Mark J. Cherry - Profile on Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Books by Mark J. Cherry
Kidney for Sale by Owner: Human Organs, Transplantation, and the Market (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2016). New paperback edition.
Sex, Family, and the Culture Wars (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2016)
Kidney for Sale by Owner: Human Organs, Transplantation, and the Market (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, March, 2005).
Edited Books by Mark J. Cherry
At the Roots of Christian Bioethics: Critical Essays on the Thought of H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. (Salem: Scrivener Press, 2009); co-editor: Ana Iltis.
The Normativity of the Natural: Human Goods, Human Virtues, and Human Flourishing, (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009).
Pluralistic Casuistry: Balancing Moral Arguments, Economic Realities, and Political Theory (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007); co-editor: Ana Iltis.
The Death of Metaphysics; The Death of Culture: Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Morality (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006).
Religious Perspectives in Bioethics (London: Taylor and Francis, 2004); co-editors: John Peppin and Ana Iltis.
Natural Law and the Possibility of a Global Ethics (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004).
Regional Perspectives in Bioethics (Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger Publishers, 2003); co-editor: John Peppin.
Allocating Scarce Medical Resources: Roman Catholic Perspectives (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002); co-editor: H.T. Engelhardt, Jr.
Persons and Their Bodies: Rights, Responsibilities, Relationships (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999).
Papers by Mark J. Cherry
Christian bioethics, May 26, 2020
This issue of Christian Bioethics explores foundational debates regarding the orientation and app... more This issue of Christian Bioethics explores foundational debates regarding the orientation and application of Christian bioethics. Should Christian bioethics be approached as essentially a human activity, grounded in scholarly study of theological arguments and religious virtues, oriented toward practical social ends, or should Christian bioethics be recognized as the result of properly oriented prayer, fasting, and asceticism leading to an encounter with God? The gulf between these two general perspectives-the creation of immanent human goods versus submission to a fully transcendent God-is significant and, as ongoing debate in Christian Bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality over the past nearly three decades has made clear, the implications are both intellectually engaging and spiritually profound.
![Research paper thumbnail of [Book Review of] The Foundations of Christian Bioethics, by H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/123020667/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](The Linacre Quarterly, 2003
Bioethical controversies, such as abortion, cloning, and health care resource allocation show tha... more Bioethical controversies, such as abortion, cloning, and health care resource allocation show that there are always different accounts of the moral life. Political struggles concern not merely which policies will best achieve the desired objective, but which outcome itself is desirable; that is, which moral understanding should be established (e.g., pro-life or prochoice). Given the great diversity of moral viewpoints in contemporary secular society, alternative moralities compete without an apparent principled bas is for definiti vely establishing one as uniquely true. Even Christian bioethics is fragmented: the moral assessment of abortion, assisted suicide, embryo experimentation, homosex ual marriage, and third party assisted reproduction varies significantly among the Christian religions. Moral truth appears deeply ambiguous. How then is one confidently to choose and rightly to act? Such is the challenge which H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. explores in hi s controversial, ground-breaking, and powerful volume, The Foundations of Christian Bioethics . Should one simply acquiesce to individual preference, current convention, cultural custom, or claims to moral consensus? Or should one seek moral content to guide public policy through appeal to intuitions, consequences, casuistry, the notion of unbiased choice, game theory, or middle-level principles? All such attempts, Engelhardt argues, confront insurmountable obstacles : one must already presuppose a particular morality so as to choose among intuitions, rank consequences, evaluate exemplary cases, or mediate among various principles, otherwise one will be unable to make any rational choice at all. As he points out, even if one merely ranks cardinal principles, such as liberty, equality, justice, and security, differently, one affirms different moral visions, divergent understandings of the good life, varying senses of what it is to act appropriately. How then does one break through the seemingly interminable bioethical debates to truth? The answer, according to Englehardt, is to be found in the content, practices, and living world of Orthodox Christianity; that is, the traditional Christianity of the first millennium.
