Waters Brent
The Jerre L. and Mary Joy Stead Center for Ethics and Values and Department of Christian Social Ethics, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois, USA.
Christ Bioeth. 2005 Dec;11(3):281-95. doi: 10.1080/13803600500402325.
What is Christian about Christian bioethics? The short answer to this question is that the Incarnation should shape the form and content of Christian bioethics. In explicating this answer it is argued that contemporary medicine is unwittingly embracing and implementing the transhumanist dream of transforming humans into posthumans. Contemporary medicine does not admit that there are any limits in principle to the extent to which it should intervene to improve the quality of human life. This largely inarticulate, yet ambitious, agenda is derived first in late modernity's failed, but nonetheless ongoing, attempt to transform necessity into goodness, and second the loss of any viable concept of eternity, thereby stripping temporal existence of any normative significance. In short, medicine has become the vanguard of a profane attempt to save humankind by extracting data from flesh. In response, it is contended that an alternative Christian bioethics must be shaped by the Incarnation, the Word made flesh. This assertion does not entitle Christians to oppose the posthuman trajectory of contemporary medicine on the basis of any natural or biological essentialism. Rather, it is an evangelical witness to the grace of Christ's redemption instead of the work of self-transformation. It is Christ alone who thereby makes the vulnerability and mortality of finitude a gift and blessing. Specifically, it is maintained that the chasm separating necessity and goodness cannot be filled but only bridged through the suffering entailed in Christ's cross, and through Christ's resurrection eternity becomes the standard against which the temporal lives of human creatures are properly formed and measured. Consequently, Christian bioethics should help us become conformed to Christ rather than enabling self-transformation.
基督教生物伦理学中的“基督教”体现在哪里？对这个问题的简短回答是，道成肉身应当塑造基督教生物伦理学的形式和内容。在阐释这个答案时，有人认为当代医学在不知不觉中接受并践行着将人类转变为后人类的超人类主义梦想。当代医学并不承认在干预改善人类生活质量的程度上存在任何原则性限制。这个基本上未明确表达却雄心勃勃的议程，首先源于现代晚期将必然性转变为善的失败却仍在进行的尝试，其次源于任何可行的永恒概念的丧失，从而使现世存在失去了任何规范意义。简而言之，医学已成为通过从肉体中提取数据来拯救人类的世俗尝试的先锋。作为回应，有人认为一种替代性的基督教生物伦理学必须由道成肉身，即道成了肉身的圣言来塑造。这一断言并非使基督徒基于任何自然或生物本质主义来反对当代医学的后人类轨迹。相反，它是对基督救赎之恩典的福音见证，而非自我转变的工作见证。唯有基督能使有限性中的脆弱与必死成为一份礼物和祝福。具体而言，有人认为分隔必然性与善的鸿沟无法被填满，只能通过基督十字架上的苦难来弥合，并且通过基督的复活，永恒成为塑造和衡量人类现世生活的恰当标准。因此，基督教生物伦理学应帮助我们变得与基督一致，而非促成自我转变。
