Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The Second Coming of Christ: Our Role and Technology

This fascinates me.  Something to contemplate.


from Christ in Evolution by Ilia Delio

- Highlight Loc. 3000-3006 (Kindle)

In this respect, the consummation of the universe, the parousia or second coming of Christ, will ultimately be determined by the choices of the human community. Panikkar* writes that the parousia of Christ is not separate from the Eucharistic and risen Christ;it is not another incarnation or a second Christ appearing somewhere. We have been warned by Jesus in the Gospels not to believe in any appearance of the coming Messiah here or there. Rather, we are coworkers with God and stewards of creation. The second coming of Christ is the emergence of Christ in us, the human community, when we become reflective not only individually but collectively and live in the spirit of crucified love. Jesus came once;now the new Adam, the new earth, must be fully formed in us if this universe is to find its completion in God.


- Highlight Loc. 3124-32

Philip Hefner indicated that if we are to speak of religion, it must be a religion that can encompass cyborgs and technosapiens. It cannot be merely a religious way of dealing with technology, as if it were external to who we are; rather, technology has become part and parcel of who we are.** When we participate in this drive for new possibilities through technology, we participate also in God. This is the dimension of holiness in technology. The difference between a nontheological and a theological interpretation of technology, Hefner claims, is that the one says the transcending drive is epiphenomenal, a surface phenomenon, while theology says it is rooted in the very nature of things. The epiphenomenalist says that transcendence is evolution’s way of promoting fitness. The theologian asserts that evolution has itself been designed to enable a selftranscending system of reality. In Hefner’s view, the union of technology and humanity—the emergence of techno sapiens—is integral to the transcendent evolutionary trend.

*Raimon Panikkar was the son of a Spanish Roman Catholic mom and a Hindu father.  He was uniquely situated by birth and by his studies to pursue inter-religious dialogue.

**Technology and Human Becoming by Philip Hefner

1 comment:

Frederick Froth said...

Please find an essay which describes how the Process of human evolution really works.

www.aboutadidam.org/readings/divine_physics_of_evolution/index.html

Elsewhere the author has pointed out that the anti-"culture" created in the image of scientism actually prevents that Process from occurring. As does the culture created by exoteric anti-Spritual religion, which shares the same reductionist presumptions about what we are as human beings (despite and contrary to all of the naive mommy-daddy "God"-talk.

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