Moral Theology: Dodo or Phoenix?
IV
BIRTH:
A POINT OF DEFINITION FOR CHRISTIANS IN A NEW CENTURY
A.
I have argued that the Biblical witness points to the common life of the church as the primary focus of Christian Ethics and or Moral Theology. I arguing this case, I am not unaware that it may seem both a radical departure from past foci and unattractive (that is to say sectarian). I am also fully aware that I have used the terms Moral Theology and Christian Ethics almost interchangeably, and that this terminological fluidity may prove confusing. I can only plead that there is good reason for both the fluidity and the confusion. When Christianity spread through the Middle East and Southern Europe, it came into a culture shaped by a worldview that made a great distinction between this world of appearance and change and one of light, truth and permanence. In this cultural métier, Moral Theology was born as a practical discipline designed to set the soul of the individual free from a world of “unhappy disquiet” so that it could be born into a world of light. Thus, in the works of the fathers of the church, individual sanctification became the chief focus of moral concern. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Christian moral thought took a very different turn. What we now call Christian Ethics was born, and the focus of moral attention shifted to the life of society.
I have, I admit, gone back behind both these developments and discovered in the Bible a rather different emphasis; namely, the common life of the church. The primary concern of this focus is the unity of Christ’s body and the “graces” and “practices” which promote unity while overcoming division and conflict. There are, however, concerns of equal importance for a communal ethic. I am speaking of the practices that define the relationship of the community both to the major events of life (sex, marriage, birth, death for example) and the institutions and practices of the larger society in which Christians may happen to live (war, the power of government, economic systems, etc.) An ethic that focuses on the common life of the church must give attention to the practices that define a community in relation to the larger society of which it is a part.
It is to one of these issues that I now turn. The one I have chosen has to do with birth. I have in mind a range of issues concerning this defining point in our existence that make our front pages and the evening news with remarkable regularity. I speak of prenatal screening, new reproductive technologies (like in vitro fertilization and cloning). . I could have chosen other issues, but these, unlike abortion and sex, have the advantage of still being discussable.
B.
What then are the practices in respect to birth that cohere with basic Christian belief, and so help give visible definition to their common life? In search of an answer, it is well to admit from the outset that theologians are not the spokespersons for our age. Pop stars are, and though the wisdom they proffer may not be very profound, they do have a way of displaying our lives with disturbing clarity. Paul Simon is particularly good at showing us the images we have of ourselves. You may remember a song is entitled “The Boy in the Bubble.”
These are the days of miracle and wonder…
Medicine is magical and magical is art
The Boy in the Bubble
And the baby with the baboon heart
And I believe…
These are the days of miracle and wonder
These are indeed the days of miracle and wonder and medicine is indeed magical. You may have read not too many years ago not about the boy with the baboon heart but about the twin born eight years after his sibling.[i] This miracle was made possible, not by divine intervention in the course of nature, but by freezing an embryo that then lay forgotten for eight years and, when found, was implanted in the mother of the firstborn twin. But miracles and wonders can take place on a more mundane level. Most of us probably would not be alive without the miracle of modern medicine, and for this reason alone medicine appears to us, if not really, at least almost magical.
Nevertheless, our miraculous capacities confront us with perplexities that have reached a new degree of complexity and, on occasion, fearfulness. Given the miracle of modern medicine, at what point, if any, do we cease to look to its wonders and, in stead, accept the fact that, even if we can, we ought not to continue looking for a cure for a person in the last stages of their life? Given the miracle of modern medicine, at what point and in what ways, if any, does a childless couple seek the wonder of medicine to provide them with a child. Given what medicine can tell us about the child that will be ours, what ought we to want to know about that child before its birth? And given the heightened compassion for those who are suffering which we feel and our forbears perhaps to the same extent did not, what ought we to do, and what ought we not to do to relieve the suffering and anguish both of ourselves and those who are dear to us?
These questions, along with a host of others to which I have not alluded, are ones with which we are now struggling; but, as I have said, my interest at the moment is not public policy. It is the ways in which Christians, as Christians, ought to think of these and other related matters along with the practices they ought, as Christians, to adopt in respect to them. But to accomplish this task, I feel constrained to adopt a more adventurous approach than simply to deliver considered opinions about our moral dilemmas. To be of any real use to people in perplexity, a moralist must explain why our dilemmas perplex us, and why they take the shape they do.
