The OT term ban (Heb. herem) often refers to the destruction of booty and/or slaughter of captives after a military victory. It denotes the state or condition of Yahweh’s exclusive ownership and mandates the complete withdrawal of something from human use by its physical destruction or conveyance to priests or a temple treasury (Lev. 27:28-29; Num. 18:14; Josh. 6:19, 24). War herem, attested in other ancient Near Eastern cultures, predates Israelite history and varies in biblical depictions. In the OT, this ban serves as a prohibition of personal gain from battle and is thus an expression of God’s sovereignty as well as a protection against idolatry (Exod. 22:20 [22:19 MT]). Deuteronomic tradition restricts the ban to the indigenous residents of Canaan, none of whom are to be spared (Deut. 7:1; 20:17). The depiction of the ban during Israel’s journey to the land (Deut. 2-3; cf. Num. 21, 31) foreshadows rather than extends this restriction (Deut. 3:21). Deuteronomy’s rationale for herem is the prevention of spiritual corruption (Deut. 7:1-5; 20:16-18). Outside of Canaan, terms of peace are to be offered first; only if peace is rejected are captured males to be killed. Women, children, livestock, and spoil may also be kept by the Israelites in this case (Deut. 20:10-15). Several narratives illustrate a similar understanding (Josh. 2; 6-7; 10-11; 1 Sam. 15). The command to blot out the Amalekites (Exod. 17:14-16; Deut. 25:17-19) is presented as a supplementary directive rather than as herem per se, but 1 Sam. 15 does invoke herem in the context of an Amalekite battle. Although it targets an entire people for destruction, this action also ironically limits slaughter (since, according to 1 Sam. 15, the last Amalekite is dead). Later Deuteronomistic tradition directs the ban toward apostate Israelite cities (Deut. 13:6-18). Post-Deuteronomistic traditions mostly ascribe herem to God alone and no longer to Israel (Isa. 34:2, 5; Mal. 4:6 [3:24 MT]; Mic. 4:13 is a notable exception). God may even initiate the ban against Israel (Isa. 43:28; Jer. 25:9). Zechariah 14:11 prophesies the end of herem at the day of the Lord.
The extent to which the ban was ever historically enacted by Israel in battle is disputed. By setting the ban primarily within the context of Israel’s entry into the land, the canonical OT presents it largely as a time-bound, nonrepeatable practice. By devoting lives and property to God through destruction, the OT does not mean to glorify vengeful slaughter, but rather to confess God as the sole source of victory. Nevertheless, the ban shockingly sanctions the killing of captives and noncombatants, and later appeals to this biblical tradition have sometimes used it to promote religiously motivated genocide. Yet modernity is arguably just as brutal in conducting profane war that seduces the strong into believing that they are masters of their own destiny.
See also Holy War Bibliography
Hoffman, Y. “The Deuteronomistic Concept of Herem.” ZAW 111 (1999): 196-210; Holloway, J. “The Ethical Dilemma of Holy War.” SwJT 41 (1998): 44-69; Nelson, R. “Herem and the Deuteronomic Social Conscience.” Pages 39-54 in Deuteronomy and Deuteronomic Literature: Festschrift C. H. W. Brekelmans, ed. M. Vervenne and J. Lust. BETL 133. Leuven University Press, 1997; Stern, P. The Biblical Herem: A Window on Israel’s Religious Experience. BJS 211. Scholars Press, 1991.
Stephen B. Chapman
Banking See Business Ethics; Economic Ethics
Baptists were born in the sixteenth century out of an environment of intolerance created by the demands of political power for religious conformity in a state-governed church, the Church of England. John Smythe (c. 1554-1612) and Thomas Helwys (c. 1550-1616) were English dissenters who formed a congregation in Amsterdam in 1609, establishing one branch of core ethical values for Baptists that emphasized individual liberty expressed in free interpretation of Scripture and religious practice, opposition to the control of religion by the state, and local congregational autonomy.
Baptists emerged in England, but they found their most fruitful soil for the expressions of their freedom in the frontier spirit of America. The expansiveness of the New World provided opportunity for the individualism of Baptist liberty to thrive, for if one encountered intolerance in one place, there was the opportunity to move to another. Roger Williams (1603-83) was a Baptist briefly, founded the first Baptist church in America in Providence, Rhode Island, but, more important, set forth the Baptist commitment to religious liberty in early documents of the church, the state of Rhode Island, and his writings. He was the first to use metaphors of separation between church and state. Liberty and separation of powers between church and state are inherent Baptist principles from Williams, which he applied to all humanity.
Through most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the focus of Baptist ethics was on the twin themes of religious liberty and separation of church and state, along with a highly individualistic ethic of personal morality that eventually embraced the temperance movement and other issues such as gambling, family solidarity, and, for some Baptists, the abolition of slavery. Isaac Backus (1724-1806) and John Leland (1754-1841) were among the most fervent early American Baptists to use their influence in advocacy with government leaders for religious liberty. Leaders such as these played a key role in pressing for the breakthrough church/state arrangement established in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Baptist ethics are highly individualist in that the core values of Baptist faith allow for wide variances in understanding Christian faith and are deeply suspicious of coercion in matters of religious conscience. Added to these values is the historical reality that Baptists lack the towering theological authority of the Reformed tradition embodied in the works of Martin Luther and John Calvin.
But Baptists are distinctive and demanding in their insistence on the essential principles of radical discipleship, emphasizing the lordship of Jesus Christ as the only authority for true faith, with the Scriptures as the revealed truth of Jesus’ life and teaching and the final written authority for faith and practice. Derived from these sources of authority, Baptists affirm the religious liberty of each Christian to interpret Scripture under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, reject creedal formulations of how Scripture must be interpreted, and insist on the autonomy of each congregation that gathers for worship and ministry. The final affirmation of these principles is the necessity of confessing faith in Christ as an informed adult decision, hence the practice of baptism usually by immersion only and the rejection of the baptism of infants.
The consequence of these principles is wide latitude in the application of faith to social and political issues. Such individualism and congregational autonomy often result in Baptists taking opposite sides on the same ethical issues. Given the lack of specific requirements of education for the ordination of clergy by most Baptists, ethical stances often are rooted in simplistic lay understandings that lack the nuances of a rational, clearly articulated approach to issues.
Further reinforcing diverse perspectives on ethics, Baptist congregationalism rejects ecclesiastical structures that can establish broadly accepted and enforceable policy. Baptists organize themselves voluntarily into fellowships, associations, and state and national conventions or unions, and many cooperate in international organizations, most notably the Baptist World Alliance (BWA). Because of this nonauthoritarian polity, Baptists tend to organize along racial, ethnic, national, and regional groups. There are fifty-six identifiable Baptist groups in North America, the greatest concentration in the world. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is the largest of these, with more than 16 million adherents. The BWA, founded in 1905, is the most inclusive of these groups (the SBC withdrew from the BWA in 2004), having 214 unions and conventions comprising 37 million baptized believers and 105 million participants worldwide.
Each fellowship, association, union, or convention has distinct processes for addressing ethical issues. Normally, Baptists address ethical issues through resolutions passed at annual meetings. No resolution by any group is binding on any individual or congregation, but these declarations do express the sentiments of the group gathered at a given time. Such resolutions speak to Baptists and seldom for them. Among the most progressive groups, social action committees or Christian life committees give leadership to the denominations in making ethical pronouncements. Within the BWA, the Commission on Christian Ethics studies ethical issues of international importance and issues statements of analysis of a wide variety of matters, including environment, terrorism, human trafficking, poverty, and racism. A new administrative division was formed in 2008, the Division of
Freedom and Justice, to focus on universal human rights and connect more fully with the United Nations as a nongovernmental organization.
