Aquinas, Science, and Human Uniqueness: An Integrated Approach to the Question of What Makes Us Human
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
What is a human being? What makes humans special, different from other creatures? Or is a human just another animal? Drawing on Scripture, Aquinas, and science, this book seeks to articulate both why and how humans should be understood as special. Despite amazing similarities to other creatures, humans are physiologically, psychologically, and spiritually unique beings. No other creatures—not even angels—have the unique combination of capacities nor the divine calling that humans have. Vanden Berg argues that only humans are material-spiritual, intellective, worshipping beings created specifically for a personal relationship with their Creator and with the stated vocation of caring for God’s world and representing God in it.
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It is a wonderful gift to have a thoughtful and courageous theologian reach across Christian perspectives, pursue interdisciplinary engagement with the sciences, and remain intentionally rooted within her own tradition. Vanden Berg’s argument for human uniqueness is a valuable starting place that will foster robust conversations between Protestants and Catholics, scientists and theologians, clergy and congregants.
Clay Carlson, Trinity Christian College
Mary Vanden Berg makes a persuasive case for retrieving Aquinas’s notion of the soul’s intellective capacity as the best way forward for doing justice not only to human uniqueness but to the human dignity of the disabled as well. The argument turns on rightly dividing physical from metaphysical judgments, science from theology. The conclusion—that humans are material-spiritual worshiping animals—is compelling.
Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
- Title: Aquinas, Science, and Human Uniqueness: An Integrated Approach to the Question of What Makes Us Human
- Author: Mary L. Vanden Berg
- Publisher: Cascade Books
- Print Publication Date: 2022
- Pages: 158
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- ISBNs: 9781725267770, 9781725267787, 1725267772, 1725267780, 9781725267763, 1725267764
- Resource ID: LLS:QNSSCNCHMNMSHMN
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-11-27T19:34:01Z