This comes down to the question, says Gaine, of whether Neanderthals had immortal souls, so we have to look for evidence of that. Since we have no idea whether Neanderthals had immortal souls (indeed, we can’t be sure that anybody else has an immortal soul, since it’s like consciousness), we have to look for proxies for souls. To answer his question of whether Neanderthals are “theologically human” (i.e., whether they had immortal souls), Gaine turns to his hero Aquinas:So were Neanderthals theologically human or not? I think the only way we can approach this question is to ask whether or not Neanderthals had immortal souls, as we do. And so he concludes, without saying so explicitly, that Neanderthals had immortal souls and were save-able by Christ.

Source: Wall Street Journal August 10, 2023 17:40 UTC