Becoming Human in a Technological World

In this chapter, John Behr examines what challenges the erasure of death from the horizon of sight in the modern Western world raises for our understanding of ourselves as embodied human beings. As Hervé Juvin notes in the last lines of his study, The Coming of the Body (2010), which examines the various ways in which our experience of embodiment has changed over the last century: ‘Alone, the body remembers that it is finite; alone it roots us in the limits, our last frontier (for how long?); and even if-especially if-it forgets, the body alone still prevents us from being God to ourselves and others.' Bringing together insights from Hervé Juvin, Martha Nussbaum (‘Transcending Humanity’), and his own recent work on the Gospel of John and the theology of Irenaeus, Behr argues that the technological advances of the past century provide a unique, precious opportunity for us to recognize the important connection between mortality, being human, and the incarnation of God.