R. Albert Mohler, Jr., President The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

"I was convinced that there was still plenty of time."(1)

With those words the author Aldous Huxley looked back to 1931, and the publication of his famous novel Brave New World. Huxley's vision of an oppressive culture of total authoritarian control and social engineering was among the most shocking literary events of the twentieth century.

But just 27 years after the publication of Brave New World, Huxley was already aware of his underestimation of the threat represented by modern technocratic society. News that scientists had cloned an adult sheep from non-reproductive cells shook the scientific community, but prompted an earthquake of concern in the larger culture.

The cloning of the sheep by Dr. Ian Wilmut's team in Scotland raises a host of ethical, legal, and social issues which will take time to untangle. Yet, even as this reality began to sink into our cultural consciousness, further reports of the cloning of monkeys from embryo cells and attempts at human cloning raised the sense of ethical crisis.

The Cloning of Animals and the Ethics of Dominion

The simple fact that an adult sheep had been produced through cloning was a graphic indication of the remarkable advances made in the field of genetics in recent years. The achievement of a cloned mammal -- genuinely cloned from a non-reproductive cell -- was thought to be years away.

Yet Wilmut and his colleagues apparently moved the schedule ahead and achieved a genuine scientific breakthrough. The proposed use of the cloned sheep and the impetus behind the experiment is pharmaceutical research, but this limited purpose is but a hint of the countless purposes to which the technology can be directed. "Dolly," as the sheep is known, is the face of the future as the technology of cloning is advanced and applied.

What Are The Ethical Implications Of Cloning Animals?

At first glance, this question appears no more complicated than related questions concerning animal husbandry and breeding. After all, selective breeding designed to enhance the quality of stocks and herds predates the development of genetics as a science.

Once the basic patterns of genetic inheritance were observed, techniques intended to enhance genetic quality quickly followed. Over the past two decades, this has exploded into international agribusiness, and most modern animals produced for human consumption bear the marks of some genetic intervention.

Genetic enhancements such as the practice of "twinning" cattle embryos are now practiced wholesale in developed nations. But the arrival of "Dolly" represents an entirely new development toward the artificiality of animal life at the hands of human engineers.

According to the Bible, human beings are granted and assigned a dual responsibility by the Creator -- dominion and stewardship. Human beings, made in the image of God, are to exercise dominion and "rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."(2)

This extensive rule sets the human being apart from the rest of creation, and the other creatures. This rulership is translated into the intentional use of animals to human ends and the elevation of human needs and purposes above all other creatures. But the dominion granted to human beings is not inherently ours, but is a delegated rulership. We rule over the animals by the authority of our Creator, and thus we will answer for our stewardship of our rulership.

What does this suggest about the issue of cloned animals?

First, the acknowledgment of our delegated dominion should make clear that our rulership is limited.

We are not to take the authority of the Creator as our own.

Second, this principle of a delegated rulership should serve as a warning concerning the increasing artificiality of animal life at human hands.

The increasing use of unnatural means of reproduction leads automatically to a sense of engineered life forms as human creations. Put bluntly, we were not commanded or authorized to create new forms of life as extensions of our own designs and ego.
Nightmarish scenarios of unforeseen consequences are easily imaginable.

Further, the issue of cloned mammals also threatens the biodiversity God clearly intended as a mark of His creation. Cloned animals repeat the genetic code of the host animals, avoiding the necessary genetic mixing by natural reproduction. Performed on a wide scale, this could threaten to harm species, or even threaten their survival from disease.

The intricate questions of ethical means and ends revolve around every aspect of animal cloning. This is not a simple issue of a new genetic technology.

The ethical issues of animal cloning are real and unavoidable.

Without question, the development of cloning may provide advances in therapeutic technologies which will benefit human beings as well as animals.

Nevertheless, the technology of cloning also raises the specter of transgenic animals -- crossing species and creating customized new animal forms. Again, the Christian worldview warns us that our stewardship and dominion of other creatures is to be exercised within limits imposed by the Creator.

Many arguments on behalf of human "co-creation" with God are not biblically sustainable, and indicate creaturely over-reaching and hubris. Human beings are assigned responsibility for the care, use, and enjoyment of animal creatures, but we are not granted license for their mechanistic manipulation, transgenic innovation, or ruthless violation.

One need not accept the ideology of the animal rights movement in order to question the moral character of these new technologies which threaten the integrity of animal life. At the same time, abstract claims of the integrity of animal life cannot be posed in terms of ultimacy.

The distinction between human beings and the other living beings is central to the biblical text. Spiritual value is assigned to human life in a sense that is totally foreign and alien to animal life. Animal life is certainly not without value, as attested by the "goodness" of animal creation by the verdict of the Creator. But animal life cannot be assigned the highest value, for such would be an inversion of the biblical hierarchy of value and moral responsibility.

