Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Contemporary transhumanism advances a secular soteriology that recasts salvation as human achievement and relocates hope from God’s promise to human prowess. By viewing suffering and mortality as engineering problems, this movement treats finitude as a design flaw requiring correction rather than a condition Christ embraced. This essay confronts these claims through a Lutheran theology of the Cross, arguing that the Creator redeems the lost not by lifting them out of their finitude, but by entering it. The argument is anchored in a Christ-centered reading of Psalm 8 through the lens of Hebrews 2:5–9, demonstrating that human dignity is a divine gift and that dominion is only fulfilled in the crucified and risen Lord. This Christological vision is placed in dialogue with the “name-making” immortality project narrated in Genesis 11:1–9 and the counter-narrative of self-emptying (kenosis) found in Philippians 2:5–11. Ultimately, the study affirms technology as a “mask of God” for neighbor-serving vocation while strictly refusing it as a rival false redeemer.
Source: Verba Vitae
Author: Dan Lioy
Institution: Institute of Lutheran Theology
Language: English
Subfield: Philosophy
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funder: Yale University
OpenAlex ID: W7225462905