Can Humanity Be Saved without Being Overcome? Christian Anthropology and Transhumanism

Abstract

Contemporary transhumanism seeks to overcome biological limitations through technological enhancement, raising theological questions concerning embodiment, vulnerability, personal identity, and human salvation. This study aims to examine whether Christian anthropology can support human enhancement without allowing technology to replace or eliminate the embodied human subject. Using a constructive theological approach, the research conceptually compares representative transhumanist claims with Christian teachings on creation, incarnation, salvation, resurrection, and theosis, while incorporating perspectives from disability and vulnerability studies. The findings distinguish three forms of human limitation: privative harms requiring healing, creaturely finitude constituting human existence, and relational dependence that may become either communion or injustice. The discussion proposes non-eliminative transformation as a theological criterion for assessing artificial intelligence, genetic intervention, radical longevity, neural enhancement, and mind uploading. Technological interventions may contribute to human flourishing when they preserve embodied continuity, protect dignity, promote relational justice, respect gifted freedom, and avoid transforming finite technological benefits into promises of ultimate salvation. The study concludes that Christianity need not reject technological advancement, but should evaluate whether innovation genuinely serves embodied persons rather than replacing them with optimized successors. Accordingly, responsible enhancement must remain directed toward communion, participation, and protection of vulnerable people while preserving the human subject as the beneficiary of transformation.