Christ Against Enhancement Analysis

Regarding enhancements among the distinction between enhancements and therapy, “theological ethicist H. Richard Niebuhr, in his 1951 book Christ and Culture, outlined five categories that describe how Christians have related to the culture at various times in history [in regards to Christ]” (Chesire 77). After examine each of the five categories and contrasting them with Catholic moral theology and Catholic teaching, I believe the category “Christ against enhancement” is most accurate, which Niebuhr explains in that “the radical Christian regards culture as deeply corrupted by original sin. Within this perspective, biomedical enhancements, being part of culture, work to transmit the destructive effects of sin and have the potential to magnify

Each are theologically important to consider in the teaching of bioenhancements because the technology attempts to alter our finitude and fallenness, and thus our human nature as discussed. And as bioenhancements attempt to alter human nature, so too do they attempt to alter if not diminish, human limitations. According to Richard Niebuhr, the Catholic view of human nature “insists on man’s weakness, dependence, and finiteness, [and] on his involvement in the necessities and contingencies of the natural world, without, however, regarding this finiteness as… a source of evil in man” (qtd. in Hollinger 182). Therefore, in explaining Catholic teaching of bioenhancements with human nature it is essential is discussing finitude. In addition, one’s fallen nature is a consequence of “his unwillingness to acknowledge his dependence, to accept his creaturely existence, but it is precisely their creaturely dependence upon God that frees them from anxiety” (Hollinger 182). In addition, one’s finitude and fallenness are grounded in his or her being as much as one’s nature is. Firstly, human finitude in scripture is based in Genesis, chapter three verse nineteen, when it is said that we are from dust and to dust we shall return, which means that we are finite, meant to die, which is due to our fallen nature