Image of God/Created Co-creator

Still thinking about beneficence and technology. Some random quotes from that process.

Peterson, James C. Genetic Turning Points: The Ethics of Human Genetic Intervention Critical Issues in Bioethics. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001.

The question for any technology is, how can we develop this to best love God and our neighbors? Asking that question is not trying to be God; it is following God’s orders, fulfilling a God-give mandate to maximize our service while we are here. Such development and intervention is not playing God. It is fulfilling a God-give mandate to serve. Whether our current physical nature is a starting point God intends us to improve upon, broken in the devastation of the fall, or both, it is clear the we could be physically better. We are responsible to do the best we can with what we have. As God’s people we are being created, redeemed, and transformed by God. Part of our calling is to participate in that process by sustaining, restoring, and improving what has been temporarily entrusted to us. (p.89)

Peters, Ted. “The Soul of Trans-Humanism.” Dialog 44, no. 4 (2005): 381-395.

Drawing a bright sharp line between therapy and enhancement seems easy to do. Therapy is ethical, whereas enhancement is not. Yet, is it so easy? For the theologian, the line gets blurry quite quickly. Let’s ask: if therapy focuses on health, does this refer strictly to bodily function? Let’s also ask: if the Christian faith emphasizes redemption, would this lead to embracing all forms of human betterment, even enhancement? Still one more question: would good health within Christian theology include enhancement? (p.384)

Spezio, Michael L. “Brain and Machine: Minding the Transhuman Future.” Dialog 44, no. 4 (2005): 375-380.

Will such enhancements actualize dormant human possibilities, or will they rather make it more difficult for that which is most human to be actualized, in the individual and in relationships? (p.377)

Graham, Elaine. “Bioethics after Posthumanism: Natural Law, Communicative Action and the Problem of Self-Design.” Ecotheology 9, no. 2 (2004): 178-198.

Yet to speak of an orderliness to nature, of its integrity as a mediation of divine purpose, is not the same as inferring an immutability to nature which forbids the ‘unnatural’ interventions of technology or cultural diversity. So we must be ware of attributing to ‘nature’ a fixity and purpose – or even a homogeneity and determinism – which it does not possess. Human relationships to nature are altogether more complex, and appeals to what is ‘natural’ provide little help when, as in the age of advanced biotechnology, this is the very category which is revealed to be malleable and problematic.(p.184-185)

Socio-economic inequalities may thus represent as profound a threat to human dignity as biotechnologies. (p.189)

Hansen, Bart, and Paul Schotsmans. “Cloning: The Human as Created Co-Creator?” Ethical Perspectives 8, no. 2 (2001): 75-89.

In brief, the power of mastering (human) nature through (therapeutic) cloning raises the question whether the human being, as the image of God, is permitted to carry out this task or whether God alone may exercise this right? (p.82)

I’ve been skimming through cognitive scientist/philosopher Andy Clark’s book “Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence” over the past couple of days and came across this bit near the end of the book.

The drive toward biotechnological merger is deep within us—it is the direct expression of what is most characteristic of the human species. The task is to merge gracefully, to merge in ways that are virtuous, that bring us closer to one another, make us more tolerant, enhance understanding, celebrate embodiment, and encourage mutual respect. If we are to succeed in this important task, we must first understand ourselves and our complex relations with the technologies that surround us. We must recognize that, in a very deep sense, we were always hybrid beings, joint products of our biological nature and multilayered linguistic, cultural, and technological webs. Only then can we confront, without fear or prejudice, the specific demons in our cyborg closets. Only then can we actively structure the kinds of world, technology, and culture that will build the kinds of people we choose to be.

Clark’s ideas about the hybridity of human beings bears striking similarity to Philip Hefner’s metaphor of humans as ‘created co-creators’. For Clark, it is human beings existing in a symbiotic relationship between human and technology, whereas for Hefner it is the human being as the fusion of biological conditionedness and cultural freedom. Clark’s definition of a cyborg goes beyond the typical Star Trek or Bionic Woman visions:

For we shall be cyborgs not in the merely superficial sense of combining flesh and wires but in the more profound sense of being human-technology symbionts: thinking and reasoning systems whose minds and selves are spread across biological brain and nonbiological circuitry.