In spite of this decentralized approach to ethics, for much of the twentieth century Baptists were at the forefront of social activism within the progressive movement of the United States. None has been more influential in the early development of a clearly stated theological formulation of Baptist ethics than Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918). His Christianity and the Social Crisis (1907) became one of the most widely read books in religion in America in the early decades of the twentieth century. His Theology for the Social Gospel (1917) remains the classic theological formulation for a progressive Christian social ethic in spite of the intense critique and rejection of his insights by the fundamentalist movement of the 1920s and neoorthodox theologians of the mid-twentieth century.
Rauschenbusch rooted his theology in Jesus as a prophetic deliverer of the kingdom of God, a here-and-now reality of the reign of God in human life. As such, the kingdom is a social reality with the central virtue of love manifested to all that comes into being by divine initiative. The kingdom is not a static reality, but grows organically to affect all dimensions of life, whether family, government, economy, or the church. He also expanded the individual Baptist understanding of sin to include social sins of exploitation, accumulation, and greed, especially as these were manifested in the abuses characteristic of unfettered industrial capitalism. If sin is social, then so must be salvation as society is transformed through the actions of love in the social system. The church’s call is to be an agent of participation in bringing kingdom activism to bear in the world.
The influence of Rauschenbusch can hardly be overestimated when one considers the impact of his thinking through the lineage of a host of Baptists who both embraced and reinterpreted his ideas. Baptist seminaries have been a major conduit of these ideas, with noted teachers of ethics applying his insights in their own cultural milieu. These included especially Crozer Theological Seminary—where Martin Luther King Jr. completed his bachelor of divinity degree—Andover Newton Theological Seminary, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Much of the ethical consciousness of Southern Baptists was developed in these latter two seminaries, where Henlee Barnette (1911-2004) and T. B. Maston (1897-1988) were respective conduits of King’s ideas.
African American Baptists have made major contributions to the field, with early leadership in education and social action provided by Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961), who led black women as the primary leader of the Woman’s Convention of the National Baptist Convention for sixty-one years, established the National Trade and Professional School for Women and Girls, and called women to participate in a host of social and political organizations. Marian Wright Edelman (1939- ), as founder and leader of the Children’s Defense Fund, has extended her tradition as the leading spokesperson in America for social policy that enhances the needs and rights of children.
Ethical consciousness was on the agenda of black Baptists throughout the twentieth century, with primary leadership given by Howard Thurman (1899-1981). He authored twenty books, cofounded one of the early interracial congregations in America, served as faculty and chaplain at several prestigious educational institutions, and worked as an advisor to the major leaders of the modern civil rights movement. His friend and colleague Benjamin E. Mays (1896-1984) was a leading voice for civil rights as president of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, a mentor of Martin Luther King Jr., and a major civic leader in the Atlanta community.
No Baptist offered a more powerful voice for the cause of ethical concerns than Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-68). A third-generation son of Baptist preachers, he was the founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the primary advocate of nonviolent civil disobedience based on the teachings of Jesus and Gandhi. King’s leadership in the civil rights movement resulted in the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, following which he became an outspoken critic of the war in Vietnam and an advocate for a guaranteed minimum income for the poor as a founder of the Poor People’s Campaign. King’s corpus of published sermons and books as well as the numerous biographies and analyses of his work make him the most famous Baptist ethical activist in modern history.
Baptists as a whole have been largely conservative in their ethical perspectives in regard to personal life, with strong affirmations of the importance of a personal morality rooted in deep piety, the family as the model of moral behavior and the source of ethical guidance, the importance of temperance in relation to alcohol, opposition to the use of drugs, and living out one’s faith with integrity in daily life and work. Much of the Baptist ethic is rooted in personal responsibility for each follower of Christ to embody behavior reflective of biblical norms.
In social ethics, on the issue of abortion the position has largely been one of a pro-life perspective with concessions by some for therapeutic abortions, with minority Baptist voices such as former Southern Baptist Theological Seminary ethics professor Paul Simmons strongly affirming a prochoice stance as a religious liberty issue. Baptists generally have been broadly supportive of birth control, but some very conservative Baptists have begun to reject the practice. Most Baptists have been cautious on bioethical issues, including therapeutic cloning, in-vitro fertilization, and end-of-life issues surrounding euthanasia.
Baptists have not been notable in their leadership on other issues concerning violence and sanctity of life. The majority tends to favor capital punishment, though strong voices oppose it. In regard to war, the just-war position has been predominant, with mostly unqualified support for American wars, especially among Baptists in the South. A small antiwar voice can be heard from the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America. Strongly patriotic, only minority voices can be found in pacifist positions, though notable Baptists have been a part of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, including British leader Muriel Lester (1885-1968), Clarence Jordan (1912-69) and J. Martin England (1901-89) of Koinonia Farms fame, and Howard Thurman. Primary leadership for the emerging paradigm of just peacemaking has come from Glen Stassen (1936- ), now at Fuller Theological Seminary.
The issue of slavery and race has been the most divisive one for Baptists, having prompted a major schism between Northern and Southern Baptists in 1845. Although popular attitudes often have been embarrassingly discriminatory, even to the present, significant progressive leadership has come from white Baptists in support of the black leadership described above. The SBC approved a resolution in support of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 and more recently, on the occasion of its 150th anniversary in 1995, approved a repentant resolution confessing past injustices and requesting forgiveness for racism. Most Baptist leaders exhibit acute awareness of the painful history of racial division and discrimination and seek opportunities to heal old wounds, as occurred with the New Baptist Covenant meeting of 2008, an interracial gathering that brought together thousands of Baptists.
One issue that continues to unite Baptists in America to some extent is religious liberty and separation of church and state. The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJCRL) advocates for legislation and frequently addresses court cases and social policy. On the one hand, the BJCRL, comprising representatives of fifteen broadly diverse Baptist bodies, is reflective of a broad commitment to religious issues in the nation’s capital. On the other hand, the SBC no longer supports the BJCRL and articulates at least a different version of the Baptist commitment to religious liberty.
This serves as a reminder that the schism that rent the SBC beginning in the late 1970s was largely instigated by differences over ethical issues. After the fundamentalist-conservative takeover of the SBC, which was essentially finalized by the early 1990s, conservative stances on issues such as women’s roles, abortion, and homosexuality became required of all who would serve the SBC in any official capacity. Those Baptists who opposed these developments, many of them eventually aligning with the new Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (founded in 1991), did not always disagree with conservative SBC leaders on the substance of their ethical views (though they sometimes did), but often appealed to Baptist commitments to freedom of conscience, the autonomy of the local church, and separation of church and state as the reason for their resistance to developments in the denomination. In the end, their arguments were in vain, and the schism between fundamentalist-conservative and moderate-conservative Southern Baptists became irreparable.
This means that since the late 1970s, Baptist social ethics has been split between a conservative approach tightly aligned with the Christian Right, a more progressive approach drawing its main inspiration from figures such as Rauschenbusch and King, and a harder to define approach that seeks to avoid focusing on social or political issues, in part because of the divisiveness of these issues. The conservatives have tended to gravitate toward Republican politics, and the progressives toward the Democrats—the former saw Ronald Reagan as the apotheosis of Christian political leadership, while the latter embraced Jimmy Carter. This quite definite split certainly has defined the recent history of Baptist social ethics in the United States, especially in the South, and has made it more difficult to identify a shared “Baptist” ethical vision. Perhaps twenty-first-century cultural, political, and religious developments will eventually heal this breach.
