HOMO DOMESTICUS: Theological Implications

4. CHAPTER FOUR
HOMO DOMESTICUS AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY
This section considers some of the implications human domestication represents for Christian
theology. The Christian study of domination has focused on the critique of ideologies of
domination. I was unable to fulfil my initial intention to go beyond identifying the influence of
the notion of human domestication on theology and elaborate on a theology of domination via
human domestication. I was hoping to identify some elements in Christian theology to address
human domestication in itself, unsuccessfully.
This reflection on theology reflects on my conclusion, namely, that there are two main
aspects in the process of human domestication: one is human domestication in general; the other
is the intensification of human domestication in particular. Human domestication in general
refers to the condition imposed by the built environment onto the entire human species. The
intensification of domestication in particular refers to the formation and maintenance of
particular domesticating features, e.g., empires, traditions, schools, confessions, orders, etc.
Seeking to address human domestication from a theological perspective drove me to frustration
because I could not find elements in the Christian tradition that addresses human domestication
per se. My conclusion is, first, that theology emerged within human domestication in general.
And second, that theology responds to the shortcomings of sophisticated human domestication or
to the intensification of human domestication in particular.
The critique of domination in Christian theology is incomplete without treating human
domestication. Architecture or the built environment reveals marks of social and ecological

domination. Christian theology, in its endeavour to discern the godly and challenge the ungodly,
must pay attention to the domesticating role of the built environment. An understanding of
domestication—human domestication, in particular—assists Christian theology to better
understand the underlying dynamics of anthropological, cosmological, social, and ecological
domination on Earth.
4.1. HUMAN EMERGENCE IN THEOLOGICAL NARRATIVE
The Christian theological narrative takes human domestication as a starting point and
locates the human in the context of human domestication. The notion of human domestication
prompts a re-lecture of the biblical and theological account. Without pretending an exhaustive
exegesis of the biblical narrative, and acknowledging the need for a deeper biblical treatment
which would go beyond the aim of this thesis, what follows is a consideration of the implication
of the notion of human domestication in the interpretation of the Christian scriptures.
The Genesis account of the human emergence and experience is framed by the Garden of
Eden. This metaphor interprets the transition into the period of domestication in the Neolithic.
The Beginnings, according to the Judeo-Christian tradition, portrays humans as food collectors
and hunters, resembling common anthropological descriptions of nomadic peoples. Humans
feed themselves picking crops from the trees in the Eden. After sin or human-fall, humans
practice plant and animal domestication, toiling the soil and having dominion over the earth
(Genesis 4:1). The latter reference is of particular importance because it explicitly evokes the
notion of domination (Genesis 1:28-30).
Eve and Adam‟s offspring come into view within the context of domestication. Cain is
portrayed as plant domesticator (farmer or horticulturist) and Abel as animal domesticator
(shepherd). However, making a step backward, we need to remind ourselves that it was God

who planted the Eden and put the human in it. This assertion presupposes the existence of
agriculture (planting) previous to the human experience. Biblically, humans emerge in the
context of agriculture or domestication.
Appealing to traditional methods in theology, one would be tempted to assume
domestication as human sin. Toiling the earth would represent God‟s punishment for human sin
(Genesis 3:17-19). The scriptural account presents God, in consequence to human disobedience,
throwing the humans out of the Garden. Adopting a domestication viewpoint, this movement
takes another dynamic. God‟s action in the context of human fall presents an interpretation of
human evolution: from collecting and hunting to domesticating. Instead of being thrown “out
of” the Garden, as traditionally understood, abandoning food collection and hunting, humans
seem rather getting “into” the house, continuing to develop incipient practices of animal and
plant domestication and becoming themselves domesticated.
When read from a secular perspective, human domestication emerges in the process of
human survival. This situation of humans opting for domestication in the process of survival
strategy leaves theology bounded by domestication. Theologically speaking in the Christian
tradition, humans come into being in the age of domestication. Despite the Christian notion of
eternity, the secular account reveals a much larger perspective regarding the emergence of
human life on earth. While in the Christian version humans appear domesticated, in the secular
version humans appear in stages that include primate and nomadic experience. Since human
domestication is the condition of the built environment on humans, the solution to human
domestication would imply to eliminate the condition of the built environment, which would lead
to the elimination of the built environment per se. Theology emerges limited by domestication.

There are no scriptural-theological indications neither of recognition of human
domestication nor of a radical critique to the conditioning influence of the built environment.
Theology takes domestication for granted. Theology begs for categories to deal with human
domestication. Theology assumes that humans build and live surrounded by buildings.
Christians have affirmed that God is eternal, omnipresent, and omniscient, meaning, God‟s
presence, love, and power reaches the wild and the domestic. This approach does not address the
domesticated condition in itself. It does not challenge the very human domesticated condition.
Whether the divine is present in the wild and/or in the domestic realm alleviates but does not
resolve the domesticating condition. I could not find theological elements to qualify human
domestication as sinful or salvific.
From my domesticated viewpoint, beyond the comforts buildings represent for
domesticated humans, domestication degrades social and ecological life on earth. However, this
understanding differs from affirming that domestication equals evil or sin. It goes beyond
speculation that the response to human domestication resides in any particular Christian doctrine.
Not to reject notions like divine grace, revelation, and salvation, but to argue that their inefficacy
is evident when facing human domestication.
4.2. RELIGION AND CHRISTIANITY WITHIN HUMAN DOMESTICATION
The religious Christian theology emerges within a much larger religious context: human
religion. This account does not pretend to render an exhaustive analysis of the role of human
domestication in the origins and development of religion and Christian theology. My intention is
to explore the impact of human domestication on Christian religious and theological affairs.
World religions both reflect and respond to domestication. Human domestication represents a
way to understand religion. For Pavlov, a methodically conditioned stimulus achieves a

conditioned reflex. Shelters stimulate and produce domesticating conditioning on human beings.
Neither religion nor Christianity represents the exception to domestication. Great religions and
theology, in general, and Christian religion and Christian theology, in particular, find their
origins in the Paleolithic-Neolithic transition, when nomadic spirituality transformed into
institutionalized religion and theology. That the religious and theological modes emerged in the
domestication phase presents various implications for Christian theology.
Religion is believed to have emerged among humans with genetic inclination for the
surreal and supernatural. Additionally socially advantaged leaders profited from ancestral
success and traditional succession. (The English words success and succession etymologically
develop from the same linguistic root). Such human inclination and practice developed into
shamanic spirituality among nomadic societies. Religion as we know it evolved as an
elaboration in line with shamanic spirituality. With the advent of domestication in the
Palaeolithic-Neolithic transition, shamanic spirituality became formalized as religious traditions.
Shamanism can be considered a proto-religious form of spirituality. Religion properly
appears in the age of domestication. This transition was possible by the institutionalization
mediated by the built environment. With the emergence of funerary rituals, the construction of
tombs, palaces, and temples, human leaders increased their claims to special mediating abilities
between the gods and the earthly. The role of the ancestors was crucial increasing the prestige of
heredity, leadership through heredity. The hereditary king and priest took over and from the age
of shamanic mystic spirituality in the Paleolithic developed more formally structured and
institutionalized religion in the Neolithic. The wider Christian tradition, the biblical, refers to
about 4,000 years of history. Domestication refers to about 10,000 years of being established.

