THEOLOGY CONFRONTS TECHNOLOGY AND THE LIFE SCIENCES
Gustafson, James M.
Searching tor the specifically theological THEOLOGY CONFRONTS TECHNOLOGY AND THE LIFE SCIENCES JAMES M. GUSTAFSON desire to be known as "religious ethicists" if only to distinguish themselves...
...What are the grounds for convictions about the "limit questions," to use Stephen Toulmin's phrase...
...The prophetic theologians find a vocabulary that is somewhat "theological" in some sense which enables them to interact with other theologians and with other prophetic critics of the ethos...
...They know golden calves when they see them, and they see them sooner than persons preoccupied with how to get from one oasis to the next in the Sinai of contemporary culture and society...
...The proper argument is not to be confined to the consequences of relatively closed or open positions but must pursue the question further, to the adequacy of doctrines of God and different anthropologies...
...While it is the case that all modern theology continues to reel from the impact of the Enlightenment, and that theologians continue to find philosophical bases on which to justify the existence of religion (or "the religious" as some like to call it), on the whole this synthetic enterprise is not in the best of T repute philosophically, scientifically, or theologically and for some substantial reasons...
...In the meantime there are still a large number of people who attend churches, and who seem not fully alienated from traditional religious language and practice...
...What data and warrants support alternative views, and which view in the end appears more adequate...
...Many theologians who are critics of culture write for other theologians and for a half-converted religious readership even when they are writing as theologians of culture—technological culture, "modern" culture, or what have you...
...While there is a self-consciously Catholic constituency among these professional persons (for example, the members of the National Federation of Catholic Physicians' Guilds who sponsor The Linacre Quarterly), and while there may well be constituencies from the evangelical wing of Protestantism, most of the professional persons the writers seek to influence are judged not to be interested in the theological grounds from which the moral analysis and prescription grows...
...It is quite understandable, then, that theology (either as doctrine from an historic tradition, or ideas about the "religious dimensions" of life) tends to be displaced in the attention of the writer by ethical theory and by procedures of practical moral reasoning...
...If we find an affirmative answer to the question unacceptable, at least we have to give our reasons for that, and we are left with the chore of figuring out just how knowledge of biology relates to ethics and theology...
...What the culture is to turn from is clear...
...Their prominence was in part the effect of the concern that religious communities had for practical moral questions, a concern that moral philosophers, until very recently, looked upon with haughty disdain...
...In a most technical sense, perhaps, these are not yet "theological" questions...
...It will have to be accepted that not everyone in that highly esteemed secular technological culture will be interested in the contributions of theologians, but that some persons (even some with social power) might...
...The first understands society basically in contractual terms...
...To paraphrase the title of an article by H. Richard Niebuhr, in these circumstances theology is not queen, but servant...
...The house could readily have been divided between the Augustinians and Pelagians on other questions: the extent of "free will" and the depths of human corruption...
...Theologians and other religious thinkers seem highly self-conscious of their own cultural relativity...
...There are procedures for justifying particular judgments...
...For him and others like him, technology tends to become reified as a demonic power which only the power of the crucifixion can overcome...
...If one is persuaded that Rahner's theology is the best available for the Catholic Church today (and the number of dissertations sympathetically exploring his thought suggests that quite a few people are so persuaded), then one ought to come out in moral theology somewhere within the range of his conclusions...
...We were also in a discussion of the proper objects of hope, faith and love...
...Who ought to address these differences...
...A real theological discussion then becomes unavoidable...
...I feel I do not unduly alter what went on there if I say we were in the midst of a discussion of hope, faith and love...
...The new religious and theological language will be as high above that of five centuries ago as contemporary cosmology is above the Ptolemaic, as contemporary medicine, agriculture, communications and transportation concepts are above those of the fifteenth century...
...Again Ramsey is to be commended...
...Unfortunately, in this tradition the resources and dimensions of theological reflection became confined to a basic theological authorization for ethics, and almost nothing more...
...Geertzian or what have you...
...Why not test the need and the practice on an endocrinologist who researches testosterone levels...
...Enough said about theology...
