An Identity Crisis for the Postmodern Church Today - "Just What Is It?"

Today I thought I would include a review of David Fitch's book, Prodigal Christianity, by a neo-Reformed student who sees himself as sympathetic to, but caught in-between the arguments of, the Emergent Christian and neo-Anabaptist groups (this latter voice is thus represented by the Missio-Alliance organization). Since Relevancy22 was birthed in the hot cauldrons of Emergent Christianity it should be stated immediately that Emergent Christianity was first-and-foremost an ethos and not a movement. And when it did attempt to become a movement it became stillborne on the birthing table largely because of the diversity of its participants which included everything from the evangelical right to the liberal left (an encouraging sign to be sure when considering the reach of the Gospel across all spectrums of religious mankind). However, its ethos (or gospel ethos) lives on as can be seen in many of today's reawakening Christian groups - from the religious right to the religious left - where Jesus has become front-and-center again in doctrine and dogma, faith and belief, practice and piety. Rather than" fizzling out," as the student below suggests, Emergent Christianity has become incorporated into the very blood and veins of the postmodern living church.

Moreover, today's article reviews popular neo-Reformed criticism towards Emergent, and neo-Anabaptist, Christians, and mostly (since this is a Missio-Alliance article), how neo-Reformed Christians wish to see themselves as juxtaposed from their neo-Anabaptist brethren. As an aside, it should be noted that many an Emergent Christian would be sympathetic to the concerns of their close cousins, the Anabaptist's, especially in today's observations by the more traditional (but updated) neo-Reformed movement. You'll note this from the familiar overtones that are recited at length in today's posting:

• What does God's love mean to us today? (relational theism)
• How do we go about bearing a generous and compassionate gospel? (church mission)
• How is our story and God's story meaningful to one another? (narrative theology)
• How is God Sovereign? (open theism)
• What about the problem of evil? (theodicy)
• Is God's Salvation to one or to all? (the Barthian dilemma)
• Can the Bible still be authoritative without being inerrant? (the problem of inerrancy)
• Etc.

But there is nothing new in today's reading that any longtime reader of Relevancy22 hasn't read before, thus underscoring my observations that Emergent Christianity lives on in its Christian ethos amongst God's many churches, as evidenced by its renewed emphasis upon: (i) faith-works as versus correctness of belief; (ii) love, over purity of religious dogma; and, (iii) tolerance and compassion versus demarcated boundaries for "proper" Christian thought and lifestyle. For support, Emergent Christianity went to the Gospels (and not Paul where neo-Reformed doctrine lives) to hear afresh Jesus' Sermon on the Mount; His restatement of the Golden rule; His sundry commandments to love thy neighbour; and a plethora of examples showing personal generosity and compassion found in Jesus' many parables (sic, the good Samaritan, the adulteress woman, the prodigal son, and et cetera, many of them aimed squarely at the Jewish religious establishment of His day).

One final observation has been the consistent message here at Relevancy22 for the necessity of today's postmodern Christian (I occasionally prefer the added descriptor, post-evangelic Christian) to let go of unnecessary doctrines such as inerrancy (put forth in 1980 in Chicago at an Evangelical assemblage of schools and theologians) and the evangelical attitude of being anti-everything, as they posture and preen towards self-definition by defining themselves by what they "aren't"... mostly, sectarian cultural groups thinking to regain control of societal laws and mores through forcible indoctrinations by methods of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (the FUD factor, for short. And why not? It worked extremely well for the company Microsoft in its marketing heyday, so why not for modern Christianity as well?).

And that's the nub of it, isn't it? We, as the church, are still attempting to force a modern day version of Christianity onto a post-modern, post-Christian world. What Emergent Christianity came along and did was to let go of this attitude. To accept where people are at in their cultures, thoughts, and beliefs. And to allow the sciences, technologies, and social medias, to guide and inform its evolving idea of what Christianity and the Christian faith means in this day and age. (Many will say you've got it backwards. It needs to be the other way around. But when done you get a deaf and dumb religion unable to communicate its message to the contemporary society around itself). To begin preaching Jesus in a pluralistic, multi-vocal voice into this world's variegated and global societies lost in its own ethos of sin and self-destruction. To admit that the church no longer runs society's political planks-and-platforms but must get on with the job of living out Jesus to a postmodern world in serious doubt and distress. To address the practical issues of injustice and discrimination, environmental rape and pollution, and to visibly declare the church's love for humanity by speech and by platform (think, racist discrimination against LGTBQ's; the injustices of the sex trade; and the discriminatory cultural wars against those cultures and societies different from our own Westernized view of the world) rather than to pound the air waves and church pulpits with self-righteous words of hate and exclusion.

If we are to become stakeholders in the gospel of Christ then let it be on the important issues of speaking in the vernacular to society's needs and wants, and not what we think those needs and wants should be. To become better listeners to our communities... perhaps by beginning with listening to the youth in our area as they speak out their insights and observations - from the elementary school child to the post-college graduate. To hear their concerns, their judgments, their ideas and reflections, laments and complaints, joys and satisfactions, hopes and dreams. Somewhere within the moiling cauldrons of the human heart beats a man, a woman, a child, trying to speak out to the Lord what they need to hear from Him, fail to see in Him, and don't understand about Him or the church.

As the Lord's emissary, the church is to become that mouthpiece for humanity - both to the Lord, and against the Lord - dependent upon the event, the turmoil, the suffering, the gladness, or commemoration. We have much to beseech and question the Lord about. And much to pray and lament about. And much to thank and praise the Lord about. Let us then get about the business of redeeming humanity... and while we are at it, re-teaching ourselves to write and speak better theology than the popular Christianized folklores and platitudes that we have been reading about all too frequently in the headlines. It's out-of-date, irrelevant, meaningless, and pretty much become like white static noise in the background of our heads. No one pays attention to it anymore. And no one cares. And when we do its mocked, criticised, and cursed. So let go of your dogmas and inflexibilities and learn to read, write, and speak, better post-evangelic theology both in word and by deed. Write profound poems. Write insightful prose. Create unnerving plays. Produce new oratorios, concerts, music, and liturgy. Create practical organizations for justice, support, health, healing, and wholeness. Let no one person speak for the whole of humanity anymore unless you and your church can make that speech your own. To assimilate it and adapt it into a post-modern, post-evangelic context for your community-at-large. It will take a global church to do that task and many global hands and hearts. So let us begin that task today in our meager lives, such as they are, and how they are placed, within the communities we live, and breathe, and have our being.

