Abstract
Meilaender agrees with the advocates of extending life that life is a good thing, a “blessing.” To want “more life” is surely understandable. Moreover, he acknowledges with them that human beings are free and rational and capable of quite remarkable interventions against disease and death. But he disagrees with their assumption that human flourishing can simply be identified with “more life,” especially when the project of extending life risks distorting the relations between the generations. And although Meilaender acknowledges that human powers can transcend some of the limits of the body, he worries that dismissal of our embodiment (as if bodies were merely the best prostheses currently available) risks transgressing those limits, not just transcending them.
We are, after all, bodies. It is a point underscored by the critics of the project of retarding aging and indefinitely extending life. And Meilaender agrees with the critics that our embodiment is not to be dismissed as insignificant to human flourishing. That we are bodies prompts these critics to locate human flourishing not simply in “more life” but in a “complete life,” an organically complete life that moves along the stages of youth, maturity (with its procreative possibilities), and aging, and that ends in death, by which we make room for the next generation. Meilaender acknowledges that the desire for a “complete life” is also understandable, but he denies the claim that a complete life—or human flourishing—can be adequately described simply in terms of a life shaped by the stages of organic life and ending in death.
In Meilaender’s Christian vision, human beings are “composite” creatures. They both are, and have, bodies. They are both organic beings and capable of transcending (some of) their organic limits. He notes that his conversation partners see part of the truth about human nature, but he wonders whether they do justice to our composite nature. In his Christian vision, moreover, human beings are “ecstatic” creatures. They must finally be seen—and their flourishing located—in relation to God. The human heart is restless, as Augustine said, until it rests in God. God creates human beings for a flourishing not of their own making, whether by technological power or by conformity to the organic stages of this life. God draws human beings in Christ into a life that is both “more” and “complete” by participation in the mutual giving and receiving in love that marks God’s own life. Such a life is a gift of God. Against the accusation of the critics of immortality that an eternal life would be “boring,” Meilaender insists that the blessings and delights of this life are mere intimations of eternal life in God. This life is good, but we will find human flourishing neither in more of the same old life nor in contentment with the stages of organic life ending in death. We will find human flourishing outside ourselves, ecstatically, in God. The appropriate image for a human life is not simply “stages” but a “journey.” We are in this life always “on the way” to a flourishing in God that surpasses our imagination but that nothing, not even death, can destroy.
In the remainder of the book, Meilaender gives an account of the virtues that belong to that journey. He names the first of these “generativity,” which is a feature of a life well lived in relation to the next generation. It is a virtue we need to cultivate and sustain against the possibility that the success of the project of retarding aging would alter the relationship between the generations. Generativity includes not just bearing children but also rearing them, teaching them, initiating them into a community and a culture. It requires generosity and chastens self-absorption; it prompts us to act on behalf of those who will replace us. In that context, Meilaender raises the question, “Why have children?” (p. 67). And he answers his question—and gives shape to generativity—by attention to the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. To have children requires faith that it is good to pass life on to the next generation, a faith “grounded in a sense of gratitude for our own life” (p. 69). That gratitude is finally funded by a faith in God, by the trust that our lives are the gift of a gracious God, and it is enacted in praise and in a generosity of one’s own. To have children requires hope. It is not a hope based on scientific progress in retarding aging or prolonging life indefinitely, as if human beings can completely control and master the world or the next generation, but rather on the confidence that God’s commitment to God’s creation can be trusted. Such hope is enacted in wisdom and generosity rather than in mastery. To have children requires love, which does not grasp the good gifts of life in the tight-fisted grip of the miser. It receives the good gifts of life from the hand of God and delights in them, but also passes them on.
Patience is another feature of a well-lived life, a mark of the journey toward a flourishing that is not our achievement but a gift of God. Patience is, in one sense, simply required by our organic and temporal nature, and cautions against any impatient effort to transcend our bodily and temporal limits. Patience, however, is not passivity. The patience Meilaender commends does not dismiss discerning use of medical interventions to restore vitality or to preserve life. Our human nature is composite, after all, and the human capacity to transcend (some of) the limits of our bodies is both part of our composite nature and a gift of God. But patience does resist the Promethean character of the technological projects that proceed as if our lives and our flourishing finally depend on our mastery of the world. Our human nature, after all, is not only composite but “ecstatic.” To learn patience is finally to learn to wait upon God for the gifts of life and our flourishing. Such patience frees us from the anxious attempt to extend our lives (and our youth) by our own efforts to master and control. It frees us for gratitude, for delight in the good gifts of life, which are but tokens of a flourishing beyond our grasping. We may even learn to see in aging the gift of a freedom from “the tyranny of accomplishment” (p. 87), a freedom from hurry, as we wait upon God.
Finally, Meilaender returns to the notion of a “complete life” and to the claim that a complete life is given shape by the stages of an organic life, ending in death. He does not deny that there are stages, but he sets them in the context of the journey. Following Barth (in Church Dogmatics III.4, 607–18), Meilaender argues that each “stage” has both its limitations and its own opportunities and responsibilities. The special opportunity of the aged is to live in the faith that God can be trusted—even at the limits of our lives and of our powers. And their special responsibility is to provide an example of that faith for those who are younger. God calls us and draws us toward a life and a flourishing that cannot be reduced either to “more” of the same old life or to an organic wholeness completed in death. In this life we are always but “on the way,” but on the journey we may see hints in this life of God’s creative blessing and promises of God’s eschatological blessing. We may even learn to acknowledge the incompleteness of this life in the confident hope that God’s grace and power can and will give to us both life and wholeness.
“Amen, brother” may not be altogether appropriate for a review in Interpretation, but perhaps only that exclamation captures my appreciation for this book. I recommend it for students and teachers, for pastors and for those who, like me, are aging and reminded of their mortality. It will not eliminate the ambiguities of aging, but it does nurture the comfort and the courage to face those ambiguities and the wisdom for a more faithful journey through them.