Professional Documents
Culture Documents
T h e a g e - o l d q u e s t i o n s —W hat is
man? What is our purpose? Do we have any
value?—have become pressing and urgent ques-
various technologies alongside these ideological
viewpoints which have further questioned our
understanding of ourselves. After all, living in a day
tions today. No doubt, people in every day have of test-tube babies, trans-sexual operations, genetic
wrestled with these anthropological questions. But engineering, artificial intelligence, and potential
today, especially in the West, it seems as if these human cloning, the question of human dignity,
questions now consume us. Part value, and personhood have indeed become press-
Stephen J. Wellum is Professor of the reason for this is due to the ing. Are we creatures of dignity because we are
of Christian Theology at The South- so-called “demise” of the Christian created in God’s image? Or are we merely animals,
ern Baptist Theological Seminary.
worldview in the West and its influ- by-products of an impersonal evolutionary pro-
Dr. Wellum received his Ph.D. ence upon our larger society. Prior cess, things that can be, technologically speaking,
degree in theology from Trinity to the Enlightenment, Christian manipulated and re-fashioned for whatever ends
Evangelical Divinity School and
theology largely shaped our society, we deem best?
has also taught t heology at the
Associated Canadian Theological but due to the rise of competing This collective identity crisis is best illustrated
Schools and Northwest Baptist “isms,” as represented by the larger in the postmodern university (better: “di-versity”)
Theological College and Seminary categories of modernism and now where any Christian or unified view of human
in Canada. He has contributed
to several publications and a
postmodernism (e.g., Marxism, beings has disappeared. For example, in the biol-
collection of essays on theology secular humanism, existential- ogy classroom, humanity is viewed as nothing
and worldview issues. ism, nihilism, deconstructionism, more than a “naked ape,” to use the words of Des-
etc.), our culture is now suffering mond Morris. From the perspective of neurobiol-
from a collective identity crisis. What makes this ogy, humans are viewed merely as physical beings
identity crisis even more acute has been the rise of which seems to entail that the mind is reducible