Embracing His Artistry: Irenaeus and transhumanism
In studying for our Being Human series, I was reminded of a quote that I had read a few years ago by Irenaeus, one of the Great Early Church Fathers:
“How can you be a god when you have not yet become a man? How can you be perfect when you have only just been made? How can you be immortal when, in your mortal nature, you do not obey your Maker? You must hold the rank of man before you partake of the glory of God. You did not make God; God made you. If you are the handiwork of God, await the Craftsman's hand patiently; He does everything at a favourable time, favourable, that is, to you, whom He made. Offer him your heart, pliant and unresisting. Preserve the form in which the Craftsman fashioned you. Keep within you the Water which comes from Him; without it, you harden and lose the imprint of His fingers. By preserving the structure, you will ascend to perfection; God's artistry will conceal the clay within you.
His hand formed your substance; He will coat you, within and without, in pure gold and silver; He will adorn you so well that 'the King Himself will delight in your beauty' (Ps. 44:12). But if you harden and reject His artistry, if you show Him your displeasure at being made a man, your ingratitude to God will lose you both His artistry and His life. Making is a property of God's generosity; being made is a property of man's nature. If, therefore, you hand over to Him what is yours, faith in Him and subjection to Him, you will receive the benefit of His artistry and be God's perfect work of art.”
Irenaeus lived in a time when the “givenness” of our embodied humanity, with its limitations and imperfections, was being rejected. Gnosticism, which held the material world in contempt, was infiltrating the Early Church and threatened to undermine the givenness and goodness of the body that is affirmed in Genesis and re-affirmed in the Gospels with the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus.
The Gnostic impulse hasn’t gone away, with the rise of the Transhumanist movement.
Transhumanists offer a similarly contemptuous view of the body, hoping that Science and Technology will eventually allow us to abandon our bodies, these withering husks riddled with decay and death, and to migrate our minds into more durable machines.
To its credit, Transhumanism, alongside Christianity, correctly recognises that there is something wrong with the world. With the Apostle Paul it grieves that creation (including our bodies) is “subject to futility”, in “bondage to corruption”, “groaning in the pains of childbirth” (Romans 8). Where Transhumanism and Christianity differ, however, is the solution that it offers.
In short, Transhumanism proposes an escape from our creatureliness, whereas Christianity proposes an embrace of it.
You were made by God, receive his generosity
Fundamental to Christian Anthropology is that we are made by God. While we are creators by nature, we are first, by nature, created! As Irenaeus says, “making is a property of God's generosity; being made is a property of man's nature”. There is a givenness to our embodied reality that is the good design of a gracious God. Our creatureliness is a feature not a flaw and therefore should be received with thanksgiving. To reject our embodied humanity is to reject the God who made us – to reveal that we have forgotten the “imprint of his fingers” that formed our flesh.
Transhumanism, at its heart, reveals a “displeasure at being made a [human]”. It is an echo of the primordial temptation, to be like gods, unbounded by creaturely dependence. The consequence of this, Irenaeus says, is that our “ingratitude to God will lose [us] both His artistry and His life.”
You are being made by God, trust his artistry
This is not to say that everything about the human condition is part of God’s original design – sickness, suffering and death are part of the de-creation caused by sin. But how might these be “solved”?
Irenaeus suggests that the way to “perfection” is not to transcend our humanity, but to allow God to transform it. This means, rather than escaping creaturely dependence, we are called to embrace it – by giving back to Him what He has graciously given to us. This is what Irenaeus calls God’s artistry. A God who not only made the world but is remaking it. Just as he “formed your substance”, Irenaeus says, “He will coat you, within and without, in pure gold and silver”. This speaks to the work that God does in us now by His Spirit (our sanctification) but also of the work that is promised in our resurrected future (our glorification) - where our mortality will be clothed in immortality (1 Cor 15:53), and we will be trans-figured to be made like God (1 John 3:2).
Whereas transhumanism proposes that our bodies are like husks that should be discarded for us to reach our full potential, Christianity proposes that our bodies are like seeds, imbued with the potential for transformation, alive with the hope of resurrection, and that even if planted in the soil of death, they will one day sprout and bloom into an ever-more glorious tree (1 Cor 15:36–37). But that will not be a result of human ingenuity – it will be consequence of divine grace. It won’t be a result of abandoning of our creaturely dependence; it will be a consequence of its embrace.
The invitation then, is rather than to attempt to be like gods, we are to become MORE human. And we do so, not by escaping “the form in which the Craftsman fashioned [us]” but by entrusting ourselves to the Craftsmen’s design and in his ongoing and ultimate work. The irony being, that as we become more human, being conformed by the Spirit into the image of the Son, we are made more and more like God.
“You must hold the rank of [human] before you partake of the glory of God.”
Christ City – Would we receive our humanity with gratitude, and offer our hearts to him, pliant and unresisting, that he might mould us into a masterpiece?