Enhancing the Imago Dei: Can a Christian Be a Transhumanist?

Transhumanism is an ideology that embraces the use of various forms of biotechnology to enhance human beings toward the emergence of a “posthuman” kind. In this article, I contrast some of the foundational tenets of Transhumanism with those of Christianity, primarily focusing on their respective anthropologies—that is, their diverse understandings of whether there is an essential nature shared by all human persons and, if so, whether certain features of human nature may be intentionally altered in ways that contribute toward how each views human flourishing. A central point of difference concerns Transhumanists’ aim of attaining “substrate independence” for the human mind, such that one’s consciousness could be uploaded into a cybernetic environment. Christian anthropology, on the other hand, considers embodiment, with its characteristics of vulnerability and finitude, to be an essential feature of human nature—hence, Christians’ belief in bodily resurrection. Despite Christianity and Transhumanism having fundamental differences, I contend that Christians may support moderate forms of enhancement oriented toward supporting our flourishing as living, sentient, social, and rational animals.

Mysterious Bodies: Aristotelian Animal Generation and the Early Christian Doctrine of Bodily Resurrection

In the fifteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul makes a number of philosophically mysterious claims about the relationship between the ‘earthly’ body and the resurrected or ‘spiritual’ body. To what extent do these claims reflect themes present in Aristotle’s own views on the relationship between matter and organism? We will argue that Aristotle’s understanding of the relationship between matter and organism already reflects a commitment to the two central claims that Paul takes to be definitive of the relationship between earthly and spiritual body. On the one hand, Paul insists that the earthly body is not itself the resurrected or spiritual body, but only a seed that is sown for the latter. Further separating the earthly from the spiritual body, he compares their distinction to the distinction between the bodies of different animals. On the other hand, the chapter ends with language of continuity between the earthly and the spiritual body. Precisely this seeming conflict is present in Aristotle’s analysis of animal generation. Whereas many interpretations of Aristotle’s analysis privilege one side of the conflict over the other, I will argue that both must be equally privileged, yielding a parallel between the cases of animal generation in Aristotle and bodily resurrection in early Christianity.

Lenin’s Memorization as a Hierotopic Project

This article traces the implementation of the concept of ‘temple consciousness’ in hierotopic processes, including the construction of monuments and the organization of memorial sites. The memorials were designed to stand as an eternal reminder of an event that was experienced as a common heroic story in its symbolic representation. The study shows the transit and transformation of memorial discourse in the Soviet and post-Soviet symbolic spaces, which manifested itself in the redefinition of memorial sites in the direction of either actualization or levelling of the cultural and historical memory, given the dominant ideological paradigm. The sources of research, in addition to architectural and artistic monuments, include the mythopoetics of the mass culture, which also acts as a projection of ideology and contains archetypal patterns of the collective unconscious.Lenin’s memorialization as ‘the leader of the world proletariat’ became useful. The memorial policy of the Bolshevik Party was influenced by the ideas and events that took place back in history, including the discovery of the tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in Luxor (1922) and the teachings of Russian cosmologist Nikolai Fedorov in the work Philosophy of Common Cause published in full in 1913. The use of religion should point to key preconditions that have ensured the development of Soviet ideology which should be codified through the dominance of religion, in particular as ‘political religion’ or ‘secular religion’. The peculiarity of this phenomenon is the merging of two forms of thinking: political and religious.In addition, the Bolshevik atheists allowed the bodily resurrection of Lenin considering their unconditional belief in the “science of the future”; incidentally, they were not mistaken, because the leader’s body, engaged in the research work, survived until the invention of the cloning procedure. The secularized religious energy was mobilized to achieve political goals, which made possible the implementation of a totalitarian system, revealing the imitative essence of totalitarianism, which parasitized on religious thinking. Lenin’s Mausoleum is seen as a reliquary temple in the view of the communist cult of Eternity, which became the basis of Lenin’s cult.The levelling of the cult of Lenin began in the 1970s, which was facilitated by the pompous celebration of his 100th anniversary, which gave rise to political anecdotes as a symptom of the destruction of Lenin’s myth. The Revolution of Dignity (2013–2014) in Ukraine contributed to the dismantling of monuments to Lenin which were seen as personifications of Soviet-style ‘Leninism’ and symbols of imperial-Russian oppression.The purpose of this article is to substantiate the legitimacy of the author’s proposed concept of ‘political hierotopy’.

Battle for the Soul of a City: John Roach Straton, Harry Emerson Fosdick, and the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy in New York, 1922–1935

The Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy was a defining moment for New York in the 1920s and one of the most significant theological battles in the city's history, as key doctrines of the Christian tradition such as the Virgin Birth, the Atonement, and the bodily resurrection of Christ were debated in the mainstream as well as the religious press. The principal figures in the controversy were John Roach Straton and Harry Emerson Fosdick, two prominent clerics whose intellectual and oratorical confrontation showed just how deep this nationwide religious divide had become. Straton and Fosdick used their New York pulpits as public platforms to articulate their opposing theological visions and to justify them as the correct expression of historic Christianity in the present. In doing so, they made the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy very much a New York story, remapping the city's Protestant evangelical culture and reorienting one of the most important episodes in American religious history. The aftermath of the conflict, however, reveals that the lines between “fundamentalist” and “modernist” as distinct categories of religious experience became blurred as each embraced elements of the other. By 1935, both fundamentalists and modernists in New York City had been transformed, just as they had transformed the city.

