Introduction

After the field-shaping ambition of Origin of Species, Charles Darwin turned to a humble milieu for his final publication in 1881. He analyzed how earthworms not only adapted to soil but modified soil to suit themselves. Earthworms therefore passed an altered habitat to descendants, who could maintain elements of their freshwater physiology while making a home in the earth. Darwin chose an unassuming title—The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms with Observations on Their Habits. Nevertheless, his study continues to inform twenty-first-century debates over critical questions in evolutionary biology (see Odling-Smee 2024, 101; Laland, Odling-Smee, and Feldman 2019, 128; Wray et al. 2014).

Taking the lead from Darwin, Niche Construction Theory (NCT) identifies how organisms’ modification of their environments can alter natural selection pressures on both their own and other species. Its proponents claim that it goes beyond standard evolutionary theory in that it “recognizes a role for organisms as imposing a bias on selection through systematically shaping the properties of selective environments” (Laland, Odling-Smee, and Feldman 2019, 127; Kendal, Tehrani, and Odling-Smee 2011). Such shaping can occur through organisms’ artifacts, learned activities, environment-changing byproducts, and relocations (see Laland, Odling-Smee, and Feldman 2019, 129–30; Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 419). In brief, the organism’s niche is not only the physical environment to which it adapts but “the way it makes a living” (Fuentes 2017, 10).

NCT has generated productive controversy in the sciences, especially as it has been taken up in the proposal of an extended evolutionary synthesis. Points of contention range over empirical questions regarding epigenetic inheritance, historical depictions of the modern synthesis, and philosophical issues about evolutionary process. Given this complexity, Tim Lewens (2019, 707–21) proposes that biologists make “cross-cutting assessments” about discrete components of the extended evolutionary synthesis and turn to more ground-level research rather than programmatic statements. Other disciplines that have adopted NCT, including biological anthropology and archaeology, are making their own critical analyses of NCT nomenclature (e.g., Spengler 2021). Given the relative independence of disciplines, it is important to avoid misconceptions (see West, El Mouden, and Gardner 2011).

This article engages with scientific accounts of niche construction for the purposes of theological and ethical reflection on the question of agency—an aspect of NCT identified as central to recent debates (Laland, Odling-Smee, and Feldman 2019, 127). While there are contextual scientific concerns over explorations of creatures’ agency as an aspect of evolutionary process, I agree that it is healthy to engage in dialectical exchange over alternative accounts (see Laland, Odling-Smee, and Feldman 2019, 134; cf. Levins and Lewontin 1985). As a theologian, I recognize the integrity and in-principle completeness of scientific explanation within its own domain (Fergusson 2018, 201). That said, the domain of science, including its demarcation from religion, is historically constructed and contingent (Harrison 2015). Given the present disciplinary configuration, this essay can be seen as contributing an “interpretive layer” to scientific accounts on the basis of theological-ethical convictions (Deane-Drummond 2018, 255).

Theological and ethical engagement is important in light of the considerable power of human niche construction. In a seminal monograph in the development of NCT, human beings are deemed the “ultimate niche constructors” given our use of language and the advantages that come from cumulative culture (Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 28). That sense of ultimacy is reinforced as we become increasingly aware of the effects of our large-scale modifications of the world, at once creative and destructive (Burtynsky 2018). When taken up beyond disciplined scientific description, NCT has been invoked for inflated claims about how humans create their world, obviating reference to divine agency or suggesting a kind of parity with God. Lisa Sideris (2022, 234) identifies the rise of an “Anthropocene dogma” that leads her to ask what it means for “this particular narrative of the self-aware, world-creating human to be holding sway at precisely this moment, when it seems that restraint and humility—reining-in rather than naturalizing our power—seems warranted.”

While I am sympathetic with Sideris’s concerns, it is worth further exploring what it means to “naturalize” human powers. Although NCT can be used to highlight humanity’s exceptional status, it can also identify continuities with other organisms’ habits of niche construction. It is therefore instructive for theologians who, along with scientists, recognize the importance of “collective responsibility for the custodianship of life on earth” (Odling-Smee 2024, 331). Our contribution to that endeavor involves adapting accounts of a God who is distinct from natural processes yet provides the resources to sustain mortal life (pace Odling-Smee 2024, 329–31).

