of human biology has undergone profound transformation. The key role
of the ‘world inside us,’ namely the gut microbiota, once considered a
forgotten organ, has been revealed, with strong impact on our health and
well-being.” 32
I’m indebted to Robert Dunn, 33 a fi ne naturalist and a great writer, for
some clever ways of expressing the following short list of contemporary
biological thinking that should be of interest to theologians:
- “We are human because we chose to try to take control.”
- “Twenty-eight thousand years ago, we found religion.”
- “Once we learn how to kill something, we tend to do so.”
- “...nothing seems more natural to our brains than getting rid of
nature.”
- On the Tower of Babel story: “...there is a second moral too, implicit
in the method chosen to divide these peoples—that the failure to
communicate leads to failure.” 34
- “The white patients that were long the focus of much of Western
medicine come from relatively few, and somewhat anomalous,
branches of the human tree.”
- “Our parasites and mutualists infl uenced our bodies. It is the preda-
tors, though, that messed with our minds.”
- “Fear, or at least the urge that precedes it, may even be our default
reaction to our surroundings.”
- “Ours is a universal struggle not of will power, but between who we
are and who we were.”
In highlighting this list I make no attempt to be particularly selective, and
none whatsoever to be comprehensive; the point being, there is no limit
to the topics and subtopics where fruitful collaboration might take place
between the two great parts of human scholarship that have life on earth
as at least one of their primary objects of study. My prayer is that better
relations and even more fruitful dialogue will come soon. The kingdom
will be better for it.
LET THERE BE LIFE!: TOWARD A HERMENEUTIC OF BIOLOGICAL... 311