When the biblical tradition emerged human domestication was well developed. Religion refers
to a domesticated expression of spirituality.
Early human domesticated civilizations, like the Mesopotamian people, were ruled by
overlords. These overlords were initially denominated gods. These overlords were at first
humans occupying special social functions. The figure of the overlords mutated into mediators
of divine powers. Along these socio-philosophical mutations, the notion of gods was gradually
transformed into notions of divine entities acting beyond the human. Jewish spirituality further
refined the polytheistic version of the divine pantheon into the monotheistic version of the only
true God of Abraham. The modern notion of god had been born and with it religious and
political systems of precepts and doctrines. Such incipient religious and political versions of
human spirituality embodied philosophical constructions conforming sophisticated and refined
religious and political believes and legal systems that claimed the precedence of the divine over
the mundane. The construction of temples was crucial in this religious movement.
The Christian religion embodies a domesticated religious mode rooted in the biblical
Judeo tradition, which developed along the secular history of political and religious evolution.
The Jewish mode of religion emerged as a monotheist critical expression among predominant
polytheistic religious systems in the ancient Middle East. It seems apparent that the Jewish
evolved from tribal peoples who were characteristically shepherds. Abraham, the earliest Jewish
patriarch, came out of Ur, a town in the Mesopotamian crescent, according to a promise by
Yahweh. God‟s promise represents the blessing that brings the Jewish human expression into
being. Abraham was promised to become the father of a multitude of people. An important
branch of his descendents became to be known as the people of Israel. They were mainly
wandering tribes until they became slaves in Egypt. As their Lord God liberated them from

Egypt, they wandered in the desert for several decades. Finally, Israel established itself in the
region of modern Palestine and became an important nation among the nations of the world. Its
religion has expended to the consciousness of a good portion of humanity.
In the process of settling, Israel conquered and destroyed kingdoms and took land
according to and fulfilling their divine promise. It is more likely that the Jewish version
regarding their settling was developed afterwards to settling. In any event, and despite
controversy, according to the biblical scriptures, one of the key institutions among this settled
Jewish nation was the kingship tradition. The king headed the political and religious system of
Israel. Along the kingship tradition developed a priestly tradition, which fundamentally
supported the kingship tradition. This twin religious-political structure was established on the
basis of the divine precept of having dominion over the earth and all its subsystems, according to
the Jewish sacred writings about the beginnings of the human civilization. The precept regarding
dominion was also interpreted sociologically. Priests and kings developed ideological
domesticating and taming apparatuses to legitimate the domination of their shared subjects and
their eco-surroundings. It comes in no surprise that the temple was a major building project
beside the palace. Priests and kings represented elaborated and pre-eminent institutions of Israel.
They symbolized and represented a typical civilization or domesticated human society where
priests administered the temple as kings administered the palace.
In sharp contrast, the biblical prophetic tradition counteracted the biblical kingship and
priestly tradition. The prophetic tradition characteristically insisted on a call from the
wilderness. The notion of the wilderness is recurrent in the biblical account. The Torah
developed out of Israel‟s transitory tribal experience in the wilderness. God calls Abraham out
of Ur pretty much into the wilderness. God self-reveals to Moses in the wilderness. God sends

Moses to call the Israelites out of Egypt to meet their “I Am Who I Am” in the wilderness. The
prophets incarnated a kind of shamanic experience. They acted as mediums to communicate
with the divine. They were considered sages with special understanding and power. They were
thought to have the ability to see the future and acted as clairvoyant. The Jewish prophets
functioned as seers that many times put forward a contrasting vision of the present, past, and
future to those portrayed by the official institutions of Israel.
Despite the strong resistance maintained by the prophets, the theme of wild and
wilderness was never intended to eliminate the domesticating condition imposed by the built
environment. On the contrary, as typified by the prophet Natan and Nehemiah, the divine call
was mainly interpreted as to build. The call from the wild was aimed at ameliorating the
excesses of domesticated human life among the Jewish. The people was often brought out of the
town or city to follow the prophet but eventually intended to return after taught and continue to
live in the city. The city represents the cutting edge domestic laboratory, an elaboration or
intensification of domestication. Similarly, the Prophet Jeremiah encouraged Israel to build
houses, settle down, and pray for and seek the good of the city, “because if it prospers, you too
will prosper.”1
After this history of domestic religion and Christian theology, the Judeo-
Christian prophetic project does not yet quite succeed in correcting the kingly and priestly
conspiracy for domination.
Religion at large and theology in particular, including Christian theology, has developed
in the process of the domestication of humans. Theology emerges both under the condition of
domestication and in response to the shortcomings of domestication. Religion refers
characteristically to a practice of domesticated humans. Hence religion can be understood as
part of the problem as well as part of the solution regarding domination via domestication.
1
Jeremiah 29:7, New International Version (NIV).

While Christian theology and religion in general has developed elements to counteract
deficiencies identified in the age of domestication, its doctrines are bounded by the established
context of domestication. Christianity, inspired on the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus
of Nazarene has grown to become one of the dominant modern religious modes of expressions.
Christianity emerged both as a domesticated version of spirituality and as a critique to
domestication. Christianity typically seeks to correct the domestic with initiatives surging from
the wild.
Beside appealing to general philosophical axioms that claim intermediacy, alleging
access to divine revelation from beyond the mundane and finite through notions of illumination
and the like, religion and theology exhibits no elements to deal with the problem of
domestication per se. Notions of heavenly preceding and afterlife are plagued with domesticated
pro-visions like mansions with rooms and heavenly homes. Theology takes domestication for
granted. In the theological arena, domestication refers to a normal way of life on earth.
Theology offers no intention to challenge the legitimacy of domestication. Theology emerges
among domesticated humans interested in challenging the shortcomings of domestication but not
to eliminate domestication in itself. The Prophet Nathan declares to the Israeli kingship
tradition: “the LORD will build a house for you.”2
The house, the people of Israel, and the
kingdom of David were promised forever. The Prophet Samuel‟s words had been forgotten by
then: “they have rejected me as their king… [They] will cry out for relief from the king [they]
have chosen.”3
The biblical scriptures challenge the intensification of human domestication,
2
1 Chronicles 17:10, NIV.
3
2 Samuel 8:7 and 18, NIV.

e.g., empire, but leave general domestication untouched. Nehemiah puts the biblical building
enterprise rather succinctly: “Let us start rebuilding.”4
4.3. HUMAN DOMESTICATION AND BIBLICAL THEOLOGY
Some biblical topics explicitly related to the notion of human domestication include
notions like God‟s house (Genesis 28:17; Exodus 23:19 and 34:26, 1 Chronicles 6:48, Luke 6:4),
the door into salvation (Luke 13:24; Revelation 3:20 and 4:1), the old city (Isaiah 23:7) and the
new city (Isaiah 1:26; Revelation 3:12 and 21:2), the city of refuge (Numbers 35:25-32; Joshua
21:13-38; Joshua 21:21-38; 1 Chronicles 6:57 and 67), praying for the city (1 Kings 8:44 and 48;
1 Kings 8:48; 2 Chronicles 6:34 and 38, Jeremiah 29:7), heavenly places (2 Corinthians 5:1;
John 14:2), to built on the rock and not on the sand (Matthew 7:24; Luke 6:48), and the kingdom
of God as a vineyard (Isaiah 5:1-7; Isaiah 27:2; Isaiah 27:3; Jeremiah 12:10; Matthew 20:1).
Possessing the land, agriculture, and husbandry were taken for granted, even as a sign of blessing
in the Jewish tradition (Deuteronomy 28:11 and 30:9). Success in the domestication of plants
and animals was considered a divine gift (2 Chronicles 26:10; Job 1:10).5
John the Baptist represents one of the most radical anti-domesticating claims in the
Christian gospel calling from the wilderness. The Baptist is believed to have been raised in the
wilderness, eating food from the wild, and wearing clothing made out of the skin of wild
animals. His message appears radical, particularly against a generation of snakes he found
among his listeners. The Baptist, however, shows no intention to eradicate the domesticated
human mode of living in the first century of the western Christian age. While he confronts the
religious and political institutions of his time, there are no claims in his message indicating
4
Nehemiah 2:18, NIV.
5
Mark E. Graham, Sustainable Agriculture: A Christian Ethic of Gratitude (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press,
2005); and Charles P. Lutz, ed., Farming the Lord’s Land: Christian Perspectives on American Agriculture
(Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub. House, 1980).

acceptance or repudiation of the built environment. There is no indication of a critique of the
condition imposed by the built environment. There is no identification of the relationship
between social and ecological domination and the built environment by the ministry of John the
Baptist. He does not qualify the built environment. His life style portraits a radical identification
with the wild. But John the Baptist shows no intention to eliminate the domesticating condition.
Jesus of Nazarene initiated, similarly to John the Baptist, and greatly developed his
ministry in the wilderness. The beginning of Jesus‟ ministry represents a direct attack to the
main institutions of intensified domestication. As the Spirit takes Jesus to the wilderness in order
to be tempted, Jesus is confronted with the political and religious powers of the world. Jesus is
both taken to the temple and he is shown the palaces of the world. Jesus rejects the temple and
the palace. This account somehow follows the account of his birth in a manger. While the
manger continues general domestication (the general condition imposed by the built environment
on organisms), the manger represents a critique and rejection of the intensification of
domestication. Jesus was also the little child displaced from his home land, who escaped to
Egypt as he was persecuted by the kingly and religious institutions of his domesticated time.
Jesus is reported as no having even a place where to recline his head. However, there is no
indication in Jesus‟ ministry regarding the critique of general domestication and no intention on
abolishing it.
Jesus is reported in the Johanine account regarding the destruction of the temple stating:
“„Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.‟”6
Jesus refers to the temple as
himself, his own body. This gospel version, which presumably appeared after the destruction of
the Temple of Jerusalen in the 70 D.E.C., extends the notion of temple to all believers, temples
of the Holy Ghost. The Temple in Jerusalem represents the Jewish religious and political center.
6
John 2:19, NIV.

