A Christian Ontology of Genetic Disease and Disorder

Abstract

This article will present an ontology of the human person that is predicated upon a Christian understanding of God the Creator. It argues that defining ontological personhood in relation to God is essential for determining how Christians should understand personhood and human nature and their relation to genetic disease and disorder within human life. To show how a theological account of ontology can influence genetic debates, the article first explores why it is necessary to define personhood as an ontological reality granted by God in creation. Next, the article discusses how we ought to understand human nature in relation to fallenness and sin. Finally, the article explores how our vision of resurrected bodies within the Kingdom of God can inform our treatment of those living with genetic diseases and disorders in our present communities. Within the classic Creation–Fall–Redemption narrative, the article focuses on the status of individuals whose bodies are often deemed subhuman by our contemporary definitions of personhood.

KEYWORDS:

• ontology
• genetics
• disability
• Christian theology

Notes

¹This distinction has since been overturned.

²DNA has been referred to as a “the code of codes” (Kevles, 1992, book title); a “sacred molecule,” (Nelkin & Lindee, 2004, p.2); “the language in which God created life,” (Clinton, 2000), http://clinton5.nara.gov/WH/New/html/genome-20000626.html, paragraph 8);“the holy grail,” (Gilbert, 1992, pg. 83); and even “the gospel documents of all life.” (Dawkins, 1986, pg. 272).

³Debates about personhood go back to at least the Patristic era when Christians described how God could be three persons with one nature.

⁴Singer (1993) maintains this is particularly true when the parents could have a healthier child: When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of the happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second. Therefore, if killing the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, it would, according to the total view, be right to kill him. (p. 186)

⁵The ways in which Christians have failed to uphold this mission are too numerous to count, but it is worth noting Jews and early Christians were mocked by ancient Greek and Roman cultures for opposing infanticide.

⁶A strictly naturalistic or Darwinian account of evolution would have a difficult time resisting the tendency of labeling some persons deficient or even harmful deviations from normal human functioning. In such accounts, persons can be normal functioning members of the society or deviations from the norm, and if persons have deviations they either promote or undermine evolutionary advancement.

⁷Although it is beyond the scope of this chapter, it should be noted that disability theologians debate whether disability is part of the fallen world alone or if resurrected bodies continue to bear the marks of disability. For more on this debate see Eiesland (1994) and Yong (2007).

⁸This term is the preferred term for bioethicist Jackie Leach Scully because it avoids the negative connotations of genetic disability. See Disability Bioethics: Moral Bodies, Moral Difference (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008).

⁹In this section I will elaborate on how Christ's own body serves as an exemplar for understanding the human condition. Of course, Christ's body and work does more than simply reveal something about the human, it literally redeems the human. Salvation occurs not simply by the incarnation but the redeeming work of Christ on the cross.

¹⁰The question of whether or not Christ took on a fallen nature (as opposed to an unfallen or prelapsarian nature) remains contentious in modern theology as well as contemporary academic debates. Oliver Crisp and Karl Barth are often taken as the representatives of the two opposing sides, Crisp arguing against Christ assuming a fallen nature and Barth arguing for it. I do not believe my argument hinges on the answer to the question of which human nature Christ assumed, but I agree with McFarland when he writes, “If Christ's possessing a fallen nature is not soteriologically necessary, it is an appropriate manifestation of [God's] love, for by displaying solidarity with us to the point of assuming a nature that is damaged, God reveals and qualifies our status as sinners” (McFarland, 2008, p. 415).

¹¹Methodius of Olympus believed human bodies would be melted down and re-forged from the same material, such that its defects and damages would be eliminated. Similarly, Peter Lombard argues in Four Books of Sentences, that resurrected bodies would be reconstituted with all their defects purged, “shining like the sun.” He also argued bodies would appear around thirty-years-old, but with every blemish removed. Augustine concurred the resurrected body would show the “flower of its youth” but believed the martyrs would continue to bear scars and would enhance the appeal of the saints’ bodies.

¹²For example, Buchanan, Brock, Daniels, and Wikler (four established members of the bioethics field) have argued, in certain circumstances based on “quality of life” predictors, parents are morally required to undertake genetic interventions to prevent “harmful conditions to their offspring.” See Buchanan, Brock, Daniels, & Wikler (2000, p. 257).

¹³In contrast, for Gregory of Nyssa, “perfection” means never arriving. Gregory speaks of the eschatology body as an ever-changing one; a body that marks the endless transformations “from glory to glory.” The only thing that will not be physically lost is the suffering the body has experienced and overcome, as represented in Christ's risen and scarred body and his own sister Macrina's scar from cancer.