Cyborg Anthropology - Theological Engagement With Posthuman Discourses

The Book deals with the question of understanding human being in a context embedded in Cyberspace. The imagery of Cyborg is used under the Posthuman discourse to engage with 'Created Co-Creator paradigm suggested by Philip Hefner. The Christological explorations under such a paradigm which leads to authentic human formation is the search and quest of this book. The work is a dialogue in the Theology Technology conversation and tries to engage with some of the questions where there is a Human Being Technology continuum.

Merin Mathew is an Ordained Clergy of the Mar Thoma Syrian Church. He completed his B.D. From Mar Thoma Theological Seminary, Kottayam in 2011. Hel completed his Master of Theology (M.Th) in Christian Theology from United Theological College in 2019. He has authored two books, Burning Bush: Fifty Biblical Meditations and Here Am 1: Fifty Biblical Meditations. He is an avid blogger with a good following on social media.

He has published 3 books in Mizo, namely Bible Hriatzauna Puitu (Bible General Knowledge), Bible Chang Zawnawlna (Bible Concordance), Paula leh A Zirtirnate (The Life and Teachings of Paul) and 1 book in Nepali- The Revelation of God in the New Testament.

Love it or loathe it, we are all cyborg beings! Our lives have embraced and have been impacted by technology with all its complexities. For some, the cyborg and the human are harmonious entities; and for some, bringing a theological formulation to explain the embeddedness of technology in our lives does not sit well in the so-understood spiritual realms. Therefore, there are ongoing theological struggles surrounding the debates on the created and the manufactured.

Rev. Merin Matthew's work comes to us as a refreshing research-based conversation addressing the love-loathe relationship between technology and theology. The book offers greater currency to the debates on Cyborg and its Christian theological relevance. Ir questions unhelpful-and at times denigrating-anthropocentric actitudes our spiritualities and theological discourses uncritically uphold. It does so by answering the questions like: What constitutes the human from the vantage point of the Image of God (Imago Dei) in the context of cyberspace and its challenges for the conventional premise of theological anthropology. Importantly, it also addresses how at the core of Christological formulations is a call for a deep hybridity of entities that are often deemed incompatibles.

In the Sci-fi genre, the concept of Cyborg is very popular. Many movies, especially the Avenger Series and Iron Man series from the Marvel Studio, have triggered popular imagination beyond just intellectual speculations. But, then what is a Cyborg? How do we understand a Human Being? How does one engage in a Cyberspace with conventional Theological Anthropology?

The study is a nuanced search in the larger debate of Science and Religion called the Theology and Technology studies. Technology has been instrumental and aided the Lutheran Reformation, thanks to the Guttenberg's Printing Press which hugely accelerated the phenomenon and provided Bibles for personal reading. But since then, or historically it could be the Puritan Movement which pictured technology either as an aberration or just for functional purpose. The human/technology binary has been profound as at a popular level, Churches have denounced television, mass media, computers, internet, cell phones and what not. But, in the context of Covid 19, one realizes that cyberspace has opened up a new understanding of human being itself with multiple technologies. enabling virtual gatherings and possibilities of being a Church. The study engages with Cyberspace and sees how the conventional understanding of a human being is not helpful in our engagement. The conventional understanding of humans as distinct, superior and pure, and the world of technology as something for the benefit humans is an obsolete paradigm. The understanding of humans as Cyborg can seem troublesome and also problematic. But, certain transgressions in theology lead to a deeper engagement. The researcher wishes to root the discourse of Cyborg in the framework of Posthumanism over Transhumanism and the reason for it will be elaborated in the course of the research work. Humans as hybrid who are created co-creators is what the researcher attempts to explore. The search also attempts to understand various doctrines in engagement with cyberspace as doctrines help in human formation. Therefore, the glorification of technology at the expense of humans or glorification of humans at the expense of technology are two paradigms that exist. The researcher says that such a binary is faulty. The Cyborg Anthropology is a paradigm of engagement which resists any of the extreme trends.