...There certainly are ways to deal with the controversy between these two that might lead to some agreement— that might determine whether to pay the carpenter's helpers $8.20 or $8.55 an hour...
...Valid charge...
...They will have either to become moral philosophers with a special interest in "religious" texts and arguments, or become theologians: Christian theologians, or natural theologians, or "religious dimensions" theologians...
...To make the practical moral question susceptible to any recognizably theological answer requires nursing, massaging, altering, and maybe even transforming processes, When these processes are completed one might discover that a different set of issues are under discussion from those that originated the interaction...
...I have not described the social, historical and institutional contexts in which the discussions increasingly occur...
...That persons and society are in bondage to the powers of technology, that they are looking for a "salvation" in medical therapy that therapy cannot give them, these are poignantly indicated by the contemporary prophets...
...Thanks a lot...
...Only indifference to what they are writing, or exceeding patience with inexcusable ambiguity, can account for the tolerance they have enjoyed...
...This article ought to have made clear my criticisms of the interchange between theology and technology and the life sciences as long as that interchange is confined merely to the "ethical...
...Among them were the "doves...
...The priest began, "The Church teaches that . . ." The rabbi began, "The tradition teaches that . . ." The minister began, "Now I think that . . ." There are very good historical and intellectual explanations for the extension of a kind of Protestant anomie to the theological enterprise as a whole, but explanations of why it is hard to answer the simple question "what is the subject matter of theology...
...And surely there are resources in the religious traditions, in speculative natural theologies, and in the discussions of "religious dimensions" that can be used at least to frame the questions and explore answers to them...
...Physicians and most persons writing about ethical issues in medicine , and the life sciences have consciously or implicitly adopted the more mechanistic metaphor, and not without some good reasons...
...That particular Titanic has not yet sunk, and there is merit in arranging things so that it can stay afloat for some time in the future, or at least in organizing things so the lifeboats can be used effectively...
...In the matters I have been discussing as in so many others, my impression is that much theological or "religious" writing is directed to the justification of an enterprise in the eyes of persons who are not really interested enough to care whether the justification is adequate or not...
...Another example refers more specifically to Christians and their doctrinal differences...
...Even a clear and well developed principle of distributive justice would not easily answer the latter question...
...The difficulties in formulating a theological (and not merely moral) confrontation with technology and the life sciences are real, and not just apparent, as any of us who have written in this area knows...
...Searching tor the specifically theological THEOLOGY CONFRONTS TECHNOLOGY AND THE LIFE SCIENCES JAMES M. GUSTAFSON desire to be known as "religious ethicists" if only to distinguish themselves for practical reasons from those holding cards in the philosophers' union...
...they often forget that other areas of thought share the same plight...
...Paul Ramsey's Beecher Lectures at Yale, from which came the widely read The Patient As Person, provoked a discussion between an internist and surgeon both of whom worked in the renal program...
...No one proposed the Pauline answer, "Your hope is in God...
...The theological questions are not clear, and as a result frequently even those writers trained in theology neither attempt to make them clear, nor attempt to answer those that can be asked...
...Not only technology and science, but programs of social revolution and churches feel the sting of his prophetic rhetoric...
...If one does not like Rahner's openness (which is "ft, 16 June 1978: 388 really very guarded and has several severely restraining principles) one has to argue with his theological and philosophical anthropology and with his views of the relations of grace and nature...
...Perhaps there is quite a bit to be done to help these persons understand technology in the light of their religious faith and convictions...
...What is the subject matter of theology...
...To ask what "theology" might say to that question is patently more difficult...
...Can we think theologically and ethically on the basis of what we know about biology...
...The New Testament begins with a census politically decreed by Augustus, which determined where Christ philip scharper, formerly an associate editor of Commonweal, is Editor-in-Chief of Orbis Books...
...I am not suggesting that theologians are the best retail communicators, but that the historically identifiable religious communities are fairly obvious loci to be taken into account in writing theology and theological ethics in relation to technology and the life sciences...
...A priest, a Protestant minister and a rabbi were asked to respond to the same question...
...And the ethical questions were stirred by particular acts about which judgments of moral rightness or wrongness could be made...
