Introduction

In this ambitious edited volume, Savin-Baden and Reader (2022) bring together a diverse range of contributions on the topic of postdigital theology. Key guiding questions include where God might be found within the postdigital world and how the postdigital might impact our understanding of this same God, of spirituality, and of the human condition (Reader and Savin-Baden 2022-Baden 2022: xii).

Part One: Postdigital Theologies

In the first chapter, Maggi Savin-Baden offers a helpful overview and some much-needed definitions of key vocabulary such as posthumanism, transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and digital religion. The postdigital itself must in part be described through its difficulty to grasp: ‘Postdigital then as a concept, context, and practice is fluid, blending the person, the digital, and machines, with all interrupting all.’ (Savin-Baden 2022: 6) When it comes to the theological dimensions of this evolving landscape, Savin-Baden identifies seven areas that merit particular consideration: the subversion of authority, material culture, mediation, ritual, the sacred and sacramental, heterotopias, and practical theologies (Savin-Baden 2022: 9ff, see especially the table on page 10).

The second chapter is presented as the transcript of a conversation between Catherine Keller and Petar Jandrić (Keller and Jandrić 2022). It highlights some key contours of the landscape, remarking upon postmodernism, poststructuralism, theology as science and as poetry (theopoetics), process theology, politics, and faith. One may wish to probe specific comments further or even push back against them; two such cases that speak to my own academic background are the place of the community of goods in the Acts of the Apostles (23) and the assertion that ‘Trinity is not a biblical concept’ (33). However, to do so would go against the grain of a generative conversation such as this one, in which the task is one of gathering rather than of picking apart. While in nascent form within this chapter, this attempt to weave reflections on the earth, the natural world, and the postdigital into a single tapestry feels deeply important.

The third chapter focuses upon the specific example of the practice of communion in the Church of England during the Covid-19 lockdowns. Andrew Braddock (2022) summarises the contours of the discussion to date, highlighting the role that ambivalence regarding digital technology has played. Braddock (2022: 52) likens the adaptation required for the shift online to the cross-cultural act of transmitting the Gospels in new places and times (52). This comparison raises intriguing questions regarding the cultural identities of postdigital humans that would merit further exploration. Is this a world into which one can knowingly opt in or out, is it akin to a foreign land, or are we all rather more entangled than this? (See Savin-Baden 2021).

Part Two: Postdigital Conundrums

This section begins with John Reader’s (2022) treatment of divine becoming. This is a valuable scene-setting chapter in which several different theological approaches to digital technologies are outlined and assessed. The discussion leads us away from focusing upon the individual, both in relation to human ‘being’ but also in relation to technology. Individual technologies need not diminish our personhood, but the collective powers at work in a postdigital world need to be taken seriously and perhaps challenged. In all of this, space needs to be made for ‘new forms of human (and non-human) development’ (Reader 2022: 72), as well as for the idea that God, too, may be unfolding and changing over time (59).

In the fifth chapter, Alcibiades Malapi-Nelson (2022) offers a thought-provoking assessment of the potential common ground between transhumanism and the Roman Catholic faith and thought. Challenging any conception of the latter as necessarily tied to the principles of virtue ethics and their perceived lack of compatibility with transhumanism, three themes are identified wherein it is argued that resonances and connections may be located: the treatment of human suffering and its relationship to human flourishing; the question of the survival of humanity in the long-term; and the matter of human dignity (Malapi-Nelson 2022: 81). While a plausible case is made for these points of common ground, the resulting picture has a hierarchical and anthropocentric character, which would not fit comfortably within all articulations of Roman Catholicism. This is especially the case in relation to the concern for the poor and the marginalized highlighted within the chapter as a defining feature of Pope Francis’ pontificate (79).

To echo Braddock’s (2022: 43) question, what is the experience of the marginalized within the transhumanist vision that is being proposed? If the comparison to the sacrifices of war as investments in human progress and learning is taken seriously (Malapi-Nelson 2022: 82), one might ask who the likely losers are to be within civilian participation in risky proactionary technological experiments (83). Might it not be the economically or educationally underprivileged who are most likely to need the ‘compensations’ of such an enterprise? And might not the most likely beneficiaries of any resulting life-enhancing and life-extending technologies be the rich and the powerful? Naturally, one assumes this discussion is intended to be generative rather than prescriptive, and it is successful in confronting some of the cost-counting and prioritization that must form part of a transhuman future.

