Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
love. As well, given that Christian theological anthropology presumes
intrinsic relationality—there is no primordially free self—sifting our
cherished and essential commonalities (and commune-alities) from
unthinking absorption in dominant cultural forces is bound to be a
delicate matter.
As this chapter proceeds, I will take up examples of cultural acquies-
cence to ever-more-radical manipulations of the human body.
2
An over-
arching and framing thematic of contemporary U.S. culture is a flight
from finitude that undermines a recognition of the complexities and the
limits as well as the joys of embodiment—the givens, if you will, of
human
being
itself. One spin-off is widespread approval of the destruc-
tion of the bodies of others as part of our culture's panoply of invented
rights and punishments, whether in situ (the abortion regime) or as a
central feature of our system of retributive justice (the death penalty).
3
Neither the abortion “right” nor capital punishment is a focus of this
chapter, but insofar as each practice involves the destruction of a human
body—one developing, and the other developed—these practices help to
structure the overall cultural frame in the matter of the differential value
we assign to some human bodies in contrast to others.
Having noted Luther's mordant view about the lingering implications
of human defiance of the Creator, let's flesh matters out beginning with
reminders about the nature of Christian freedom, and the fact that we
are both creatures and creators. As creatures we are dependent. It follows
that our creaturely freedom consists in our recognition that we are not
abstractly free but free only in and through relationship. A limit lies at
the very heart of our existence in freedom. Christian freedom turns on
the recognition of the limits to freedom.
German theologian and anti-Nazi martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in
Creation and Fall
, frets that humans as creators easily transmogrify into
destroyers as they misuse freedom.
4
There is a big difference between
enacting human projects as cocreators respectful of a limit because,
unlike God, we are neither infinite nor omniscient and, by contrast, those
projects that demand that humans embrace God-likeness for themselves,
up to the point of displacing God himself. With God removed as a brake
on human self-sovereignty, we see no limit to what human power might
accomplish. An alternative to this project of self-overcoming is an under-
standing of a humbler freedom, a freedom that never aspires to the
