Transhumanism and the Image of God: Today’s Technology and the Future of Christian Discipleship
by Jacob Shatzer
IVP Academic, 2019
192 pages (paperback), $22.00
February 1999 Christianity Today magazine cover featured “The New Theologians” with a capture of N. T. Wright, Ellen Charry, Miroslav Volf, Kevin Vanhoozer, and Richard B. Hayes—new theologians who were top scholars with something important to say to the church. But that was twenty years ago, and these same theologians—now established and significant contributors—have broached their sixties and seventies. Not so “new” anymore. But there is a crop of truly new theologians emerging who are entering the orbit of James K. A. Smith and Michael Bird. These would include Kelly Kapic, Adam Francisco, Jonathan Linebaugh, Jordan Cooper, Korey Maas, and now Jacob Shatzer, author of Transhumanism and the Image of God.
Shatzer, who has a doctorate from Marquette University, is an excellent writer possessing a keen philosophical mind with theological acumen. These skills are applied to taking what at first blush may seem to be intimidating topics—transhumanism and posthumanism—and rendering them altogether interesting and establishing their relevance as an ongoing phenomenon and concern, making Transhumanism and the Image of God a timely call to understanding and action.
Complementing Alan Noble’s Disruptive Witness: Speaking Truth in a Distracted Age (Intervarsity Press, 2018), Shatzer presents a more in-depth view and a big-picture analysis of technology’s impact on human living, thinking, and habits, with a calm voice and plausible proposals.
The author sets the stage by presenting posthumanism and transhumanism as related philosophical movements tied closely to the optimistic promises of technology to advance the next phase(s) of human evolution. Posthumanism argues that there is a next stage in human evolution, wherein humans become posthuman because of our interaction with and connection to technology. On the other hand, transhumanism promotes values connected to this change, providing the thinking and method for posthumanism.
The upshot is a technosocial community where present and future communities are formed and informed in thought and habits derived from technological principles and values. But do not be mistaken: Transhumanism is not value-neutral, merely a matter of advancing technology and reaping its benefits. Posthumanism is an agenda. It is a worldview, one in which supernaturalism is rejected and Darwinianism and scientific positivism are extolled. The engine of posthuman agenda—transhumanism—involves faith in technology to vastly expand the capabilities of humans. This is to say, transhumanism entails a values-specific life philosophy that is decidedly nontheological and it rejects biblical anthropology. It is an intellectual and cultural movement saturating nearly every dimension of modern human living, normalizing the logic of “morphological freedom,” which celebrates the possibility of radically altering human nature via technology, as a fundamental individual right (over against community priorities). In short, as a faith-based worldview, it is an ideological competitor with Christianity.
Shatzer observes that much of modern technology tends toward a transhuman future—a future created by the next stage of evolution (the posthuman), moving beyond what it currently means to be human. This has ethical implications for the church. He notes how personal electronic devices and various platforms encourage and shape us toward certain goals—goals for which these devices and platforms were made. But are these goals, he asks, agreeable to the kingdom of God and to what it means to be created and, through regeneration, recreated in the image of God?
Shaping people is another way of talking about discipleship and mentorship, indoctrination, and habituation. The church, cautions Shatzer, should concern itself not only with our technological future but also with our technosocial future—a future defined by how our evolving technological powers become embedded in coevolving habits, values, doctrines, and institutions. The church should be mindful of the challenge of employing technology, without being shaped into “technological people” with technological values, especially where such values—the values of transhumanism and its rationale—may conflict with those of the one holy catholic and apostolic church.
It all seems so wonderful, so innocent, and so positive: the transhumanist movement seeks to improve human intelligence, physical strength, and the five senses by technological means. Who could find that problematic? But, says Shatzer, just as every technology is an invitation to enhance some part of our lives, it is also necessarily an invitation to be drawn away from something else. Since technology is not value-neutral, we must ask what we have been drawn away from and what we are being drawn to.
The author notes three main realms of concern: social networking (identity and relationships), gaming (attention, addiction, and aggression), and search engines (learning and memory). Each of these can bring changes in behavior, performance, and neurological configuration, all of which affect social norms. How do they—along with virtual and augmented realties—affect understanding, engaging, and interpreting the world through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus? If a different anthropology is the starting point of posthumanism, then a different narrative of salvation is going to follow and with it, different goals and values for being human.
Discipleship and churchmanship are also at play. Personal data collection on all devices is aimed at algorithmic behavior modification of its users. Data collection devices (smartphones and computers) are purposed to promote consumerist thinking and habits, as well as a dependency on them for even the basic things of life. It is what they do: they make disciples of tech, not as a community but as individual consumers. What Christians are called to do within the church is to be aware, to exercise awareness—both of technology’s usefulness and lure, its aid and addictiveness, how it helps and how it hurts what it means to be truly human, as opposed to a mere hue in the theoretical spectrum of “humanity” that is now passing away.
There are two concepts related to the technosocial future, according to Shatzer. First, there is our “givenness” to technology; its constant availability (even necessity) makes it increasingly difficult to identify, seek, and secure the ultimate goal of ethics—a life worth choosing, a life lived well (that is, according to the values of pre-transhuman society). The value of present-day humanity is thus ambiguous and undervalued, if not countermanded, by posthumanism. But we don’t really see this. Shatzer, with other scholars, opines that we may have “acute technosocial opacity” (blindness) due to immersion and saturation. Second, we may need to develop “technosocial virtues” to help us see and choose a “future worth wanting.” We must draw on the right resources to develop wisdom in the face of the technology that shapes us. That requires, again, awareness and intentionality in discipleship. Catechesis cannot be passive when technological saturation is always active.
Digital technology has the potential to become the end rather than the means. It has its own lifestyle, and many within the church have uncritically embraced that lifestyle and by implication its ethos and ideas—both of which are antithetical to the way, the truth, and the life. This is the point of contact with discipleship. It begins with “awareness” and continues by employing the mind of Christ and exercising self-control.
Transhumanism and the Image of God warrants the widest possible readership and discussion. It should be read by all pastors, educators, leaders, collegians, and especially parents. Its potential to reorient parental permissiveness concerning their children’s technological saturation and personal device usage cannot be overstated. Technology may be leading us, quite unawares, into a dystopia; but Shatzer’s measured book encourages us to remember that it doesn’t have to be so, at least within the church.
John J. Bombaro (PhD, King’s College, University of London) is the associate director of Theological Education for Eurasia, based at the Rīga Luther Academy in Latvia.
