Mary Timothy Prokes, FSE. At the Interface: Theology and Virtual Reality . Tucson, AZ: Fenestra Books, 2004. viii+181 pages.
This is a fascinating and important book. In it Sister Timothy Prokes addresses virtual reality as a “sign of our times” and shows why it presents urgent issues for Catholic faith and theological study, focusing on the profound ramifications virtual reality has on basic truths of Catholic faith.
A brief opening chapter describes “virtual reality,” defined by Michael Heim, a “virtual reality metaphysician,” as “an event or entity that is real in effect but not in fact,” and its seven levels: simulation, interaction, artificiality, immersion, telepresence, full-body immersion, and networked communication. Prokes' concern is not to question “the virtual” as a basic human experience, insofar as “virtual reality” (hereafter VR) is natural for human persons whose imaginations put them into contact with it. Her concern is with applications of VR that “distort or replace the human.”
In subsequent chapters Prokes examines in depth and with great theological profundity how contemporary applications of VR relate to our understanding of the real body person, real presence, real food vs. virtual nourishment, freedom, truth, and sexuality, the supernatural. To illustrate the fascinating and profound theological significance of this book I will present Prokes' analyses of VR with respect to the following: the gift of imagination, the reality of the body, the meaning of “presence,” the meaning of the supernatural.
1. The gift of imagination . Prokes thinks that this gift, which she calls “ the encounter point between the real and the virtual, ” is being subverted and that imperceptibly, from childhood on, “viewers of electronic media are induced…to consider the living body in its reality as a liability, [in need of] a multitude of enhancements through products…available for the right price” (pp. 23-24). This concerns theology because understanding the lived body touches every aspect of a faith-based life.
2. The reality of the body . In the post-human world of VR the body is regarded merely as a biological substrate for the consciousness that is the basis of human identity. Indeed, for many today the living human body is merely “the original prosthesis that we all learn to manipulate” (pp. 45-46). Indeed, the world of VR presents us with a new Docetism.
3. The meaning of “presence.” For Catholic theology “presence” has a meaning that “involves an actual, personal, relational being-there that has a positive or negative effect” (p. 58). Thus for Catholic faith we live in the “presence” of God, and “the words Real Presence succinctly express Catholic belief in the true, living, presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist,” which in turn depends on the Real Incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity (pp. 67-68). But in VR “presence” has no real significance inasmuch as one's “subjectivity,” as a practitioner of VR puts it, “is dispersed throughout the cybernetic circuit” (p. 59). But real human persons, as Prokes reminds us, are unitary beings composed of body and soul, and spiritual realities are perceived through physical signs and symbols and their presence. As John Paul II says, although Prokes does not here refer to him, the body reveals the person and is indeed the “sacrament” of the person. But this sacramental significance of bodily reality and the real presence of the incarnate Word in the Eucharist are lost in the world of VR.
4. The meaning of the supernatural. Prokes notes that leading practitioners of VR such as Frank Tipler, Ray Kurzwell, and others specifically relate developments in the cyber-world of VR to theological matters, opening up issues for dialogue (p. 146). They deny that there is any supernatural so that “the very existence of the supernatural…is at issue in the current interplay between the real and the virtual” (p. 148). Prokes then notes the vast difference between a divine gift and human acquisition. The first is gratuitously and freely given, bestowed person to person, cannot be demanded or earned, expresses love and friendship, etc., whereas the latter requires human effort and planning, can be earned and demanded, and usually lacks the element of surprise, etc. (p. 150).
Prokes goes on to write brilliantly about gift as the first category of being. The one true God is a communion of three Persons whose “identity is that of relation , of Person-Gift poured out to each of the other Divine Persons and totally receptive of them. All created reality has vestiges of the Trinity in some way, but human persons bear the Trinitarian image and likeness as their fundamental identity.” She then adds: “That is why, when there is only a simulation of gift , it is destructive of persons and relationships” (155). But this is precisely what happens in the world of VR.
I have merely given a few examples of the significance and depth of Prokes' work. It is a magnificent defense of the reality of the human person as a bodily being , of the sacramental principle of Catholic faith, and the gratuitousness of God's gift of himself to us. It is likewise a wonderful indictment of the docetic dualism so characteristic of our culture and so central to the world of VR. When God created man, he did not make a “consciousness” to which he then added a body as a privileged kind of instrument; rather when he created man, “male and female he created him,” a being of flesh and blood and sexually differentiated. Moreover, when the Eternal Word became man, the Incarnate Word, he became living flesh ( ho logos sarx egeneto ). For the metaphysicians of VR the human person is not a bodily being but a consciousness using a body as a prosthesis. This understanding of the human person is, as John Paul II made clear in Evangelium vitae , at the heart of the “culture of death.”
Prokes has given us an exceptionally well-written, thoughtful and thought-provoking work of great theological depth that merits careful attention.
William E. May Michael J. McGivney Professor of Moral Theology John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at The Catholic University of America