...Now, no less than in previous decades, it is fraught with difficulties that have frequently been indicated by philosophers of science, philosophers of religion, and moral philosophers...
...If it refers to something as specific as "Christian" or "Jewish," or even "Protestant" or "Catholic," presumably writers would be willing to use the proper term...
...The second understands society, obviously, in organic terms...
...Exactly what the adjective "religious" refers to, however, is far from obvious...
...Nothing of comparable detail and precision exists in the more strictly theological realm of discourse...
...They might find an agenda that would give them something distinctive to do...
...The enterprise is not novel, and different proposals come forward from it about the biological bases for ethics, for knowledge of ultimate reality, and for other matters...
...moralists were theologians by being moralists...
...It is the "religious ethicists" who have most to be anxious about, in my judgment...
...The obvious irony is that, however recent the term, the reality of a political theology and a theologically impregnated politics is almost as old as recorded human experience, and as new as the Vatican's efforts to prevent repeal of Italy's contraceptive and divorce laws...
...Not only is the audience frequently uninterested in the theological principles that might inform moral critique, but also the problems that are addressed are defined by the non-theologians, and usually are problems that emerge within a very confined set of circumstances...
...its author limned out a vision of the vast benefits to the human race that would accrue from vigorous pursuit of genetic research...
...Matters of Belief I have long believed, and often said, that many of the debates that are passionately conducted within the framework of ethics are misplaced, and that the issues that divide persons are matters of beliefs (whether theological in function or in fact, or whether moral or something else we need not decide here) and loyalties which determine our value choices...
...Much of the literature deals with such matters as the rights of individuals, the preservation of individual self-determination, the conditions under which others might exercise their own self-determination, and the consideration of what benefits and whose good might justify overriding the rights of individuals...
...I worked for years on a book Can Ethics Be Christian...
...They frequently publish in that very interesting journal called Zygon...
...I have been accused, in my preoccupation with some matters of a casuistic sort with "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic...
...This openness so alarmed Paul Ramsey that he described it as "remarkably like a priestly blessing over everything, doing duty for ethics" and yet Rahner's attitude rests firmly on theological and philosophical grounds...
...The ethical questions have become fairly clear, and to an ethical question one gives an ethical answer, whether one is a physician, engineer, philosopher or theologian...
...Ethical analysis and prescription was theological in principle...
...Since this is my occasion for broadsides, yet another group of writers can be noted...
...Ethics provides a basis for a new casuistry that is indispensable as long as the issues are framed by the professional persons who have to make particular choices, and as long as the terms of discussion are those on which there can be some consensus, namely ethical terms...
...To respond to specific questions requires more acumen in moral reasoning than it requires theological learning and acumen...
...The internist was much taken by Ramsey's argument, and vehemently supported the Uniform Anatomical Gifts Act, an act stipulating in precise detail the consent procedures for using an organ from a corpse...
...this tends to limit the theological questions...
...He writes, "I suggest that before this century is out we shall see all over the world an increasing integration cf information from the sciences into the heart of the belief systems of traditional religions...
...when he or she speaks of "benefits," the reference is to the human species...
...In the course of such an argument an apparently astounding matter might be seen, namely that one's theological convictions and their articulation in principles about the character of ultimate reality and about human life have a fundamental bearing on one's attitude toward the life sciences and technology...
...Whether or not one uses the religious language of idolatry, the attack on ethos and Zeitgeist implies a call to radical repentance, to a turning away from the Baals of technology whose reliability is bound to fail, and to whom cultural devotion can only lead to desolation for the coming generations...
...Or the more general Christian answer, "Trust in God...
...Frequently both terms are abstractions: these writers are not concerned about the relations of Judaism to human genetics...
...But the discussion was about whether one should trust chance, or the evolutionary process with minimal intervention, or scientists and statesmen who have power to intervene...
...While debate continues about what moral principles ought to be decisive in determining courses of action in the life sciences and technology, at least the principles under debate can be formulated with some conceptual precision...
...Indeed, often when they write about the need for theology to be engaged in criticism of technological and scientic culture, they are addressing a likeminded group...
