Theology of Technology Archives

Theology of Hope Re-Imagined – From Politics to Technology

In part 1, I introduced Moltmann’s theology of hope and its origins. In part 2, I explored one of its main offshoots, theology of liberation. There, I also posed the question whether the avenue for liberation may be shifting from politics to technology. In this blog, I will probe this question further by showing the growing global impact of technocapitalism in our time.

What is Technology?

Ever since the first human chiseled a rock to make a tool, we have been in the business of developing and using technology. Recently, technology has come to mean digital gadgets. Yet in a broader sense, technology is much more than that. Every time we extend ourselves into nature’s resources to accomplish a task, we are using technology. Therefore, it is an inescapable part of our reality as human beings. It is also what separates us from other species.

Technology is not only an integral part of the human experience, but is also infused with purpose and ideology. They possess a telos, an ideal that is shaping us into. Unfortunately, we tend to treat technology as neutral means to an end. This thinking supports an illusion that we can use technology without being transformed by it. As technologies cross into the human body, the boundaries between “natural” and “artificial” become blurry. The extension of ourselves becomes part of ourselves.

Furthermore, technology is also an expression of ourselves. They express social and cultural ideals while also perpetuating beliefs. As technologies advance into every aspect of our lives, we start seeing it as the solution to all of our problems. They are no longer tools for accomplishing tasks but are becoming full-blown solutions to existential questions. You add capitalism to that and now every problem becomes a market for a new gadget or app.

The Rise of Techno-Capitalism

The growing influence of technology companies in the last decade is undeniable. Just think of how many smart phones are sold every day in the world. Yet, the extent and speed of this rise is rarely understood. The animation below illustrates this trajectory by showing how the top ranked global brands have changed in this decade. The fact that only one tech company was in the top 5 in 2010 while now they occupy all five spots is mind boggling.

Late 2010 was when I got my first iPhone. Now, that iPhone 4 is what my kids use for playing music so they can sleep. Yet, the proliferation of smart phones and tablets in this decade is only one piece of the puzzle. Less apparent is how the digital economy has disrupted so many industries such as retail, financial services and automobiles. The impact is so pervasive that in 2017, Forbes declared that all companies are now technology companies. That means, businesses will live and die based on their ability to successfully incorporate emerging technologies into their operations. Data is the new oil and code its most effective drilling technique.

The business avatars are betting that technology will take them to a profitable future. It remains to be seen whether consumers will prove their bets right. Even so, what we are undergoing right now is nothing short of a revolution. One that will likely re-organize how we work, live and play. This becomes even more prescient when one considers the potential that AI (Artificial Intelligence), VR/AR (Virtual/Augmented Reality) and IOT (Internet of Things) bring to the table. This is not just the end of a business cycle but the beginning of a whole new era.

Technology and Politics

With that said, the future promised by Silicon Valley may never materialize. The currents of technological optimism have met a wave of nationalism in politics. While not diametrically opposed, these trends tend to go in opposite directions. The rise of protectionism in trade, restrictive immigration policies and increased geopolitical tensions all threaten the advance of technology which depends on a global ecosystem of collaboration and knowledge sharing.

That’s why, when I say that the avenue of liberation is moving from politics to technology, that does not imply that politics will be inconsequential. It just means that working for change may be less about changing policy and more about creating social technologies of liberation. This work will be political in that it will challenge power structures but they may not flow through the halls of government as they did in the last century.

Furthermore, it means that any vision of liberation that does not take into account the impact of technology is simply inadequate to address our current historical moment. This is where current political movements of the left and the right (in the United States) miss the point. The first remains focused on identity politics while the latter insists on perpetuating an outdated vision of 20th century capitalism. Both fail to address the disruptive yet transformative power of technology.

Hence, a new theological vision of liberation must take an alternative path. It must speak through the left and right political dichotomy while also critically confronting the vision of a technocapitalistic future. This is what I want to address in the next blog.

