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Is Genetic Engineering Co-Creation?
By Ronald S. Cole-Turner

"This is the central problem of a theological understanding of genetic engineering and of technology in general. If we are to see our work as cooperative or co-creative with divine creativity, then we must have some sense of what God intends."

Genetic engineering is changing our relationship with creation. Rapidly and irreversibly, we are casting ourselves in a new role with fundamentally new powers and new responsibilities.

The human role in nature is a central concern for Christian theological reflection on creation. But Scripture and subsequent tradition view the relationship between ourselves and nature in light of then-existent technologies. Agricultural technologies, including selective breeding of grains and livestock, are given theological blessing in the Hebrew and Christian creation traditions. In our time, however, we are rapidly moving beyond agriculture alone into the age of genetic engineering.¹ This new technology re-opens the question of the human place in nature. Our task is to consider how genetic engineering changes our place in the scheme of things and, more crucially, how theology ought to respond to this change.

I

For thousands of years, human beings have known how to use microorganisms to produce bread, alcoholic beverages, cheese, and other products. We have also known how to select desirable traits in livestock and grains. Through diligence over millennia, farmers have developed strains that are far more productive, in terms of human benefit, than the grains or animals found in the wild. By means of selective breeding, we have altered evolution.

Always before, however, our biotechnology and selective breeding have been limited to what organisms produce naturally. We could put

Ronald S. Cole-Turner is Assistant Professor of Theology at Memphis Theological Seminary. He serves on the United Ministries in Education Committee on Science, Technology, and the Christian Faith. He is expanding this article into a book, tentatively entitled The New Genesis: Theology and the Genetic Revolution. He acknowledges with appreciation the opportunity for research afforded by the 1985 Coolidge Colloquium.

¹A helpful introduction to genetic engineering may be found in Slicing Life: The Social and Ethical Issues of Genetic Engineering with Human Beings, the Report of the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982).

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yeast to work for us, but we did not alter its products. In selective breeding, we were limited to traits that already appeared within a given species. We grew hardier wheat with bigger grains, but could not imagine a strain that would fix nitrogen in the soil or thrive in salt water. Now we have learned how to identify the genetic basis of a particular trait in one species and transfer it to unrelated species. Thus, bacteria can produce "human" insulin. We can also delete a gene from a cell and, if it is defective, replace it with a normal gene. When the cells and organisms we modify begin to reproduce, they pass on the modified genes to their offspring.

In respect to all technology, the urgent question is whether we will use our power as co-creators. Genetic engineering poses the question in a unique way, for through this technology we have the power to affect the direction of life on earth in subtle ways, not merely by altering the environment or selectively breeding but by creating new genetic combinations. Unlike brute power to destroy (as for instance with nuclear weapons), genetic engineering offers us power to create.

The emerging techniques of today's genetic engineering have placed within human hands the power to shape other species in vastly more significant ways than ever before. As a result, nature has suddenly become more fluid before us. The slow, painstaking process of selective breeding, for example, is being replaced by processes vastly more rapid, predictable, and powerful. The change here is basically one of speed, accuracy, and greatly increased capability. Since the beginning of agriculture, with selective breeding of seeds and livestock, we have had an impact on evolution. We have changed the genetic pool of the organisms we farmed, and through their cultivation have altered the environment radically. But today we are poised at the beginning of a period in which our generation may effect more genetic changes than all the agricultural technology since the beginning of human civilization. "There is amongst most scientists an absolute, rock-solid faith that recombinant DNA and molecular genetics are leading in directions and to products that cannot now be foreseen."² The limits of human impact on other living creatures have been pushed back dramatically. The genetic interchangeability of all life, now accessible to our technology, means that all life lies before us, more open to our influence than ever.