This approach coincides with most religious traditions in the sense of relating the temple and the
body. They are believed to replicate each other. The account indicates that Jesus self-
proclaimed as the Temple. Jesus advocates an anti-domesticating kingdom, an anti-
domesticating religion. By having Jesus claiming his own-self as his own-temple-kingdom,
Jesus makes perhaps his most radical claim against empires: the no-king without temple-palace,
rebuilding his body-temple with his own resurrection. Construction and destruction parallels
domestication and assassination, respectively, revealing the methodology of the domesticated
and domesticating kingdoms of this world.
The Apostle Paul offers one of the closest biblical references to anti-domestication. Paul
argues that the earth cries out of bondage. The reference implicitly refers to the extremes of
domestication. Since Paul opposes institutional slavery but criticizes neither social economic
systems based on sheep labour nor human food systems based on agriculture and husbandry per
se. His concern regards excesses of agriculture. Nevertheless, he provides a remarkable critical
insight into the human practice of taming the land and plants. Agriculture as an aspect of taming
reflecting domestication makes the land to cry. Remarkably for his time, Paul was able to hear
that crying of the earth.
4.4. A HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY AND HOMO DOMESTICUS
Christian theology lost very soon the insights from John the Baptist, Jesus of Nazarene,
and the Apostle Paul, former Saul of Damascus. Christianity remarried the kingship tradition,
becoming the official religion of the Roman Empire. Constantine, the Roman emperor, assumed
the head of the Church as Christianity entered into one of its most crude domesticating phases.
In the name of Jesus, heralding a crowned cross, Constantine led Christians to expand the
imperial border and consolidate the order of one of the cruelest religious and military empires

humans have ever seen. Under the Roman siege, peoples were conquered, cities were destroyed,
rebuilt, and renamed, cultures were shaped, and power was displayed. Among the greatest
buildings humans have created were built and Christian architecture took over the social and
ecological landscapes. Over the centuries of the classical historical period of the middle
European ages, Christendom became synonym to society. During the centuries of
industrialization, competing kingdoms continued to develop slightly different but similar
theological versions matching their regional location, architectural, and political preferences.
Imperial Christianity had taken over a key portion of the earth.
With the cross and the sword, inspired by theological ideas of a gospel reaching the entire
humanity, Christians gave themselves to reach the end of the earth. They embarked across the
oceans. The Atlantic and the Pacific became routinely navigated as Christians explored the
confines of the earth and discovered lands on other sides of the earth. They realized the earth
had no end. It was rounded. Anyway they continued around and around, delivering missions
even in the most remote and recondite places, where humans were found at or brought to.
Despite the caring impulses and inspirations of sincere men and women, in the name of a cross
and a crown, Christians built schools, hospitals, houses, statues, monuments, roads, entire
architectural infrastructures, but over all temples. After all, the temple was the most important
house in town. The temple was the house where presumably the divine lived, the house where
the people met the divine, but most importantly, the house where the mediators of divine power
usually lived. Of course, they were not built by great men and mighty people but by simple
people, women, slaves, labourers, servants, children, animals, plants, a mixture of them and other
strangers to a land that never belonged to them, where they never belonged to her. Without

home and native land, they built the architecture of the greatest religious traditions of a “new”
world.
From the simplest and plain meeting house and chapel to the most elaborated, massive,
and sophisticated basilica, Christian temples marked and shaped the ecological and social
panorama, mirroring similar dominating religious imperialistic traditions around the world. The
temple became the central geographical, religious, and political architectural structure of every
town, every city, and every Christianized country. This architectural ecological and social
domination was not only stimulated and sanctioned but made possible by Christian theology.
Many attempts have been made to reform such architecturally domesticating Christian practices,
but until the built environment is not eliminated at all human Christian domestication will
continue for centuries to come. As the temple stands theological domestication stands.
Anything short from eradicating the built environment will just amount for cosmetic touches to
domestication.
Christian theology leans toward replicating significant social developments and
movements that challenge key human taming ideologies of domination. Unfortunately, the
challenge to domestication and particularly human domestication remains unresolved. Hopefully
somebody will be able to find a solution.
4.5. HUMAN DOMESTICATION AND THEOLOGICAL METHOD
The notion of human domestication influences the Christian theological method. Latin
American liberation theologies challenged the theological method arguing the importance of
both praxis as the departing point and context in the hermeneutical reading and reflection when
doing theology. This correction was realized after a long history of doing theology that gave
pre-eminence to theology as an intellectual activity primordially both constructed in the academy

and concerned with defending the divine dogmas handed down since the beginnings of the
Christian tradition. Theology had grown up as an intellectual activity closely and in many ways
secretly held by academic circles.
Such theologians had institutional privileged access to the scholarly apparatuses and tools
that made it possible to do professional theology, at least in an influential manner. Theology had
been confiscated from the daily experience of the regular believer and was sheltered in the
confines of the theological faculties in academic settings. Besides consecrating themselves and
being commissioned by their own traditions to preserve the strict content constructed during
generations within specific traditional understandings and explanations, theologians were
committed to perpetuate the academicist and doctrinarian technicalities of such particular
traditions. Professional theologians became the guardians of content and form in doing theology.
They were in charge of designing and enforcing theological procedures and protocols.
Dissidents were quickly isolated and silenced. No rebels and troublemakers were allowed.
Theology was supposed to be able to remain holy, separated from worldly philosophical
contamination.
Theology had been understood as the queen of science. Science had followed a similar
path with its pillars strongly cemented in experimentation in the laboratory and theoretical
research in the library. Science had closely gone along the foundations and parameters
established by domestication typified with the laboratory. Scientific writings had been taken
systematized in libraries. These buildings were architecturally arranged for the purpose of
nurturing domesticated science. Knowledge was centralized in the library and the academic
scientific tools and methods had gained one of the highest values in the world of the construction
of domesticated knowledge. Libraries made it possible to continue building knowledge on the

basis of previous theories. Scientists had become experts with regards to the system of
compiling theories. Theology had also enthroned the library as a main laboratory to develop
philosophical ideas. The built environment was sheltering and shaping the theological
enterprise. Liberation theologies challenged that structure of knowledge with emphasis on praxis
and context.
4.5.1. Praxis-reflection and human domestication
Theology, like science, had fallen into the hands of experts. It was then the privilege and
the obligation of the theologian to defend, explain, and create theology. From their
observatories, many times just plain research cubicles or school offices, such influential
theologians were able to diagnostic the misery and glory of the world and prescribe their
theological remedies and endorsement. Latin American theologians challenged that dominant
academicism in theology and argued that the practice of theology was not only important but that
it was primary to reflection. These Latin American theologians had adopted that insight from
academic and popular sources, including materialist readings of history that advocated the
formation of vanguards to advance the cause of the proletariat as opposed to that of the burgesses
and owners of the means of production. The most fundamental function of such vanguards was
the praxis of the proletariat struggle. Through praxis, the vanguards advanced the cause of the
proletariat in the history of the struggle between classes. They were to lead the struggle through
practicing it.
Latin American theologians argued that theology had a similar component of praxis.
Reflection, if any, was possible only after theological practice had been incarnated by the
theologian. Speculation as a theological manoeuvre was limited to refer to previous theological
praxis. Personal involvement was then a prerequisite to theological reflection. The notion of