And this is coupled with the drive to create (seen also in Hefner’s idea of the drive toward self-transcendence being part of nature) where Clark asserts:

By contrast it is our special character, as human beings, to be forever driven to create, co-opt, annex, and exploit nonbiological props and scaffoldings. We have be designed, by Mother Nature, to exploit deep neural plasticity in order to become one with our best and most reliable tools. Minds like ours were made for mergers. Tools-R-Us, and always have been.

Clark’s approach is techno-optimistic, where the benefits of technology outweight the problems. However, he does dedicate a chapter to the perceived downsides of living in a world of where technology is ‘the air that we breathe’. This serves as a useful, albeit brief, starting point for such discussions.

Chapter 1 of the book is available at the OUP web site on the like above. Some interesting ideas, and I like how he clearly reaffirms the place of the body in a technological society.

Looking at information technology, and technology in general, as an ecology is a stimulating idea, and one I’m thinking about in relation to the imago Dei. Much has been written on the relationship between the environment and interpretations of the imago Dei in Gen 1. Is it possible, if we think of technology ecologically, to connect that reflection with cyberspace and other technological dimensions of life?
Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O’Day look at how viewing information technology as an ecology might serve to shape engagement with it that goes beyond a focus upon means rather than ends. They write in their book Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart:

We define an information ecology to be a system of people, practices, values, and technologies in a particular local environment. In information ecologies, the spotlight is not on technology, but on human activities that are served by technology.

By focusing upon technology as an ecosystem they argue that (among other things) it:

• Focuses attention on the relationships between tools, people, and practices.
• Moves beyond the idea of technology as a single tool for a single person.
• Captures the notion of locality that is missing from high-level system views.

Furthermore, while an ecology is complex it can be views at many different scales because:

• An ecology responds to local environmental changes and local interventions.
• An ecology can be examined at the level of the individual.
• Individuals can participate in multiple ecologies.
• Individuals are involved with real relationships with other individuals in an ecology.
• Scale of the ecology allows for the identification of individual points of leverage, of ways into the system, and avenues of intervention.

I like their idea of librarians as ‘gardeners’ or ‘ecologists’ of information ecologies, and think the metaphor of the created co-creator (together with related metaphors of the cyborg and Incarnation) might connect well here.

Related links:
Greenflame: Appropriate technology

Picked up a copy of this the other day via inter-loan (all the way from Wichita State University). Contains a selection of essays looking at, among other things, co-creation and artificial intelligence. Most of the papers are short (5-10 pages) and don’t interact with the material to the depth of my own research (and nor should they given their length), but it’s encouraging to see that others have had similar (but different!) ideas. Not sure if any of the paper will get used in the thesis - well past the time for new material now.

I inter-loaned the book rather than buying it (even though it’s one of the few that touches on my thesis topic) because of the price: US$120 / UK£60. Seriously, books like this should move to a publish on demand or electronic media version. Given the limited appeal (and sales) that’d make access better and more people might buy it outside of institutions.

Görman, Ulf, Willem B. Drees, and Hubert Meisinger, eds. Creative Creatures: Values and Ethical Issues in Theology, Science and Technology. Issues in Science and Theology. London; New York: T & T Clark, 2005.

Working on refining the thesis section that notes people who have used the idea of co-creation independently of Philip Hefner’s work. Here’s a quote from Arthur Peacocke on co-creation which he frames within the topic of humanity, creation and concern for the environment:

to be co-creator with the ‘living God’ who always actualizes in his creation new possibilities, previously unimagined humanly speaking, is to be prepared always to adjust creatively and deliberately to the changes necessary for God’s purposes to be fulfilled—which includes maintaining the environment in such as way that it can go on being the medium through which life can continue and explore new modes of existence under the guidance of God. (p.316)

From: Peacocke, Arthur R. Creation and the World of Science: The Bampton Lectures, 1978. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.

