Early draft for feedback: The Church and Human Personhood in the 21st Century

I am interested in hearing feedback on the basic outline of an essay (below) as I continue to work on it. What would you add or modify? Is this directionally sound?

What questions might occupy the mind of the church in the century to come?

The church will need to define what it means to be a human person more explicitly than previous generations would have imagined. Others smarter and wiser than me have considered this the potential third major defining (literally) moment in Christian history: (1) the 4th and 5th century addressing of Christological and Trinitarian definitions, (2) the 16th century addressing of those of Salvation, and now (3) the 21st century addressing of questions of human personhood.

If this is even remotely the case, I would imagine the following to be true.

Conception and begotten-ness—being conceived by human parents and gestating in the womb of a woman—will become important markers of what it means to be human by the end of the 21st century.

This necessary definition of what it means to be a human person will unlock new ways of appreciating and understanding historic Christian doctrines surrounding the Incarnation. That Jesus was conceived and gestated in a woman’s womb for forty weeks before being born will perhaps be seen in a new light.

Genesis 3 will remain a pertinent text for our times. The allure of immortality (“you will not surely die”) and the temptation towards shortcuts to acquired knowledge and wisdom (grasping the fruit of the tree of wisdom) are central to the AI impulse in our century.

How do we prepare future Christian leaders for these things?

If these are directionally true, how might this impact what we choose to emphasize in our formal and informal theological training of the next generation of the church? What should our posture be as we prepare students for the life of the church in the next century?

Some initial proposals:

• The historic Christian Creeds and Councils will (continue to) be a necessary place to start this quest.
• An insistence on listening to those outside of our own age will be essential. We need the perspective of those not trapped in our situation.
• This may be a century to proclaim afresh the full humanity of Christ.
• An increasingly ability to discuss and embrace the reality of death and our hope in the life of the world to come.
• An increasing visible emphasis on passing acquired wisdom down from one human person to another, also known as discipleship.