Notes on Perils and Possibilities of Human Exceptionalism
The modern academy is in a crisis. We are splintering under the weight of a disorienting shift drawing us beyond pluralism, a welcoming of diversity, toward relativism, the uncritical surrender of reasoned, principled conversation. The universal ideal wherein many disciplines and departments might find a shared center has nearly vanished. The vison of John Cardinal Henry Newman (1801-1890) of “a seat of universal learning” is in need of a fresh consideration:
“An assemblage of learned men [persons], zealous for their own sciences, and rivals of each other, are brought, by familiar intercourse and for the sake of intellectual peace, to adjust together the claims and relations of their respective subjects of investigation”. For the earnest, erstwhile Oxford scholar, such an environment of respect, consultation, and mutual aid had the potential to forge “a pure and clear atmosphere of thought, which the student also breathes”.[1] While such a sentiment may strike the inhabitant of the post-modern university as quaint, its wistful idealism still carries a haunting appeal. After all, our own milieu of unyielding conflict has tended to hinder rather than to advance human flourishing in the fractious context of higher learning.
My own field, historical theology, is inherently interdisciplinary. Yet within this status it reverberates with its own internal paradoxes. Where does history leave off and theology begin? While I was in graduate school, my professors tried to initiate a constructive conversation between historians and theologians, but even this settled into a frustrated state of détente after the conversation foundered. Beyond such internal challenges, meaningful dialogue even with adjacent fields, or consultations with experts in philosophy for example, was a pursuit students and faculty would usually have to explore by their own mettle.
I have long desired to see a fuller interdisciplinarity expressed in the academic world. The benefits of such are often intangible, but the personalist approach I have learned to embrace has enriched my teaching as well as my writing. After crafting a seminary paper on the thought of existentialist philosopher Martin Buber (1878-1965), I came to appreciate an “I-Thou” valuing of interpersonal relations. In my participation with interdisciplinary groups, such as Expanded Reason, The Ciceronian Society, the C. S. Lewis Summer Institute, The Calvin College Summer Seminar, and the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, I have come to see Newman’s perspective as deeply wise.
My chosen field of theology, like other fields in the humanities, is at its best when seeking interlocutors in neighboring disciplines of anthropology, biology, sociology, epistemology, and ethics. In my published work, and in this essay, I express the hope that an even more constructive dialogue might result involving persons from a wider range of fields.
Theological Anthropology
The thematic core of my recent book, Perils of Human Exceptionalism, is theological anthropology. If there is a God, and if God attends to both the making of humanity and to a providential superintendence of the ongoing endeavors of humanity, what might the implications of such a relation be? Combining the study of God (the meaning of theology) and the study of humankind (the meaning of anthropology) is an enterprise that both theology and the philosophy of religion have long undertaken. The rise of modern science, with the philosophical questions raised in the context of its discoveries, renders necessary an integration of scientific insights into the existing discourse of theological anthropology. The conversation is fraught with difficulty, as the proliferation of “models” to describe this interaction demonstrates. This imperative flows in part from the rising prestige and cultural authority of the sciences, especially any practices or technologies that alternately degrade or ennoble human knowledge, values, and experiences.
My first book, emerging out of my doctoral dissertation at Saint Louis University, was entitled Eugenics and Protestant Social Reform.[2] The varied paths by which promoters of eugenics justified multiple erosions of human rights and the dignity of human persons on the margins of society led to a question. How did the Western world arrive at even the possibility of eugenics, laying aside for the moment how the concept was implemented via social policy? This ideology was, by most later accounts, an enterprise scientifically and theologically incoherent and repellant. To borrow a concept from Charles Taylor: what then provided the plausibility structure or social imaginary for the emergence of eugenics? A desire to answer this question led to my investigation of the historical development of an anthropology unmoored from those sources that previously undergirded human dignity, sources grounding theological convictions about human creation in the imago dei.[3]
This in turn ushered in a deeper investigation assessing the meanings of the image of God, both in its biblical and its historical/theological iterations. I have long understood the image as manifesting itself in three areas: reason, responsibility, and relationality.[4] Taking these themes as structural scaffolding, my various chapters emerged. Under the first theme, responsibility, the moral dimension rises to the fore.