May the Lord's peace be with you this Christmas Advent season and the coming New Year.

R.E. Slater

December 19, 2013

*comments from myself in the article below will be 

highlighted and bracketed [ ].

A Neo-Reformed Review of Prodigal Christianity

http://www.missioalliance.org/a-neo-reformed-review-of-prodigal-christianity/

by Derek Radney

December 18, 2013

Comments

[Review of David E. Fitch and Geoff Holsclaw, Prodigal Christianity: 10 Signposts into the Missional Frontier. Available on Amazon now.]

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Amazon Blurb

An engaging and thoughtful book that guides readers into the frontiers of being a missional Christian.

Prodigal Christianity offers a down-to-earth, accessible, and yet provocative understanding of God's mission of redemption in the world, and how followers of Christ can participate in this work. It speaks into the discontent of all those who have exhausted conservative, liberal, and even emergent ways of being Christian and are looking for a new way forward. It offers building blocks for missional theology and practice that moves Christians into a gospel-centered way of life for our culture and our times.

• Offers a compelling and creative vision for North American Christians
• Puts forth a theology and ten critical signposts that must be observed to follow a missional way of life: post-Christendom, missio Dei, incarnation, witness, scripture, gospel, church, sexuality, justice, pluralism
• Asks questions and points to issues that trouble many leaders in the post-modern, post-denominational, post-Christendom church

This book can fill the gap for the average Christian left discontented with the current options "after evangelicalism."

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Since September 11th, 2001, the Emergent Church and the Neo-Reformed resurgence have come to dominate the theological discourse in the Evangelicalism of North American Christianity. These opposing movements could be characterized as reactions or responses to the problems of traditional and attractional models of church that have done nothing to prevent the decline of the church in a postmodern world. Along with, and in large part because of, the growth of the internet, these two Evangelical movements have grown rapidly and begun to replace the mainline denominations and seeker churches of the previous decades. David E. Fitch and Geoff Holsclaw, both professors at Northern Seminary, and pastors together in the northern suburbs of Chicago at Life on the Vine Christian Community, have been in the middle of the conversation between these two movements for over a decade.

While I have never met Fitch and Holsclaw, several of my fellow seminary students and conversation partners during my studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School were involved in the ministry at Life on the Vine. Just prior to the formation of The Gospel Coalition (TGC) in 2007, the Emergent (E) discussion was already in full swing, and those of us who were headed for what has now been labeled the Neo-Reformed (NR) resurgence (also “New Calvinism” or “the Young, Restless, and Reformed”) were eager to debate where the church was heading with our Emergent leaning classmates. I didn’t know it at the time, but we were all wrestling with our own spiritual formation growing up in the church and the dramatic cultural shift that had been taking place and that was accelerated by 9/11.

Since my time at Trinity, the heated debate between Emergents and the Neo-Reformed has died down, though not without an occasional flare up over Rob Bell (E) or Mark Driscoll (NR). This is due in large part to the fact that the Emergent church has largely fizzled out or become, as the authors put it, “another version of mainline Christianity” (xxiii). Since my time at Trinity, I have tried to keep up with some of my former classmates who formerly identified with the Emergent discussion but have shifted toward a Neo-Anabaptist theology (the authors prefer “radical evangelical” (RE) or “evangelical Anabaptist”). Recently in a blog post over at TGC, I encouraged those who have, like me, found a theological home in the Reformed tradition to continue reforming by listening to our brothers in the Neo-Anabaptist movement. This review is a further effort to encourage both camps to engage one another in fruitful theological dialogue. Therefore, I will be avoiding the books interaction with E and focus on its engagement with NR.

Purpose and Message

Prodigal Christianity proposes an alternative way of being Christian than the visions offered by the Neo-Reformed and Emergent camps. However, “the book does not seek to be a compromise middle ground between these two camps; it proposes a way beyond them that learns from both but defies the categories of each” (xvi). Borrowing from Karl Barth’s interpretation of Luke 15:11-32, Fitch and Holsclaw envision churches in mission that embrace and imitate the radical journey of the Son of God into our fallen world. They do this not by providing a step-by-step process but by attempting to shape what we are able to imagine regarding the way God is working in the world through ten signposts pointing us forward.

The authors begin the book with a brief history of the liberal-conservative controversies that shaped the past century and then offer a brief evaluation of the Emergent and Neo-Reformed. Regarding the first group, the authors say, “Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Tony Jones, and others have helped us ask really important questions and contributed greatly to creating a generous and compassionate Christianity,…but their answers have often lacked the substance on which we could live” (xxiii). Regarding the latter group, “The Neo-Reformed have invigorated theological discussion and offered serious reflection on the mission we all face in North America,…but to us, they appear to be defensive. At times, they seem to revert to doctrinal entrenchment and the attractional habits of the churches from which we had come” (xxiii). On that point, they lament how the term missional has been stolen by the very churches and models of ministry that the term was coined to challenge (xxiii).

The argument throughout the book seeks to show that the two camps both fail to transcend the liberal-conservative controversies and the cultural context these arguments assume (xxiv). Therefore, the authors make a case for prodigal Christianity, a way of being disciples together determined by the extravagant, radical, and gracious Triune God. Only when we embrace the radical and scandalous love of the Father who sent his own Son into the “far country” of sin and death in the power of the Holy Spirit will we be capable of bearing witness where no cultural Christian consensus exists (xxv-xxvi).