See also Abortion; African American Ethics; Alcohol; Anabaptist Ethics; Civil Rights; Evangelical Ethics; Fundamentalism; Gambling; Individualism; Just-Peacemaking Theory; Kingdom of God; Nationalism; Race; Racism; Religious Toleration; Sanctity of Human Life; Slavery; Temperance
Bibliography
Gaustad, E. Roger Williams. Oxford University Press, 2005; Leonard, B. Baptists in America. Columbia University
Press, 2005; McSwain, L., ed. Twentieth-Century Shapers of Baptist Social Ethics. Mercer University Press, 2008; Shurden, W. The Baptist Identity: Four Fragile Freedoms. Smyth & Helwys, 1993; Stassen, G., and D. Gushee. Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context. InterVarsity, 2003; Stricklin, D. A Genealogy of Dissent: Southern Baptist Protest in the Twentieth Century. University of Kentucky Press, 1999.
Larry L. McSwain and David P. Gushee
The book of Baruch is attributed to the scribe and secretary of Jeremiah, Baruch the son of Neriah (Jer. 36:27-32; 45:1-5). It is sometimes called
1 Baruch to distinguish it from the apocalypses
2 Baruch (Syriac) and 3 Baruch (Greek) as well as 4 Baruch (Paraleipomena of Jeremiah). Its Greek version appears in LXX manuscripts, though parts of it may have been composed in Hebrew. Most scholars place its composition in Palestine in the second or first century BCE, though its narrative setting is sixth-century Babylon. Its major concerns are why the exile took place and how Israel might repent and so continue as God’s people. In dealing with those questions, the book adopts and develops the theological scheme of sin, exile, repentance, and return found in Deut. 28-33 and Jer. 26-33. The major ethical problem that it raises is the adequacy of that schema as an explanation of ancient Israel’s national tragedy.
The four major parts of the book differ in their literary forms: the narrative framework (1:1-14), the exiles’ prayer (1:15-3:8), the meditative poem about searching for wisdom (3:9-4:4), and the poem of consolation (4:5—5:9). What unifies these four pieces are the theological convictions that the exile was the consequence of Israel’s sins, that what God wanted from his people was their repentance and renewed willingness to live according to the Torah, and that God would then return Israel to its great city (Jerusalem) and temple.
The narrative framework introduces Baruch and the exiles in Babylon and portrays what follows as their letter to Jews who were remaining in Jerusalem. The community’s prayer (based on Dan. 9) recognizes the exile as God’s just punishment for the people’s sins and appeals to God’s mercy and goodness and to the glory attached to God’s name as reasons why they might be allowed to return from exile to their homeland and to renew their covenant with God. The poem about searching for wisdom (echoing Job 28) reflects on how hard it is to obtain real wisdom and affirms that it can be found in the Torah. The poem of consolation (based on Isa. 4066) acknowledges that the exile was just punishment for Israel’s sins but also offers encouragement and hope about returning to Jerusalem and the renewal of God’s people. Thus, the book as a whole moves from the people’s confession of sin and sadness over the exile, through a meditation on God’s mysterious ways and an equation between wisdom and the Torah, to hope for return from exile.
The language, images, and theological ideas in Baruch are deeply rooted in the OT. The complex of sin, exile, repentance, and return is a communal application of the “law of retribution.” According to that principle, wise and righteous persons prosper while foolish and wicked persons are justly punished in this life. Though taken for granted in many parts of the Bible (especially in the Deuteronomistic History, the Prophets, and Proverbs), this “law” is criticized and contested in the books of Job and Ecclesiastes. In Baruch it is accepted as a premise and serves as the starting point for interpreting Israel’s communal exile in the sixth century BCE, for urging the people’s moral renewal, and for holding out hope for a national revival.
The major question raised by the book of Baruch is whether this explanation of Israel’s national tragedy in the sixth century BCE is truly adequate. Modern scholars tend to explain these events mainly in political, socioeconomic, and historical terms. The book’s theological appeal to the schema of sin, exile, repentance, and return can be criticized as too easily blaming the victims or can be explained away as a futile attempt to make sense out of what has happened (an example of cognitive dissonance). However one might judge the adequacy of Baruch’s explanation of the Jewish exile in the sixth century BCE, attempts to apply it or something like it to the Shoah (Holocaust) of twentieth-century Europe raise difficult ethical questions. These include the lack of correlation between the Jewish people’s alleged “sins” and their “punishment,” and the religious claims made by some about the providential significance of Zionism and the modern State of Israel.
See also Deuterocanonical/Apocryphal Books; Exile; Isaiah
Bibliography
Feuerstein, R. Das Buch Baruch: Studien zur Textgestalt und Auslegungsgeschichte. EUS 32/614. Lang, 1997; Harrington, D. Invitation to the Apocrypha. Eerdmans, 1999, 92—102; Wright, J. Baruch ben Neriah: From Biblical Scribe to Apocalyptic Seer. University of South Carolina Press, 2003.
Daniel J. Harrington
The Beatitudes are sayings of Jesus found in Matt. 5:3-12, as the introductory section of the Sermon on the Mount. They set the theme of the sermon as deliverance coming with the kingdom of God (Matthew uses “kingdom of heaven” to avoid overusing the holy name of God). They are also found in a shorter version in Luke 6:20-22, at the beginning of the Sermon on the Plain. This article addresses the Matthean version of the Beatitudes.
Robert Guelich has shown that the Beatitudes frequently quote Isa. 61, which announces the deliverance that comes with God’s reign. The Beatitudes are not like ideals in wisdom literature, “more concerned with ‘worldly well-being’ growing out of a life lived in conformity with the principles of God and the wise”; they are like “beatitudes in prophetic literature . . . addressed to those who because of their faithfulness would be saved from the last judgment and enter the new age” (Guelich, “Matthean Beatitudes,” 417). Like Isaiah, J esus is saying that we are being made participants in God’s deliverance, and therefore we are joyful.
The first part of each beatitude is usually translated as “Blessed are . . . ,” but the Greek word makarios usually means “joyful,” here in celebration of the coming of God’s deliverance. Joy is one of the marks of the reign of God in Isaiah’s teachings, and Jesus regularly cites Isaiah when he proclaims the reign of God. We see the connection better when we translate each beatitude as “Joyful are . . .” The second part of each beatitude names a characteristic of those who experience deliverance in the coming reign of God.
The first and third beatitudes refer to the same key word in Isa. 61:1, ‘anawi'm, which means “poor, oppressed by the rich and powerful, powerless, needy, humble, lowly, pious.” It connotes both the economically poor and the humble before God. We could follow Clarence Jordan’s exegesis and translate them as “the poor and humble before God, whose wills are surrendered to God” (Jordan 21-22, 24-25). The conventional translation “poor in spirit” and “meek” can be confusing. The Greek word translated “meek” (prays) is used in the Bible of Moses (Num. 12:3 LXX) and Jesus (Matt. 11:29; cf. 21:5), both of whom had the strength to confront the ruling authorities of their times. That is hardly what the English word meek has come to mean. Guelich writes, “For Matthew, the poor in spirit are those who find themselves waiting, empty-handed, upon God alone for their hope and deliverance while beset with abuse and rejection by those in their own social and religious context” (Guelich, Sermon on the Mount, 75).
The second beatitude, mentioning “those who mourn” (Gk. penthountes), refers to being sad because of a loss, but also repenting. Jesus calls us to repent because the kingdom of God is at hand. Christians who pray for God’s reign to come become aware that our lives and society are far from God’s reign. They want to end the sinning and serve God. The prophet Amos pronounces God’s judgment on those who do not mourn: they oppress the poor and crush the needy, and then they say, “Bring something to drink!” (Amos 4:1). God proclaims, “Woe to those who . . . are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph! . . . I will turn your feasts into mourning” (Amos 6:1, 6; 8:10).
