Acceso usuarios
Andrea Vaccaro
This article discusses certain trends peculiar to the posthuman in relation to figures of the Christian eschatological promise in line with the traditional patristic discourses. Among this subject’s many aspects, in particular, three ‘figures’ belonging to each of the two fields are compared: a) On one hand, the idea of the planetary creature as a product of the trend towards interconnected cognitive processes among human beings by virtue of global communications; on the other, the eschatological promise of the unification of all humans saved as a member of the one body of Christ at the end of time. b) On one side, the contemporary trend to dematerialization (computerisation, digitalisation, etc.), which finds its anthropological apex in the concept of human beings as (informational) patterns and in the image of the hologram; on the other, the eschatological figure of resurrected humans who will live in the form of ‘spiritual bodies’ in the heavens and in new lands. c) On one hand, the overbearingly unnatural impact of technology as dominion over Nature, transforming it on demand; on the other, the untrammelled power of miracles that, according to the description of many of the Church fathers, the divinised human in the kingdom of heaven will possess. This article attempts to interpret today’s technological transformations and posthuman trends as foreshadowings of (or approaches to) Christian eschatological reality. Based on an ‘apprehensive’ interpretation of the current stage in the world’s transformation and the human race’s transition, the proposed perspective observes this reality from a philosophically tranquil and theologically enthusiastic standpoint, beginning with statements made in important Church teaching documents, especially from the Second Vatican Council.