Altarul reîntregirii, 2015
14th International Symposium on Science, Theology and Arts be talking about the same things as Or... more 14th International Symposium on Science, Theology and Arts be talking about the same things as Orthodox Christianity, they are not. The moral theology of Protestants and Roman Catholics is guided by heterodox religious assumptions. Moreover much of their theology is routinely oriented towards ecumenism and has been radically deflated. Many supposedly "Christian theologians" now seek to accommodate the secular culture, rather than to transform it to Christ. As this paper argues, Orthodox Christians must understand how radically different a truly Christian life is from the life-world that surrounds them. If we are to maintain Orthodox Christianity for our children and grandchildren, and with love to convert others, we must fully preserve the Holy Orthodox Church and the life-world of Orthodox Christianity; a life embedded in right worship and right belief, properly oriented vigils, fasting, and almsgiving. Where Orthodox Christianity recognizes that morality must be appreciated in terms of an authentic experience of God, for secular culture God is dead. As a result, secular morality lacks any ultimate foundation or final point of moral focus to ground ethical judgments. In its denial of God, the secular world has lost any in principle standpoint from which to provide a unique and binding moral perspective. It is, as Gianni Vattimo concludes, a cultural Babel.1 Without God, definitive moral content cannot be secured. The very project of morality is thereby radically transformed. Secular morality can encompass no more than those particular idiosyncratic ends and projects that individuals affirm as i f they were virtuous and good. This is why the secular world tends to embrace an individualist search for self-satisfaction. Lacking either canonical foundation or definitive content, secular morality has been deflated into no more than the affirmation of those lifestyle choices that are currently
Christian bioethics, Mar 1, 2023
Increasingly, the abolishment of the soft establishment of Christianity, as this existed in the U... more Increasingly, the abolishment of the soft establishment of Christianity, as this existed in the United States in the first half of the 20 th century, with prayer in public schools and the presence of Christian symbols in public spaces (the Ten Commandments in courtrooms), has been replaced by the hard establishment of a secular moral and political vision. This essay explores this remarkable social transformation. It argues that there has been a failure to recognize that current secular states in the West are not religiously or morally neutral; instead, there exists a salient animus against belief in God. The essay concludes by exploring the secular state"s major cultural drive against Christendom as that religion which may not be allowed to reassert itself again. The goal is the establishment of the fundamentalist secular state.
Richard Rorty, Gianni Vattimo, and H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. are correct in their assessment of... more Richard Rorty, Gianni Vattimo, and H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. are correct in their assessment of our contemporary culture; namely, that a rupture has occurred separating the contemporary dominant secular culture"s understanding of morality from that of Kant"s Enlightenment. It is not just that the contemporary culture is moving towards affirming rights to physician-assisted suicide and voluntary active euthanasia, but, more significantly, the new morality and Bioethics that are emerging accepts physicianassisted suicide and euthanasia because they have demoralized choices in these matters to issues of death-style decision making. Killing with consent and assistance in selfkilling have been demoralized in their significance, thus deflating as well the significance of end-of-life care, which is the primary focus of palliative care. Palliative care is regarded in merely immanent terms as a cost-effective approach to treating the morbidity of patients in the last months of their lives, rather than to regard such care as a support in the preparation through repentance for death. Rorty and Vattimo in different ways recognize that the contemporary culture prohibits such transcendent concerns. Engelhardt recognizes that Rorty and Vattimo are right in their diagnosis, but that this state of affairs constitutes the cardinal danger from the now dominant secular culture: there has been an all-encompassing, immanent displacement of transcendent concerns.