The fourth beatitude refers to hungering and thirsting for restorative justice. “Righteousness” in our culture means “being a good and respectable individual,” which is not the meaning of the Hebrew sedaqa that stands behind Jesus’ teaching: justice that restores rightness and community to the excluded and oppressed.
In the fifth beatitude, being “merciful” indicates being generous in doing deeds of deliverance.
In the sixth beatitude, the nature of our “heart” is seen in how we relate to people. Being “pure in heart” means that one has integrity, is willing God’s will in one’s being and doing.
The seventh beatitude refers to eirenopoioi, “peacemakers,” as in the English translation.
The eighth and ninth beatitudes concern those who are persecuted for their struggle to follow Jesus and to achieve restorative justice.
The third part of each beatitude celebrates the promise of participation in God’s coming reign: theirs is the kingdom of heaven, they will be comforted by God, inherit the earth, be filled, receive God’s compassion, see God, be called “children of God,” and have the kingdom of heaven and great reward in God. Jesus says that we have this now, but in the size of a mustard seed.
See also Imitation of Jesus; Kingdom of God; Sermon on the Mount
Bibliography
Crosby, M. Spirituality of the Beatitudes: Matthew’s Challenge for First World Christians. Orbis, 1981; Galilea, S. The Beatitudes: To Evangelize as Jesus Did. Trans. R. Barr. Orbis, 1984; Guelich, R. “The Matthean Beatitudes: ‘Entrance-Requirements’ or Eschatological Blessings?” JBL 95 (1976): 415—34; idem. The Sermon on the Mount: A Foundation for Understanding. Word, 1982; Hamm, D. The Beatitudes in Context: What Luke and Matthew Meant. Michael Glazier, 1990; Jordan, C. Sermon on the Mount. Rev. ed. Judson, 1974; Lambrecht, J. The Sermon on the Mount: Proclamation and Exhortation. Michael Glazier, 1985.
Glen H. Stassen
Benevolence is an intentional disposition to perform good deeds or charitable acts. It is the disposition that corresponds to acts of beneficence. Genesis 1:10-12 emphasizes God’s benevolence in the acts of creation. Other OT passages exhort benevolence and link it to both wisdom and societal justice (Deut. 15:11; Prov. 14:21; Isa. 1:17; Mic. 6:8). Jesus commands benevolence as a demonstration of agapic love (Matt. 5:43-48; 7:12). Throughout the NT benevolence toward believers and nonbelievers connotes both a descriptive (Acts 2:42-47; 4:32-35; 6:1-4; Rom. 15:25-26; 1 Cor. 16:1-3; 2 Cor. 8:1-4; 1 John 3:17-18) and normative (Acts 20:35; Rom. 12:13; 2 Cor. 9:12-13; Gal. 6:10; 1 Tim. 5:3-16; Jas. 1:27) dimension of Christian life.
Modern discussions regarding benevolence center on the nature of benevolence (whether it is disinterested or self-interested), its origins (whether they are divine or natural), and its content (see Flescher and Worthen). Recent scientific literature has suggested that benevolence contributes to human well-being and health (see Post). Comparative religious studies have documented widespread exhortations to benevolence and beneficence (see Neusner and Chilton). Evolutionary naturalism has suggested adaptive fitness as a reason for benevolent behavior (see Sober and Wilson).
See also Agape; Altruism; Good, The; Koinonia; Value, Value Judgments
Bibliography
Flescher, A., and D. Worthen. The Altruistic Species: Scientific, Philosophical, and Religious Perspectives of Human Benevolence. Templeton Foundation Press, 2007; Neusner, J., and B. Chilton. Altruism in World Religions. Georgetown University Press, 2005; Post, S. Research on Altruism and Love: An Annotated Bibliography of Major Studies in Psychology, Sociology, Evolutionary Biology, and Theology. Templeton Foundation Press, 2003; Sober, E., and D. Wilson. Unto Others: The Evolution of Unselfish Behavior. Harvard University Press, 1998.
Daniel E. McFee
Bestiality See Sexual Ethics Betting See Gambling Bigamy See Marriage and Divorce Bioethics
Bioethics is a relatively new word, fashioned in the 1970s from the Greek words bios (“life”) and ethike (“ethics”). It refers to the interdisciplinary inquiry concerning the moral questions prompted by developments in the life sciences and healthcare. It includes medical ethics, which focuses on the conduct and character of those who provide healthcare, but it also includes the use of healthcare by patients or consumers, the ethics of research on human subjects, the ethics of animal research, the ethics of public health practices and policy, the relation of ecological issues to health, and a whole range of other issues related to the life sciences. A number of entries in this volume treat various special topics within bioethics.
Bioethics sometimes is traced to developments in the mid-twentieth century. At the end of World War II, stories of medical research prompted both great horror and great hope. The Nuremberg Tribunal disclosed the horrific stories of Nazi experimentation on human subjects, but the development of penicillin saved the lives of many soldiers and prompted the hope that medical research could bring a triumph over dreaded diseases as dramatic as any victory in war. The postwar success of the “March of Dimes” against polio nurtured that hope. Soon, developments in medical research and technology prompted a series of dramatic moral questions, leaving the public sometimes horrified, sometimes hopeful, and frequently confused. In the 1960s came revelations of the abuse of human subjects in medical research within the United States. The same decade saw the first heart transplant, the first pediatric intensive care units, the clinical use of respiratory support to prolong life, the advances in genetics that made it possible to diagnose individuals, including fetuses, as either affected by or carriers of certain genetic traits, and more. The questions were inescapable: May we use some people to learn how to care for other people? How can we take a beating heart from someone without killing that person? How should we decide who gets a scarce medical resource? Now that we can keep someone alive on a respirator, must we? Now that we can diagnose a fetus with Trisomy 18 and abort, may we? Who should live? Who should decide? And who should pay?
The new powers of medicine inevitably led to new questions, but the questions inevitably were moral questions, questions that could not finally be answered by science alone. By the 1970s, an interdisciplinary conversation had started about these questions, and bioethics was born. It is more accurate, however, to say that bioethics was resuscitated. There were, after all, long and worthy traditions of reflection concerning the ordinary human events of suffering and dying, giving birth and caring, not only among physicians but also within religious communities. Theologians were important contributors to those initial conversations, in part simply because they had traditions on which to draw (Smith). Bioethics, however, was quickly secularized as people looked for arguments that would be universally persuasive. It typically examined particular cases or public policies in the light of four presumably universal principles: respect for persons, beneficence (doing good), nonmaleficence (doing no harm), and justice. Even the theologians who contributed to the continuing conversation frequently sounded more like followers of Kant or Mill than followers of Jesus.
There has been, however, a revival of interest in theological reflection on bioethics, and for two reasons. The first reason was the growing suspicion that even the four principles mentioned above mean different things within different particular moral traditions and communities. The criticism of Enlightenment foundationalism by philosophers such as Alasdair MacIntyre encouraged Christian theologians to speak candidly as Christians in public discourse. Still more important, however, was the recognition that within the church many faithful people wanted to live and die and give birth and care with Christian integrity, not just with impartial rationality. The church was recognized as an important community of moral discourse and discernment concerning bioethics.
Faithful Christian reflection about bioethics sets the questions prompted by developments in medical science and technology within the context of Christian convictions and practices. One of those convictions is the authority of Scripture, and one of those practices is reading Scripture as somehow normative for the Christian life. Conversations about bioethics within the church will from time to time (and again and again) turn to Scripture for wisdom and guidance.
