Theology Looking at Culture through the Lenses of Science

Abstract

The developments of Christian theology in the mid-twentieth century show an increasing attention to human earthly vicissitudes. This led to the consideration of history and culture as key theological categories (section “The theological relevance of culture”). Culture is considered as the locus where human dynamism and active self-transcendence unroll in this world, thus becoming a key theological topic and acquiring central stage in the debate about human uniqueness. Recent scientific developments suggest that cultural dynamics affect the human biological (specifically neural) constitution even in ways not directly involving biological (mainly genetic) evolutionary mechanisms and processes. This will be shown through the case of the invention of literacy (the ability to read and write), interpreted in the light of the notion of cultural neural reuse (section “Literacy and ‘Cultural Neural Reuse’”). Therefore, those cultural dynamics central to the theological inquiry about human uniqueness have a clear and direct biological counterpart that cannot be overlooked. The consequences of this for a deeper and interdisciplinary understanding of culture (with its ‘non-evolutionary’ biological underpinnings) as the locus for human active self-transcendence will be discussed in section “From literacy to anthropology”. The final section, “Culture and the Imago Dei: the integral human being”, will glance at the connections of all this with more traditional theological topics in Christian anthropology.