Article on genetic determinism - Science & Theology News - The Daily Dose: Genes are my co-pilots points to another at That Wild Streak? Maybe It Runs in the Family - New York Times.

Reminds me of this from a paper I read recently.

Hansen, Bart, and Paul Schotsmans. “Cloning: The Human as Created Co-Creator?” Ethical Perspectives 8, no. 2 (2001): 75-89. (Abstract)

It is equally compelling to investigate how a ‘gene theology’, insofar as it is formulated on the basis of a belief in a sort of predestination, reasons. Here the genome takes the place of a Janus-faced God who arbitrarily rules over and disposes of everything. On the one hand the human is literally bound by the invisible threads of DNA. Human life is reduced to the performance of a drama whose ‘dénouement’ has been determined in advance. The divine DNA directs the play and humans act it out. In this perspective of God’s providence the separation and autonomy of humanity over against God is eliminated. On the other hand, the illusion is created that once the genetic structure is untangled a total control of the further evolution of human dignity and scientific and technological development becomes possible. (pp.82-83)

Science and Theology New have been running articles recently about biotechnology and its interaction with religion. There are a couple of interesting ones I’ve seen in the print edition that haven’t made it on to the web site yet, but this one is there now.

Science & Theology News - God’s genetically modified image

I’ve been looking at various ways in which people have appropriated Hefner’s metaphor of the ‘created co-creator’ and today I was following up a paper by Anne Kull (University of Tartu, Estonia) that drew parallels between the concept of the cyborg articulated by Donna Haraway and the dual-natures of Christ found in the Incarnation. Kull argues that Haraway’s cyborg and Hefner’s co-creator are parallel stories attempting to make sense of human being within technoculture.

Kull, Anne. “Cyborg Embodiment and the Incarnation.” Currents in Theology and Mission 28, no. 3-4 (2001): 279-284.

From the editorial for that issue (by Ralph W. Klein),

Anne Kull considers the views of Donna Haraway regarding the relationship between human beings and nature in our technological age. Haraway believes human beings have become “cybernetic organisms,” or cyborgs, through the marriage of machine and life. The cyborg has as much affinity with technology as it does with the wilderness. Cyborgs are hybrid entities and have the potential to disrupt present dualisms that set the natural body in opposition to the technologically recrafted body. Nature is a co-creation among humans and non humans, machines, and other partners. The concept of the cyborg makes it possible to affirm our createdness with a new specificity, along with the creativeness of the rest of nature. Since the incarnation of Jesus is so contrary to common sense, it is useful for critical positioning and for destabilizing categories.

Some interesting ideas in there, and Kull uses the idea of the hybrid to link together a whole bunch of ideas that I’d like to tease out sometime. In her paper she concludes,

Deliberately posing as a hybrid creature, Jesus can show the arbitrariness and constructed nature of what is considered the norm(al)—and often, significantly, natural. The borderland of history and consciousness, where crossings are never safe and names never original, allows for differently articulated stories for humanity. (p.284)

While I was reading the paper I was thinking about this image which I’d seen a while back.

I’ve added a new page in the resources section about Philip Hefner’s concept of human beings as “created co-creators.” I was trying to collate all the related material for a thesis chapter into one place and I hadn’t seen a similar collection online anywhere. So I’ve made an outline of the concept with a couple of bibliographies attached.

The bibliographies are more of a sample selection than the definitive list, but now I have a place to refer people to when they ask for more information about the metaphor. Within my own work I take Hefner’s concept and rework it, so it’s useful for me to have it around too.

See The Created Co-Creator resource page.

Catching up on some podcasts today I listened to this one from ABC’s The Spirit of Things. Some good thought provoking material, which intersects with the thesis chapter I’m editing at the moment (created co-creator stuff). See The Spirit of Things - 4 June 2006 - Epiphanies: Lord Robert Winston

Spent the weekend filling in a gap between thesis chapters and adding some comments in a chapter about how different models of the imago Dei are challenged by techno-science. Came across this quote in my notes when looking at how the imago Dei maintains both a connection to the divine and to creation.