Christian bioethics, Oct 20, 2017
Reference to the Imago Dei expresses a foundational relationship between God and man, with implic... more Reference to the Imago Dei expresses a foundational relationship between God and man, with implications for properly appreciating basic human goods and human flourishing, which in turn have repercussions for appropriate medical decision-making. Although this theological theme is often invoked as if its meaning and implications are evident and clear, they are not. What does it mean to be created in the image of God? And, what are the implications of that meaning for central questions in bioethics? The authors in this issue of Christian Bioethics consider the ways in which foundational, and at times very different, understandings of being created in the image of God lead to particular understandings of appropriate biomedical moral choice. This essay draws on the theological reflections of Saint Basil and Saint Maximos, among others, to set our reflections regarding the Imago Dei within the recognition that Christian bioethics must be grounded in the Church's mystical experience of God and work to orient us towards Him. Approached correctly, medicine can play an important role in one's life, but secular goals should not undermine Christian moral truths, and medical care must not replace Christian spiritual therapy for the soul.
The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine
Bioethics functions within a world of deep moral pluralism; a universe of discourse debating ethi... more Bioethics functions within a world of deep moral pluralism; a universe of discourse debating ethical analysis, public policy, and clinical practice in which a common, generally accepted morality does not exist. While religious thinkers are often approached within a hermeneutic of suspicion for assuming moral standards that cannot be justified in rational terms, secular bioethicists routinely find themselves in exactly the same intellectual predicament. That ethical theory, proposed values, or normative content is secular, that it does not invoke God or any particular religious perspective, does not mean that it is rationally grounded, necessarily true, or universally binding. As the authors in this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy make clear, this normative reality directly impacts debates regarding concepts of health, illness, and disease, accounts of socially acceptable health-risky behaviors, and the political frameworks that shape public policy. As a result, hones...
Kidney for Sale by Owner: Human Organs, Transplantation, and the Market (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2016). New paperback edition.
Sex, Family, and the Culture Wars (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2016)
Kidney for Sale by Owner: Human Organs, Transplantation, and the Market (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, March, 2005).
At the Roots of Christian Bioethics: Critical Essays on the Thought of H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. (Salem: Scrivener Press, 2009); co-editor: Ana Iltis.
The Normativity of the Natural: Human Goods, Human Virtues, and Human Flourishing, (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009).
Pluralistic Casuistry: Balancing Moral Arguments, Economic Realities, and Political Theory (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007); co-editor: Ana Iltis.
The Death of Metaphysics; The Death of Culture: Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Morality (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006).
Religious Perspectives in Bioethics (London: Taylor and Francis, 2004); co-editors: John Peppin and Ana Iltis.
Natural Law and the Possibility of a Global Ethics (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004).
Regional Perspectives in Bioethics (Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger Publishers, 2003); co-editor: John Peppin.
Allocating Scarce Medical Resources: Roman Catholic Perspectives (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2002); co-editor: H.T. Engelhardt, Jr.
Persons and Their Bodies: Rights, Responsibilities, Relationships (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999).
Christian bioethics, May 26, 2020
This issue of Christian Bioethics explores foundational debates regarding the orientation and app... more This issue of Christian Bioethics explores foundational debates regarding the orientation and application of Christian bioethics. Should Christian bioethics be approached as essentially a human activity, grounded in scholarly study of theological arguments and religious virtues, oriented toward practical social ends, or should Christian bioethics be recognized as the result of properly oriented prayer, fasting, and asceticism leading to an encounter with God? The gulf between these two general perspectives-the creation of immanent human goods versus submission to a fully transcendent God-is significant and, as ongoing debate in Christian Bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality over the past nearly three decades has made clear, the implications are both intellectually engaging and spiritually profound.
