Rescuing Medicine From the Corpse: A Theological Anthropology of Gift/Self-Gift for Medicine and Ethics
Jacob Harrison, PhD Student, Graduate Assistant, Saint Louis University Center for Health Care Ethics
Jeffrey Bishop, in the last line of his book, The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power and The Care of the Dying, asks a provocative question that points to a possible solution for the state of medicine, “Might it not be that only theology can save medicine?” The author explores a possible answer to Bishop’s question by turning to a theological anthropology of gift/self-gift, where the person exists as a creative gift from God and furthermore the human person finds his or her meaning in the reciprocal gift of self to God and one another. The author begins by briefly exploring the current state of medicine as conceived by Bishop and others who share similar viewpoints that medicine’s epistemological norm is the dead body and the metaphysics of medicine is efficient causation. Here the author shows that the mythos operating in medicine is void of a theological anthropology of gift. Next, he demonstrates that secular bioethics, adhering to liberal ideologies that necessitate the removal of any “thick” moral commitments, has no ability to offer medicine a way forward and thus succumbs to some of the same problems already found in medicine. In the last section the author turns to a theology of gift found within the Christian tradition as a way forward for medicine. After briefly explaining a theology of gift, he concludes by pointing to a few ways a theology of gift might change the practice of medicine within Catholic health care systems, namely: ethics, formation, and liturgy. The author argues that this is concept of gift, cultivated within ethics and formation and located in a community such as Catholic health care, has the potential to help transform how medicine is practiced and experienced.
Jeffrey Bishop, in the last line of his book, The Anticipatory Corpse: Medicine, Power and The Care of the Dying, asks a provocative question that points to a possible solution for the state of medicine, “Might it not be that only theology can save medicine?” The author explores a possible answer to Bishop’s question by turning to a theological anthropology of gift/self-gift, where the person exists as a creative gift from God and furthermore the human person finds his or her meaning in the reciprocal gift of self to God and one another. The author begins by briefly exploring the current state of medicine as conceived by Bishop and others who share similar viewpoints that medicine’s epistemological norm is the dead body and the metaphysics of medicine is efficient causation. Here the author shows that the mythos operating in medicine is void of a theological anthropology of gift. Next, he demonstrates that secular bioethics, adhering to liberal ideologies that necessitate the removal of any “thick” moral commitments, has no ability to offer medicine a way forward and thus succumbs to some of the same problems already found in medicine. In the last section the author turns to a theology of gift found within the Christian tradition as a way forward for medicine. After briefly explaining a theology of gift, he concludes by pointing to a few ways a theology of gift might change the practice of medicine within Catholic health care systems, namely: ethics, formation, and liturgy. The author argues that this is concept of gift, cultivated within ethics and formation and located in a community such as Catholic health care, has the potential to help transform how medicine is practiced and experienced.