A Theology of Hope in a Technological Age – Introduction

This blogs starts a series on re-visiting a theology of hope in a technological age. For full transparency, I write this as my reflection on the topic progresses. I do this on purpose, in the hope that this reflection is not limited to an isolated individual’s musings but instead can open the way for a dialogue with others. Theology is done best when done in community. In an age of instant global communication, the possibilities for dialogue widen and allow for an in-time collaboration that was simply not possible before. Hence, I invite the reader to enter this not as a passive receiver of information but instead an active participant in this conversation. Feel free to post comments or email me directly through the contact form in the site.

In this first blog, I want to discuss the emergence of a theology of hope in the middle of the last century looking at its most prominent proponent -German theologian Jurgen Moltmann. His seminal work Theologie der Hoffnung [Theology of Hope] in the mid 1960’s would initiate a revolution in academic theology that reverberated through decades to come. Here is how it started.

The Emergence of a Theology of Hope

Each theology engages a particular set of questions which are considered to be crucial to the context of the theologian. To do theology is precisely that: to observe the world and listen to its most perennial questions. Then, in prayerful mediation, under the guidance of the Spirit and in dialogue with their community, to seek out answers emerging from the Christian tradition and practices.

Jurgen Moltmann’s theology emerges from the Post-war experience as the world was taking stock of the horrific atrocities executed by the European powers. One of the questions his world was asking was how could there be a good God in a world where Auchwitz happens? Even seventy years later, this question rings in Western ears challenging the European Christendom projects of the previous centuries. If Christian societies were capable of such cruelty and destruction, what is even the point of upholding the Christian religion as the foundation of our political structures? Furthermore, is Christianity even relevant for individuals in a post-war age or does it belong to the history books? The crisis cast both existential (personal) as corporate (political) doubts on an European Christian identity.

A Passionate/Suffering God

A temptation, then and now, is to relegate religious expression to a privatized individualistic piety. That is, all that matters is me, Jesus and my salvation. As long as my passport to heaven is stamped, I don’t need to engage with worldly affairs. The world is confusing enough and meaningless, let me endure its reality in the weeks and escape to heavenly dreams on the weekend.

Moltmann resists this temptation by taking seriously the suffering in the world. If Christianity is to have a voice in the public square (and in our lives), it must actively engage with the questions people and societies are asking. If our faith inadequately addresses the crisis of our time, then it is no longer useful or pertinent to our time.

He starts by reframing the problem. In one of his shortest books, Open Church, Moltmann sees apathy as the biggest curse of our age:

[Our] one-sided orientation towards accomplishment and success make us melancholic and insensitive. We become incapable of love and incapable of sorrow. We no longer have tears, and we smile only because we are supposed to keep on smiling…We become apathetic, still alive but surely and slowly dying inwardly. (pg 23)

Theology of hope starts and ends with a passionate God. It is important here to recover the original meaning of the word passion. It is not just about energy and zeal but also about suffering. The best example is the Passion of Christ, where we see both an unyielding zeal as well as the resulting suffering Christ goes through. A passionate God means one that is moved by the world suffering, cries with them but also moves to action to answer the cries of humanity.

The End is the Beginning

If every theology has a starting point, theology of hope begins with the end. This is what theologians call an eschatological approach. Eschatology is the study of the last things which has come to mean many different things. Recently, because of evangelical pop culture, eschatology has sadly become synonymous with exhaustive speculation about the end of the world. That is not what Moltmann means by it.

Instead, he is following New Testament scholarship in recovering the centrality of the eschatological hope in the Early church. That is, the fact that the apostles and early Christians believed in an actual installation of God’s kingdom on earth. They believed it to be an imminent event. The point of it was not the destruction of the world but the future vindication of God’s people in view of their present political oppression. Hence, the gospel message, in the First and still in the Twenty-First century, has political implications.

By doing so, Moltmann is joining a chorus of theologians, scholars and some clergy in bringing eschatology from the supernatural realm to the natural world. With time and heavy influence from Greek philosophy, eschatology became focused on the after-life. Instead, they want to correct this notion so that Christians can focus more on the here and now.

Hence, this recovery the eschatological character of early Christianity should translate into present action. While grounded in God’s action, it raises the question of how to live today in a way the reflects that future reality. In short, how do we bring the future liberation of God’s people into the present?

Inspired on Moltmann’s writing, the early 70’s would see the emergence of a Latin American, Catholic version later known as liberation theology. If eschatology is about a political reality, then what would that look like in the context of Latin American poor? This is the topic of part 2.

