A Book Review from Books At a Glance
by Thomas Haviland-Pabst
Martin Erdmann, who held a variety of posts such as head of the New Testament at Staatsunabhängige Theologische Hochschule Basel and Senior Scientist at the University Hospital in Basel, seeks to explore in this book the intellectual forces that brought us to the point of endorsing transhumanism, which is a species of humankind’s desire to achieve perfection apart from God.
In the first chapter, he makes plain the philosophical assumptions laying behind transhumanism and other endeavors to employ technology to exceed biological limitations, writing
Genetically modified organisms and robots with artificial intelligence could actually do more harm than good. The temptation is great to succumb to the delusion that the convergence of major technologies is a kind of religious world salvation. Objections are raised to a seemingly naïve belief in progress. This is based on the mistaken idea that man is capable of perfecting himself to such an extent that in the future he will no longer have to die and will be freed from the compulsion to eke out an existence in corrupt social forms (p. 12).
In contrast to this naïve belief in human perfectibility, the author states that only the Christian worldview can respect the “boundaries between machine and human being” and only the ethics arising out of said worldview can provide the proper foundation for “real scientific and technological progress” (p. 12).
With chapters two through five, the author provides an intellectual history of the phenomenon now known as transhumanism. In the second chapter, Erdmann moves from Greek philosophy to its adaptation and transformation by Christian thinkers, moving into the medieval period. Here, he discerns three major philosophical schools that heavily influenced the period: “Hermeticism, Gnosticism, and Neoplatonism” (p. 21).
The author offers a number of insights in this chapter (which, I might add, was one of my favorites of the whole book). He demonstrates how the monism of Greek antiquity, with “the insolubility of the questions” (p. 31) it raised, gave way to a dualism that led to irrationalism. Thus, the Greek rational project was a failed one. Socrates, while a great thinker, ultimately gave the Western world as an inheritance “the fixation of all interpretation on man as the final point of reference” (p. 55), which lead to the mysticism of Neoplatonism, as seen in the work of Plotinus. Some of the consequences of this, Erdmann notes, is that Greek philosophy created a dichotomy between the mind and the body that promoted asceticism and removal from worldly affairs and the lowering of “ethical standards … to allow them to gradually approach perfection at a lower moral level” (p. 59).
Erdmann, turning to the medieval synthesis of theology and (ancient) philosophy, offers this summary: “Many medieval theologians agreed with Greek philosophy in making human autonomy the main basis of philosophy” thus added to the teaching of “the Christian dogmas of divine creation and redemption” in the universities was “[m]onistic pantheism [which] overgrew biblical teaching until in essentially destroyed them” (p. 102). This compromise, in turn, impacted how technology was understood. They were no longer seen only as easing human labor but as “useful” for humanity to regain “dominion over nature” (p. 108). Erdmann argues that monastic orders are largely responsible for “the equation of technology and religiosity” by reframing physical labor as “something spiritually meritorious” (p. 109).
The third chapter discusses the move from nominalism to modernism. He writes, “late medieval nominalism led to the modern emphasis on the self-explanatory human personality” (p. 123). This is the case, he argues, since nominalism, while drawn to monism, ultimately resisted it instead positing that “the idea of an absolutely perceptible reality” was relegated to “a sphere completely beyond human control” (p. 124), which left the heirs of late medieval thought (i.e., modernism) with “the empirical study of psychology and nature” (p. 123).
Chapter four examines the thought of Enlightenment philosophers such as Isaac Newton, John Locke, and Immanuel Kant. Here, the author argues that because Greek thought rejected God’s decretive will, instead allowing for “pure change” (p. 205), ancient rationalism is the ancestor of modern irrationalism. Thus, rather than epistemological and ethical submission to God, the modern man is caught between the horns of rationalism and irrationalism in the rebellion against God and promotion of human autonomy.
In chapter five, the author surveys “the fusion of Hermeticism, [post-]millenarianism, and apocalypticism,” which resulted in “the search for a universal science” (p. 212) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This universal science assumed religious characteristics as it sought to bridge the gap between “traditional philosophy and the natural sciences” (p. 222). This, in turn, gave way to the nigh-religious adherence to and faith in progress in the nineteenth century.
Chapter six focuses mainly on the prophetic voice of Aldous Huxley warning against the utopian vision controlled by ruling elites, which, ironically, opposed the vision of his brother, Julian Huxley, who advocated for a society ruled by a “new elite of superhumans” (p. 241), which later birthed transhumanism. Helpfully, Erdmann notes five characteristics of the transhumanist project: (1) boundless expansion; (2) self-transformation; (3) dynamic optimism (e.g., avoidance of “stagnant pessimism” [p. 270]); (4) intelligent technology; and an (5) open society (i.e., decentralized and tolerant). With the final chapter, the author drives home the notion that true societal progress can only be realized within the Christian worldview as it seeks to honor and submit to God and to avoid occultism and the self-referential nature of non-Christian philosophy.
Overall, this is a book worth consulting to get a grasp of how transhumanism stands in a long tradition of attempts by humans to transcend their God given limitations. A few minor quibbles are worth mentioned, though I hasten to add that they do not substantially detract from the usefulness of this work. First, the author paints the Eastern Orthodox view of deification in a largely negative light. Though it could be argued that the eliding of the creator/creature distinction is built in to this concept, Erdmann’s does not make the reader aware of a perspective of theosis that does not have this theological implication (cf. Robert Letham, Systematic Theology for a more sympathetic treatment. Second, while one can agree that the monastic elevation of physical labor as a means of meriting divine merit is surely correct, I wonder if there are more positive ways to understand this phenomenon (e.g., Brother Lawrence). Third, not all adherents of postmillennialism will likely find Erdmann’s construal of their position, especially how it has contributed to a trajectory away from God, charitable. Lastly, this book read much like another largely negative intellectual history, Michael McClymond’s The Devil’s Redemption (Baker Academic, 2018). While a negative slant on things is not necessarily bad, it might prove tiring for the less enduring reader.
In conclusion, this is truly a remarkable work. The range of sources consulted, the depth and breadth of the author’s treatment, and the seriousness of the topic considered makes this essential reading for anyone interesting in the turn toward transhumanism, especially since this movement is not likely to be going anywhere any time soon. It also anticipates (likely not intended by the author) in many aspects the projected three-volume work by Michael Horton on a history of the notion of ‘spiritual but not religious.’ Highly recommended.
Thomas Haviland-Pabst