In 1944 we developed a way of "splitting" the "un-cuttable" a-tom, of manipulating the forces at its nucleus -- the "primal stuff" which underlies material reality. In 1973 we developed a technique for slicing and splicing DNA, the molecular material of genes, and hence for literally manipulating the stuff of life -- the ultimate technology. In 1997 the successful cloning of an adult sheep was announced (though rumors of earlier such experiments had already been circulating in the scientific community for some time). Given the exponential growth in technology and science of the 20th century, our imagination leaps from bacteria, crops, frogs, and livestock to genetic diseases in humans all the way to humans themselves -- first cloned and then custom-designed. From Rabbi Judah Löw Ben Bezalel's Golem of Prague, Frankenstein's monster, and Goethe's homunculus to Homo sapientissimus as Nicholas Wade calls the possibility of a human-engineered person in The Ultimate Experiment: Man-Made Evolution. 

From Imago Dei to Imago Homini . . . Our response to the awe-some potential of science and technology tends to be a function of our existing religious and ideological worldview -- preconceptions and prejudices -- and especially -- if we are devout -- our paradigm of the role of human beings vis-a-vis ultimate reality, that is a personal God in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. 

However, it's important to note that awesome as recent scientific and technological "miracles" are, thus far we have done nothing except gone ever deeper into the exploration of the physical makeup of the already existent material universe. At best, we are imitating the workings of nature and learning to "play" the instrument we have been handed, as we continue to eat of the "tree of knowledge" (and now, the "tree of life"). Much depends on how we interpret the original Genesis myth. In the Jewish tradition there is no original sin, no Fall. As we eat of the tree we become self-conscious; we become aware of transience and our mortality; we become fully human. Ultimately this means that as formed in the Image of God, our Creator, we are meant to be co-creators (as Philip Hefner calls us) with the capacity for self-transformation. Consider the following midrash cited by Ira Progoff: "And Isaac asked the Eternal: '. . . when Thou hadst made man in Thine image, Thou didst not say in Thy Torah that man was good. Wherefore Lord?' And God answered him, 'Because man I have not yet perfected, and because through the Torah man is to perfect himself, and to perfect the world.'" In that perspective, the current developments are in keeping with the original charge given to humans to be God's representatives on earth. 

There are many moral theologians (especially those who focus on our "fallen nature") such as Leon Kass and Paul Ramsey, who are profoundly suspicious of our arrogant attempts to interfere with the foundations of human life, the "unlimited self-modification of the genetic conditions of life" leading to what Ramsey calls "access to the Tree of Life" which he believes would turn into "boundless destruction in its end results, even as its methods all along included the unlimited subjugation of man to his own rational designs and designers. No man or collection of men is likely to have the wisdom to rule the future in any such way" (Fabricated Man 95-96). 

Obviously, neither Ramsey nor Kass agree with theologian Harvey Cox who in the appropriately named volume On Not Leaving It to the Snake (1967) accused us of indolence by refusing to take charge of ourselves and our future. Kass even called the renowned Jesuit scholar Karl Rahner a "theologian-turned-technocrat" because of the latter's insistence that "man ... [is] that creature who is free to create himself" (60). While Kass cited Rahner out of context, Rahner's incarnational theology does indeed allow a vision of God-in-the-world and of the scientific enterprise as divinely sustained. 

While I grant many of the points made by Kass and Ramsey, I find their approach disturbing because, like uncompromising anti-evolutionists, they introduce premisses which cannot be empirically falsified. Humanity emerged from the primeval mists and swamps when Homo sapiens began to use reason to forge cosmos out of chaos. Why is it any more plausible to imagine God erecting electric fences around certain areas of knowledge than to imagine God watching with delight and parental pride as human beings use their divinely designed brains to decipher the code of life? What's wrong with envisioning God perching on the side of a Petri dish, eager to have us correct some copyists' errors which have crept into the three billion "words" in the past six hundred million years. Why not have faith in a God who expects us both to cherish the genetically defective already alive and to do our utmost to have future babies come into this world healthy in every way? A God who appreciates our willingness to learn by sacrificing part of ourselves for the sake of the species? A God who challenges us to perfect ourselves not only spiritually but biologically? After all, if we believe in the only kind of Creator God compatible with evolution we must also accept the divine way of improving all life-forms through the divine experiment of natural selection which at some point begins to includes the human ability to become an active part of the process, a change agent, one in whom -- as Teilhard de Chardin insists -- evolution is becoming conscious of itself. 

In addition, we must also keep in mind that human persons are much more than physical bodies and genetic constitution. We are also but not only bodies. A cloned newborn is open-ended genetic potential which can develop into any number of diverse mature persons in interaction with family and society. As long as we make sure that the cloned are cherished no less than the naturally conceived, as long as we make sure that they are born into a loving family, there is no reason to assume that they will differ from any other child, except in their origin (most people may not realize that the technology can also be adapted to allow sterile men to become biological fathers). 

At the present we are facing bio-technological possibilities which stagger the imagination. Childhood's End is upon us. Religious leaders can try to keep us captive in our safe chrysalis. On the other hand, they can help us reach the intellectual and ethical maturity to envision, project, and invent ourselves as we grope toward majority, which for Jews and Christians means the actualization of the divine image within themselves, the unveiling of the new-old Tetragrammaton A G C T. 

Ingrid Shafer
University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma