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.

(more…)

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.