In the sixth chapter, Eric Trozzo (2022) considers the potential for affective transformation and sublime encounters within the postdigital. Such encounters do not necessarily demand a theological interpretation (108), but rather represent a disruption or an irruption within our own world. In contrast to Malapi-Nelson (2022), Trozzo (2022) utilizes Rosi Braidotti’s (2019) posthuman framework of zoe/geo/techno, recognizing the interconnections, entanglements, and blurred boundaries between these elements. Within this complex picture, the sublime is understood as ‘an attempt to recognize an irruption of transcendence within immanence’ (Trozzo 2022: 97). He follows Emily Brady (2013) in arguing that some ‘wildness’ (Trozzo 2022: 98) or ‘defamiliarization’ (Trozzo 2022: 105) is necessary for such encounters. While Trozzo persuasively weaves the postdigital into this landscape, one wonders whether there is a sense-making tendency built into digital technologies that might ultimately function to tame rather than showcase this feature.

The idea of disruption that Trozzo (2022) raises is also picked up in the seventh chapter, wherein Jack Slater (2022) draws queer theology and postdigital theory into conversation with one another in the topic of digital afterlives. He notes ‘the queering effects of digital afterlife’ (Slater 2022: 122) in which the identity of the deceased person is transformed, though still connected to that of their living presence. Slater also raises the interesting idea of ‘sociability with the deceased’ (119). It may be fruitful to bring this into fuller conversation with older religious practices that tend towards veneration over sociability.

In the final chapter of this section, Steve Fuller (2022) notes the challenge that the postdigital can present for proponents of critical race theory and for others for whom embodied identity (in this case, the Black body) is of central significance. He suggests that the increased mixing of people in a postdigital world, the way in which ‘genomic accounts of biological lineage’ have superseded morphological explanations, and the growing awareness of the possibilities afforded by digital technology to manipulate images, all contribute towards a transracial future in which the postdigital promotes morphological freedom (Fuller 2022: 141). Given the reluctance to engage with digital technologies that has been observed among Black Americans in the United States (129), representation and agency much surely be key considerations in the creation of any such future.

Part Three: Language, Machines, and Theologies

The third section of the book begins with Douglas Estes’ (2022) work on divine design in the postdigital. He argues that ‘life on earth is innately technological’ (152) and that we as humans are already cyborgs (147). Asking why this is the case, Estes asserts that humans were created to create by a creator God (159) and that as humans continue to progress, our humanness is only amplified since our capability and our agency also grow. Estes is less concerned than many about the risk of humanity being overtaken by technology, emphasizing the ability of humans to adapt to new technologies (158–159). His conclusion also notes the human desire to become more divine, and this may hint at a different endpoint in the ‘technological spiral’ (157) of human progress than that which is suggested here.

In the tenth chapter, Paul Woods (2022) introduces a hypothetical ‘computer aided system for spiritual living in the urban environment’ (CAUSAL), which is an AI system that would function as a resource to enable individuals to supplement and develop their knowledge of spirituality. Recognizing the multiple spheres of belonging that can typify urban dwellers, Woods (2022: 167) proposes a ‘cautiously pluralistic approach to spirituality’ that would enable users to specify their own religious norms and traditions while also introducing them to other sources of information. Such a system would likely be significantly more able than human beings are to mine and organize the relevant data and to hold together the complex threads of place, tradition, and culture that make up religious affiliation. Woods (2022) does not address if and how God or the divine might be present within the system itself. Since many religious believers would hold to the view that God is at work in the here and now, the question of the potential for divine activity within an AI system is one that remains unanswered.