How indeed do we tend to think about the moral issues that come our way? I believe, as I have stated before, that most of us are apt to regard those involved in birth and death issues as either being or not being “persons,” “selves” and “individuals” who, as such, are free moral agents possessing certain “rights.” We are apt also to want to do all in our power to guard and further the freedom and dignity of those “persons,” “selves” and “individuals.”[ii] Of these three ways of describing ourselves as moral agents, the term “person” is by far the most commonly used in respect to both birth and death. For example, at birth, we ask questions like, “Is this unborn human being yet a person;” or does one ‘person’ have a right to buy or sell rights to the use of the womb of another ‘person’? Again, at death, we ask if a “person” has a right to refuse treatment or ask the help of another “person” to aid them in ending their life.
The terms “self “ and “individual” appear with equal frequency in our moral discourse, but in different contexts. We tend to refer to “selves” when we wish to speak of the store of experiences that each “person” has; and we speak of “individuals” when we want to point to the unique identity of a “person” who possesses “selfhood.” I could spend the remainder of our time simply tracing the way in which we use these terms in our moral reasoning, but for the moment it is enough to say that we are so used to thinking of ourselves as “persons,” “selves” or “individuals” that we forget that it has not always been that way. There was a time when we would think of ourselves first not as “persons” with “dignity” and “rights,” but as occupants of a social “station” that carried with it certain “duties” and required certain marks of “character.” In other circumstances we might, once upon a time, have thought of ourselves as “souls” whose actions determined their eternal destiny.
Our ways of referring to ourselves as moral agents are numerous and complex, but it is the term “person” that appears most frequently in our discussions of birth and death; and it is well to note at the outset that “person” is not simply a descriptive term. It is a term that carries heavy moral content; and if we do not take time to understand that content, we will never be able either to understand or evaluate the ways in which we tend to think about and respond to the matters of life and death that now lie before us.
The point I wish to make is that the way in which our society now generally employs the notion of “person,” though it has real advantages, nonetheless, poses grave issues for Christians and indeed, at certain points, sets them at odds with their social surroundings in ways that always prove quite painful. There is something ironical about this state of affairs because Christians themselves are, in part, responsible for the current popularity of the term.[iii] The notion of the human being as a “person” came originally from Greece and Rome where it was used both in the theatre and in the courts of law. A prosopon or persona was a mask that provided continued identity for a character in a play or history.
It is this quality, i.e., continuity of appearance within a drama or history, that made the term apt for use in courts of law. A person “acts” within a history and so is an “actor” who may be held responsible for his “actions.” For this reason, in Greece and Rome, women, children and slaves were not considered “persons.” This fact alone should give us pause about too easy an acceptance of the moral adequacy of the term “person.”
But this remark leaps ahead of where we are. For the moment note only that early Christian theologians fixed upon the term “person” not to refer to human agents, but to God. Because God, as presented in both the Old and New Testaments, is an agent whose appearance manifests continuity over time and whose relation with humankind has a history, the early fathers of the church found it more adequate to describe God by use of the notion of “person” than to describe him by means of the static, a-historical categories of intellect, appetite and soul that classical philosophy had used. God’s history with his people revealed him to be three “persons” that nonetheless shared a unity of nature. To convey God simply as intellect or appetite or even will did not do justice to this history of manifestation.
Thus the notion of person assumed its importance in the Christian culture of the West first as a theological rather than an anthropological term. It was the theologian/philosopher Boethius who, in the Christian era, first used “person” as a general term of reference for human beings. He defined a “person” as “an individual substance of rational nature” and in so doing he gave human “person hood” a definition markedly different from the one it now has.
