Craig L. Nessan
William D. Streng Professor for the Education and Renewal of the Church
Professor of Contextual Theology and Ethics
Wartburg Theological Seminary
Dubuque, Iowa
“With self-reflective consciousness we can either shape a culture to maximize our sociobiological impulses to self interest or we can construct a culture that fosters altruistic and the common good. Religion can do either, for example, Christian white nationalism or the Great Commandment for neighbor love.”—Craig L. Nessan
Review by Paul S. Chung
Craig L. Nessan: Sex, Aggression, And Pain: Sociobiological Implications for Theological Anthropology, Zygon, vol.33.no.3. Sep. 1998.
Prof. Craig L. Nessan engaged in in-depth research in his 1998 article on the sociobiological implications of sex drive, aggression, and pain for theological anthropology by way of critical comparison. He acknowledges that Wilson’s Sociobiology (1978) has emerged in recent decades in a comprehensive spectrum conceptualizing human behavior in a genetic evolutionary paradigm.
Nessan shows an audacious endeavor by bringing a theological view of human creation in the image of God (expressed in the biblical story of creation and fall in Gen. 1-3) to the atheistic scheme of explanation built in the sociobiology. Indeed, a sociobiological condition can be implied in a biblical witness to human being as formed out of the dust of the earth (Gen. 2:7).
In Nessan’s view, a biblical narrative implies that human beings are deeply imprinted in the evolutionary past and offers an insight in encountering with a scientific study of sociobiology. The latter makes the case for understanding human behavior according to the propagation of selfish gens (Richard Dawkins).
Aware of limitation and innovation in the program of sociobiology, Nessan brings its arguments about human behavior to dialogue with a theological understanding of human beings in a heuristic manner, without discarding the evolutionary, biological reductionism. He seeks to cut through the dilemma lying between sociobiological reductionism and theological sheer ignoring of its challenge.
What matters in Nessan’s major interest lies in appraising themes such as sex, aggression, and pain in dialogue with what evolutionary biology contributes considerably, because each stance is still quite important for theological discussion of human understanding.
To advance this topic, Nessan pays attention to the capacity of human brain for reflective self-consciousness, because neuroscience in the study of human brain would offer a new dimension to a biological direction, regarding its destructive or the redemptive possibilities.
For the redemptive assessment, it is significant for Nessan to undertake an integrative approach to brain/mind or consciousness, because “reflective self-consciousness refers not only to the human capacity for awareness of the self as one who knows.” But it also refers “to the capacity to appreciate another human being as a knowing self who has the same ability” as mine.
An integrative model of reflective self-consciousness is embedded within the intersubjectivity, which finds an expression in the human capacity for symbolic language communicating multilayers of gestures, nuances, and meaning. Reflective self- consciousness constructs the culture through language as embodied in human life.
The integrated theme of reflective self-consciousness, language, and the construction of culture remains crucial in Nessan’s argument challenging sociobiology, since the latter has not adequately managed to explain the complexity of human behavior and culture. It is certain that Dawkins’ notion of cultural “meme” seeks to describe the phenomenon of human self-transcendence through language and culture. But it is still fraught with a commanding role of genes occupied in driver’s seat. Genes hold human behavior and culture on a long leash (Wilson).
Other than that, Nessan is convinced of neuroscientific study of neocortex in its cognitive functioning and complexity, making a room for the meaning of life and the question of God. Differentiated from other animals based on instincts and drives, the human animal is capable of confronting an intense moral problem in terms of mutual knowing and affection.
For instance, defending territory, mating, killing prey for survival and self-propagation are fraught with moral responsibility and culpability in an earlier evolutionary stage. Moral capacity is seen in “negotiating the boundary between inherited animal nature and the wonder of reflective self-consciousness.”
Seen in the cognitive science of brain and human intellectual, Nessan finds it important to take on the issue of sex drive, aggression and the experience of pain, elaborating on a unique responsibility for reflecting and acting upon them.
Nessan’s neuro scientific understanding of human intellectual reminds me of the emergent understanding of circular structures at the nervous system. According to Humberto Maturana and Francisco Valera, the nervous system is not merely an information-processing system like a computer or cybernetic model, but it is self-organization (autopoiesis; autonomy and self-production).
