In De ciuitate Dei (ciu.), Augustine famously calls people with disabilities created on purpose by an absolutely competent God (16.8). On the whole, however, Augustine's views on disabilities in ciu. are often misunderstood. The statement about the creation of people with disabilities is part of a discussion of the theodicy question that implies that the goodness of people with disabilities is not open to experience and must be accepted on faith. This negative background assumption results from Augustine's view that dignity (...) emerges from the embodied beauty, rationality, and utility of the ensouled body (22). Augustine gives several examples of how disabilities reduce dignity along with these dimensions, as “deformity defeats beauty” (19.4). In eternal salvation, however, disabilities will be removed (22). Martyrs will perhaps retain scars in heaven, but these particular scars will be of such a kind that there is “not deformitas in them, but dignitas” (22.19). If in the resurrection for eternal life God removes congenital disabilities that God created so competently, what is their purpose in the first place? Augustine regards disabilities as temporal embodied warnings of eternal corporeal punishment (21.8). As a concluding perspective, the alternative view of disabilities by the Apostle Paul will be considered. (shrink)

The development of Barth's ethics from the First Epistle to the Romans to Church Dogmatics I/1 -- The ethics of the doctrine of God in Church Dogmatics II/2 -- The ethics of the doctrine of creation in Church Dogmatics III/4 -- The foundations of ethics in the doctrine of reconciliation in Church Dogmatics IV -- Perspectives: responsibility and faith in the Triune God.

Technical advances in genome editing methods raise the question how autonomy should figure in theological ethical debates about genetic enhancements. Thinking primarily of the parents’ reproductive autonomy, several secular and theological thinkers argue parents should be allowed to ‘enhance’ an embryo genetically. Jürgen Habermas’s critique of enhancements in the name of the child’s autonomy, meanwhile, has been met with a critique of autonomy in theology. This article argues that theological views about God’s relationship to the creature provide strong theological grounds (...) for a new appropriation of autonomy. A liberal maximisation of individual choice is to be viewed critically, but more recent discourses on relational autonomy see certain forms of vulnerability contribute to a communal understanding of autonomy. This view dovetails with Habermas’s argument, according to which enhancements create too strong a temptation towards overly directive parenting—less in modifying an embryo than in the ensuing relationship to the child. (shrink)