IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - March 2017 - 22

existed in the ancient world was far
less than what we have today. And
most of the technological changes
have come, I suppose, in the last
200 years: the ability to travel by rail-
way, by car, and then by plane; the
ability to use telephones and now to
communicate through the Internet.
All of this is a modern development.
Therefore we have an elaboration
of technology, far greater than ever
existed in the ancient world. That
brings both advantages and risks.
We can travel easily and communi-
cate by all kinds of new means. This
in itself gives us the opportunity to
do far more, but the advantages are
not automatic. Always it is a ques-
tion of how we use technology. Why
do we travel quickly from place to
place? What is our aim? When we
communicate with the Internet,
what is it that we are wishing to
communicate to one another? So
value judgements come in as to
how we use technology. That we
should use it seems to me fully in
accordance with Christian tradi-
tion. But the more complex technol-
ogy becomes, the more we can do
through technology, the more ques-
tions are raised whether it is right to
do these things. So we have a great-
er responsibility than ever people
had in the ancient world, and we
are seeing the dangers of misuse of
our technology, in for example the
pollution of the environment. For
the most part the ecological crisis is
due to the wrong use of our techno-
logical skills. We should not give up
using those skills, but we do need to
think much more carefully how and
why we are using them.

In what ways has technology
impacted upon our practice
of religion? Is there anything
positive coming from this?
One positive gain from technology
is clearly the greater ease by which
we can communicate. We can share

22

our ideas far more readily. A huge
advance came in the fifteenth centu-
ry with the invention of printing. You
no longer had to write everything out
by hand, you could produce things
in thousands of copies. And now of
course a whole revolution that has
come in through the use of comput-
ers, which again renders communi-
cation far easier. But once more we
are challenged: we are given greater
power through these technological
advances, but how are we going to
use this power? We possess today a
knowledge that earlier generations
did not possess, quantitative, infor-
mation, technological, and scientific
facts that earlier ages did not have.
But though we have greater knowl-
edge today, it is a question whether
we have greater wisdom. Wisdom
goes beyond knowledge, and the
right use of knowledge has become
much more difficult. To give an
example from bioethics: We can now
interfere in the processes of birth in
a way that was not possible in the
past. I am by no means an expert
here, but I am told that it is possible
or soon will be for parents to choose
the sex of their children. But we
have to ask: Is it desirable? Is it right,
from a Christian point of view that
we should interfere in the mystery
of birth in this way? My answer is
that parents should not be allowed
to choose the sex of their child. This
is going beyond our proper human
responsibility. This is something that
we should leave in the hands of God,
and I fear that there could be grave
social problems if we started choos-
ing whether we would have sons or
daughters. There are societies where
girls are regarded as inferior, and in
due course there might arise a grave
imbalance between the sexes. That
is just one illustration of how tech-
nology makes things possible, but
we as Christians on the basis of the
teaching of the church have certain
moral standards, which say this is
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine

possible but is not the right thing
to do. Technology in itself, indeed
science in itself, cannot tell us what
is right or wrong. We go beyond
technology, and beyond the strict
methods of science, when we begin
to express value judgements. And
where do our values come from?
They come from our religious belief.

How are we to understand the
idea of being created in the
"image and likeness" of God
in the pursuit of the highest
levels and trajectories of
technology?
There is no single interpretation in the
Christian tradition of what is meant
by the creation of the human per-
son according to the image and like-
ness of God. But a very widespread
approach, found for example among
many of the Greek fathers, is to
make a distinction between these
two terms. Image on this approach
denotes the basic human faculties
that we are given; those things
which make us to be human beings,
the capacities that are conferred on
every human. The image is as it were,
our starting point, the initial equip-
ment that we are all of us given. The
likeness is seen as the end point. The
likeness means the human person
in communion with God, living a life
of holiness. Likeness means sanc-
tity. The true human being on this
approach is the saint. We humans,
then, are travellers, pilgrims, on a
journey from the image to the like-
ness. We should think of the human
nature in dynamic terms. Funda-
mental to our personhood is the ele-
ment of growth. Now, the image then
means that we possess the power
of rational thinking, the power of
speech, articulate language with
which we can communicate with
others; it means therefore reason in
the broadest sense. More fundamen-
tally, it means that we humans have
a conscience, a sense of right or
∕

march 2017



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