Abstract
In this article I propose the initiation of a conversation between biblical interpreters and proponents of transhumanism. Transhumanists recognize that the rapid expansion of technological innovation is changing our understandings of human behavior, thinking, and physical makeup. The vitality of the post/transhumanism debate about human identity suggests that a “biblical conversation” should be part of a larger conversation not only with theologians, but also the social entities who will hold forth on the values of human/machine transformations. It becomes ever more clear that this debate about human identity will be a real issue in the near future since we will undoubtedly improve our technological capacities and geometrically increase our prosthetic capacities, leading to a possible conclusion that the body itself is best understood as a “prosthesis.” For better or worse, Scripture is and will be adduced on both sides of the debate and often in the form of proof-texting rather than actual consideration of the materials. So, it seems not only reasonable but necessary to reopen the idea of how scriptural materials conceive of the body–self relationship. This is happening in some quarters (e.g. Thweatt-Bates, Cyborg Selves), but the use of biblical materials is not particularly strong. Hence, the viability of this project. This is a first foray into that matter and Paul is a good starting place since the question of the human being as an embodied being occupies a place of importance in many of his letters, especially Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and 1 Thessalonians.
Introduction: The claims of transhumanism
We are living in an auspicious moment of our history when the confluence of robotics, nano-technology, neurobiology, and informatics has raised a new set of questions about the human being’s relationship to its technologies. The questions are actually age old, but a new wave of technology and technological advancement has refashioned our senses of them, with our dawning realization that technology is now part of our human makeup, and not simply something we use. 1 This recognition and its implications make apparent that the boundaries between the human and the “non-human” are not as distinct as we pretend. Transhumanism 2 imagines and explores new latitudes and longitudes for these boundaries.
The lead essay of Time Magazine’s February 11, 2013 issue, entitled “Game of Drones,” illustrates the blurriness of those boundaries. After piloting a commercially available drone for a week, the essay’s author, Lev Grossman, observed that A drone isn’t just a tool; when you use it you see and act through it—you inhabit it. It expands the reach of your body and sense in much the same way that the Internet expands your mind … They are, along with smart phones and 3-D printing, one of a handful of genuinely transformative technologies to emerge in the past 10 years. (28)
Conceptions of these transformative technologies are not limited to those already available; they are also predicated on those that will appear in the near future. For example, on Sunday June 1, 2013, The New York Times ran a story about Dmitry Itskov entitled “This Man is Not a Cyborg. Yet.” Itskov is the founder of 2045 Initiative, a foundation that “aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of an individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier. And extending life, including to the point of immortality.” 4
Figures such as Itskov, Ray Kurzweil,
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and Natasha Vita-Moore
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are the public faces of the transhumanist movement. They provide the sensational sound bites that so quickly attract the attention of media outlets.
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However, these are not the only people involved with transhumanism. Philosophers, scientists, medical doctors, engineers, and technologists working in institutions of higher learning, medical research, and engineering labs and institutes dedicated to the future of human existence, all reflect on the issues and problems posed by transhumanism daily.
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As one would expect with any new movement or school of thought, specific definitions of its beliefs, commitments, and philosophical positions are difficult to achieve and open to debate.
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This is certainly true of the transhumanist movement. According to one of its prominent members, Max More, transhumanism is a “life philosophy, an intellectual and cultural movement, and an area of study.” While, “firmly committed to improving the human condition and generally optimistic about our prospects for doing so, transhumanism does not entail any belief in the inevitability of progress nor in a future free of dangers and downsides.” Nevertheless, with the term “Trans-human,” the philosophy emphasizes the way in which transhumanism goes well beyond humanism in both means and ends. Humanism tends to rely exclusively on educational and culture refinement to improve human nature whereas transhumanists want to apply technology to overcome limits imposed by our biological and genetic heritage. Transhumanists regard human nature not as an end in itself, not as perfect, and not as having any claim on our allegiance. Rather, it is just one point along an evolutionary pathway and we can learn to reshape our own nature in ways we deem desirable and valuable. By thoughtfully, carefully, and yet boldly applying technology to ourselves, we can become something no longer accurately described as human—we can become posthuman.
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On the other hand, another of its most eloquent and thoughtful proponents, Nick Bostrom, describes the philosophy as “a loosely defined movement” that developed as an outgrowth of secular humanism and the Enlightenment. It holds that current human nature is improvable through the use of applied science and other rational methods, which may make it possible to increase human health span, extend our intellectual and physical capacities, and give us increased control over our own mental states and moods … Transhumanists promote the view that human enhancement technologies should be made widely available and that individuals should have broad discretion over which of these technologies to apply to themselves.
My engagement with transhumanism mirrors that of N. Katherine Hayles. 12 Along with her, I recognize that the appeal of transhumanism is serious exploration of “the “spiraling dynamic of coevolution” between technology and human development. Like Hayles, I find compelling this recognition of the double helix of technology and biological/social evolution. It is, indeed, as Hayles notes, “virtually irrefutable, applying not only to contemporary humans but also across the Homo sapiens across the eons, shaping the species biologically, psychologically, socially, and economically.” 13 Like Hayles, I have serious qualms about the rhetoric that transhumanists use to describe this, but then again; I have serious qualms about the rhetoric from many Christian responses to transhumanism. Nevertheless, “the transhumanist community is one that is fervently trying to figure out where technogenesis is headed in the contemporary era and what it implies for our future. This is its positive contribution and … why it is worth worrying about.” 14
It is likely that many transhumanist predictions about the capacities of technology to “upload” our minds to other non-biological entities as well as their proposed timelines for building cyborgs are overly optimistic, even so, their observations about the intersection of the human being and its technologies are serious and sound, recognized not only by technologists but by philosophers, ethicists, and theologians. For example, the work of Peter-Paul Verbeek, a Dutch philosopher of technology, has demonstrated that technologies “play a constitutive role in our daily lives … [helping] to shape our actions and experiences … inform our moral decisions, and … affect the quality of our lives … [co-shaping] new practices and ways of living.” 15 Given this fact about our technological selves and lives, Peter M. Scott has insisted that “[w]hat the human is cannot be separated from things and technology; hybridity is not the outworking of the human solus/sola but is the human in processes of becoming with things and by technology,” and as a result of those two considerations, ethicists like Joanna Zylinska believe we need to move away from “for or against” type arguments and to “rethink the mainstream understanding of technology as a tool that can be applied to discrete entities, and consider instead the mutual co-constitution between the entity that gets designated as ‘the human’ and what we call ‘technology’.” 16
These observations make it evident that the questions transhumanism raises are not about whether or not we will continue to integrate technologies into our lives; we will, but about how and to what extent, as well as how this integration will reorient what we are. 17 These are therefore theological questions in the sense that they present questions about the identity of a self, its relationship to its world, its connection to other human beings, and its responsibilities to those entities.
