According to theistic evolutionists, at what point did humans evolve enough to be considered special to God?

Question

^{Disclaimer - Even though my personal views are well-established, I'd like to point out that I am not out to make a point with this question, and I am absolutely not out to establish whether any specific perspective is true. I am simply curious about this. I know the atheistic views, I know the day-age theory, the gap theory, etc, but I've never heard an answer to this, good or bad. I'd like to know what the answer is from those who genuinely hold this view.}

Theistic Evolution defined from Wikipedia:

Theistic evolution or evolutionary creation is a concept that asserts that classical religious teachings about God are compatible with the modern scientific understanding about biological evolution. In short, theistic evolutionists believe that there is a God, that God is the creator of the material universe and (by consequence) all life within, and that biological evolution is simply a natural process within that creation. Evolution, according to this view, is simply a tool that God employed to develop human life. According to the American Scientific Affiliation:

In general, most Christian teachings assert that the relationship between God and Man is unique, and different than the relationship between God and other animals.

Assuming that theistic evolution is a valid point of view (and I'm not arguing that it's not), are there any established teachings from any denomination or proponents that explain at what point we evolved enough to have a unique relationship with God?

Barring that, what characteristics had to be present in order to have said relationship? The ability to speak? Cognitive reasoning?

The Wikipeda article lists several denominations that hold a theistic evolutionary view. I'd like answers/reasoning from any of those perspectives, or from any established organization that holds/defends this view.

Answer 1

My lay, minimally-researched Catholic understanding may not necessarily qualify, since Catholicism doesn't require a belief in evolution. But ... well, here I go:

In my understanding, it would be the first creature capable of bearing God's image. That is, it would be the first creature capable of love, but with freedom of will, and capable of contemplating the divine mysteries.

The human person participates in the light and power of the divine Spirit. By his reason, he is capable of understanding the order of things established by the Creator. By free will, he is capable of directing himself toward his true good. He finds his perfection “in seeking and loving what is true and good.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church)

The whole chapter on The Dignity of the Human Person explains in great detail the aspects of being human make us "special" or "in his likeness." But, the summation, I think, is the capacity for Godly things.

And, perhaps more of a side note, another "qualification" for human "God likeness" would be a creature capable of dominating all other earthly creatures.

Then God said: Let us make human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth. (Genesis 1:26)

In any case, if you're after a particular point in time or creature to which we could say, here's the baby that broke the barrier, I'm not sure that's a wholly religious discussion. If we did venture such a guess, it would be whenever the anthropologists told us it was! But, I think the general criteria apply to both the creationist and evolutionist-leaning perspectives.

Answer 2

I hold multiple views on creation. My personal view under the assumption that human evolution occurred in a Darwinian manner descending from apes is that humanity existed in a non-image of God state (no spirit) prior to Adam and Eve. There is some Biblical support for this. Genesis 4:13 indicates that when Cain was sent away, he indicates that whoever finds him will kill him, but who else was there? Further, it says in verse 26 that at that time people began to call on the Lord. Then in chapter 6, verse 1 indicates that the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful and they married any of them they chose.

It is possible that there was a more animalistic version of humanity which the descendants of Adam and Eve interbred with and that Adam and Eve were the introduction of a human spirit in the image of God rather than the simple flesh and blood creature. Then with the flood, only those who had bred into the descendants of Adam and Eve would have remained since Noah was part of that line.

Ultimately, since Genesis makes no attempt to be a history book, it leaves a lot of questions unanswered, so it's really all just theories based on fragments of information and particular phrasings that may or may not be valid interpretation. Thus I give this theory with the caveat that it should be taken with a large grain of salt and regarded as just that. A theory.

Answer 3

From the Roman Catholic point of view, the answer is very simple: when God created man, i.e. when God infused a spiritual soul in two individuals. If there is a spiritual soul, there is abstract reasoning - including true human speech as described e.g. by Chomsky's universal grammar -, moral sense, etc.

BTW, Genesis provides a clear basis for divine creation ex nihilo of each spiritual soul: the verb bara (Strong 1254), "create", as distinct from asah (Strong 6213), "make". Bara indicates the exclusively divine action of creating something which is not the result of reshaping a preexisting entity, and is used, as bārā or wayyiḇrā, in:

• 1:1 & 2:3 for the whole universe;
• 1:21 for the sea animals, the first living beings from the viewpoint of the Hebrews (for whom plants did not count as such);
• 1:27 (& Deut 4:32) for man.

Thus, while sea animals are "created", meaning that their being does not come from mere reshaping of preexistent inanimate matter (since for the Hebrews plants did not count as living beings), birds and land animals are "made", meaning that their being comes through the reshaping of sea animals (which BTW was just the actual case according to contemporary natural science). Man, in turn, is also "created", meaning that his being (i.e. his spiritual soul) does not come through the reshaping of an existing animal.

Now, in Roman Catholic theology theological sentences have one of several degrees of certainty, which from higher to lower are: de fide, fidei proxima, certa, communis, and probabilis. Using these degrees:

It is not even sententia communis whether the infusion of the spiritual soul of the first two human beings happened at the time of their conception or later. For all subsequent human beings, it is sententia certa that it happens at the time of their conception. (In particular, Aristotelian "delayed hominization" is not compatible with Roman Catholic Magisterium, pace St. Thomas Aquinas).

It is also not even sententia communis whether the first two human beings were the only two specimens of a new biological species or were part of a larger population. To note, if the latter was the case, the other members of such population, lacking a spiritual soul, would not have been human beings.

It is sententia fidei proxima that all human beings descend patrilineally from the first man, biblical Adam. Which is in agreement with the observational evidence, through Y chromosome, that all extant men have one patrilineal Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA), dubbed Y-Chromosomal Adam. Therefore, biblical Adam must be either Y-Chromosomal Adam or a patrilineal ancestor thereof.

It is sententia de fide that the first man disobeyed God and lost, for him and his descendants, the supernatural gifts that he had received from God.