It is dangerous to show man too clearly how much he resembles the beast, without at the same time showing him his greatness. It is also dangerous to allow too clear a vision of his greatness without his baseness. It is even more dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both. (Pascal, Penseés [1659])

Science and Theology News has a collation of articles relating to ecology and religion available in a new mini-portal at Science & Theology News - Ecology. This includes the 2001 article “Ted Peters Reflects on Making the World a Better Place” which is of interest for me at the moment as I work through ideas about the proleptic nature of the imago Dei.

Something to bear in mind as I work through the interpretation and implications of the imago Dei in a techno-cultural society. In commenting on the interpretation of the imago Dei by figures such as Ambrose, Augustine, the Reformers, Hegel and Troeltsch, Barth writes of the Gen 1:26ff passage and its interpretation,

We might easily discuss which of these and the many other similar explanations is the finest or deepest or most serious. What we cannot discuss is which of them is the true explanation of Gen. I26f. For it is obvious that their authors merely found the concept in the text and then proceeded to pure invention in accordance with the requirements of contemporary anthropology, so that it is only by the standard of our own anthropology, and not according to the measure of its own anthropology and on exegetical grounds, that we can decide for or against them. Indeed, is it not almost refreshing to observe that in the end Troeltsch quite obviously makes no attempt whatever to expound Gen. I26f. but decides for an independent reconstruction of the concept? The procedure is characteristic of the tendency in much that has been said at this point by other writers both ancient and modern.

– Karl Barth, The Doctrine of Creation, Church Dogmatics, vol. 3 No. 1 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1958), 192-193.

The latest issue of Dialag, a Lutheran theological journal, has a collection of articles on technology and the human being in it’s latest issue. And that issue is now their current sample issue - it wasn’t a week or two back when I was getting ready to interloan it - with PDFs of the articles available for a while. See - Blackwell Synergy: Dialog, Vol 44, Issue 4: Table of Contents.

Emergent Authorship: Player as Co-Creator by Celia Pearce on interactive computer games - especially massive multiplayer online games and “God-games”.

From a cultural perspective, the ramifications of these new forms of entertainment is nothing short of revolutionary. Through these experiences, the consumer is thus transformed into consumer/producer and consumption itself becomes an act of production. Where previously there was a clear boundary between producer and consumer of content, this boundary continues to become more blurry. The role of the “author” in this context is, rather than creating content, to create context. This then invites the audience create or co-create the content, in essence, to entertain each other with their unique way of “playing the story.” Karl Marx said “seize the means of production.” What is interesting here is that not that users are seizing the means of production, but that in a sense, capitalism has found a sort of compromise in the production/consumption hybrid.

Published in a more polished form in: Celia Pearce, “Emergent authorship: the next interactive revolution”, Computers & Graphics, Volume 26, Issue 1, February 2002, Pages 21-29.

Off on Friday night to hear this public lecture at BCNZ by biblical scholar Joel Green. I’ve referred to some of his work in my thesis so it’ll be nice to put a voice to the articles. More details at Bible College of New Zealand - Events - Joel Green - What are They Saying About the Soul?

Green’s got an article online over at Catalyst that touches on some of what I’m expecting him to talk about. It’s available at Catalyst: Body and Soul, Mind and Brain: Pressing Questions. From that article he raises some of the following questions:

• Is there anything about humans that our mechanical creations, our innovations in Artificial Intelligence, will be unable to duplicate?
• What view of the human person is capable of funding what we want to know about ourselves theologically — about sin, for example, as well as moral responsibility, repentance, and growth in grace?
• What portrait of the human person is capable of casting a canopy of sacred worth over human beings, so that we have what is necessary for discourse concerning morality and for ethical practices?
• How should we understand “salvation”? Does salvation entail a denial of the world and embodied life, focusing instead on my “inner person” and on the life to come?
• How ought the church to be extending itself in mission? Mission to what? The spiritual or soulish needs of persons? Society-at-large? The cosmos?