A proposed conversation
In her 2006 article, “On Posthumans, Transhumanism and Cyborgs: Towards a Transhumanist–Christian Conversation,” Heidi Campbell invited the Christian community and the leading voices of the transhumanist movement to a “convivial questioning and recognition of shared desire or belief in a transformed humanity.” 18 Even though Campbell recognized inconsistency and incongruence on both sides, she wanted to avoid the pitfalls that accompany extreme forms of this discussion that identify transhumanists as naïve “technological utopians” and Jewish and Christian theologians as “bioconservatives.” 19
I share her desire and think that the conversations are vital on a number of ethical, religious, and political fronts. 20 As biblical materials play some role in determining the positions taken on these fronts, it seems imperative that biblical interpreters enter the fray. This essay is a first foray into what, I am sure, is a much more involved set of conversations. Because transhumanists seek to understand and, for the most part, desire to enhance our human existence, engaging them in this manner is a proper form of interpreting the New Testament. 21
Campbell identifies three areas for considering these questions: the shared longing for transformation, best understood as a form of eschatology; the place of the human in the world, that is, the relationship of the self to the other; and the proffered ethical frameworks for determining the human participation in the transformation of itself and its environments. She concludes her essay by noting that “[a]t the heart of this exploration are two questions both groups must answer. Who are we? and What do we long to be?” 22
These questions of human identity raised by transhumanism, and identified by Campbell, are precisely those that lie at the heart of the New Testament, as Rudolf Bultmann’s famous dictum made evident: “Every assertion about God is simultaneously an assertion about human beings and vice versa.” 23 There are many places one might enter into the New Testament writings on these questions, but the most extensive treatments are found in Paul’s letters. As Bultmann’s student, and critic, Ernst Käsemann, argued, “In the whole New Testament it is only Paul who expounds what we should call a thoroughly thought-out doctrine of man, although, oddly enough it already became superficial in the hands of his disciples or was even abandoned by them altogether.” 24 Bultmann’s conception of the New Testament message and Käsemann’s assertion both suggest that the Pauline materials are a prime locus for starting Campbell’s proposed conversation.
Preliminary remarks on the difficulty of such a conversation
Numerous factors make a conversation between Paul and the transhumanists complex. In the first instance, transhumanists are not of one stripe and they do not all hold to the same goals or intentions. As we noted above, no single definition of transhumanism exists and, where one is proffered, significant debate among its adherents arises.
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Second, what applies to transhumanism applies (perhaps more so) to conceptions of Paul’s core theological convictions.
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Third, Paul’s anthropology is not a systematic anthropology, but an abstract construction derived from only a few occasional letters, none of which deals with the topic directly.
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Interpreting these letters is itself a complicated matter because the direct and indirect references to the human being are always contextually shaped and reflect Paul’s perceptions of his communities’ contours, as well as their ethical and theological needs.
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The following points delineate the issues for constructing a Pauline anthropology and hence one of the reasons the conversation is complex.
1. For a number of reasons it is not possible to present a complete and systematic Pauline anthropology. 1.1. A full Pauline anthropology is equivalent to creating a Pauline theology because his comments about the human being are connected to and shaped by his understanding of God’s actions in Christ toward human beings and all creation. Obviously, this is beyond the scope of our discussion. 1.2 Second, and a corollary to the first point, a full Pauline anthropology would require an examination of all the terminology Paul uses to describe the human being and its relationships as well as the interconnectedness of those terms. These include: human being (anthrōpos), heart (kardia), spirit (pneuma), flesh (sarx), body (sōma), soul (psychē), “I” (egō), mind (vous), shape/form (eidos, morphē, and schēma), as well as his references to life and death. Moreover, Paul does not always use these terms precisely or keep them distinct, making it even more difficult to construct a complete and consistent anthropology. Paul’s most inclusive term for the human being as an embodied being is sōma, by which he means the whole self, body and spirit, understood as an active reflective subject, even of itself. However, he can and often does use other of the terms in this way, as his use of the terms sōma and sarx in 1 Corinthians 6:13–20 demonstrates. There, sōma is connected with the koilia (stomach), sarx (v. 16), and melē as well as to the Body of Christ. Simply put, Paul often uses these terms synonymously, but without declaring their mutual relations. 1.3 It should also be noted that sarx and pneuma can refer not only to the self, but also to modes of existence or stances taken toward existence and not simply constitutive entities. In this regard they are also understood as spheres of power. Paul frequently indicates these two functions of the terms by the phrase kata sarka or kata pneuma. He does not use the term kata sōma because the human being both has a sōma and is a sōma. To analyze Paul’s notion of the human being, it is therefore necessary to analyze his understanding of the human being as a spiritual entity and, more importantly, to consider the role of God’s spirit in revitalizing that being (e.g. Rom 5:5; 8:2, 5, 9, 15, 26; 1 Cor 2:12; 6:19; 2 Cor 1:22; 3:17–18; 5:5; Gal 4:6; 5:16). 1.4 Further, Paul connects the human being to the cosmic body of Christ (Gal 2:20) and to the corporate body of Christ “the ēkklesia” (Rom 12:5; 1 Cor 12:27). The human being is not therefore an isolated autonomous being. It exists in relationship, both with the Creator and the creation, a point that clarifies why Pauline anthropology is, in effect, Pauline theology. 2. We do not have Paul’s non-contextual theoretical treatise on the nature of the human being, but his attempts to persuade, coax, and educate his congregations to a deeper understanding of their Christian beliefs (this includes the letter to Rome).
Paul refers to the human being directly or indirectly in all of his letters (1 Thess 5:23; Phil 1:20–26; 3:20–21; Gal 2:19–20; 5:13–25; 6:17), but his most extensive discussions occur in Romans and the Corinthian correspondence. However, as a brief overview suggests, even examining those letters and Paul’s remarks demonstrates their contingent nature. In Romans Paul’s remarks revolve around the human condition and God’s irruption into history in order to restore relationship with God (cf. 1:18–32; 5:12–20; 6:12–14; 8:5–8). The Corinthian correspondence moves more directly to the pragmatic connection between Paul’s abstract anthropology and his exhortations to communal ethics. In 1 Corinthians Paul addresses a number of behavioral excesses: divisions and factions within the congregation (chaps. 1–3), sexual immorality (chaps. 5, 6), marriage and sexual intercourse (chap. 7), dietary practices (chaps. 8–10), excessive worship practices (chaps. 11, 12–14), and misconceptions of the resurrection body (chap. 15). Through the process of responding to the Corinthians’ questions it must have become clear to Paul that the root problem affecting all of these behaviors was a faulty conception of the human body and its relationships, because in every instance, he relates the matter specifically to the body, using the terms sōma and sarx (sōma, 6:13, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20; 7:4, 34; 9:27; 11:29–30; 12:12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 27; 13:3; 15:35, 37, 38, 40, 44) (sarx, 5:5; 6:16; 7:28; 15:39, 50). In 2 Corinthians, Paul reflects on the human being, as an embodied human being, especially its fragility and weakness as the means and site of God’s expressed power (chaps. 1, 4–5).
In each of these instances, the conceptions of the human being are conditioned by Paul’s understanding of the contours of the theological questions or ethical concerns raised by miscomprehensions of that power in the present sphere. In other words, Paul did not write on the topic of the human being, but wrote about human beings as they were part of the Christic community. Thus, while I believe that Paul’s anthropology is coherent, it is not consistent in any systematic sense. 29 His positions on matters changed as he interacted with his congregations, and as he determined the particular goals for his letters, especially those dealing with the ideas and the terms of the future and of history’s culminating events. As Hans Dieter Betz suggests, as Paul “became increasingly involved in ongoing controversies about the nature of the human being … when his anthropology changed, it developed in the course of his struggle as he formulated a Christian alternative to the predominant religio-philosophical dualistic anthropology of body and soul.” 30
Thus, Paul’s anthropological remarks do not reflect a finished doctrine but a series of reconceptions of the human being created to strengthen and inform his nascent and fragile communities as they learned to define themselves in relation to the communities and social organizations with which they interacted. In this regard, even though Paul’s specific and particular reflections on the human being may be of limited use today, his manner of constructing these thoughts, that is, his hermeneutics, may be of significant importance for contemporary attempts to engage our own social contexts.