Theological accounts of the sciences that emphasize human agency often draw on the notion that humans are “co-creators” with God (e.g., Hefner, Roberts, and Turk 2022, 50). This claim can be seen as a variation on the notion of divine–creaturely concurrence (concursus), to use the terms of Protestant scholasticism. While I acknowledge the compelling power of the concursus, I argue that it is best deployed with reference to a fuller account of divine providence. In light of the destructive effects of human niche construction, it is vital that the concursus be ethically conditioned with respect to the conservatio—the divine sustaining of creatures’ lives by means of their environments. In turn, NCT offers insights into how the conservatio takes place, insofar as those environments are brought about through the creative behavior of organisms.

The article proceeds in two parts, the first focused on science and the second on theological ethics. In the first part, I briefly recount the development of NCT and identify some of its salient features for my argument: that ecosystems are “superconstructions” of several organisms, that niche construction also involves destruction, and that “ecological inheritance” ought to be considered alongside genetic transmission in evolutionary accounts. I then highlight the question of agency and consider the ambivalence expressed over the ultimacy of human niche construction. As a segue to the theological and ethical material, I highlight Kevin Lala’s evocative statement that human beings are “creatures of their own making.”¹ I also reference an Indigenous account that illumines the significance of our neighboring creatures in building a shared world.

In the second part, I turn to theological ethics in light of the science, asking how human niche construction can proceed in more sustainable ways. That is to say, how might we conceive of our work in a given environment in order to better ensure that life—both our coming generations and those of other species—can go on? My argument is that as a penultimate endeavor, human niche construction can take part in God’s sustaining orders for creaturely life. I begin by demonstrating how the concurrence between divine and creaturely agencies is integrally related to the divine sustaining, drawing on modern Lutheran and Reformed theologies. I then show how NCT can modify theological accounts that speak of how God sustains life by means of the environment. In light of this reality, I propose a theologically informed account of our co-construction, with other creatures and with future generations, of a livable world.

Making a Shared World: Scientific Accounts of Niche Construction

As creatures make themselves at home in the world, they modify the physical environment in ways that can provide fitness benefits to others. Northern flickers are seen as “keystone engineers” for their excavation of tree cavities to use as nests, cavities which then function as niches that several other species rely on for their own reproduction (Martin, Aitken, and Wiebe 2004; Wiebe et al. 2020). Yet, as ecologists recognize, any modification of a local habitat will benefit some species that are adapted to that niche at the expense of those species that are not. The built environment of beavers provides an attractive environment for woodpeckers and herons, as well as plankton and microbial life in the water. In creating this environment, beavers also cut down trees and flood land, destroying the habitats of others. Leila Philip (2022, 9, 25) refers to them as “forest shiva” who are active “putting into motion cycles of growth and regrowth, creation through destruction.”

Beavers’ modifications of the environment are often referenced in the literature surrounding NCT. Beavers have been called “ecosystem engineers” because of the way their dams profoundly alter the landscape and waterways (Jones et al. 1994). They are also an example of the extended phenotype—the expression of genes beyond the body of a given animal. Using the example of beavers building dams and lodges, Richard Dawkins ([1982] 2016, 304–6, 355–56) claims that extended phenotypes can reach several miles—“the distance separating the extreme margins of a beaver lake from the genes for whose survival it is an adaptation.” Yet Dawkins’s view was still considered restrictive by proponents of NCT, and at this point, we can see the beginnings of a proposed extension to standard evolutionary theory. F. John Odling-Smee, Kevin N. Laland, and Marcus W. Feldman (2003, 30) argue that the change in selective environment carries implications for “the fitness of other genotypes, at other genetic loci,” observing that a beaver’s niche construction alters many selective pressures, which are “likely to feed back to affect the fitness of genes that are expressed in quite different traits, such as their teeth, tails, feeding behavior, susceptibility to predation, diseases, life-history strategies, and social systems.”

Thinking of how environments are passed down the generations, NCT proposes “ecological inheritance” as akin to the way humans pass down land and property. Offspring “inherit two legacies from their ancestors: genes and a modified selective environment” (Laland et al. 2011, 116). Distinct from genetic transmission, which takes place once from parents to offspring, ecological inheritance can pass between generations throughout organisms’ lifetimes and can even pass between neighboring species (Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 13–15).