Since we ourselves are biological organisms, the techniques of genetic engineering have become both a promise and a concern for us as a species. As promise, these techniques offer totally new approaches to cancer, AIDS, genetic-based diseases, and a host of diseases of tropical countries which kill an estimated 20 million each year. Cures are elusive, but the benefits are enormous and this technology is crucial in the process. But the emergence of a technology so useful to us raises the specter of its use over us. Fears of eugenics or of attempts to engineer

²Paul Berg, early developer of recombinant DNA technology and Nobel laureate, interviewed by Rudy M. Baum in "Nobelist Berg Reflects on Recombinant DNA," Chemical and Engineering News 62 (August 13, 1984), p. 63.

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humans that are stronger or more intelligent are raised, not just by theologians concerned for a God-given integrity of human life, but by many others as well.

In assessing these concerns, it is important to distinguish three things: eugenics, human germline research, and human gene therapy. Eugenics is the attempt to alter the human gene pool to enhance certain traits thought to be desirable. Some fear that genetic engineering will be used in future eugenics programs in place of traditional selective breeding. Human germline research is the attempt to alter a specific gene in a fertilized egg in order to correct for a genetic defect. If successful, it would mean that the individual whose genes were thus corrected would not transmit the genetic defect on to subsequent generations. Such an approach to genetic diseases (Tay Sachs or sickle cell, for example) is undoubtedly intriguing. It suggests a one-time genetic improvement for the individual and all descendants. But it is fraught with enormous technical difficulties.³ Gene therapy is intended to cure a genetic disease in a specific body tissue. In a tissue affected by a genetic defect, the missing or corrected gene could be introduced through a number of possible techniques, thereby correcting the condition. A request for permission to attempt gene therapy is anticipated soon. It raises no ethical concerns unique to itself, for the involvement of human subjects is practically no different from other experimental developments in medicine.⁴

While fears of the use of genetic engineering on human subjects are serious concerns, immediate applications such as gene therapy pose no unusual ethical problems. Human germline research merits the most careful ethical and technical consideration, for while there is great capacity for good, the potential for misguided applications is equally great. Theological understandings about human life will need to be brought into conversation with ethical considerations as restrictions and guidelines for research are developed. As in uses of genetic engineering in non-human organisms, this emerging technology calls for ethical and theological vision comparable in richness to the creation narratives of Genesis.

II

The opening chapters of Genesis speak eloquently of our relationship with God and with creation. We are fundamentally creaturely, yet we

³No one is likely to propose an attempt until numerous technical difficulties are overcome. And even then, scientists themselves have serious misgivings about the prudence of germline techniques. Nevertheless, a group of prominent church leaders recently condemned human germline research. In a resolution authored by Jeremy Rifkin, sixty-four bishops, church executives, theologians, and scientists declared their opposition to research aimed at altering the human germline. The June 9, 1983, New York Times front page headline, "Clerics Urge U.S. Curb on Gene Engineering," gave the false impression that the church opposed all genetic engineering.

⁴Cf. L. Walters, "The Ethics of Human Gene Therapy," Nature 320 (March 20,1986), pp. 225-27.

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stand in a special relationship to God and to the rest of creation. In the priestly account, we are animals, created with other species, yet we are in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27). We alone receive a divine blessing, but even this blessing is two-fold in its significance: we are blessed with biological reproduction and fertility, which ties us biologically to other species; but we are also blessed with "dominion" over all the others (v. 28; cf. Ps. 8:5-9).

In the Yahwist account (Gen. 2:4b ff.), a comparable two-fold relationship is suggested. God creates Adam from the dust, then breathes the dynamism of life into the formed clay (v. 7). The Creator places Adam in the garden with the command "to till it and to keep it" (v. 15). Here, unlike the priestly account, Adam is created before the animals or even the vegetation. The reasons given are that there is no rain and no human yet exists to till the ground, suggesting that the very existence of vegetation depends in part on the human effort of agriculture. After the banishment from Eden (Gen. 3), agriculture continues even though under more difficult circumstances. The importance of agriculture through chapters 2 and 3 suggests that it is a major theme of the . text, although rarely treated in the history of its interpretation.⁵