...And that could not be answered without asking, in effect, "In whom can we trust...
...that it is to return to Yahweh is not necessarily proclaimed...
...Those whe use the organic metaphor are more ready to justify overriding an individual "right...
...We know what many of the moral issues are in technology and the life sciences...
...The precision of the debates at the level of casuistry is net to be demeaned...
...To be trained in theology should alert one to aspects of discussions that are otherwise hidden...
...or "What is God saying to us through these crises...
...Burhoe is confident...
...What is the agenda for exploring them...
...I recall attending a party after a day of meetings with biologists and physicians at which a biologist, made friendlier by the ample libations provided, said to me, "Say something theological, Gustafson...
...Sciences are a fundamental resource for theology," writes Ralph Wendell Burhoe, a person seldom cited by professional theologians but more widely known than Van Harvey or Gordon Kaufman or David Tracy by groups of scientists interested in the relations of science and religion...
...I prophesy human salvation through a reformation and rehabilitation of religion at a level superior to any reformation in earlier histories, a level high above that of Jasper's axial age as that was above the primitive religions of 10,000 B.C...
...If one is concerned that Rahner's openness is morally dangerous in its potential consequences, perhaps one ought to examine one's own theological anthropology, and one's own views of grace and nature...
...Indeed, the rhetoric in the discussion was what those of us alert to religious language could only call apocalyptic...
...The paper generated a very passionate discussion, mostly by other scientists and clinicians...
...Most apparent was the question "For what can we hope...
...Competence in argumentation is the criterion by which their contributions will be judged, and a number of them will continue to be highly respected...
...there are complex prescriptions like double-effect...
...he works out of a highly biblical and confessional theology...
...To be honored in such theologians is their radically prophetic stance...
...I grant that some anxieties will arise...
...Their intention is to humanize technology and science with some sense of the sacred, and to scientize theology with arguments that presumably support "religion...
...Inferences from scientific data and theories to theological and ethical conclusions are often weakly warranted...
...The high degree of anomie among practicing theologians, and the uncertainty among some as to what defines their work as theological, is hardly an asset to any interaction between "theology" and technology and the life sciences...
...What can be anticipated about theology's "confrontation" with technology and the life sciences...
...and "In what can we trust...
...Myopic casuists need strong enough lenses to see the point of the radical theological critics...
...They are those concerned about the relations between "religion" and "science...
...It turns out that the principal point of the address is that present institutions and cultural values are ephemeral and relative, and we ought not to absolutize them...
...Timidity might be as much a restraining factor as are the objectively real problems in undertaking such discourse...
...The arguments were finally not about matters of hard science...
...the natural moral order was itself created by God so the natural order was God's order...
...with the nagging sense that most persons who answer in an unambiguous affirmative would not be interested in my supporting argument, that a few fellow professional persons might be interested enough to look at it, and that for those who believe the answer is negative the question itself is not sufficiently important to bother about...
...ethicists" might have to become theologians...
...Obviously it is not easy to give a clearly theological answer to a question that is formulated so that there are no theological aspects to it...
...but surely they demand a response that is more "theological" than casuistic...
...Theologically trained persons have not been excluded from participation in these, and indeed continue to be significant contributors, but insofar as the contribution of the "theologians" has been and continues to be "practical moral philosophy," the basis of their being attended to is shared by practitioners who are at least as skillful as they are...
...The surgeon strongly expressed the opinion that hospitals and their staffs ought legally to be authorized to "salvage" from corpses any usable organs that might benefit the health and prolong the life of patients...
...I had the presence of mind to utter a gutteral and elongated "Gawd...
...If they cannot address the specific and concrete manifestation of the ethos (if it can be said to exist independently) in the particularities of cases and policy choices, if they cannot show how their theologies address the issues as they arise out of specific activities, conversation never gets down to the ground...
...I call such scientists "hawks...
...one can ask for nothing more forthright than his 1974 declaration, "I always write as the ethicist I am, namely a Christian ethicist, and not as some hypothetical common denominator...
...But what really divided the disputants were questions that traditionally have been judged to be religious in character...
...I am sure that the writers of the manuals in medical moral theology were well schooled in the tractates on the Trinity...