The Cloning of Humans and the Reproductive Revolution

Though the cloning of a sheep was the proof that cloning could be achieved, few thoughtful persons could keep their minds on the lamb. The cloning of human beings -- long limited to the domain of science fiction -- now appeared to be an impending reality.

Ian Wilmut accepted the fact that cloning humans would be possible. "There is no reason in principle why you couldn't do it," he acknowledged. Yet he added, "All of us would find that offensive."(3)

Though his first statement remains to be demonstrated, his second statement is blatantly false. It is simply not true that all of us would find the cloning of human beings to be offensive. Indeed, an editorial published in Nature advised that human cloning "is likely to be achievable any time from one to ten years from now. Ethical constraints aside, there are even some rare genetic and medical disorders for which it would be a desirable way for a couple to produce offspring."(4)

Bioethicist John Robertson agrees, adding that the cloning of a dying child or infertile adults might be morally justified.(5) Others, such as John Fletcher, a former ethicist for the National Institutes of Health, assert that the cloning of a baby designed to provide a tissue-matched organ or bone marrow could also be justified. "The reasons for opposing this are not easy to argue," Fletcher commented.(6)

The claim that the cloning of a human being could take place in the next few years came as a surprise to the general public. The idea of cloning a human being was quickly championed by some of the more eager proponents of genetic technologies. Others were more skeptical, doubting that the difficulty of cloning a human would be comparable to cloning a sheep.

Nevertheless, the technology is basically the same, and the achievement of a cloned human being is not likely to be far in our future, if it has not occurred already. This is an issue of immediate, urgent, and universal importance. The cloning of a human being represents a radical break with the human past, and with the established patterns of human life.

The very possibility of human cloning is repulsive to many persons. Harold Varmus, director of the National Institutes of Health, suggested that the notion of cloning a human being would be "repugnant to the American public."(7) Harvard neurobiologist Lisa Geller, who admitted that she could make no ethical distinction between in vitro fertilization and cloning, nevertheless confessed: "I admit is makes my stomach feel nervous."(8)

The cloning of a human brings to mind the sterile, dehumanizing images of Huxley's Brave New World, with its fertilizing rooms, decanting chambers, and embryo stores representing the technological perfection of artificial human reproduction. The reproductive revolution has already thrown a host of difficult ethical issues on the national agenda, but the genetic revolution is perhaps the greatest ethical challenge of the new millennium.

That nervous stomach to which Geller admitted is about all the secular worldview can offer in response to this issue.

Having denied the existence and authority of God the Creator, all that remains for modern secularists is the artificial morality of an ad hoc ethic. Any opposition to cloning -- human or otherwise -- is merely arbitrary. Business Week was positively ecstatic about the possibilities of cloning, and stated editorially: "The world should embrace the biological revolution, not cringe from it."(9)

Yet, incongruous though it may seem, the same editorial warned: "There is no question that the notion of individuals cloning themselves is not only repugnant but also raises important questions."

Clearly, Business Week's embrace of the biological revolution is not unconditional -- at least not yet -- but their editorial opposition to human cloning appears merely arbitrary and superficial. The possible development of human cloning raises a host of ethical quandaries. Who would be the "parents" of a cloned child? In an age of patented forms of life, could a cloned being be "owned," at least in genetic pattern?

Will parents seek to clone children in order to provide tissues, organs, or bone marrow for transplant into another child? These are but a few of the many pressing questions which will demand address. The secular worldview provides only tentative and provisional answers.

Does the Christian worldview offer a more substantial basis for the ethical evaluation of human cloning? I will argue that the Christian worldview alone can provide us with an ethical context and authority adequate to this task

In the Image of God: Human Beings and the Purpose of God

The biblical creation account presents the creation of human beings as the pinnacle of God's creative purpose. After creating the world and filling it with living creatures, God purposed to create human beings.

The human creature -- set apart from all other creatures -- would bear the Imago Dei, the image of God. While the exact nature of the image of God in the human creature is not identified in detail, it clearly represents the spiritual character and capacity God established in us, and it sets the human creature apart from all other living beings.(10)

Though the image of God in human beings has been corrupted by sin, it has not been removed, and this image is an essential mark of true humanity. Each human being is a special creation of God, made in His own image. Human beings share certain common characteristics and features, as well as a common form with specializations, but each is unique by the design of the Creator.

