AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion

Thematic Areas: And Beyond: Perspectives

Theology's Future with Science
Dr. Ronald Cole-Turner
on the occasion of his inauguration to the H. Parker Sharpe Chair of Theology and Ethics Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
November 12, 1996

To the family of Mr. H. Parker Sharp; to President Calian and the members of the Board of Directors of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary; to my new colleagues in the faculty, the staff, and in the student body; and to our distinguished guests: Today we honor a man who dearly loved the church and the God who calls it into being, who understood the need for a well-prepared clergy, and thus who loved and cared for this seminary, who served here as a member of the Board of Directors, and who, through an act of great generosity and foresight, has set before us today a new vision.

The life of H. Parker Sharp spanned almost this entire century, and his vision carries us into the next. It is a vision of faithful congregations, a prepared clergy, and a renewed theology by which the church is able to take its place in the public debate over the shape of the human future. It is a vision that includes, at its core, this strange and daring notion that the church and the seminary need to take account of the advances of science and technology and to incorporate them into our theology and into the way we understand our ministry.

In deciding how to recruit candidates for this position, and in the selection itself, it was clear that Pittsburgh Theological Seminary understood the challenge of the H. Parker Sharp Chair in a way that is dramatically new, as a position in theology and ethics in relation to science and technology, not as some new sub-sub-discipline in the never ending game of academic sub-sub-specialties, some new excuse for ivory towered isolation, but as an opening of the whole framework of the thinking of the church -- embracing all the theological disciplines and more -- toward the startling new insights of the sciences and their provocative technological applications.

Not everyone agrees with this vision. Theology and ethics considered in relation to science and technology? What has Jerusalem to do with Athens? What has faith to do with research? And why on earth should overburdened seminarians puzzle themselves in the least about science and technology? It is a rare seminary that offers so much as a course on the relationship between theology and science. To the best of my knowledge, until today, there was only one other seminary in the United States with a faculty chair in theology and science; and this, the H. Parker Sharp Chair, is the only one that explicitly includes ethics and technology in the mix.

We who are gathered here take this step together today, not to be trendy or ahead of the curve, but to help the church of Jesus Christ do nothing other than be the church in and for our time. We live in an age in which both our thinking and our acting are pervasively conditioned by science and by technology. We understand nature through science and we act on nature through technology. Certainly those outside the church see the world through science; young people, especially -- these citizens of the contemporary, secular, scientific culture -- are perplexed at a church that ignores science and technology, that ignores their world, and yet still thinks it has something to say to them. If for no other reason than evangelism, the church must learn the language and the thought forms of this new culture that has come to us.

But our task is deeper and more difficult than learning to speak of faith in a new tongue. We are called not only to communicate theology but reconstruct it. In the wisdom of his vision, H. Parker Sharp established here a chair of theology and ethics, not of communication. It will not do for us to take the theology of the first century or the fifth, of the sixteenth or even the twentieth, change of few words, repackage the carton, add a few illustrations from recent science, post it on the Internet, and think we have met our calling. The theologies of these previous centuries were constructed and expressed in the thought forms of their time, and the ethics were always defined by the technical possibilities of those times.

Our task is to do now what theologians of previous centuries did then, to articulate anew the core beliefs of the church of Jesus Christ. Our task is to reconstruct theology, to expound the gospel for our time, to declare with renewed conviction that the grace of God in Christ is Good News not just for us but for the whole creation. Theology can no longer neglect nature, as if God had some other creation beside this natural world. Theology can no longer neglect science, as if God had some other world, unknowable by science, in which to be revealed and in which to redeem us. The church can no longer neglect technology, as if the church and technology sought to change different worlds. There is but one world that God has made, and it is this physical, natural world. This world, which science explores and technology rearranges, is the same world in which God Incarnate meets us and redeems us.