commitment regained plateau in the plethora of theology. Theology was intended to comeback
to its roots among the people, in particular among the poor, whom they argued represented the
theological locus. Given its experience and first hand knowledge in domination and oppression,
the poor was considered in a position of privilege to read history and scriptures. Latin American
theologians considered the poor in a position of privilege to maintain the dialogue between the
two stories: the scriptural narrative and that of their present domination.
The notion of human domestication makes yet another contribution. Highlighting the
preponderant value of practicing belief, Latin American theologies had become relevant
protagonists of one of the most important confrontations in recent theology by challenging
dominant theology to displace the pre-eminence of academicism in theology. However, the
dichotomy between praxis and reflection had remained untouched. This dualist approach to
theology is symptomatic of the condition established by the built environment. Architecture
makes it possible to have one life inside and another outside the building. But practice and
reflection are one single theological momentum. Theology belongs to the human enterprise that
ought to be a wholistic life expression.
Theological traditions also differ from each other by being sheltered in particular built
environments. Theology itself has been sheltered and disintegrated by the built environment.
The architectural constructions that house the different currents in theology embody specific
theological theories and understandings. Walls, pillars, entrances, doors, halls, ceilings, altars,
windows, roofs, shrines, locations, directions, statuses, monuments, naves, sanctuaries, domes,
frescos, mosaics, paintings, tombs, icons, cupolas, ovals, stain glasses, plaques, inscriptions, bell
towers, crescents, anchors, pews, galleries, chapels, kneelers, baptisteries, catechumens, gates,
porches, narthexes, floors, etc. embody and represent distinctive theological theories reflecting

diverse versions of domesticated spirituality. Theology has been done mainly in such
architectural places like modern complex temples, monasteries, and faculties of theology. The
notion of human domestication alerts about the inadequacy of differing theological currents and
compartmentalized theology.
Modern theology, like any other modern human domesticated enterprise, reflects and
reinforces domestication, which characterizes by compartmentalizing life, whether
anthropologically, cosmologically, socially, or ecologically. The built environment divides by
erecting separators and creating closed environments that alienate organisms from each other.
The most typical rational to support such approach to doing science and theology alleges the
benefits of specializing in narrow areas, given the argued inability of humans to embrace the
whole body of scientific and theological knowledge. This rational maintains that it is more
accurate and practical to focus in specific matters than to address the whole theological
endeavour.
Theology, often proud itself of looking at the big picture, reflects the compartmentalized
ontology of domesticated humans. Thanks to the built environment, the human grew up
alienated from the larger ecological environment. Further intensification in the building of
housing and other socially institutionalized constructions breed the human up alienated from
each other. Human cosmology became a domesticated cosmology reflecting and interpreting the
world through the lenses of the built environment. Humans were no longer able to perceive the
cosmos directly but through the instruments interposed by the built environment. Theology
developed both as a sectarian practice and as a human disintegrated enterprise. In any event,
theology has fallen into this human domesticated deceiving cycle.

Theologies like traditions replicate the house. Houses constitute an alternative reality. It
consists of a modified reality. This reality manifests modified human reality. It may seem real,
however it is artificial; but then it becomes real, it becomes the norm. Feminists have identified
a similar issue of deception in patriarchal ideology. The deceptive threat the house poses
represents a natural universe; however it constitutes a human device. It presents nature in human
terms, yet when confronted with the outside of the house that presentation is revealed deceiving
the interpreter. The house constitutes a virtual reality. As the house hijacks and hides humans
from nature and society at large, the house establishes misleading structures and functions for
humans. Such conditions replicate at the anthropological, social, ecological, and cosmological
levels.
Compared to the outside, the house enforces a fictitious environment, supporting virtual
lives disengaged from natural dynamics. Theology as a domesticated version of spirituality
reflects and reinforces the disintegrated condition of the domesticated human. The human itself
grew up compartmentalized internally, anthropologically. In sharp contrast, the wild human was
able to experience life in a more wholistic way than the domesticated human does. The
domesticated human was able to separate and specialise its ontology, subdividing it in different
aspects and dimensions. The domesticated human was then able to do and think in separate
moments and places. Theology as a human domesticated commodity reflects and reinforces this
dualistic and disjunctive characteristic of domesticated human ontology. Domesticated theology
is able to do and then reflect theologically or vice versa.
Non-domesticated human theology would be done by non-domesticated humans.
Undomesticated theology would reflect a wholistic human ontology. Theology ought to be done
in one single continuous movement of time-space. Non-domesticated theology is action and

reflection at the same time-space. Every localized-momentum reflecting theologically as
separate localized-momentum acting theologically represents wasted localized-momentums to
live spiritually. Every wasted momentum represents dysphasic or inapprehensive living lapsus
between action and reflection. This lapsus is, first, an unrecoverable lapse of life required for
survival and the fulfilment of life, and second, a luxury that the average un-domesticated human
could not and would not be interested to afford. Non-domesticated humans would be too busy
living.
Such lapsus worsens with the advent of written theology. The idea of spending time
writing and reading theology makes sense in a society with low appreciation of interaction.
There is neither academicism nor activism in non-domesticated theology. A wild theological
human lives with its whole being every instant and everywhere. This idea obviously blows up
the domesticated mind. Theology as we know it reflects the domesticated human condition and
characterizes by the impossibility to reflect undomesticated. Un-domesticated theology would
not require architectural constructions to be done; actually, it would consider the built
environment an impediment to spirituality. The dichotomy action-reflection is possible in the
domesticated built human reality.
4.5.2. Context and human domestication
Christian theology should take into account—as it has been articulated by many scholars,
including theologians—the context in which it emerges. Latin American theologies, along other
theologies, also embraced the idea that texts emerge within larger texts which have been
denominated contexts. Christian theology emerges in the context of human domestication and in
response to the human domesticating enterprise.

Reflecting theological readings from other religions, particularly Hinduism, Latin
American theologians argued that the poor represents the theological locus. The poor not only
holds the hermeneutical key to unwrap the theological content historically accumulated in the
scriptures but to understand the living context of modern humans. Theology is then
commissioned to enhance the dialogue between the scriptural and the living experiential contexts
by reading them through the eyes of the poor.
These theologies understood both the historically accumulated scriptural and the
experiential present contexts as describing conditions of domination and oppression and
prescribing a Christian notion of salvation interpreted as liberation. As contextual theologies
realized the different ramifications or expressions of such liberation, different focuses were
developed along the dominant domains of race, economics, gender, and ecology. Ultimately the
theological method was influenced to incorporate the value of context in the theological
equation.
Theology was challenged to deal with a context that was interpreted both as socially and
ecologically oppressive. Theology was challenged to face direct accusations. Marxist scholars
poignantly criticized the religious tradition as embodying the superstructural ideological opium
of the people. Lynn White, Jr., issued a successful accusation against the Judeo-Christian
tradition as the root cause of the ecological crisis. The context was moved beyond the social to
the ecological.
Early Christians, like Saint Francis of Assisi, had addressed ecological concerns in line
with the Pauline preoccupation with the crying of the earth subjected to bondage. These
expressions had been raised among other religions, e.g., Jainism, who took their deeply radical
ecological call to the point of sweeping the floor avoiding to step on insects. Many Christian

theories and projects ranging from superficial to deep ecologies have emerged in recent eco-
theological revivals intending to respond to Marx and White.
The notion of human domestication suggests a further refinement to the notion of context
in the theological method. The theological context is also a context of domestication. Theology
must take into account the influence of the built environment which refers to domestication. The
liberation argued by contextual theologies involves the emancipation from the condition of
domination imposed by the built environment on humans and ecological environments at large.
Liberation fails incomplete neglectig the domesticating conditioning of the built environment.
As a chief expression of domination on earth, theology ought to address domestication. The
domestication context involves social and ecological domination. The built environment
segregates and establishes social human strata. The built environment penetrates, controls, and
destroys the larger ecological environment. To abolish domestication in its general expression
would imply the elimination of the built environment at all. Domesticated humans disconnect
and disengage from the larger social and ecological environments.
4.6. THEOLOGY AND INTENSIFIED HUMAN DOMESTICATION
No Christian theological or scriptural insight challenges domination via domestication,
but there are insights that address the intensification of domestication and its most scandalous
extremes, e.g., slavery, poverty, misogyny, and extinction. The religious mode emerges as a
domesticated corrective to the elaborated domestic. It seems symptomatic that the Judeo-
Christian mode deals with the deficiencies represented by the central institutions of the domestic
condition.
The Christian version of the Jewish mode of spirituality emerged both in continuity and
discontinuity with its ancestral Jewish religion. Christianity disputes the scandal of