Attending to Scripture: Some Problems
When Christians turn to Scripture for guidance in bioethics they quickly encounter problems. The first problem is that Scripture is silent about heart transplants and respirators, about genetic diagnoses and in-vitro fertilization. It is folly to expect Scripture to provide direct answers to moral questions posed by the developments in contemporary science and technology.
The second problem, however, is that when Scripture does speak about biology or about human sickness and healing, its words seem sometimes, well, quaint. Reading Scripture, Christians confront again and again a strange biology and a strange world of sickness and healing. There is Jacob’s success as a herdsman in producing speckled sheep by whittling white spots on sticks where the animals bred (Gen. 30:25-43). There is the bronze serpent on a pole with healing power (Num. 21:49), later destroyed by Hezekiah because it had evidently become an idol and a charm (2 Kgs. 18:4). There is King Asa being chided by the Chronicler for seeking “help from physicians” for his diseased feet (2 Chr. 16:12). There is again and again the assumption of a causal connection between sin and sickness. It is there, for example, in the promise of God after the exodus, “If you will listen carefully to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in his sight, . . . I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians” (Exod. 15:26). And it is there again in a sick man’s lament, “There is no soundness in my flesh because of your indignation; there is no health in my bones because of my sin” (Ps. 38:3). From our own world of sickness there are many unanswered questions: What is the diagnosis? What is the prognosis? Is there a doctor in the house? In Scripture, however, there is no concern with a medical diagnosis or with securing the aid of a physician or even with getting a couple of aspirin (which the Sumerians had discovered at least a millennium earlier). There are different expectations of the sick in Scripture: not to send for a physician or a magician, but simply to be a penitent and a supplicant before God. It would be easy to multiply examples. Yet to be mentioned are the NT exorcisms, for example, or the assumption that diseases and psychoses can be traced to the power of demons. It is a strange world of sickness in Scripture.
The third problem is the diversity of voices within Scripture. As we have noted, many passages assume a causal connection between sin and sickness, but Job rejected the assumption and resisted the accusations of his friends. And Jesus too evidently rejected the putative connection between a man’s blindness and either his own sin or his parents’ sin (John 9:2-3). And while the Chronicler chided Asa for consulting physicians, in the Apocrypha the sage Jesus ben Sirach effortlessly integrated physicians and their medicines into Jewish faith in God the healer. “Honor physicians for their services,” he said, “for the Lord created them. . . . The Lord created medicines out of the earth, and the sensible will not despise them” (Sir. 38:1, 4). There are different voices also about the causes of disease, whether “the hand of the Lord” (1 Sam. 5:6) or natural causes (Sir. 31:20-22; 37:27-31) or the power of demons, the explanation that took center stage only in the NT.
Enough has been said here to evidence the need for caution as Christians turn to Scripture for wisdom about medicine and bioethics. But one other problem deserves brief consideration. It is a problem not with Scripture but with us as readers of Scripture. Appeals to Scripture have sometimes led to foolishness, not to wisdom. Appeals to Scripture, it must be admitted, sometimes have done a great deal of harm. When Gen. 3:16, “In pain you shall bring forth children,” was quoted to oppose pain relief for women in labor, a great deal of harm was done. When some Dutch Calvinists refused to have their children immunized against polio because Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician” (Matt. 9:12), a great deal of harm was done. When the Bible was quoted to argue that AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexual behavior, a great deal of harm was done. These are abuses of Scripture, to be sure, but people have nevertheless been harmed—notably, women and children and those on the margins, seldom “righteous” adult males. The abuse of Scripture is one more reason to be cautious when we turn to Scripture.
Hermeneutical Issues
The necessity for caution should prompt attention to hermeneutical issues. Acknowledging that Scripture is somehow authoritative also for bioethics, we must give attention to how it is authoritative. Scripture’s authority for bioethics has been construed in various ways. It sometimes has been taken to provide “a system of divine laws” (Frame 10; see also Payne) that supplies a moral handbook for bioethics. Sometimes its moral authority has been construed as the requirement to love one’s neighbor, and then love itself has been variously construed either as a principle of “equal regard” or as an ideal of beneficence (and social utility). Sometimes Scripture is taken to reveal certain “goods” that belong to human flourishing. And sometimes it has been construed as the revelation of God’s character and way, to which Christians must respond faithfully. Alongside the diversity of Scripture stands the diversity of ways of reading it as normative for bioethics.
Two hermeneutical proposals, however, are widely accepted. First, the Bible provides neither a medical textbook nor a moral handbook for contemporary bioethics (contra Frame; Payne). We may not simply repeat its words today as if they provided a timeless moral code for the new powers of medicine. Second, the story has hermeneutical priority. The wholeness of Scripture is fundamentally a narrative wholeness. Every part of Scripture must be read as a part of that whole, and appeals to Scripture must be tested by whether they fit that whole.
The Story of Scripture
Scripture gives us a story. It is a story that renders God’s character and reveals God’s will and way with God’s people. It is a story of God’s people too, a story that Christians own as their own, that can form their character and conduct, that is constitutive of Christian identity and determinative for Christian discernment. In our own strange world of sickness and medicine, we read the Bible and remember our story, struggling to discern how to perform it faithfully in sickness and in health and with the new powers medicine gives (see Verhey 39-67).
A story of creation. The story begins, of course, “in the beginning.” In the beginning God created all things. Because God made all things, nothing that God made is God. There is a prohibition of idolatry in the creation narrative no less than in the Decalogue. Whatever we are to say about health and the new powers of medicine, this much is clear from the beginning: we may not make idols of them. The suspicion of idolatry has been a consistent characteristic of biblical reflection about health and medicine from the Chronicler to the early church and down the centuries to this very day.
We tend to think that we have outgrown idolatry, that it is a sin of “primitive” people, but the temptations to idolatry are no less present to the modern world than to the ancient world. Anywhere a good exists, it can evoke an extravagant and ultimate loyalty and prompt extravagant and final expectations. And health and healing are very real goods. They touch us near the center of our hopes and fears, where we live and die, give birth and shudder in pain.
Health is a good gift of God, but it can be a very demanding idol. The beginning of the story should make Christian bioethics a little suspicious of the “cult of health” in our culture, a cult within which hospitals and exercise facilities are the temples and doctors and dieticians are the priests. To be sure, few bend the knee before Asclepius or Gula, the ancient gods of healing, but the high god in the contemporary pantheon of idols may well be technology, especially medical technology with its healing power. Patients kneel at this shrine when they visit the doctor’s office to petition for a piece of medical wizardry to be provided with technological grace. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) may have been a Puritan, but the project of modernity that bears his name, with its reduction of knowledge to power over nature and its extravagant confidence in technology as the faithful savior, is idolatrous (on “the Baconian project,” see McKenny).
Children too are good gifts of God, but they are not gods. When undertaken with the presumption that human fulfillment and flourishing depend on having children “of one’s own,” assisted reproductive technologies are idolatrous. When such technologies are joined to genetic knowledge in an effort to make perfect children, the project is folly. And when that project is undertaken with the presumption that children are the hope of the future, it is idolatrous. God’s power and grace are the hope of the future—also for our children.
There is a second implication of the creation story: God made all things, and made all things good. God said as much in the story, of course. The gnostics could not bear this story. They thought the soul, or spirit, to be good because it has a good source, and the body to be evil because it has an evil source. Contemporary dualists are more likely to say that the body counts for little, and that the soul, the mind, the capacity for reason and choice are what really count. But the creation story is a narrative prohibition of this dualism too. The story should make Christian bioethics a little suspicious not only of the Baconian project but also of that other pillar of modernity, Cartesian dualism.