The Linacre Quarterly, 2003
Bioethical controversies, such as abortion, cloning, and health care resource allocation show tha... more Bioethical controversies, such as abortion, cloning, and health care resource allocation show that there are always different accounts of the moral life. Political struggles concern not merely which policies will best achieve the desired objective, but which outcome itself is desirable; that is, which moral understanding should be established (e.g., pro-life or prochoice). Given the great diversity of moral viewpoints in contemporary secular society, alternative moralities compete without an apparent principled bas is for definiti vely establishing one as uniquely true. Even Christian bioethics is fragmented: the moral assessment of abortion, assisted suicide, embryo experimentation, homosex ual marriage, and third party assisted reproduction varies significantly among the Christian religions. Moral truth appears deeply ambiguous. How then is one confidently to choose and rightly to act? Such is the challenge which H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. explores in hi s controversial, ground-breaking, and powerful volume, The Foundations of Christian Bioethics . Should one simply acquiesce to individual preference, current convention, cultural custom, or claims to moral consensus? Or should one seek moral content to guide public policy through appeal to intuitions, consequences, casuistry, the notion of unbiased choice, game theory, or middle-level principles? All such attempts, Engelhardt argues, confront insurmountable obstacles : one must already presuppose a particular morality so as to choose among intuitions, rank consequences, evaluate exemplary cases, or mediate among various principles, otherwise one will be unable to make any rational choice at all. As he points out, even if one merely ranks cardinal principles, such as liberty, equality, justice, and security, differently, one affirms different moral visions, divergent understandings of the good life, varying senses of what it is to act appropriately. How then does one break through the seemingly interminable bioethical debates to truth? The answer, according to Englehardt, is to be found in the content, practices, and living world of Orthodox Christianity; that is, the traditional Christianity of the first millennium.
Altarul reîntregirii, 2015
14th International Symposium on Science, Theology and Arts be talking about the same things as Or... more 14th International Symposium on Science, Theology and Arts be talking about the same things as Orthodox Christianity, they are not. The moral theology of Protestants and Roman Catholics is guided by heterodox religious assumptions. Moreover much of their theology is routinely oriented towards ecumenism and has been radically deflated. Many supposedly "Christian theologians" now seek to accommodate the secular culture, rather than to transform it to Christ. As this paper argues, Orthodox Christians must understand how radically different a truly Christian life is from the life-world that surrounds them. If we are to maintain Orthodox Christianity for our children and grandchildren, and with love to convert others, we must fully preserve the Holy Orthodox Church and the life-world of Orthodox Christianity; a life embedded in right worship and right belief, properly oriented vigils, fasting, and almsgiving. Where Orthodox Christianity recognizes that morality must be appreciated in terms of an authentic experience of God, for secular culture God is dead. As a result, secular morality lacks any ultimate foundation or final point of moral focus to ground ethical judgments. In its denial of God, the secular world has lost any in principle standpoint from which to provide a unique and binding moral perspective. It is, as Gianni Vattimo concludes, a cultural Babel.1 Without God, definitive moral content cannot be secured. The very project of morality is thereby radically transformed. Secular morality can encompass no more than those particular idiosyncratic ends and projects that individuals affirm as i f they were virtuous and good. This is why the secular world tends to embrace an individualist search for self-satisfaction. Lacking either canonical foundation or definitive content, secular morality has been deflated into no more than the affirmation of those lifestyle choices that are currently
Christian bioethics, Mar 1, 2023
Increasingly, the abolishment of the soft establishment of Christianity, as this existed in the U... more Increasingly, the abolishment of the soft establishment of Christianity, as this existed in the United States in the first half of the 20 th century, with prayer in public schools and the presence of Christian symbols in public spaces (the Ten Commandments in courtrooms), has been replaced by the hard establishment of a secular moral and political vision. This essay explores this remarkable social transformation. It argues that there has been a failure to recognize that current secular states in the West are not religiously or morally neutral; instead, there exists a salient animus against belief in God. The essay concludes by exploring the secular state"s major cultural drive against Christendom as that religion which may not be allowed to reassert itself again. The goal is the establishment of the fundamentalist secular state.