domestication. Some Christian scriptural and theological topics that explicitly relate to human
domestication address the intensification of domination via the built environment.
4.6.1. Loving the neighbor
The notion of loving the neighbor is perhaps one of the most recurrent elements with
respect to human domestication in the Christian scriptures (Zechariah 8:17; Matthew 19:19;
Mark 12:33; Luke 10:27; Romans 13:9). The neighbor as we know it is only possible in the
context of human domestication. In fact, the neighbor is one of the first products of the built
environment. While the ordinary house and the ordinary human reflect the palace and the king,
the house functions as a kingly fortress beside other fortresses. Ordinary kings and queens find
themselves at the midst of the kingship arena.
This dialectic separate-closeness feature introduced by buildings facilitates the
emergence of competing interests, the formation of different ideological views and personal
characters, and the intricacies of constant social interaction and intervention. The Jewish
tradition elaborated a religious-legal system addressing disputes and rivalries among neighbors.
The Jewish were taught no to covet the possessions of the neighbor (Exodus 20:17).
Accumulation of possessions was not discouraged and there was no limit to possessions, both of
humans and of things in general. If any limit it would be the amount of land or the size of the
house where the possessions were stored. The people coveted the possessions of the king. This
is implied in the context of worrying about food and clothing. The gospel mentions that
“Solomon in all his splendour” was not dressed like one of the lilies in the field (Matthew 6:28-
2). King David coveted Bathsheba, Uriah‟s wife (2 Samuel 11-12). Of course, the king coveted
some other things: lands, animals, treasures, slaves, kingdoms, etc.

The two main features of a domesticated society are monopoly and to follow the leader.
The ever expanding border, ever accumulation, constant reaching out to include, characterizes
domesticity. The domesticated domesticating leader is easy to follow. The extravagant grandeur
of the built environment makes the leader imposingly visible and present everywhere, all the
time. What would be of a domestic leader without buildings? Would be like an official without
uniform. Ultimately, domesticated leaders compete to monopolize leadership, power. Unable to
dethrone it, the rest follow the leader.
Attention to the neighbor carries the dialectic character of religion in general and
Christianity in particular, namely, to hold together the reality of the neighbor and to address the
extremes of that reality. The Christian way to deal with possessions is to accumulate them in
heaven (Matthew 6:19-20). This will avoid rust and thieves. Eventually, in order do not store
treasures on earth would include possessing neither of both: the store itself, best symbolized by
the house, and the treasures.
Disputes are everyday features of domestic neighbors. The Jewish were taught to avoid
revenge (Leviticus 19:18). A society that endorses revenge would eventually exterminate itself.
In order to maintain the order established by the leader, it is the leader who names the truth. The
leader exemplifies compassion. The leader administers justice. The leader establishes peace.
Christian even loves the enemy (Luke 6:27-36). Rarely a person hates a remote enemy.
Neighbors get along well, even though they may hold reservations against each other. As friends
do, whether compromised or liberally, neighbors support each other. Loving the neighbor may
come along rather easily. But good typical neighbors entrench in their refuges and from their
house-fortress they spay, provoke, and envy each other. As things escalate, good typical

neighbors may eventually become enemies. Loving the neighboring enemy is rather difficult.
Christianity makes perhaps the most challenging call to domesticated societies loving the enemy.
4.6.2. Loving the stranger
The built environment, the house in particular, instantly produces the stranger. As
humans close themselves in their private houses, the rest becomes stranger. Jewish and the
Christians encourage domestic hospitality or hosting the stranger. Strangers are usually aliens
from distant places, different cities, or visitors from remote regions. The great Jewish legend Job
is praised for hosting the stranger (Job 31:32). The biblical narrative sees the condition of the
stranger as a non-desirable social disadvantages (Jeremiah 14:8). The Christian gospel
characterizes divine judgment in terms of taking care of the stranger (Matthew 25:35).
According to Christians, blessed are those who welcome and protect the stranger of domesticated
humanity. Among the Christian community of believers the stranger as a notion disappears:
“you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God‟s people and members of
God‟s household.”7
The Christian community prefers to become a whole social body of
strangers to the world.
To love both the neighbor and the stranger is a Christian cornerstone. Thinking of
neighbor is only possible in the context of human domestication. That the Judeo-Christian mode
refers to human relationships regarding the neighbor, property, privacy, enemy, ideology,
animals, plants, the land and its borders indicates the domestication mode as the context of
reference where the Judeo-Christian narrative and practice emerge. Jesus cleanses the temple of
vendors, saying, “„My house will be a house of prayer‟; but you have made it „a den of robbers‟”
(Luke 19:46; Mark 11:17). The “house” (domestic) juxtaposed the “den,” synonym of “cave”
(nomad). The revealed heaven as a city characterized by houses and streets seems possible only
7
Ephesians 2:19, NIV.

within a context of the human domestication via the human built environment. Only
domesticated humans could imagine it. Arguably, a divinely revealed conception of the heaven
for nomads would not be characterized by houses and streets. This implies, as sustained by
many theologians, the biblical revelation as contextual. One of the specifics of such a context
refers to human domestication.
4.7. MYSTIC SPIRITUALITY
The discussion in this section does not usurp an analysis on mystic spirituality. It calls attention
to mystic spirituality and how it relates to the influence human domestication presents to
Christian theology. Mystic spirituality represents a concrete response to domesticated religion.
Theology suffers from a generalized neglect of mystic spirituality.8
This neglect permeates
dogmatic and confessional Christian theologies, clearer in recent contextual Christian theologies.
To face human and planetary realities seems so shocking that most Christian theologians
“rightly” focus acutely on the physical realm. This preoccupation is nurtured by the strong
scientific and materialist critiques, as well as by the insidious and pervasive inability Christianity
exhibits coping with critique.
The mystic represents a sense of the wild to the present domesticated world. Since recent
Christian theological concern focuses on life “here and now,” input from other realms, such as
the mystic, are often neglected. But they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The temptation
consists in mutually neglect them in a debate of immanent and transcendent divinity. Some
apologetic tendencies preconceive transcendence as something needing and having to be proved.
The tradition “faith seeking understanding” (Fides quaerens intellectum) often turns out to be
8
Lee identifies a similar neglect in “the cosmic dimension” (186). Lee points out, based on Berry‟s
notions, and speaks of “spiritual code,” “cultural code,” and “genetic code” (191). Jai-Don Lee, Towards an Asian
Ecotheology in the Context of Thomas Berry’s Cosmology: A Critical Inquiry (Th.D. diss., University of St.
Michael‟s College and the University of Toronto, 2004).