The status of human beings as created beings, each unique but all bearing the image of God, establishes a foundation for theological understanding. The fact that the precise character of the image of God in humanity is unknown to us does not mean that we have no general knowledge of its meaning. The Reformed tradition has identified knowledge, righteousness, and holiness as a triad of qualities representing the image of God.(11)

Each of these qualities establishes the human as qualitatively distinct from other creatures. Thomas Aquinas, the great synthesizer of the medieval tradition, defined the image of God as a function and capacity of human consciousness or intellect. This capacity exists in three stages, argued Thomas, rising from the potential knowledge of God, to the actual acknowledge of God, to the perfect knowledge of God.

John Calvin tied the concept of the image of God to the human capacity to glorify God, but accepted that every part of the human being is marked in some sense by the image, even though it is corrupted by sin. Herman Bavinck stated the issue clearly: "Man does not simply bear or have the image of God; he is the image of God."(12)

He continues: From the doctrine that man has been created in the image of God flows the clear implication that that image extends to man in his entirety. Nothing in man is excluded from the image of God. All creatures reveal traces of God, but only man is the image of God. And he is that image totally, in soul and body, in all faculties and powers, in all conditions and relationships. Man is the image of God because and insofar as he is true man, and he is man, true and real man, because and insofar as he is the image of God.(13)

Thus, the biblical view of human value is rooted in the revealed knowledge that we are made in God's image, and thus are image-bearers by our very nature. Bavinck's reminder that this is essential to true humanity is echoed by Anthony Hoekema's insistence that the concept of the image of God is the "most distinctive feature of the biblical understanding of man."(14)

Without the knowledge of the divine image, man does not know himself for who he is. This makes clear the decisive distinction between the biblical and secular conceptions of human nature and value.

The naturalistic understanding of humanity central to modernity accepts no theistic referent of value. Human beings are cosmic accidents -- the fortuitous by-products of blind evolutionary process. As James Watson reflected, he came early to accept Linus Pauling's simple statement, "We came from chemistry."(15)

Any value thus ascribed to human life is arbitrary and tentative, and necessarily self-referential. This explains why contemporary secular debates concerning the value or sanctity of human life are so inherently confused. We will ascribe value to ourselves by an act of the will. But, as the murderous twentieth century has shown, those who ascribe value to human life by an act of the will can deny that same value by a similar act of the will.

According to the biblical revelation, human beings, like all of creation, were created in order to glorify God. But humans were created with a distinct and unique capacity to know, reverence, worship, and glorify the Creator. He made human beings, male and female, of his own good pleasure, in his own image, and to his own sovereign purpose.

Thus, human beings are not mere biological artifacts, nor accidental forms of life. The special, purposeful, and direct creation of every human being in the image of God is central to the Christian worldview. Modernity's rejection and refutation of that revealed knowledge has set the stage for the rise of abortion, euthanasia, genetic manipulation, infanticide, and even genocide -- all in the name of social responsibility and personal autonomy.

Genetic Manipulation and the Eugenic Temptation

Since the rise of genetic knowledge, the eugenic temptation has always been with us. As Daniel Kevles notes, the desire to breed better humans goes back as far as Plato, though Plato had no conception that genetic knowledge would one day put that goal within human reach.(16)

Francis Galton's term eugenics (literally, "good in birth") is now a part of our cultural vocabulary, and the eugenic reality is on the front line of our cultural crisis.

The temptation to conceive human breeding in eugenic terms is powerful and, in one sense, virtually unavoidable.

No thoughtful person would suggest or recommend casual disregard of genetic knowledge regarding, for example, inherited genetic disorders such as Tay-Sach's disease.

But the advent of genetic testing and the exploding knowledge of the human genotype present entirely new eugenic opportunities and ethical challenges. The crusades of the early eugenicists were directed at limiting the reproduction of those persons or races considered "inferior" and the enhancement of the human species by the intentional breeding of those considered racially or individually "superior."

Eugenic experiments, movements, and theories were common in the early twentieth century in both Europe and the United States, and these often were presented as essentially hygienic and progressive in purpose.

Widespread knowledge of the eugenics-driven genocide of the Nazi regime pushed eugenics outside the pale of acceptable science and medicine in the western democracies -- at least until the rise of the new genetic knowledge after 1953, and the identification by James Watson and Francis Crick of the molecular code of DNA. Now, the eugenic temptation is back, armed with knowledge and technologies unimagined by the Nazi doctors and their eugenic compatriots.

The Human Genome Project represents the Manhattan Project of human genetics, and will present humanity with the greatest ethical challenges of the coming century.

Though this is seldom articulated or acknowledged in public, genetic testing currently available is used by some parents to decide if a developing fetus is worthy of life.

Be sure to read Part 2 of this article

Albert Mohler, Jr. is President and Professor of Christian Theology, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2825 Lexington Road, Louisville, KY 40280 Phone 502.897.4121, Fax 502-899-1770