3. Finally, Paul and transhumanists diverge in their fundamental convictions about the human being. 3.1 First and foremost, Paul’s position on the human being is proscribed by his conviction of the sovereignty of God, and the human being can only be understood in terms of its relationship to that God. Hence his arguments always begin and end not with a notion of the human being per se, but with the human being before God. That is, his reflections are not simply about human nature but also the purpose of God for the human being. As a result, the human is not considered to be an independent entity, but one always in relationship to itself, to God, and to the forces of the external world. The human being is thus always a relational being, residing either in relationship to God or to powers inimical to God. Further, as a composite of material and spirit, the human being is part of creation, and its state affects the rest of creation (Rom 8:28). 3.2 The previous comment also affects Paul’s understanding of the human condition. Because the human is not autonomous but is subject to forces beyond its control, it is never an independent entity. In truth, it is radically dependent on God for its existence, but unwilling to accept that reality. It is in rebellion and has damaged its relationship with God. The enmeshed human is thus, to use Paul’s language, under the thrall of Sin and culpable for sins (Rom 1:18–25; 5:6–11:18). It is unavoidably implicated in sin, that is, it is under a power that it cannot escape on its own. The language may be foreign, but Paul is arguing that the human being is a culpable being and that solving its existential dilemma is beyond its control (i.e., it is a historically situated, conditional, and contextual being).
Most transhumanists do not conceive of the human condition in this manner. Instead they attribute a high degree of autonomy to the human and locate humanity’s problems primarily, but not exclusively, with the human being’s physical and mental constrictions. This, in turn, locates radically different notions about the active agent for change. Transhumanists understand that the human being is capable of, and responsible for, its transformation. Paul argues that human beings are responsible for their actions and for a community’s well-being, but he assigns the capacity to achieve these ends solely to the prerogative and power of God (Rom 8:3; 9:16; 2 Cor 1:9; 5:18–19). God exercises this power for redemption through the resurrection of Christ and the bestowal of the Spirit. As Paul conceives this, God thus overcomes the relational breach caused by the force of Death and though physical death is a phenomenal reality, it is not the end of human existence (Rom 8; 1 Cor 15; 1 Thess 4). Thus, Paul’s emphasis on resurrection and the future of the human being is not simply a temporary avoidance of death, but the overcoming of death and the establishment and continuing relationship with God. The combination of Paul’s understanding of a divine sovereignty, the human condition, and God’s display of life power in Christ are the reasons for his eschatological language and orientation. He understands this moment not simply to be one of many historical phenomena but the defining moment of history.
Transhumanists do not allow that this moment has occurred (or likely will occur), but that human beings are, by their nature, participating in an evolution toward an existence that transcends the vagaries of the present biological and finite body, including for some transhumanists the limit of physical death itself. In contrast to a transhumanist belief, Paul attributes this possibility to God alone. Even if human beings could, somehow, overcome physical death, they do not have, nor can they have, the ability or the status to overcome the reality of Death. Moreover, in Paul’s understanding, even through an accelerated form of technogenesis the history of human endeavors or initiatives will not supersede the definitive Christic act of God, for as Paul sees it, “life” is more than continued existence. Thus, the transhumanist desire for prolonged existence does not equate to Paul’s understanding of redemption or eternal existence.
3.3 Finally, in contrast to many transhumanists, Paul insists that the human being is, and must be, an embodied being. Transhumanist perspectives on the human follow more closely a Platonic conception of the primary self as mind/spirit enclosed or imprisoned by a body, while Paul rejects this particular form of anthropological dualism. He does distinguish different aspects of the human and typically understands it as a bipartite entity; however, he does not consider this duality metaphysical but historical.
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His understanding of redemption or freedom, therefore, is not a release of the inner self (soul or spirit) from the body, but a re-embodying of the self as a spiritual being (Rom 8:11, 23).
Paul as conversation partner
In light of these complexities for determining definitively the anthropologies of either Paul or transhumanists, it should be clear that in suggesting a conversation between them, I am not suggesting that Paul is a transhumanist in the modern sense of that term or insisting that transhumanists have a corner on rational arguments about our future. Rather, despite the difficulties outlined above, I am suggesting that an attempt to bring Paul into conversation with transhumanism is worthwhile because through it both interpreters of Paul and transhumanists will: learn more about their own fundamental convictions about human existence, and gain insight into the positions held by each other. My goal is not some grand convergence, but an investigation of overlap and difference that clarifies the values expressed by each. Thus, with the recognition that the conversation is not without limitations, I think that Paul’s reflections on the human being, particularly those that suggest the transitory nature of the empirical body, and transhumanist ideas about changes which lead to a full expression of human existence, allow for a fruitful conversation with transhumanists and that such a conversation reveals the debated boundaries and limits of human existence, enabling us to have a conversation about our future. I base this on two observations.
First, Paul’s expressed ambivalence towards this current empirical human body suggests that he accepts the idea that the human body could and would be transformed into another type of corporeal existence. Nowhere is this clearer than in 1 Cor 15, but the idea is also expressed explicitly in 2 Cor 4, Phil 1 and 3, and 2 Cor 12, and it implicitly undergirds his arguments in Rom 8. This fundamental idea needs closer scrutiny because, while Paul insists that the human being is an embodied human being, he does not believe that the human being’s current form of embodiment defines it (Rom 6:12, 17; 8:26, 31–39). 32 In other words, the dignity of the human being is not located in its present physical form but only in its restored relational state. Therefore, contrary to many of his contemporaries, Paul did not equate the “image of God” (Gen 1:26–27) with the current form of human existence, but with the Christ or the Last Adam (Rom 5:14, 18, see also 1 Cor 15:22, 45—just as the first human, Adam, became a living being [psychē], the Last Adam became a life giving spirit [pneuma]; see also 2 Cor 4:4). In fact, he considers that the human being in its current state has either lost or damaged that image and that it can be restored only through the eschatological action of God in Christ. Thus, Paul does not understand our current bodily existence ultimately to define who we are (Rom 5:12–21; 1 Cor 15:49).
Second, Paul repeatedly expresses his personal desire for a release from his current bodily state (Phil 1:21, 23; 2 Cor 5:2, 4–5; see also Rom 7:24; 8:11, 18–23) and maintains that the current form of the human body (perishable, dishonored, weak, and physical) will be transformed or re-clothed with a non-perishable, glorious, power-laden, immortal spiritual body (1 Cor 15:42–49, 50–57). Typically Paul understands this to occur at the return of Christ (1 Cor 15:51–52; 1 Thess 4:13–17) but he is not always consistent in this, as 1 Thess 4:13–17; 2 Cor 5:1–5; and Phil 1:20–23 suggest. In Philippians, for example, when he was facing the possibility of his execution, Paul opined, It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be put to shame in any way, but that by my speaking with all boldness, Christ will be exalted now as always in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. (1:20–21, NRSV)
In 1 Thess 4:13–17, stressing the totality of the resurrection in order to encourage his young congregation, he does not mention human bodies at all, but rather points to the intimate relationship between believers and the Lord. 33 In this passage once more it is the intimate ongoing relationship of the human with God that is at the core of his hope, not simply the extension of his current human form.
2 Corinthians 4:16–5:10 as a test case
In order to test the possibility of the conversation we can examine Paul’s statements concerning identity and the empirical human body found in 2 Corinthians 4:16–5:10. This is one of the few Pauline passages that speaks intensively of the body/self complex.
