Sárospataki Füzetek 14. (2010)

2010 / 1. szám - TANULMÁNYOK - Rusthoven, James J.: Mit jelent embernek lenni a technika korában? Református keresztyén megközelítés.

Rusthoven, James J.

culture. On the one hand, its fundamental belief in a common morality seems to be a remnant of a universal certainty sought in a modernist worldview. On the other hand, their worldview expresses a post-modern desire for the acceptance of all ideas through discourse, at least at a certain level of meaning. However, for the sake of consensus and the promotion of a common moral culture, discussants are asked to gradually put their differences aside in favour of finding common moral positions. With this mixture of post-modern openness and a modernist desire to find universal truth, religious beliefs become restricted to personal discussions and decisions in their small, religious communities. Such beliefs are brought into the process if and only if they promote eventual moral consensus. However, even such a consensus is open to further revision so only an unstable moral equilibrium is achieved.

As a result, the concept of the moral status of human beings becomes quickly relativized. There is no final appeal to something or someone beyond our human experience, beyond a world that accepts all visions as equally valid but then fails to raise morality beyond “the preference of the month”. Its preoccupation with process hides a lack of moral content and the unwillingness to probe into the deeper moral meaning that often defines smaller communities. When contemplating the status of different types of human beings, such a process soon leads to criteria for distinguishing different degrees of humanness and personhood. Some try to justify a certain physical stage of development as reflecting greater humanness while others favour more cognitive criteria. In the end, again agreement is by rational persuasion, leaving criteria for humanness that lack foundational validity and authority outside of our human experience. The granting of lesser moral status to human beings with lesser degrees of development such as fetuses or those with lost capacity later in life inevitably results in justification to act in ways that would be morally unacceptable for someone with full moral status. By this thinking, destroying human embryos for research and performing active euthanasia on a terminally ill patient would be morally both equally acceptable.

Eluman Moral Status Seen through a biblical Ethical Framework

In my view, the quandary resulting from this ethical framework requires more than a novel vision of human moral status. It requires a confessional moral framework out of which this and other bioethical issues can be addressed using the power and authority of God’s revelation to humanity. The biblical theme of covenant provides such a confessional moral framework for biomedical ethics. I believe that there is compelling scriptural evidence that a covenantal ethic should be considered by Christians as an alternative to the current secular paradigm of principles- based ethics in the field of biomedical ethics. I believe that such an ethic can have perceptive power to normatively envision and prescribe the relationships that comprise the medical enterprise. Such an ethic moves the focus of moral discourse and problem-solving from principles inductively derived from a groundless common morality to human relationships of medical practice whose moral direction is taken from the example of God’s covenant with humankind.

Working out such a covenantal ethic also requires a biblical anthropology. Some like physician David Landis believe that medical students and physicians develop a second, medical self during their training, a self that is in tension with

62 SÁROSPATAK.! FÜZETEK