Simon Cross (2022) continues the conversation around AI, drawing our attention to the use of language in digital and theological discourses. He notes that, while digital technology has tended to draw upon biology and engineering in constructing its lexicon, discussion of AI has often tended towards the use of metaphor (Cross 2022: 186) and especially metaphors of human identity and experience. A key example of this is an Amazon Science blog entitled ‘Alexa enters “the age of the self”’ (Cross 2022: 183; see Natarajan 2021). Cross (2022) argues that, while metaphors can perform highly important functions, they also risk encouraging overextension [as per the emotional attachment to chatbots displayed in some experiments (188)] or becoming overfamiliar and therefore losing their resonance as metaphors. Cross (2022: 186) suggests that ‘mind as software’ and ‘brain as machine’ are at risk of precisely this loss. One wonders how avoidable these boundary-blurring risks really are, given the inherently anthropocentric framework for the development of AI that Cross (2022: 192) acknowledges.

Part Four: the Impact of the Digital

The final section of the book begins with Heidi A. Campbell and Grace Jones’s (2022) analysis of research into the technological engagement of church leaders in Iowa during the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors set out to show how this paved the way for acceptance of certain posthuman perspectives within the religious communities, for example, through the decentring of the human that occurred through increased technological dependency during lockdowns (Campbell and Jones 2022: 209).

The definition of posthumanism in this chapter, which uses David Roden’s (2015) work as a framework for much of the discussion, feels narrower than that found elsewhere in this volume, tending towards a linear and future-oriented understanding. One potential area for further engagement relates to a comparison of these human-digital trends with some of the other ways in which the human has been problematized or reshaped during the pandemic, such as increased use of outdoor spaces for social connection and worship. By weaving this thread into the current discussion around digital technologies, informative similarities and differences may emerge.

In keeping with many of the earlier contributions, chapter thirteen situates the postdigital upon a historically grounded continuum. Agana-Nsiire Agana (2022) proposes four stages of Christian understanding of divinity during which particular ideas or approaches can be understood to dominate. In the fourth of these phases—the postdigital—it is the instantiability of God that is highlighted. The author suggests that, in this phase, the true potential of humans to fulfill their divine likeness is possible through their creation of autonomous AI beings. The chapter focuses upon the question of how this might be achieved in a moral way, in spite of and perhaps because of the current unknowability or incomprehensibility of many of the layers of deep AI. In some respects, the question and its answer might be understood to be one and the same.

In the last chapter, Rebecca Taylor and Joan Ball (2022) use two pieces of art, Bill Viola’s Emergence (Viola et al. 2003) and Kanye West’s Jesus is King (2016), to demonstrate ways in which the senses might be drawn into our attempts at meaning-making. This entails a surrendering to the ‘ingraspability’ of the postdigital world (Taylor and Ball 2022: 239) and a recognition that in it one might simultaneously find and lose oneself, being both grounded and reoriented (237). This final chapter is an apt culmination of the preceding discussions. The intentional move away from classically academic/scientific approaches (246) encourages readers to join the conversation, rather than feeling walled off from it by virtue of its technicality and complexity. This question of accessibility has a wider significance in drawing attention to the identities of those who will be instrumental in the development of postdigital theology. For all its allusions to collective thinking and opportunities for transformation, a top-down discussion driven largely by ‘experts’ may see us miss the opportunities afforded by the postdigital world to engage in fresh ways of thinking, learning, and becoming.

Concluding Reflections

Postdigital Theologies: Technology, Belief, and Practice (Savin-Baden and Reader 2022) is a thought-provoking resource that enables readers to grasp the key contours of the emerging discipline of postdigital theology and raises pertinent questions that will help to shape future discussion. The focus is largely upon the Christian tradition, and further work would doubtless be enriched by the inclusion of insights from other religious perspectives. The intended audience for the book is not entirely clear; while some of the chapters assume familiarity with technical language and/or wider theological debate, others appear to be directed much more towards those just beginning their forays in these areas. Some of the chapters would make suitable reading for advanced undergraduates, but most are more suited to those working at the postgraduate level and beyond. In spite of this unevenness, it is a commendable and highly valuable resource that should form part of the required reading for further work in this field.

While many will elect to read individual chapters that interact directly with their own research interests, one of the biggest successes of this volume is the space it creates for conversation across the boundaries of particular subdisciplines. The generous and generative conversation contained within is very much in the spirit of the postdigital itself, blurring existing boundaries and mapping out new networks for ongoing conversation.