AI Revelation: From Natural to Artificial Theology

Systematic theology organizes theological ideas into topics. The original intent was to construct a system that could explain the many facets of the Christian faith to its adherents. If Scripture described the experience of God through history, systematic theology sought to organize the knowledge emerging from that historical experience into a cohesive group of propositions and arguments. This system consists of specific topics that include esoteric terms, often coming from Greek or Latin such as Trinity, Eschatology and Deification. Each of these terms carry centuries of arguments, reflections and stories within them.

Dusting off Seminary Books

It is unfortunate that such approach has now fallen into neglect. Even those who have studied these concepts in seminary will often not use them again in sermons, writings even less day-to-day conversations. When was the last time you discussed the different views of the Trinity with your spouse? Their historical nature is what makes them both distinctive but also disconnected from contemporary language. They require a pre-requisite knowledge that is no longer taught in western societies.

Even so, maybe it is time we re-visit this age-old tradition with a fresh perspective. In that vein, I have recently gathered some books I acquired in seminary and browsed through them again. Almost three years since I have graduated, I must confess my theological thinkings has grown rusty. Just like any art or skill, you lose it if you don’t use it.

As I looked over them, I re-encountered the concept of revelation. This loaded term is theology’s way to describe how God communicates with humanity. It speaks of the role of Scripture, tradition and experience in how divine truth is communicated. I acknowledge that in a secular world, the idea that an unseen being would speak is quite scandalous. Yet, hang in there for a bit.

General, Special and Natural

Theologians have often divided the topic into general and special revelation. Special revelation speaks of the exclusive way in which God directly speaks through the Hebrew and the Christian faith. This is where Scripture and religious experience fits in. Yet, theologians recognize that God’s revelation was not limited to those means. That is where the concept of general revelation emerged as a way to express these instances where God communicates through non-religious means.

One way general revelation occurs is through nature. I can personally attest to that reality. Many times I have had life-changing moments of clarity, peace and resolve while hiking through the woods. There is something compelling about being outdoors. It touches our senses in rich ways.

Thomas Aquinas, a church father and one of the first systematic theologians, recognized this reality and developed some thinking around this phenomenon. This later became known as natural theology – the idea that nature also contains divine truths available to all humans regardless of religious persuasion. Unfortunately, natural theology fell in disrepute with the Reformation. In an effort to elevate the role of God in salvation, reformers emphasized special over general revelation. In reacting against traditional Catholic thinking, they ended up closing the door on this rich avenue of meaning.

From Natural to Artificial

In a multicultural and secular world, the idea of general revelation cannot be denied. That is why Christian theologians and believers must reconsider natural theology. It is time to re-visit Aquinas’ legacy and re-formulate it anew in a technological era.

It is also time to introduce a new concept: Artificial theology. If natural theology focused on how God could speak through nature, consequently artificial theology should explore how God could speak through technology. What if revelation could happen through algorithms? Can we find God in the countless pieces of data circulating through the cyber world?

Many of us can attests that one can find transcendence in nature. However, when it comes to our experience with technology, transcendence is not the first word that comes to mind. More often than not, technology connotes a lifeless sense of utility. It is more like an imitation of reality than reality itself. Hence why we tend define it artificial, implying the opposite of natural. Yet, by doing so, we shut out a growing part of our human experience from divine connection.

Dutch theologian Albert Kuyper believed that no square inch of existence was beyond God’s dominion. If this is true, it must also include our silicon world. The first step in this journey is to open our eyes to this reality.

Re-Thinking Worship: Seeing Liturgy as Technology

Can the technical and the religious intersect? In this blog I want to explore what happens when we look at liturgy (the order of Christian rituals) as technology. What kind of new insights can this perspective provide?

A Personal Struggle

For a few years now, my family has struggled to plug into a church. Part of that is the phase of our lives with small children. Getting three kids ready make any outings an elaborate event! Yet, I know there is more to it. This external struggle only reflects what is happening internally with me and my wife. After growing up as active members in Christian communities we find ourselves struggling to find a spiritual home (in the way we traditionally understood it). Church is no longer an anchoring community but instead a trigger for painful memories. Going to church does not give meaning to our lives as it used to even as we still hold on to the faith it preaches.