But all too often, we in the church think and act as if there were two worlds, one where God and church and soul and morality and immortality have their part, but which is wholly beyond the scope of scientific research; and another world where science and technology reign, but where God and soul and morality are utterly absent. There is only one world. If God and soul and spirituality and moral obligation have any place at all, if they mean anything at all, they will have their place and their meaning in this one world which our God has created, the same world explored by science and altered by technology.

It is an illusion, dangerous for theology and nature, for us to think that there are two worlds. Nowhere has this danger become more clear to so many than in the ecological crisis. The waters of the Great Lakes and the air of Los Angeles are cleaner than they have been in a generation, but globally our situation grows worse. Some blame Christians for this crisis. After all, they say, you Christians have said there are two worlds and that nature does not matter; it is nothing but a big disposable cup containing souls that will survive the cup's exhaustion. The accusation stings because it contains at least some truth, and in response many churches have now begun national and international programs on the environment as a spiritual problem, saying very clearly that nature matters.

But if theology and science share one world, several problems immediately arise. How, for instance, should we think about God acting in the world as described by science? Or we might ask: Are faith and theology fundamentally different from scientific inquiry? Are they such different ways of knowing that they cannot be brought together? Or we might wonder: How do we understand the relationship between the theory of evolution and our theology?

But of all the questions we might ask about theology and science, none is more urgent, I believe, than the question of our humanity and the prospect of its technological alteration. This is a question that is at once about theology and science, technology and ethics, for it asks not merely what we are but what should we become, and what means, spiritual or technological, we should usein remaking ourselves.Our question brings theology and science, the two great enterprises of the human spirit, together in a truly multi faceted dialogue in which theology listens, to be sure, listens and reconstructs itself in light of what it hears, but in which theology also responds with informed conviction.

The question before us today is the question of our selves, the human person, in light of theology and science. What is it to be a person, a self, to have a soul? What do we mean by these words, in light of theology and ethics but also in light of science and technology?

This question is connected, of course, to the debate over creation and evolution, for as Darwin himself recognized, the notion that everything about us is a product of evolution is most distressing implication of his view.

Our question is also connected to our concern for human health. Suddenly there is widespread interest in religion and health, with scientific proof, supposedly, that it is healthy to be spiritual. It is a sad irony that just at the moment when the church has almost entirely gotten out of the health care business, selling church³related hospitals to for³profit corporations, we are learning that the church, that religion, that spirituality can be a major factor, nearly as important as medicine itself, in contributing to a state of health.

And our question of what it means to be a human person, in light of theology and science, is also related to our understanding of immortality, whether we believe in it, either in the form of immortality of the soul or resurrection of the body, or reject it as so much myth, comforting but unconvincing.

So our question, that of a contemporary theology of the human person, is connected to other questions that are important to us. Indeed, for systematic theology, every doctrine is connected with every other. Even the doctrine of God and the doctrine of humanity are connected, or as John Calvin put it in the second sentence of the Institutes, they are "joined by many bonds [so that] which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern."

But we must leave aside these broader connections and return to our central question, that of our humanity in light of theology and science. A technical term that theology uses to describe the human person is to say that we are a psychosomatic unity. That is, we are not made of two parts, body and soul, but of one substance, the dust of the ground, which is put together in such a way that it is capable of everything that we traditionally mean by soul. Soul is not a thing alongside the body but a set of capacities of the body, which must be raised if those capacities are to live beyond death. Contemporary theologians are practically unanimous in the view that for Christian faith, we human beings are a psychosomatic unity, and one reason they give is that this view is biblical, at least in the sense that the predominant biblical anthropology tends toward a unity rather than a dualism. So in practically every contemporary theological discussion about what it means to be a human being, we read that we are a psychosomatic unity. Period. End of subject.

