Previous Page

Audio Recording

Video Recording

Christian bioethics does not fit into the now-dominant secular culture. The contemporary situation of Christian bioethics can only be rightly appreciated in the context of the culture wars, which are in great part fueled by the profound gulf between Christian morality and the morality of the dominant secular culture. First, the two give radically different responses to the choice proposed by Plato in the Euthyphro: are the good, the right, and the virtuous such because God approves of them, or does God approve of them because they are so, that is, are they so independently of God? Which is to say, can morality and bioethics be rightly understood apart from God? Second, the two bioethics are set within radically different accounts of reality: one regards all of reality as on its way from the Fall through the Resurrection and redemption to final restoration, and the other regards reality as if all were coming from nowhere, going nowhere, and for no ultimate purpose. Third, the now-dominant secular morality, which is grounded in commitments to liberty and equality drawn from the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, seeks to deflate to life-style choices the moral significance of choices among consenting adults regarding sexuality, reproduction, and dying. As a consequence, the Christian bioethical appreciation of sexuality, reproduction, consent for treatment, dying, and death are at odds with the bioethics of the surrounding culture, which places all moral concerns within the horizon of the finite and the immanent. Finally and crucially, we are witnessing the emergence of secular fundamentalist states in which there is no separation of state and secular ideology. From the perspective of the secular culture, and in particular from the perspective of such states, Christian bioethics is to be marginalized and rendered a private bioethics. The persistence of Christian bioethics will intensify the culture wars.

Keywords:
Christian bioethics, Christianity