LifeDate Winter 2024 – Life Shines in Darkness
by Pastor Michael Penikis
Beyond Human? “Better” than Human?
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth’” (Genesis 1:26-28).
This passage from the first chapter of the Bible sets forth some familiar teachings of the Christian faith. First, that God is one and more-than-one (i.e., the Trinity), that humans are made in the image and likeness of God, and that God made humans male and female. God also blesses and commands the procreation of His human creatures. All humans so begotten are to be treated with the same in-the-image-of-God dignity as our first parents were given by God. Your value and dignity as a human are yours because God has made you and loves you.
Another truth is also found here, one that often gets ignored, overlooked, dismissed, or explained away. That is God’s decree that man “have dominion,” or lordship, over the earth and the other earthly creatures. Christian worldview scholar and author Nancy Pearcey has called this The Cultural Mandate, the Creator’s blessing/command that mankind create culture and build society. We were meant to “imitate” God (so to speak) in these activities, doing them in righteousness, for the good of one another, and to God’s glory. [Author’s note: Throughout this article, “man” is used in the generic sense of “human” unless context clearly indicates that “man” refers to a male human.]
It’s obvious that mankind and the world do not operate in this way today, nor have they for a very long time. The break from God’s good design and purpose for us came with the Fall, man’s rebellion against the Lord God. The Tempter promised Eve that she and Adam would become as gods, knowing good and evil. Adam went along with it without raising a single objection. To become as gods means being your own god, your own boss, the lord of your own life, making the rules you want—and usurping the place of the true God.
The record of sacred Scripture and the record of human history testify to the clashing of the wills of countless petty little “gods” that all men have become in the heart ever since Adam and Eve’s rebellion. Many ideas, philosophies, movements, religions, and assorted “–isms” have arisen from this false sense of human godhood. Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche posited the concept of the Übermensch (variously translated as superman, overman, above-man, or beyond-man) as a goal for all humanity to set for itself. He wanted it to signal a shift from “otherworldly” Christian values toward the “grounded” human ideal, for Christians. For the Christian system is “nihilistic” and “destructive,” whereas the Übermensch is “life-affirming” and “creative.” Nietzsche also tied Übermensch to “the death of God.”
Other philosophies have since developed from this idea, including posthumanism and transhumanism. You’ve heard of humanism, especially in reference to its secular form, which is a non-theistic, naturalistic worldview focused on human “freedom” without “constraints” from God or religion. In earlier usage, humanism referred to advocating classical education and the study of classical literature. (So, there were Christian humanists, such as Luther’s colleague, Philip Melanchthon.) Today, secular humanism is virtually synonymous with humanism.
Posthumanism and transhumanism critically question humanism and seek to move the human race beyond its present physical, intellectual, and mortal limitations. Posthumanists believe in the fluidity of identity, the priority of “practices over individuals,” and that human rights are on a spectrum with animal (and other non-human) “rights.” We are merely one of many natural species. Transhumanists seek to direct human evolution through the use of emergent and future technologies which could expand human intelligence, increase human physical abilities, and extend human life effectively to achieve immortality—heaven on earth! (Shades of utopianism: There’s a reason Sir Thomas More called his imaginary society Utopia, meaning “no place.”) In practice in all such approaches, either the individual gives way to the will of the collective whole (like the Borg of Star Trek), or a divide grows between post- or transhumans and inferior ordinary humans (like us of God’s creation).
Ultimately, these philosophies and ideas are attacks on our God-given humanity and on God Himself. In her book Awake, Not Woke, Noelle Mering says that “the cult of progressive ideology” is, at its root, an attack on the Logos, who is the Word of God, God the Son, Christ Jesus. The same may be said of posthumanism, transhumanism, and the like. The goal is to chuck God’s design, purpose, and definition of and for us, then replace them with our own designs, purposes, and definitions—the supposed godhood promised by the Tempter. But he is a liar, a thief, a killer, and a destroyer, and doomed to eternal destruction. It is a most blessed irony, then, that the True and Only Hope is in “the death of God,” not as Nietzsche said but as God in His Word declares, the atoning, sacrificial death of God the Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross, to give to all who trust in Him forgiveness of sins, salvation, and life now and eternally, and to restore us men to a right relationship with God and to His design and purpose for us.
Rev. Michael Penikis was a Pastoral Advisor for Lutherans For Life of Kansas for several years.