The incarnation and the challenge of transhumanism

Many of the great theologians in the Christian tradition, particularly in the East, have used the language of deification (theosis in Greek) to describe human spiritual progress toward God. Some verses in scripture suggest this possibility. Psalm 82, for example, includes the statement, “You are gods, children of the Most High, all of you” (Ps. 82: 6). The author of the second letter of Peter writes that God’s revelation in Christ “has given us everything needed for life and godliness” so that we might “become participants of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:3–4). The writings of Paul, while not explicitly mentioning deification, describe the Christian life as participation in Christ’s cross and resurrection, identify believers with the divine Christ through their sharing in his life, his mystical body, and his sovereignty over the world, and speak of a future existence as one of freedom from corruption in a glorified, immortal body.

But the primary justification for the idea of deification in early Christian theology is the doctrine of the incarnation. Christ’s assumption of a human form in the incarnation effects the radical transformation of human nature so that it might become divine. In the oft-quoted words of Athanasius, “God became human to make humans divine.” The Christian spiritual journey, classically portrayed as involving stages of purification, illumination, and union, may therefore be conceived as a gradual process of deification that enables believers to participate in the divine reality and transcend at least some of the limits of ordinary human experience.

The spread of scientific rationalism in the modern period has no doubt made the notion of human deification incredible to many people, but there are exceptions. The French philosopher Henri Bergson conceived of the history of life on earth as a process of spiritual evolution and the universe itself as “a machine for the making of gods.” Even a triumphant atheist like the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who boldly proclaimed the death of God, celebrated the coming of a godlike Übermensch, or “Overman,” in God’s place.