Perhaps you noticed
this article
in the Guardian last
year by David Albert Jones, a bioethicist at St Mary’s
College, part of the University of Surrey. I didn’t, but
plenty did, judging from the feedback.
But it came to my
attention after having just read Jones’ 2004 book The
Soul of the Embryo, as research for my next book. It’s
a very interesting survey of how this issue – whether embryos
have souls, when they get them, where they come from, what
happens to them – has been debated in Christian theology
throughout the ages.
It is also an unintentionally revealing portrait of the mixture
of bad logic, warped and misrepresentative argumentation that
seems to pervade the Catholic rejection of embryo research. In
the language of the Telegraph
reader: I am appalled.
Oh, there are the little deceits, such as his insinuation
without evidence that IVF clinics routinely seek to overproduce
embryos so that they have plenty for research purposes. (For one
thing, no embryos can be used in research without the permission
of the donors.) Or the sudden switch, when we reach the modern
discussion of abortion, from the almost universal use of
‘embryo’ and ‘fetus’ earlier in the book to ‘unborn
child’ – or even just ‘child’.
But
far worse is the perverse logic
and the unprincipled
cherry-picking of facts and
arguments. Now, I can fully
understand how someone might
reach the conclusion that, from
the moment of fertilization, an
embryo is a human being and is
entitled to the basic right of
being allowed to live – and
that abortion is therefore
murder, as is discarding of
human embryos in any form.
It’s a point of view, so to
speak. If you believe that the
embryo has the same status as a
newborn child, and that killing
is always wrong, then that’s a
consistent position.
It means, as a corollary, that
you are an unconditional
pacifist, and must consider that
papacy wrong and unethical not
to share this position. That,
somehow, does not seem to be
Jones’ view.
Ah, so perhaps you feel that,
no, one can’t simply say one
should never in any
circumstances kill, but that one
should not in any circumstances
kill something as small and weak
and vulnerable as an embryo. So
OK, we can now get into an issue
of relative merits: there are
circumstances in which it is
alright to kill, but this
isn’t one of them. Then you
can no longer take refuge in
absolute prohibitions, and must
instead be ready to place things
on the balance. Why is it wrong
to prevent the further
development of a ball of cells
that might or (more probably, as
IVF statistics make clear) might
not implant in a womb (even
though it is never going to have
the opportunity to do so anyway)
in order to find a way of
alleviating some extreme human
suffering? What is the ethical
calculus that leads you to this
position? Not only does Jones
fail to explain it, he fails
even to consider it. The only
mention he makes of the medical
potential of embryo and
stem-cell research is to say
that it has been exaggerated by
its supporters. This man is said
to be a bioethicist, remember.
But OK, he is opposed to the
destruction of any embryo. It
must follow that he opposes the
attempted production in IVF of
any more embryos than would be
implanted – which means two,
in the UK. This would, at a
stroke, cause IVF success rates
– already pretty low, at 20-30
percent – to plummet. But that
would of course be a pretty
unpopular course, and so Jones
keeps quiet about it. After all,
it would seem a bit harsh,
wouldn’t it – and he is very
keen not to appear harsh or
unfeeling.
Now, you might have spotted that
all of this takes no account of
the soul. Indeed, for there is
absolutely no reason why it
should. But for Christian
readers, all the arguments seem
likely to carry so much more
weight if we can get the soul in
there as soon as possible. Give
the embryo a soul, Jones seems
to imply, and it is ethically
unassailable. And so he marshals
arguments for why Christian
theology supports the notion of
‘ensoulment at conception’.
The problem is that the Bible is
all but silent on the issue of
when, how or to what degree
ensoulment happens during
embryogenesis. So the story must
be constructed by indirect
inference. This is where the façade
of logic really starts to
unravel. I can’t go through
all the reasons for that –
they are too plentiful – but
here’s a taste.
One
of the key arguments rests on
the example of Christ as an
embryo. To some theologians
(Jones downplays this), the
image of Christ in the womb was
unsettling, particularly if it
meant we were forced to regard
him as a developing embryo (even
in ancient Greece it was clear
that embryos acquire their form
gradually). So some considered
Christ to have been created
fully formed – as a kind of
homunculus – at the moment of
the Immaculate Conception, and
just to have grown bigger.
Jones, on the other hand, is
prepared to contemplate an
embryonic Christ, but stresses
that the Bible emphasizes his
humanity and rules out the
notion that Jesus could ever
have been a
less-than-fully-human embryo.
But souls are always possessed
by humans, and so if, as the
Bible says, Jesus was as fully a
human as any of us, then we too
must be fully human, and thus in
possession of a soul, from
conception. This insistence on
Jesus’s humanity rules out the
possibility that there could
have been something exceptional
about his embryonic status –
indeed, this whole argument
hinges on being able to make the
case against this exceptionalism,
so that what is true of the
embryonic Jesus is necessarily
true of us. (I know what
you’re thinking – is this a
modern theologian, and not some
obsessive medieval scholastic
debating angels on pinheads?
Bear with me.) But the problem
with that is that it overlooks a
few other things that do seem to
rather set the embryonic Christ
apart from your run-of-the-mill
embryo:
1. He is the son of God
2. He is in a virgin’s womb
3. He was created without human
sperm
Oh yes, he was different like that,
but otherwise, you know, just
like us.