Some good questions, especially the ones about mission. One of the good things about teaching the course “Humanity and Hope” last year was the space to ponder how the combination of our understandings of eschatology and of Christian anthropology shapes our activism.

Democratic transhumanist James Hughes interviews Lutheran theologian Ted Peters (Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary & Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences) about theology, genetics and humans as created co-creators.

Podcast at : Changesurfer Radio: Co-Creator Theology (2005-02-12).

Slogging through understanding, appropriating and then adapting Philip Hefner’s metaphor as human beings as created co-creators into something of my own to apply to my research field (Christian anthropology, the imago Dei and emergent digital and transhuman technology). Figured I’d whack a summary out here so then when people ask me what I’m referring to I’ll just refer them over to here. May not make much sense to them but its a starting point.

Of course, this doesn’t sketch out here any of the criticisms of the metaphor (I came up with a few (yay!) but then found them listed elsewhere already along with a whole lot of others (which was somewhat affirming and dampening at the same time)).

Anyway, Hefner proposes the following as the “hard core” (in Lakatosian terms) of his research proposal.

Human beings are God’s created co-creators whose purpose is to be the agency, acting in freedom, to birth the future that is most wholesome for the nature that has birthed us—the nature that is not only our own genetic heritage, but also the entire human community and the evolutionary and ecological reality in which and to which we belong. Exercising this agency is said to be God’s will for humans. (Philip Hefner, The Human Factor : Evolution, Culture and Religion, 27)

The purpose of the “hard core” is that while it may or may not be verifiable or falsifiable it provides the stimulus for generating hypotheses and suchlike that can be evaluated.

Hefner unpacks this “hard core” as a theory as follows:

1. The human being is created by God to be a co-creator in the creation that God has brought into being and for which God has purposes.
2. The conditioning matrix that has produced the human being—the evolutionary process—is God’s process of bringing into being a creature who represents the creation’s zone of a new stage of freedom and who therefore is crucial for the emergence of a free creation.
3. The freedom that marks the created co-creator and its culture is an instrumentality of God for enabling the creation (consisting of the evolutionary past of genetic and cultural inheritance as well as the contemporary ecosystem) to participate in the intentional fulfillment of God’s purposes.

Read the rest of this entry »

Reading this paper this morning and this quote stuck out,

Humanity created in God’s image-and the church as the renewed imago Dei-is called and empowered to be God’s multi-sided prism in the world, reflecting and refracting the Creator’s brilliant light into a rainbow of cultural activity and socio-political patterns that scintillates with the glory of God’s presence and manifests his reign of justice.

Middleton, J. Richard. “The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago Dei in Context.” Christian Scholar’s Review 24, no. 1 (1994): 8-25.

Middleton doesn’t really unpack how the church is the renewed image of God in the article beyond the it being the rule of Christian life. The bulk of the paper being a call for theologians to take the OT consensus about the image seriously but I imagine his new book will flesh out the “body of Christ” metaphor in relation to the image of God in more detail.

Finished the Virtual Theology paper finally. Definitely a start toward something larger (a thesis chapter?) and a weaving together of some strands of my research.

Had a large section (1500-2000 words) on the role of science-religion models of interaction in technology-theology engagement. It went into the paper, was removed, went back in and then was brutally cut out. Felt like I was doing the “Hokey Cokey” [Syr. mss "Hokey Tokey", Copt. mss "Hokey Pokey"]. My main problem with science-religion stuff is that the messy stuff (like the ethics of embryonic stem cell research) is left as an exercise to the reader. Too much abstraction and not enough “rubber meets the road.” Anyway, here’s the abstract.

