Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
6
The Body and the Quest for Control
Jean Bethke Elshtain
In our fast-paced, fitness- and youth-oriented culture, perfecting the
human body has become a messianic project. In this chapter, I bring
theological anthropology to bear on this project for the purpose of cri-
tique.
1
It is not that easy, of course, to stand apart from the dominant
preoccupations of one's own culture in order that one might assess its
enthusiasms critically. But I take this to be an essential task, difficulties
notwithstanding. The situation that we face is this: bodies are thought
of increasingly as the exclusive property of an individual for one to do
with as one sees fit. Bodies are also construed as malleable and “con-
structable.” We are all enjoined, through advertising, cultural imagery
on television and in films, science joined to profit in the biotech indus-
try, popularizers of the genetic revolution, and others, to “get with the
program,” to hop on board and not remain stuck in superstition that
urges restraint or even curtailment of genetic and biological engineering.
Philosophers and cultural critics indebted to Christianity, among whom
I number myself, are poised as a matter of principle and faithfulness in
a tension between
contra mundum
and
amor mundi
in ways that may
be fruitful or frustrating, or both. This tension begins with the recogni-
tion that uncritical identification with the currents of one's own time is
easily understood because so many of those currents speak to real human
needs, fears, and desires, and the goods associated with these. Therein
lies a major part of the problem, at least if one follows Martin Luther's
lead. Luther insisted that all our needs are bound to be distorted given
human rebellion against God, beginning with that ur-disobedience that
got Adam and Eve thrown out of the garden. Ever since, the human being
itself is marked by a trace of this original willfulness, or so argued the
great reformer. We are separated from God, the source of undistorted
