In his book Bioethics: A Primer for Christians Meilaender seeks to direct the Christian community about "bioethics." In this assignment, I propose to review the chapters on Christian vision and abortion and my overall response on them.
CHAPTER I REVIEW (Christian Vision)
This chapter very highlighted the Christian vision of the world. He concerns about our moral obligation and position to adopt regarding the public consensus. He struggles with how to make balance between principles and situations. In this chapter, we can see that Bioethics talks about rights of each individual. Those rights are related with our background beliefs which will helps us to understand the meaning of the human life, the significance of suffering and …show more content…
The author explains that as an individual we are finite because we exist in "time and space." He comes with the concept of duality of the Individuals, means that we have a body and a spirit. Individuals are free; that is, we have the capacity to transcend the limits of nature and history. This dual nature of individuals leads to Meilaender's ethical position: given that a person is both finite and free, a Christian ethic related to scientific medicine and progress must be prepared to say no to some exercises of human freedom. A continuing phrase throughout the text is that one can exercise his or her freedom, but within certain limits.
According to Meilaender's Christian vision is "person and body." Now we have to come with the discussion how we define a person and based on what we can recognize a person as a person. A person is a person because they have a history. However, there will be times when individuals may not have "certain empowering cognitive capacities." Persons lacking those capacities are non-human; they are "the weakest and most …show more content…
When you read this book, you can see that the lack of guidance for pastoral care. While Meilaender does provide some examples, how does one conduct ministry in light of what he thinks should and ought to be a Christian ethic related to bioethical issues? He didn’t tell us as church leaders what to do when a church member have a good reason to do abortion. The reader is left with a few questions about what really happened on abortion. This book focuses more on the issue rather than how we can resolve this issue of bioethics based on the Christian perspective. In addition, there is a lack of references. In the case of abortion, he emphasizes more on his own ideas rather than a medical research. In my view, abortion can be acceptable when it becomes a big issue for the person health. I share the idea that medicine is limited. Sometimes people thought that medicine is able to heal the whole body. Even we have to acknowledge our medical need in this world, we also have to understand that medicine can only heal our body but not our spirit. Only God is able to heal both. In the spirit of our author, God does work through us, to bring hope that our God is a loving and just