In subsequent chapters of Genesis, the importance of agriculture remains evident, sometimes emerging as competition between two forms: animal husbandry (which may be nomadic) and tilling the soil.⁶ Both Cain and Abel are agriculturalists: "Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground" (4:2b). Interestingly, Yahweh finds the fruits of Abel's work a better offering than Cain's. But even more interesting, Cain's punishment for fratricide is this: "When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength; you shall be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth" (v. 12). Cain is punished by being made into a wanderer cut off from agriculture and society. He is associated with the Kenites, a tribe that worshipped Yahweh but remained beyond the covenant community. According to Gerhard von Rad, "the Kenites were a difficult riddle to the Israelites. They too, like the Israelites, were worshipers of Yahweh, perhaps even before Israel...And in spite of this, the Kenites never belonged to the covenant community chosen by Yahweh...[and] they never achieved a sedentary life. Like Bedouins, they lived not from agriculture, but wandered restlessly on the limits of cultivated land. Strange, this roving life on the other side of the soil that God had blessed!"⁷

⁵Cf. Bruce D. Naidoff, "A Man to Work the Soil: A Now Interpretation of Genesis 2-3," Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 5 (1978), pp. 2-14. Noting that none of the Hebrew words for sin appear in Genesis 2-3, Naidoff asks whether traditional interpretation emphasizing "the fall" has overshadowed "the real issue [which] appears to be man's relationship to the soil and its corollary, the procurement of food" (p. 2).

⁶Cf. Norman K. Gottwald. The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250-1050 B.C.E. (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1979), pp. 435-63.

⁷Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary, trans. by John H. Marks (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 196 1), p. 104.

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In the rivalry between Jacob and Esau, there is a strikingly similar theme. Esau is a hunter while Jacob stays close to the tents (Gen. 25:27). Unsuccessful hunting leaves Esau hungry and prompts him to sell his birthright for bread and lentils, the fruits of agriculture (vv. 29-34). Later, while Esau is searching for game to present to Isaac in anticipation of his blessing, Jacob beats him to the prize by depending on the herd (Gen. 27). Agriculture wins both the birthright and the blessing. Years later, while working for Laban, Jacob practices selective breeding and makes himself wealthy (Gen. 30:25-43). His method is faulty (although successful), but the important point is that the concept of selective breeding is clear in the story.

The frequently noted struggle in early Israelite religion between worship of Yahweh and the cults of Canaan centers, to a large extent, on the issue of agriculture. As Israel takes its place in Canaan, its agricultural offerings are enticing:

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing forth in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper" (Deut. 8:7-9).

Can Yahweh, who led the people out of Egypt and into the promised land, be adequate for the transition to a sedentary, agricultural life? To what extent does Israel turn to Baal, and to what extent are elements of Canaanite worship incorporated into worship of Yahweh?

Martin Buber noted the relationship between rival worship and agriculture: "He, YHVH, cannot remain really the Lord of the people, the God of Israel in the old absolute sense, unless He brings under his rule the domain of the new, agricultural form of life. But how is this to be done without perverting His own nature?"⁸ But as we have already seen, God is understood by the Yahwist as authorizing, blessing, and promising to prosper the human agricultural enterprise. How different is this Yahweh from the God of the Exodus? Undoubtedly, new elements are drawn into the understanding of Yahweh. The only other choice would be a God inapplicable to the changed situation of agriculture in Canaan.

The people of Israel do not bring agriculture to Canaan. They find it there, enticing them with its abundance and its gods. They are faced with a new technological option and with a theological decision. Are they to enter into the sedentary life of agriculture with the perils of urbanization and centralization? Or are they to remain nomadic and at the fringe of human culture and civilization? Will the God of the Exodus take up residence with them and be known to them in the routines and

⁸Martin Buber, The Prophetic Faith, trans. by Carlyle Witton-Davies (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1949), p. 75.