The Moral Dimension
The moral dimension is explored episodically in the pages of The Perils of Human Exceptionalism. Within the arguments of the early 19th-century natural theologians was the moral argument for God’s existence. William Paley (1743-1805), like many apologists, grappled with the problem of evil. He argued that our human condition is a probationary one designed by providence to improve character. Moral character is tried, proved, and detected by trials and formed by challenging circumstances. Bridgewater theologian Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) argued that human interaction is the context for moral development.[5] By contrast, Friedrich Nietzsche rejected traditional morality, and promoted a transvaluation of values, leading to a realm beyond good and evil.[6]
An essay on the soul includes a section where slaves challenged the immorality of their treatment as mere property by earthly masters. They did so grounded in the conviction that they possessed souls, and as ensouled persons, their bodies could not be reduced by slavery to the denigrated status of beasts of burden. Thus the theological anthropology that insists that humans are created in the imago dei, and as ensouled bodies, functioned in principle as a moral barrier against atrocities committed against human dignity.[7] Such affronts against dignity seen in the 19th century proved even more egregious in the 20th century, the century of genocide. To preserve us from the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc, more studies need to be done to explore those causal links between the tradition of genocide and prior process of dehumanization rooted in the 19th century. This is especially, I would argue, as the result of the reduction of mankind to a biological product of no more ontological worth than the rest of the biota that environs human persons. The triumph of the sciences over the humanities had unintended harmful consequences.
The ethical questions and their applications have life-orienting importance. What mankind does is distinct from what mankind ought to do. The distinction between “is” and “ought” must be sternly enforced if we are to ever recover the virtue of hope. Modern debates about Artificial Intelligence often involve a shrug and the statement, “It is going to happen anyway, so what is the point of resisting it?” This confuses “is” with “ought”. It may prove to be practically unstoppable, but the unethical use of artificial intelligence should move us to raise our human fists in steadfast resistance. To draw upon erstwhile AI enthusiast, now repentant, Douglas Rushkoff, we need to cheer for “Team Human”.[8]
Meaning
The making of meaning has haunted the modernist and postmodernist worlds for decades. Given the worldview options that predominate secular academia—materialism, nihilism, and hedonism—a loss of meaning was already foreshadowed in the presuppositions of those worldviews. The theist has more steady ground for affirming meaning in human life. In Perils of Human Exceptionalism, I located that ground in the imago dei and the immaterial soul. My conviction at the outset of the research was that the loss of these two doctrines of classic theism, along with the dogmatic framework undergirding and supporting them, contributed to those erosions of human dignity widely experienced by human individuals and communities in the 20th century and beyond.
In the imago dei, with the doctrine of Christ’s incarnation, we see a balancing of the goodness of the human embodied state with such spiritual values as rationality, responsibility, and relationality. With the doctrine of the soul, we have a hedge against reductionism, or the tendency to explain all reality, including ourselves, in terms merely of atoms and energy. My chapter on Darwin focused on efforts by Catholic scholars to preserve the human soul even with some acceptance of a causal account of the human body that linked it with the rest of the animal world. John Augustine Zahm (1851-1921) and St. George Jackson Mivart (1827-1900), though differing on the salience of the Darwinian account of the body, both sought to preserve the soul as the citadel of conscious personhood.[9]
The persistence of human trafficking in the 21st century is a sad legacy of the loss, beginning in the 19th century, of a transcendent purpose and dignity undergirding the inestimable value of human beings. Reduction of persons to mere fungible bodies is surely a byproduct of such trends. Positively, both John Paul II and Benedict XVI have urged cooperation between churches, and even between the church and other agencies to care for the vulnerable. Pope Benedict grounded such cooperation thus: “. . . we all have the same fundamental motivation and look towards the same goal: a true humanism, which acknowledges that man is made in the image of God and wants to help him to live in a way consonant with that dignity”.[10] The true humanism is a Christian humanism, rather than a secular humanism or a transhumanism.
