It is in the practice of Christian community that, week after week and year after year, Christians are discipled in the recognition that they are not their own, and that all they have, they have first received. Their making, and their very capacity to make, is always a sheer gift. In the end, Redemer rightly reminds us that wherever the future finds them…Christians will continue to gather, baptize, commune—and remember.

As I write this, there is a watch on my wrist. It isn’t especially fancy—this isn’t a Rolex or Omega, but a stainless-steel Seiko. Its case and band no longer glint in the sunshine, but bear the dull matte burr of long wear. And over the years I’ve had to do various forms of upkeep, from adjusting the size of the band to replacing the crystal face to fixing the internal mechanism that makes it run.
This watch was my grandfather’s, and after he passed away in 2014, it descended to me. Since then, it’s been a fixture in my life: I wore it at my wedding, and, God willing, I’ll pass it on to my son someday. Whenever I wear it, I find myself grateful that my grandfather didn’t buy a cheap Timex or Casio. Instead, he invested in an item that would last—not something extravagant, or something indestructible, but something nevertheless worth preserving and handing on.
In short, I carry on my wrist an item of technology permeated by both memory and history—by my grandfather’s past, and by my own future. It has a particular “immanent” function, to be sure: on a traditional Aristotelian account of virtue ethics, a watch that tells time rightly is properly called a good watch, since it functions as a watch should1. My watch is a good watch, by this standard. And yet what matters to me isn’t just the watch’s function of telling time, but the deeper realities—the deeper loves—to which it points.
Something like this intuition first drove the Christian transposition of Aristotle into a Neoplatonic key2. For Christian thought, the life rightly lived involves both the exemplification of one’s essential virtues and final union with a transcendent Reality that overflows the finite. Beneath and beyond the apparent flux of history and becoming, eternity is ever-present—and all created beings stand within its horizon.
In Made Like the Maker, just as in his classic Centuries, Thomas Traherne once again proves that he is the great English poet of just such participation in the divine. Traherne’s sacramental universe is a world not merely shaped by a demiurge’s hand, but a cosmos positively overflowing with glory for those with eyes to see.3
Mere apprehension of that glory, though, is not the end of the story. Activity is key. As Colin Redemer ably shows in his compelling introduction to Traherne, the Christian has the right—and even duty—to act in freedom to perfect and improve this creation. Over against those who might suggest that Christian contemplation entails stasis or quiescence, Redemer stresses that “the work of man is not finished. The finishing touches of creation are still ours to freely fill.”4
It is in this spirit that Redemer confronts the question of technology and Christian ethics—of the ways in which human beings may rightly exercise their own “sub-creative” faculties. He begins by noting that technological progress as such lacks any orienting principle, beyond the brute fact of incremental improvement in performing some function or other: “Version 2.0 is better at satisfying the needs that version 1.0 was designed to satisfy.”5 That is a crabbed view of advancement indeed.
This myopic tendency is exacerbated by the fact that when modern people think about producing things—that is, creating technology—they tend to think in terms of techne, or “making” through skilled craftsmanship. But, Redemer points out, the notion of “making” is fuller-orbed than this.6 Where, after all, does technology come from in the first place?
The answer is that technology first emerges from ideas put into words. This making-with-words—poesis—is the necessary condition of any development at all. Some poetic vision or other (understood broadly) logically precedes crafting or manufacture: “Techne is a making without words, but the true technician must first know what he is making, and that requires learning the language of the thing made. This learning shows us that the techne is downstream from poiesis.”7
Of course, the poesis exercised by Christians is inherently derivative of the original Word with which God spoke creation into being. Failure to recognize this leads to idolatry, as the maker of the idol inevitably seeks to arrogate originating creative power to himself.8
With the relation of techne to poiesis clarified, how then should Christians think about technological advancements? As a governing principle—or perhaps framework—Redemer settles on a distinction, drawn from Oliver O’Donovan, between begetting and making.9 Begetting is the act of bringing into reality that which is like the progenitor in essence, and which is received as it is: a child who is begotten is human, like her parents, and is received by her parents just as she is. Making, conversely, involves the deliberative craftsmanship, by way of both techne and poesis, of that which is truly other than the maker.10
These two must not be conflated. “We are bits of creation, and so we are made,” Redemer urges. “Much as human pride rages against it, we are made by God. As we follow God we must beware not to attempt to make what ought naturally to be begotten. This truth grounds us in humility, in moderation.”11 An obvious case of confusion between begetting and making, one assumes, would be the use of CRISPR or similar tools to produce an infant “according to specifications.”12
But as far as “making” goes, Redemer contends, the field is largely open. In metaphysical terms, it is open because whatever human beings do as sub-creators cannot undercut the reality of God as source and end of all things. “Knowing creation is made, and that we are made as part of that creation, also gives us courage to act,” Redemer stresses. “We are not constrained by the fear that our making or begetting is going to fundamentally alter the nature of nature. The making that is ultimately God’s is a complete and whole thing inside of which our making takes place.”13 Hence, for Redemer, “[w]e need not fear the creation of our hands, be it an artificial ‘intelligence,’ a genetic modification technology, a neuralink, or a new form of as yet unrealized power generation.”14 In conclusion, Redemer urges Christians to anchor their own poesis within their theological inheritance, embracing “the word and the sacraments [as] the spiritual technology of Christian poetics.”15
This is a bold vision—neither reactionary nor uncritically accelerationist. It is optimistic. And it is a vision that rightly grasps the centrality of technology to the contemporary question of Christian being-in-the-world. Any theorizing about ideal Christian politics will never escape the armchair if it tacitly assumes away the Industrial Revolution, the internet, and the smartphone. Opposition to progress tout court is a fantasy.16
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The eugenics movement, as Chesterton predicted, became a wretched story of the negation of democratic ideals to serve a utopian vision. “Hence the tyranny has taken but a single stride to reach the secret and sacred places of personal freedom,” he wrote, “where no sane man ever dreamed of seeing it.” Wittingly or not, the eugenic dream unleashed a cataract of deeply rooted fears and hatreds — sanctified this time by a secular priesthood, the scientific community.