“belief giving explanation.”9
Indoctrination often means domination. Preconception frequently
overpowers revelation. It is understandable that new cosmologists seek to depart from a fixation
on divine transcendence as an independent ontology to follow a more heuristic comprehension of
universal realities. A recovery of the mystic may be one of Thomas Berry‟s main purposes.10
Pseudo-mysticism compromises with political understandings of transcendence.
Christian theology inherited an obscure aspect of philosophy that feeds on mental disparities and
busily attests to what structuralists refer to as increasing complexities of abstract intellectual
dynamics. The here-and-now focus mutually enrich with metaphysical mysticism, increasingly
recognized by scientific empiricism. Empirical mysticism challenges notions of mystery limited
to pure speculation arising from human ignorance and fear. It distinguishes from mysticisms
emerging from mystery, epistemological intuition, or materialistic human incantation mingled
with physical and esthetical arrangement. A worldly mysticism emerging from experience or
personal knowledge, metaphysical yet scientifically assessable in character, a kind of
metaphysical empirical mysticism, presents a meaningful alternative to human domestication,
indeed to human extinction.11
Donald D. Evans speaks of spiritual awareness by resonance.12
He learned to resonate
with spiritual presences (beings). He considers empirical research on spiritual resonance. He
acknowledges other forms of spiritual insight, but self-understands, recognized by Native and
9
Medieval philosopher, theologian, and Archbishop of Canterbury, founder of Scholasticism, Saint Anselm
Cantuariensis (of Canterbury) (1033/4-1109) promoted the notion “faith seeking understanding” through his
Proslogium (A Discourse). It refers to demonstrating the existence of God via ontological argumentation based on
sensibility (sensibilis). Vitruvius Pollio, 1st cent. BCE. De Architectura: Vitruvio Ferrarese: La Prima Versione
Illustrata (Modena: F. C. Panini, 2004); and Indra Kagis McEwen, Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003);
10
Berry, The Dream of the Earth, Ibid, 211.
11
In his Emeritus speech, referring to his mystical transformative experiences, Evans claims, “I have no
doubt whatsoever that there is life after death, for every day I experience the presence of people who have passed
on.” Don Evans, Life After Death: Reflections on Experiences (the Fifth Annual Edith Bruce Lecture; 23 October
2003, sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and the Centre for the Study of Religion, University of Toronto).
12
Donald D. Evans is emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto.

other spiritual leaders claiming similar experiences and abilities, a healer or shaman. This kind
of mystical claim is supported by an increasingly growing research on near-death experiences
and paranormal extra-sensorial practice, largely neglected by scientific research until recently.
Shamans alike Jewish prophets exhibit the ability to perceive beyond the social conventions, and
when having the courage, they deliver messages to deal with the wrong doings of humans.
Evans has been researching this mystical spirituality for about three decades. Though some
traditions may have emerged from similar kinds of mysticisms or spiritual awareness,
institutionalized humans domesticate such mystical experiences.
Mystic illumination relates to the call from the wildness in Christian theology.13
It assists
us to appreciate what “giants of faith” invoke, while the “prophetic spirit” may gain renewed
value. The dynamics of life reveal the futility of mere Christian theological argumentation and
activism. Compared to religious spirituality and sceptic scientific materialism, empirical
mysticism represents a wild religious expression as opposed to domestic religion. Empirical
mysticism interprets a religious tendency which practices spirituality unbounded by the built
environment. Mystical empirical spirituality is self evident where humans simply participate as
witness. It represents a metaphysical spiritual approach in the face of Homo domesticus.
4.8. HOMO DOMESTIC THEOLOGICAL ETHICS
My main interest was to explore the influence of the notion of human domestication to
the general Christian critique of domination, but here I would like to offer some ideas regarding
ethics. Two key elements in order to address the notion of ethics in the context of human
domestication: the city as a political enterprise and society as resulting from leadership. Towns,
13
The Christian mystic movement of the middle ages and the so-called Renaissance movement of sixteen-
century Europe were particularly stimulated by the Christian philosopher and theologian Aurelius Augustinus,
Augustine of Hippo, or Saint Augustine (354-430). His idea of “illumination” is of particular importance.
Augustine affirmed “Christ is the teacher within us.” William E. Mann, ed., Augustine’s Confessions: Critical
Essays (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006), xii and 240.

cities, and countries are the product of domesticated leaders. They take the land, bring and breed
the people, and put the society together. Leaders settle their subject followers charge them to
built homes and keep charging them for using the land. It was clearer with the European
invasion of the Americas. Led by their royal families, so-called explorers took the land,
dominated, exterminated, and expelled the Natives, brought peoples from other regions, and built
imperial extensions across the oceans. Kingship traditions classically define domestication.
Countries that proud themselves to lead the world politically, socially, militarily, technologically,
and economically continue to tribute and vow their submission to royal family traditions
considered obsolete in many parts of the world. No surprisingly, commonly, people are of
particular cities. It is not the city that belongs to the people but the people who belongs to the
city. Cities have owners, the city of… Last names and names often identify the city‟s owner.
After all they built it. It belongs to them, including its people.
Leaders continue to build cities. Large corporations built mega-plants and built entire
populations around them. They build hotels and stadiums captivating the domesticated human
love for leisure. They build convention centers to centralize and disseminate human
domesticated knowledge. They build subdivisions and create domesticated neighborhoods.
Domestication indelibly contributes to cement social relationships via leadership in the city.
Domestication makes it possible to speak of pastors and flocks.
Human herding has been practiced since ancient times. For Plato, “no two people are
born exactly alike. There are innate differences which fit them for different occupations.”14
He
applies the notions of superiority and inferiority to humans: “good men are unwilling to rule.”15
14
Republic of Plato, Francis McDonald Cornford, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941), 56.
15
Ibid, 29.

Good (divine16
) humans opt for ruling when facing the possibility of being ruled by inferior
humans. Appealing to molding the character and physique of the young,17
Plato expands on his
strategy to rise up the “really noble Guardian of our commonwealth.”18
Gloucon…you keep sporting dogs and a great many game birds at your house; and there
is something about their mating and breeding that you must have noticed…though they
[animals] may all be of good stock, are there not some that turn out to be better than the
rest?... Are you not careful to breed from the best so far as you can [rather than all
indiscriminately]? Yes. And from those in their prime, rather than very young or the
very old? Yes. Otherwise, the stock of your birds or dogs would deteriorate very much,
wouldn‟t it? It would…we shall need consummate skill in our Rulers, if it is also true of
the human race.19
If we are to keep our flock at the highest pitch of excellence, there should be as
many unions of the best sexes, and as few of the inferior, as possible, and…only the
offspring of the better unions should be kept…no one but the Rulers must know how all
this is being effected; otherwise our herd of Guardians may become rebellious.20
Plato‟s dream is particularly fulfilled in the city. The modern pastor and its flock live in
the city. The city breeds Plato‟s Guardians and its most precious subjects.
Aristotle speaks of the naturalness of master and slave:21
“For the slave by nature is
someone who has the power of belonging to another (which is why in fact he does belong to
another) and who shares reason sufficiently to perceive it but not to have it.”22
Likewise, small
settlements are fulfilled in the city: “For the city is the goal of those communities and nature is a
goal.”23
Aristotle inverts the equation: the city is nature, not artificial. The city is then the dream
of nature. City is political, like humans, but for Aristotle, they are better tamed: “For neither
among the other animals nor among the nations do we see courage accompanying those of them
16
Ibid, 71.
17
Ibid, 68.
18
Ibid, 66.
19
Ibid, 158.
20
Ibis, 160.
21
The Politics of Aristotle, Peter L. Phillips Simpson, trans. (Chapel Hill and London: The University of
North Carolina Press, 1997), 9.
22
Ibid, 16.
23
Ibid, 11.

that are wildest but rather those of them that are tamer and more lion like in character.”24
Hence
culture perfects nature: “For all art and education aim to fill up what nature has left wanting.”25
Ideological conditioning superimposes on the already domesticated humans, right from their
beginning, from birth, as Aristotle explains: “For in the case of anything capable of habituation,
it is better to get it habituated, though gradually, right from the start.”26
For nature, as we say, makes nothing in vain, and humans are the only animals who
possess reasoned speech.27
A possession is a tool for the purposes of life, property is a multitude of such
tools, and the slave is a living possession. Also, every assistant is, as it were, a tool for
tools.28
The tame animals are better in nature than the wild ones, and it is better for the
former all to be ruled by humans because thus they are preserved. In addition, the
relation of the male to the female is by nature that of better to worse and ruler to ruled.29
Politics happens in the city, the conglomerate of domesticated humans who follow their
leader framed by the massive built environment. Urban humans would rightly feel living and
behaving in a mega-zoo.
Livingston questions the extent to which “leader” and “follower” represent cultural
inventions. Domestication (taming) became the archetypal pattern for social subordination.
Herd management of domestic animals mirrored interventionist and manipulative politics.
Loyalty, docility, and obedience to a considerate master became exemplary for employees,
epitomized by the paternal model headed by the good shepherd ruler, like the bishop carrying his
pastoral staff. Given the history of ruling techniques, legitimated by philosophical
argumentation, as domestication advances methodologies of domination, discourses, ideologies,
and technologies of leadership become sophisticated.
24
Ibid, 158.
25
Ibid, 152.
26
Ibid, 150.
27
Ibid, 11.
28
Ibid, 14.
29
Ibid, 16.

