on piece.

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