The bulk of the book is made up of ten chapters, one for each signpost. In each chapter, we are presented with broad observations about how both the Emergents and Neo-Reformed movements have responded to or understood the topic of the chapter and then given a radical-evangelical alternative [(sic, neo-Anabaptist alternative - re slater)]. There is both appreciation for what each camps gets right, [as well as] concern over perceived shortcomings. I think the authors are very charitable in their interaction with both camps. As long as readers remember that they are painting with a broad brush, it will be difficult to argue that they have missed the general trend of each movement on the various topics.

Helpful Challenges to the Neo-Reformed

It seems to me that the underlying critique of the NR throughout the book is aimed at two problems that distort our ability to be faithful in mission. The first concern suggests that we have reduced the gospel to individual salvation through the forgiveness of sins (85-86). It is important to note that the authors make it very clear that they are not denying that the gospel is about individual forgiveness in any way: “Today this great truth is as true as ever before” (86). But they believe that the personal plan of salvation needs to be linked to the robust and communal story of salvation: “Jesus, the crucified and risen Messiah, is Lord” (84). The cross and the kingdom, atonement and the victory of Jesus, need a stronger connection than what is normal among us NR.

The reduction of the gospel impacts our understanding of witness and ecclesiology. Because the gospel is merely about personal forgiveness, witness becomes the same as evangelism rather than encompassing proclamation and demonstration of the kingdom in the life of the church (51, 58-60). They give numerous examples of NR leaders who seem to think that merely stating the Christian position on an issue is the same as witnessing faithfully to the world. They argue that witness “happens socially as reconciliation, righteousness, and new creation taking place horizontally (in lived relationships) and vertically (with God). We cannot reduce witness to mere proclamation” (62). How can it be that so many NR churches seem to be little more than preaching centers much like the attractional churches so many of us NR sought to leave behind (99)? I have to admit that these concerns are concerns I have had with our tribe for some time. The celebrity pastor, the multi-site church, and the mega-church are all phenomena that simply do not comport with a robust Reformed understanding of the gospel (which is not merely about personal forgiveness), church, and witness. So I embrace this critique, but I don’t think this problem is related to our theological convictions so much as our failure to apply them properly.

The second major concern that runs throughout the book suggests that the NR are stuck in Christendom and the mindset of cultural dominance. This is most clearly manifested in the defensive, insecure, and smug proclamations made from a distance regarding various issues or leaders. One example of this comes in the chapter on the journey into sexual redemption where the authors assess one NR leader’s engagement with homosexuality:

He outlines his biblical position…yet what has he accomplished? Perhaps he has made those who already agree with him feel better about their own positions. But has he entered into the world of those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender/queer (LGBTQ)?…He approaches the question from a culture war point of view. He acts as if the church is still in charge of the culture when plainly we are not. He acts as if expert analysis of the Bible can help win the church’s war with culture…He is not a missionary: he has not crossed the boundaries into the very lives of LGTBQ people…Information might win an argument, but it seldom draws a person into the kingdom all on its own. (121)

In short, our engagement with the world confuses proclamations from a distance with faithful witness. They observe in us a Christendom mindset that fails to account for the cultural shift and that inappropriately embraces (desires, seeks, and clings to) the powers and privileges of this world. Here, I think, is perhaps the biggest problem we have in the NR camp, and it’s possible that our failure to address this latent Constantinianism is responsible for our failure to escape the problems of wider evangelical culture.

Concerns and Areas for Further Discussion

Prodigal Christianity has many helpful challenges that we need to consider, but the longstanding differences between Anabaptists and the Reformed seem to show up in a number of places that leave me with some concerns and some possible challenges for the authors.

In the chapter on Scripture, I found myself fluctuating between agreement and concern with the direction the authors were heading. I think those in NR camp who have read thoroughly on the issue of inerrancy and hold to a critical rather than naïve view will appreciate the affirmation and the nuance the authors give to the subject. For instance, Fitch writes about his affirmation of inerrancy, “So I believe the Bible is without error, but I need more than that” (70). The authors note that inerrantists have often tried to defend the Bible using science and historiography such that “we inadvertently end up basing the authority of Scripture on an authority outside of (extrinsic to) scripture” (70).

But after the authors affirm that “Scripture is a dramatic unfolding of the story of God’s redemptive work in and for the world” (69), the bulk of the chapter argues that the NR have wrongly sought to control the text rather than proclaim it (72-74). While this isn’t a completely unfounded charge and while we do need to avoid trying to master the text instead of letting it master us, some of the practices the authors provide as signposts toward a more faithful reading of Scripture seem problematic to me. It is true that we must “come to embrace the Bible as our own story, as the story of the kingdom” (80) and “approach Scripture first not to analyze it or subject it to study as an object” (80), but what the authors share about how this plays out in their own congregation doesn’t go far enough. [(This is the idea of narrative theology and what it means for us today. - re slater)]. The example the authors share involves discerning what position the church should take regarding the leadership of women, and instead of declaring the church’s view from a position of pastoral authority, they held open discussions accompanied with prayer to practice mutual submission to one another and to discern together what God was commanding them to do (81). While this approach seeks to avoid the dangers of power and control that silence opposition, and while it hopes to truly listen to God through the work of the Spirit among the congregation, I wonder if this has a hidden power dynamic to it as well [(lest I am mistaken, the Anabaptist tradition has always allowed equality of leadership between the sexes. - re slater)]. Could this potentially silence the voices of Christians elsewhere and at different times in the church’s history because those who want to bring that testimony to bear on the local decision are considered too dogmatic? While it is good and right for pastors to be open to being challenged before the congregation, I wonder if this approach undercuts one of the roles pastors have to protect the sheep from false teaching that can destroy kingdom faithfulness.

