From
The Universe dated Friday, November 13 1987:
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Robert Runcie, recently addressed
the annual meeting of the Council of Christians and Jews. His
thought-provoking lecture raised a number of questions, which the
Archbishop himself readily admitted were controversial. We publish an
extract below and, to stimulate debate, we also print commentaries from
two noted Catholic theologians. Dr Runcie discusses in the extract the
common ground that Christians and Jews share in their reverence for the
whole of creation, and its relevance to the problems of the modern
world. It should be remembered that this extract is only part of a
longer speech which dwelt on a number of important areas of
Christian-Jewish understanding:
'The doctrines of creation and human responsibility
are...inextricably linked in our two faiths. God who is Creator,
Sustainer and Providential Guide, has conferred among human beings the
obligation to join him in the work of creation.
But joining God in the work of creation is not only man's vocation,
but his temptation, too. The temptation is that he will usurp God's
place as Creator and exercise a tyrannical dominion over creation...
Are we to accept that the rest of creation has been created only for
man? Does dominion necessarily lead to domination? And what, in any
case, are the limits of the category of creation known as man?
Both in theory and practice, the boundaries of the human family are
becoming unclear. This is particularly true in medicine. There,
practical problems are encountered which challenge Christians and Jews
alike to re-examine and redefine their theology of creation.
Does, for example, a human fetus have all the rights and value of a
human being? Or is it possible that, at a certain stage of development,
the fetus may be used for experiments which might eventually lead to
termination of its future?
Practical dilemmas
Should the elderly victim of severe brain damage be sustained
indefinitely in some kind of minimal life by sophisticated medical
support?
These are everyday practical dilemmas behind which lies the
difficulty of defining what it is that decisively distinguishes the
human from the non-human. And this difficulty increases as, for
instance, naturalists determine in non-human creatures subtleties of
behaviour and complexities of communication which, until recently, would
have been thought uniquely and exclusively human.
Such dilemmas and difficulties will certainly increase. I sense that
already developing are two distinct and irreconcilable kinds of response
to the problem. The first is to maintain the present status and value of
the human by defining in very clear and unambiguous terms where the
boundaries of humanity lie.
Complex terms such as rationality, self-awareness, and moral sense
would, no doubt, be deployed in producing such a definition.
This course of action would at least clarify those areas of creation
over which man's dominion lay. But the cost of it might be great. It
might belittle the value of the non-human, and the arrogance of man
needs no such encouragement. We must not reduce the area of the sacred:
we must extend it.
Perhaps instead our theology of creation, in which we see all things
coming from God who is all in all, might lead us to enhance the value of
the non-human. The question of the definition of the human would then be
less important: for intrinsic value, varying in degree but on the same
scale of value, would be seen to extend beyond the boundary fixed by any
definition of the human.
Beyond the indefinite edge of the human would lie a world of
creatures and things valuable on their own account and not simply for
the support or interest or delight which they provide for the human.
The value of, let us say, a horse, would not lie simply in its
capacity to give service or delight to man. It would have its own
intrinsic value - and so one might properly destroy a horse to save a
human life. But the intrinsic value of the horse would not be negligible
- so that it would not be proper to destroy an indefinite number of
horses to save or prolong one human life or to confer some marginal
benefit on a number of human lives.
The values of nature and of man would be seen to belong on the same
scale of value, and nature would no longer be regarded as indefinitely
available and expendable for the benefit of man.
Distorted
I believe that too often our theology of creation has been distorted
by being too man-centred. We need to maintain the value, the
preciousness of the human by preaching with emphasis the preciousness of
the non-human also - of all that is.
For our concept of God, both Jew and Christian alike, forbids the
idea of a cheap creation, of a throwaway universe in which everything in
principle is expendable save human existence...'
...And two Catholic views -
Bishop Mario Conti of Aberdeen: Overriding dignity of human life
"I believe that too often our theology of creation has been distorted
by being too man-centred. We need to maintain the value, the
preciousness of the human by preaching with emphasis the preciousness of
the non-human also".
In this, the archbishop echoes Psalm 103: "How many are your works, O
Lord; in wisdom you have made them all. The earth is full of your
riches."
Reverence for the whole of creation is certainly fundamental in both
Jewish and Christian faith cultures. However, there is nothing
incompatible in holding the overriding dignity of human life and the
need to show it a unique sort of reverence.
It is not simply because the human animal is more wonderful in the
complexity of its nature and more beautiful in form, but because it has
been made in the image and likeness of God, made by God viceroy in his
world, and made capable of knowing and loving his creator.
Here, too, the Psalmist provides the most appropriate words: "You
have made him little less than a God, with glory and honour you crowned
him, gave him power over the works of your hand, put all things under
his feet" (Psalm 8).
This, too, is fundamental to Jewish and Christian understanding of
man - the whole of the Old Testament preaches his uniqueness, without in
any way minimising the marvels of creation.
In the New Testament, St Paul sees the whole creation "groaning in a
common travail" - sharing the birth pangs of the new creation in which
men and women through Christ become the children of God. "Before the
world was made, he chose us, chose us in Christ...determining that we
should become his adopted sons" (St Paul).
Man may not be physically the centre of the universe, but he is -
above all in Christ - at its heart, rendering to the Creator Father the
praise of the whole creation. The capacity of even the littlest to do
this makes him or her uniquely precious.
Subordinate
The rest of creation, while never expendable, is subordinate to this
little one. I think we need to hold to, and proclaim ever more clearly,
this insight and dogma of our Judeo-Christian inheritance.
It must be one of the things in the archbishop's praise, " in which
our communities could speak and act together."
The lesson of the Holocaust is that unless each individual human is
regarded as having an inalienable dignity, and right to life and
respect, first some and then many become expendable for increasingly
trivial and evil purposes.
John McDade SJ, editor of The Month: Painful choices that must
be made
Archbishop Runcie is right to suggest that our "arrogance" towards
the "non-human" part of creation comes from a failure to value the
whole of creation as a dimension of God's love - we need to envisage
a continuum of "creatureliness" which restrains our human instinct to
abuse and destroy.
We have mistakenly interpreted "dominion" over creatures, given in
Genesis, as the right to do what we will with creation, as long as it is
for our own benefit.
Instead, dominion involves responsibility and stewardship, exercised
with reverence for "all that exists".
Equally, we are not entitled to presume that the only value to be
considered is what benefits human beings. Recent philosophical work on
animal rights challenges the presumption that we can treat the non-human
side of creation as expendable.
Archbishop Runcie is right to focus our attention on the significance
of our belief in a doctrine of creation, in which the human and the
non-human have intrinsic value. However, human moral dilemmas involve
choices in which we have to choose between the rights of non-humans and
the rights of human beings - the use of animals in medical research for
example.
It is not clear that by insisting on the continuum of creatureliness
within creation, we thereby clarify the hierarchy of moral values. If I
had to choose between saving the life of the last pair of American Bald
Eagles (a protected species) and saving a human being, I would regard
the latter option as my primary moral duty. And in making that painful
choice, I don't think I would be treating creation as cheap and
disposable.
NB the first of the above responses to the Archbishop of Canterbury's
speech in 1987 has been reproduced for informational rather than
inspirational purposes.