Good is to be Pursued and Evil Avoided: How a Natural Law Approach to Christian Bioethics can Miss Both
This essay casts doubt on the benefit Christian bioethics can derive from some recent natural law theorizing, both in its traditional and its "new" versions. It does so on two levels. First, it targets the underlying ambition to secure a basis (whether in a sufficiently general moral conse...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Published: |
Oxford University Press
[2016]
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| In: |
Christian bioethics
Year: 2016, Volume: 22, Issue: 2, Pages: 186-212 |
| RelBib Classification: | CB Christian life; spirituality NAB Fundamental theology NCH Medical ethics VA Philosophy |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | This essay casts doubt on the benefit Christian bioethics can derive from some recent natural law theorizing, both in its traditional and its "new" versions. It does so on two levels. First, it targets the underlying ambition to secure a basis (whether in a sufficiently general moral consensus, or in some objectively valid reason) that could legitimize the legal enforcement of Christianity's very specific moral norms. The apparent success of such attempts, so this essay argues, derives from conceptual ambiguities and arbitrary assumptions which closer scrutiny exposes as merely parochial. Second, this essay takes issue with the way in which such theorizing tends to separate Christian morality from Christians' liturgical and ascetic conduct of life. Such separation, so it is argued, either distracts from or even distorts the integrity of the Christian witness. Insofar as natural law theorizing (on the first level) is meant to promote "the good" of a well-ordered society, its appeal to a purely human moral reason runs aground on the diversity of ways in which "reason" is understood in a pluralist society. And insofar as such theorizing (on the second level) is presumed to avoid "the evil" of betraying the Christian mission pursued by such promoting, that very appeal to reason obfuscates the challenge which that same mission presents for all worldly wisdom. |
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| ISSN: | 1744-4195 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Christian bioethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1093/cb/cbw004 |