Hacking the Divine : A metaphor for theology-technology engagementIn this paper the metaphors of �God as hacker� and human beings as created co-creators are linked with the narratives of creativity, novelty and experience within contemporary technoculture. This type of approach is envisaged as one of many that might be used to engage with technology theologically. Drawing upon the tradition of God as creator and a functional interpretation of the imago Dei in humans it aims to open up a conversation with technology. This conversation looks to move beyond mere abstraction and into existential questions raised by new technologies together with identifying how to live wisely within the everyday technological world.

Note: The term created co-creator is one that Philip Hefner developed. The idea that we are rooted in an ongoing creation yet can act as agents of change - producers of novelty - as we participate with God’s ongoing creative action.

Note 2: Also managed to fit viriditas in the too. Might print the final copy of the paper in green.

From Technology and Human Becoming by Philip Hefner.

If the techno-human, the cyborg, is created in the image of God, what does that tell us about God?

Hefner uses the term ‘created, co-creators’ to describe human beings. Created in the sense the we are finite (stands against hubris) but capable of being part of God’s wider creative enterprise, and agents in that enterprise. It’s an optimistic engagement with technology at a time when emergent technologies seem to meet with innate conservatism.

Random neurons firing at the moment as I’ve been reading a lot of bioethical and theological reflections on technology (e.g. cloning). How should the tension between - don’t do evil - and - actively choose to do good - be worked out technologically?

Came across this today while trawling some blogs I visit on an irregular basis. Paradoxology: Is Our DNA Sacred? has some commentary and some interesting third party comments on Lutheran theologian Ted Peter’s perspective on cloning and stem cell research. (See Response: The Seattle Pacific University Magazine - Summer 2004 | Volume 26, Number 7 | Features - Is Our DNA Sacred?)

I’m currently reading Ted Peter’s essay “Cloning Shock - A Theological Reaction.” (In Human Cloning : Religious Responses, ed. Ronald Cole-Turner, 12-24. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997.) as I work on an article on Christian social justice and technology so it was good to get another insight into the thought of someone who has a more nuanced approach to biotechnology than the “Just say ‘No!’” crowd. Not that I would agree with all he says but he is right to note that the issues surrounding biotechnology generate a range of religious responses.

Just finished reading Rocks of Ages : Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life by Stephen Jay Gould as part of an ongoing project evaluating models of science and religion interaction. It was one of those books where after the preface and the next 8 pages you knew pretty much all you needed to know. Still 200+ pages later it’s done. If you want to read a book about how science and religion relate to separate things (facts vs. values), basically shouldn’t talk to each other and science has the last say, then this is the book for you. Still he painted the “two-worlds” argument with verve even if he reuses the old cliches like “science tells you about the age of rocks; religion tells you about the rock of ages” and “science tells you how the heavens go; religion tells you how to go to heaven”.

Knocked that off and I’m on to Elaine Graham’s Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture which looks far more promising. Flicking through her bibliography I noticed that she has cited not only a lot of the printed material I’ve been working with but also many of the electronic sources too. Sort of reassuring to know someone else has walked a similar path as well.

I also find it interesting that both Graham and Noreen Herzfeld (In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Spirit in their respective engagements with theology and technology spend significant effort using cinema, television and literature as primary sources. In thinking about this last year I wrote

These contemporary narratives highlight what Lelia Green calls �the widespread fascination with the interface of biology and technology, and the potential for fusion between the two.� It is in these type of stories that society explores the boundaries of what it means to be human as well as trying to distill the essence of humanness. Questions about how to live and how to be human are addressed, as well as the hopes and fears of people who are increasingly dependent on technology and the cultures it creates. There is, she asserts, almost an enthrallment with the question of how much technology compromises the essentially human.

I’ve only dipped into Graham’s book but already the synapses are firing as I’ve skimmed through it.

Another observation is that a lot (most?) of the people writing in the areas overlapped by culture, technology, sociology and religion are women - Brenda Brasher, Margaret Wertheim, Susan J White, Anne Foerst, Noreen Herzfeld, Elaine Graham, Lelia Green, Jennifer Cobb, Nancey Murphy and Sherry Turkle to name just a few off my bookshelf.

Anyway, only another million books or so to go after this one so I’d better get cracking.