Richard Rorty, Gianni Vattimo, and H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. are correct in their assessment of... more Richard Rorty, Gianni Vattimo, and H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. are correct in their assessment of our contemporary culture; namely, that a rupture has occurred separating the contemporary dominant secular culture"s understanding of morality from that of Kant"s Enlightenment. It is not just that the contemporary culture is moving towards affirming rights to physician-assisted suicide and voluntary active euthanasia, but, more significantly, the new morality and Bioethics that are emerging accepts physicianassisted suicide and euthanasia because they have demoralized choices in these matters to issues of death-style decision making. Killing with consent and assistance in selfkilling have been demoralized in their significance, thus deflating as well the significance of end-of-life care, which is the primary focus of palliative care. Palliative care is regarded in merely immanent terms as a cost-effective approach to treating the morbidity of patients in the last months of their lives, rather than to regard such care as a support in the preparation through repentance for death. Rorty and Vattimo in different ways recognize that the contemporary culture prohibits such transcendent concerns. Engelhardt recognizes that Rorty and Vattimo are right in their diagnosis, but that this state of affairs constitutes the cardinal danger from the now dominant secular culture: there has been an all-encompassing, immanent displacement of transcendent concerns.
Christian bioethics, Oct 20, 2017
Reference to the Imago Dei expresses a foundational relationship between God and man, with implic... more Reference to the Imago Dei expresses a foundational relationship between God and man, with implications for properly appreciating basic human goods and human flourishing, which in turn have repercussions for appropriate medical decision-making. Although this theological theme is often invoked as if its meaning and implications are evident and clear, they are not. What does it mean to be created in the image of God? And, what are the implications of that meaning for central questions in bioethics? The authors in this issue of Christian Bioethics consider the ways in which foundational, and at times very different, understandings of being created in the image of God lead to particular understandings of appropriate biomedical moral choice. This essay draws on the theological reflections of Saint Basil and Saint Maximos, among others, to set our reflections regarding the Imago Dei within the recognition that Christian bioethics must be grounded in the Church's mystical experience of God and work to orient us towards Him. Approached correctly, medicine can play an important role in one's life, but secular goals should not undermine Christian moral truths, and medical care must not replace Christian spiritual therapy for the soul.
The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine
Bioethics functions within a world of deep moral pluralism; a universe of discourse debating ethi... more Bioethics functions within a world of deep moral pluralism; a universe of discourse debating ethical analysis, public policy, and clinical practice in which a common, generally accepted morality does not exist. While religious thinkers are often approached within a hermeneutic of suspicion for assuming moral standards that cannot be justified in rational terms, secular bioethicists routinely find themselves in exactly the same intellectual predicament. That ethical theory, proposed values, or normative content is secular, that it does not invoke God or any particular religious perspective, does not mean that it is rationally grounded, necessarily true, or universally binding. As the authors in this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy make clear, this normative reality directly impacts debates regarding concepts of health, illness, and disease, accounts of socially acceptable health-risky behaviors, and the political frameworks that shape public policy. As a result, hones...
Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality
How can we definitively determine which biomedical choices are morally correct and which engage i... more How can we definitively determine which biomedical choices are morally correct and which engage in seriously wrongful acts? Depending on whom one asks, one is informed that choices such as abortion, euthanasia, and significant body modification involve real moral harm (either as forms of murder or as denying the goodness of the body that God has provided), or that disallowing such “medical care” violates the basic rights of persons (where abortion, active euthanasia, and body modification are appreciated as positive expressions of personal autonomy). Secular bioethics appears no longer able to appreciate what could possibly be wrong with such activities, provided that the individuals involved consent in some fashion. Indeed, many actions that were once openly and easily recognized as sinful have become so commonplace, as well as politically desirable, as to appear as if they were obviously good. As the authors in this issue of Christian Bioethics explore, fully to appreciate the ser...
International Journal of Chinese & Comparative Philosophy of Medicine, 2018
This paper explores the social and cultural implications of different conceptions of marriage and... more This paper explores the social and cultural implications of different conceptions of marriage and family life. It compares traditional understandings of marriage and family, set within particular religions and cultures, to a Western secular liberal understanding, which seeks to recast marriage as a sort of egalitarian social contract between autonomous individuals. Rather than appreciating the family as a normative form of social being constituted around the monogamous marriage of husband and wife and their own biological (and perhaps adopted) children, here the family is to be appreciated as an institution legally to be molded more closely in line with currently popular Western principles of social justice and gender neutrality. Claims regarding individual autonomy, gender neutrality, and rights to sexual freedom have come to possess a commanding place within the West's recasting of the family.