How is this so? For Boethius, the basic notion connected with “person hood” is substance. That is, a “person” is first of all a substance--a being with a history and so continuing identity through time. Only in the second place is a “person” a substance with a “rational nature.” For Boethius, human beings are “persons” not because they always possess reason but because their nature or substance is pointed in the direction of its acquisition. To put the matter another way, for Boethius, the distinctive qualities of humanity (intellect, appetite, soul, etc.,) are attributable to the fact that we are “persons,” not the fact that we are “persons” to the actual possession of the qualities “persons” are destined to acquire.[iv]
I am sure that what I have just said has not been all that easy to follow. The obscurity is due to the fact that, over time, we have reversed the order of Boethius’ definition and so think of a “person” in a very different way than he did. For us a “person” is not first of all a substance that persists over time and second of all a being of rational nature. For us a “person” is first of all a being of rational nature and so definable by the actual presence or absence of a variety of qualities of nature (reason and freedom being the most important).[v] As a result, our philosophers can carry on arguments over whether or not computers might one day become “persons,” and all of us can discuss whether or not or at what point an unborn child becomes a “person,” and at what point an individual with advanced Alzheimer’s no longer is a “person.” So also we can argue about which “person” has a “right” to a child who, as an embryo, was brought into being in a petri dish by sperm and egg from two people other than the ones who paid for the procedure and carried to term in the womb of a surrogate. Or, we can argue over whether or not a “person” dying of a painful illness, because they are losing their “person hood,” has a “right” to ask a doctor to administer a lethal injection.
The point about the change that has occurred in the meaning of “person” is crucial. Christian thought dislodged a view of “person hood” that located it in the possession of certain qualities or capacities (and so denied it to entire classes of human beings) and located it instead in a history of being human (a category open to all). That history began before rationality and continued after rationality had been lost. Our account of “person hood” is exactly opposite. It depends, in a way similar to the classical view, upon the possession of two qualities—freedom and reason.
Now I hasten to say that, despite a preference for Boethius and my quarrels with our present usage, the growing prominence of this newer notion of “person hood” represents, in one way at least, a genuine moral gain. The moral gain comes from the fact that widespread adoption of the term has led to the attribution of equality to a large number of people previously denied it. Ascription of “person hood” establishes between “persons” an equality that goes deeper than the social classifications we use to divide others into important or less important. The idea that human beings become “persons” has served to counter distinctions based on birth, wealth or power.
The emergence of “persons” as centers of action and so moral and legal responsibility constitutes a moral and political advance for which we can be truly thankful. However, this advance has brought with it a down side. The down side involves not only a number of ill effects brought about by the reversal of Boethius’, but also what can rightly be called “moral bracket creep.” That is, a moral term that works perfectly well in one context “creeps” into another where it does not work as well or does not work at all. It seems these days that, in respect to almost all the moral and political issues we face, we ask only about “persons” and their “rights.” In this respect, we are not as morally pluralistic as many claim. We seem to have a very pervasive and common public moral vocabulary and it centers, no matter what the subject under discussion, on the notion of “persons,” who, because they possess freedom and reason, are thought to possess both “dignity” and “rights.”
The question, of course, is whether this moral notion is in all ways adequate for the many areas of life into which it has crept. I believe that Christians cannot accept the term as a fully adequate means of thinking morally about many areas of life, and that their use (or non use) of it must be judged on the basis of how well it either fits or does not fit into a larger scheme of religious and moral belief and practice. Indeed, I believe that anyone, no matter what their beliefs may be, must find the proper use and limits of the notion of “person hood” by placing it within a larger scheme of belief about the nature of the world and human destiny. If this placement does not occur, then the outcome of our moral reasoning will inevitably be that, because they are free and reasonable, whatever a person determines to be suited to their freely chosen “life plan” is right and proper as long as it does not harm another “person” or interfere with their freedom to follow their own “life plan.” Thus, reasoning simply on the basis of “person hood,” we will come to the conclusion that if a “person” has decided to take their own life it is morally right to do so as long as the act does not hurt another “person” or interfere with their “life plan.” Or again, we will reason that if a “person” wants a child, as long as they do not, in the pursuit of their end, do harm to another person or rob them of a their freedom and dignity, they may procure one by purchasing gametes and renting a womb.
A use of the term “person” that is unanchored in an account of human nature and destiny means that our moral problems will all be solved by asking the simple question “What is and is not permitted to free and reasonable ‘persons’ in the pursuit of their ‘life plans’.” I take it that, increasingly, it is just this unanchored use of the term “person” in our public life that constitutes the standard means of public reasoning. This public and pervasive use of the term “person” has crept steadily as well into the reasoning of church bodies and individual Christians. I believe, however, that it can be shown that this moral notion poses more problems for Christians (and other people as well) than it solves.