It is an emergent network having internal, or operational closure within the boundary. The brain configures or constitutes relevance for otherwise meaningful interactions, and our cognition is practically embodied as lived experience in our interaction with the world. The meaning of life or religious source is emergent of embodied mind within a tremendous network of historical, environmental relationships.
Life is not in the genes, or genetic engineering, but is incarnated in the dynamical pattern and interaction; human mind is situated in the life as an emergent property. The emergent approach to human brain in autopietic system seeks to deconstruct adaptationist position by neo-Darwinism.
According to sociobiology, there is difference between men and women in capacity of the survival of their genes. Men would propagate their genes by impregnating women as frequently as possible, favoring the polygamy in an evolutionary advantage. Otherwise, the female strategy is based on the status and wealth, tending toward monogamy.
Although such genetically determined view of men and women would be empirically read in the newspapers, it does not tell the whole story about human behavior.
Hence, Nessan questions whether human beings are predetermined to act upon their innate sexual impulses, as the sociobiological model argues. Contra Sociobiology, however, it is of special significance to take into account the human capacity for reflective self-consciousness, along with the empathy and a long term commitment to partners and children. Cognitive mind is incarnated in human life, emergent as reflection and self-consciousness in an autopoietic sense.
In so doing, theological anthropology is in a better position to account for the complexity of human sexual behavior in dealing with ethical integrity, parental care, empathy, and religious source. This contrasts with an evolutionary strategy of sociobiology, which justifies status quo of social hierarchy and racial discrimination. Rather cultural structures and religious symbols make the case for reinvigorating human capacity for reflective self-consciousness, fostering marital relationship and stabilizing family life for the sake of human community.
Nessan’s integrative model of reflective self-consciousness, which is espoused with empathy and altruism, provides an insight into non-violent alternatives (Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.) to the sociobiological explanation of violence and aggression according to the shared genes.
For instance, male violence against women is seen in such as male body strength, or the physiology of the male in reproductive process of impregnation, competition, rivalry and jealousy, or the use of force (coercion and rape), and homicide, among others.
Furthermore, Nessan identities pain as a necessary (though ambiguous) function, which is integral to the survival of living creatures. But in the human life, reflective self-consciousness turns the pain into the meaning of suffering, elaborating on the meaning of life along with reality of unbearable suffering. Human sensitivity is undertaken in ethical and religious symbols to alleviate reality of suffering,
Intellectual cognition is embodied in human life, in which a theological anthropology is captured in terms of reflective self-consciousness along with empathy and altruism. Hence, human behavior cannot be reduced to sociobiological gene determinism. The emergence of reflective self-consciousness becomes the occasion for underwriting moral deliberation against self-aggrandizing or other-serving purposes.
As Nessan argues, with self-reflective consciousness we can either shape a culture to maximize our sociobiological impulses to self interest or we can construct a culture that fosters altruistic and the common good. Religion can do either, for example, Christian white nationalism or the Great Commandment for neighbor love.
At this juncture, a theological concept of fall and sin finds its proper place in the face of the sociobiological tendency and categories, because humans created in the image of God imply human capability to live in relationship with God, as God’s collaborators. This provides a theological basis in understanding the emergence of reflective self-consciousness, making human beings responsible for responding to their sociobiological tendencies and conditions.
The biblical narrative—such as good creation, natural evil, fall, sin and image of God—may incorporate sociobiological challenge into developing theological anthropology in furthering dialogue between science and religion, without falling into a gray zone of a biological determinism,
Prof. Crag Nessan presents his alternative approach to sociobiology, responding to biological condition of human being in an adequate manner through the model of reflective self-consciousness. Cultural evolution is part of biological evolution, yet human capacity of language and empathy remain crucial in shaping cultural evolution and the significance of organismic view of the complexity of life can be seen in sharing other’s feeling through mutual collaboration in the face of competition and survival of the fittest.
Culture and religious source help to construct human capacity of self-reflection in league with common good governance and civil society in democratic pluralist configuration and solidarity with those who are categorized into loser. Nessan’s public theology provides a constructive alternative with a corrective to the reality of sociobiological reductionism through a core theological idea of human being created in the image of God.