Oh, souls. They’re amazing,
once you start to think about
them. One common objection to
the ‘ensoulment at
conception’ notion, says
Jones, is that some embryos
become twins. Where does the
other soul come from? He admits
this is a bit tricky: does the
old soul die and two new ones
get added to the two embryos
(but then where is the
‘dead’ being from which the
old soul fled)? Or does one
embryo get to keep the old soul,
and the other get given a new
one? Or maybe God knew that the
embryo would split, and so added
two souls in the first place?
‘The problem with twinning
seems less our inability to tell
a ‘soul story’ and more the
inability to judge between these
stories’, says Jones. ‘Until
more is known empirically, it is
difficult to know what sort of
story to tell.’ No, that is
not the problem. The problem is
that it is transparently obvious
that you will indeed inevitably
end up doing just that –
telling a story. In other words,
once the ‘facts’ are known,
Jones is confident that a story
can be tailored to fit them.
I’ve no doubt that is true –
and equally, no doubt that any
theological justification for it
will be a masterpiece of post
hoc inference. That’s to say,
any such ‘story’ will be not
only scientifically untestable
(we’re talking about souls
here, after all), but also
theologically unverifiable In
the process, incidentally, it
seems likely to turn God’s
supposedly mysterious creation
of beings into high farce:
‘Oops, looks like we need
another one of those souls over
here.’
(Note also that, while the
twinning issue seems like a
minor wrinkle to the debate, it
played an important role in
swaying the opinion of some
people involved in the debate
around embryo research in the
British Parliament between the
Warnock Report in 1984 and the
HFE Bill in 1990. They were not
so ready as Jones to sweep it
under the carpet.)
It was with growing dismay that
I realised, as I read on, that
Jones was not merely exploring
changing ideas about what the
soul is and where it comes from;
he felt he was telling us some
literal truths about this, just
as if explaining the origin and
evolution of species. What this
means is that he pursues some
arguments with the fine-toothed
rigorous logic of the
philosopher, but quickly moves
on or changes the subject as
soon as some gaping flaw in the
logic presents itself. Some
theologians, says Jones, have
worried about the idea that, if
all embryos have souls, then
most of the souls in heaven are
those of embryos that never
developed further. What are they
like? And what form do their
bodies take in the Resurrection?
‘This is not an easy
question’, he admits, and
leaves it there. But is it a
question at all?
Jones suggests that the soul of
an individual being is in some
ways synonymous with that
individual’s life. That makes
it easy enough to argue that
it’s in the embryo from
conception, which is arguably
the moment that a ‘potential
new life’ appears. But it also
forces him to slip out the fact
that plants too must have a soul
– though not the rational soul
of humans, naturally. Presumably
God puts them there too. So when
does a cutting acquire its new
soul? Given that it is a clone
(literally), does it need a new
one? Hm, no answer.
Or take this, from an article
by Jones in Thinking
Faith, the online journal
of British Jesuits on why the
latest Human Fertilization and
Embryology Bill (now an Act, of
course) is such a terrible
thing:
“It is more difficult to know
what to think about ‘true
hybrids’ which are the most
extreme kind of human-animal
embryo permitted by the Bill.
True hybrids are made by mixing
sperm and egg from different
species and would be 50% human
and 50% of some other species.
This raises the issue about
whether there is something wrong
with crossing the species
barrier. This is easiest to see
if we ask what would be wrong
with bringing a half-human
half-chimpanzee to birth. The
primary issue here is not how
much protection to give to a ‘humanzee’,
it is whether we should allow
scientists to create humanzees
in the first place (this was
actually attempted by soviet and
other scientists in the 1920s
but happily none succeeded). The
act of creating true hybrids
seems to be inhuman. It fails to
respect our humanity.”
I agree with Jones that making a
fully developed ‘humanzee’
(if it were possible) would not
do a lot for our dignity, and I
can think of no reason why it
would be desirable. But I wonder
what kind of soul Jones thinks
God would give it. Or how God
would decide the issue. Or how
we might decide how God would
decide the issue. Better to
evade the matter by saying that
scientists shouldn’t do it in
the first place.
I don’t object to the fact
that, in bringing a Christian
perspective to these bioethical
issues, one has to accept that
the issue of souls might arise.
That goes with the territory,
just as one would have to accept
that in other contexts
Christians may want to invoke
notions of heaven, resurrection
and so forth. But if, say, the
latter were to happen, I think
we might reasonable expect now
that we would not be forced to
contemplate such questions as
how big heaven is and where it
might be found. I think we can
hope that theologians have moved
beyond this sort of medieval
literalism. But Jones’ view of
souls has not – they are still
entities (albeit immaterial)
that have to be injected into
living beings at some point in
time, and accounted for in
quantitative terms. To many
people, the idea of a soul does
seem to carry some valuable
meaning, perhaps bound up with
notions of individuality and
human dignity. I can live with
that. But once you start trying
to make ‘soul’ a precise
concept, it seems you’ll
inevitably end up with this sort
of absurdity.
This matters partly because
people like Jones are the sort
who will get their voices heard
in these bioethics debates. But
it rankles me most of all
because he ends up cloaking his
position in the seductive mantle
of Christian compassion for
‘the least of these little
ones’, while – as so often
in these cases – refusing to
think compassionately about the
other side of the coin: the
compassion in treatments for
disease and infertility (not to
mention any consideration of the
role and experience of women).
In other words, ideological
principles before people.