C.
No better example of the advantages and disadvantages of the notion can be found than the issues which surround the New Reproductive Technologies (NRT,s). Here we do indeed encounter a world of miracle and wonder. Even the secular mind is amazed at what we have managed to do. You may remember that in making his proposal to clone a human being, Richard Seed said of this new technology that, through it, we can at last become as God. Our amazement may be almost this great, but if we are also made a little nervous by Seed’s statement, it is perhaps because we worry that, in seeking to become like God, we might become less than men and women.
It is just this question that must be asked by Christians. Further, by virtue of their beliefs and a long history of practice, they will be forced to pose this question in certain very specific ways. I will get to what these belief engendered questions are in a moment, but first some review of just what we can do is in order. You may remember that Louise Brown, the first baby born as the result of IVF (in vitro fertilization) was delivered in 1978. The ability to fertilize an egg in a petri dish and then transfer it to the womb was followed 1986 by the famous case of baby M. Mary Beth Whitehead had contracted with William and Elizabeth Stern to be artificially inseminated with sperm from Mr. Stern. She was paid a fee of $20,000 in return for which she agreed to have a child and give it up at birth. She also agreed to behave in certain ways during pregnancy, to undergo amniocentesis, and abort the child if asked to do so by Mr. Stern. As we know, the child was born, but Mary Beth Whitehead refused to give up Baby M. The matter went to court and, after a lower court ruling that upheld the Sterns’ contract, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that, though it was in the best interests of Baby M to live with the Sterns, Mary Beth Whitehead was nonetheless the child’s mother. As such she was granted visiting rights.
The memory of these cases is lodged in the minds of most of us. We are perhaps less aware of all the other things that now can be done to get a baby. In addition to IVF there is embryo transfer (ET). By this procedure, after either in vitro or in vivo conception, and after the pregnancy is established, the embryo is loosened from the uterine lining and withdrawn by catheter. The embryo is then examined, and, if it passes muster, re-implanted in the prepared uterus of another woman. Embryo freezing is another option. In 1980 Carl Wood, Alan Trounson and John Leeton of Australia developed a technique where by it became possible, not only to fertilize, but also to freeze, store, thaw, and implant embryos. In 1984 the first frozen embryo baby was born. Egg donation provides yet another alternative to procreation by means of sexual intercourse. Hormonal stimulation and laperascopy now allow women to do what men have long been able to do—donate gametes. After hormonal stimulation, by the procedure of laperascopy, eggs can be harvested. This procedure means that, in addition to being able to fertilize all the eggs, freeze some and implant others, a woman can also donate an egg to another woman incapable of producing one herself.
And finally, there looms on the horizon, the cloning of a human being. Cloning is an asexual means of reproduction whereby the nucleus of a fertilized egg is replaced by genetic material from another. The procedure allows for the production of a child who is the offspring of one parent and the genetic twin of that parent. If the technique becomes sufficiently advanced to try on humans without undue danger, one can imagine that in a generation or so it will be technically possible, in a genetic sense, to be one’s own grandpa (or ma).
These are but some of the miracles we can perform and, as I have suggested, if we begin with the notion of “persons” who have freely chosen “life plans,” we are likely to think of access to these procedures as legitimate means to the exercise of one’s “right to procreate.” Indeed, this assertion of “procreative rights” strikes a sympathetic cord in the hearts of most Americans. The assertion of “procreative rights” is central as well to the argument of the most extensive discussion we have of assisted reproduction, namely, John Robertson’s Children of Choice. There he argues vigorously that if we have a “right” to refrain from reproduction, we most certainly have also a to reproduce by whatever means are available to us.