But the assertion that we are a psychosomatic unity should be the beginning, not the end of our discussion. This principle, that we are a psychosomatic unity, is the anthropological correlate of a principle I proposed earlier, namely, that there is but one creation, one world which God creates and redeems and which science and technology also explore and transform. That is true of the cosmos and it is true of ourselves as individuals. We are not two beings, one a creature of God, living out the disembodied narrative of our redemption, and the other a physical organism dissected by science, injected by technology, but neglected by God. We are the one and the same organism, evolved, genetically defined, describable without metaphysical remainder by science, and alterable without remainder in the core of our psyche by technology, and yet living in prayer, in community, with the true meaning of our personhood unfolded only in the context of our relationship with God. That is what it means to say "psychosomatic unity," which everybody seems to believe but nobody cashes out.

These principles, that there is one creation and that a human being is a psychosomatic unity, are doctrines of the Christian faith. But they are also a commitment to a method of theology that draws upon the insights of science. Psychosomatic unity is both a belief and a methodological proposal. It indicates what we believe about ourselves. But more interestingly, it also indicates how we will seek (paraphrasing Anselm) to understand what we believe. To affirm the principle of psychosomatic unity is to affirm the method of seeking theological insight through science.

So our challenge is to try to gather together, in a single and coherent perspective, the scientific view of ourselves as evolved creatures, each one of us constituted by a unique interplay of genes and environment, and yet each of us capable of the subtle ambiguities of the soul that make the religious life both possible and necessary for human wholeness. This evolved creature, this human interplay of genes and environment, is able to think, love, hope, pray, sin, feel guilt, ask forgiveness, compose music, create art,sin some more, and become anxious or depressed to the point of such a despair that can do no other than cry out of the depths. We human organisms are able to do all these things as a function of the complexity of our neurological activity.

Through the stunning advances in neuroscience, particularly in imaging technology, we can now watch the human brain at work. We can watch the neural correlate of our thoughts move like waves of neural activity, electrical and chemical surges, from one portion of the brain to another. And while we cannot yet begin to understand what makes these waves thoughts, we can see that thoughts are activities of the brain, and do not exist independent of the brain. Thoughts are brain activity and yet, paradoxically, are able to initiate and to direct brain activity, to change what the brain is doing in order to change what thought is thinking.

We are now beginning to understand the crucial role played by various portions of the brain in the processes of seeing, hearing, speaking, and of integrating these sub³processes into our consciousness of ourselves as a person in the world. We are learning that the brain itself has its flexibility or plasticity, that our genes do not dictate the precise shape of the brain, but that the shape of your brain is determined in part by the use you make of it, so that what you think about, or whether you pray, has an anatomical consequence, not just in what is going on in your brain now, but in the structure of your brain that you carry into the future.

We are discovering the complex roles of neurotransmitters, subtly conveying neural activity from one brain cell, one neuron, to another, doing so not just in a simple on/off or binary system like a computer, but with staggering complexity. And the neurons of our brain, some 100 billion of them, are each connected to roughly a thousand other neurons, making this three pound organ, the human brain, by far the most complex entity in the known universe. And we are learning that the brain is not an isolated organ, separate from the other systems of the body, but that it engages in exquisite communication with, for instance, the immune system, so that your frame of mind and your physical health are literally connected in complex, subtle ways.

Alongside these advances in neuroscience have been the tantalizing reports from studies in genetics, particularly the genetics of behavior and the genetics of the brain. We human beings have upwards to 100,000 genes, and about 30,000 of these are expressed or have their primary function in the brain. In a few cases, already we have learned how variations in the form of several of these genes can lead to specific diseases that involve neurological impairment. Important advances have been reported in the genetics of the various types of Alzheimer's diseases, and of ataxia, Huntington's, fragile X syndrome, and many other impairments of the brain. Conditions such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder are more complex, genetically speaking, but it is quite likely that significant progress will be made in the next decade. Indeed, we stand only at the beginning of an age of discovery. As a result of the Human Genome Project, we are quickly learning the location and function of every human gene. Soon we will begin to understand as never before the role they play in our brains, and thus their powers, and its limits, in determining the kind of person we are.

