Abstract
“Anatomy is destiny,” stated Sigmund Freud in 1912, and theologians such as Gilbert Meilaender have, knowingly or unknowingly, debated this claim ever since. Meilaender, a noted bioethicist and a Missouri-Synod Lutheran clergyman, served on the President’s Council on Bioethics (2002–2009) and is extremely adept at handling questions that arise concerning adoption practices, assisted reproduction, gamete donation and surrogacy, stem cell research, and the surplus of cryopreserved embryos.
According to Meilaender, claims of nature (procreation) and history (adoption) in relation to the bonds between children and parents are treated somewhat differently in three religious traditions: Muslim, Christian, and Jewish (21). Nature in the form of biological essentialism, the significance of blood ties, and anatomy have a more profound effect in Islamic and Jewish traditions (15). However, in Christian theology, as nature and history meet uneasily in adoption, huiothesia, or the act of giving someone the place of a son or daughter, becomes a focal point in the moral life of the relationship between nature and history. Thus, the act of adopting a child into a family is a reflection of God’s grace in huiothesia and reflects or intimates the redeemed community that is promised by God. This ensconces the adopted child not only in the eschatological history of the Christian community but also in a temporal home, a terrestrial place of belonging. In this way, grace and not anatomy (nature) becomes destiny.
For Meilaender, family implies wife, husband, and child. According to him, gay couples cannot model the “goodness of God’s creation” of Adam and Eve, male and female, who procreated. “We would have lost something of the importance in the goodness of God’s creation—namely, the way God so often blesses the mutual self-giving of a husband and a wife with the gift of a child. That child is God’s ‘yes’ to his creation” (48). Also, adoption by a single parent should be considered a “second best approach” (57), and caution is urged for those considering adoption of children from differing races and nationalities. According to Meilaender, infertile Christian couples should never become desperate. Anatomy is not destiny.
Assisted reproduction is becoming more prevalent and with this reality, Meilaender offers caution. Once a couple decides to “produce” a child, it will be tempting not to commit to producing the best child possible (84). This has already increased the desire for preimplantation genetic diagnosis in which embryos are screened and selected. Meilaender’s reaction to this as well as the discarding of unused or surplus embryos is value-laden. Embryos are “the weakest of human beings,” and their disposal, their dying, could best be accompanied by religious ritual.
Notwithstanding all of the valuable insights and notable accomplishments of Meilaender’s ethical work—especially concerning assisted reproduction as well as “adoption embryos,” I offer recommendations by way of critique. My critique centers on two issues: the limitation of his God-images and his focus on creation to the exclusion of the incarnation. First, God as adoptive Father is the sole image that Meilaender utilizes in his work on forming families by grace on both the divine and human levels. What is lacking is the imagery of God as relinquishing Parent, the One who never forces, coerces, or shames a “child” into coming home. The agony of watching a rebellious child turn from the family is a stratum of suffering that too many parents know. Not all children come home.
Second, the book pivots on the model of family established in Adam and Eve in the account of creation in Genesis. The fulcrum is the concept of huiothesia. It is noteworthy that the incarnation is not highlighted as significant to this topic of adoption or engaged in his formulation of the family as a gift from a gracious God. It is there, in the incarnation, that we see a single, unmarried woman bear a child. The unlikelihood that a lowly, Jewish peasant girl would be chosen as Theotokos [“God-bearer”] is indeed a great reversal in “the nature of things.” Furthermore, it is here we observe the first family of Scripture: a single woman and later an adoptive father, Joseph. The incarnation highlights a non-typical family comprised of a biological mother and an adoptive father. Gay couples, single parents, biracial, and international families take note. Perhaps in the example of Jesus’ own family, we see this reality: anatomy is not destiny.