John Anthony McGuckin

Источник

Bioethics, Orthodoxy and

PERRY T. HAMALIS

The term “bioethics” refers to a subset of the discipline of “ethics” that assesses and develops normative responses to issues at the intersection of health, medicine, and the life sciences. Bioethics emerged as a discrete academic discipline in the 1960s and has since developed into the most specialized field within applied ethics. While bioethics tends to focus on moral issues faced by single human persons and their fami­lies within a medical context (e.g., organ transplantation, reproductive technologies, abortion, and end-of-life care), it may also be understood in a broader sense that includes moral reflection upon communal dimensions of health (e.g., the provision of healthcare and the funding of stem cell research) as well as upon issues pertaining to non-human species and the environment (e.g., animal testing, genetic modification of plants, and climate change).

Throughout its history the Eastern Orthodox Church has engaged bioethical issues by articulating a vision for humanity’s proper relationship toward non-human creation and by offering pasto­ral guidance and care to physicians, nurses, and Orthodox Christian patients who are making decisions about appropriate medical treatments. As the field of bioethics has grown over the past several decades, Orthodox thinkers have drawn from the church’s tradition to develop guidelines and ethical principles with which to critique problematic tendencies in secular bioethics and construct more authentically Orthodox stances on specific issues confronted by the faithful (Breck 1998,2005; Engelhardt 2000; Harakas 1990, 1992). In addition, represen­tatives of Orthodoxy have worked collabo­ratively, through synodal statements (e.g., the “Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church,” 2000), ecclesial institutions (e.g., the Bioethics Committee of the Church of Greece, established 1998), and ecumenical efforts (e.g., the National Council of Churches’ document on bio­technologies, “Fearfully and Wonderfully Made,” 2006), in order to provide faithful responses to bioethical challenges.

As one of its subsets, Orthodox bioethics works within the same theological framework, serves the same ultimate aim, and employs the same methodology as Orthodox ethics broadly understood. Thus, Orthodox bioethics starts with the church’s understanding of God as Holy Trinity, of human persons as being created in the “divine image and likeness” (Gen. 1:26), and of the goodness of God’s crea­tion. Since, from an Orthodox perspective, all of creation fell into a condition of cor­ruption, sickness, suffering, and death, the ultimate purpose of Orthodox bioethics is to guide human thinking and acting so as to promote, through the grace of the Holy Trinity, the resurrection or deification of human persons and the healing, sanctifica­tion, and salvation of the whole cosmos.

Methodologically, the church’s bioethical tradition draws from a wide range of sources, including Scripture, creeds, dogmas, liturgy, ascetical practices, hagiographies, canons, and icons, as well as from the best available scientific knowledge when developing nor­mative principles and expressing stances. Particularly relevant to Orthodox bioethics are the church’s teachings on (1) the natural world’s creation and ordering by God; (2) human beings as unities of body and spirit who are utterly unique and eternally valuable; (3) the goodness of physical health and the philanthropic call to care for one’s neighbor, as reflected in the lives and teach­ings of physican saints and in the divine services for healing; (4) the potentially redemptive role of physical suffering and of ascetic and faithful responses to pain and illness; and (5) the value of rightly utilized science and technology, as exemplified in patristic authors who were steeped in the science of their day and who incorporated scientific claims into their responses to peo­ple’s specific needs.

Since so many of the issues that arise in bioethics were never addressed directly in the church’s traditional sources (e.g., the pro­curement and use of stem cells), Orthodox bioethicists must strive to “acquire the mind of the church” so as to relate Orthodoxy’s universal and ancient ethical teachings to the particular and new situations confronted today (Breck 2005; Engelhardt 2000; Harakas 1992). Toward this end, Orthodox bioethi- cists immerse themselves in the church’s liturgical ethos, study the tradition’s sources, seek the assistance of natural scientists, and strive to acquire the virtue of discernment (Greek, diakrisis) so that teachings they express support the ultimate aim of bring­ing human persons and the natural world into saving communion with each other and God.

In its approach to issues ranging from fertility treatments to euthanasia to abortion and genetic engineering, Orthodoxy reflects a freedom and flexibility that takes personal circumstances into account, as well as several strong normative tendencies. Among these tendencies are an insistence upon the sacredness of every human being, an affir­mation of humanity’s call to responsible stewardship of nature, a reverence for sacra­mental marriage between one man and one woman as the proper context for procreation, a preference for respecting and restoring natural processes as opposed to artificially manipulating or creating new processes for transmitting life, and an eschatological viewpoint that does not place absolute value on earthly existence, but rather venerates earthly life as a gift oriented ultimately toward God’s eternal kingdom.

SEE ALSO: Death (and Funeral); Ethics; Humanity; Marriage; Sexual Ethics

REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Breck, J. (1998) The Sacred Gift of Life: Orthodox Christianity and Bioethics. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Breck, J. (2005) Stages on Life’s Way: Orthodox Thinking on Bioethics. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Engelhardt, H. T. (2000) The Foundations of Christian Bioethics. Lisse, Netherlands: Swets and Zeitlinger.

Guroian, V. (1996) Life’s Living Toward Dying: A Theological and Medical-Ethical Study. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Harakas, S. (1990) Health and Medicine in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition. New York: Crossroad.

Harakas, S. (1992) Living the Faith: The Praxis of Eastern Orthodox Ethics. Minneapolis: Light and Life.

Hatzinikolaou, N. (2003) “Prolonging Life or Hindering Death? An Orthodox Perspective on Death, Dying and

Euthanasia,” Christian Bioethics 9: 187–201.

Larchet, J.-C. (2002) The Theology of Illness, trans. J. Breck. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

LeMasters, P. (2008) The Goodness of God’s Creation. Salisbury, MA: Regina Orthodox Press.

Plate 9 Russian priest monk blessing Paschal kulich cake. RIA Novosti/AKG


Источник: The Encyclopedia of Eastern Orthodox Christianity / John Anthony McGuckin - Maldin : John Wiley; Sons Limited, 2012. - 862 p.

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