And we should expect that we will learn not just about various illnesses but also about the more typical forms of behavior. Several years ago, for instance, it was reported that a very simple genetic mutation in the gene that codes for a neurotransmitter, monoamine oxidase A, led in one extended family to lowered intelligence, impulsivity, and aggressiveness. In mice, it has been found that one particular gene, if impaired, seems to switch off entirely the maternal instinct to nurture newborns.

Many will seize upon announcements such as these as a new way to excuse their behavior, saying things like "My genes made me do it." Such excuse³making is bad theology and worse science. Indeed, the picture emerging from science is a remarkable confirmation of our theological understanding of human freedom and responsibility. For according to both, we are not absolutely free beings, unaffected by natural or biological contingencies. Nevertheless we are not so determined that the contingencies of our nature become an excuse for sin. Freedom is conditioned yet sufficient for responsibility.

It is here, of course, that the Christian gospel makes is most dramatic assertion about our humanity: We need salvation. We are in need of a healing and redeeming grace, not just a little help, but the inward healing of our moral and spiritual capacities by the power of the life giving Spirit. Why do we need grace? Traditional theology, of course, answered this question by referring to Adam and Eve, whom God created in a special act of creation, distinct from the creation of other animals, who promptly disobeyed God's instructions, and who, at least in that interpretation of Genesis 3 that is part of our tradition, fell into such a state of estrangement from God and of internal moral and spiritual disorder that they could not obey God even if they wished, which they did not...not really, not consistently. We have inherited this condition from them, and so in a single stroke traditional theology explains clearly and powerfully why we need a savior, for we have become morally and spiritually disordered at our core. Grace and only grace can heal that condition, restore us to a right relationship with God, and create within us the inner freedom that makes it possible to love and obey God

Now of course we face a problem. Thanks to a former divinity student, Charles Darwin, science has changed the story of our origins. Gone are Adam and Eve and serpent. And if they go, does that mean that gone, too, is the need for a saving grace? No. But let us be honest: For most people of our generation, indeed for the last two hundred years, the idea that we need a savior to rescue us from the consequences of Adam and Eve eating the wrong fruit -- well, that is a stretch.

But now if you invite them to think about how we human beings got here, through the story that science tells about our origins, to think about the brutality and overwhelming wastefulness of the evolutionary struggle; that one species like ours edged out its rivals, not just by being more clever and resourceful but by being more cleverly ruthless; that you and I inherit this evolutionary legacy in the genes of our body including the genes of our brains; that many of the genetic and neurological mechanisms of our brains are virtually the same as those in the predators and prey that the poet Tennyson characterized as "Nature, red in tooth and claw"; that these bits of evolutionary history, our genes, interact with each other and with our environment over our lifetime in staggeringly complex ways; that the person that we are, here, now, is the result of these interactions and their incomprehensibly complex consequences; and that we are conditioned persons, free, yes, after a fashion, but always conditioned, structured, and predisposed in that freedom, so that what we think and do is a bewildering byproduct of the legacy of evolution and of our own free choice, so that we ourselves are not sure who or what we are, or whether we are fully responsible for our personality or for our deeds, or whether we can change ourselves or solve our problems or even see ourselves clearly enough to understand the mystery of our own personhood, with its layers of depth that for the most part remain hidden from us throughout our life: If you ask people whether such a creature needs as savior -- well, at least they understand that this is a serious question.

My point is not that the church needs to reject the story of Adam and Eve. Many of us have already done that, and it has not helped, because we have put nothing in its place. We try so hard not to be creationists that we have no doctrine of creation. We have no theology of human nature, no theology of the origin of our moral nature, no convincing theological account of our predicament. Better a literal Adam and Eve than a liberal no-Adam no-Eve. So many of us in the mainstream church have tossed them out without any thought for the gaping hole left in our disembodied theology by their departure.