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rhythms of agricultural existence? In this context, they begin to understand the God of the Exodus as having created them to till and keep the ground, bringing forth its vegetation. The shift to agricultural technology is a theological shift. The land and its creatures were not theologically insignificant to them, for they knew that their relationship with the land was based upon their relationship with God.

But we must ask whether the theological insight of Genesis helps us today in addressing the major impending transition of our time, that of genetic engineering. Clearly, nothing in Genesis or elsewhere in Scripture or tradition anticipates our situation. Yet, there is an obvious similarity; for if Genesis is concerned with the transition of a people into agricultural society, and if we today are faced with the transition from agriculture to genetic engineering, then we should expect some guidance in our time from the turmoil and theological ferment of this earlier era. Perhaps the help we find is this: a transition in this basic technology is at its deepest level a transition in our relationship to the rest of nature, to ourselves as creatures, and to the creator. Neither technological shift is theologically irrelevant. Failure to recognize the theological dimension of the transition is failure to draw a lasting insight from Genesis. What we need today is a sustained effort at theological and poetic imagination that will yield texts and liturgies for the new age. We need visions and images that will sustain and restrain us as we define ourselves in the future.

III

Even before the first genetic engineering techniques were developed, Karl Rahner was able to comprehend the significance of the technology that was about to emerge. Aware that the description of the DNA molecule opened the possibility for its manipulation, Rahner wrote two essays in the mid-1960s about the impact of this technology on our species and our relationship with nature.⁹ The core of Rahner's view on genetics is based on his more comprehensive theological anthropology. He understands humanity as open-ended and as participating in its own definition. This leads Rahner to a surprising openness and fascination with the prospects of genetic engineering.

Unfortunately, perhaps due to the very early stage at which Rahner is contributing to the debate, his analysis treats almost exclusively the most audacious eugenic applications of this technology imaginable. He does not address gene therapy, only eugenic germline alterations that aim at the most complex multigenetic characteristics, such as intelligence. And while he recognizes that our open-endedness as a species suggests that we might proceed here boldly, he rejects that suggestion.

⁹Karl Rahner, "The Experiment with Man" and "The Problem of Genetic Experimentation," Theological Investigations, Vol. IX, Writings of 1965-67, trans. by Graham Harrison (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1977).

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In "The Problem of Genetic Manipulation," Rahner offers his reasons for objecting to eugenic germline efforts. He argues that the aim of "genetic manipulation" is to change what should be accepted, namely, our genetic inheritance. The desire to change is, in itself, reprehensible:

What, in actual fact, is the driving force behind genetic manipulation? What sort of person is driven to it? And the answer would be, in the first place, the hate of one's destiny; and secondly, it is the man who, at this innermost level, is in despair because he cannot dispose of existence.¹⁰

This "existence" of which Rahner speaks is not life, but the genetic inheritance which structures life. It is a given for us humans, and so it must be accepted.

Not only is "genetic manipulation" an affront to the givenness of life, it also spurns the way in which life's givenness is passed from generation to generation, namely, through intimate sexual encounter of husband and wife. Speaking now of techniques as modest as in vitro fertilization, Rahner writes: "Genetic manipulation...does two things: it fundamentally separates the marital union from the procreation of a new person as this permanent embodiment of the unity of married love; and it transfers procreation, isolated and torn from its human matrix, to an area outside man's sphere of intimacy."¹¹ The intrusion of genetic material foreign to that of the married couple is a violation of the sacredness of that union and of the procreative process protected by it. Thus, Rahner can state: "Genetic manipulation of this sort is no more 'human,' merely because it produces a human being, than a case of rape."¹²

Further, Rahner was concerned about the use of "genetic manipulation" in service of a state's program of eugenics. "What is the point of genetic manipulation if not to extend the state's area of control and thus to diminish, instead of to increase, man's sphere of freedom? It would be wiser not to put weapons into the hands of one's aggressors."¹³

In contrast to the objections of Rahner, a report issued by the National Council of Churches of Christ (USA) takes a cautious but positive stance toward the emerging technology.¹⁴ In generally positive terms, the report speaks of God's continuing creation and of our human role in that creative process. Referring to the "dominion" mentioned in Genesis and in Psalm 8, the report identifies this with our working with God in the continuing work of creation. "Dominion carries with it a

¹⁰Ibid., p. 245.