So far I have explored meaning undergirding my writing process for a specific book. However, further investigation has added insights into the larger question of the meaning of human life, and requires inclusion in this essay. To give life more than temporal or penultimate meaning, we need to explore our religious tradition for the ground of ultimate meaning. Both Jewish and Christian scriptures and tradition offer rich resources for such a reflection.
Biblical Foundations
The book of Ecclesiastes offers Solomon’s mournful retrospective over the pursuit of meaning over the course of his eventful and privileged life. His recurrent refrain, after examining each imaginable standard earthly mode of pleasure cries out: “This also is vanity and a chasing after wind” (Eccl. 2:26, 4:4, 4:16, 6:9 NRSVCE). The word vanity is translated in other English versions as “meaningless” or “empty” or even “worthless”. The literal Hebrew etymology suggests the metaphor or “vapor” or “breath”. This word occurs 36 times in Ecclesiastes. At least three categories of meaning attach to the term in the Hebrew Bible. The prophets warned of the meaninglessness of idols or false gods (Isa. 49:4; Jer. 2:5). Solomon gave voice to his exasperated evaluation of much of the expenditure of human strength as coming to nothing. The biblical authors speak of the fragility of life as seeming, from a finite human vantage point, to be anomalous, senseless, or unfulfilling.[11]
By stark contrast with this dismal account, the Hebrew scriptures accentuate the availability of joy in view of the capacity to flourish in human life. The underlying metaphor for flourishing is that of the sprout, bud, or blossom in plant life. This term is often predicated of the divinely ordained social order, represented by Israel in the world of the prophets. Representative is this encouragement from Isaiah: “In days to come Jacob shall take root, Israel shall blossom and put forth shoots, and fill the whole world with fruit” (Isa. 27:6 NRSVCE). The source of such flourishing is to embrace faithfulness considering access to revelation, to wit: “the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:6, 8 NRSVCE). In the wisdom literature, flourishing is associated with a life of righteousness, e.g., “The righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God” (Psalm 92:12-13 NRSVCE; cf. Ps. 72:7; Prov. 11:28). This experience of flourishing is in a sense fragile, requiring sustained attention, given the inherent brevity of human life on earth (Job 14:4; Ps. 90:5-6; 103:15-16).
The theme of meaning in the New Testament centers on the term “worthy” (Greek axios). The term carries the metaphor of weighing, comparing, the placing of something of value on a scale.[12] Many figures in the gospels confess their unworthiness: John the Baptist (Jn. 1:27; Acts 13:25); the prodigal son in the parable of Jesus (Lk. 15:19, 21); and the centurion whose servant was dying (Lk. 7:7). Later the disciples rejoiced in their experience of flogging for having proclaimed the gospel, for hereby they perceived they had been deemed worthy of suffering disgrace for the name of the Lord (Acts 5:41). Paul’s letters emphasized seeking to fulfill one’s vocation in a worthy manner (Philippian 1:27; Col. 1:10; 1 Thess. 2:12; Eph. 4:1). Through their suffering Paul saw the Thessalonians enduring of persecution and trials as their path to being counted worthy of the kingdom of God (2 Thess. 1:4-5). John’s Apocalypse highlighted the enthronement of Christ as the one worthy of worship, due to His work as Creator (Rev. 4:11) and as Redeemer (Rev. 5:12).
Combining Old and New Testament witness, therefore, the meaningful life is one which flourishes, rises above temporality and vanity, seeks worthiness in following Christ, even when this call is an embrace of suffering for proclaiming the good news that He has both made us and saved us. The proclamation of the gospel takes many forms, given the various fields to which believers are called. Those called to labor within academia have an obligation to teach, though this is one fraught with danger. As James warned the early church: “Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1 NRSVCE). The weight of the responsibility comes with a keen sense of vocatio, a calling to a path of lifelong learning and sharing what is learned. The goal of teaching is the imparting of truth, but this goes beyond information and betakes of personal transformation.
