One thing is integrating technology into human vision; another is surrendering to promises of technical salvation.
Transhumanism seeks to transcend human limits through technology—morphological freedom, augmented reality, and mind uploading—but Christianity values the body as sacred. Society is already being conditioned to accept transhumanist values through social media, wearables, and avatars, subtly reshaping our understanding of identity and reality.
- Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica humanitas addresses transhumanism in its third chapter
- Transhumanism seeks morphological freedom, augmented reality, and mind uploading to transcend human limits
- Christianity values the body as sacred—God became flesh, and resurrection promises glorified bodies, not disembodied souls
- Society is already being conditioned to accept transhumanist values through social media, avatars, wearables, and digital documentation of life
A Catholic columnist reviews Jacob Shatzer's book on transhumanism, examining why Christians should resist technological promises of human transcendence and maintain faith in embodied, relational living.
In late May, the Vatican released its first encyclical under Pope Leo XIV, a mathematician by training. Titled Magnifica humanitas, the document addresses human dignity in an age of artificial intelligence, and its third chapter takes direct aim at transhumanism—the philosophical movement that sees technology as a path to transcending human limits. The pope's treatment was brief but pointed: he distinguished between integrating technology into a human, relational vision and surrendering to an imaginary that devalues our limitations and promises purely technical salvation.
For those wanting deeper engagement with the question, Jacob Shatzer's book Transhumanism and the Image of God offers exactly that. Shatzer, a theology professor and ordained minister in the Southern Baptist Convention, defines transhumanism and post-humanism as philosophical movements intertwined with technological promise. Post-humanism imagines a next stage of human evolution, one in which we become post-human through our connection with technology. Transhumanism provides the values and methods to get there—it is the process; post-humanism is the destination. The three domains Shatzer identifies range from the biological to the virtual: morphological freedom (radical alteration of our bodies through technology), augmented reality (enhancement of human capacities through prosthetics and devices that blur the line between flesh and machine), and artificial intelligence paired with mind uploading (the transcendence of the biological body altogether, transferring consciousness to a more stable substrate).
What makes Shatzer's analysis sharp is his observation that we are already being conditioned to embrace these futures. The conditioning is subtle and pervasive. We curate avatars in virtual spaces that let us be whoever we wish. We wear smartwatches that monitor and quantify our bodies. We document our entire lives on social media, training ourselves to see existence through the lens of digital representation. We attend concerts and sporting events but experience them primarily through our phones, recording rather than witnessing. Tourists skip contemplation of a place to hunt for the most photogenic spot. None of this is transhumanism in its radical form, but all of it is preparation—a slow rewiring of what we expect from technology and what we are willing to surrender to it.
For Christians, Shatzer identifies two fundamental problems. The first is theological: Christianity is a faith that honors the body. God became flesh. The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Catholics celebrate Corpus Christi, the physical presence of God in the Eucharist. Even in the resurrection, Christians do not expect disembodied souls floating in eternity—they expect glorified bodies. Transhumanism, by contrast, seeks liberation from the body itself, treating it as a problem to be solved rather than a gift to be received.
The second problem is spiritual. Shatzer, drawing on the thought of James K.A. Smith, describes transhumanism as a "liturgy of control." Liturgies, Smith argues, are ritual practices that function as pedagogies of desire—they teach us what to want. Secular liturgies include consumption and sport. Transhumanism is a liturgy that promises total control: over ourselves, our identities, our destinies, our futures. Christianity proposes the opposite. God is in control. We cooperate with Him. Christ teaches that to enter the kingdom of heaven, we must become like children—humble, dependent, not masters of our fate.
The answer is not to burn our phones and retreat to the wilderness. That may no longer be possible anyway. But if we understand where technology and those who develop it want to lead us, we can resist. We can use technology with prudence while refusing to play the game. The key, Shatzer argues, is the cultivation of real relationships—face-to-face encounter, shared experience, the tightening of bonds within actual communities: neighborhoods, prayer, church participation in person, not streamed through a screen. Real life, in the end.
Christians will not be saved by technology, but by Jesus. The transformation a Christian seeks is not becoming a superhuman cyborg, but abandoning oneself so that Christ can live through you. As Pope Leo XIV wrote in the encyclical: one thing is to integrate technologies into a human and relational vision; another is to be guided by an imaginary that devalues limits and promises purely technical salvation.
Citações Notáveis
One thing is to integrate the technologies in a human and relational vision, another is to let oneself be guided by an imaginary that devalues the limits and promises a purely technical salvation.— Pope Leo XIV, encyclical Magnifica humanitas
Transhumanism is the process, post-humanism is the objective.— Jacob Shatzer, Transhumanism and the Image of God
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why does the pope—a mathematician, no less—care so much about transhumanism? Isn't this a fringe concern?
Because it's not fringe at all. The pope recognizes that transhumanism shapes how power centers think about technology and humanity. It colonizes the collective imagination, especially through media and social platforms. It's the ideology behind the people building the systems we use every day.
But we're not uploading our minds tomorrow. Isn't Shatzer being alarmist?
Not really. His insight is that we don't need mind uploading to be transformed by transhumanist thinking. We're already being conditioned. Every time you curate an avatar, wear a smartwatch, document your life online, you're practicing a transhumanist future. You're learning to see yourself as data, as malleable, as something to optimize.
So the problem isn't the technology itself?
No. The problem is the vision underneath it. If you believe the human body is a limitation to transcend rather than a gift to receive, then it becomes easier to justify all kinds of things—treating some people as less worthy, less useful, less deserving of dignity.
What would Shatzer say Christians should do instead?
Show up. In person. Pray together. Eat together. Know your neighbors. Build real community. Not because technology is evil, but because real relationships are where we learn what it means to be human—dependent, vulnerable, loved not for our optimization but for who we are.
That sounds almost countercultural now.
It is. That's the point.