...There is not a wide world waiting to hear about these ideas, since they do not immediately assist in determining what constitutes a just distribution of health care resources...
...The creative and exasperating French Protestant Jacques Ellul is one such prophet...
...When the ecologist speaks of benefits, the reference is to the well-being of life on the planet...
...That the need is for liberation from bondage, and that some fundamental conversion of individuals and of ethos is required, these points are well made...
...I have argued elsewhere that Karl Rahner's apparent openness to certain kinds of experimentation on humans is a reasonable conclusion from his philosophical and theological anthropology, and from his understanding of the relations of grace and nature...
...Certain principles are invoked constantly: informed consent, risk-benefit ratios, dis: 387 tributive justice, and so forth...
...It might turn out that passionate ethical debates about technology and the life sciences are missing the crucial point where the real differences lie, and (my goodness...
...It cannot be said that my intervention, in which I pointed out these themes, turned the conversation to one about theology, and certainly about Christian theology, as a subject in itself...
...which to my mind, incorrigibly saturated with Biblical and theological language, becomes "What are the proper objects of our love...
...Now philosophers, physicians and many other professions are contributing a larger portion of the literature than was the case...
...The moralists find a vocabulary enabling them to interact with the professionals from technology and the life sciences...
...Catholic moral theologians are more conscious of that constituency than are Commonweal: 391 Protestants...
...Burhoe's program is in sharpest contrast with those theologians that Kai Nielsen has called "Wittgensteinian fideists" who separate religious consciousness and language from scientific consciousness and language in such a way that the former is virtually rendered immune from any criticism by the latter...
...On the other hand, the perspectives of the radical prophets make conversation with persons who specialize in technology and the life sciences very difficult...
...Or the Augustinian answer, "God is the proper object of desire...
...With equal severity I would criticize those who confine the theological discussion to Zeitgeist, ethos and other comparably general terms...
...It might at least help to develop the radar technology that aids in avoiding them...
...Several years ago a number of us participated in an intensive conference with research and clinical geneticists...
...Should one cut the power source to a respirator for patient y whose circumstances are a, b, and c? Although the stakes are much higher, this is not utterly dissimilar to asking whether $8.20 an hour or $8.55 an hour ought to be paid to carpenter's helpers in Kansas City...
...There may, however, be more people out there who are interested than we presently recognize...
...It did not occur to these moralists, for example, to wonder if the prophets' critiques of the worship of Baal might not provide, by an act of imagination if not by well developed analogy, some basis for a theological criticism of the excessive scrupulosity that the moral enterprise itself might promote...
...Much of the writing is done for persons who are making policy or choices in the areas of technology, biological experimentation and clinical medicine...
...ters of technology and the life sciences', they would also do well to attend to the home folks who might care more about what they have to say...
...A tired old story from the years of the banquet circuit of the National Conference of Christians and Jews comes to mind...
...I have amply distributed my criticisms so that few, if any, theologically trained writers in this field are exempt, including myself...
...Sometimes it turns out that those who are famous as prophetic critics of culture have nothing very specific to say about any particular event in technology and the use of the life sciences...
...We are told, for example, that a theology of hope addresses social and cultural issues...
...The population geneticist tends to take the latter view...
...That does not assist the committees on experimentation on human subjects on which I sit to decide whether protocol #6172 is acceptable from a moral perspective...
...do little to identify a melody in a collective cacophonous response...
...Separate institutes, national commissions, advisory committes and other organizations have come into being...
...That is a philosophical and theological probem as important for one aspect of culture as the relation of Marxist theory to ethics and theology for another...
...this tends to limit their capacities to relate to the specific occasions in which critical choices have to be made...
...society is a structure that individuals voluntarily agree to institute and develop...
...Unless the intended readership is one internal to the theological community, communication problems are exacerbated beyond the ordinary...
...As far as the ethical responses are concerned, what was a lively, interdisciplinary enterprise even a decade ago has increasingly become a separate profession, if only because the volume of literature has exponentially increased so that it takes a fulltime effort to be in control of it...
...we are not sure what the "religious" or theological issues are...
