Made not begotten: a theological analysis of human cloning
• The announcement in February 1997 that Scottish scientists successfully cloned a sheep from a single adult cell captured media attention and the popular imagination.[1] But it also rather quickly raised ethical questions in the minds of many, especially given the potential for the use of such technology on human beings. Dolly deux fois might be one thing, but the prospect of using the same procedure on the shepherds might make one feel, well—sheepish. Even the popular media found itself pondering the moral implications of assuming divine prerogatives over the disposition of human life.[2]
The reaction of most people to this prospect is a kind of unease or perhaps even revulsion. This is especially the case among people of faith who understand themselves to be creatures subject to a divine Creator.
Undoubtedly this reaction is akin to what the German Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner, in arguing against genetic manipulation some thirty years ago, described as "a humane and Christian 'instinct' which can be discovered in the moral field."[3] However, it seems that it is possible to be more precise in specifying the moral evil entailed in cloning human beings than merely to appeal to such "instinct." I contend that the cloning of human beings is morally objectionable because it is dehumanizing or more precisely depersonalizing.
In what follows I will briefly consider the bases for approaching this issue in the understanding of human dominion and human dignity found in the book of Genesis. I will then look more closely at the understanding of human personhood and the impact of cloning technology on it.
Genesis and human dominion
Among the most important statements in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures is that humanity, male and female, is created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26-27). The idea of the imago dei has a long history of interpretation associated with it. However, the text itself provides an important clue as to how this ought to be understood, in the twice repeated command given by God to mankind to "have dominion" over the rest of creation (cf. 1:26, 28)."[4] In at least one case, this dominion is connected to human reproduction through the shared fertility of male and female (cf. 1:28). Hence through the procreation of new life through sexual union, man and woman exercise dominion over creation in the image of the One who made them.
It is undoubtedly true that at times in Western history the idea of dominion has been understood as a kind of carte blanche given to humanity for conquest and technological domination of the earth and more recently of ourselves. However, it is equally true that this reading utterly misunderstands the biblical text. If the first creation account sees humanity as standing atop the whole of the created world and capable of relating directly to God, it also sees this dominion as modeled upon and subject to God's own lordship over the earth. The second creation account captures this understanding in its statement that God placed humanity in the garden which he had made "to cultivate and care for it" (Gen. 2:15). In a word, our dominion over the created world is one of responsible stewardship—not unlimited license.
The fundamental temptation which confronts humanity is precisely to ignore the bounds of our creaturely status and to usurp the prerogatives of the Creator—to attempt to become "like gods who know what is good and evil" (Gen. 3:5).[5] However, the biblical record makes clear that whenever we thus harken to the voice of the serpent and attempt to usurp the place of the God who lovingly fashioned us, we succeed only in creating disaster, rupturing our relationships to God (cf. Gen. 3:8-10, 23) and one another (cf. Gen. 3:7, 16) and unleashing chaos into the creation into which we were placed as stewards (cf. Gen. 3:17-19).
This basic pattern applies to the human use of technology as well. Technology can be good; indeed, it can be an expression of our dominion over creation when used according to God's plan and purpose. Thus one can read the flood story of Genesis as a kind of parable concerning the "technology," in the form of the ark, given by God to Noah to preserve human and animal life on the earth during the deluge (cf. Gen. 6-9). Conversely, technology at the service of human hubris can be utterly destructive as with the abortive attempt to achieve human security without recourse to God through the construction of the tower of Babel which resulted in the fragmentation of human language and relationships (cf. Gen, 11:1-9). Hence, technology is morally ambiguous—it can be good when utilized as the expression of human dominion in the service of God's plan, or it can be evil when utilized by human pride to "play God."
Therefore the idea that existing technologies must be used—sometimes called the technological imperative—is false and dangerous. Just because we can do something, does not mean we ought to do something. Just because we probably can eliminate human life on this earth through the use of nuclear weapons does not mean that we should. Even more pernicious is the idea that technology creates a kind of irresistible force—we have no choice but to use a technology once it has been created. By this logic the cloning of human beings is inevitable. But technology is not a magic genie beyond our control; it is rather the expression of human intellect and will. The fact that we have not engaged in all out nuclear warfare over the course of the previous decades bears witness to this fact.