Perhaps the underlying concern I had with the book that is most like responsible for other reservation were the subtle statements that showed up several times along the lines that “God comes not to destroy or even impose his will on us” (39). This by itself is not problematic when referring to the incarnation (to which the above quote does), but other statements along these lines suggest that the authors believe that God’s posture to the world is always an embrace and never one of judgment. This comes out strongly in the chapter on the gospel where the authors describe different ways of proclaiming the gospel, most of which speak of Jesus’ salvation as something already true of each person but not yet entered into by everyone (92-95). For example: “We must therefore proclaim into people’s lives…that God is at work reconciling all relationships, including our relationships, in Jesus Christ” (93), “this person needs to hear that Jesus has saved and is saving him or her from (drowning in) sin” (88). I may be mistaken here, or the authors may need to be more clear, but it sounds like Fitch and Holsclaw have a Barthian view of Jesus’ saving work. It seems like they believe that the world, in its entirety with each and every person included, has already been reconciled in Christ and that the church is the community that recognizes that reconciliation, lives in it, and invites others to live in it. In other words, everyone has Jesus, but only the church is living in the reality. Furthermore, it suggests that God has already judged all sin on the cross. So I wonder if the authors believe that Jesus will come again to destroy and impose his righteous will on the world. Perhaps this could be clarified or further explored by the authors.

Recommendation

Overall, I found the book helpful and challenging but ultimately something I cannot wholeheartedly embrace. The Anabaptist theology that permeates the approach to Scripture, the gospel, the kingdom, the church, and so forth can only go so far for those of us convinced that Reformed theology best reflects the Bible’s teachings on these matters. Furthermore, there does seem to be a number of Barthian critiques present in the book that the Reformed camp has long listened to, received in part, and then ultimately rejected.

I do recommend the book, however, to those in the NR camp who are able to read charitably and receive humbly those insights that our brothers and sisters in the RE camp are noticing about our disposition, tone, and approach to mission in the world today. While we might not embrace every signpost, we can certainly appreciate the Trinitarian theology of mission, the invitation to embrace and imitate the incarnation, the advice on how we need to understand our witness more broadly, and the challenge to our church structures, leadership, fellowship, and practices.

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Addendum

Added - December 20, 2013

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Four Areas That Will Challenge American Evangelicalsim

1. Openness to true developments in the intellectual drama of the human species.

2. Openness to different ecclesiastical traditions.

3. Openness to different expressions of the spiritual journey.

 

4. Openness to holding to Scripture in a different way.

Openness to the Other: A Challenging

Necessity for the Future for American Evangelicalism

http://www.respectfulconversation.net/ae-conversation/2013/12/16/openness-to-the-other-a-challenging-necessity-for-the-future.html

by Peter Enns

Deceber 16, 2013

Let me lay out two preliminary points. First, this is a blog post, not a treatise. I am expressing my opinions, formed over roughly twenty years, on a matter that has occupied my thoughts.

Second, I realize full well the perils of speaking of “Evangelicalism” (even when modified as American) as anything other than a fairly diverse movement, especially in recent decades. I restrict my thoughts below to what I see as institutional, or systemic, issues. I realize, quite happily, in fact, that scores of individuals exist on the Evangelical spectrum who would do not reflect the “system.”

That being said, I see “openness to the other” as a pressing challenge and a pressing need for the future of Evangelicalism.

The challenge is that the kind of openness I am calling for would likely threaten Evangelicalism’s raison-d’etre, i.e., a largely defensive posture assumed for the purpose of protecting and defending what is seen as the most biblical iteration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The need is that without some adaptation or transformation, Evangelicalism will shrivel and die the death of a thousand qualifications and slink off into irrelevancy.

And to be clear, by “openness” I do not mean open to superficial exchanges that leave things as they are. I mean true openness, where change is a two-way street, where the possibility of change is focused inward rather than simply outward.

So where would the Evangelical system need to be open to the other in ways it traditionally has not? For better or worse, as an academic, I live in the world of ideas, so I want to restrict my thoughts here to that familiar world and mention just four interrelated areas. I am not suggesting that all the pressing challenges reside in my universe of discourse, and I am counting on others to add their own voice from their own experience.

1. Openness to true developments in the intellectual drama of the human species.

Other posts in this series have addressed this issue, which often falls under the umbrella of genuine significant advances in various scientific fields that tell us of the past.

We simply know more than past centuries of Christians, even more than the early decades of the Evangelical movement, about evolving humanity, our ancient planet, and the inconceivably large and complex universe around us.

I am not suggesting—I hope this doesn't to be said—that science “dictates” faith, the truth of the Gospel, or whether God exists. These sorts of accusations are often first lines of defense in maintaining the system; they are obscurantist and ultimately destructive of true faith in God.

I am saying, however, that genuine, widely agreed upon, scientific developments need to be accepted for what they are—and not at a distance, but brought into theological and hermeneutical discussions of our faith. To do otherwise is to concede that God himself is outmoded.

2. Openness to different ecclesiastical traditions.

A common characteristic of Evangelical ecclesiology is the view, either explicit or implicit, that Evangelicalism is in some meaningful sense the clearest and most faithful expression of the Christian faith—which implies it is the version God most approves of. Other traditions are often looked down upon as either compromising “the clear teaching of Scripture” or lacking in some other crucial way.

The challenge to maintain some sort of Evangelical identity amid ecumenical discussions is a real one, but not necessarily impossible to pull off. How that might work itself out is not for me to say, but, in our ever-shrinking world, Evangelicalism cannot afford to be seen as anything other than in serious dialogue with other Christians communions. The global Christian faith must work toward a deep unity in basics amid diversity of various local and ecclesiastical traditions.

3. Openness to different expressions of the spiritual journey.

Most global citizens claim to adhere to some sort of religious/spiritual practice and faith, and most of them are not American Evangelicals. Evangelicalism must be willing to listen as much as speak, and be willing to have its own traditions examined, and even to learn from those of other faiths and to take their expression of faith seriously.

Rather than seeing such openness as a denial of the Gospel, it is actually an expression of deep faith in God to acknowledge that our own very local view of ultimate reality is deeply conditioned by the American drama—often far more so than by the biblical story. Few things are as unsettling to Evangelicalism system than to consider that Israel’s God, in Christ, and in Spirit—who, like the wind, goes where and how he pleases—may be on the move across the world in ways the Evangelical system cannot understand or control.

4. Openness to holding to Scripture in a different way.

The core intellectual foundation of Evangelicalism is biblical inerrancy, however defined (whether literalistically or its more recent progressive iterations). Inerrancy is rooted in a priori commitments to the nature of God and how that God would necessarily communicate in a written document—namely, in a manner that is essentially historically accurate and internally consistent (without contradictions of true theological diversity).