Robertson pushes his argument to points many of us would not want to go, but we are nonetheless immediately sympathetic with his point of view. We not only believe in privacy and the rights of privacy, we have, on the whole, great compassion for those suffering pain or loss; and are anxious that everything possible be done to alleviate that pain and suffering. There are, of course a number of practical reasons that can be advanced which make us cautious about the use, either singly or in combination, of some of these procedures. We know, for example, that the success rate of IVF is very low (successful pregnancy occurs in only between 19% and 20% of the attempts); and that the morbidity rate connected with the procedure is quite high. We have moral questions about the fertilized eggs that are frozen, tossed, or aborted. We have certain worries about the fact that a child produced by sperm or egg from an anonymous donor will wonder always about the identity of this absent “parent.” We are troubled by the fact that surrogacy raises questions about who the mother of the child really is, and we are definitely bothered by cloning. Isn’t there something intuitively troubling about producing a child that is the genetic twin of its “mother” or ”father”? We are troubled by these and other concerns, but, when push comes to shove, we tend to say, “Well, I wouldn’t do it, but if that’s what they want, why not?” In the end of the day, we tend to honor the individual “life plans” of “persons” by according them “reproductive rights.”
D.
The issues I have mentioned raise huge questions of public policy; but my purpose is not to argue social policy. I wish at this point to ask only if Christians are not compelled by their beliefs to place the “person” with his or her “life plans” and “rights” within a larger context; and having done so, ask about the moral permissibility of these procedures. What are these beliefs and how might they be constraining? How might they set Christians at odds with both social policy and medical practice? To find out, let us look first at IVF, the oldest and least problematic of these procedures. Let us look in particular at IVF using an anonymous donor of either egg or sperm.
Let us grant from the outset that, even if the success rate is low, a number of childless couples, that would not have otherwise had a child, now have one; and I take it that having a child is a result in which most of us take some pleasure. But the issue at the moment is not the pleasurable result of an action (having a child), but the moral character of the action itself (IVF using an anonymous donor IVFAD). Is there anything about this action that might raise moral doubts in a mind informed by Christian tradition and practice?
There are, in fact, several questions that immediately arise. It has been a central Christian moral belief that God, in creation, has linked two goods both in marriage and in sexual intercourse. These goods are the unity of the couple and the procreation of children. The fact that sexual intercourse tends of itself toward these two goods may reasonably be understood, as an indication of God’s gracious will for the relationship between men and women. Consequently, marriage is said to have these two goods; and so also marriage, as Christians have understood it, requires both that these goods be kept together and that third parties, whose presence would divide these goods in principle, be kept out of the relation between husband and wife.
The problematic character of IVFAD appears for Christians not so much because a child is born but because IVFAD inevitably brings a third party (namely the donor of gametes) into the relationship between husband and wife. The presence of this third party, furthermore, has three results that make IVFAD morally problematic. In doing so, they provide indications of why God’s creative will to exclude third parties is not only right (because it is God’s will) but good (because it lends itself to human flourishing.) In the first instance, the presence of this third party breaks the biological (and perhaps gestational) links that tie parents and children and in so doing links the child with a stranger who effaces him or herself before the child is even conceived. We know that this absent “parent” haunts the child; and, for this reason, the absent “parent” is ever a ghostly presence in the home of the child’s parents. He or she turns out to be a third party presence whether intended or not. And so, not only is the location of the child in a line of kinship partially obscured by this third party, the relation between husband, wife and child is in certain ways compromised as well.
In the second instance, the presence of a third party separates in principle what Christians believe God has joined together, namely, the unitive and procreative goods of both marriage and sexual intercourse. This separation has negative implications for the significance of both the unity of husband and wife and the procreation of any children they may have that lend credence to the belief that what God has joined together (unity and procreation) ought not to be torn asunder. In respect to the unity of husband and wife, the separation places procreation in principle as well as in fact outside the realm of their embrace. We know full well, however, that it is not love alone that gives sexual intercourse its complexity, resonance and seriousness. That complexity, resonance, and seriousness is heightened immeasurably by the fact that sexual intercourse is so bound to procreation. To create circumstances where people can think of sexual intercourse and procreation as being, in principle, separable activities, opens sexual intercourse up to becoming trivial —something like an advanced form of play. Indeed, it would not be unreasonable to argue that it has already become so.
In a similar manner, procreation is diminished. Separated from sexual intercourse and the unity of a couple it expresses and strengthens, procreation becomes not a wondrous gift we receive but a technical feat we accomplish. That we tend these days to speak more and more of “reproduction” (a term derived from manufacturing) and less and less of “procreation” (a term derived from theology) perhaps indicates that we have already gone some way down that road.