Human dominion over creation is a gift from God, but a gift with real limits. When we overstep these bounds and attempt to usurp God's role as Creator with authority over life and death, we disfigure our own creaturely integrity. James Burtchaell, in summarizing the Catholic opposition to certain forms of reproductive technology in the 1987 document Donum vitae, states the point clearly:
The Vatican is too technical, or perhaps too dainty, to state graphically enough that we have been turning procreation into science fiction, and that we have become monsters as a result. A society which venerates Drs. Masters and Johnson and their lab coat lore of orgasm as advisors on the fullness of human sexuality. . . or that orders up children the same way it uses the Land's End catalogue: this is a creature feature that ought not appear even on late Saturday television. Or so I take the Vatican to be telling us.[6]
While the statement was made in regard to in vitro fertilization and artificial insemination, its implications for the cloning of human beings are obvious.
This point accords well with the theology of creation contained within the first creation account. Humanity, while created in the image of God is created on the sixth day with the beasts. Throughout the Bible six is the number of incompletion and imperfection. As such it can denote humanity apart from God. But we are created for the worship of God on the seventh day, the Sabbath. Seven in biblical thought denotes completion, perfection, and is often associated with God himself. Hence creation and humanity is complete in the worship and acknowledgement of the One who made it. When we fail to worship God and set ourselves up in his place, we revert to our origin and become like mere beasts.[7]
A crucial aspect of our dignity as human beings, as opposed to the rest of creation, is our ability to relate directly to God in knowing and worshipping him. For the author of the first creation account it is this that sets us apart from other created things. Animals or the inanimate material creation certainly have an intrinsic worth and as such are entitled to humane treatment. But it is only in the human capacity to worship and acknowledge the God of the universe that creation itself is complete.
Technology, like any other human creation, must reflect and acknowledge this transcendent source of our dignity. When technology breaks free of such moorings and subordinates human dignity to other ends— curiosity, greed, even misplaced compassion—then it becomes dehumanizing and morally evil. Such amoral technology, while still a human artifact, has the power to enslave and dehumanize those who are its objects.
The application of cloning technology to human beings offers a number of these kinds of scenarios: clones being grown to produce "spare parts" for those for whom they have been copied, sports franchises attempting to duplicate celebrated athletes, wealthy individuals who want only the best and brightest to raise as children, or, as the President's National Bioethics Advisory Commission appears to allow, privately funded cloning of human embryos to be used for purposes of experimentation and then eventual destruction.
While there is no irresistible force compelling us to use such technology on human beings, once done there may nevertheless be a certain momentum created by its application which makes it difficult to draw the line at certain kinds of use. Like the sorcerer's apprentice we may unleash forces that we find it difficult to control. To recommend limited applications of this technology may thus set us firmly on the slippery slope.
Persons and procedures
But there is still a deeper set of theological objections to the application of cloning technology to human beings. We are more than creatures possessed of a real but limited dominion and a specific kind of dignity—we are also persons.
Historical study has shown that the concept of "person" is one of the unique contributions of the theology of early Christianity to the common patrimony of Western thought.[8] In attempting to formulate its faith in a God who was both Three and at the same time utterly one, early Christian theologians utilized the concepts of "person" and "nature" respectively. In this perspective to be a person means to be a unique and unrepeatable individual who exists in and through relation to others. In time this understanding has colored our understanding of human personhood in various ways.[9]
The application of cloning technology to human beings attacks this understanding of our personhood in at least three distinct ways. First, as Gilbert Meilaender has observed, the language employed by Christians in their creedal confessions of faith describing the procession of the Son from the Father as "begotten not made."[10] The language of begetting here is intended to assert an equality of being between the Son and the Father. As Meilaender puts it: "What we beget is like ourselves. What we make is not; it is the product of our free decision, and its destiny is ours to determine."[11] Hence in "making" human beings through cloning we stamp them with an inferior and ultimately subpersonal designation.
Second, to clone a human person mocks his uniqueness or unrepeatability by attempting to make a kind of genetic photocopy of that individual. It is true, of course, as some scientists will hasten to point out, that a clone would never exactly replicate the original person because of chance factors and the complex interaction of environment and genetics. Hence a human clone would differ in personality, character, and ability from the person from whom it was made. Theologically, we could be assured that such a clone would have a soul and as such possess dignity and rights. But these factors do not remove the fact that the attempt to produce a genetic replicate of a human individual strikes at the heart of the irreducibility which is constitutive of personhood. As such it can only be regarded as a violation of the dignity of the person.
Third, the application of this technology to human beings undermines the unique relations constitutive of personal identity which come into being when man and woman give themselves to each other in an act which allows them to cooperate with the creative work of God—procreation (cf. Gen. 4:1). That is, at the core of our identity as persons is not only the fact that each of us is a creature and child of God, but the son or daughter of a particular man and woman. Cloning removes the personal relations of parenthood and substitutes the impersonal one's of producer and product.[12] A clone has no parents, only an "original." Instead of two sets of chromosomes which form a genetic template for the uniqueness of the person's growth, development, and ultimate independence, there is only a replication of an existing genetic pattern.[13] There is nothing personal in such an origin.
