Contrasting Models of Deification

Ancient ideas about human transformation and divinization have resurfaced in our cultural moment. Artificial intelligence and biotechnology are raising afresh questions about what it means to be human and divine. The Oxford Handbook of Deification has arrived on the scene as its subject matter has splashed out of theological discourse into the popular imagination. What Christian theology would recognize as deification is now a talking point on podcasts, a central theme in film and television and an agenda item for government cabinet meetings. This essay celebrates the Handbook's publication by comparing the technological anthropology of our day with early Christian theological anthropology. The forces of ‘accelerationism’ and ‘techno‐fatalism’ are pressuring uncritical adoption of technological advancements, shaping how we think of both humanity and divinity. Yet early Christian teaching offers a corrective that is realistic about the ‘human condition’ while remaining hopeful of a transformation enacted by the transcendent powers beyond the self, and outside the timeline of modernity's narrative of ‘progress’.

Christianity · Early Christianity · Humanity · Narrative · Subject matter · Timeline · Media, Religion, Digital Communication · Neuroethics, Human Enhancement, Biomedical Innovations · Religious, Philosophical, and Educational Studies