We are, from the beginning, embodied creatures, “embodied souls or ensouled bodies,” as Paul Ramsey used to say, not to be reduced either to biological organisms or to disembodied souls. The implications of this embodiment for bioethics are legion. When we ask, “Who counts as a person?” whether at the beginnings or the endings of life, embodiment resists the reduction of “personhood” to capacities for agency. When we would be attentive to suffering, embodiment reminds us that neither the technical expert who reduces the patient to manipulable nature nor the bioethical expert who reduces the patient to capacities for agency can really understand suffering, for people suffer neither as mere organisms nor as ghostly minds but as embodied selves. And when we would procreate, embodiment resists reducing human procreation either to mere biology or to a free contract transcending our bodies.
A story of human sin. Creation, of course, is not the end of the story. The story continued and the plot thickened with human sin. And hard on the heels of sin came death—not mortality, it must be said. Mortality is simply given with the creation, the simple sign that we do not have life the way God has life. But the threatening horror of death, the threat of alienation from our own bodies and from our communities and from God—that came hard on the heels of human sin.
And sickness became the “forerunner and messenger” (Barth 366) of death, and of its threats.
The story of human sin, of human pride and sloth, is a story still on display—sometimes in the use of the new powers of medicine and sometimes in the refusal to use them, and it surely is relevant to bioethics (Elshtain).
A story of blessing. Human sin left an ugly mark on the world God made good; the “curse” fell heavy upon it. But God would not let sin and sickness or death and the curse have the last word. God came again to covenant and to bless. It is a long story. God called Abraham and blessed him, called him to be a blessing to the nations (Gen. 12:1-4), and the blessing of God would reach “far as the curse is found.” The blessing of God, as the stories of the ancestors make clear, reaches into the ground in wells of water, into the womb with Isaac (whose Hebrew name refers to “laughter”), and into sociality in the ancestors’ willingness to make covenants of peace. The blessing of God includes health, but it cannot be reduced to health as if health were the summum bonum. In these stories, moreover, the blessings are wrought in part by ancient technologies: well-digging, farming (Isaac [Gen. 26]), herding (Jacob [Gen. 30]), and public administration (Joseph [Gen. 41]). The fault is not in technology. Technology can bring blessing, can help to lift the curse a little. But the fault is not in nature either. The fault is still traced to human sin. And although technology can bring blessing, it is not the final solution. It too can be co-opted by pride and greed. The Tower of Babel, symbol of humanity’s highest spiritual aspirations and greatest technological accomplishments, makes that clear enough.
When some slaves cried out to God, God heard those cries and answered them with the promise of liberation, and that promise included deliverance from “the diseases [of] the Egyptians” (Exod. 15:26). God sealed that promise with his word and with his name, “I am the Lord who heals you” (Exod. 15:26). This verse Karl Barth called “the divine Magna Carta in all matters of health” (Barth 369), strange for its assumption of the connection of sin and sickness but stunning for its promise of health in God’s good future.
It is a long story, but at the center of that story, and at the center of the Christian canon, is Jesus of Nazareth. God came yet again to covenant and to bless.
The center of the story: Jesus. Jesus came announcing that the good future of God was “at hand” (Mark 1:15), and he already made that future present and its power felt in his works of healing and in his words of blessing. He suffered and died, but God raised him up. The stories of Jesus as healer, preacher, sufferer, and risen have formed the Christian tradition about medical care from the beginning and should continue to form a Christian bioethics.
In his healing ministry Jesus made known God’s cause. When the dead were raised and those who were thought in the first century to be “like dead” or under the power of death were healed (Luke 7:22-23), the power and the purpose of God were disclosed. God’s cause is life, not death; God’s cause is human flourishing, including the flourishing we call “health,” not sickness. The memory of Jesus and the hope for God’s good future require that bioethics celebrate life, not death, but enable it to meet even death with courage and hope. In memory of Jesus and in hope the Christian community will delight in human flourishing, including the human flourishing we call “health,” but also will be able to endure, with confidence in God, even the diminishing of human strength we call “sickness.”
The Christian community today may praise God for medicine, for its research and new powers. It may not idolize either health or medicine, but it may, following the wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach, see medicine as a gift of God the creator. And it may also, in memory of Jesus, construe medicine as a servant of God the redeemer, as a healing ministry today, as a way God’s future may still be given token. Physicians and nurses within the Christian community may construe their professions as callings, indeed as holy callings, and themselves as disciples of the healing Christ. To condemn medicine because God is the healer would be like condemning governments because God is the ruler or families because God is the father. Of course, if medicine pretends to be messianic, if it presumptuously thinks of itself as the ultimate healer, then its arrogance may be and must be condemned, just as the arrogance of governments and families that make pretentious claims to ultimacy may be and must be condemned. A modest medicine may be granted its modest and honorable place under God and alongside other measures that protect and promote life and health, including good nutrition, public sanitation, a clean environment, and the like.
The healing ministry of Jesus was a sign of God’s triumph not only over the power of death but also over the power of Satan. Although exorcisms seem strange and alien to many of us, “possession” was widespread in the ancient Mediterranean; at least the demonological understanding of sickness and psychosis was widespread, and Jesus evidently shared that understanding. He explained his exorcisms neither as collusion with Satan nor as magic but as the good future of God made present and real: “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you” (Luke 11:20). His exorcisms were of one piece with God’s final triumph over the powers of evil and already diminished Satan’s dominance.
To remember this Jesus and to welcome the good future of God is to celebrate his exorcisms and somehow to make the stories of exorcism our own. That does not mean that we must account for pathologies and psychoses in the strange and alien categories of the first century, as the power of demons at work. The texts are not addressed to twentieth-century scientific and clinical questions and may not be used to prescribe either the way to understand such suffering today or the way to provide therapy. The stories are strange, but they can remind contemporary bioethics that God will triumph over all that hurts and harms and demeans persons and over all that destroys human community. The exorcisms also disclose something of God’s cause. One decisive characteristic of “possession” was precisely that—possession. The sick had no control of themselves; they were possessed, subject to the power of the demons; their speech and action had no genuine connection with who they were. A second decisive characteristic of possession was isolation. The sick were separated from their community, alienated from the very ones who would care if they could. The strong man in Mark 5, for example, “lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain” (5:3). But Jesus healed him, restored him to self-control (5:15), and said, “Go home to your friends” (5:19). The exorcisms freed persons to be themselves and to be with others. They restored persons to their own identity and to their community. The cause of God made known in Jesus’ healing ministry is human flourishing, and the human flourishing made known in the exorcisms involves integrity and community.
Bioethics must respect the integrity and the community of the sick. In Christian community and in memory of Jesus, physicians may use their best medical skills and knowledge to explain what is happening in and to the sick. However, they must use those skills and that knowledge in ways that honor God and serve God’s cause, including not only life and health but also the integrity of the sick and their community with those who are well. We remember Jesus and anticipate God’s future by standing with those who lack control over their own lives, who lack control over themselves, by standing with the weak and the powerless, and by
standing against whatever and whoever hinders and frustrates their freedom to be or to act in ways that have integrity with their identity. Sometimes sickness threatens such freedom, and then medicine can serve God’s cause by using its powers. But sometimes medicine itself can threaten the powers of persons to live (or die) with integrity or within community, and then medicine can serve God’s cause only by not using its powers. When, for example, medicine can only prolong one’s dying, or when by its technological interventions it can only rob the dying of dignity and separate the dying from the human companionship of friends and family, then medicine must acknowledge that the moral limit to its powers comes long before the technological limit of its powers.