The modern study of Scripture and the events behind it study has yielded numerous insights that are in irreconcilable tension with inerrancy but are also widely accepted among scholars, and in some cases are pillars of the academic field (such as the long compositional history of the Bible and the presence of myth and political ideology in the Bible).

Though these insights form the content of most any high-level academic program in the study of the Bible and the biblical world, they have rested uncomfortably with the Evangelical commitment to inerrancy. As I see it, the recurring tensions over inerrancy within Evangelicalism are fueled by the distance between a priori theological expectations about God and how his book should behave, and the non-cooperative details of biblical interpretation.

The nature of Scripture is not a closed question, and within Evangelicalism, an invitation to open and safe discussions is sorely needed.

No tradition is perfect, and I am not saying Evangelicalism alone has problems. I am only saying that, in my opinion, the future of American Evangelicalism requires that Evangelicalism be prepared to rethink some things, even reinvent itself, by proactively, seriously, and openly addressing issues such as these—not to participate in trends and fads to keep current, but simply to remain active and contributing players in the human drama, which will not sit still waiting for the next clever defense of the Evangelical status quo.

Continue to -

Index to past articles on "An Open Faith and Open Theology"

NYT Report: Toe Fossil Provides Complete Neanderthal Genome

Bence Viola

Excavation in the Denisova cave in Siberia.

Toe Fossil Provides Complete Neanderthal Genome
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/19/science/toe-fossil-provides-complete-neanderthal-genome.html?_r=0

By Carl Zimmer

Published: December 18, 2013

Scientists have extracted the entire genome of a 130,000-year-old Neanderthal from a single toe bone in a Siberian cave, an accomplishment that far outstrips any previous work on Neanderthal genes.

The accuracy of the new genome is of similar quality to what scientists would achieve if they were sequencing the DNA of a living person.

“It’s an amazing technical accomplishment,” said Sarah A. Tishkoff, an expert on human evolution at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the research. “Twenty years ago, I would have thought this would never be possible.”

The new Neanderthal genome, which is described in the current issue of Nature, is part of an extraordinary flurry of advances in studying ancient human DNA. Earlier this month, for example, scientists reconstructed a small segment of genes from a 400,000-year-old fossil in Spain, setting a record for the oldest human DNA ever found.

While the Spanish DNA only provided faint, tantalizing clues about human evolution, the new Neanderthal genome is more like a genetic encyclopedia, rich with new insights. The Neanderthal to whom the bone belonged was highly inbred, for example, offering a glimpse into the social lives of Neanderthals.

The new Neanderthal genome also contains evidence of more interbreeding between ancient human populations than previously known.

The authors of the new study also compared the Neanderthal genome to modern human DNA to better understand what makes our own lineage unique. They have come up with a list of mutations that evolved in modern humans after their ancestors branched off from Neanderthals some 600,000 years ago.

“The list of modern human things is quite short,” said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin who was not involved in the study.

Neanderthals have intrigued scientists ever since their first fossils were found in 1856. Experts argued whether they were part of our own species or a separate one. Since the initial discovery, researchers have found remains of these heavy-browed, solidly built humans from Spain to Central Asia. Their fossil record now stretches from about 200,000 years ago to about 30,000 years ago.

Some of these fossils still hold fragments of Neanderthal DNA. In 1997, Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and his colleagues extracted a snippet from a 40,000-year-old Neanderthal fossil. In 2010, after gathering more DNA from fossils, Dr. Paabo’s team published a rough draft of the entire Neanderthal genome.

Using improved methods, the scientists were able to reconstruct the genome from another trove of DNA from an 80,000-year-old finger bone retrieved by a team of Russian explorers from a cave called Denisova.

Much to their surprise, the genome belonged to a separate lineage of humans that had not been known from the fossil record before. The scientists called these mysterious people the Denisovans.

By comparing the rough drafts of the Denisovan and Neanderthal genomes to modern human DNA, Dr. Paabo and his colleagues found clues to how we’re all related. Modern humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans all descended from a common ancestor that lived several hundred thousand years ago. The ancestors of modern humans then branched away on their own lineage. It wasn’t until later that Neanderthals and Denisovans split apart from each other.

The researchers also discovered some Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in the genomes of living humans.

Dr. Paabo and his colleagues concluded that modern humans interbred with both Neanderthals and Denisovans before those two lineages became extinct.

The scientists then developed better methods for reconstructing ancient DNA. They were able to create a new version of the Denisovan genome that was extremely accurate and complete.

There was just one catch: the latest reconstruction methods demanded a lot of ancient DNA, which is a rare thing to find in fossils. But when Dr. Paabo and his colleagues studied more bones from Denisova, they hit the jackpot again, discovering an abundance of DNA in a toe bone.

A computer-generated image of a single Neanderthal toe bone found in a Siberian cave in 2010.

Bence Viola

“We thought it would be a Denisovan toe,” said Dr. Paabo, “but it very clearly was a Neanderthal.”

The scientists were able to reconstruct the new Neanderthal genome even more accurately than the Denisovan one.

The crisp focus of the new genome is yielding new discoveries about Neanderthals. For example, Dr. Paabo and his colleagues can distinguish the origin of each piece of DNA — whether it came from the Neanderthal’s mother or father. With an X chromosome from each parent, the toe belonged to a female.

A closer look at these two sets of DNA revealed that the Neanderthal female was extremely inbred. Her two parental sets of genes were identical for long stretches. Such similarity can only come about when close relatives have children.

“We don’t know if this is typical of all Neanderthals, or just this population in Siberia,” said Dr. Paabo. It will take more high-caliber Neanderthal genomes to settle that question.

The new genome reveals not just inbreeding but interbreeding. The accompanying diagram summarizes the flow of DNA between human lineages over the past half million years, based on a comparison of the new Neanderthal genome with other Neanderthal DNA sequences, the Denisovan genome and the genomes of living humans.

