The technocratic imperative and the inviolable dignity of the person : The TESCREAL bundle in light of Magnifica Humanitas

Kelam, Ivica (2025) The technocratic imperative and the inviolable dignity of the person : The TESCREAL bundle in light of Magnifica Humanitas. CENTRAL EUROPEAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW. ANNUAL THEOLOGICAL JOURNAL (2). pp. 28-54. ISSN 3057-9619

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Abstract

Parts of the TESCREAL constellation and Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas disagreeabout human dignity, and this article traces that disagreement through transhumanist, longtermist,and AI-safety writing, attending closely to embodiment, finitude, moral agency, and who owns digital infrastructure. Two understandings of human transcendence are at stake. The transhumanistprojects discussed here locate transcendence in the technical modification of human capacities;Christian accounts of the imago Dei and theosis understand it instead as a gift – one that fulfils creaturely existence rather than replacing it. The closing sections bring the disagreement down to theground: concentrated ownership in the AI industry, and Croatian and Hungarian institutions thatdepend on infrastructures they neither own nor can independently audit. Read this way, the political economy of AI is not a separate ethical application but part of the theological question itself.

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