Future Perfect?

Professor Celia Deane-Drummond is Director of the Centre for Religion and the Biosciences at University College Chester, UK.

• Introduction: Celia Deane-Drummond and Peter Scott; Part 1: Perspectives on Humans; 1. Fabulous Humans Or Trans-Humans?, Ted Peters, Professor of Systematic Theology at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, USA; 2. Human Nature and the Human Condition, Gordon Graham, Professor of Philosophy, Aberdeen University, UK; 3. The nature of human welfare, Professor Soren Holm, Cardiff Law School, UK & The Section for Medical Ethics, University of Oslo, Norway; 4. The 'end' of the human or the end of the 'human'? Human dignity in technological perspective,; Professor Elaine Graham, Department of Religions and Theology, University of Manchester, UK. Part 2: Medicalised Humans; 5. Neuroscience, brains and persons: Is neuroscience destroying our stature and worth as human beings?, Gareth Jones, Professor of Anatomy and Structural Biology, University of Otago, New Zealand; 6. The Rhetorics of Healing, Dr Michael S Northcott, Reader in Christian Ethics, University of Edinburgh, UK; 7. Spinoza Meets Descartes: Ensoulment Revised, Gordon McPhate, formerly Senior Lecturer in Pathology, St Andrew's University, currently Dean of Chester Cathedral, UK and Visiting Professor, University College Chester, UK; 8. The Virtues Of Medicine And The Virtues Of Science, Dr Neil Messer, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Lampeter, UK; Part 3: Fabulous Humans; 9. The quest for extended life and immortality- some ethical considerations, Dr Ulf Gorman, Theology and Religious Studies Department, Lund University, Sweden; 10. Self-perfection of the human race, or fulfilment of creation in Christ? The "Fabulous Human" in 19th century theological debates, Maureen Junker-Kenny, Professor of Theology, Trinity College, Ireland; 11. Future Perfect? God, the Post-human Future and the Quest for Immortality, Professor Celia Deane-Drummond, Director of the Centre for Religion and the Biosciences, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University College Chester, UK; 12. Saving Us from Ourselves: Christology, Anthropology and the Seduction of Posthuman Medicine, Professor Brent Waters, Garrett Evangelical Seminary, Evanston, USA.

'Together with faith and love, hope has for centuries been identified as one of the chief theological virtues.  The essays in Future Perfect? help us to ponder what Christian hope should mean in the face of technological and medical advances that transcend old limits,  that give us the power to reshape how and how long we live, and that  threaten (or promise) to transform even the meaning of human  identity.  In thinking theologically with the authors of the essays  collected here, readers will be invited to reflect upon the sort of  future for which we should hope.'Gilbert Meilaender, Duesenberg Professor in Christian Ethics, Valparaiso University, USA