Metaverse seems to be all the rage these days, with its promise to be the new medium of human interpersonality in an age when physical gatherings are discouraged if not banned. The expansion of space from the physical to the virtual has indeed unlocked new opportunities, with real estate firms purchasing virtual estates and individual investors entrusting their wealth in non-fungible tokens (NFT). This new world, brimming with opportunities that were once objects of children’s fantasy, is the latest holy grail of tech giants. Still in its infancy, metaverse is given various definitions, some of which sound downright theological. Consider for example, Mark Zuckerberg’s claim that metaverse is “an embodied internet where you’re in the experience, not just looking at it.” Consider too, Satya Nadella’s definition of metaverse as an entirely new platform that brings “real presence to any digital space.” There was a time when the talk of mediating an embodied, real presence belonged exclusively to the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Now, humanity is priming to take ownership of it.
Despite its promises, metaverse faces one glaring complication: the human body. The degree of immersion into a virtual embodiment is inversely proportional to the degree of freedom experienced by the body, these being measurable in terms of the number of devices worn. This potential somatic disadvantage is not to be taken lightly, if the biblical witness to the goodness of the human body is affirmed. The purpose of this paper is to probe this region of conflict between the physical and the virtual body using resources from theological anthropology, to enumerate factors that ought to be considered as humanity proceeds to embrace this latest technological development.