Anthropology

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition) Anthropology

1: the science of human beings especially: the study of human beings and their ancestors through time and space and in relation to physical character, environmental and social relations, and culture.

2: theology dealing with the origin, nature, and destiny of human beings.

The Distinction between humans vs. other animals:

Made in the image of God

Ability to have general ideas - John Locke

Free agency - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Division of labor - Adam Smith (economist)

Ability to improve self - Alexis de Tocqueville

Ability to sympathize not just with offspring, but with all humans & A more developed intelligence which allows for greater sympathy to other humans-John Stuart Mill

In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin systematically dismisses the many hypotheses concerning human exceptionalism, arguing that …

“the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind” and that “we have seen that the senses and intuitions, the various emotions and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, etc., of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even sometimes in a well-developed condition, in the lower animals.”

Watkin, Christopher. 2022. Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic.