Transhumanism and Christianity

Abstract

Although supporters of transhumanism present their agenda as a secular movement that specifically challenges the basic ontological and ethical premises of Christian metaphysics, there are also techno-progressive thinkers who claim that Christians should endorse a moderate version of biotechnological human enhancement. The main objective of this essay is to scrutinise this claim by outlining the relationship between transhumanism and Christian anthropology from the perspective of Joseph Ratzinger’s thought. The order of this analysis is constituted by three steps: first, I will critically analyse Benedikt Paul Göcke’s main arguments in favor of a Christian transhumanism; secondly, I will discuss the normative foundation of the techno-progressive agenda with regard to Ratzinger’s/Benedict XVI’s critique of the modern concept of freedom and its anthropological implication – the technological “new man”; finally, I will refer the notion of the posthuman to Ratzinger’s theo-evolutionary image of Jesus Christ as the “man of the future.”