Further sophistication in methodologies of leadership surfaces as technology develops.
Intensification in domesticating methodology can be perceived in the current level of chemical,
biological, and physical modification of humans according to certain human-designed features.
Cultural methodologies condition humans to certain ethnologies. Chirurgical procedures mold
humans to fit particular physiologies. Ideologies and academic faculties enforce particular
psychologies. The in-vitro revolution mature artificially conceived embryos. Genetic
engineering designs embryos. Spatial expeditions explore the domestication of outer space.
Cryonics clients seek immortality by preserving their corpses frozen while science finds cures to
their sickness in the future. While the media and the Internet enforce a virtual life within private
homes, within just decades, artificial intelligence may par human intelligence. Such trends
continue to expand and change rapidly; all made possible by human domestication.
Recognizing human domestication implies a profound revision of human interpretations
of histories, present realities, and future visions; a revision compared to that issued by post-
modernists and post-structuralists regarding language, ideology, and discourse.30
Such revision
avoids constructive and reconstructive intents for they suffer a crucial impasse, given the human
domesticated condition. Post-modernist and post-structuralist efforts actually represent re-
modernist and re-structuralist movements.31
Post-modernist and post-structuralist critiques
30
Hughes insists, “The important thing about consciousness raising and the process leading up to Freire‟s
conscientization is that they are a means to social change” [Kate Pritchard Hughes, “Liberation? Domestication?
Freire and Feminism in the University,” Convergence 31, no. 1-2 (1998): 137].
31
Jewish-American historian and philosopher of science Thomas Samuel Kuhn (1922-1996) developed the
notion of “paradigm shift”: the periodic revolutions undergone by science toward truth, as opposed to its normal
periods or “normal science” (day-to-day science), rather than the notion of science as evolving gradually. A
difference of Algerian Marxist philosopher Louis Pierre Althuser (1918-1990), who conceived science as
cumulative, though discontinuous, and developed the notion of “epistemological break,” Kuhn considered the
incommensurability of various paradigms. Kuhn substituted “exemplars” for “paradigm” to refer to the foundational
problem-solutions examples a scientist is expected to know in his/her discipline. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions, 2nd
ed. 1st
ed. 1962 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); and Louis Althuser,
“Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly
Review Press, 1971).

recreate notions of collage or mixing perspectives, what structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss
denominated “bricolage”:
Like science…the game produces events by means of a structure… Rites and
myths…like „bricolage‟…take to pieces and reconstruct sets of events…and use them as
so many indestructible pieces for structural patterns in which they serve alternatively as
ends or means.32
Like bricolage, the quest for a new human being, as many theorists argue, fails in great
part because every such quest starts with a conditioned domesticated human being. Even Berry‟s
correction, recovering the earth and the universe as the primary teachers, finds itself truncated in
the face of the domesticated human who processes and domesticates the teaching. Advocating
for imagination, for artistic and transcendentalist solutions, seems insufficient. The arts and
imaginations of humans refer to arts and imaginations of domesticated beings. Human arts refer
to domesticated arts and imagination. The situation certainly concerns human ontology.
Ethics reflects architecture conditioning human ontology. Whether as individual or as
species, domestication exercises influence on humans at the foundational level of the human
experience: ontology. Unlike taming and ideology, awareness does not constitutes
undomestication. Domesticated humans characterize by a distorted ability of being that
undermines their ability to imagine, perceive and intuit, identified at the sensorial, intellectual,
and spiritual dimensions. Such a distortion is projected in the social and ecological human
enterprise. What domesticated humans may appreciate in any sense, under the influence of
architecture, it may certainly refer to the contrary. Architecture shapes the distorted human
search for origin by domesticated ontology. Undertaking this architectural search assumes
recognizing being influenced by the distorted condition of domesticated human ontology.
Architectural enterprise obscures human ontology promoting a distorted domesticated human
32
Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1962), 33.

search for origin. A distorted search informs the human ability to value in its decision making
process. Domesticated human ethical decisions are informed by the built environment in search
for origin.
The human search for origin shadows the history of architecture. Florentine Renaissance
humanist (Gian Francesco) Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459) rediscovered in 1414 the earliest
surviving work on architecture by Roman architect Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (80/70-25 B.C.E.?),
De Architectura (The Ten Books of Architecture). Vitruvius in Rome, the Kaogongji in China,
and Vaastu Shastra in India wrote some of the most ancient known canons in architecture. For
Vitruvius, architecture must exhibit firmitas (strength, structure), utilitas (usefulness, function),
venustas (beauty, aesthetic). Ancient architectural orders (Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian) saw to
perfect the understanding of proportions. The Vitruvian Man, made famous by a drawing by
Italian Renaissance Roman Catholic Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (1452-1519), refers to the
proportions of the human body, the greatest work of art, inscribed in the geometric patterns of
the cosmic order: the circle and the square. Vitruvius, proposing the Sacred Geometry of
Pythagoras, designed architectural projects, particularly temples, using the proportions of the
body as pattern. Pythagorian tradition maintains that the circle refers to the spiritual realm, while
the square to the material one. Vitruvius considered these body proportions to be perfect, since
the extended limbs of a perfectly proportioned human by fitting both within a circle and a square,
perfectly combined in one body both the spiritual and material realms. Like other species that
built shelters (e.g., bird‟s nests), hence, for Vitruvius, architecture imitates nature.33
33
Vitruvius Pollio, 1st
century B.C.E., De Architectura: Vitruvio Ferrarese: La Prima Versione Illustrata
(Modena: F. C. Panini, 2004); Vitruvius Pollio, De Architectura (Vitruvius: Ten Books on Architecture), trans.
Ingrid D. Rowland (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); and Indra Kagis McEwen, Vitruvius: Writing
the Body of Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003).

Human ontology is architectural human artificial construction that imitates nature.
Domesticated human ontology is designed and built by artificial humans. Human domesticated
ethics belongs to human domesticated ontology. Domesticated humans deal with the recovery of
their lost “natural” human ontology. They pursue a search for their original state, which
substantially refers to a pre-domesticated state. This search involves explorations into their
social arrangement and ecological functioning. Domestic human longing is a yearning of diverse
expressions and characteristics. Human domesticated ethics happens in the city, where political
leadership leads its flock on the pastures of further domestication.
Politics refers to the ethics of the polis, the domestic or domesticated realm. In the polis,
human herding occurs at grand scale. Current planning of urbanization represents the most
ambitious project of rapidly expanding human domestication in history. Present urbanization,
the birth of metro-polis, mega-cities, refers to increasing sophistication and intensification of
human domestication. Human domesticated ethics is the product of domesticated humans
primarily herded in the city. Politics as the ethics of the polis embodies the ethics of the modern
domesticated human being. The polis as a social body embodies a living organism that feels,
thinks, believes, and hopes. Cities follow life cycles; they are born, grew up, decline, and die.
One can identify the hearth of the city, its lungs, mind, circulatory and respiratory systems, but
particularly it skeletal structure: the built environment. The built polis behaves ethically.
Plato conceived a political philosophy pregnant of a complex class structure. He
described the constitution of democracy observing a series of degradations starting by the top
(monarchical) class until reaching the bottom (common people) class. Berry identifies other two
levels of base societies: the earthly ecological society, and the universal cosmological society.

