I apologize for the lack of updates these past four months. I unintentionally took a hiatus while I finished my thesis, and then I had a long recovery where I couldn’t quite work up the energy to write at all. Now my desire to write has returned, and I have many things to blog – including announcing that this fall I will begin doctoral studies in Christian Ethics at the Toronto School of Theology, about which I’m quite excited.
To explain a bit of what I’ll be working on, I thought I’d share most of the statement of research interest I used to apply to TST and two other Canadian programs. (For non-academic reasons, I only applied to schools in Canada.) I do not know how important my statement was in my application – I’ve heard wildly varying claims on the subject – but I know examples of theology statements are hard to find, so here’s mine, with some commentary to explain my thoughts.
“Once emancipation is pulled from incarnation, the flesh of one Palestinian Jewish male, this Jesus cannot be trusted to free us. We then must free ourselves.” In “He Became Truly Human,” Willie James Jennings describes the trajectory of modernity away from “trusting flesh,” both divine and human, in the pursuit of freedom. A similar mistrust of flesh can be seen in the new eugenics made possible by genetic medicine and the new Gnosticism of transhumanists like Ray Kurzweil, for whom salvation involves abandoning bodily existence altogether to merge with machine life. Often, these visions exploit a parody of Christian eschatology: a future without tears not because God dwells among us, but because limited bodies no longer do.
Jennings is a professor at Duke, and I discovered his article through a link on Fors Clavigera. In it, he examines the disintegration of the idea of a common humanity, but instead of the usual lament for natural law, universal truth, and so on, he suggests our attack on anthropology is rooted in a definition of true humanity as emancipation. But this definition is simply “another version of abstract humanity.” The goal is worthwhile – freedom from forces of confinement and surveillance – but critics fail to separate “the ideology of emancipation from those terrorism(s) that are the underside of modernity’s image of humanity.” Rather, Jennings advocates a return to “trusting flesh.” In a meditation on Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Lyotard, he argues we can keep emancipation and incarnation together: putting to death “the false universal of a common humanity” through recapitulation, crucifixion, and then resurrection, rather than by denying flesh.
There’s much more there, but already several parallels to medicine are clear. Certainly all modern medicine is emancipatory to some degree, and that’s a good thing! But the testing, sorting, and selection of eggs, sperm, embryos, and fetuses is subtly different from the temporary restoration of ailing bodies. Genetic selection promises parents that their children will be permanently emancipated because they will not be discoloured, disabled, dumb, or worst of all, of the wrong gender. Like many technologies, biotechnologies tend to be profoundly conformist, offering entry into the good life by erasing those particularities that “produce” social and economic disadvantages. Transhumanism goes one step further: we are all disadvantaged because we are simply human, and our emancipation will come by transcending bare flesh through technology. And for some transhumanists, the eschaton will arrive with the total abandonment of material existence altogether. Total freedom from everything – except the dynamics of economics and power, of course, which is another indication that transhumanism, like the new eugenics, offers a fairly conservative vision of the good life.
Against such forces, I hope to research how the narratives, theology, and practices of the Christian tradition can shape Christian communities – and society as a whole – as we all grapple with the strange new world of modern medicine. One project I am interested in is how the tradition’s long meditation on incarnation and embodiment – from Irenaeus, Augustine, and Athanasius through to Barth – can help the Church reform its desires for medicine beyond emancipation alone. I am convinced theology best guides Christians not by providing a “bigger and better” bioethical framework, but by training their ecclesial imagination to see the world differently and refuse to accept a truncated politics that polices against any common concept of the good except the fear of death. Contemporary models for such an approach include Stanley Hauerwas’ Suffering Presence, Gerald McKenny’s To Relieve the Human Condition, Joel Shuman and Brian Volck’s Reclaiming the Body, Brent Waters’ This Mortal Flesh, and John Howard Yoder’s Body Politics, as well as the broader work of thinkers like William Cavanaugh, Ivan Illich, M. Therese Lysaught, and Oliver O’Donovan.
This next section is fairly straightforward. I almost certainly won’t end up doing the project I mentioned, but likely something along those lines: retrieving the tradition for the sake of providing an alternative vision for modern medicine and helping communities discern which technologies to affirm amid limited resources and limited bodies. Obviously my method and my models for doing so put me firmly in a theological camp often labelled as “postliberal.” I then listed my rather meagre qualifications for pursuing such a project, followed by the professors I’d hope to work with and why they would be the best guides along the way – I won’t post that here, but I can email you the whole statement if you’d like.