Thomistic Insights
Here the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224-1274) on the nature of the intellect is germane. Thomas located the imago dei in the intellect, so the teaching craft became in a sense a fundamental reflection of that divine image. Thomas averred that:
[T]wo things are requisite in order that the human intellect may perfectly assent to the truth of the faith: one of these is that he should have a sound grasp of the things that are proposed to be believed, and this pertains to the gift of understanding . . . while the other is that he should have a sure and right judgment on them, so as to discern what is to be believed from what is not to be believed, and for this the gift of knowledge is required”.[13]
A sound grasp on our beliefs, and judgment or discernment exercised in distinguishing true and false beliefs is necessary. Here is where the centrality of worldview studies to the Christian educational endeavor comes into focus.
With Thomas as our model, we must know not merely the truth of what we believe, but those falsehoods we should avoid believing. In The Perils of Human Exceptionalism, I endeavored to explore those areas of modern thought that often disagreed with my own perspective. Without yielding to despair, I sought to contextualize historically why, plausibly, such seismic shifts in beliefs occurred. When asked about this book (or other future writing or classroom projects), whether my learning, teaching, and research are worthwhile, my response is a guarded yes. Guarded, because we never stand or fall on our own. We stand on the shoulders of giants. We submit our work to peer review, to journals as we put our books and articles out for review, to public presentations of our findings at professional conferences, all of which are open to peer questions and disagreements. I accept that sharpening social milieu of academic life.
The creation of meaning is a heavily contested area within philosophy. Recent accounts sort such an analysis into categories of supernaturalist, naturalist, and nihilist frameworks for exploring “the meaning of life”. The supernaturalist account may be subdivided between those who believe in the soul (but not in God), and those who believe in God (but not the soul), and those who believe in both God and the soul.[14] My argument in Perils of Human Exceptionalism is that belief in God and the soul together remains imperative to attaching maximal dignity and meaning to the lives of human persons. This was at times an implicit argument, but made more explicit in the books’ concluding chapter. Here I offered a brief synopsis of modern scholarship on the imago dei and the arguments for the centrality of, in turn, reason, responsibility, and relationships. I take a holistic approach that sees value in viewing the image of God in a multivalent way. I am convinced that to omit any of the features of humanity from what constitutes the human person in his or her dignity, is to give an incomplete and unsatisfying account. Thomas Morris, a literary and philosophical mentor, offered these words on the meaning of life: “The need to understand the meaning of life naturally leads to a search for God. The existence of God is thus no merely theoretical issue. It is an issue of the most ultimate personal importance”.[15] With his account I concur, and add that it is the imago dei in us that both poses the questions and gives access to the answers pertaining to life’s deepest meaning and to our flourishing.
Reflections on Motivation and Meaning
The examination of our motives is a core component of spiritual manuals and autobiographies in the Christian tradition. Augustine wrestled with this in The Confessions, Boethius in On the Consolation of Philosophy, Thomas a Kempis in Of the Imitation of Christ, Ignatius Loyola in The Spiritual Exercises, Pascal in Pensées, Jonathan Edwards in On Religious Affections, John Cardinal Henry Newman in Apologia Pro Vita Sua, C. S. Lewis in Surprised by Joy, and others too numerous to explore. As I tell my students at test time, Paul told the Corinthians 2,000 years ago: “Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless, indeed, you fail to meet the test!” (2 Cor. 13:5 NRSVCE). Self-examination, even when painful, is needed.
