The Pilgrim's Progress or Regress? The Case of Transhumanism and Deification 
Kimbell Kornu, MD, PhD, Belmont University, Nashville, TN

Reflecting on the conference theme of expanding holistic care at the margins, it is important to deepen our understanding about what human progress should look like. While it remains an open question whether transhumanism will become a reality, the project of transhumanism offers a helpful limit case about what human progress should look like. Transhumanism presents a view of human progress by transcending the human, regarding finitude and suffering to be fundamental problems that must be overcome by radical bioenhancement technologies. Recent theologians have compared Christianity and transhumanism as competing deifications via grace and technology, respectively. Ron Cole-Turner is a cautious yet optimistic interpreter of the relationship between Christian deification and transhumanism, regarding them, on the one hand, to be incompatible based on self-centeredness vs. kenosis, while on the other hand, they can be compatible through a robust theology of creation and transfiguration such that creative human efforts via technology will be an active agent in transforming the world in glory. In this way, Christian transhumanism offers a vision of human progress in deification that transfigures creation through technology. In this presentation, I challenge this proposal. I wish to show how transhumanism in any stripe, whether secular, Christian, or other, is fundamentally incompatible with Christian deification for two reasons: (1) incompatible views of human agency in deification and (2) incompatible views of progress. Transhumanism assumes an agency of pure effort through technology, while Christian deification entails an agency of active receptivity—that is, divine grace cannot be grasped but must be received. Over against the transhumanist progress that increases human power and control over nature, I propose that proper human progress is infinite growth in the love of Christ. Finally, I suggest how a view of human agency affects how we think about suffering as a means to human progress.