Let’s start with John:
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
Or, perhaps the power apostle Paul who says of Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
7 rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
These core texts boast a foundational Christian doctrine: the Incarnation - a beautiful idea of the cosmic God taking on human form, wrapping himself fully in human flesh, the Creator becoming the created in the person of Jesus. Believers often utilize this core tenant to argue for the superiority of the Christian faith: unlike other religions where god expects you to make your way to him through the mastery of religious rituals, the Christian god, motivated by his love for you, seeks you out even to the point of putting on human form. It’s beautiful indeed!
The Incarnation, God in the flesh…a.k.a. Jesus is a launching pad for so many theological talking points:
The atonement works only if Jesus is fully human.
The appeal of the resurrection is not that a god came back to life (gods don’t die), but that a human came back to life.
Jesus’ sinless life impresses and inspires only if he was fully human.
Jesus’ high capacity to intercede on our behalf before God comes from human solidarity.
Sermons highlighting God’s capacity to empathize with his creation are often tied to his having walked in our shoes as Jesus, “God knows personally how you feel!”
And…Christmas
So much rests on the fully human Christ!
A Savior to All HominiNs
It is beautiful, unless you are a stocky, large headed, big browed Neanderthal (Homo Neanderthalensis), first discovered in the 19th Century, or the more recently discovered Denisovans, or any other of the 9 human species coinciding with early Homo Sapiens (Smithsonian Magazine). If Jesus was FULLY human, could he also be fully Neanderthal and Denisovan?
Let’s focus on Neanderthals since we know the most about them. Although my understanding of Neanderthals and taxonomy is kindergarten; the little to which I’ve been exposed has produced enough incongruences with my theology to create significant problems.
In 2010, the Human Genome Project finished mapping the Neanderthal Genome. Neanderthal (Homo Neanderthalensis) DNA overlaps with modern humans (Homo Sapiens) at 99.7%. That’s extremely close but it’s not the same. To compare, chimpanzee DNA is 98.8% identical to Homo sapiens, yet we’d never say chimps and humans were the same animal. In other words, small variantions in DNA result in significant differences.
For example, the .3% DNA difference between modern humans and Neanderthals explains why our cousins have shorter limbs, thicker bones, wider pelvises, barrel shaped chests, elongated skulls, prominent brows, wide noses, larger front teeth, larger brains, and brain differences. While some discussion remains regarding whether to classify Neanderthals as a separate species, the DNA evidence is clear, modern humans and Neanderthals are different hominins.
That being the case, if Jesus were fully human, then his DNA would be a 100% match to the homo sapien DNA (allowing for a .001% variance to account for appearance and health differences). If this is true, then Jesus could not have been a Neanderthal.
Christ the Neanderthal?
Here’s where the problems arise for me regarding the Incarnation. (I’m not even going to touch the problems Neanderthals cause for the biblical timeline and the Genesis creation account, which in themselves are substantial).
If the Incarnation argues Jesus as fully homo sapien, then what do we do with the indisputable evidence of other highly conscious human species roaming the earth? For example, evidence suggests Neanderthals used bone tools and buried their dead. More recent research suggest they were a sea-faring species who likely had some kind of language, not to mention their brains were larger than modern humans. This being the case, our closest cousin most likely shared a similar level of consciousness to that of modern humans. If so:
Did Neanderthals have a soul? If they did, then could it be lost, unredeemed? Or, if your theology allows for Hell and Heaven, will you find Neanderthal souls there?
Did they have the capacity to know right from wrong? Were they sinners in need of a Savior? If so, could a homo sapien Jesus save a Homo Neanderthalensis?
Does not the homo sapien incarnation of Christ reveal the divine bias of a god who does not "so loved the world…” but who favors the modern human over other conscious human species?
When God says in Genesis 1, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…” Was he talking about Homo sapiens or Homo Neanderthalensis? Did Neanderthals also possess the imago dei (image of God), or is the God-image found somewhere in the .3% difference in DNA?
Or perhaps, we say…”Charlton, you are splitting hairs that do not concern the Bible or God. The DNA distinction is a human creation, not a divine one: a way for people to categorize and label. Jesus died for all conscious hominins, Neanderthals included.” That’s great, but then where do we draw the line in DNA differences? As mentioned above, chimpanzees are 98.8% identical to us? Would we say Jesus died to save chimps from their sins? Could God have come in the flesh of a chimp to save modern humans? Why not, the DNA is a near perfect match. Keeping with that idea: could God have come in the flesh of a Neanderthal to save modern humans? So, DNA differences do matter, which leads us back to the questions I mention above. If the key to the Incarnation is God being FULLY human, how does a fully homo sapien god save other humans who aren’t homo sapiens?
A Homo Sapien Story for Homo Sapiens
I’m sure serious believers can theologically maneuver their way through the questions I raised above, but I think their is a simpler answer. The Bible and the God of its pages were composed/created by Homo Sapiens who had no idea other humans species ever walked this planet. As a result they fabricated a story about a God who is like them, a story concerned with them, and a story for them. Of course Jesus was fully modern human…it’s all he could have been at the time. Perhaps if we wrote the story in our modern day, with our expanded knowledge, the Incarnation would necessitate a trans-species savior.
DNA NOTE:
It might been tempting to disregard the discussion and questions raised in this post by calling into question what DNA science says about Neanderthals and other hominins. That is an option, but if we are to question DNA science regarding Neanderthals then we’d also need to question DNA science we accept and upon which we depend daily: forensics, paternity tests, ancestry tracking, medical test (such as those for identifying Down syndrome & cystic fibrosis), genetic engineering in the food we eat every day, dog breeding, vaccines, hormone production such as insulin and more. If we accept the DNA research with regard to these branches of sciences then we also need to take serious its contribution to other human species.