The healing ministry of Jesus is remembered in the Gospels and still remembered in the churches. It should form a people, and a medicine among those people, disposed to protect life, not to practice hospitality to death; disposed to sustain health, not to welcome sickness; disposed to respect the embodied integrity of people, not to run roughshod over their freedom and identity; disposed to nurture community, not to isolate and alienate the sick.
Jesus was not just a healer, however; he preached “good news to the poor” (Matt. 11:5; Luke 4:18; 7:22). His words of blessing to the poor and his compassion for them were no less a token and a promise of God’s good future than his works of healing (e.g., Luke 6:20). In memory of Jesus, bioethics must be attentive to the needs of the poor. That memory too should form a people, and a medicine among those people, disposed to insist on justice for the poor and to practice kindness toward them. The needs of the poor are not all (or even mainly) medical; even their health-related needs are not all (or even mainly) medical. A Christian bioethics should include a concern to so order our communities that no one is doomed to an untimely death resulting from the lack of things such as clean air and pure water, adequate nutrition, periodic rest from labor, and security from violence. The need for medical care may seem relatively insignificant against the background of that list of more fundamental human needs. But the poor do have needs for medical care, and the need for medical care never seems insignificant when you have it. A Christian bioethics will surely include a concern to provide secure access to a decent standard of healthcare for those who need it, including the poor.
Jesus was not only the healer, not only the preacher of good news to the poor, but also the one who “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.” This too has important implications for Christian bioethics. The first implication is simply that although life and health are good gifts of God, they are not the greatest goods. On the one hand, life and the flourishing we call “health” belong to the creative and redemptive cause of God. The signs of it are breath and a blessing, a rainbow and God’s own sanction, a commandment and a healing ministry, and finally, of course, an empty tomb. Life and its flourishing must, therefore, be recognized and celebrated as goods, as goods against which we may not turn without turning against the cause of God. They are to be received with thanksgiving and used with gratitude. Acts that aim at death and suffering do not fit this story, do not cohere with devotion to the cause of God or with gratitude for the gifts of God. On the other hand, life and its flourishing are not the ultimate goods. They are not “second gods” (Barth 392). Jesus walked a path steadily and courageously that led to his suffering and to his death. Therefore, Christians may not live as though either survival or ease, their life or their health, were the law of their being. Sometimes life must be risked, let go, given up. And sometimes health must be risked and suffering shared for the sake of God’s cause in the world. The refusal ever to let die and the attempt to eliminate suffering altogether are signs not of faithfulness but of idolatry. And if life and its flourishing are not the ultimate goods, neither are death and suffering the ultimate evils. They need not be feared finally, for death and suffering are not as strong as the promise of God. One need not use all one’s resources against them, but only act with integrity in the face of them.
The second implication is truthfulness. Without the cross—this reminder of human suffering and of the silence of God, this testimony of the anguish and the helplessness even of Jesus—the church is always at risk of distorting the good news into a kind of Pollyanna triumphalism and then of self-deceptively ignoring or denying the sad truth about our world. There is a spiritual enthusiasm that supposes that faith provides a charm against sickness and sadness, that prayer works like magic to end our suffering and grief, and that Scripture will put ambiguity to flight. But there is also a technological enthusiasm that supposes that some new piece of medical wizardry will finally rescue the human condition from its vulnerability to death and suffering. Jesus knew better. He taught his disciples not how to avoid suffering but how to share it.
This points to the third implication: compassion, both God’s compassion and our calling. The good news is that God shares the suffering. The good news is that Jesus made the human cry of lament his own cry (Ps. 22:1; Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34). When Christians remember the cross, they acknowledge the sad truth about our world, but also they celebrate the glad tidings that God cares, that God does not abandon the sufferer. To those who suffer, the story of Jesus provides an unshakable assurance that they do not suffer alone, that they are not and will not be abandoned, that J esus suffers with them, that God cares. But a Christian bioethics will also call the community to share the suffering of others. The presumption that we can altogether eliminate suffering has sometimes led to abandoning (or eliminating) the patient when medicine cannot eliminate the suffering. A Christian compassion will neither kill nor abandon a patient. It will care even when, or especially when, medicine cannot cure (see Verhey 99-144).
Finally, there is a fourth implication for bioethics in the memory of Jesus’ suffering, an implication that eminent historian of medicine Henry Sigerist called “the most revolutionary and decisive change” in the tradition of medicine: in memory of Jesus the sick were ascribed “a preferential position” (Sigerist 69-70). Christians are trained by the memory of Jesus’ suffering and death to see in the sick and suffering—in their weakness and vulnerability, in their loneliness and pain—the very image of their Lord and to see in their care for them (or their abandoning them) an image of their care for Christ (or their abandonment of Christ). The classic text is Matt. 25:31-46, in which Jesus says, “Just as you did it to one of the least of these . . . , you did it to me.”
The end of the story: already and not yet. This healer, this preacher of good news to the poor, this one who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was raised up as the “first fruits of those who have died” (1 Cor. 15:20). It was the promise of God’s good future, of that day on which God “will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4).
That good future, however, is not yet, still sadly not yet. In the meantime, although moral ambiguities are inescapable, Scripture can illumine both the enduring problems and the novel quandaries of health and healing, even it if does not tell us precisely what to do. In memory of Jesus the healer, and in hope, a Christian bioethics will not celebrate death or suffering as good; it will celebrate the powers God gives to intervene sometimes in a person’s premature dying and to relieve a person’s unnecessary suffering. In memory of Jesus the preacher of “good news to the poor,” and in hope, a Christian bioethics will not delight when such powers, and the simpler things on which life and health depend, are not shared fairly and generously with the poor. In memory of Jesus who suffered and died, and in hope, a Christian bioethics will call on the community to practice Christ’s compassion, signaling Christ’s presence and care to those beyond cure on their own.
See also Abortion; Care, Caring; Death, Definition of; Death and Dying; Disability and Handicap; Dualism, Anthropological; Eugenics; Euthanasia; Health; Healthcare Ethics; Healthcare Systems in Scripture; Hospice; Infertility; Monism, Anthropological; Quality of Life; Reproductive Technologies; Sanctity of Human Life
Bibliography
Barth, K. Church Dogmatics. Vol. III/4. Trans. A. Mackay et al. T&T Clark, 1961; Elshtain, J. Who Are We? Critical Reflections and Hopeful Possibilities. Eerdmans, 2000; Frame, J. Medical Ethics: Principles, Persons, and Problems. Presbyterian & Reformed, 1988; Lammers, S., and A. Verhey, On Moral Medicine: Theological Perspectives in Medical Ethics. 2nd ed. Eerdmans, 1998; McKenny, G. To Relieve the Human Condition: Bioethics, Technology, and the Body. State University of New York Press, 1997; Payne, F. Biblical/Medical Ethics: The Christian and the Practice of Medicine. Mott Media, 1985; Reich, W., ed. Encyclopedia of Bioethics. 5 vols. Rev. ed. Simon & Schuster Macmillan, 1995; Sigerist, H. Civilization and Disease. Cornell University Press, 1943; Smith, D. “Religion and the Roots of the Bioethics Revival.” Pages 9—18 in Religion and Medical Ethics: Looking Back, Looking Forward, ed. A. Verhey. Eerdmans, 1996; Verhey, A. Reading the Bible in the Strange World of Medicine. Eerdmans, 2003.
