As I mentioned in last week's Saturday post, we will now be turning our attention to the topic of the next issue of The Briefing, which is on ethics, infertility and in-vitro fertilization (IVF). Obviously this is not the first time The Briefing has tackled science and ethics before. Over the next four weeks, we will look at some of the classics from our archives on this subject.

This week, Michael Hill wrestles with the question of how much human beings should fiddle with God's creation:

The ethical issues raised by genetic engineering are similar to others produced by the use of modern technology. The Bible simply does not address such topics. In such cases we have to go back to the Scriptures and get a general picture or world view. This vision or big picture will give us a sense of the general direction we ought to be heading. A biblical world view will give us broad moral guidance and set the parameters of our moral search and research. This methodology is the one to be adopted with other modern issues not directly addressed by Scripture; issues such as abortion, euthanasia and gamete donation, just to mention a few.

While the Scriptures comment on the nature of creation and its order, the overall focus is on the story of salvation history. This is the story of God's activity in saving and preserving a people for himself, and it moves from creation through the Fall and on to redemption and consummation. This story and the theology it generates has implications for genetic engineering. We will not be able to bring the whole picture into view. However, three notions in particular are relevant and deserve our attention. These are the concepts of personhood, health and medicine.

1. Personhood

In the Bible, persons are on-going relational beings. We are defined by our relationships. Individuals come into the world because of personal relationships, and are born into families of various kinds. They are subjects whose history can be traced back into the womb. And part of any individual's history is that he or she is born as an agent of the living God, placed on earth as a vice-regent to maintain the order God had established. Persons, therefore, find their meaning and significance in a right relationship with God, their fellows, and creation. Our meaning and existence cannot be explained by, or reduced to, regulations and achievements. Neither can our personhood be reduced to a bundle of properties which includes such assets as self-awareness and rationality. The subject's history begins at conception and various capacities are accrued along the way. And at conception, we are creatures in relation to the living God. That's who we are at the core.

2. Health

From a biblical perspective, disease, suffering and death are the manifestations of a fracture in the relationship between God and the people he created. Hence true health is only found in the restoration of a right relationship with God. Health is viewed holistically as part of a wider and deeper problem. Within the eschatological framework of salvation history, medicine is seen as restorative. It is a matter of restoring disturbances, disorders and diseases. Given the disorder and disease occasioned by the Fall, medicine is an expression of faith operating in love as we await the final redemption. The solution to the fundamental problem of sin is only found in divine intervention and does not emerge from human activity.

3. Medicine

This biblical perspective provides us with a criterion of moral evaluation. As one aspect of the working out of humankind's responsibility as the image and representative of God, medical practitioners have a moral obligation to restore disturbances, disorders, and disease in the order of creation. Not all theologians will accept this conservative notion of the nature of medical science. Some liberal theologians have argued that God is always involved in redemption and creation and that we humans are invited to participate in the work of the new creation through the process of genetic engineering. For them human genetic engineering has the potential for being an extension of the work of God. Conceiving creation as an evolutionary and on-going process, they see genetic engineering as a way to bring creation to fulfilment and harmony. A careful study of the Scriptures will not endorse this merging of the materialist vision with the biblical hope. In the end the problem is not fundamentally a biological one and the role given to humankind is not that of co-creator. Nor are the purposes of God realized or achieved by the activity of his creatures. Everything is finalized in the person and work of Christ.

(Read the full article online.)

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