NCT has become part of a proposed extended evolutionary synthesis that considers the fuller role of ecological inheritance in evolutionary process (see Pigliucci, Müller, and Lorenz 2010). The extended evolutionary synthesis carries forward several emphases from the modern synthesis but calls for an extension insofar as organisms’ development and agency tend to be “black-boxed” by a focus on genes and dismissal of “soft inheritance” (Jablonka and Lamb 2020, 76). Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb (2020, 12) write that a more “development- and organism-centred view” would acknowledge that “[a]cquired morphological and behavioural features can be perpetuated by descendants because they are reconstructed developmentally in the environmental niche their ancestors bequeathed to them.”

The question of agency is a key reason for the controversy around NCT. Laland, Odling-Smee, and Feldman (2019, 132) describe agency as a key indicator of a living organism: “Organisms are self-building, self-regulating, highly integrating, functioning, and (crucially) ‘purposive’ wholes, which through wholly natural processes exert a distinctive influence and a degree of control over their own activities, outputs, and local environments.” By “purposive,” they mean acting in ways consistent with biological function such as acquiring resources, avoiding stress, and reproducing (Laland, Odling-Smee, and Feldman 2019, 132). The claim to purposiveness relates to thermodynamics, specifically the work required of organisms who must preserve their out-of-equilibrium status by exchanging energy and matter with their surroundings (Odling-Smee 2024, 3–14). This activity cannot be random if it is to “provide organisms with a basis for sustained life” (Laland, Odling-Smee, and Feldman 2019, 143–45, 147; cf. Schrödinger 1944).

NCT proposes to cast new light on the evolutionary significance of human work, from the introduction of agriculture to the ongoing development of tools and technologies. “The defining characteristic of niche construction is not the modification of environments per se,” write Jeremy Kendal, Jamshid J. Tehrani, and John Odling-Smee (2011, 785), “but rather the organism-induced changes in selection pressures in environments.” Two key examples are given for how human activity leads to modified environments that in turn direct selection: 1) dairy farming has led to selection for alleles that allow lactose tolerance, 2) field-clearing agricultural practices have contributed to an increase in standing water, which means a rise in malaria-bearing mosquitoes, and so, in turn, selection for sickle-cell alleles that confer resistance to the disease (Laland 2017, 215–22).

As NCT shows, humans are not merely reactive to their environments; they proactively construct their own niche and so, in turn, “make” themselves. In Laland’s (2017, 30) memorable phrasing, humans are “creatures of their own making.” Read in context, Laland is drawing a contrast to the way extrinsic conditions such as climate, predation, or disease “make” species by calling forth adaptive responses. The plural pronoun is crucial here, for Laland (2017, 30) emphasizes how teaching and other forms of social transmission made for the evolution of human minds. Because humans draw on a wealth of cultural knowledge with which to manage environments and increase their carrying capacity, they are deemed “champions of niche construction” (Laland 2017, 190, 247). Laland (2017, 233) marvels at the aesthetic symmetry between human work and its environment: “Human minds and human environments have been engaged in a long-standing, intimate exchange of information, mediated by reciprocal bouts of niche construction and natural selection, leaving each beautifully fashioned in the other’s image.”

This symmetry comes, in part, though an unprecedented regulation of the environment humans inhabit. As Laland (2017, 234–35) observes, humans have experienced three broad eras of adaptive evolution: 1) the dominance of biological evolution, which involved adapting to the conditions of life as would any other creature; 2) the ascendancy of gene-culture coevolution, in which cultural activities drew out morphological change; and 3) the dominance of cultural evolution, which biological evolution now trails behind. This is not to say that natural selection no longer operates—the process is “relentless”—but it can be mitigated or reversed by cultural transmission (Laland 2017, 215, 228). Culture can thus reinforce itself—it becomes “autocatalytic”—while at the same time losing its attunement to biological evolution as it is experienced by other species.

The modification of habitats in the service of one species also causes them to become less suitable for a range of other species. Laland (2017, 235) admits that human niche construction is a “runaway process;” we are moving at “breakneck speed” in an “express-train transformation” to which other species cannot adapt in time and will likely thus go extinct. He also refers to “a disconcertingly long history of biodiversity destruction” in humanity’s “evolutionary wake” (Laland 2017, 262–63). “When our ancestors first devised agriculture,” he states, “they opened up a Pandora’s box, and let loose the evil of the Anthropocene” (Laland 2017, 262–63). Laland’s judgments about over humanity’s distinct capacity for destruction are not always recognized by his critics (see Sideris 2022, 234).