¹¹Ibid., p. 246.

¹²Ibid.

¹³Ibid., pp. 248-249.

¹⁴The report was prepared by the Panel on Bioethical Concerns of the National Council of Churches of Christ (USA) and was approved for study by the Governing Board on November 3, 1982. It was published (with editorial revisions and with additional materials) as Genetic Engineering: Social and Ethical Consequences, ed. by Frank M. Harron (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1984).

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concept of custody, of stewardship, of being responsible for, of caring for all creation. Therefore, we are called to live in harmony with all creation, including humankind, and to participate with the Creator in the fulfillment of creation."¹⁵ This leads to the term "co-creation" to describe our role. While the report endorses this term, it does so with caution: "The language of co-creation must be used with care."¹⁶ It is not clear what reservations the panel had with this term. The overall flow of the document clearly supports it, claiming that Scripture "exalts the idea that men and women are coming into the full exercise of their given powers of co-creation."¹⁷ But while any reservations the panel may have had about "co-creation" are not stated, neither is there anything said affirmatively about what this term might mean. Quite obviously, such a term is crucial to our understanding the theological significance of the emerging technology.

IV

The position developed here is closer to the NCCC statement than to Karl Rahner. I will argue that in respect to biotechnology, we humans do play something of a cooperative role in the creative process and that we should intend to do so. Before we can dignify this role with the label of "co-creation," however, we need to have a clear idea of what the creator intends for the creation. It is not at all obvious that we have such an idea of the divine intention.

This is the central problem of a theological understanding of genetic engineering and of technology in general. If we are to see our work as cooperative or co-creative with divine creativity, then we must have some sense of what God intends. Without that sense, it is not possible to say that we cooperate with divine intention, unless of course we mean that we cooperate unwittingly, much as viruses do when they invade a cell with new genetic material, But presuming that we do not mean an unwitting cooperation, we must have some inkling of the divine intent. Can human beings understand God's intentions for the creation? As difficult as the question appears, it seems to be unavoidable if we recognize the need to reflect theologically on this emerging technology and thus to create a theological context of meaning and value in which it may be employed.

To approach this question from either the perspective of the sciences or of theology alone is inadequate. The most the sciences can discern about purpose in nature is purposiveness at various levels of explanation. Ordering processes can be described, and these seem to display a quality of purposiveness. One might even go so far as to see these ordering

¹⁵Ibid., p. 24.

¹⁶Ibid.

¹⁷Ibid., p. 25.

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processes of nature as evidences of divine ordering.¹⁸ But to claim that all such natural ordering processes cohere in one all-inclusive intent--namely, God's--is beyond the aims of scientific study. Such a claim for an all-inclusive divine intent must arise theologically and be argued on quite different grounds from those generally advanced in defense of a scientific theory.¹⁹ This claim is at once an affirmation of a God and of nature as creation. It affirms that there is a transcendent, divine intent which expresses itself through the natural ordering processes so that they cohere and may be regarded as a creation. While this claim is not a scientific theory or an explanation of the cosmos, it must be informed by and congruent with emerging scientific understandings of the cosmos, especially the ordering processes of nature. This is not to suggest that it is vulnerable to every shift of scientific theory or held in limbo pending the outcome of every scientific debate, but merely that it seeks at all points to be informed about the means through which God creates as we come to understand them through the sciences.

From the sciences, we are able to discover the ordering processes that are the conditions under which cosmic and biological evolution occurs. From the theological tradition of the doctrine of creation, we affirm that these ordering processes cohere as means through which God's intentions for the creation are achieved. But how are we to understand the relationship between the natural processes and the divine intent, between nature and God? Such a question is obviously foundational to our understanding of our own place vis-á-vis God and nature.

