Ep 33: Ron Cole-Turner & The Theology of Transformation

The Christian Transhumanist Podcast

What does Christianity bring to the conversation about the future of humanity? How do we move beyond the selfishness of short-term thinking, and embrace technology as part of the renewal and transformation of all life? Ron Cole-Turner, professor of theology and ethics, and author of numerous books on transhumanism and human origins, joins us to explore these questions.

• What does Christianity bring to the conversation about the future?
• The need for theology to relate to the real, practical world
• Bioethics and why the distinction between Therapy & Enhancement can't answer our moral questions for us
• Why Christian theology needs to offer more than justification
• The Eastern Orthodox doctrine of Theosis & the Vision of Cosmic Transformation
• The whole universe becomes "luminous" or intelligent
• Christian Transhumanism applied to the Cosmos
• Ephesians 1:9-10 and God's plan to bring all things into unity in Christ, not as dead matter, but as participatory life
• “God became human so that humanity might become divine.” — St Athanasius <-- (click to tweet)
• The breath-taking doctrine of the incarnation
• The rejection of racist interpretations
• Can you engineer something outside the scope of the incarnation?
• Everything we are, have been, or will become, is in the scope of God's plan
• Pierre Teilhard de Chardin aka The Jesuit Priest Who Believed in God and the Singularity
• Karl Rahner
• Romans 8:19-21 and the glorious vision of incarnation's ultimate impact
• Physicist David Deutsch on Humanity's Infinite Reach
• Salvation as transformation
• The historic differences between East & West
  • The problem isn't guilt, it is that we are mortal—and cannot share fully in the life of God
• Why newer churches are named things like Elevation
• “The glory of God is a human being fully alive” — St Irenaeus <-- (click to tweet)
• Why moments of persecution are the moments of greatest imagination
• Why Christian Transhumanism is the strongest possible transhumanism
• The origins of the word “Transhumanism” by Ron Cole-Turner
• Dante in 1320—exclaiming over the impossibility of saying what is beyond the human
• Dante's final guide: Bernard of Clairvaux, the figure who personified looking beyond the human
• The History of “Transhumanism” by Harrison/Wolniak
• God takes the limits off our humanity
• The more we open ourselves to God, the more we open ourselves to unlimited life
• Books:
• Design and Destiny: Jewish and Christian Perspectives on Human Germline Modification
• The End of Adam and Eve: Theology and the Science of Human Origins
• Transhumanism and Transcendence: Christian Hope in an Age of Technological Enhancement
• Links:
• Blogging at TheologyPlus
• Ron Cole-Turner on Twitter

---

Ron Cole-Turner is the Professor of Theology and Ethics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, a founding member of the International Society for Science and Religion, and has served on the advisory board of the John Templeton Foundation and the Metanexus Institute

---

Quotes:

• “The glory of God is a human being fully alive” — St Irenaeus <-- (click to tweet)

• “God became human so that humanity might become divine.” — St Athanasius <-- (click to tweet)

"After all, almost no one objects to the idea that human beings should strive to enhance or improve themselves."

"And to say that religion, Christianity in particular, also endorses at least some form of human enhancement is an understatement in the extreme."

"The distinction in theology is between redemption and glorification, between God redeeming humanity by restoring us to an original state from which we have fallen and glorifying or transforming us far above any original status. The bioethics distinction that is similar, and perhaps related historically, is of course the one between therapy and enhancement. Redemption and therapy are both aimed at restoring what was (or what should be regarded as a “normal” state, even if it never actually existed), whereas glorification and enhancement take us far beyond toward something completely new."

"The main point, however, is that human transformation is central to Christian thought, and thus it affects the way in which Christian theology understands not just the character but the very being of God as triune and as capable of entering into and taking up the human condition, thereby transforming it beyond all human expectation."