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However, the material is neither an anthropology nor a thanatology in the formal sense of those terms. Though Paul’s terminology is similar to that found in Platonic philosophy, he is not writing to reflect directly on the relationship of the soul to the body, nor on the nature of the soul. Rather, this section is part of a larger argument (begun at 2:5) concerning the validity of Paul’s apostolic status and the practice of his mission. The materials here are offered as evidence for the appearance and shape of his ministry and to explain the reasoning for that shape. The arguments center on a series of dichotomies: ordinary–costly, heaven–earth, now–then, light–heavy, temporary–permanent, inside–outside, fleshly–spiritually, insane–sane, death–life, new–old, seen–unseen, human–divine. Paul intends to demonstrate that rightly understanding the gospel reconstitutes one’s criteria for evaluation of a ministry or a person. Paul’s goal and the contrasts are clearly stated in the verses that follow this section, 5:11–17: Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade others; but we ourselves are well known to God, and I hope that we are also well known to your consciences. We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you an opportunity to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast in outward appearance and not in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! (NRSV)
The contrast between the fragile and disposable body indicated by the earthen vessel metaphor used in verse 7 is repeated in verses 10–12: “always carrying about in the body (sōmati) the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our body (sōmati). For while we are alive, we are being given over to death because of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be visible in our mortal flesh (thnētē sarki) so that death is active in us, but life in you.”
This same contrast of human fragility with divine power is taken up in the transitional verses 4:16–18. 35 The verses link the earlier mention of Paul’s apostolic hardships to his future instantiation in a heavenly body (5:1–10). The verb enkakoumen repeats the verb found in 4:1 and the contrast between the destruction of the outer person and the daily renewal of the inner person repeats the contrasts he has just made in 4:8–11. In turn, verse 17 contrasts the temporary and light afflictions of the body with the future eternal, overly surpassing weighty glory and looks forward to the contrast he will make between the earthly tent/house (5:1) in which the human now dwells and the “non-human-made” heavenly dwelling he or she has with God. This contrast is repeated again in 5:6–8 where Paul once more stresses his confidence (tharreō) in God and juxtaposes his existence as “being at home in the body (endēmountes en tō sōmati), which equates to being away from the Lord (ekdēmoumen apo tou kuriou), with his greater desire to “be away from the body” (ekdēmēsai ek tou sōmatos) and be at home with the Lord (endēmēsai pros ton kyrion). This repeats the longing to be “further clothed” so that the mortal (thnēton) will be swallowed up by life (zōēs), found in verse 4.
This small section also has a structure similar to that found in 5:1–5 and 6–10. In all three pericopae there is a contrast between the outer and the inner, or present/future, as I have just mentioned. There is also a repetition of the verb ‘achieve/accomplish’ katergazomai (v. 17; 5:5), and the participle baroumenoi (burdened) at 5:4 recalls the adjective baros (weight) from 4:17. There is also the connection to the unseen Spirit that enables the eschatological hope to be more than a vain wish (4:13; cf. 5:2—picking up language from Rom 8:5, 7). In effect, conducting oneself (peripateō) by faith in 5:7 is the functional equivalent of focusing (skopeō) on the “unseen” (mē blepomena) in 4:18 and recognizing the Spirit as an escrow for the future state of re-embodiment (5:4).
All of the contrasts between the present body and the one that will be furnished, between the inner and outer person, and the longing to depart the mortal tent, are reminiscent of a typical Hellenistic dualism that can be traced to Platonic understandings of the distinction between the body and the soul—between the base physical corpus and the higher reality of the internal mind or spirit. The position is reflected in Epictetus, Democritus, as well as Philo and Seneca.
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All interpreters recognize this. Their question is how much of this Hellenistic position Paul had accepted and what dimensions of it he rejected. As with almost every other aspect of the passage the debates are intricate and irresolvable. Most scholars opt for a full distinction from Platonic dualism. However, as Margaret Thrall notes in her commentary, the main tenet of that position is the contention that Paul’s anthropology is not dualistic. But this depends in part, on which verses are taken as the key to the interpretation of other passages. There are, in fact, several occasions where the more natural interpretation might well be ‘dualistic’ in a general sense: Rom 7.22–25, 1 Cor 5:5, 7.34, 2 Cor 7.1. At least it seems probable that Paul at times made more of a distinction between body and spirit than is sometimes allowed.
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Second Corinthians 4–5 is fraught with exegetical and semantic theological problems: particularly those that relate to Paul’s comments on a post-death body in 1 Cor 15. As a result, a full exegesis of the passage is beyond the scope of these remarks. I wish therefore to make two observations about the passage pertinent to our concern:
Although many commentators attempt to downplay Paul’s dualistic rhetoric in the passage, he is closer here to a form of Hellenistic dualism than anywhere else in his letters. It is only because commentators take Paul’s equally contextualized comments in 1 Cor 15 as definitive for his ideas about the human body that this attempt to modulate the dualism in 2 Corinthians is made. Would that Paul were as consistent as we might like, but alas he was not. Thus, with Thrall, I think that Paul’s remarks in 2 Cor 4–5 are feasibly understood as expressions of a historical form of bodily dualism.
A form of this dualism is evident in 1 Cor 5:3–5 where Paul instructs the Corinthians communally to shun the immoral person so that his “flesh/sarx will be destroyed” and his “spirit/pneuma” will be saved. It also appears in 2 Cor 12:2–3 when Paul speaks of a person who had an experience of the Lord, “whether in or out of the body” he does not know (sōma).
However, the dualism is most obvious in Paul’s references to the inner and outer person (4:16–18) and, at the end of life, that is, at death (5:1), when the earthly tent dwelling is destroyed (katalythē) and the dwelling that is not made by human hands is put on as further (or re-)clothing. This is further emphasized by verses 6 and 8, which contrast being at home “in the body” (en tō sōmati) and away from the Lord to being at home with the Lord and “away from the body.” It would appear that the human being can, and will exist, without its empirical body.
At times scholars attempt to associate the “inner person” of this verse with the “palaios anthrōpos” (old anthropos) found in Rom 6:6. 38 However, it is apparent that the outer person (exō anthrōpos) in 2 Cor 4:16 cannot refer to that “old anthropos” of Rom 6:6 for two reasons. First, the “old anthropos” of Rom 6 is enslaved to sin and it dies through co-crucifixion with Christ (verse 6), but in 2 Cor 4 Paul refers to his current ministry and the hardships he endures with his “outer person.” It is hardly conceivable that Paul could mean hardships because of his sin. Indeed, he is arguing not that he experienced these hardships because of sin, but because he was serving the Lord in obeying and preaching the gospel. Thus, the most natural way to read this verse is to see the outer person as another expression for the earthen vessel mentioned in 4:7 and the earthly tent-like dwelling of 5:2. As Robert Gundry suggests, “The outer person [man] is not the old man of sin, then, but the physical body subject to hardship, decay, and death.” 39
Paul’s statements concerning the outer person in 2 Cor 4 use the present tense/passive voice as do his statements about the inner person. The activity to which he refers is happening to him in the present, and it is ongoing. That is, he is undergoing transformation (present tense of katergazomai). This is likely the same reality to which he refers in 3:18 when he notes that “we all, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord, as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed (metamorphoumetha) [present passive] into the same image from one degree of glory to another (apo doxēs eis doxan).” The human being, in Christ, is being transformed into a different form of existence. In 2 Cor 4 and 5 Paul suggests that this is tantamount to the destruction of the present empirical body and its replacement with the weighty, glorious eternal body. That is why he can endure the temporary and light afflictions of the present.