Quoting John Calvin, James Gustafson sees God and nature as inseparable and perhaps indistinguishable. Gustafson observes: "John Calvin wrote, 'I confess, of course, that it can be said reverently, provided that it proceeds from a reverent mind, that nature is God.'"²⁰ While Gustafson wishes to avoid confusing God with the processes of nature, the distinction is difficult to find.²¹ Writing about the inevitability of death in spite of medical research, he concludes: "In the end the powers that create and sustain human life also bear down upon it and

¹⁸Cf. Stephen Toulmin, "Nature and Nature's God," The Journal of Religious Ethics 13 (Spring 1985), pp. 37-52. In his review of James Gustafson's Ethics From a Theocentric Perspective, Toulmin writes: "There are no longer basic scientific objections to Gustafson's claim that we can discern, in empirical experience, evidence of the divine scheme of things" (p. 47).

¹⁹Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation, trans. by Margaret Kohl (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985): "Knowledge of the world as divine creation does not emerge from the mere observation of the world in itself " (p. 56).

²⁰James M. Gustafson, Ethics from a Theocentric Perspective, Vol. 1, Theology and Ethics (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981), p. 251. The quote from Calvin appears again in Gustafson on p. 258 and in Vol. II, Ethics and Theology (1984), p. 36.

²¹Lisa Sowle Cahill, "Consent in Time of Affliction: The Ethics of a Circumspect Theist," The Journal of Religious Ethics 13 (Spring 1985), pp, 22-35: "The identity of or difference between nature and God deserves clarification. In exactly what ways does Gustafson's idea of 'God' qualify or add to the common understanding of 'nature'?" (p. 31).

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destroy it. Nature and God will not be defied; disease and death come to each and to all whether we consent to them or not."²² By holding God and nature close together, Gustafson avoids a God who stands over against nature, putting him in a position to reject a mechanistic, value-neutral view of nature.

It also leads him to reject the idea of calling human beings "cocreators." If God does not stand over against nature as Creator over creation, certainly human beings cannot stand over against it with God as co-creators. Gustafson, rejecting "co-creator," describes the human role as that of participant, acting from within but not having either the distance or the capacity to act upon the creation.

Participants in interaction are not mere spectators, nor do they simply react to external stimuli as our eyes react to a blazing midday sun. They have capacities for innovation, intervention, and intentional action that do affect courses of events and states of affairs. Thus, to be a participant is to claim far more for human capacities of self-determination and the determination of courses of events and states of affairs than to be a "reactor" or even a "responder." Yet such a claim avoids the language of "creativity" and of man being a co-creator with God.²³

In contrast to Gustafson, if we draw the distinction between God and nature more sharply, we are in a position to speak of God as transcendent creator and of ourselves as co-creators. While God works through natural processes, God's creative intention transcends the natural processes. Nature is not God, though God works through the processes of nature. In this sense, God is transcendent and immanent. As transcendent, God stands over the processes of nature, working through them to achieve a divine intent that should not be confused with any processes, patterns, or events in nature. God's creative intent is evolutionary or, in more traditional theological language, eschatological. Its goal transcends any present achievement and its progress is marked by continuous development. Some developments and events in nature, of course, do not reflect God's intentions and may be regarded as aberrant or defective. Others simply repeat the present. But through all developments and events, God is continually at work not merely sustaining the creation but guiding it toward an intended future.

Arthur Peacocke draws such a distinction between God and nature and understands God as communicating with nature. Nature responds by patterning itself toward the divine intent, but it also (through the evolution of the human capacity to discern) recognizes itself as an evolutionary process. Through science, nature (as human beings) discovers the natural processes through which God works, and through religious awareness it senses the divine intent which underlies its own

²²Gustafson, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 277.

²³Ibid., p. 13. Cf. Moltmann, op cit.: "We no longer desire to know in order to dominate, or analyze and reduce in order to reconstruct. Our purpose is now to perceive in order to participate, and to enter into the mutual relationships of the living thing" (p. 3).