Nature

A new study of ancient DNA indicates that modern humans branched off from ancestors of Neanderthals and Denisovans around 600,000 years ago. Later, interbreeding moved DNA between the branches. The percentages show how much DNA in a genome arrived through interbreeding. For example, people in Oceana have 3 to 6 percent Denisovan DNA.

Dr. Paabo and his colleagues were able to detect not one, but two injections of Denisovan DNA into the modern human gene pool.

Intriguingly, the Denisovan genome also contains hints of even more exotic interbreeding. A few percent of their DNA appears to have originated from a more distant branch of our evolutionary tree.

Dr. Paabo said it was possible that the branch was a species known as Homo erectus, which lived across much of the Old World from 1.8 million to about 50,000 years ago.

Dr. Tishkoff thinks this is a possible explanation of the data, but not the only one. She thinks it is possible that the same pattern could have emerged if the ancestors of humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans in Africa became separated from each other early on, evolving different DNA sequences.

Despite all the flowing DNA, Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans did not become one big genetic blur. After Denisovan and Neanderthal DNA made its way into the modern human gene pool, most of it gradually disappeared. And modern humans took their own evolutionary path.

By comparing their high-quality ancient genomes to human genomes, Dr. Paabo and his colleagues are drawing up a list of mutations that are unique to our own lineage. “I would say it is a definitive list,” said Dr. Paabo.

Dr. Paabo is intrigued by some mutations that affect genes involved in the development of the brain. But he sees the list as only a starting point for research.

“What lies ahead is to understand which of these is important,” said Dr. Paabo. “That’s totally up in the air.”

For more Information on the Human Ancestry go to:

Wikipedia - Homo

Wikipedia - Homo Sapiens

Wikipedia - Anatomically Modern Humans (homo sapien sapiens)

Wikipedia - Human

Map of the migration of modern humans out of Africa, based on mitochondrial DNA:
Coloured rings indicate years before present, in thousands

Summary

World map of human migrations, with the North Pole at center. Africa, harboring the start of the migration, is at the top left and South America at the far right. Migration patterns are based on studies of mitochondrial (matrilinear) DNA. Dashed lines are hypothetical migrations.

Numbers represent thousand years before present.

The blue line represents area covered in ice or tundra during the last great ice age.

The letters are the mitochondrial DNA haplogroups (pure motherly lineages); Haplogroups can be used to define genetic populations and are often geographically oriented. For example, the following are common divisions for mtDNA haplogroups:

• African: L, L1, L2, L3
• Near Eastern: J, N
• Southern European: J, K
• General European: H, V
• Northern European: T, U, X
• Asian: A, B, C, D, E, F, G (note: M is composed of C, D, E, and G)
• Native American: A, B, C, D, and sometimes X

Data derivation

• Image:Northern icesheet hg.png shows the region that was covered by ice or tundra in the last ice age
• All migration data based on mitomap.
• Geographic data from [1]
• and adding the following data [2] we get this interesting result [3]

The Ancient Denisovans: Part of Man's Human Ancestry

National Geographic

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/07/125-missing-human-ancestor/shreeve-text

July 2013

The Case of the Missing Ancestor

DNA from a cave in Russia adds a mysterious new member to the human family.

By Jamie Shreeve

Photograph by Robert Clark

In the Altay Mountains of southern Siberia, some 200 miles from where Russia touches Mongolia, China, and Kazakhstan, nestled under a rock face about 30 yards above a little river called the Anuy, there is a cave called Denisova. It has long attracted visitors. The name comes from that of a hermit, Denis, who is said to have lived there in the 18th century. Long before that, Neolithic and later Turkic pastoralists took shelter in the cave, gathering their herds around them to ride out the Siberian winters. Thanks to them, the archaeologists who work in Denisova today, surrounded by walls spattered with recent graffiti, had to dig through deep layers of goat dung to get to the deposits that interested them. But the cave’s main chamber has a high, arched ceiling with a hole near the top that directs shimmering shafts of sunlight into the interior, so that the space feels holy, like a church.

In the back of the cave is a small side chamber, and it was there that a young Russian archaeologist named Alexander Tsybankov was digging one day in July 2008, in deposits believed to be 30,000 to 50,000 years old, when he came upon a tiny piece of bone. It was hardly promising: a rough nubbin about the size and shape of a pebble you might shake out of your shoe. Later, after news of the place had spread, a paleoanthropologist I met at Denisova described the bone to me as the “most unspectacular fossil I’ve ever seen. It’s practically depressing.” Still, it was a bone. Tsybankov bagged it and put it in his pocket to show a paleontologist back at camp.

The bone preserved just enough anatomy for the paleontologist to identify it as a chip from a primate fingertip—specifically the part that faces the last joint in the pinkie. Since there is no evidence for primates other than humans in Siberia 30,000 to 50,000 years ago—no apes or monkeys—the fossil was presumably from some kind of human. Judging by the incompletely fused joint surface, the human in question had died young, perhaps as young as eight years old.

Anatoly Derevianko, leader of the Altay excavations and director of the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography in Novosibirsk, thought the bone might belong to a member of our own species, Homo sapiens. Sophisticated artifacts that could only be the work of modern humans, including a beautiful bracelet of polished green stone, had previously been found in the same deposits. But DNA from a fossil found earlier in a nearby cave had proved to be Neanderthal, so it was possible this bone was Neanderthal as well.

Derevianko decided to cut the bone in two. He sent one half to a genetics laboratory in California; so far he has not heard from that half again. He slipped the other half into an envelope and had it hand-delivered to Svante Pääbo, an evolutionary geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. It was there that the case of the Denisovan pinkie bone took a startling turn.

Pääbo, a transplanted Swede, is arguably the world’s leading expert in ancient DNA, especially human DNA. His milestones are many. In 1984 he became the first person to isolate DNA from an Egyptian mummy. In 1997 he accomplished the same feat for the first time with a Neanderthal, a kind of human that vanished more than 25,000 years before the Egyptian pharaohs. That secured his scientific reputation.