This perception is also spilling over to our kids. Any time I mention to my two older girls (8 and 6) about going to church, protest follows. I guess they learned early to be Protestants!

When I probe further, they say that that they do not get much out of it. They don’t see the point dressing up in a Sunday morning to sit with other kids they barely know to hear stories they already know. As a father, my knee-jerk reaction is to contest these impressions, trying to affirm the slow work of grace that happens in the continual exposure to Christian rituals. Yet, the message is not getting through. Often time, I find myself being the only one at home who sees value in going to church on a Sunday morning.

This situation grieves my heart. For all its failures, I still believe in the institutional church. I also see the regular gathering of believers as an essential part of spiritual formation. Therefore, my children’s aversion to church makes me feel like I failed. I know that ultimately they will have to choose the path they need to follow. This is not under my control. Yet, I hope that by then they would have at least as much exposure as I had to the faith. Doing that without regularly participating in a Christian community is very difficult.

A Shift in Perspective

Pondering on this predicament, I wanted to understand why my view of church was so different from that of my kids. There are many differences between our upbringings in culture, language, age and technology. What I realized, however, is that through practice and study, I was encouraged and trained to see the grandeur of God in the life of the church. This has come to me through many avenues. One of them was music and the experience of worship. Another was through listening to preachers and Sunday School teachers. Additionally, I have had multiple personal mystical experiences, deeply personal and emotionally rich, that affirmed the realities being spoken in church. Through study, my vision of the body of Christ expanded beyond a group of a few hundred whom I join on a weekly basis to an unbroken communion of people affirming this faith over time in all continents of the earth. The latter, is one of the main reasons why I still believe in the institution.

The problem is that I expected my young children to simply get all that by simply dropping them off in a nursery or Sunday school class on a weekly basis. This becomes even more complicated when they are bombarded from multiple influences throughout the week that claim their attention. They are not growing up in the same world I was. A new context require different measures.

In view of this realization, I decided to take upon myself the responsibility to pass on the faith, in the best way I can, directly to my children. Relying on others to do is not working. Maybe then, they will come to yearn for gathering with other Christians on a weekly basis. That theological degree may finally come in handy after all!

Liturgy as Technology

As I considered ways to pass on the Christian faith to my children, I wondered whether I could see liturgy as technology.

To level set, liturgy means the order and content of how Christian services are conducted. It it encompasses prayers, music, reading, taking communion (or the Eucharist), baptism, etc. Liturgy is what people do when they come together for worship, hence, the “work of the people.” When ministers prepare for a Sunday service, they consider what the experience communicates. It goes beyond words but can include sounds, aromas and visuals. All these elements shape, direct and communicate through the worship experience. Over time, good liturgy changes those who regularly participate in it. There is not such thing as a liturgical church because every congregation follows a liturgy. Some are implied rather than explicitly stated.

What is the connection with technology? If technology is applied science to solve a problem, liturgy is applied theology to form character. In other words, it is a means, albeit important, to foster divine encounters. These encounters, re-order desires, transform souls and develop faith. When working properly, they have the power to make us better people.

If we are willing to accept this analogy, I wonder if the problem that my kids see no relevance in church is a technical rather than a spiritual one. I wonder if the liturgy is inadequate to do the work at their level of understanding. By that, I don’t mean that they need to experience church through more advanced technological means. The idea is not to create children’s VR church! It is much deeper than that. It is examining the elements that are not working properly and test alternatives that work better.

Can I pass on a faith that will stick over time? Will the liturgy, like a technology, work properly towards that goal? How effective are our liturgies in the goal of spiritual formation?

What do you think?

The Machine Learning Paradigm: How AI Can Teach Us About God

It is no secret that AI is becoming a growing part of our lives and institutions. There is no shortage of article touting the dangers (and a few times the benefits) of this development. What is less publicized is the very technology that enables the growing adoption of AI, namely Machine Learning (ML). While ML has been around for decades, its flourishing depended on advanced hardware capabilities that have only become available recently. While we tend to focus on Sci-Fi like scenarios of AI, it is Machine Learning that is most likely to revolutionize how we do computing by enabling computers to act more like partners rather than mere servants in the discovery of new knowledge. In this blog, I explain how Machine Learning is a new paradigm for computing and use it as a metaphor to suggest how it can change our view of the divine. Who says technology has nothing to teach religion? Let the skeptics read on.

