[H]umans exhibit a great deal of unnervingly animal behaviour. The search for the human difference – we speak, we laugh, we know that we die and we bury our dead, as opposed to the ‘dumb animals’, etc. – is a fool’s errand. Instead of thumping our chest and proclaiming ourselves just a little less than the angels, entitled to lord it over everything else (Ps. 8:5), we should instead see a graded continuum of analogous behaviours, visible both in the stages of the history of evolution and in the series of transformations from embryo to the mature adult. The human is not opposed to the animal. The human is a particular inflection of the animal, a complex twist taken by certain animals, as when Nietzsche savaged the Christian idea of sin as the product of animals intent on making themselves sick.

Caputo, John D.. Hermeneutics: Facts and Interpretation in the Age of Information (Pelican Books) (pp. 257-258). Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”

Catholic Biblical Association (Great Britain), The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition (New York: National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, 1994), Ge 1:26–28.

Can these viewpoints be reconciled, or can they even meaningfully converse?

Hans-Georg Gadamer would say that these two viewpoints are two distinct "horizons", by which I understand him to mean that they are contexts of meaning or "traditions", that frame and delimit what we can perceive or interpret. We can never "get outside of" these horizons, we are always already situated within them, unable to get at some Kantian "thing-in-itself".

However, If we read these two differing viewpoints together, it will result in what Gadamer calls a "fusion" of horizons. This is a process by which one horizon and another merge not by abstract reason, but by dialogical reason.

Thus within Caputo’s "horizon" there exists a legitimate descent from the modern hubris of absolutism and domination into a more modest, creaturely hermeneutic: humans are within nature’s unfolding play, not standing outside it. If his horizon becomes "merged" with Genesis, however there also appears a consideration that we should be wary of reducing the human to "mere" animality. The human is animal, but also the being who understands, who plays, and who participates in meaning.

From within Caputo’s horizon we learn humility: the human is revealed to be creaturely and continuous with nature. From within the horizon of the Genesis story we learn dignity: the human becomes the bearer of meaning and responsibility. Thus through a conversation, through Gadamer's dialogical reasoning and fusion of these two horizons, a new understanding of the human can emerge: a human being is not necessarily “a little less than the angels,” but neither is he merely “a clever animal” either. Rather, the human is the animal who nevertheless understands the world as gift and as language, the animal who names.

In Gadamer's dialogical reasoning Caputo purifies theology from triumphalism and anthropocentrism, but Genesis rescues Caputo’s view from nihilism by affirming that our animality is beloved and called. Humanity is both animal and imago Dei: the creature through whom matter becomes self-aware, responsible, and capable of love. Evolution tells the story of our becoming; Genesis names the meaning of that story. Caputo shows what we are; Genesis shows what we are for.

What is important here is not only this particular result from this particular reading, but to comprehend what, for Gadamer is distinctive about it - it is an example of what understanding is: it is neither one's present horizon, nor the "past" horizon, but a fusion of both of them. Only from the process of dialog within such a fusion can any understanding whatsoever occur. The "fusion" of horizons is human understanding. Thus "truth" is not an object waiting to be discovered, it is rather an event, a dialogical event between finite, historical beings, contexts, points of view and horizons. Neither is the goal of hermeneutics perfect or pure objectivity, but participation in the conversation of meaning that binds history together.