My interest is not in making a case for, or against, human exceptionalism. The scale at which humans “make a living,” and the self-consciousness with which we do it, is said to set our species apart—hence the proposal that we live in the “Anthropocene.” Yet, our habits of making now threaten to undo us. I therefore ask how humans can use their formidable cognitive and cultural powers to co-construct environments that better sustain life—both our own and that of our neighboring species.

Here, I recall the insight, expressed early in NCT, that human work is part of the “superconstruction” that is a given environment, which consists of the contributions of “a multitude of constituent organisms” (Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 335). The oxygenation of Earth by cyanobacteria is only one of several prehuman instances of niche construction that has made it possible for us to live (see Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 54). Yet, broadly speaking, the theoretical underdevelopment of humanity’s relationship to other creatures remains a barrier to more effectively addressing the reality of anthropogenic climate change (Gardiner 2011).

Indigenous knowledge has long recognized other creatures’ role in making a shared habitat. Take the story of the Great Beaver (Ktsi Amiskw), as told by the Algonquin people. This beaver’s stature calls to mind the Castorioides ohioensis, a species of beaver as large as a bear, that populated North America during the Pleistocene. Algonquin accounts tell of a Great Beaver who constructs a formidable dam, flooding a nearby valley, and affecting the agricultural land of the tree people living there. The people appeal to Obbamakwa, the shaper-creator, who confronts the Great Beaver, leading to a drawn-out struggle that shapes the cliffs and waterways of North America’s eastern seaboard and Great Lakes (Philip 2022, xiii–xv, 179).

The Algonquin account acknowledges the significant role of beavers in constructing a continent. There was a time when an estimated sixty to four hundred million beavers lived in North America, which meant they would have affected the physical form and functioning of the ecosystem within every continental watershed. The story also underlines the importance of one’s relations in a given environment, issuing a warning about human habits of disregard (Philip 2022, 257). Humans have often seen beavers as either a nuisance or a commodity. By nearly driving them to extinction, we contributed to the “great drying” of wetlands and the degradation of river systems (Philip 2022, 195–96).

Water has become increasingly important in our era of drought and wildfires, of atmospheric rivers and widespread flooding. In the late eighteenth century, Thomas Malthus raised concerns about population growth given the availability of arable land; today, a central issue is the availability of fresh water. The ecosystem services provided by beavers will be increasingly vital in this new reality. Meanwhile, studying beavers’ constructive activities can help us “think like a watershed,” in a recent variation of a land ethic (Philip 2022, 219). In order to envision more such sustainable forms of niche construction, I turn to the work of theological ethics.

Penultimate Niche Constructors: Human Work in God’s Sustaining Orders

Theologians have long set human work apart from that of other creatures. In an influential Catholic encyclical, the pope writes that “[w]ork is one of the characteristics that distinguishes man from the rest of creatures, whose activity for sustaining their lives cannot be called work” (John Paul II [1981] 2016, 380). The context for this claim is a personalist account that describes work as a means of self-fulfillment. In theology–science discourse, humans are given the distinctive category of being co-creators. Philip Hefner (1993, 27) conditions this status: humans are created co-creators in order “to be the agency, acting in freedom, to birth the future that is most wholesome for the nature that has birthed us.” Nevertheless, the focus remains on human creative power, which others have taken up without so carefully situating our work within natural processes (e.g., Novak 1996, 176; 1982, 39).

Rather than beginning from the notion that humans are co-creators with God, this article works from Laland’s evocative claim that humans are “creatures of their own making.” As noted, this is a scientific claim about human agency vis-à-vis extrinsic conditions. Interpreting the phrase theologically, I would say that although we did not create ourselves, we take part in “making” ourselves as the creatures we always already are. Such a lexical–theological distinction is present in the Hebrew terms of Genesis 1: bara (to create), a term used of God alone, and asa’ (to make), a term used of both humans and God. In Darwin’s early reception, the term “making” was employed in this dual sense as theologians expressed how the understanding of the Creator’s ways had expanded. “We knew of old that God was so wise that He could make all things,” states Charles Kingsley (1874), “but behold, He is so much wiser than even that, that He can make all things make themselves.”.