Allen Verhey
Birth control encompasses a range of practices associated with heterosexual genital sexual relations for the purpose of avoiding or terminating pregnancy. Birth control methods that prevent fertilization or implantation of fertilized ova are commonly known as “contraception.” Contraception includes hormonal contraceptives, spermicidal agents such as copper intrauterine devices, and barrier methods such as condoms and diaphragms. Natural or behavioral forms of birth control differ from artificial contraception and include coitus interruptus (penile withdrawal from the vagina prior to ejaculation) and abstaining from vaginal intercourse. Abstinence might be total or only from vaginal sex, either permanently or restricted to fertile periods during a woman’s menstrual cycle. Such periodic abstinence is often reductively referred to as the “rhythm method,” a term that fails to indicate various methods, some very effective, for tracking fertility symptoms. Abortion and sterilization provide other birth control options. Emergency contraception involves taking a high dose of oral contraceptive within seventy-two hours of unprotected vaginal sex to prevent ovulation or fertilization. Male and female condoms and some forms of abstinence can also reduce the likelihood of some sexually transmitted diseases.
Aside from total sexual abstinence, all methods of birth control involve some risk of failure. Success rates vary considerably depending on the method and require responsible use. Artificial contraception, abortion, and sterilization also risk various side effects such as allergic reactions, weight gain, abnormal bleeding, and blood clots.
The earliest known forms of birth control included abstinence, coitus interruptus, natural resources used as spermicides, and cervical caps. Only in 1843 did scientists learn that conception occurs when sperm fertilize ova. In the United States the Comstock Act (1873) prohibited the distribution of “obscene” materials through the mail, including information about and devices for contraception and abortion. Margaret Sanger (1879-1966), a noted advocate for contraception, was charged with violating Comstock laws on several occasions. In 1918 legal paths opened for therapeutic uses of contraception. Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, the precursor to Planned Parenthood, in 1921. Sanger and others helped Gregory Pincus fund research to develop hormonal birth control in the form of an oral contraceptive called “the Pill.” In 1960 the Food and Drug Administration approved the Pill. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) the Supreme Court ruled that laws against contraception violate the right to marital privacy. By this time, millions of women were taking the Pill. Its unsurpassed popularity as a birth control method, relative safety, and reliability contributed to profound changes in the West regarding the role of women in social and economic life.
Scripture and Tradition
Genesis provides one of the earliest references to birth control and the only explicit mention of it in Scripture (Gen. 38:8-10). Judah instructs Onan to father a child with his brother’s widow. Onan instead “spills his seed on the ground.” God is displeased and puts Onan to death. While some opponents of birth control cite this passage to support their position, others argue that Onan’s offense is not coitus interruptus but rather his deliberate failure to perform his levirate duty.
Scripture does offer larger perspectives on human life, sexuality, marriage, and family that bear on the ethics of birth control. God is the author of life, calling humans to be fruitful and multiply (Gen. 1:28). Scripture also exhorts care for orphans (Exod. 22:22; Jas. 1:27) and stewardship over creation and one’s resources. These latter themes can inform reflection on limiting biological offspring in order to welcome genetically unrelated children, serve the needy, or reduce overpopulation. Yet faith in divine providence, as evidenced in God’s care for the lilies of the field (Matt. 6:25-34), can dispose Christian couples to accept unplanned children in hospitality and joy.
Several church fathers, such as Jerome and Augustine, opposed birth control. Opponents of birth control speak of the church’s unbroken tradition of teaching against the practice. Christian communities were indeed united in their formal opposition to birth control, though there were complex pastoral practices in tension with Christian teaching in the early twentieth century (see Tentler). At the 1930 Lambeth Conference the Anglican Church approved birth control in limited circumstances, the same year Catholic teaching in Casti connubii declared its moral wrongness. Protestant traditions now variously approve of birth control and sanction it. Some evangelical Protestants eschew even behavioral forms of birth control and seek large numbers of biological offspring to build the kingdom of God, as in the Quiverfull movement (see Ps. 127:3-5).
According to Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Hu-manae vitae, procreative responsibility includes a couple’s thoughtful and prayerful discernment regarding the timing and spacing of children. However, not every means of regulating births is morally fitting. Catholic teaching about contraception is based more on natural-law arguments (and appeals to tradition) than scriptural arguments. The Catholic position is both principled, in that contraception is judged intrinsically wrong regardless of the agents’ intention, and consequentialist, in that contraception’s intrinsic violation of the human good is expected to yield damaging consequences such as promiscuity and male degradation of women.
The means employed for regulating births, argues Humanae vitae, must accord with the dignity of marriage and the marriage partners and therefore must respect the integrity of conjugal love. Christian tradition has long attributed two values to conjugal love, a unitive potential (it is capable of expressing and fostering intimacy between sexual partners) and procreative potential. Couples respect the integrity of conjugal love in every genital sexual encounter by never deliberately separating these values. Birth control methods for therapeutic reasons can be morally acceptable if the infertility that they cause is foreseen but not directly intended.
Humanae vitae met with much controversy and open dissent from a number of Catholics, particularly in the West. Opponents argue that conjugal love should be fruitful but reject the claim that each and every genital sexual act must be open to the possibility of procreation. Rather, fruitfulness should characterize the couple’s relationship as a whole. The Catholic magisterium continues to teach that many forms of birth control are wrong even as pastoral and lay practice in the West often departs from this teaching; birth control remains a polarizing issue between conservative and liberal Catholics.
Ethical Issues
Some feminists argue that birth control is necessary for women’s freedom from patriarchal control of reproduction. Others argue that patriarchy renders contraception yet another instrument aimed at making women available for male sexual satisfaction and attenuates men’s reproductive responsibility.
Ethical issues surrounding birth control extend into legal disputes: whether healthcare workers who morally oppose contraception and abortion should be legally required to provide employees with health insurance that includes contraceptive coverage, offer emergency contraception, fill prescriptions for birth control, and at least provide information about and referrals for contraception and abortion. Given the possibility of sexual assault, any female of childbearing age is vulnerable to the possibility of unintended pregnancy brought about by rape. Although Catholic teaching prohibits the use of artificial contraception, US bishops assert women’s right to defend themselves against pregnancy following rape, which opens a door for Catholic hospitals to provide emergency contraception.
Access to birth control bears on moral issues such as women’s social equality, economic development for the poor, eugenics, and genocide. On one hand, access to birth control seems vital for personal reproductive responsibility, and the collective economic development that typically follows increases women’s education and employment opportunities; on the other hand, access to birth control can function as an instrument of social control. Sanger, for instance, supported negative eugenics, limiting reproduction of “undesirable” populations. Black suspicion of government-sponsored birth control clinics developed during the 1960s. In 1967 the Pittsburgh chapter of the NAACP charged Planned Parenthood with promoting racial genocide through birth control. Given the range of issues that birth control impacts, relevant scriptural resources include those that speak to women’s status, treatment of the poor, conscience, and the scope of secular authority.
See also Abortion; Adoption; Conception; Eugenics; Family Planning; Feminist Ethics; Orphans; Parenthood, Parenting; Population Policy and Control; Procreation; Reproductive Technologies; Roman Catholic Moral Theology; Sexual Ethics
Bibliography
Grisez, G. Living a Christian Life. Vol. 2 of The Way of the Lord Jesus. St. Paul’s/Alba House, 2008; Maguire, D. Sacred Rights: The Case for Contraception and Abortion in World Religions. Oxford University Press, 2003; Noonan, J. Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists. Harvard University Press, 1966. Paul VI. Humanae Vitae. United States Catholic Conference, 1968; Smith, J. Why Humanae Vitae Was Right: A Reader. Ignatius Press, 1993; Tentler, L. Catholics and Contraception: An American History. Cornell University Press, 2004; United States Catholic Conference of Bishops. Ethical and Religious Directives for Health Care Services. 5th ed. United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, 2009.
Darlene Fozard Weaver