In the 1920s, when he was still an agnostic, C. S. Lewis noted in his diary his latest reading: “Began G. K. Chesterton’s Eugenics and Other Evils.”
A controversial English Catholic writer, Chesterton published his book in 1922, when the popularity of eugenics was at flood tide. Respectable opinion on both sides of the Atlantic embraced the concept: a scientific approach to selective breeding to reduce, and eventually eliminate, the category of people considered mentally and morally deficient. From U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes to Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, eugenics policies — including involuntary sterilization — were hailed as a “progressive” and “compassionate” solution to mounting social problems.
A hundred years ago, Chesterton discerned something altogether different: “terrorism by tenth-rate professors.” For a time, he stood nearly alone in his prophetic assault on the eugenics movement and the pseudo-scientific theory by which it was defended.
“People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late,” Chesterton warned. “I know that it numbers many disciples whose intentions are entirely innocent and humane; and who would be sincerely astonished at my describing it as I do. But that is only because evil always wins through the strength of its dupes.”
Chesterton declared his aim openly, without qualification or compromise: The ideology of eugenics must be destroyed if human freedom is to be preserved. The eugenic idea, he wrote, “is a thing no more to be bargained about than poisoning.” In the end, it would require the discoveries at the death camps at Auschwitz and Dachau for most of the world to finally reject the horrific logic of eugenics. Yet Chesterton was one of the first to see it coming: when the machinery of the state would invoke the authority of science to deprive individuals — both the “unfit” and the unborn — of their fundamental human rights.
It is hard to overstate the degree to which eugenics captured the imagination of the medical and scientific communities in the early 20th century. Anthropologist Francis Galton, who coined the term — from the Greek for “good birth” — argued that scientific techniques for breeding healthier animals should be applied to human beings. Those considered to be “degenerates,” “imbeciles,” or “feebleminded” would be targeted. Anticipating public opposition, Galton told scientific gatherings that eugenics “must be introduced into the national conscience like a new religion.” Premier scientific organizations, such as the American Museum of Natural History, and institutions such as Harvard and Princeton, preached the eugenics gospel: They held conferences, published papers, provided research funding, and advocated for sterilization laws.
To many thinkers in the West, the catastrophe of the First World War, in addition to the problems of poverty, crime, and social breakdown, suggested a sickness in the racial stock. Book titles help tell the story: Social Decay and Degeneration; The Need for Eugenic Reform; Racial Decay; Sterilization of the Unfit; and The Twilight of the White Races. The American Eugenics Society, founded in 1922 — the same year Chesterton published Eugenics and Other Evils — was supported by Nobel Prize–winning scientists whose stated objective was to sterilize a tenth of the U.S. population.
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Written by L. Anthony Curto |
Friday, December 29, 2023
When we evangelize, we must remember that we are engaged in spiritual warfare. Therefore, as Paul reminds the Ephesian church, we must always approach this task with the whole armor of God (Eph. 6:10–20). We must not be taken unaware by the designs of the evil one (2 Cor. 2:11). We must be strong, ever abounding in our service to Christ, knowing by whom and for whom we have been sent. 

Evangelism is part of the life and purpose of the church and of every Christian. A church that does not evangelize is not a true church. This may seem to be a hard statement, but it is true. The church is to make disciples, and discipleship begins with evangelism (Matt. 28:16–20). Our Savior has commissioned the church to be an instrument for extending His kingdom to all nations. As Paul states: “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” (Rom. 10:14). Here are five things we can bring remember when we think about evangelism.
1. The Holy Spirit serves as Christ’s emissary in the worldwide expansion of Christ’s kingdom.
In the last days of Jesus’ earthly ministry, He began to tell the disciples that it was necessary for the Son of Man to die and rise again. The disciples were confused and troubled. Jesus encouraged them not to be troubled. He would go away but would come again to receive them. In the meantime, He would send another Helper. In the interim between Christ’s going and returning, amid all circumstances, the Holy Spirit would be their help.
In John 16, Jesus reveals that the Holy Spirit would also equip the church for the Great Commission. The Holy Spirit would “convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:8). The Holy Spirit would serve as Christ’s emissary in the worldwide expansion of Christ’s kingdom. As the disciples went to all nations, the Holy Spirit would bring home the truth of man’s need of salvation.
2. Sin is not something that people can escape on their own.
By the Spirit’s work, sin can be seen for what it truly is: the great malady of mankind. Sin is not just something one does or doesn’t do. Sin is a state—a fallen state of depravity, helplessness, and hopelessness. Man is not a sinner because of what he does or doesn’t do. Man is a sinner by nature. He does what he does because of who he is. Therefore, salvation is not just a change in lifestyle. Salvation is the beginning of a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17), and it is the Holy Spirit who convicts men and women of this fundamental truth.
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