The notion that creation plays a role in making Earth increasingly habitable is intimated in Jewish and Christian scriptures. In Genesis, the Creator speaks in such a way that invites the earth and the waters to “bring forth” life (see Genesis 1:11–12, 1:20–21). This intermediary role was identified by early Christian theologians such as Augustine (2002, 5.4.11, compare Davison 2020, 187n7), who observes that in the biblical account, “the earth brought forth the crops and trees causally, in the sense that it received the power of bringing them forth.” Significantly, this observation suggests a gradation of agency in the environment itself. Approaching these texts from an evolutionary perspective, we can say that selection pressures on organisms are determined, in part, by the composition of the climate and particular habitats, including the influence of cosmic rays and even comets.

While God’s speech remains the ultimate causal factor in the Genesis account, with the environment in an intermediary role, creatures are also given the agency to “bring forth” niches that accommodate life—both their own life and that of others. NCT can further our understanding of this causal role played by living organisms. Andrew Davison (2020, 187–88) marks the difference in our understanding from that of earlier theologians who proceeded from environment to organism:

We now recognise that this also operates in the opposite direction, with the organisms bringing forth their habitation. In an important sense, plants have brought forth “land,” or soil (acting in concert with fungi and bacteria, insects, snails, and worms). Creatures, likewise, first in the sea, and later also on land, produced the oxygen that would go on to allow for complex organisms: in biblical language, these creatures brought forth the “sky.”

That said, it is difficult for any individual organism to conceive of how large-scale, population-level changes will come about and affect the coming generations. “Purposive” creaturely agency is limited and proximate. Such environmental modifications can also be seen to introduce greater unpredictability into evolutionary processes, which still require God’s governance in order to be life-giving.

From a theological perspective, I would therefore challenge the claim that humans are the ultimate niche constructors. Of course, scientists who use this phrase are situating humanity with reference to other organisms and environmental factors. Yet, their claim is then adopted by theological treatments (e.g., Davison 2020, 182). Michael Burdett (2020, 159–60, 176) confirms this status in his case for humanity as the “functional image of God,” which is to say that God has “devolved” power to humanity for the “productive transformation” of the whole Earth. He maintains this position while simultaneously acknowledging that humanity has failed not only in a “venial, ethical” sense but at the “very core of what makes us theologically human” (Burdett 2020, 160, 177). But given his account of human ultimacy, he does not undertake a more thorough reenvisioning of human work vis-à-vis the constructive activity of other creatures in the providence of God.

With reference to the Creator, I argue that human niche construction can be better described as penultimate. Niels Henrik Gregersen (2017, 579) welcomes NCT’s emphasis on agency, which he employs to challenge theologies that would control “creaturely self-development” or jeopardize “the self-organizing powers of creaturely existence.” He also affirms how NCT calls attention to the effects of the “wider ecospace” in which gene-transmission occurs (Gregersen 2017, 566). Nevertheless, Gregersen (2017, 584; cf. Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman 2003, 28) claims that human niche construction can only ever be “penultimate”—a slight but significant modification to the frequently repeated claim that humans are the ultimate niche constructors.

Employing the ultimate-penultimate distinction better distinguishes the works of God from those of creatures. In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s work ([1949] 2009, 151), penultimacy identifies human life with regard to the ultimacy of divine speech and action. For Bonhoeffer, being human is a penultimate stance, sustained in its own integrity. Humans may perform “visible, creative activity on the greatest scale,” yet such action is always answerable to the Creator who acts with renewing ultimacy in the world (Bonhoeffer [1949] 2009, 161). This is the same Creator who actively sustains creation in its existence, both with respect to the nothingness out of which it was drawn and the fallenness to which it would succumb.

