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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
According to John Polkinghorne, the Fall is the major Christian doctrine that is the most difficult to reconcile with contemporary science. Like him, however, I believe it is vitally important, even in this regard, to try to pinpoint the extent to which taking science seriously requires us to modify traditionally held beliefs. In this paper I focus on two problematic ideas associated with the Fall: (i) the idea of a primordial human couple (Adam and Eve), and (ii) the idea that this couple was subjected to bodily death as a result of their original misdeed. I argue that, contrary to appearances, it is possible to harmonize these beliefs with contemporary science – at least if one presupposes some kind of soul-body dualism. I also try to show that this dualism, although philosophically non-fashionable nowadays, is yet to be refuted or made redundant by current evolutionary theory or neurophysiology.
1 Polkinghorne, John, Reason and Reality: The Relationship between Science and Theology (London: SPCK, 1991), p. 99Google Scholar.
2 Ibid., p. 101.
3 Polkinghorne, John, Scientists as Theologians: A Comparison of the Writings of Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke and John Polkinghorne (London: SPCK, 1996), p. 83Google Scholar.
4 Polkinghorne, John, Belief in God in an Age of Science (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998), p. 88Google Scholar.
5 Polkinghorne, Scientists as Theologians, p. 83.
6 Polkinghorne, John, Serious Talk: Science and Religion in Dialogue (London: SCM Press, 1996), p. 17Google Scholar.
7 Pius XII, Humani Generis (1950), § 36. Accessed 2012–11–27 at <http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xii/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_12081950_humani-generis_en.html>.
8 Polkinghorne, John, Exploring Reality: The Intertwining of Science and Religion (London: SPCK, 2005), p. 139Google Scholar.
9 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, §1.97.2. (Tr. by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province.)
10 Scriptural quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
11 Gaudium et Spes (1965), §18. Accessed 2012–11–27 at <http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html>.
12 Aquinas, Summa Theologica, §1.102.2.
13 Polkinghorne, John, Science and Providence: God's Interaction with the World (London: SPCK, 1989), p. 51Google Scholar.
14 Ruse, Michael, Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? The Relationship between Science and Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 75Google Scholar.
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16 Osvath, Mathias, ‘Spontaneous planning for future stone throwing by a male chimpanzee’, in Current Biology 19 (March, 2009), pp. 190–1, at p. 191CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
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18 Polkinghorne, Faith of a Physicist, pp. 77–8. It may be noted that even if this prediction would turn out to be true, it would not seem to explain why no species apart from Homo sapiens has developed a comparable level of cognitive capacity.
19 Polkinghorne, Exploring Reality, p. 47 (emphasis removed). By comparison, Aquinas (following Aristotle) seems to be trapped in the middle: on the one hand he affirms that the soul is the form of the body, and hence not a substance of its own, and yet on the other hand he stresses that ‘the principle of intellectual operation which we call the soul, is a principle both incorporeal and subsistent’ (Summa Theologica, §1.75.2). According to my own proposal, the soul may perhaps be said to be the ‘form’ of the body in the sense that it is what makes the body a human (rather than mere hominid) body.
20 Polkinghorne, Faith of a Physicist, p. 79.
21 Ibid., p. 19.
22 Quoted in Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro, Naturalism (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2008), p. 59.
23 Kim, Jaegwon, ‘Lonely Souls’, in Corcoran, Kevin, ed., Soul, Body, and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 30–43, at p. 32Google Scholar. Kim suggests that neither soul-body interaction nor soul-soul interaction is possible, arguing that ‘the possibility of causation between distinct objects depends on a shared spacelike coordinate system in which these objects are located’ (ibid., pp. 42–3).
24 Goetz and Taliaferro, Naturalism, p. 70.
25 Kim, ‘Lonely Souls’, p. 35.
