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The Human Being as Hypercube: Paradox, Apophatic Anthropology, and Human Destiny

June 19, 2015
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The failure of theologians and exegetes to give content to the Image of God has given rise to a recent school of thought which denies that there is any sort of concrete nature to the human person. What it means to be human is, precisely, to be undetermined. The implications for discussions of post-humanism and human modification are clear. We have a blank check for experimentation. Seeking a more cautious and logically sound deduction, I argue that if humans are an image of the infinite God, we should not expect to fully articulate what this means. Our models and conceptions will, though true, never be comprehensive. The Image is, in fact, a paradox unsolvable from our present point of view. I define the human being therefore as a bounded, theoretically comprehensible object which, nevertheless, we cannot from our present frame of reference model cohesively. This necessitates multiple models, which could even compete or conflict until we receive our proper frame of reference, in which they will cohere perfectly and rationally. We should therefore seek models of disclosure rather than description to avoid reductionism. This does not preclude progress in accuracy or knowledge, but it does preclude rampant alteration of the human being. I will give an overview of the problem of the Image and then offer a brief survey of apophatic anthropology (an anthropology of unknowing) and offer a critique of some of the modern moves being made, though of course we cannot be comprehensive. C.S. Lewis will offer an avenue of approach with which we can move forward. Finally, I will make a constructive proposal for understanding (partially) the nature of the Image, based on an understanding of higher dimensions broached in Edwin Abbott’s novel Flatland, and link this with Ian Ramsey’s notion of disclosure models.

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