Abstract
There are two types of approach in the theology of technology. The first explores ethical issues that arise in technology: consideration of genetic engineering would be a good example of this tendency. The second takes a larger view and explores the ways in which technology emerges in human reflexivity: to enquire after the culture of technology, if you will. Eschatology and the Technological Future is firmly in the second camp. In subject matter, it ranges over more than two centuries and covers theology, philosophy, science and science fiction. In its scope, this book is a deeply impressive achievement. A number of points and claims are bundled together in this ambitious argument and I shall try in this review to un-bundle them.
First, however, it may help to notice one contrast and one thematic source. The contrast is futurum and adventus, and the thematic source is transhumanism. By the end of the book it becomes clearer that the core argument is a theological rebuttal, based in the concept of adventus, of transhumanism (pp. 208, 218, 236). In other words, transhumanism presents in its strongest form what is wrong with a futurum eschatology. In the last two chapters a different sort of eschatology, based in adventus, is proposed.
This argument is not as clear as it might be because the contrast between futurum and adventus is not deployed fully through the first two of the book’s three parts. The discussion in part 1 covers political utopias, science fiction and, finally, transhumanism. The contrast between futurum and adventus is presented but then dropped, although there is reference to the concept of novum, which becomes important in part 3 (chapter 8). Transhumanism is presented—I think this is the point—as the culmination of utopian thinking in technological futures; transhumanism is the strongest form of this technological future in its utopian aspect. At the very least, a historical point is being made: transhumanism emerges not out of nowhere but as the continuation of some of the emphases in utopian futures and fictions. At this point, the contrast between futurum and adventus reappears and the point is made that in transhumanism we have the victory, so to speak, of futurum. ‘It has become evident that there has been … an inverting of the future as adventus to futurum’ (p. 80). The critical issue here is that in such utopianism the future is built (p. 100, citing Kurzweil) rather than received (or addressed to us interpersonally; see p. 224).
At this point, it is important to note that the imagination of futures has, for Burdett, a religious aspect. The religious themes in transhumanism include the overcoming of death through technological/religious salvation, a type of transcendence, a stress on transformation and glorification, including of internal experience, and hope (pp. 100-101; see also p. 69). Some of these issues are addressed again in the final chapter of the book (pp. 236-43). Indeed, ‘Wherever we find technological dreaming, religion is not far off’ (p. 237) might stand as a summary of the methodological stance of this book. The task therefore is to develop a theological elaboration of and response to such a claim.
Having established this religious aspect, part 2 presents us with the thinking of Teilhard de Chardin and Jacques Ellul. Teilhard is read in this analysis as a kind of precursor to transhumanism, although this is not in a detailed fashion. Ellul’s hesitation over technology is presented as a different theological option in the face of technology. While one is affirming of technology, the other is more sceptical, and that leaves open the question as to the correct relation of theology and eschatological technologies. Through this discussion, the contrast between futurum and adventus is mostly submerged. After this standard fare, we come to part 3 and the consideration of Heidegger, and thereafter the work of Kearney, Jüngel and, finally, Moltmann. The aim here is to amplify the meaning of adventus as the theologically more convincing way of grasping the eschatological future. It is at this point we discover that part 3 is the response to the questions posed to theology by transhumanism.
In Burdett’s analysis Heidegger is important because the latter offers an approach to the future that is strongly different to that of transhumanism. As Burdett writes, ‘Heidegger rejects a relation to the future, the kind of future that transhumanism posits’ (p. 193). What is at stake here is the rebuttal of a ‘flattened ontology which gives greater weight to the actual and a presence which is not inundated with the possible’ (p. 193)—later called a ‘stunted ontology’ (p. 203). Heidegger offers resources for such a rebuttal and thereby opens the way for the consideration of the concept of possibility in relation to the future and thereafter the concept of promise. Thus we are provided by reference to possibility with an alternative to futurum, while reference to promise suggests the interpersonal nature or quality of the future. Arguing against an Aristotelian understanding of the relation between actuality and possibility, Burdett advances a futural ontology based in possibility and this forms the basis of critique of the hyper-futurum of the transhumanist. There are some issues of interpretation here: one formulation (see p. 194) suggests that transhumanism does not give adequate emphasis to possibility, whereas another (p. 217) suggests that transhumanism has an inappropriate understanding of possibility. At this point, creatureliness and possibility are equated (p. 217), and also the latter is understood as the basis of a truer Christian understanding of the future. What is the content, so to speak, of this future? The distinction between adventus and futurum is now brought strongly into play, by reference to Moltmann. As Burdett notes, ‘God’s gifting of new possibilities is visible, for Moltmann, precisely in the superabundance of the promise and resurrection’ (p. 222).
The argument closes with a discussion of adventus and futurum which includes the claim that the transhumanist future calls out for—in an unknowing way—the interpersonal dimension of adventus (p. 238). In a sense, thereby, the central problematic of this stretching and impressive enquiry returns: what is the relation between these two? If my reading of the final sections is correct, the relation between the constructed and the arriving is difficult to establish, and neither the concept of possibility nor that of promise addresses this issue fully.