restores the human race into its fullness. Modern mystical interpretation Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, a small population of theologians and church leaders have emphasized a need to return to early monastic spirituality. Thomas Merton, Parker Palmer, Henri Nouwen, and Barbara Brown Taylor, among others, draw from aspects of mystical theology, central to the Christian desert ascetics, in order to provide theological frameworks which positively view the physical body and the natural world. For early mystics, the imago dei included the physical body as well as the whole of creation. Upon seeing a void in the development of Western theology, modern writers have begun drawing upon works of third century monks the desert mothers and fathers, as well as various gnostic systems, providing a more comprehensive view of the body in early Christian thought and reasons why modern theology should account for them. Feminist interpretation Similarly, feminist thinkers have drawn attention to the alienation of the female experience in Christian thought. For two millennia, the female body has only been recognized as a means to separate women from men and to categorize the female body as inferior and the masculine as normative. In an attempt to eliminate such prejudice, feminist scholars have argued that the body is critical for self-understanding and relating to the world. Furthermore, bodily phenomena typically associated with sin and taboo (e.g. menstruation), have been redeemed as essential pieces of the female experience relatable to spirituality. Feminism attempts to make meaning out of the entire bodily experience of humanity, not just females, and to reconcile historical prejudices by relating to God through other frameworks. Imago dei and transhumanism Negative view of transhumanism The understanding of imago dei has come under new scrutiny when held up against the movement of transhumanism which seeks to transform the human through technological means. Such transformation is achieved through pharmacological enhancement, genetic manipulation, nanotechnology, cybernetics, and computer simulation. Transhumanist thought is grounded in optimistic Enlightenment ideals which look forward to the Technological Singularity, a point at which humans engineer the next phase of human evolutionary development. Transhumanism's assertion that the human being exist within the evolutionary processes and that humans should use their technological capabilities to intentionally accelerate these processes is an affront to some conceptions of imago dei within Christian tradition. In response, these traditions have erected boundaries in order to establish the appropriate use of transhumanistic technologies using the