Animality in Sin and Redemption

Abstract

Chapter 5 works constructively on the narrative of sin and redemption at the heart of the Christian account of human life. It reverses the conventional paradigm in which humanity falls into sin through proximity to beastly impulses and, through redemption, is raised again above the state of other animals. Drawing on Althusser and Butler to establish an account of “humanity” as an ideological apparatus, the chapter argues that the idea of anthropological exceptionalism itself is at the heart of human sinfulness, a false pretension to transcendence that negates the relations in which God has set human beings. The chapter argues that the incarnation of God as a human being, while it accomplishes redemption, does not endorse an exceptional status for humanity in creation, but reattaches human beings, through their own animality, to creation as a whole.