Oliver O’Donovan warned some years ago that it is important for Christians to think of children as “begotten, not made.” This word, “begotten,” is used in the creeds to speak of the way in which God the Father brings forth the Son. Begetting is a way of engendering that is very different from making. To “beget” implies that in bringing forth one bestows all that one is and has upon an offspring who is in every way equal to oneself. In the words of the creed, the Son is God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made. On the other hand, to “make” implies the creation, not of an equal, but of an object that is the subject of one’s will—something that is not an equal to and image of oneself but something intended for one’s use.
In the cases to which we have been referring the use in question may be the fulfillment of a dream of parent hood. The dream is not in and of itself a bad one, but Christians have through the ages insisted that children are not born to fulfill the dreams of their parents. They are born for their own sake and for the worship and service of God and their fellows. Children are thus to be seen not as project or an especially important experience for “persons” to add to the bank of experience that constitutes “self hood.” Rather, children are to be seen as “procreated” on behalf of God, and given over by God as a trust to be nurtured and given back to God and their fellow human beings in service, praise and thanksgiving.
The introduction of third parties into procreation threatens to change begetting to manufacture and, not unsurprisingly, carries with it a hint of both the commodification of children and the loss of that independence from parental desire which they have bestowed upon them by virtue of the fact that, by divine intention, children are to be “begotten and not made.” It is precisely this commodification and loss of independent and equal status on the part of children that we see looming ever more clearly in the case of surrogacy and cloning. In respect to surrogacy, both the womb and the life of the surrogate are rented for a time in order to procure a much-desired child. The contract between would be “parents” (if indeed we can call them that) and a surrogate “mother” (if we indeed can call her that) suggests both that the life of the surrogate has (for a time) become a commodity; and that a child, along with the status of parent, are things that can be bought on the open market.
The prospect of cloning human beings makes even more plain the fact that “making” rather than “begetting” or “procreating” children turns them into commodities. The prospect of having as a child one’s genetic twin, and all this without the help of a partner, opens not only the possibility of designer children but also an ultimate form of narcissism. One can have both a “parental experience;” and one can have it with someone who in every physical way is one’s mirror image.
The possibility of cloning a man or a woman opens up even more ghoulish possibilities than these narcissistic delights--making another human being as a source of spare parts for example. One need not, however, jump to this sci-fi channel scenario to see that the introduction of third parties, the separation of unity from procreation, deconstruction of conception, gestation and socialization, and the concomitant introduction of technique to replace intercourse raise questions not only about whether it is right or wrong to use these technologies but also questions about exactly what it is that we are about when we do so? Are we indeed still becoming parents, mothers and fathers, or are we beginning to explore the ultimate and last frontier of consumption.
E
If, in response to these and other related questions, we ask only what is permissible to autonomous “persons” in pursuit of the realization of “self hood” and the fulfillment of “life plans” we will find it difficult, though not impossible, morally to prohibit any of these means of “reproduction.” I have tried to suggest, however, that there are more ways to violating our lives as men and women than to impinge upon our exercise of freedom and reason. I have tried to suggest also that Christian Ethics will arise phoenix like from the ashes (rather than disappear into history like the Dodo) if Christians are willing to address these issues in a different voice. To do so, however, will without question set off a firestorm within our congregations. Once religious belief is said to impinge upon individual choice, we all know the person who holds this position had better prepare for violent reaction. We clergy know this full well, and that is why we can only discuss these issues in our parishes in what I call the Oprah format. That is, we can encourage people to trade opinions and accounts of experience. And when this happens, be the subject sex, birth, or death, the home team advantage always goes to the persons pleading for the benefit of their personal choice. The person seeking to locate the actual moral act in a larger moral field is perceived within the dialogue format as an authoritarian prig who wants to deny others happiness. As my friend Chris Seitz is fond of saying, every game such a person plays is an away game played before a partisan crowd. At the moment, the powers that be in our church are fully committed to the “dialogue” format that privileges the person with rights in search of a self that is fully individuated and satisfied. Their God is one who affirms each person in their search for fulfillment, and so does not ask them to locate their lives within a larger moral field.