In contradistinction to the “outer person” stands the “inner person” that is being renewed (anakainoō—only in Paul, see Rom 12:2) daily (hēmera kai hēmera). Whether this last expression refers to a continual progression or a repeated experience each day is not pertinent to our question. In either case, the inner person is made new, while the external/outer person is “wasting away” (diaphtheiretai), which BDAG compares to the phenomenon of a piece of iron rusting. 40 Eventually the steel and the outer person are destroyed, as Paul argues in 5:1. Then the inner person is re-clothed in the heavenly dwelling. 41
Thus, with Robert Gundry, I think that it is correct to conclude that, while Paul does not denigrate the empirical body as evil as his Greek counterparts might, nevertheless, Paul makes the same basic distinction between the physical and the non-physical. We might deny this by attaching other meanings to the inner man and the outer man and by making both refer to the indivisible personality seen from within and seen from without. Indivisibility is hard to accept, however, because the outer man even now is passing away while the inner man gains in vigor. Ultimately the inner man exists without the outer, or rather, receives a new outer man (5:1–5).
42
Some concluding reflections
Based on the texts where Paul refers explicitly to a desire to depart the present empirical body and be with the Lord (Phil 1:19–26; 2 Cor 5:1–5) and the impressions he leaves by his comments in Romans 7–8 (et al.), it seems clear that Paul does not equate the present physical form with the ongoing self. He does commit to that self being embodied, and, in this sense, disagrees with many transhumanists who conceive of the human being as an information processor inside of a prosthetic device. Not all transhumanists, however, hold to this conception of the transformed human. 43 Thus, it appears to me that there is a sufficient point of contact to continue a conversation between Paul and some transhumanists, especially in regards to the tension between the human as “an embodied self” and the human as “something more than/other than an embodied self.” The focus would be on questions such as: “Are bodies what we have or what we are?,” and, “Is what we are/have what we necessarily must be in the future?”
The following could serve as starting points for that conversation:
Paul would not oppose certain goals or tenets of transhumanism per se. He would approve of humanitarian efforts to alleviate undue physical suffering or maladies, since Paul’s God comforts those in affliction, and one would expect followers of that God to do the same. It is likely that he would not impede political efforts to increase our abilities to live as peaceable and mutually supportive communities based on his comments in Rom 13:6–7, so he would perhaps support scientific efforts to attain transhumanist goals in this respect. The question to be raised would be how this would be carried out and who would be able to participate.
Despite his longing for release from this physical plane, I think it feasible that Paul would not oppose efforts to increase or extend our life/health span, although I do think that he would raise questions as to why someone would wish to do so. His remarks in Phil 1:26–27 and 2 Cor 5:1–10 suggest that he would prefer full presence with the Lord to continued earthly existence which limits full relationship with God. Moreover, since he does not understand physical death or mortality as the final experience of human existence, prolonging one’s physical life to postpone death or to avoid it would not make sense to him, unless that postponement would provide benefit to others (Phil 1:22–23).
I believe that Paul would, however, disagree with transhumanist conceptions of the human predicament and therefore disagree with their proposed solutions to it. He does not locate the problem of human existence or death in the physical realm, but in the spiritual. Paul’s human is a psychosomatic being including both physical and spiritual components. In the end, solving the physical limits of finitude may not sufficiently address the more profound issues of one’s relationship to the forces of the world or to one’s understanding of how to see those forces. Thus, he would disagree with the Enlightenment conceptions of liberation and freedom that drive many of the transhumanist initiatives. In this regard, Paul has more affinity with “posthumanists” who understand that term as a critique of the philosophy of “humanism” most transhumanists adopt. The question of what the human being is looms large once again.
Paul would also not accept the idea that the human being is an agent capable of redeeming itself. Thus, he would not accept the idea that the human being can, or has the ability to, free itself from the entanglements of human existence, no matter how sophisticated its technology becomes. He would agree with Hava Tirosh-Samuelson’s criticism that transhumanism is misguided “because of its mechanistic engineering-driven approach to being human, its obsession with perfection understood in terms of performance and accomplishments rather than moral integrity, and its disrespect for an unknown future.” 44 However, the transhumanist position need not necessarily neglect the questions of moral integrity and thus, there may be a significant point for discussion here, particularly in terms of the demands made on the moral agent.
Both Paul and transhumanists look to a future existence of the human being that could be considered “immortal.” However, Paul would insist that a distinction be made between prolonged existence due to human ingenuity and immortality granted by God. The issue for Paul is not extended existence, but existence in relationship with God. Thus, his emphasis on “being with God” when he was exhorting the Thessalonians who were distressed about the death of some of their community members (1 Thess 4). Immortality for him is not the same thing as perdurance. Once again, the point of extended existence would need to be discussed. What are the social, psychological, and “spiritual” benefits of extending one’s existence?
Finally, because of his insistence that “in Christ” distinctions based on physical features or cultural constructions of gender, race, and station are rendered inconsequential (Rom 12–14; Gal 3:28), if and when the boundary between the organic human and the hybrid human/cyborg is sufficiently blurred so that one cannot be recognized from the other, Paul may very well argue that these transhumans be included in the redemptive community along with the rest of God’s creation. 45
Footnotes
1
Joel Garreau has captured the dynamics of this change in his book, Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies—and What It Means to be Human (New York: Broadway, 2005). Garreau posits three possible scenarios for our future: (1) the Heaven Scenario in which the human is replaced by something far grander than its current self; (2) the Hell Scenario, in which the technological innovations result in a catastrophic end to human beings; and (3) the Prevail Scenario, in which the future is not determined, but a result of what we make relative to the technological changes we are experiencing. My belief is that the third scenario actually enables us to express our humanity to the fullest extent, and is therefore preferable to the first two.
2
The two terms “posthumanism” and “transhumanism” are often used interchangeably. However, it is better to distinguish them. Posthumanism is itself ambiguous—“post” in the sense of referring to a time when the psycho-somatic entity we now are is replaced by a different form of human “body–non-body” existence, and “post” in the sense of after the philosophical and ethical commitments of humanism. Thus, when I speak of “transhumanism” I am referring to the transitional moment which we are now in and of which we are becoming increasingly aware, that is, the realization that the human being is deeply influenced by its technologies, and as these technologies become not only external to our empirical bodies, but internal to them, we are undergoing some form of transformation as human beings. The difficulty involved in defining and distinguishing the two terms is discussed by Jeanine Thweatt-Bates in Cyborg Selves: A Theological Anthropology of the Posthuman (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2012), 3–13, and clearly discussed in N.K. Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1999).
3
R. Blackford, “Trite Truths about Technology: A Reply to Ted Peters,” Transhumanism and Its Critics, ed. Gregory Hansell and William Grassie (Philadelphia: Metanexus Institute, 2011), 176. Russell Blackford is an attorney and adjunct lecturer at the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Newcastle. He holds doctorates in English and philosophy and is the editor-in-chief of The Journal of Evolution and Technology.
