Nigel Biggar

Why religion deserves a place in secular medicine

As a science and practice transcending metaphysical and ethical disagreements, ‘secular’ medicine should not exist. ‘Secularity’ should be understood in an Augustinian sense, not a secularist one: not as a space that is universally rational because it is religion-free, but as a forum for the negotiation of rival reasonings. Religion deserves a place here, because it is not simply or uniquely irrational. However, in assuming his rightful place, the religious believer commits himself to eschewing sheer appeals to religious authorities, and to adopting reasonable means of persuasion. This can come quite naturally. For example, Christianity (theo)logically obliges liberal manners in negotiating ethical controversies in medicine. It also offers reasoned views of human being and ethics that bear upon medicine and are not universally held—for example, a humanist view of human dignity, the bounding of individual autonomy by social obligation, and a special concern for the weak.

Individual Rights versus Common Security? Christian Moral Reasoning about Torture

Should a Christian ethic endorse an individual’s right against torture? If so, how should its reasoning take into account considerations of common security? To answer these questions, this article first compares the early Christian ‘just war’ tradition’s pre-liberal reasoning about the ethics of harming with that of the liberal philosopher, David Rodin. It then deploys the fruits of this comparison—especially the contingency of a right against harm (partly upon social obligation), and the distinction between natural moral rights and positive legal ones—in an examination of what makes torture wrong and when. Dissenting from the views of Jeremy Waldron and Jean Porter, the article concludes that a positive legal right against torture and aggressive interrogation should be granted—even though morally right cases of the latter might occur.

‘God’ in Public Reason

The recent suicide bombings in London by young Islamists should remind Christian theologians that they are committed to a liberal polity of some kind. But is a genuinely theological liberalism possible? Many still think that public reason in a liberal polity must be universally accessible and therefore ‘secular’; and that it requires those with religious convictions to strip their public speech of theology. Such is the position taken by Jürgen Habermas in a recent newspaper interview. But is Habermas correct to suppose that a theological argument must be inaccessible to ‘non-theologians’? This essay returns a negative answer by seeking to demonstrate that a genuinely theological argument — for example, about the legalisation of euthanasia — can be grasped by non-theologians, can engage them, and might even persuade them. It concludes that on this point the late John Rawls has certain advantages over that of Habermas.

Honey from the Lion: Christianity and the Ethics of Nationalism

This book comprises a Christian apologia for nationalism in general and for Scottish separatist nationalism in particular. It is only fair that the reader should know that its reviewer is an Anglo-Scottish unionist.

Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs

This response to Justice, Rights and Wrongs argues that Wolterstorff’s defence of rights attaching to human subjects withstands Oliver O’Donovan’s critique; that the concept of multiple rights is compatible with the affirmation of a larger moral order; that there is a problem with rights thought to be determined in advance of moral deliberation; that love should not only recognize rights (with Wolterstorff) but should react to their violation with retribution (against Wolterstorff); that a biblical and theological case can be made for a Christian form of eudaimonism; and that Wolterstorff ’s attempt to ground human worth in the love of God rather than in some capacity or other does not work.

The New Testament and Violence: Round Two

Dear Richard, Thank you for agreeing to take our debate about the New Testament and violence one stage further. I do think that there’s scope for shedding more exact light on our disagreement. Let me begin with your largest objection to my critique: namely, that I failed to engage with hermeneutical issues—in particular the synthetic role of your three focal images of community, cross, and new creation—and that I therefore avoided coming to grips with ‘the deepest christological, ecclesiological, and eschatological warrants’ for your position. You’re quite correct that I didn’t do this; but I don’t think that my omission is as important as you suppose. Let me explain. I entirely recognise the need to construct coherent ethical sense out of the diversity of New Testament texts, by deciding to foreground certain elements and marginalize others. I agree that the foundation of this construction should be the story of God’s saving work, as it finds its definitive expression in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. I also agree that Jesus’ death and its circumstances epitomise his life. Where I disagree is over your summary of the story of his death as that of ‘a Messiah who refuses the defence of the sword and dies at the hands of a pagan state that bears the power of the sword’. To me this seems excessively simplified and wrongly focused. As I read the story, Jesus refused to identify God’s salvation with the expectations of religious nationalism, concentrated his fiercest criticism on the oppressive use of religion, and sought to woo wrongdoers to repentance by displaying compassion toward them, with the result that he was eventually hounded to his death by Jewish religious authorities, who managed to manipulate a weak Roman governor into executing him. One of the striking (and anti-nationalist) features of the story is that the main villains are the pious Jews, not the pagan Romans. Yes, the story presents

