Called to Be Human

An event hosted by the Concordia Institute on Lay Vocation

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

Humans are slaughtering humans allegedly in the name of God, thus seemingly supporting a new crop of articulate atheists in their strident campaign against all forms of organized religion. Before rolling cameras “believers” behead others, blow themselves up in order to kill at random the highest possible number of men, women and children. They dance maniacally around the corpse of a hanged tyrant, or they build, equally maniacally, monuments to him. If we believe that God created us in his image, is this, then, God’s true image?

One of the gems of Lutheran theology, the doctrine of vocation, teaches that all humans have divine assignments – a call from God to serve each other lovingly. Our first and foremost vocation, however, is to be simply human, meaning, to reflect our Creator’s image. There is a reason why man ranks highest among all creatures: God wants us to be his associates, his “cooperators,” as Martin Luther phrased it.

March 15, a celebrated Jewish academic, who is an orthodox rabbi and a biologist, will visit the campus of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, to make precisely the same point. The reality of “God’s call to be human” is not just a thought Luther came up with in the 16th century, studying Paul. Instead, this idea conforms to ancient rabbinical teaching. “God created us to be his partners,” says Dr. Carl Feit, a Talmudic scholar who is also a noted cancer researcher. Feit holds the Dr. Joseph and Rachel Ades Chair in Health Sciences at Yeshiva University in New York and heads the biology department at Yeshiva College.

Feit, a leading voice in the burgeoning international dialogue between theology and the natural sciences, goes even further than affirming Luther’s definition of man as cooperator Dei. He even concurs with some contemporary Lutheran theologians such as Prof. Philip Hefner, editor of Zygon, a journal of religion and science, who for several decades now have been describing man as a “created co-creator,” a participant in the ongoing process of creation called creatio continua in theological parlance.

This seems logical enough, considering that man involved himself in the creative process way back in prehistoric days when he leaned to make tools and cultivate the soil. But this partnership between God and man becomes exceedingly topical as humans prepare to explore and ultimately colonize other worlds. This development promises to turn Dr. Feit’s presentation titled Called to Be Human: Jewish and Lutheran Perspectives on Creation and Vocation into a stirring event, especially as it will underscore the inseparable link between contemporary Christianity, Lutheran and otherwise, and the Jews whom Pope John Paul II used to call “our elder brothers in faith.”

Concordia Seminary is very fortunate in having on its faculty outstanding Old Testament scholars. One of these is Dr. David L. Adams who will serve as Dr. Feit’s respondent. The forum will be held in the Clara and Spencer Werner Auditorium on Concordia’s campus on Thursday, March 15, at 7:30 p.m.