5
Ray Kurzweil, a principal inventor of the flatbed scanner, optical character recognition machines, and one of the first handheld devices to transform print into computer-spoken speech, makes even more extravagant claims about the future of humanity. In How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed (London: Duckworth Overlook, 2013), Kurzweil argues that in the relatively near future we will be able to write computer algorithms that replicate the function of the human brain’s neocortex and in so doing fix the brain when needed, to create machines that think better than humans do, and eventually to upload our human identities into those machines, enabling us to transcend our biological limitations. In The Singularity is Near (New York: Penguin, 2006), Kurzweil coins the term “singularity,” which astrophysicists use to refer to the event horizon of a black hole. While his is the most popular rendering of the idea, it is not the first. Kurzweil was preceded in these predictions by Hans Moravec, Mind Children: The Future of the Robot and Human Intelligence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1988) and Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind (New York: Oxford, 1998), and Vernor Vinge, “The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era,” an essay for Vision-21, a symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center held in March, 1993. Moravec is chief scientist at Seegrid Corporation, which makes vision-guided robots, and is an adjunct at Carnegie-Mellon University. Vinge was professor of mathematics at San Diego State University until his retirement, as well as a Hugo Award-winning science fiction novelist. Not surprisingly, other futurists and technologists dispute the claim that human intelligence will be surpassed in the near future by computer-based machines. See, for example, “Tech Luminaries Address the Singularity,” in IEEE: Spectrum Special Report: The Singularity (June, 2008), and Are We Spiritual Machines? Ray Kurzweil vs. The Critics of Strong AI, ed. Jay W. Richards (Seattle, WA: Discovery Institute, 2002).
6
Natasha Vita-Moore, formerly known as Nancie Clark, is the author of the “Transhumanist Manifesto,” which holds the following tenets: “We are transhumans. Transhumans integrate the most eminent progression of creativity and sensibility merged by discovery. Transhumans want to elevate and extend life. Transhumans seek to expand life. As our tools and ideas continue to evolve, so too shall we. We are designing the technologies to enhance our senses and increase our understanding. The transhumanist ecology and freedom exercise self-awareness and self-responsibility. Let us choose to be transhumanist not only in our bodies, but also in our values. Toward diversity, multiplicity. Toward non-partisan ideology (transpolitics, transpartisan, transmodernity). Toward transhuman rights of morphological freedom, existence safety, personhood preservation. Toward a more humane transhumanity.” She is also the founder and director of the Transhumanist Arts and Culture and is a multimedia artist committed to the development of a new bio-technological full-body prototype, the Primo-Posthuman. Her website describes her other writing, ventures, and artistic designs (
).
7
This is not restricted to the faces and voices of transhumanism. As Wayne Meeks pointed out in his 2004 Presidential Address to the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (SNTS) in Barcelona, the only time the work of biblical practitioners gains notice is when something extreme is reported. Otherwise, as Meeks notes, “we find ourselves today approaching a state of complete isolation: within the university, lonely practitioners of a quaintly antiquated craft; in the larger world, distant voices scarcely heard within communities of faith, and in the noisy public realm informed by global corporate media, not noticed at all except when we say something truly outrageous” (“Why Study the New Testament?,” NTS 51 [2005]: 163). The condition is mostly self-inflicted by practitioners themselves, as Ernst Käsemann recognized in his own presidential address to the SNTS from 1972. Käsemann argued that historical exegesis of the New Testament was a necessary and essential part of the biblical interpreter’s task, “but the kind of research which assembles facts and insights as in a record office, or in a Babel-like confusion makes off in ever-changing directions, strikes me as a nightmare. Something like an intelligible and organized whole must be mirrored even in part. Harnack could still look on systematic theology as a department of literature, but today there is a pressing need for a connection between analytic and systematic thought—otherwise we end up in total isolation from one another and from our present world” (“The Problem of a New Testament Theology,” NTS 19 [1973]: 235–36). As Käsemann went on to note in his address, “Even in the realm of thought the ability to play should not be stifled. Rather it should prove itself there, and there particularly, although one ought not to play only in one’s own sandpit. But while hobbies may be charming they do not make up life’s meaning. Scientific thought will always have some connection with practice, albeit in varying degrees, if for no other reason than that we bring to it from the start our own presuppositions and prejudices. So too the history and exegesis of the New Testament, whether we like it or not, exercise a function in the life of the Church and relate to the community within which Christians live. If however the one is abstracted from the other, not only is sacrifice offered on alien altars but the claims of the object we study and the service we might render are both alike misconceived” (236). The attempt to open a conversation between transhumanist thought and New Testament interpretation follows Käsemann’s advice to play in sandpits other than one’s own.
8
Some examples include: The Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, the Selfhood and Human Person Project at Arizona State University sponsored by The Center for the Study of Religion and Human Conflict and The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET), which publishes The Journal of Evolution and Technology.
9
Attempts to describe “the philosophy” of transhumanism are as misleading as those that describe “the theology of the New Testament.” As with most philosophies, the adherents to transhumanism disagree about different features and implications of their convictions. For example, Max More identifies as an extropian, that is, someone who extends the limits of human existence through science and technology, eschewing the regulations of religious authority. Nick Bostrom takes a more moderate position, viewing transhumanism as a commitment to a progressive communal transformation. Nevertheless, the quotations from More and Bostrom below come close to describing the main tenets of the philosophy. To see a full range of the positions taken one can read The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on the Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future, eds. Max More and Natasha Vita-More (Chichester, England: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013).
10
Max More, “The Philosophy of Transhumanism,” in The Transhumanist Reader, eds. More and Vita-More, 4.
11
Nick Bostrom, “In Defense of Posthuman Dignity,” Transhumanism and Its Critics, 55–56. Bostrom has also written about transhumanist positions and values in “Transhumanist Values,” Review of Contemporary Philosophy 4 (1–2): 87–101; “A History of Transhumanist Thought,” Journal of Evolution and Technology 14:1 (2005): 1–25; “The Future of Humanity,” in New Waves in Philosophy of Technology, ed. Jan-Kyree Berg Olsen, Evan Sellinger, and Soren Riis (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
12
N. Katherine Hayles most extended work on this topic is How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1999).
14
Hayles, “Wrestling with Transhumanism,” Transhumanism and Its Critics, 216.
15
Peter-Paul Verbeek, Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2011), 4.
16
P. Manley Scott, “We Have Never Been Gods: Transcendence, Contingency, and the Affirmation of Hybridity,” Ecotheology 9.2 (2004): 206. See also, Anti-Human Theology, eds. P.M. Scott and Celia Deane-Drummond (London: SCM, 2010) and Future Perfect? God, Medicine and Human Identity, eds. P.M. Scott and Celia Drummond (London: T&T Clark, 2006). Joanna Zylinska, “Playing God, Playing Adam: The Politics and Ethics of Enhancement,” Bioethical Inquiry 7 (2010): 155. For the full form of her argumentation see, J. Zylinska, Bioethics in the Age of New Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2009).
17
Ultimately the question is one of human identity. In this case the question is posed in terms of the human being’s relationship to technology. As with all claims about the “essential Human,” the answers offered to the question are loci of significant debate. Heidegger’s essay, “Die Frage nach der Technik” now translated as “The Question concerning Technology,” in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York: Harper Collins, 1977), remains seminal. I have found the works by Andrew Feenberg, “The Question concerning Techné: Heidegger’s Aristotle,” in Heidegger and Marcuse: The Catastrophe of Redemption and History (New York: Routledge, 2005), 21–47, and Richard Rojcewicz, The Gods and Technology: A Reading of Heidegger (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2006) helpful for interpreting the essay. Arthur Kroker also examines Heidegger’s writing in relationship to Marx and Nietzsche in The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism: Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Marx (Toronto: University of Toronto, 2004). With respect to the larger and contentious question of the relationship of technology to human identity, the following have been helpful for viewing the landscape of the debates: Verbeek, Moralizing Technology, A. Feenberg, Questioning Technology (New York: Routledge, 1999), Don Ihde, Bodies in Technology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2002), A. Borgmann, Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1984) and Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2003), and Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1993).