God, the Responsible Individual, and the Value of Human Life and Suffering

John’ committed suicide last year. He had been a very successful i student, both as an undergraduate and as a post-graduate. His parents loved him; and, judging by the congregation at his memorial service, he had lots of friends. They remembered him in particular for his sharp, perhaps slightly cynical, wit. And apparently he had a special gift in relating to young children. No one really knows why he killed himself; he left no note. But mention

Compromise: What Makes it Bad?:

This article considers what makes a compromise bad. First, it defines a compromise as a decision involving a loss of good (i.e., an evil), which should therefore be accompanied by ‘agent-regret’. Regret, however, is not moral guilt. Pace proponents of ‘dirty hands’, a morally right compromise cannot retain elements of moral wrongness (as distinct from non-moral evil). Second, the article proceeds to elaborate the features of bad compromise further in terms of common moral sense: the preference of less rather than more of a single good; the preference of an inferior to a superior good; and the violation of an absolute moral rule. Third, it extends its elaboration in terms of three historical cases: the abandonment of strategic promotion of a good; tactical suspension for insufficient reasons; complicity in indubitable and certain injustice to avoid tolerable costs; and the violation of a basic principle of justice as distinct from normal judicial process. Finally, it adds a methodological epilogue, in which it reflects on whether its treatment of the topic has been sufficiently theological.

Falconer's Revolutionary Imprudence

While well intentioned, Lord Falconers Assisted Dying Bill is imprudent in its enlightenment confidence that the legal prescription of procedural and institutional safeguards would be effective in preventing the abusive manipulation of vulnerable people into choosing assistance in suicide. Indeed, the Bill does not even meet the ‘essential’ conditions prescribed by Falconers own Demos Commission.1 Further, there is good reason to doubt that the proposed restriction of eligibility to the terminally ill would long survive the weakness of its own logic and the medias publicity of cases of the poignant suffering of the chronically ill and severely disabled.

Religion's place at the table of ‘secular’ medical ethics: a response to the commentaries

‘Why religion deserves a place in ‘secular’ medicine’1 has provoked three commentaries—one each from Kevin R Smith, Brian D Earp and Xavier Symons. I am grateful to all of these for taking the time and trouble. In the response that follows the constraints of space have precluded me from being comprehensive and required me to be terse. Kevin Smith objects to my argument in favour of religions place at the ‘secular’ table of deliberation about medical ethics on the following grounds: religious ethics are not universal, many of their claims appeal to Gods authority rather than to reason, they fail to take into account the possibilities that modern technology offers, when they are rational they cease to be religious, and it is incapable of the give-and-take of rational exchange. In contrast, Smith tells us, ‘secular’ ethics in general are based on a set of principles that are open to rational analysis, and utilitarianism in particular has the potential to attract universal agreement ‘because happiness and suffering … are respectively high valued and strongly deprecated by virtually all agents’. Smith seems unaware of how controversial his narrow concept of reason is, adopts a simplistic understanding of the relationship between reason and authority, fails to distinguish between popular religion and the academic discipline of religious ethics, writes unfairly about contemporary developments in the latter, neglects to acknowledge the strength of opposition within moral philosophy to utilitarianism, and entertains a utopian view of the possibility of universal ethical consensus. On the other hand, the issue he raises about the relationship between the nature of the religious ethicists ethical reasons and their relationship to his religious convictions is a crucial one, and it deserves more clarity than I gave it in my article. I shall address this later, but first let me make …