Conversation with Andrew Leslie

Head of Theology, Philosophy, and Ethics

Societas: What is your opinion on what humans are thinking about when it comes to being human?

Andrew: Most people think it has to do with their capacity to define their own existence in terms of choices that they make. I think it’s a modern phenomenon to prize freedom and to prize our capacity to make choices for ourselves. It’s what we tell our children at school, that the world is your oyster, and you can be whatever you want to be, if you set your mind to it. And that extends, of course, as far as what we choose to do with our bodies. That seems to be a particularly important feature of the modern identity, the way in which our sexuality has become a preference and bound up with our freedom and our choice.

Societas: Do you think it’s the case that, despite the prizing of choice, that some choices are more equal than others, that some choices are more noble or interesting or meaningful for us?

Andrew: Yes, I think that’s right. I remember John Haldane, the Catholic philosopher, identifying this modern ideal that anything that is sincerely felt ought to be acted upon. So, when people have a sincere desire, the expression of that reality needs to be affirmed. And yet we still have boundaries. There are still lines or thresholds that are considered taboo, although that has been shifting ground. And so, it’s a kind of ‘Where next?’ question.

Societas: That’s a good summary of the received (though seldom articulated) wisdom about being human. If we shift to a theological perspective, could you outline a Christian view of who and what we are as human beings?

Andrew: I think that the key difference is that the Bible speaks about identity as something that is gifted to us by God. It’s received by us in the context of faith in him. That was true from the beginning. And it’s often captured in the notion of the image of God; everyone in the tradition has agreed that it’s central to explaining our existence and the destiny that God intends for human beings. It features in both the beginning and the end of the Bible.. So, it’s central to the whole story of salvation history. To my mind, the most coherent way of thinking about being made in God’s image is in terms of reflecting God’s glory. If we think of creation as a kind of a cosmic temple, then in that temple created human beings are his representatives, who are called to reflect his glory, in enacting his will. And to harness the resources he has furnished us with in the beginning, so that creation as a whole reflects his glory. And so, there is an intended harmony between our identity as human beings and the natural world. And interdependence. A dependence of the natural world upon divine image bearers to realise its potential. And yet at the same time human beings depending on the natural world to provide us with the resources for us to do that. All of that, of course, went terribly wrong in the Fall. But the biblical trajectory is one of restoration, and a restoration that has at its centre the person of Christ, who has been given sovereignty, not just over the creation at the beginning, but over the new creation. And we are caught up in that destiny as those who are now being conformed to his image and likeness. So, that, I think, is a central concept to the way that we think about our humanity.

Societas: Could you reflect, though, on our current relationship with technology, both in terms of how we use it and how it structures human society? And how it might shape the way we think about being human, too?

Andrew: In the beginning, there was the exhortation given to Adam and Eve to fill and subdue. Another way of putting that is as being called to be stewards of the world that God had made. And theologians have equivocated over whether that privilege was taken away from us as a result of the Fall, such that now we’re inclined to scramble after something original that was taken from us. And the mark of that is now a vexed, ambiguous relationship to technology and resources at best, so that dominion now looks more like domination. Other theologians would say that there might be a sense in which God has not taken away that gift that he gave us in the beginning, so much as brought it under the sentence of his judgement, so that it’s now experienced as a curse. Either way, it shouldn’t surprise us, theologically speaking, that human beings both want to use technology to master their environment, rather than using it as the instrument that God has made – like a musical instrument that he called us to play to resound to his glory. Now we use it to bolster our own sense of self-made identity.

Societas: I agree that it seems like we’ve co-opted it into our choice-making ethos. You’ve reminded me of C.S. Lewis’s argument in Abolition of Man, that as we master nature, nature in a sense is reverse mastering us, because we see nature as neutral domain over which we assert our will, for which technology is a useful tool. But in this view there’s no robust safeguard against applying that technology against humanity.

Andrew: Well, then we start to panic that we’ve gone a little bit too far. And that may be an expression of what Lewis was getting at. There is this sense that we’re not in control, that nature has mastered us, that technology isn’t an inert tool that we can use in whatever way we can, without any consequences, to serve our own ends. And so, for example, there’s almost an apocalyptic feel to the climate discourse.

Societas: So far, we’ve spoken about human beings as these choice makers with strong desires, who want to realise their desires, including through technology. There are questions about the viability and rightness of how we’re living out our humanity, from undue exploitation of natural resources to the more intimate violence of abortion, and in many other ways. How might you draw together these different threads and label this phenomenon? Where in general terms do you think we are, and what’s the direction of travel?

Andrew: A kind of apocalypticism has touched the person on the street. And yet there is evidence that we’ve never had it better, and that there are actually very good reasons to be optimistic about the future, even with what technology can do to make our life and the life of the planet much better than what we fear. So, there is this strange disjunction between the way that people feel, which is feeding a sense of this fear that things are getting out of control. And yet the reality that the very technology that we fear will be the end of us is what might well result in a better life for everybody.

Societas: Do you think people might have a natural sense of the end of the world? That this fear is a hint or intimation of the actual end of things?

Andrew: From a theological perspective, it shouldn’t surprise us that people are caught in this strange cycle of fear and optimism. And I think this cycle speaks to two realities. The first is the sense that we are outside the garden, and we are living under the sentence of the curse. And that there’s a sufficient perception of the reality that we will be held to account, since not all is well with our world, as well as in our own lives; that we are fearful of coming out into the light, and that we prefer darkness. And, at the same time, there’s optimism that, however much this accountability is a reality, we will be able to evade it.

Societas: In the Apostles’ Creed, the only present tense statement regarding Jesus is that right now he is seated at the right hand of the Father. We then confess that he’ll come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. How might – or ought – these truths to shape the way 21st century Christians think about and live in this world that we’ve been describing?

Andrew: Firstly, our sense that our hope is elsewhere.

It’s in this space that the Bible describes as the ‘highest heavens’, where the resurrected Christ is seated. It’s beyond the realm of our own bodily existence right now. And there’s something important about this reality that figures the shape of Christian hope. It’s why Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 writes about this ability Christians have through hope to live in this world and to use it and to embrace it. But to do so, at the same time, with a lightness and fleet-footedness that recognises its transitory character. And yet there’s a way of pushing that logic perversely that would incline us to think

‘Who cares about the world around us?’. As if to say,

‘Christians shouldn’t bother with trying to make the world a better place because it’s all going to burn up’.

Societas: In closing, could you reflect more specifically on the place of of hope – the hope we have that’s outside this world that also shapes the way we live inside the world? What’s the beauty and blessing of Christian hope in these last days?

Andrew: The content of Christian hope can sometimes be thought about as a kind of consolation prize for the miseries of life. Looking for biblically faithful resources for making disciples?

Societas: A security blanket of sorts for when we’re feeling extra bad?

Andrew: Feeling bad or when things are manifestly out of control. I think that’s a mistake. I think our hope actually provides us with a context to be radically countercultural in the way that we approach life in this world, including its woes; to be willing to do things with our possessions, and with our bodies, for the sake of others, and for the sake of the glory of God, that reflect our confidence that our life is now tied to the life of the risen Christ. And that it can be a context in which we can be radically thankful and radically generous. We can use at our disposal, with the wisdom that he calls us to have, the resources that God has given to make friends, as Jesus puts it, for eternity. I think you see this in Paul: he castigates the Thessalonians for being idle. There’s a kind of apocalypticism that almost leads to inertia, a way of thinking about our hope that has no bearing on actually how we conduct our business in this world. So, I think that’s the beauty and blessing of hope.

Societas: Thanks for the conversation, Andrew.