Covenant

A covenant is a binding relationship that God and people enter freely, with obligations and promises on both sides. As technology lengthens human lives and reshapes human bodies, covenant offers a model for commitments that hold across change and carry blessing outward to others.

The Hebrew berit, "covenant," usually appears with the verb karat, "to cut," which explains why ancient Israel spoke of cutting a covenant. The phrase recalls rites in which animals were divided and the parties walked between the pieces, pledging their lives to the agreement. The Greek diathēkē, used in the early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible and in the New Testament, could also mean a last will, which is why English Bibles speak of an Old and a New Testament. Today many people hear "covenant" as a formal word for a contract, a list of terms with penalties for breaking them. Scripture uses the word for something closer to adoption. A covenant makes the parties family, and Restoration teaching treats that family bond as the setting in which people grow toward exaltation.

The Everlasting Covenant

God tells Abraham, "I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant" (Genesis 17:7). The Book of Abraham names the purpose: through Abraham's seed "shall all the families of the earth be blessed" (Abraham 2:11). The Hebrew hesed, the steady and loyal love that covenant partners owe each other, describes how God keeps that promise across centuries of failure on Israel's side, and Latter-day Saints teach that those who make covenants receive a particular measure of that love. Mormon transhumanists read the Abrahamic promise as a charter for shared progress. Knowledge and tools developed by a few people are meant to bless the whole human family, in the way the covenant given to Abraham was meant to reach every nation. The same covenant also shows what God asks in return, and Restoration scripture describes that exchange as binding on both sides.

Bound by Covenant

Restoration scripture describes covenant as mutual, with God binding himself as well as his people. The revelations say it directly: "I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say" (D&C 82:10). In the oath and covenant of the priesthood, the promise reaches as far as a promise can: "all that my Father hath shall be given unto him" (D&C 84:38). Latter-day Saint scholars have described the temple as a sequence of covenants modeled on ancient rites of ascent, in which worshippers move step by step toward God's presence. Each covenant asks more and gives more, so power is received in step with the character to use it well.

This pattern speaks to a central worry about human enhancement. Mormon transhumanists regard science and technology as means God has ordained for exaltation, and they also recognize that power amplifies whatever character receives it. Covenant joins the two concerns. It offers greater capacity to people who have bound themselves to love God and serve others, and it measures progress by faithfulness as well as by capability.

Promises Across Change

Covenant offers a model for keeping commitments when technology changes the length and shape of a human life.

King Benjamin's people promised to do God's will "all the remainder of our days" (Mosiah 5:5). Radical life extension could make that span far longer, and enhancement could change the bodies and minds of the people who made the promise. Decision theorists study a related problem under the name precommitment: how a person can bind a future self whose values may drift. Researchers in AI alignment face the same problem at a larger scale as they try to keep powerful systems faithful to the purposes they were built to serve. Covenant handles the problem through renewal. Latter-day Saints renew their covenants each week in the sacrament, and Jeremiah foresaw a covenant written "in their hearts" (Jeremiah 31:33), kept because the person has grown into it.

Covenantal Love

Technologies that record and enforce agreements can support covenant-keeping or strip it of mercy. Digital records and self-executing agreements, such as the smart contracts used with cryptocurrencies, make commitments easier to verify and harder to break. They also shift power toward whoever writes the code and controls the records. An agreement enforced automatically, with no room for repentance, forgiveness, or intervening circumstances, can carry out every term and still have no place for hesed. The covenants spoken of in scripture hold obligation and mercy together, and a technology that serves them must leave room for both. Thus, the test for any technology of commitment is whether it helps people keep committments made to God and one another in ways that bless all the families of the earth, or whether it binds the many to the interests of the few.