This gaping hole, I am suggesting, now needs to be filled by the best insights of contemporary science, from neuroscience to behavior genetics to evolution. When we see ourselves this way, we will recognize with new clarity that we are creatures in need of grace. The more clearly we see ourselves through science, the more we will see that we are truly mysterious, an enigma opaque to ourselves, creatures in need of illumination and healing if we are to be persons in the image of the three-personed God. Neuroscience and behavior genetics, I believe, will show us again and again, in ever more vivid detail, that we need help and that we need a savior.

But what kind of help, and what kind of savior? Can science itself help us? If science can clarify to us the complexity of the interplay of genes and environment, as these in turn lead to the neuroanatomy through which we think and love and pray and hope, if science can help us see how these processes can break down or be compromised, can science through psychopharmacology, for example, clear up some of the muddle in which we find ourselves? We know how recently developed drugs like Prozac can have the effect of altering the level of a key neurotransmitter, serotonin, by inhibiting its re uptake at receptor sites in the brain. We know that for many people, this brings relief from anxiety or depression, although no one yet knows why this is so. Can drugs clear up our lack of coherence, our malaise or melancholy, our angst, our despair? Can they be a means of grace, alongside the traditional means of grace, that enable us to find our true self in relation to God? Or will they be a replacement for grace, a substitute savior, an anti Christ?

I can think of three ways in which the church might respond to the rapid rise in the reliance on psychopharmacology. We might join the lament and say how awful it is that we have to limit health care costs through managed care and so we are forced to use relatively inexpensive pills instead of relatively costly talk therapy. Or second, we might ignore the problem, essentially denying the psychosomatic unity in order to protect our turf, and say that we do not have any theological stake in the treatment of the body, which is all that pills can do. Pills cannot alter the soul, dualists among us will say, so we need not worry. The church will still have its market share of human misery, that of the soul, forever untreatable by technology. So do not worry; there is enough worry to go around. Or third, we might fear that people will prefer their pills to the hard demands of the Gospel. No more dark night of the soul. No more anxious Martin Luther groping for a gracious God. No more St. Augustine's restless heart, restless until it rests inGod alone, for now all restless hearts can be treated as a medical problem, and we will medicate our yearning spirits until they are content without God. No more of this unpleasant dread at the horror of human lostness.

We will probably hear these responses in the church. None of them will be very helpful. One thing is clear: Some among us need these medications just as much as a diabetic needs insulin. So I thank God for them. But something else is clear, or at least should be: These medications affect the very core of our self. There is no soul that remains unaffected by such medication. And the effect is religious in its significance, relieving some from the very conditions that others find healed in Jesus Christ.

What we are starting to do for ourselves with psychopharmacology is just the beginning, I believe, of the technological transformation of our humanity. The processes of the human brain depend so much upon our genes, and because we are learning more and more about how these genes work, it will become more and more likely that we will understand how to alter the functions of the brain through genetic technology, perhaps someday through the genetic alteration of the fertilized human egg at conception, thus altering the resulting human life in every cell of the body and at the very core of its personhood. A serious proposal for human germ line alteration of genes that are expressed in the human brain is probably some decades in the future. But the technology is practically upon us, and one can readily imagine an environment in which some parents would want to have such an alteration performed, perhaps to give their offspring a technological boost in an increasingly competitive world. The discussion is just beginning as to whether itwill ever be right for us human beings to alter, to heal, to enhance ourselves or our offspring through genetic technological means, even if the result of such alteration looks the same as alteration or healing through psychotherapy or through religious conversion

Such a technological transformation of ourselves could go badly. By trying to improve on humanity, we might destroy it. If we try to fix our brokenness, it may be the brokenness in us that does the fixing, and so the brokenness will only expand. On the other hand, could our technology become a new way for the grace of God to transform us?

It comes down to the relationship between technology and grace. Or more fully: How should we understand the saving and healing grace of Jesus Christ, the savior, the great physician, in light of the imminent prospect of technological salvation? That is the question, not just for one who foolishly dares to accept the challenge of H. Parker Sharp, but for the whole church of Jesus Christ.