I just read a nice blog post by one of my friends about the hypocrisy of care givers who abort unborn infants. This is is terrible problem that is occurring in many "civilized" nations. And, in many ways, it goes much deeper than the murder of unborn children. Certainly that is awful, but it is only the symptom of a much deeper problem.
This deeper problem is this: What does it mean to be human? This question has led to the deaths of millions upon millions of people in the 20th century.
Now, for most of the philosophers since Aristotle, rationality has been the hallmark of humanity. Even Luther says that "it is certainly true that reason is the most important and the highest in rank among all things and, in comparison with other things of this life, the best and something divine" (Vol. 34, 137-139). But defining humanity by rationality has its limitations. The unborn, the very young child, the person stricken with Alzheimer's are all people that could not be included in this definition of humanity.
I think that Luther has a good solution. Thesis 35 and 36 are very good: ". Therefore, man in this life is the simple material of God for the form of his future life." And again, "Just as the whole creation which is now subject to vanity [Rom. 8:20] is for God the material for its future glorious form."
If you get a chance, read his "disputation on Man," from Vol. 34 of the American Edition of Luther's Works.
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This deeper problem is this: What does it mean to be human?
ReplyDeleteSounds similar to my senior thesis topic. The Origins of Nazi Eugenics. German history from 1900-1950s, and particularly during the reign of the Third Reich, chose to determine the worth of humanity by the genetics they carried; this a prime example of when relativism was acted out to its natural end.
Isn't it sad that those people who will heartily denounce the Nazis have the same philosophical problem?
ReplyDeleteAnd they both do it out of a misplaced desire, as you have said, of care.