18
Heidi Campbell, “On Posthumans, Transhumanism and Cyborgs: Towards a Transhumanist–Christian Conversation,” Modern Believing 47.2 (2006): 70.
19
Campbell, “On Posthumans,” 70. Campbell’s use of ‘convivial’ is deliberate because she rightly wants to avoid the sorts of debates that devolve into silence. I share her desire and understand this article as an initial attempt to open that form of conversation. One can see the problems that arise from overheated rhetorical terms in Nick Bostrom’s response to Leon Kass and Francis Fukyama, who identifies “transhumanism” as the “world’s most dangerous idea.” See Bostrom, “In Defense of Posthuman Dignity,” in Transhumanism and Its Critics, 55–66.
20
My use of the term ‘conversation’ relies on the understanding of that practice developed by Hans-Georg Gadamer in “The Incapacity for Conversation,” trans. David Vessey and Chris Blauwkamp, Continental Philosophy Review 39 (2006): 351–59, where Gadamer argued that “something is a conversation for us if it leaves something behind in us. It is not that we have found out something new that makes a conversation a conversation, but that we have encountered something in the other that we have not encountered in the same way in our own experiences of the world … Conversation has a transformative power. Where a conversation is successful, something remains for us and something remains in us that has transformed us. Thus a conversation is a close neighbor of friendship. Only in conversation (and in laughing with one another which is like a non-verbal, exuberant mutual understanding) can friends find each other and develop that kind of community in which everyone remains the same for the other because they find the other in themselves and find themselves in the other” (355). I do not think that one must adopt transhumanist perspectives or even agree with them to benefit from this sort of conversation. Its benefit arises in the possibility of discovering something about the anthropologies of the New Testament and, conversely, that transhumanists discover something about their own convictions.
21
Here Käsemann’s arguments against Bultmann’s conception of anthropology as a constant in human history are instructive. As Käsemann noted, Bultmann’s theology equates the meaning of history with the question of the historical nature of human existence. He happily admits that this is a fruitful approach, but he is unwilling to grant that it is the only manner in which history or human beings can be understood. He argued that it is a “modern” conception of the human being that belongs to the nineteenth century rather than the second half of the twentieth, and then notes that “Contemporary literature and the visual arts do not testify greatly to man as the vehicle of history, even when they depict entirely secular man. To an increasing degree we feel ourselves to be manipulated, and biology, sociology, and research into our behavior disclose that this is not merely characteristic of our particular period; it is an essential aspect of humanity. That does not mean that we must give absolute, or even primary, importance to this way of looking at man. But we must stop pushing it aside altogether” (“On Paul’s Anthropology,” in Perspectives on Paul [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971],10–11). Surely this is also true for technology, and this demands an engagement with this conception of the human being.
22
Campbell, “On Posthumans,” 72. I am certain that Campbell is correct on both points, and this article is a first step towards entering that dialogue. Some theologians and religious ethicists have begun this conversation in earnest (e.g. Philip Hefner, Ted Peters, Jennifer Thweatt-Bates, Brent Waters, Peter Manley Scott, and Hava Tivosh-Samuelson), and I have learned a great deal from them, but for the most part Scripture critics have not entered the discussion, which I think is unfortunate. For further reading see Ted Peters, “Progress and Provolution: Will Transhumanism Leave Sin Behind?,” in Transhumanism and Transcendence, and “Transhumanism and the Posthuman Future,” in H ± : Transhumanism and Its Critics, Thweatt-Bates, Cyborg Selves, Hava Tivosh-Samuelson and Philip Hefner, Technology and Human Becoming (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003), Brent Waters, From Human to Posthuman: Christian Theology and Technology in a Postmodern World (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), Peter Scott, Anti-Human Theology: Nature, Technology, and the Post-Natural (London: SCM, 2010). For an interesting analysis of the “post/human” in modern culture see Elaine Graham, Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture (New Brunswick: Rutgers, 2002). An important essay about the “cyborg” human condition is Donna J. Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (New York: Routledge, 1991), 149–81. The essay, along with the positions of N. Katherine Hayles and Judith Butler, are discussed in Arthur Kroker’s Body Drift: Butler, Hayles, Haraway (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2012).
23
Rudolph Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel (Waco, TX: Baylor, 2007), 191–92. Interesting, and pertinent in the larger context of the project, is the relationship that Bultmann constructs at the end of the paragraph when he writes, “every assertion about Christ is also an assertion about man and vice versa: and Paul’s Christology is simultaneously soteriology” (191). The form of the two sentences is obviously intentional and shows that Bultmann understands anthropology to govern Paul’s soteriology and christology.
24
Ernst Käsemann, “On Paul’s Anthropology,” in Perspectives on Paul (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971), 1. Käsemann agreed with Bultmann in emphasizing the important role that anthropological expression played in the New Testament and particularly in Paul. However he disagreed with Bultmann’s conception of anthropology as the fundamental subject matter, as well as Bultmann’s construction of Paul’s understanding of sōma. Arguing that Bultmann had ignored the second part of the dictum “and vice-versa,” Käsemann insisted that christology was at the heart of Paul’s arguments and theology. See E. Käsemann, “The Theological Problem Presented by the Motif of the Body of Christ,” in Perspectives on Paul, 102–21, esp. 114–20, “On the Subject of Primitive Christian Apocalyptic,” in New Testament Questions for Today (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), 108–37, esp. 117, and “The Problem of a New Testament Theology,” NTS 19 (1973): 244. This is the basis for the debate between Bultmann and Käsemann on the meaning of dikaiosynē theou in Paul carried out in R. Bultmann, “DIKAIOSYNE THEOU,” JBL 83 (1964): 12–16 and E. Käsemann, “The ‘Righteousness of God’ in Paul,” in New Testament Questions of Today (London: SCM, 1969), 168–82.
25
As Russell Blackford states it, in essence transhumanism holds that “within certain limits that require investigation, it is desirable to use emerging technologies to enhance human physical and cognitive capacities and to make other beneficial alterations to human traits.” At the same time, Blackford realizes that this definition “allows enormous scope for discussion and debate among people who accept it as a general proposition. Questions abound. What, exactly, are the limits that I’ve described as requiring investigation? How quickly or slowly will the transition take place and where might it end … Should we be attempting to accelerate it, slow it down, or direct its course in some way? All of these issues and many others can be—and are being—discussed … ” R. Blackford, “Trite Truths about Technology: A Reply to Ted Peters,” Transhumanism and Its Critics, 176.
26
I note here, as one example, the now 30-year discussion/debate/stalemate between the so-called “Lutheran/Old” and “New Perspective” on Paul. For a discussion of the positions see James Dunn, The New Perspective on Paul (rev. ed) (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2004) and Francis Watson, Paul, Judaism, and Gentiles. Beyond the New Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), and the summative essay by David Aune, “Recent Readings of Paul Relating to Justification by Faith,” in Rereading Paul Together: Protestant and Catholic Perspectives on Justification, ed. D.E. Aune (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006), 188–245.