When Pääbo received the package from Derevianko, his team was hard at work producing the first sequence of the entire Neanderthal genome—another feat that had once seemed impossible and that was occupying most of his attention. His lab also had a backlog of other fossils to test from all parts of the globe. So it wasn’t until late 2009 that the little Russian finger bone drew the attention of Johannes Krause, at the time a senior member of Pääbo’s team. (He’s now at the University of Tübingen.) Like everyone else, Krause assumed the bone was from an early modern human. He had developed a method for distinguishing the DNA of such a fossil from that of the archaeologists, museum workers, and anyone else who might have handled and therefore contaminated it.

Krause and his student Qiaomei Fu extracted the finger bone’s mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), a small bit of the genome that living cells have hundreds of copies of and that is therefore easier to find in ancient bone. They compared the DNA sequence with those of living humans and Neanderthals. Then they repeated the analysis, because they couldn’t believe the results they’d gotten the first time around.

On a Friday afternoon, with Pääbo away at a meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, Krause called a meeting of the lab staff and challenged anyone to come up with a different explanation for what he was seeing. No one could. Then he dialed Pääbo’s cell. “Johannes asked me if I was sitting down,” Pääbo remembers. “I said I wasn’t, and he replied that I had better find a chair.”

Krause himself recalls that Friday as “scientifically the most exciting day of my life.” The tiny chip of a finger bone, it seemed, was not from a modern human at all. But it wasn’t from a Neanderthal either. It belonged to a new kind of human being, never before seen.

In July 2011, three years after Tsybankov unearthed the bone chip, Anatoly Derevianko organized a scientific symposium at the archaeological camp a few hundred yards from Denisova cave. At an opening night dinner punctuated with frequent toasts of vodka, Derevianko welcomed the 50 researchers, including Pääbo, who had come to see the cave and share their views on how the mysterious new human fit into the fossil and archaeological record for human evolution in Asia.

The year before, two other fossils had been found to contain DNA similar to that of the finger bone, both of them molars. The first tooth had turned up among the specimens from Denisova housed at Derevianko’s institute in Novosibirsk. It was bigger than either a modern human or a Neanderthal tooth, in size and shape resembling the teeth of much more primitive members of the genus Homo who lived in Africa millions of years ago. The second molar had been found in 2010 in the same cave chamber that had yielded the finger bone—indeed, near the bottom of the same 30,000-to-50,000-year-old deposits, called Layer 11.

Remarkably, that tooth was even bigger than the first, with a chewing surface twice that of a typical human molar. It was so large that Max Planck paleoanthropologist Bence Viola mistook it for a cave bear tooth. Only when its DNA was tested was it confirmed to be human—specifically, Denisovan, as the scientists had taken to calling the new ancestors. “It shows you how weird these guys are,” Viola told me at the symposium. “At least their teeth are just very strange.”

Pääbo’s team could extract only a tiny amount of DNA from the teeth—just enough to prove they came from the same population as the finger, though not from the same individual. But the finger bone had been spectacularly generous.

DNA degrades over time, so usually very little remains in a bone tens of thousands of years old. Moreover, the DNA from the bone itself—called endogenous DNA—is typically just a tiny fraction of the total DNA in a specimen, most of which comes from soil bacteria and other contaminants. None of the Neanderthal fossils Pääbo and his colleagues had ever tested contained even 5 percent endogenous DNA, and most had less than one percent. To their amazement, the DNA in the finger bone was some 70 percent endogenous. Apparently, the cold cave had preserved it well.

Given so much DNA, the scientists easily ascertained that there was no sign of a male Y chromosome in the specimen. The fingertip had belonged to a little girl who had died in or near Denisova cave tens of thousands of years before. The scientists had no idea, at first, what she looked like—just that she was radically different from anything else they had ever seen.

For a while they thought they might have her toe too. In the summer of 2010 a human toe bone had emerged, along with the enormous tooth, from Layer 11. In Leipzig a graduate student named Susanna Sawyer analyzed its DNA. At the symposium in 2011 she presented her results for the first time. To everyone’s shock, the toe bone had turned out to be Neanderthal, deepening the mystery of the place.

The green stone bracelet found earlier in Layer 11 had almost surely been made by modern humans. The toe bone was Neanderthal. And the finger bone was something else entirely. One cave, three kinds of human being. “Denisova is magical,” said Pääbo. “It’s the one spot on Earth that we know of where Neanderthals, Denisovans, and modern humans all lived.” All week, during breaks in the conference, he kept returning alone to the cave. It was as if he thought he might find clues by standing where the little girl may have stood and touching the cool stone walls she too may have touched.

Pääbo grew up in Stockholm with his single mother, a chemist, and on certain days with his father, a biochemist named Sune Bergström, who had another, legitimate family and would later win a Nobel Prize. Pääbo’s own first passion was Egyptology, but he switched to molecular biology, then fused the two interests in 1984 with his work on mummy DNA. Once anchored in the study of the past, he never let go. He is 58 now, tall and lanky, with large ears, a long, narrow head, and pronounced eyebrows that arch up and down animatedly when he’s excited—about Denisova, for instance.

How had all three kinds of human ended up there? How were Neanderthals and Denisovans related to each other and to the sole kind of human that inhabits the planet today? Did their ancestors have sex with ours? Pääbo had a history with that kind of question.

The Neanderthal DNA he had made headlines with in 1997 was utterly different from that of any person now alive on Earth. It seemed to suggest that Neanderthals had been a separate species from us that had gone extinct—suspiciously soon after our ancestors first migrated out of Africa into the Neanderthals’ range in western Asia and Europe. But that DNA, like Krause’s first extract from the Denisovan finger, was mtDNA: It came from the mitochondria, the energy-producing organelles inside the cell, and not from the cell nucleus, where the vast bulk of our genome resides. Mitochondrial DNA includes only 37 genes, and it’s inherited only from the mother. It’s a limited record of a population’s history, like a single page torn from a book.