He advocates a geocracy or geocentrism and biocentrism: a biocracy:34
“I consider democracy a
conspiracy of humans against the natural world… We need a North American constitution that
would include all the components of the North American continent.” It holds on “a spiritual
discipline that involves a change from our anthropocentrism to a biocentrism and a
geocentrism.”35
Instead of humans accommodating to their natural environments, housed
humans accommodate it to themselves; the main point of anti-anthropocentrism, and indeed of
any anti-centrism. In essence, invocations to biocentrisim and geocentrism, eloquent and
appealing as they might seem may fall in a similar trap.36
But they search for decentralized
societies or at least take a larger and grounded context into view.37
The architectural domestication of humans represents a reversal rather than a progressive
dimension in human emergence. This reversal is also an ethical regression. To borrow Michael
Cremo‟s category, domestication presents a phase of devolution in human emergence. The built
environment is often interpreted and celebrated as a momentum of greatness in human
civilization. But the Paleolithic-Neolithic transition represents a period on human emergence
accentuating how human things went wrong.
The ethical interpretation of Christian love to the neighbor, the enemy, and the stranger
can be considered in four dimensions, namely, true, mercy, justice, and peace. Christians are
called to be truthful believers who practice mercy, do justice, and strive for peace. Historically,
34
Thomas Berry, Befriending the Earth: A Theology of Reconciliation Between Humans and the Earth /
Thomas Berry in Dialogue With Thomas Clarke (Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Publications, 1991), 39, 42, and 149.
35
Ibid, 42.
36
From another perspective, will geocentrism imply a kind of anti-Copernican revolution?
37
Lee tends to arrive to a similar conclusion. Lee notes three historical Christian theological shifts:
theocentric in the Middle Ages, anthropocentric in the modern age, and cosmo-centric in the twenty-first century.
Lee cautions, from a notion of balance as opposed to exaggeration, “But overemphasis [noted in Berry‟s writing] on
the cosmic will leave other aspects unattended” (168). Lee naively believes that balance avoids exaggeration,
distortion, and critical misunderstandings (169). Balance represents in itself an exaggeration. Reality seems to
behave more as a dynamic change. At the end Lee advocates a “change from anthropocentrism to eco-centrism”
(183). Jai-Don Lee, “Towards an Asian Ecotheology in the Context of Thomas Berry‟s Cosmology: A Critical
Inquiry” (Th.D. diss., University of St. Michael‟s College and the University of Toronto, 2004).

diverse traditions have diversified along the lines of these loving dimensions. Traditions have
often focused on one or two dimensions neglecting the others. Some traditions have emphasized
the dimension of truth. This acute focusing have often developed into emphasis of personal
affairs that characterizes the true believer. This kind of personal theology has neglected issues of
justice and peace. Similarly, other traditions have interpreted love as being merciful and
compassionate. They have established different kinds of charities seeking to address human and
even ecological miseries. Their emphasis consists in alleviating pain. Other Christian traditions
have taken the herald of justice. They have seen to expose the powers of this world, denouncing
the injustice against humans, plants, animals, and the earth in general. Traditions following these
tendencies have often opted for violent means in their intents to establish justice on earth. Other
traditions have followed the path of peace as their key way to interpret the Christian love. In
their intent for bringing reconciliation among humans and between humans and their ecological
environment, they advocate for the use of dialogue and other peaceful means to pursue a blessed
and tranquil life. In this process they have neglected to address the root causes of injustice.
Each tradition in its own way has advanced the ethical dimensions of interpreting the
Christian love. Unfortunately, because of their narrow compartmentalized approach and focus
they have ended up distorting the love theoretically advocated by Christianity. Architecture
captures and reinforces each one of these emphases. A non-domesticated approach would
present a more wholistic approach to love. Nomad societies, for instance, would not preoccupy
themselves about the intricacies of theological argumentation or ethical practice. They would
simply be ethical. They love.
The most preponderant marker of human domesticated ethics is the imitation of nature
within a social world far from constituting a natural entity made up of artificiality, where value

decisions are made based on leadership and followership. The leader defines love. It names the
truth, institutes compassion, administers justice, and enforces peace. Domesticated humans
follow their loving (truthful, merciful, just, and peaceful) leader. One extreme of the
domesticated human condition surfaces as city dwellers feel natural.
The notion of the “good shepherd” (Psalms 23; John 10:11-14) acquires its most
messianic and challenging connotation in the resigning king who endures torture and is publicly
exposed as a religious-political criminal hanging assassinated on a cross outside the city
(Hebrews 13:12; 1 Kings 21:13), where poli-tics, the ethics of the polis (city-state), refers to the
ethics of urban domesticated humans.
4.8. REMARKS ON THEOLOGY AND HOMO DOMESTICUS
Christian theology enhances aware that domestication plays an important role in the
development of domination. Humanity, including its affairs, is domesticated through the built
environment. Theology is part of the problem and of the solution. A consideration of human
domestication via the built environment is clearly absent in Christian theology. The works
explored in this thesis critique domination based on ideology. Dominated beings, particularly
humans, internalize racism (ethnocentrism), patriarchy (androcentrism or sexism), classism
(elitism), and anthropocentrism (egocentrism). Such internalizations represent centrist taming
ideologies. While ideology replicates and reinforces domestication, domestication primarily
relates to the influence of architecture or the built environment.
Ideology represents a taming technique. Racism victimizes Blacks via social systems
(e.g., slavery and apartheid). Elites have marginalized and exploited the poor since earliest
times. Women suffer patriarchal victimization. Eco-systems undergo industrial exploitation to
the point of extinction. All these mechanisms or methods of domination rely on the power of

ideology to condition (tame), which mutually replicates and reinforces the domesticating
condition established through the built environment. Theology both replicates domestication and
critiques its scandalous extremes.
The notion of human domestication advances the Christian theological critique of
domination by exploring the influence of architecture, housing, and the built environment on
humans. Humans undergo similar conditioning to that suffered by animals and plants, submitted
via domestication. While humans have devised ideologies to self deceive referring to
domesticated plants and animals as opposed to domestic humans, they all share the same
condition. Aware of reducing overwhelmingly complex and ever-unfolding realities to a single
method, uncovering human domestication renders “centrism” as incompatible to planet earth.
Along diverse models, epistemologies, and hermeneutics, it offers an angle to study the condition
of human cosmology, anthropology, sociology, and ecology. Humans are domesticated. Human
un-domestication seems unviable, impossible. To produce un-domesticated methods, readings,
and conclusions would be a fallacy. Christian theologians and Christian theology, including this
thesis, represent but the exception to domestication.
Human domestication embodoies the different structures and functions in which humans
are forced to live. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834) focused on reproduction and predicted
that human population would outrun food supply, implying a decrease in food per capita. Karl
Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) focused on production and observed the main characteristics of
human history in terms of class struggle, the opposition between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat.38
While Malthus saw increasing human struggle for food, Marx thought that
38
Hribal argues about the contribution animals have made to the agricultural and industrial revolutions. He
contends that the working class has been treated as domestic animals and animals as workers: “By the beginning of
the 19th century, the majority of the English commons had been enclosed and privatized” [Jason Hribal, “„Animals
Are Part of the Working Class”: A Challenge to Labor History,” Labor History 44, no. 4 (November 2003): 435].

capitalism would eventually naturally face the point of decay where proletarians will rise and
establish socialism.
Sheltering normally fulfills a basic human living need. It represents, however, a created
need. Architecture is often seen more as a fulfilled need than as a historical development. The
house is a historical human elaboration. Architect Amos Rapoport, discussing the determinant
influence of culture and society on the house, asserts: “In general, one could argue that modern
symbols related to the house are as strong as those of the past, and still take precedence over
physical aspects—they are only different.”39
Present society enjoys reduced physical constraints
(low criticality), which means more possibilities or choices: “We can do much more than was
possible in the past… However, we act as though criticality were high and close fit to physical
„function‟ were essential.”40
Such is the overwhelming domesticating power. Domestication
apparently makes life easier, but ends up complicating survival. Berry makes a similar point:
“There exists in our tradition a hidden rage against those inner as well as outer forces that create
limits on our activities.”41
Housing, rather than fulfilling, complicates human needs.
The greatest contribution of theology regarding the critique of domination refers to
challenging ideologies of domination mainly based on race, gender, class, and ecological biases.
Theology addresses the intensification of human domestication which reveals the anti-social and
anti-ecological excesses resulting from the domesticating influence of the built environment.
Theology until now neither acknowledges nor addresses human domestication per se. To
eliminate domestication would imply eliminating the built environment at all. Otherwise
humans are Homo domesticus.
39
Amos Rapoport, House Form and Culture (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1969), 133.
40
Rapoport, Ibid, 135.
41
Berry, The Great Work, Ibid, 67.

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