Gerald McKenny

Biotechnology and the Normative Significance of Human Nature: A Contribution from Theological Anthropology

Does human nature possess normative significance? If so, what is it and what implications does it have for biotechnology? This essay critically examines three answers to these questions. One answer focuses on human nature as the ground of natural goods or goods dependent on human nature, another answer finds normative significance in the indeterminacy or malleability of human nature, and a third answer treats human nature as a natural sign of divine grace. Kathryn Tanner, who offers the second answer, and Karl Barth, who offers the third, deny that nature has normative status in itself, apart from grace, but differ over the relation of grace to human nature as created. While indebted to Tanner, this essay favors Barth’s view as best suited to a Christian ethics of biotechnology.

The Ethics of Regenerative Medicine: Beyond Humanism and Posthumanism

Every decade or so proponents of a new technology promise that it will radically alter the practice of medicine. Thirty years ago, it was organ transplantation. Fifteen years ago, it was gene therapy. Today it is regenerative medicine. Regenerative medicine refers to procedures designed to restore degenerated tissue or cellular functioning. It includes, but not necessarily limited to, transplantation of cells to form new tissue (e.g., bone, muscle, liver, and neural tissue); implantation of bioartificial tissues constructed ex vivo using a biodegradable scaffold (e.g., bladders); drugs composed of genes, proteins, or antibodies (e.g., on the model of insulin); and stimulation of cells in vivo (e.g., by gene insertion).

Finitude, Freedom and Biomedicine: An Engagement with Gilbert Meilaender’s Bioethics

A fundamental theme in Gilbert Meilaender’s work on bioethical issues is the relationship between the ethical claims of finitude (that is, the biological necessity that characterizes human beings as finite creatures) and of freedom (that is, the capacity of human beings to transcend biological necessity). This article identifies two ways in which Meilaender articulates this relationship (one Niebuhrian, the other Augustinian) and proposes a third (Barthian) way which avoids the limitations of the first two ways while serving Meilaender’s purpose, which is to redress what he sees as an imbalance in favor of the claims of freedom over those of finitude in contemporary biomedicine and bioethics. The article ends by suggesting that Meilaender’s purpose would be best served by avoiding tensions between finitude and freedom as the third way does.

Response to Paul Nimmo

I am grateful to the Scottish Journal of Theology for offering me the opportunity to respond to Paul Nimmos article review of the The Analogy of Grace , and I am especially grateful to Dr Nimmo for his lucid and accurate overview of the book, his generous comments, and his thoughtful and challenging criticisms. It is an honour to receive this careful and critical attention from the author of Being in Action , a study of Barths ethics for which I have the highest regard.

Book Review: Brian Brock, Christian Ethics in a Technological AgeBrockBrian, Christian Ethics in a Technological Age (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010). x + 408 pp. £22.99/

characterising his position in terms of a British-Anglican Barthian Thomism. The noun ‘Thomism’ is chosen because of the importance Biggar attributes to the doctrine of creation, which, in his view, implies that there is a natural law, a natural order, that can be known by human beings to some extent (see above). The adjective ‘Barthian’ qualifies the importance of the doctrine of creation by adding that the Christ event both clarifies and fulfils this natural order. Beyond this, ‘British-Anglican’ is further added because Biggar considers experience to ‘be formative of moral reasoning’ and to ‘exercise a kind of legitimate moral authority’ (p. 111), an ‘empirical bent’ (p. 111) which he takes to be ‘a typically British, Anglican turn’ (p. 110). Biggar’s Behaving in Public has much to commend: his attempt to combine theological/biblical seriousness and openness to the world, his innovative ideal of conversation, and his distinction between the visible and the true church, which itself implies that Christians should be open to the truth that comes from outside, but without giving up on proclamation and witness. In this way, Biggar offers an alternative to one-sidedness and polarisation. However, while I fully agree with Biggar that there is no reason publics should be considered secular, I remained puzzled as to his precise view on the neutrality of the State. The reason for this is that there is a certain discrepancy between Habermas’s third reason (as quoted by Biggar on p. 59) and the way Biggar responds to it (on p. 61). On p. 59, Biggar mentions the requirement ‘that state power must be neutral with regard to worldviews’, but on p. 61 he only speaks about the impossibility of a ‘neutral public language’ and about the impossibility of having a ‘public space free of persistent conflict’. What does this twofold impossibility mean for the role of the State and its possible neutrality? Closely connected to this ambiguity is the following concern: Biggar mentions that contemporary Western democracies are ‘plural’ or ‘polyglot’, yet it is unclear how far this fundamental insight has truly affected the content of his book. Specifically, I am struck by the fact that Biggar gives hardly any reference to the presence of multiple religions in our democracies and no reflection on what this might mean for the neutrality of the State. So, my most important question for Biggar after reading his Behaving in Public would be this: Should the State be neutral? Can it be neutral? And if not, in which way can it be committed to a particular religion or worldview without disadvantaging adherents of other worldview traditions?