While human activity is only ever penultimate, it can still take part in God’s sustaining work. In Bonhoeffer’s ([1932] 2012) earlier writings, he identifies human governance and the economy as God’s “preservation orders” [Erhaltungsordnungen]. These are the means through which God sustains life toward its new creation in Christ (Bonhoeffer [1932] 2012, 364). Bonhoeffer is offering an alternative to contemporaries’ use of “creation orders,” in part to acknowledge that humans have a constructive role in the orders, so they can break and reshape them if necessary. Yet Bonhoeffer is obviously making a point about continuity with his guiding criterion: the orders are in place for the purpose of preserving life. His own immediate frame of reference was the threat of international conflict, whereas I have deployed the notion in response to what has been called the “sixth extinction”—the widespread loss of species due in part to anthropogenic causes (Robinson 2023).

Reference to the divine sustaining brings us to the doctrine of providence, which is the wider purview with which I engage niche construction. Protestant scholasticism offers a three-fold account of providence, referring to the divine preserving (praeservatio/conservatio), accompanying (concursus), and governance (gubernatio) of created life. Theological engagements with the sciences on the topic of creaturely agency tend to offer a variation on the “concurrence” (concursus) between divine and creaturely action. This is how I would situate accounts that humans are “co-creators” with God. Yet the term “co-creators” can be deployed without due qualifications, suggesting a parity with God and the exercise of creativity without recognition for planetary boundaries. These problems arise when our creative agency is emphasized without reference to God’s purpose of sustaining life.

As niche construction also involves destruction, we need a theological-ethical account that goes beyond our creative capacities. In Protestant scholastic terms, it is time to locate and ethically condition the concurrence (concursus) between divine and human activity with respect to the divine sustaining (praeservatio/conservatio). Drawing on insights from NCT, I argue that human work can take part in God’s sustaining orders for creaturely life. Insofar as humans act to make and even sustain life, their work remains “penultimate” before the creating and renewing ultimacy of divine action.

To resituate concurrence within a fuller account of divine providence, I turn to the work of Karl Barth, a model of disciplinary “independence” when it comes to the sciences (Barbour 1990, 10–11). This makes his work useful to recover theological convictions that have been lost in the drive for interdisciplinary dialogue or integration. As Barth provides a modern, post-Darwin account of God’s providence, this section complements previous work that engages niche construction from Thomist theology (Davison 2020). There is some continuity between these traditions: as Barth (1960, 98) notes, Reformed and Lutheran theologies critically adopt insights from Aquinas in their accounts of providence.

A key insight I draw from Barth’s theology is that the praeservatio is the basis for the concursus. For Barth (1960, 63), “the divine preserving [das göttliche Erhalten]” includes “the individual by his human and cosmic environment; and every creaturely thing by its environment and according to the particular order of that environment.” There is a difference between creation, in which God acts directly, and preservation, in which God acts indirectly. In both cases, God acts freely, even takes a “delighting or sport” in the work, a freedom that is extended to creatures (Barth 1960, 63). In the case of preservation, God acts “in such a way that creation itself is the means by which it is preserved in being.”

An account of the divine preserving, which is alert to the order of a given environment and its limits, frames Barth’s articulation of divine–human concurrence. Barth (1960, 7–9, 92–93) rejects the idea of “continuous creation,” yet he ventures that God “co-operates” with the creature in the world God has made. He states that with both acts of human will and “the factual contingent action of all created things,” the operation of divine providence “not only does not destroy but rather confirms them in their autonomy” (Barth 1960, 96). Yet, in such autonomy, humans often act in ways that would undermine their prospects at life. “Of all creatures,” Barth (1960, 86) writes, only the human being “seems to have this impossible possibility of repudiating his preservation by God as a preservation within appointed limits.”

If Barth provides a fuller account of divine providence with which to engage NCT, insights from NCT can in turn enrich his account of how God sustains creatures by means of their environment. The term “preservation” is apt given Barth’s emphasis on the order of the environment, which seems fixed. As he writes, “all that the creature needs is the preservation of the context of its being and its own preservation within that context, a context which was created by God in order that the individual might have permanence and stability and continuity within the whole, and the whole within the individual” (Barth 1960, 64). Moreover, the accent is clearly on the provision for creatures by their environments rather than the ways creatures modify and adapt their environments.

Incorporating the work of NCT, along with evolutionary ecology more broadly, can lead to a more dynamic account of habitats, including greater recognition of creaturely agency within them. As Odling-Smee, Laland, and Feldman (2003, 18) write, there is a sense in which “niche-constructing organisms and their environments are, in effect, coevolving, because they are codetermining and codirecting changes in each other.” Laland (2017, 247) observes, “Environments are not fixed as rich or poor; they are dynamic variables, able to change as a result of the activity of potent niche constructors like humans.” That modification has a reciprocal effect on the shape of creaturely life in the coming generations.

