Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
According to Pope John Paul II, this account of our natures, including
the ontological equality of male and female as corporeal beings, is “free
from any trace whatsoever of subjectivism. It contains only the objective
facts and defines the objective reality, both when it speaks of man's cre-
ation, male and female, in the image of God, and when it adds a little
later the words of the first blessing: 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the
earth; subdue it and have dominion over it' ” (Gen l:28).
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Dominion
here—it is clear from the overall exegesis—is understood as a form of
stewardship, not domination. John Paul's account of Genesis is presaged
in Karol Wojtyla's prepapal writings. For example, in a series of spiri-
tual exercises presented to Pope Paul VI, the papal household, and the
cardinals and bishops of the Roman Curia during a Lenten retreat in
March 1976, the then cardinal Karol Wojtyla argued that “one cannot
understand either Sartre or Marx without having first read and pondered
very deeply the first three chapters of Genesis. These are the key to under-
standing the world of today, both its roots and its extremely radical—
and therefore dramatic—affirmations and denials.” Teaching about
human origins, human beginnings, in this way offers “an articulation of
the way things are by virtue of the relation they have with their
creator.”
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Denying that relationship, we too easily fall into subjectivism,
into a world of rootless wills.
With this Bonhoeffer would agree. In his discussion of “The Natural”
in the
Ethics
, Bonhoeffer observes that the natural fell out of favor in
Protestant ethics and became the almost exclusive preserve of Catholic
thought. He aimed to resurrect the natural, insisting that human beings
still have access to the natural, but only “on the basis of the gospel.”
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In his move to redeem the concept of the natural, Bonhoeffer argues that
human beings enjoy a “relative freedom” in natural life. But there are
“true and...mistaken uses of this freedom,” and these mark “the dif-
ference between the natural and the unnatural.” It follows that the
“destruction of the natural means destruction of life. . . . The unnatural
is the enemy of life.”
It violates our natures to approach life from a false “vitalism” or exces-
sive idealism, on the one hand, or on the other, from an equally false
“mechanization” and lassitude that shows “despair towards natural life”
and manifests “a certain hostility to life, tiredness of life and incapacity
for life.” Our right to bodily life is a natural, not an invented, right and