In some ways the application of cloning technology is merely an intensification of the depersonalization of human reproduction already begun in some birth technologies— where the origin of human life is torn from the bodily gift of man and woman to each other in the mystery of love and instead reduced to the outcome of a lab procedure. This is an unworthy beginning for a human person created in the image of God.[14] It is also an overstepping of the bounds of legitimate human dominion.
Such a fundamental depersonalization effected through the misuse of cloning technology in human reproduction has broader social ramifications. It feeds into the loss of reverence for human life and dignity and into the unchained primacy of instrumental reason in our culture."[15] As such it serves to foster what Pope John Paul II has called a "culture of death."[16] This culture is one that prizes untrammeled technical efficiency over human life and dignity and the mystery of human personhood created in the image of God. Instrumental reason alone can offer no ultimate argument against human cloning or any other instance of the technological imperative. But when we consider the deeper values of human life and the One who made it, then we find in this possibility once again an echo of the voice of the serpent of Genesis: "you will be like gods." Such a promise, however, always turns out to be empty—an illusion which promises freedom but delivers only enslavement.
The attempt to genetically manipulate or clone animals for the purpose of producing medicines or food for human use is morally unobjectionable, provided that the animals in question are treated in a humane fashion. The application of the same technology to human beings is morally wrong. Such efforts overstep the limits of human dominion, violate human dignity, and reduce its products to subpersonal status.
A so-called compromise procedure such as only allowing the cloning of embryos which will later be destroyed, only exacerbates the moral evil of this endeavor. This further objectifies human life, making it a disposable commodity which can be used for a period of time and then discarded. To designate and attempt to produce a whole class of human beings to be nothing more than chattel has disturbing precedents in the slave trade of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and in the Nazi eugenics programs earlier this century.
A theological analysis of human cloning which attends to the biblical and theological tradition cannot but view this procedure as both morally evil and socially dangerous. We need not bend our knees to the gods of technology or progress. To attempt to take the disposition of human lives into our hands and so play God is to seize the "forbidden fruit of biotechnology" or to enlist in the construction of yet another tower to the heavens.[17] Such insubordinations have been tried before with disastrous results. Hopefully, this time we will heed wiser counsel and better angels.
ENDNOTES
1 This paper was originally presented at the Conference "The Moral Challenge of Cloning Technology" sponsored by the Center for Jewish and Christian Values at the U.S. Capitol, June 24, 1997.
2 See, for example, Kenneth L. Woodward, "Today the Sheep . . ." Newsweek (March 10, 1997), 60, who writes: "Perhaps the message of Dolly is that society should reconsider its casual ethical slide toward assuming mastery over human life. Do we really want to play God?"
3 Karl Rahner, "The Problem of Genetic Manipulation," in Theological Investigations, vol. 9, trans. Graham Harrison (New York, Seabury Press, 1972), 251.
4 All citations are from the NAB.
5 My translation.
6 James Burtchaell, C.S.C., The Giving and Taking of Life: Essays Ethical (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 134.
7 The point is made emphatically by the story of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4:25-34.
8 See, for example, John S. Grabowski, "Person: Substance and Relation," Communio 22 (Spring, 1995): 139-44.
9 See Grabowski, 144-63: and Kenneth L. Schmitz, "The Geography of the Human Person," Communio 13 (Spring, 1986): 27-48.
10 Gilbert Meilaender, "Begetting and Cloning." Address to the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, March 13, 1997. Reprinted in First Things (June/July, 1997), 42.
11 Meilaender, 42.
12 Cf. Germain Grisez and Russell Shaw, "Dolly redux: Should we clone human embryos?", Our Sunday Visitor (June 22, 1997), 17.
13 Cf. Meilaender, 42.
14 See the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Donum vitae, II, 4-5.
15 On the primacy of instrumental reason see Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 93-108.
16 Cf. Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter, Evangelium vitae, nos. 4, 10-24.
17 The phrase is that of Sharon Begley, "Little Lamb Who Made Thee?" Newsweek (March 10, 1997), 54.
Dr. John S. Grabowski is an assistant professor of moral theology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. He earned his Ph.D. in theology at Marquette University. He has authored articles in the Thomist, the Heythrop Journal, Communio, and other journals. He and his wife have four children. His last article in HPR appeared in November 1996. © The Homiletic & Pastoral Review, 86 Riverside Dr., New York, N.Y. 10024, (212) 799-2600.
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