To better acknowledge these scientific insights, and yet maintain the importance of the givenness of an environment, I propose an alternative to “preservation,” as employed by Bonhoeffer and Barth, which suggests a continuity more in line with earlier scientific assumptions about species and their habitats, assumptions that carry on even in more recent ecotheologies (see Sideris 2003). In its place, I propose the term “sustaining” in order to convey a more dynamic and reciprocal account of creatures and their environments. As with modern conservation biology, the important thing to preserve is not the species or ecosystem in a certain “fixed” form but the processes that allow a species to keep making itself.²

How then can we co-construct our niche in a way that better sustains the possibilities for life across the generations? How can we work more wisely within our planetary boundaries, even as we acknowledge the greater effectiveness of creaturely agency? Rather than articulating an ethics that sees other creatures and our shared environment as a limit for human creativity, we can see them as guides to our own part in niche construction. The “biomimicry” movement calls for greater attention to the way nature functions as both a model and a measure of human creativity (Dicks 2023; Benyus 2002). A technology such as the solar cell is inspired by the leaf, and new building projects can be appraised for the “ecosystem services” they render. There is an awkwardness to speaking of human work as biomimicry, as humans are always already life, but this discussion can draw our attention to the ways we can co-construct our niche in more sustainable ways. There are several ways the sciences can show us how to situate human activity within the broader phenomenon of work in living systems (see Levin et al. 2011).

Theologians also provide good reasons for recognizing that work is not humanity’s exclusive preserve. In light of NCT, early theological texts are being reread with the understanding that “living things did not inherit a fully habitable planet; they made one” (Davison 2020, 186). And in that work of making, Davison (2020, 200) argues that all creatures might be said to “bear the vestige or trace” of God. Celia Deane-Drummond (2014, 235) affirms NCT for “calling attention to the active agency of creatures.” Drawing on NCT, she employs the notion that humans are the “image of God” by carrying out their role “in all humility with other life forms” (Deane-Drummond 2018, 251). Such contemporary accounts draw on a longstanding faith conviction that humans stand before the Creator in the midst of their fellow creatures. To use the words of a Reformation-era statement of faith, “I believe that God created me along with all that exists” (Luther [1529] 2000, 354).

Conclusion

Darwin spoke about the survival of the fit, which is to say, fit to place (Benyus 2023). NCT has called attention to the fact that a creature’s place is, in part, its own doing. It is tempting to employ such an emphasis on agency as a further indication that humans are “co-creators” with God. Instead, I began from the description of humans as “creatures of their own making,” qualifying the phrase theologically. Read in context, it highlights the creative agency of creatures in evolutionary process: insofar as they modify their environments, they can alter selective pressures on themselves and other species. I have shown how such a description can enrich theological accounts of how creatures are sustained by their environments, providing a more complex account of agency. Nevertheless, I maintain that humans remain creatures of the one Creator; in an important sense, we did not bring ourselves into being. Along with our fellow creatures, we construct habitats in ways that affect the evolution of life for good or ill.

Indeed, an underacknowledged insight of NCT is that niche construction also involves destruction—a reality that has become more pervasive through climate change (see Odling-Smee 2024, 301–8). There is therefore good reason for ambivalence about calling humans the “ultimate niche constructors”—a proximate reference to other organisms but one that can set humanity apart from other creatures while obviating reference to divine action. By way of response, I have designated human work as only ever penultimate before God. I have also drawn on modern Protestant theology to situate creatures’ agency within a fuller account of God’s providence, re-embedding claims about divine–human concurrence within the divine sustaining. I have argued that as a penultimate endeavor, human niche construction can take part in God’s sustaining orders for creaturely life. This is an invitation to co-construct our world in a manner that better allows life, in all its ingenuity, to persist.

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this article were presented at the inaugural conference of the Centre for Science and Faith at the University of Copenhagen in October 2023 and at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (Science, Technology, and Religion Unit) in November 2023. My thanks to participants at both sessions for their helpful comments. I also thank Karen Wiebe as well as the journal’s peer reviewers for their valuable feedback. This publication was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.