This moral stance is in complete accord with the dominant moral culture now to be found within our country, but it does suggest that Christian Ethics have already gone the way of the Dodo. If, however, Christian Ethics are to arise from the ashes of the church like the Phoenix, a terrifyingly difficult exercise in theological, moral, and communal reconstruction lies before us. This work will require the church as the body of Christ to return to its Christological and Trinitarian roots, and in so doing put in place communal practices in regard to sex, birth, and death that reflect not the diverse ends of persons in search of self-fulfillment and individual identity but the way of disciples who seek through obedience to conform their lives to the transfigured order of creation they have glimpsed in Christ’s life, death and resurrection. In short, the rise of Christian ethics from the ashes of the church will require the Phoenix like rise of a very different configuration of common life--one very different from that defined by the present culture of the Episcopal Church U.S.A.
APPENDIX
There are at least two points at which the previous argument can either be misunderstood or taken to imply something it does not. The argument might be misunderstood as one that favors the Roman Catholic view that, because unity and procreation ought to be kept together both in marriage and in sexual intercourse, artificial means of birth control are morally prohibited to Christians. I do not believe that the linkage of unity and procreation does require such a prohibition because of the fact that, to keep these goods together, one need not do so in ever act. One can keep them together within the course of a relationship (rather than in each act) by saying that, though each act of sexual intercourse need not be open to procreation, nonetheless, the relation as a whole is open to such an eventuality. One can say this even if there are physiological or other reasons why a couple either cannot or ought not to seek to conceive a child. They still may say that they do not place procreation in principle outside the relationship of a wife and husband and that should they or could they or ought they to beget a child, it would be within this relationship. In this way also, it can rightly be said that the control of procreation by limiting the number of children one might have in fact serves the ends of unity and procreation by augmenting both the unity of the couple and the nurture of any children born of their union.
The argument might also be taken to imply that adoption is also wrong because, like many new reproductive technologies, it introduces third parties into the relation between mother, father and child. The parallel between NRT’s and adoption is only apparent, however. In the case of artificial insemination by anonymous donor, for example, one goes in search of a stranger to enlist their aid and collaboration in an attempt to get a child. Things are different in the case of adoption. One does not contract with another person or couple to bear a child that will then be turned over to a different parent or set of parents. In fact, to do so is illegal. It would be taken as a form of selling human beings. This fact indicates that we look at adoption in a different manner than we look at surrogacy or AID (artificial insemination by anonymous donor). In the latter case, we do contract to procure the materials necessary to get a child. In the case of adoption, however, a person or a couple undertake to raise a child whose birth parent or parents either cannot or will not raise that child. Though we may undertake adoption to fulfill a desire to have a child (and indeed, that is why most adoptive parents adopt), in the eyes of society, we are in fact acting on behalf of the birth parent or parents and we are acting on behalf of a child who, without the care of adoptive parents, would have no one to raise them properly. The practice of adoption, in short, does not exist for the benefit of people who want a child and can’t have one as is the case of AID. It exists for the benefit of parents who cannot or will not raise their children and for the benefit of the children so bereft of parental care.
Finally, an explanatory note about the nature of Christian marriage might be in order. For many today, marriage is understood as a private contract between two “persons” who enter into this relation for mutually agreed upon reasons. Christians through the ages have held a very different view, namely, that marriage is an “estate” or condition which one enters. This estate, furthermore, cannot be morally described as autonomous persons choose. Rather it has certain goods and conditions that are determined by God’s will. The chief of these goods are unity and procreation. In entering marriage, one, as it were, takes on these conditions and vows to live into them. One does not lay down a set of conditions of one’s own choosing.
[i] See The Austin American Statesman, Feb., 17, 1988.
[ii] For an illuminating treatment of the evolution and interrelation of these three ways of describing moral agents see Amelie Oksenberg Rorty “A Literary Postscript: Characters, Persons, Selves, Individuals” in Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (Ed.), The Identity of Persons (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 302-323.
[iii] For a brief but exemplary discussion of the evolution of the moral meaning of the term “person” see Oliver O’Donovan, Begotten Not Made?, (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, Oxford. 1984), pp. 50-60.
[iv] Ibid., p. 54.
[v] We have, in fact, at one in the same time both dechristianized and repaganized the term so that when we think of a “person” we do not think first of all of a being whose “appearance” is persistent through a history. Rather, as did the classical, pagan philosophers, we think first of a complex of capacities and abilities that are associated with having a rational nature.
