Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition.

Though the papers in this volume for the most part address the question, “What is Christian about Christian Bioethics”, this paper addresses instead a closely related question, “How would a Christian approach to bioethics differ from the kind of secular academic bioethics that has emerged as such an important field in the contemporary university?” While it is generally assumed that a secular bioethics rooted in moral philosophy will be more culturally authoritative than an approach to bioethics grounded in the contingent (...) particularities of a religious tradition, I will give reasons for rejecting this assumption. By examining the history of the recent revival of academic bioethics as well as the state of the contemporary moral philosophy on which it is based I will suggest that secular bioethics suffers from many of the same liabilities as a carefully articulated Christian bioethics. At the end of the paper I will turn briefly to examine the question of how, in light of this discussion, a Christian bioethics might best be pursued. (shrink)

Recent literature shows that ethics of care can be used as a theoretical basis to add a new, important dimension to social issues. Th.

How can Christian ethics make a significant contribution to health care ethics in today's Western, pluralistic society? Robin Gill examines the 'moral gaps' in secular accounts of health care ethics and the tensions within specifically theological accounts. He explores the healing stories in the Synoptic Gospels, identifying four core virtues present within them - compassion, care, faith and humility - that might bring greater depth to a purely secular interpretation of health care ethics. Each of these virtues is examined in (...) turn, using a range of topical issues including health care rationing, genetics, HIV/AIDS, withholding/withdrawing nutrition from PVS patients, and the empirical evidence which suggests a connection between religion and health. Professor Gill also argues that these four virtues are shared by other major religious and humanistic traditions and that, together with secular principles, they can enrich health care ethics even in a pluralistic society. (shrink)

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 selftransformation. (shrink)

This essay presents Augustine as a rich ethical resource on issues of wealth and poverty. Contrary to prevalent views that he had little to say on issues of economic justice, Augustine decries wealth as morally dangerous, promotes the agency of the poor in advocating for themselves with the wealthy, and supports distributive justice. Augustine envisions an interdependent Christian community where the wealthy not only help the poor, but rely on the poor to help them achieve salvation by “bearing their goods (...) to heaven,” as Augustine describes the receipt of alms. Augustine's view of wealth's moral danger is an apt resource for ethicists interested in virtue. His insistence on poor people's moral agency and interdependence among poor and wealthy speak to pressing issues of justice in today's unequal societies. (shrink)

Scripture is somehow normative for any bioethic that would be Christian. There are problems, however, both with Scripture and with those who read Scripture. Methodological reflection is necessary. Scripture must be read humbly and in Christian community. It must be read not as a timeless code but as the story of God and of our lives. That story moves from creation to a new creation. At the center of the Christian story are the stories of Jesus of Nazareth as healer, (...) preacher of good news to the poor, and sufferer. The story shapes character and conduct and enables communal discernment. (shrink)

Christian bioethics springs from the worship that is the response of the Church to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Such worship is distinctively political in nature, in that it acknowledges Christ as Lord. Because it is a political worship, it can recognize no other lords and no other prior claims on its allegiance: these include the claims of an allegedly universal ethics and politics determined from outside the Church. However the Church is called not just to be a contrast society, (...) but also to witness to the freeing of the world from salvific pretensions in order that it may embrace its proper temporality. The implications of this for the distinctiveness of Christian bioethics are brought out in three movements: first, the Church's itself learning how it is to conceive bioethics; second, the Church's role in unmasking the idols of secular bioethics; and third, the Church's witnessing to the freeing of medicine from idolatrous aspirations. (shrink)

Bioethics is not merely a theoretical discipline but a practice as well. Indeed, bioethics is a sort of moral trade. Bioethicists serve on ethics committees, give expert testimony to courts, provide guidance for healthcare policy, and receive payment for these services. The difficulty is that their role as experts able to guide clinical choice and public policy formation is brought into question by the diversity of moral understandings regarding central moral issues at the heart of the culture wars in healthcare. (...) The disconfirmation of the expert role of bioethicists by their apparent actual role as partisans of particular moral schools and perspectives could be set aside, were there an avenue to moral consensus, a door to a common moral vision to guide this new profession of moral experts. This brief article addresses the hunger for consensus in bioethics, its impossibility with respect to the controversial issues that mark the field, and the inclination nevertheless to deny this manifest diversity by appeals to a consensus that could allow bioethicists to function as ethics experts able substantively to guide clinical choices and public policy. (shrink)

Standard medical ethical analyses typically focus on the physician/patient relationship, patient autonomy, and the clinical encounter. For Liberation Theology this amounts to neglecting the larger context of social injustice. Medicine is a social institution. Any medical ethics which purports to provide an ethics of medicine and medical practice must necessarily address the larger social issues of class structure, poverty and access to adequate health care. Liberation Theology provides a very specific perspective that draws on the needs of the poverty stricken, (...) assesses the relationship among social classes, and focuses on societal conditions. Given such an analysis, medical ethics is reconfigured as concerned not only with clinical encounters but also with background cultural conditions and social justice. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur has been hailed as one of the most important thinkers of the century. Oneself as Another, the clearest account of his "philosophical ethics," substantiates this position and lays the groundwork for a metaphysics of morals.