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emergence. Peacocke comments:

It is as if the Creator has endowed matter-space-time-energy, the stuff of existence, with a propensity, now actualized in man, of tuning in, as it were, to discern that meaning in the cosmic process which its Creator has written into it...n man, physicality has become capable of reading those meanings in existence which are the immanence of the transcendent God in the whole cosmic process. The way in which God has made himself heard and understood is by endowing the stuff of the world and with the ability to acquire discernment of his meanings and to listen to his word in creation.²⁴

Through human beings, evolution becomes self-discerning. The very processes by which we were created become known to us. With the capacity to discern comes the possibility of cooperation with the processes of nature and with the intention of God for creation. Because we are gaining this capacity, Peacocke argues, it is useful to use the terms "co-creator" and "co-worker" to describe our potential role in relation to God.²⁵ Through genetic engineering, we can understand the intricacies of the genetic processes by which life evolves, processes through which God has created and will continue to create. Furthermore, we can affect those processes potentially as co-creators with God.

In theological terms yet more bold, Peacocke proceeds to point out that if God's own creative work is continuing in the present and into the future, with new creative possibilities emerging in the interchange between God's creativity and creation's response, we humans might be seen not only as co-creators, but as co-explorers of future possibilities. We might be that part of creation through whom God works to explore new possibilities as yet unknown to God. "Man would then, through his science and technology, be exploring with God the creative possibilities within the universe God has brought into being. This is to see man as co-explorer with God."²⁶ Our technology, guided by our scientific understanding of the processes of creation, might add something new to the creative powers of God, for we might be an agent within creation through whom God acts in a creaturely way. If we use our technology in the service of God's intent, we will offer to God a new way to influence the creation. As creatures capable of discerning the divine intention, we are one part of creation that is capable of turning divine intent into creaturely activity.

Peacocke readily acknowledges that it is not at all clear how we are to function as God's co-creators and co-explorers without turning our creative powers inward in service of our private ends. To restrain us and redirect us, he looks not to science but to religion. To meet this challenge, Peacocke believes, "the resources of the whole Christian faith are the response."²⁷ In a similar vein, John F. Haught writes: "In giving

²⁴Arthur R. Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science, The Bampton Lectures, 1978 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 145.

²⁵Ibid., pp. 304-306.

²⁶Ibid., p. 306.

²⁷Ibid., p. 317.

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us a sense of ultimate meaning by way of its mythic-symbolic language it [religion] helps to locate us in the total scheme of things in a way that science, with its techniques of control, is incapable of doing."²⁸ Religion has the power of raising our imagination and our affections so that we may not only glimpse an intention which transcends our own, but commit ourselves to its service. As the book of Genesis created a techno-cultural world, so a new Genesis is needed to empower our imagination and restrain our foolishness as we cast ourselves in a new role.

The urgency of the theological task cannot be overstated. Without a theological context, the emerging technology will inevitably become self-indulgent. If we fail to see genetic engineering as power within nature for creation's aims, and instead think of it as power over nature for our aims, it will quickly become yet another way to weaken the very ecosystem upon which we depend. Through sustained theological reflection, however, we may open ourselves to being influenced by the creator's purposes. We place our work and our powers in the service of a creator who is still creating a future not yet determined.

The issue is not merely academic or narrowly theological, for by envisioning our technology religiously, we take a major step in redirecting it ethically. A self-indulgent use of a technology this powerful may prove ultimately to be self-destructive. "But at least one who sees his role as that of co-creator and co-worker with God might have a reasonable hope of avoiding this nemesis [of hubris], by virtue of his recognition of his role ipso facto as auxiliary and co-operative rather than as dominating and exploitative."²⁹ Whether we discover our role in a timely way remains to be seen.

²⁸John F. Haught, The Cosmic Adventure: Science, Religion and the Quest for Purpose (New York: Paulist Press, 1984), p. 156.

²⁹Peacocke, op. cit., p. 305.