MAKNA KEBANGKITAN YESUS BERDASARKAN SURAT-SURAT PAULUS

Basically, Jesus was willing to offer himself to come down to earth to teach the gospel to every human being and was willing to be tortured, crucified, and died to atone for human sins. The purpose of this research is to answer the question: What does God want about His resurrection? How important is the resurrection of Jesus for the lives of believers? What effect will the resurrection of Jesus Christ have on the lives of believers? The answer was: (1) His bodily resurrection and eternity. Everything is possible because Christ, after He rose from the dead, did not die again, in other words, He lives and continues to live. The resurrection of Christ happened a transfer of power, Christ went from being ruled by death to being ruler over death. (2) Without the resurrection, Christian faith is not possible. His disciples are only symbols of defeat and destruction. Without the resurrection, Jesus' position as Messiah and King would be inexplicable. Without the resurrection, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit would leave an inexplicable mystery. Without the resurrection, the source of the disciples' testimony was lost. (3) The impact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ for the lives of believers is that as long as man is in God, whatever he does, all his efforts in God, will receive a reward or reward from God. Abstrak: Pada dasarnya Yesus rela mempersembahkan diri-Nya untuk turun ke bumi guna mengajarkan injil bagi setiap manusia dan rela disiksa, serta disalibkan, dan mati bagi menebus dosa manusia. Tujuan penelitian ini menjawab pertanyaan: Apakah yang Tuhan inginkan tentang kebangkitan-Nya? Bagaimana pentingnya kebangkitan Yesus untuk kehidupan orang percaya? Apa dampak kebangkitan Yesus Kristus bagi kehidupan orang percaya? Jawabnya adalah: (1) Kebangkitan tubuhnya dan berlanjut dalam kekekalan. Semuanya dapat terjadi karena Kristus, sesudah Ia bangkit dari antara orang mati, tidak mati lagi, dengan kata lain, Ia hidup dan terus hidup. Kebangkitan Kristus terjadi peralihan kekuasaan, Kristus beralih dari dikuasai oleh maut menjadi penguasa atas maut. (2) Tanpa kebangkitan, iman Kristen tidak mungkin muncul. Murid-murid-Nya hanyalah simbol kekalahan dan kehancuran. Tanpa kebangkitan, posisi Yesus sebagai Mesias dan Raja tidak akan terjelaskan. Tanpa kebangkitan, pencurahan Roh Kudus akan meninggalkan misteri yang tidak dapat dijelaskan. Tanpa kebangkitan, sumber kesaksian murid-murid hilang. (3) Dampak kebangkitan Yesus Kristus bagi kehidupan orang percaya adalah selama manusia ada di dalam Tuhan, apapun yang ia kerjakan, semua jerih payahnya dalam Tuhan, akan mendapat balasan atau upah dari Tuhan.

Final Destinations

This chapter discusses the themes of Books 19–22, which focus on the ends of life (in the sense both of overriding values and of final states) in philosophy and in Christian biblically determined belief. The principal themes discussed are: the concept of hierarchical degrees of peace and order; the question of the realization of justice and virtue in earthly historical societies; the definition, in dialogue with Cicero, of the res publica (state); the appropriate behaviour of Christians in the Roman state; God’s last judgement, and the biblical evidence for the doctrines of afterlife rewards and punishments; the plausibility of eternal bodily punishment; bodily resurrection, and Platonist objections to it; the eternal bliss of those humans who are predestined to be saved; what ‘seeing God’ might mean.

Pandangan tentang Kematian dan Kebangkitan Orang Mati dalam Perjanjian Lama

This article tries to find answers to views on death and resurrection in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, the discussion of the death and resurrection of the dead and the judgment is less prominent than in the New Testament, so there are fewer reading texts. That is why the issue becomes interesting to be examined more deeply. This research uses a qualitative research method with a descriptive approach, by taking the main source from the Old Testament Bible and supporting literature. Based on the results of research conducted, then during the Old Testament, people believe in death as a form of separation of body and spirit. When dead, the body will return to dust, and the spirit enters the world of the dead (Sheol). In the Old Testament, people believe in the bodily resurrection (the dead), that is, the physical resurrection.Artikel ini mencoba mencari jawaban atas pandangan terhadap kematian dan kebangkitan dalam Perjanjian Lama. Dalam Perjanjian Lama pembahasan masalah kematian dan kebangkitan orang mati serta penghakiman tidak begitu menonjol dibandingkan dengan dalam Perjanjian Baru, sehingga teks bacaan yang ada juga lebih sedikit. Oleh karena itulah persoalan tersebut menjadi menarik untuk diteliti lebih mendalam. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode penelitian kualitatif dengan pendekatan deskriptif, dengan mengambil sumber utama dari Alkitab Perjanjian Lama dan literatur yang mendukung. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian yang dilakukan, maka pada masa Perjanjian Lama orang memercayai kematian sebagai bentuk pemisahan tubuh dan rohnya. Saat mati, tubuh akan kembali menjadi debu, dan roh masuk ke dunia orang mati (syeol). Dalam Perjanjian Lama, orang percaya akan adanya kebangkitan tubuh (orang mati), yaitu bangkitnya tubuh secara fisik.

The Corinthian Opponents of the Resurrection in 1 Cor 15:12

The paper contributes to the discussion regarding the Corinthian opponents of the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor 15:12). In particular, it attempts to re-examine the thesis of the Epicurean framework of this controversy. The first part focuses on the main lines of interpretation of 1 Cor 15:12 and the presentation of the Epicurean thesis. It is followed by an analysis of Paul’s polemical statements against the thesis of his Corinthian opponents, “there is no resurrection of the dead” (1 Cor 15:12; cf. vv. 19, 29-34, 35). It is assumed that Paul clearly says that his opponents deny a bodily resurrection and future life – there is nothing after death. The third part of the paper reconsiders some hermeneutic factors concerning the identity of the Corinthian opponents of the resurrection. 1 Cor 15 contains terminological and ideological parallels to Epicureanism, especially, by way of opposition. Yet, the valuation of these data remains an open question.