The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine, 2021
This issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy brings together an international group of sc... more This issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy brings together an international group of scholars from Hong Kong, Mainland China, and North America, critically to explore whole-body/head transplantation. The proposed procedure raises significant philosophical, ethical, and social/political questions. For example, assuming transplant is successful, who survives the surgery? Does personal identity necessarily follow the head? The contributors to this special thematic issue explore the nature and ground of personal identity, what it would mean to preserve personal identity, given such a significant set of physical changes, as well as the morality of such a procedure. As the authors make clear, careful conceptual philosophical analysis is essential for understanding whether whole-body/head transplantation is a life-saving/life-enhancing technological innovation, or a bioethical morass that should not be attempted. How we come to terms with such conceptual and moral concerns will h...
Increasingly, the abolishment of the soft establishment of Christianity, as this existed in the U... more Increasingly, the abolishment of the soft establishment of Christianity, as this existed in the United States in the first half of the 20 th century, with prayer in public schools and the presence of Christian symbols in public spaces (the Ten Commandments in courtrooms), has been replaced by the hard establishment of a secular moral and political vision. This essay explores this remarkable social transformation. It argues that there has been a failure to recognize that current secular states in the West are not religiously or morally neutral; instead, there exists a salient animus against belief in God. The essay concludes by exploring the secular state‟s major cultural drive against Christendom as that religion which may not be allowed to reassert itself again. The goal is the establishment of the fundamentalist secular state.
Altarul Reîntregirii, 2015
14th International Symposium on Science, Theology and Arts be talking about the same things as Or... more 14th International Symposium on Science, Theology and Arts be talking about the same things as Orthodox Christianity, they are not. The moral theology of Protestants and Roman Catholics is guided by heterodox religious assumptions. Moreover much of their theology is routinely oriented towards ecumenism and has been radically deflated. Many supposedly "Christian theologians" now seek to accommodate the secular culture, rather than to transform it to Christ. As this paper argues, Orthodox Christians must understand how radically different a truly Christian life is from the life-world that surrounds them. If we are to maintain Orthodox Christianity for our children and grandchildren, and with love to convert others, we must fully preserve the Holy Orthodox Church and the life-world of Orthodox Christianity; a life embedded in right worship and right belief, properly oriented vigils, fasting, and almsgiving. Where Orthodox Christianity recognizes that morality must be appreciated in terms of an authentic experience of God, for secular culture God is dead. As a result, secular morality lacks any ultimate foundation or final point of moral focus to ground ethical judgments. In its denial of God, the secular world has lost any in principle standpoint from which to provide a unique and binding moral perspective. It is, as Gianni Vattimo concludes, a cultural Babel.1 Without God, definitive moral content cannot be secured. The very project of morality is thereby radically transformed. Secular morality can encompass no more than those particular idiosyncratic ends and projects that individuals affirm as i f they were virtuous and good. This is why the secular world tends to embrace an individualist search for self-satisfaction. Lacking either canonical foundation or definitive content, secular morality has been deflated into no more than the affirmation of those lifestyle choices that are currently
Altarul Reîntregirii, 2017
The deep beauty of holy icons is not attached primarily to the skill of the artist, but rather to... more The deep beauty of holy icons is not attached primarily to the skill of the artist, but rather to the proper disclosure of the truths that they reveal. Written correctly, holy icons form a central component of Orthodox Christian theology, locating persons within Traditional Christian understandings of God, His saints and the Church. Icons provide both spiritual orientation and education regarding Christianity's core metaphysical, epistemological, historical, and spiritual understandings. Wrongly written icons, modernistic and expressionistic paintings, fail in this regard; truth is distorted by the desires of the artist. This presentation briefly explores five dimensions about which holy icons provide instruction, situating canonical understandings regarding the nature of reality and of our place within that reality: (1) the relation of persons to the world; (2) the relation of persons to animals; (3) the proper relationship among living humans; (4) the relation among humans over time; (5) the relation between persons and God. Readers are put on notice, however, that this analysis of icons necessarily truncates the phenomena it analyzes. Holy icons are set within lived experiential ritual practices, interacting with reality in facets beyond the ability of academic discursive analysis to conceptualize. It is by praying with holy icons that we truly come to appreciate the ways in which they embody canonical understandings regarding the nature and meaning of the cosmos and of man's place within it.
Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, 2020
This issue of Christian Bioethics explores foundational debates regarding the orientation and app... more This issue of Christian Bioethics explores foundational debates regarding the orientation and application of Christian bioethics. Should Christian bioethics be approached as essentially a human activity, grounded in scholarly study of theological arguments and religious virtues, oriented toward practical social ends, or should Christian bioethics be recognized as the result of properly oriented prayer, fasting, and asceticism leading to an encounter with God? The gulf between these two general perspectives—the creation of immanent human goods versus submission to a fully transcendent God—is significant and, as ongoing debate in Christian Bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality over the past nearly three decades has made clear, the implications are both intellectually engaging and spiritually profound.
Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, 2017
Reference to the Imago Dei expresses a foundational relationship between God and man, with implic... more Reference to the Imago Dei expresses a foundational relationship between God and man, with implications for properly appreciating basic human goods and human flourishing, which in turn have repercussions for appropriate medical decision-making. Although this theological theme is often invoked as if its meaning and implications are evident and clear, they are not. What does it mean to be created in the image of God? And, what are the implications of that meaning for central questions in bioethics? The authors in this issue of Christian Bioethics consider the ways in which foundational, and at times very different, understandings of being created in the image of God lead to particular understandings of appropriate biomedical moral choice. This essay draws on the theological reflections of Saint Basil and Saint Maximos, among others, to set our reflections regarding the Imago Dei within the recognition that Christian bioethics must be grounded in the Church's mystical experience of God and work to orient us towards Him. Approached correctly, medicine can play an important role in one's life, but secular goals should not undermine Christian moral truths, and medical care must not replace Christian spiritual therapy for the soul.
Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, 2017
This article explores the limits of secular philosophy and philosophical reason. It argues that o... more This article explores the limits of secular philosophy and philosophical reason. It argues that once one abandons God, philosophical reason is unable to establish any particular bioethics or understanding of morality as canonical; that is, as definitively true and binding. Philosophy simply cannot secure the truth of any particular account of the right, the good, the just, or the virtuous. Once one abandons God, all is approached as if it were without ultimate meaning. Throughout, the article explores H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr's arguments in After God: Morality and Bioethics in a Secular Age, which confronts this major intellectual and cultural crisis. As Engelhardt remind us, traditional Christianity is not a life-style choice, much less another meta-narrative that one chooses and writes for oneself. It is an encounter with God, Who changes everything. Christian bioethics must be appreciated in terms of an encounter with and an authentic experience of God, Whose commands will routinely conflict with the moral dictates of secular morality.
Bioethics and Moral Agency: On Autonomy and Moral Responsibility
Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 2016
Two clusters of essays in this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy provide a critical... more Two clusters of essays in this issue of The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy provide a critical gaze through which to explore central moral, phenomenological, ontological, and political concerns regarding human moral agency and personal responsibility. The first cluster challenges common assumptions in bioethics regarding the voluntariness of human actions. The second set turns the debate towards morally responsible choice within the requirements of distributive justice. The force of their collective analysis leaves us with a well-founded basis critically to approach any account of bioethics or health policy that is insufficiently attentive to the central challenges of human freedom and responsible free choice.
Philosophical Studies in Contemporary Culture, 2006
Philosophy and Medicine, 2015
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this p... more The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
Bioethics and Moral Agency: On Autonomy and Moral Responsibility
[Please see the link.]