What is Machine Learning?

Before explaining ML, it is important to understand how computer programming works. At its most basic level, programs (or code) are sets of instructions that tell the computer what to do given certain conditions or inputs from a user. For example, in the WordPress code for this website, there is an instruction to show this blog in the World Wide Web once I click the button “Publish” in my dashboard. All the complexities of putting this text into a platform that can be seen by people all over the world are reduced to lines of code that tell the computer and the server how to do that The user, in this case me, knows nothing of that except that when I click “Publish,” I expect my text to show up in a web address. That is the magic of computer programs.

Continuing on this example, it is important to realize that this program was once written by a human programmer. He or she had to think about the user and its goals and the complexity of making that happen using computer language. The hardware, in this scenario was simply a blind servant that followed the instructions given to it. While we may think of computers as smart machines they are as smart as they are programmed to be. Remove the instructions contained in the code and the computer is just a box of circuits.

Let’s contrast that with the technique of Machine Learning. Consider now that you want to write a program for your computer to play and consistently win an Atari game of Pong (I know, not the best example, but when you are preparing a camp for Middle Schoolers that is the only example that comes to mind). The programming approach would be to play the game yourself many times to learn strategies to win the game. Then, the player would write them down and codify these strategies in a language the computer can understand. She or he would then spend countless hours writing the code that spells out multiple scenarios and what the computer is supposed to do in each one of them. Just writing about it seems exhausting.

Now compare that with an alternative approach in which the computer actually plays the game and maximizes the score in each game based on past playing experiences. After some initial coding, the rest of the work would be incumbent on the computer to play the game millions of time until it reaches a level of competency where it wins consistently. In this case, the human outsources the game playing to the computer and only monitors the machine’s progress. Voila, there is the magic of Machine Learning.

A New Paradigm for Computing

As the example above illustrates, Machine Learning changes the way we do computing. In a programming paradigm, the computer is following detailed instructions from the programmer. In the ML paradigm, the learning and discovery is done by the algorithm itself. The programmer (or data scientist) is there primarily to set the parameters for how the learning will occur as opposed to giving instructions for what the computer is to do. In the first paradigm, the computer is a blind servant following orders. In the second one, the computer is a partner in the process.

There are great advantages to this paradigm. Probably the most impactful one is that now the computer can learn patterns that would be impossible for the human mind to learn. This opens the space to new discoveries that was previously inaccessible when the learning was restricted to the human programmer.

The downside is also obvious. Since the learning is done through the algorithm, it is not always possible to understand why the computer arrived at a certain conclusion. For example, last week I watched the Netflix documentary on the recent triumph of a computer against a human player in the game of Go. It is fascinating and worth watching in its own right. Yet, I found striking that the coders of Alpha Go could not always tell why the computer was making a certain move. At times, the computer seemed delusional to human eyes. There lies the danger: as we transfer the learning process to the machine we may be at the mercy of the algorithm.

A New Paradigm for Religion

How does this relate to religion? Interestingly enough these contrasting paradigms in computing shed light in a religious context for describing the relationship between humans and God. As the foremost AI Pastor Christopher Benek once said: “We are God’s AI.” Following this logic, we can see how of a paradigm of blind obedience to one of partnership can have revolutionary implications for understanding our relationship with the divine. For centuries, the tendency was to see God as the absolute Monarch demanding unquestioning loyalty and unswerving obedience from humans. This paradigm, unfortunately, has also been at the root of many abusive practices of religious leaders. This is especially dangerous when the line between God and the human leader is blurry. In this case, unswerving obedience to God can easily be mistaken by blind obedience to a religious leader.

What if instead, our relationship with God could be described as a partnership? Note that this does not imply an equal partnership. However, it does suggest the interaction between two intelligent beings who have separate wills. What would be like for humanity to take on responsibility for its part in this partnership? What if God is waiting for humanity to do so? The consequences of this shift can be transformative.

Category: Theology of Technology