By the time of the Denisova symposium, Pääbo and his colleagues had published first drafts of the entire Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes. Reading so many more pages allowed Pääbo and his colleagues, including David Reich at Harvard University and Montgomery Slatkin at the University of California, Berkeley, to discover that human genomes today actually contain a small but significant amount of Neanderthal code—on average about 2.5 percent. The Neanderthals still may have been swept into extinction by the strange, high-browed new people who followed them out of Africa, but not before some commingling that left a little Neanderthal in most of us, 50,000 years later. Only one group of modern humans escaped that influence: Africans, because the commingling happened outside that continent.

Although the Denisovans’ genome showed that they were more closely related to the Neanderthals, they too had left their mark on us. But the geographic pattern of that legacy was odd. When the researchers compared the Denisovan genome with those of various modern human populations, they found no trace of it in Russia or nearby China, or anywhere else, for that matter—except in the genomes of New Guineans, other people from islands in Melanesia, and Australian Aborigines. On average their genomes are about 5 percent Denisovan. Negritos in the Philippines have as much as 2.5 percent.

Putting all the data together, Pääbo and his colleagues came up with a scenario to explain what might have occurred. Sometime before 500,000 years ago, probably in Africa, the ancestors of modern humans split off from the lineage that would give rise to Neanderthals and Denisovans. (The most likely progenitor of all three types was a species called Homo heidelbergensis.) While our ancestors stayed in Africa, the common ancestor of Neanderthals and Denisovans migrated out. Those two lineages later diverged, with the Neanderthals initially moving west into Europe and the Denisovans spreading east, perhaps eventually populating large parts of the Asian continent.

Later still, when modern humans ventured out of Africa themselves, they encountered Neanderthals in the Middle East and Central Asia, and to a limited extent interbred with them. According to evidence presented by David Reich at the Denisova symposium, this mixing most likely occurred between 67,000 and 46,000 years ago. One population of modern humans then continued east into Southeast Asia, where, sometime around 40,000 years ago, they encountered Denisovans. The moderns interbred with them as well and then moved into Australasia, carrying Denisovan DNA.

This scenario might explain why the only evidence so far that the Denisovans even existed is three fossils from a cave in Siberia and a 5 percent stake in the genomes of people living today thousands of miles to the southeast. But it left a lot of questions unanswered. If the Denisovans were so widespread, why was there no trace of them in the genomes of Han Chinese or of any other Asian people between Siberia and Melanesia? Why had they left no mark in the archaeological record—no distinctive tools, say? Who were they really? What did they look like? “Clearly we need much more work,” Pääbo acknowledged at the Denisova symposium.

The best of all possible developments would be to find Denisovan DNA in a skull or other fossil with distinctive morphological features, one that could serve as a Rosetta stone for reexamining the whole fossil record of Asia. There are some intriguing candidates, most from China, and three skulls in particular, dated between 250,000 and 100,000 years ago. Pääbo is working closely with scientists at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing and has set up a DNA testing lab there. Unfortunately DNA does not preserve well in warmer climates. To date, no other fossil has been identified as Denisovan by the only way Denisovans can be known: their DNA.

In 2012 Pääbo’s group published a new version of the finger bone’s genome—astonishingly, one that in accuracy and completeness rivals any living human’s genome that has been sequenced. The breakthrough came from a German postdoc in Pääbo’s lab named Matthias Meyer. DNA consists of two interlocking strands—the familiar double helix. Previous methods for retrieving DNA from fossil bone could read out sequences only when both strands were preserved. Meyer had developed a technique for recovering short, single-stranded fragments of DNA as well, greatly increasing the amount of raw material to work with. The method produced a version of the Denisovan girl’s genome so precise that the team could discriminate between genetic information inherited from her mother and that from her father. In effect, they now had two highly accurate Denisovan genomes, one from each parent. These in turn opened a window on the entire history of their population.

One immediate revelation was how little variation there was between the parents’ genomes—about a third as much as there is between any two living humans. The differences were sprinkled across the genomes, which ruled out inbreeding: If the girl’s parents had simply been closely related, they would have had huge chunks of exactly matched DNA. The pattern indicated instead that the Denisovan population represented by the fossil had never been large enough to have developed much genetic diversity. Worse, it seemed to have suffered a drastic decline sometime before 125,000 years ago—the little girl in the cave may have been among the last of her kind.

Meanwhile the ancestral population of modern humans was expanding. Myriad fossils, libraries full of books, and the DNA of seven billion people are available to document our subsequent population history. Pääbo’s team discovered a completely different one inside a single bone chip. The thought tickles him. “It’s incredibly cool that there is no one walking around today with a population history like that,” Pääbo told me, his eyebrows shooting up.

And yet the Denisovans also have something to say about our own kind. With virtually every letter of the Denisovan genetic code in hand, Pääbo and his colleagues were able to take aim at one of the profoundest mysteries: In our own genomes, what is it that makes us us? What defining changes in the genetic code took place after we separated from our most recent ancestor? Looking at the places where all living humans share a novel genetic signature but the Denisovan genome retains a primitive, more apelike pattern, the researchers came up with a surprisingly short list. Pääbo has called it the “genetic recipe for being a modern human.” The list includes just 25 changes that would alter the function of a particular protein.

Intriguingly, five of these proteins are known to affect brain function and development of the nervous system. Among them are two genes where mutations have been implicated in autism and another that’s involved in language and speech. Just what those genes actually do to make us think, act, or talk differently than Denisovans, or any other creature that has walked the Earth, remains to be seen. The lasting contribution of studying Denisovan DNA, Pääbo says, “will be in finding what is exclusively human.”

But what of the little girl herself? The tiny bit of bone that is all we ever had of her—or at least the half that went to Leipzig—is gone now. In pulling DNA from it, Johannes Krause and Qiaomei Fu eventually used it all up. The little girl has been reduced to a “library” of DNA fragments that can be exactly copied again and again forever. In the scientific paper discussing the history of her population, Pääbo and his colleagues did mention, almost in passing, a few facts about her that they had gleaned from that library: She probably had dark hair, dark eyes, and dark skin. It isn’t much, but at least it sketches in broad strokes what she looked like. Just so we know whom to thank.