27
On “Pauline Anthropology” see, Karl-Adolf Bauer, Leiblichkeit, das Ende aller Werke Gottes (Gütersloh: Gütersloher, 1971), Udo Schnelle, The Human Condition: Anthropology in the Teachings of Jesus, Paul, and John, trans. O.C. Dean, Jr. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), Robert Jewett, Paul’s Anthropological Terms: A Study of Their Use in Conflict Settings (Leiden: Brill, 1971), R. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 1:192–203, E. Käsemann, “On Paul’s Anthropology,” in Perspectives on Paul (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1971), 1–31, Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Cosmology and Self in the Apostle Paul: The Material Spirit (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), and George van Kooten, Paul’s Anthropology in Context, WUNT 232 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008). In fact, “anthropology” may be the wrong word if one takes it to mean that Paul has produced an ontology of the human being; he has not. Paul’s expressions speak of the ontic situation of the human being, as he understands it. Moreover, though the positions he takes are coherent, they are not entirely consistent since they were expressions meant for particular people in particular settings. It may not be fair to ask Paul to “comment on transhumanism” as it is difficult to believe that he could even imagine a human being of the sort that transhumanists easily conceive. At the same time, this hermeneutical problem affects every biblical text. I postulate that, even though Paul’s thinking is not directly applicable to questions of “techno-humanity” it is pertinent to such questions. This is especially true for communities that hold the biblical materials to be authoritative, but it is also true for the philosophical discussion in general. My postulation is based in a belief that Paul was an interesting thinker worthy of engagement. A new appreciation of Paul as a conversation partner is beginning among some contemporary philosophers. For example, G. Agamben, The Time That Remains: A Commentary on the Letter to the Romans, trans. Patricia Dailey (Stanford: Stanford University, 2005), Alain Baidou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, trans. Ray Brassier (Stanford: Stanford University, 2003), and Slavoj Žižek, The Fragile Absolute—or Why the Christian Legacy is Worth Fighting For (London: Verso, 2000). A discussion of the various interpretations can be found in St. Paul among the Philosophers, ed. John D. Caputo and Linda Martin Alcoff (Bloomington: Indiana University, 2009).
28
J. Christiaan Beker’s distinct manner of phrasing Paul’s writing as the result of the interaction of his coherent convictions with the contingent situation of his audience is still helpful for conceptualizing the relationship of Paul’s expressions to his religious thinking. See Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980).
29
I want to be clear that I do not consider Paul a systematic theologian and do not expect him to write at the level of abstraction that such theologians must attain. At the same time, I do think that his arguments are coherent and that “an anthropology” can be developed from his letters. That, in effect, is what Bultmann attempted to do in his Theology of the New Testament. As H. Boers notes in discussing Bultmann, “To a certain degree every interpreter of Paul—or any other New Testament writer—does something similar to what Bultmann has done but not nearly with the same consistency. It becomes a problem only when it is then tacitly assumed that Paul, or some other author, actually thought in terms of such a system. It is akin to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness in the sense that the system of thought that had been produced as a means of interpreting Paul’s thinking becomes confused with that thinking itself” (What is New Testament Theology? [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979], 79). I want to avoid that error but distill from Paul’s letters some sense of his understanding of the human being, i.e., “a Pauline anthropology.” That anthropology can then be used to interpret Paul’s particular expressions about the human being and compare them to the understandings of human beings that the technological conditions we inhabit suggest.
30
H. Betz, “The Concept of the Human Being in the Anthropology of Paul,” NTS 46 (2000), 316. See also, Walter Burkert, “Towards Plato and Paul: The ‘Inner Human Being’,” in A.Y. Collins (ed.), Ancient and Modern Perspectives on the Bible and Culture: Essays in Honor of Hans Dieter Betz (Atlanta, GA: Scholars, 1998), 59–82.
31
By historical I mean that Paul locates the “split” at a point in human history. Obviously, both transhumanists and Paul understand the human being as “historical” in the sense that it exists within time. Interestingly, however, while transhumanists suggest that this is the ongoing state of human beings, Paul suggests that when the human being exists “with God” in its eschatological being, it is beyond time.
32
It is this distinction between the current empirical body, that is not “natural” but biological, and the ‘Adamic/Christic’ future embodiment that enables a potential conversation with transhumanism to arise.
33
NB: the use of syn compounds throughout the section: 4:14, 17 [2 ×]
34
The limit of the thought unit is disputed, with some scholars dividing the thought between verses 18 and 5:1. It is more likely that the entire section of 4:16–5:10 should be taken together as Paul’s conclusion to the argument about “self-sufficiency” already signaled at 2:16 when he asks, “Who is sufficient for these things (the apostolic ministry)?,” implying the answer, no one without the help of God. See on this section, Victor P. Furnish, II Corinthians, Anchor Bible, 32A (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1984), 277, F. Matera, II Corinthians: A Commentary, NTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2003), 114, Jan Lambrecht, Second Corinthians, Sacra Pagina 8 (Collegeville: Liturgical, 1999), and Fredrik Lindgård, Paul’s Line of Thought in 2 Corinthians 4:16–5:10, WUNT 189 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005).
35
Paul returns to this important point in his claim that God’s “power is made complete” in weakness and thus whenever Paul is “physically weak” he allows for the divine power to be revealed in him (2 Cor 12:8–11).
36
Lindgård points to the problem of defining “dualism” in antiquity, Paul’s Line of Thought, and notes that in his essay Jörg Frey distinguishes ten types of dualism (111, note 26.) See, Jörg Frey, “Different Patterns of Dualistic Thought in the Qumran Library. Reflections on Their Background and History,” in Legal Texts and Legal Issues. Proceedings of the Second Meeting of the International Organization for Qumran Studies 1995, ed. Moshe Bernstein, Florentino Garcia Martínez, and John Kampen (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 275–336.
37
Margaret Thrall, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, Volume 1: I–VII, ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), 349. See also, 397–400. Interestingly, considering that he typically deemphasizes the physical aspects of sōma, Bultmann also recognizes the dualism present in this passage (cf. Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, 201–202).
38
A more likely parallel is to be found at Rom 7:23 and 8:9–13.
39
Robert Gundry, Sōma in Biblical Theology with Emphasis on Pauline Anthropology, SNTSMS 29 (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1976), 136.
40
“diaphtheirō” in A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., ed. Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and Gingrich (Chicago: University of Chicago, 2001), 239.
41
Paul’s use of the term “inner person” is hotly debated because he only uses it here and in Rom 7, leaving insufficient evidence confidently to decide the issue. See the discussion in Lindgård, Paul’s Line of Thought, 106–13, as well as Christoph Markschies, Die platonische Metapher vom “inneren Menschen”: Eine Brücke zwischenantiker Philosophie and altchristlicher Theologie, ZKG 105.4, Folge 43.1–17 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1994), 3–5. Obviously, I hold that Paul is distinguishing two human realities, the inner and outer person, in this passage.
42
Gundry, Sōma, 135. So also David Aune, “Anthropological Duality in the Eschatology of 2 Corinthians 4:16–5:10,” in Jesus, Gospel Tradition and Paul in the Context of Jewish and Greco-Roman Antiquity, Collected Essays II (Tübingen: Morh Sieeck, 2013), 353–80.
43
For example, Rodney A. Brooks and Lynn Andrea Stein argue that a “thinking robot” must think by building on its “bodily” experiences. This enables it to move from rudimentary tasks to abstract thinking. See, Brooks and Stein, “Building Brains for Bodies,” Autonomous Robots 1 (1994): 7–25.
44
H. Tivosh-Samuelson, “Engaging Transhumanism,” in Transhumanism and Its Critics, 46.
45
Initially this article was presented in a condensed form to a group of transhumanists who knew little about Paul at the 2013 Christian Scholars Conference (Nashville, TN) and in a second form to a group of Paulinists who knew little about transhumanism at the 2013 International Society of Biblical Literature (St. Andrews, Scotland). I appreciate the remarks of those participants and especially the conversations and criticisms provided by Richard M. Adams. This form is an attempt to coordinate the goals of those two papers.