...A different example reveals the need for another kind of discourse which at least approaches "theology" if it is not theology...
...there were some discussions about whose extrapolations from the known to the unknown were most reliable, and about the time frame in which certain possibilities (such as cloning of humans) might occur...
...I can readily cite coherent passages from Tillich on technology, Barth on clinical medical moral problems, Rahner on the uses of genetic knowledge, and Ramsey on why Richard McCormick's Jesuit probabilism requires a rigorist response, but I see no way in which I can find from among them a basis for a generalization about how theology confronts technology and the life sciences...
...If "religious ethicists" would even say what the "religious dimensions" of the problems were, we could place the adjective in some frame of reference: Tillichian, Deweyan, Luckmannian...
...No doubt there can be a theological justification for the casuistry, but then 'here can also be a lot of other, non-theological justification for it...
...Theology cannot push the icebergs away...
...If there is any plausibility to my observations, it is fair to ask who is responsible to think about such matters of basic perception, in this case of the relations of individuals to society...
...the bearing of these texts on their medical moral discussions, however, is at best remote...
...and for various theological reasons the sorts of questions a previous generation asked—such as "What is God doing in these circumstances...
...What is it that theologians think about and write about...
...The Old Testament is heavy with theological reflection on the realities of Israel, and prophetic words of reproach for the present and promise for the future in the political life of the people...
...Traditional theological language, and perhaps also the efforts to decontaminate its historical particularities with the language of natural theology or of religious dimensions, will require some skillful usage and significant interpretation...
...This bearing, in fact, might be more significant in determining one's particular moral preferences than the specific principles chosen to justify a particular decision...
...Any student of the history of science and technology knows that...
...I shall illustrate this too simply by suggesting that the competing metaphors used to depict this relationship are the mechanistic and the organic...
...In the Catholic tradition with its continued development of natural law as a basis for ethics an intellectual legitimation for the autonomy of moral theology developed...
...In effect the writers of whom Burhoe is fairly typical aspire to develop both theology and ethics on the basis of science, and the life sciences seem to have a privileged place in these proposals...
...appear to be very odd and unanswerable...
...I do believe, however, that something dawned in the consciousness of some participants: theology might not provide answers you like to accept, but it can force questions you ought to be aware of...
...One could interpret the whole discussion as a contest between competing eschatologies: prospects for a universal salvation pitted against prospects for eternal annihilation...
...society is a network of interrelatedness and interdependence in which the relations of the parts are "internal" (I do not intend to invoke a whole Hegelian view by using this term), and in which the development of the well-being of the whole must be considered if not supreme, at least on par with the wellbeing of its individual members...
...The sickness is "global" and the antidote must be sufficient for the poison...
...Also in dispute were answers to the question "What is desirable...
...One of the papers was rather more Utopian in outlook than the others...
...The enterprise has the merit of a challenge, however...
...How one understands the relation of self and society, how this relationship is interpreted and conceptualized has profound effects upon the outcome of very specific answers to specific questions...
...They fall sick, have unexpected pregnancies, vote for legislators who in turn vote on health insurance plans and funding of research...
...Usage and Interpretation But what if "theologians" choose to be clearer about what the theological issues, or the "religious dimensions," are in the life sciences and technology...
...Theologically trained writers had a prominence a decade ago that is receding and will continue to do so...
...My equally nasty retort to those critics is that they think the only proper response is to jump in the North Atlantic and push the icebergs away...
...But the difference between these two physicians really stemmed from more general beliefs and valuations, and these divergences will not be settled, or even addressed, by the latest refinement of the principle of double-effect and its application to cases in the operating room...
...A brute fact, and a source of some embarrassment in discourse with the professionals in technology and the life sciences, is the lack of consensus among theologians on some rather simple matters...
...While theologians ought to continue to participate competently in the public debates about matThe term, "political theology," seems of rather recent coinage, a fact which permits those who wish, to dismiss it as another of those theological fads which have bedazzled and bedeviled the churches for upwards of two decades: the death of God, the secular city, theology of hope, theology as autobiography, theology as narrative, etc...
Vol. 105 • June 1978 • No. 12