The demonstration of one’s worth is embedded inevitably in the daily pilgrimage known as discipleship. Academia is only one more context where that journey presents its unique set of challenges, both mundane and exhilarating. Oxford philosopher Richard Swinburne has stated with elegant simplicity the principles that Christian theism offers to the acknowledgement of meaning in human life. “If there were no God, there would be no one to whom to be grateful for our existence, for although your parents may have chosen to have a child, they could not have chosen to have you”. Here we find the centrality of gratitude to our human flourishing and well-being. Recent scientific studies even bear out mental-health benefits of gratitude. Swinburne continues: “So it is a very good thing for us if our whole life does not come to us by chance but by the act of a loving creator”. One driving conviction behind my writing of Perils is the divine intentionality in bringing about human existence. We are not the mere happenstance of chance and necessity, but were intended to be here by a transcendent reasoning agent, from whom flow the theological virtues we need to cultivate: faith, hope, and love.[16]
Conclusion
The disintegration of a unified, holistic, and cogent vision for the university of the twenty-first century has led to an erosion of the influence of reason in the shaping of our culture. The love of wisdom, the study of the divine, and the moral life were all once core components of the formation of an educated citizenry. Now, to the degree these values are still placed before the mental gaze of collegians at all, such considerations are often reduced to the status of trivialized tribal ideologies rather than precious and transcendent truths. To see a renaissance of the flowering of faith seeking understanding, coherent, cross-disciplinary approaches to truth-seeking must be revitalized. By promoting healthy dialogues between the sciences and the humanities, the Western mind may rediscover a new fidelity to the correspondence of thought with a mind-independent, metaphysically grounded reality. Imaginative engagements of persons representing a plurality of disciplines in respectful conversations could bear tremendous fruit, in both research and pedagogy. Laboring alongside fellow-travelers in a consecrated quest for insight, for new perspectives and fresh angles of vision, thought leaders may contribute new ways of resolving the long-lamented siloing of knowledge, and the fragmentation of the moral and social order. Wisdom, morality, and divinity answer to the enduring mission humans embody as we journey ahead together in the pursuit of positive transformation.
ENDNOTES:
[1] Newman, John Henry. The Uses of Knowledge. 2011, 10.
[2] Durst, Dennis L. Eugenics and Protestant social reform: hereditary science and religion in America, 1860-1940. Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick Publications; 2017.
[3] Taylor, C. A Secular Age. Cambridge ; London: The Belknap Press Of Harvard University Press; 2007, 159-211; 352-76.
[4] Durst, Dennis L. The Perils of Human Exceptionalism. Rowman & Littlefield; 2022, 217-21. See also Herzfeld, N. L. In our image: artificial intelligence and the human spirit. Minneapolis: Fortress Press; 2002, 10-32.
[5] Durst. Perils. 26-34.
[6] Durst. Perils. 97-105.
[7] Durst. Perils. 177-82.
[8] Rushkoff, D. Team Human. New York: W. W. Norton; 2021. 153-68, 211-16.
[9] Durst. Perils. 67-86.
[10] Benedict XVI P. Deus caritas est (December 25, 2005) | BENEDICT XVI [Internet]. www.vatican.va. 2005. Available from: https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20051225_deus-caritas-est.html.
[11] Hamilton, V. P. Parah. In: Harris R, Archer G, Waltke B, editors. Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament. Chicago, Ill. Moody; 1980. Vol 2. p. 734.
[12] Tiedke, E. Axios. In: Brown C, editor. New Testament Dictionary of Theology. Grand Rapids, Mich. Eerdmans; 1978. Vol. 3. p. 348–9.
[13] St. Thomas Aquinas: Summa Theologica – Christian Classics Ethereal Library [Internet]. Ccel.org. 2025 [cited 2025 Mar 28]. Available from: https://ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/summa/summa.SS_Q9_A1.html.
[14] Metz, T. “The Meaning of Life.” Platostanfordedu [Internet]. 2007 May 15; Available from: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/life-meaning/.
[15] Morris, T. V. Making sense of it all: Pascal and the meaning of life. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans; 1992. 62.
[16] Swinburne R. How God Makes Life a Lot More Meaningful. In: Seachris J, Goetz S, editors. God and Meaning. New York: Bloomsbury Academic; 2016. p. 154. See also: Harvard Health Publishing. “Giving thanks can make you happier” [Internet]. Harvard Health. 2021. Available from: https://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/giving-thanks-can-make-you-happier.
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