Abstract
Adoption has received a fair bit of attention from theologians in the past couple of decades, but perhaps nowhere so poignantly as in Gilbert Meilaender’s new book. He develops arguments related to common questions about adoption, yet what makes the book endearing is that he combines theological reasoning about adoption together with letters to his son. As we might guess from the book’s title, one of the key questions for Meilaender is the interplay between nature and grace.
Meilaender begins with a chapter on the importance of human history and nature. (In this chapter and elsewhere, he often uses biology interchangeably with nature. I simply note that there is more that could be explored here, especially in relation to Catholic understandings of nature that are not wholly about biology.) Meilaender names how bio-logy connects parents to children, and to broader families—and yet biology is not the only point of connection. Shared family history is also crucial to sustaining family ties; children who have little or no connection to biological parents but who have a robust shared life with adoptive parents might well say that their family is the one with which they have a shared history. Meilaender thus invites us to consider the puzzles that are posed when we think ‘about the meaning and significance of adoption … in which nature and history are not harmoniously ordered’ (p. 5). Through examination of literature (for example, a thought-provoking comparison of the children’s books Are You My Mother? and A Mother for Choco), other religious traditions’ interpretations of adoption, as well as theological writing about adoption from the past couple of decades, Meilaender argues for broad acceptance of both nature and history.
Meilaender follows this probing argument with a reprint of a letter written to his son. The letters in this book date from the early 2000s and were written for the popular Christian journal The Christian Century. They are beautiful reflections on the meaning of adoption, and dovetail well with the more prosaic chapters in between. In the first letter, Meilaender says to his son: ‘I hope over the years you’ll keep both of these truths in mind: that you owe much to others, and that we give you credit for what you’ve achieved. And really, you know, even though your case is special because you were adopted, both of these lessons are true for all of us. We’re all indebted from the start, before we are even able to form the words “thank you”’ (p. 26). In so saying, Meilaender hints at the discussion of grace that he will take up in the following chapter. He also directs readers toward another point: these letters crucially demonstrate that Christian questioning about adoption cannot be only for adoptive parents and children. Meilaender’s book rightly is to be seen as for the whole church, as we all consider our indebtedness as well as what it means to name both biology and story as part of who we are.
In this first letter, then, Meilaender’s opening words on history and biology come directly in contact with grace. It is a theme he then explores more deeply in the second chapter, on adoption and the New Testament. We are invited to see Paul’s use of huio-thesia (Rom. 8:23) as a reminder that all of us are adopted as children of God. ‘What the Spirit’s work of huiothesia does is give the place—the genuine place—of a son to one to whom that place does not belong by nature’ (p. 30). We must acknowledge the significance of nature/biology in that we are God’s creatures; but we must also recognize our own relationship with God as huiothesia. Our identity as Christians is to be God’s adopted children and this marks our very lives at every turn. Meilaender says that in the church, we learn ‘what it means to live in an ecclesial community that genuinely understands itself as united not by flesh and blood but by adoption in Christ as God’s children’ (p. 42). The ecclesial community calls us, in a variety of ways, to practice generosity and hospitality even to strangers with whom our lives intersect (most notably, in the Eucharist).
In this vein it is appropriate that Meilaender’s second letter to his son describes what it might mean to ‘live into commitments’ that we as Christians have already made to others even though we haven’t necessarily chosen those commitments in the ways that Western thinkers typically understand choice. He writes to his son: ‘Don’t imagine that the point of life is to set goals. Think, instead, that the point is to be faithful to the commitments already built into your life’ (p. 44). Just as with the chapter on huiothesia, this second letter invites us to consider the real implications of adoption for the whole people of God and the whole life of faith.
The least helpful part of this book was the third chapter, which Meilaender writes in a Q&A, almost Catechism-like format with fairly short answers directed to questions, and which includes rather little discussion of nature and grace. Granted, the questions posed are ones that frequently arise in discussions of adoption. Yet there is a much different tone than in other parts of the book and Meilaender is too quick to pass over some questions and answers that need more development in light of all that he has said thus far on biology, history, grace, adoption, and Christian life. Meilaender asks questions such as whether single people or LGBTQ couples should adopt, or whether adoption is mainly for the infertile. His short answers belie that these questions name topics currently significant for theological debates about nature and grace, such as those of sexual difference, gender complementarity, and procreation.
The third letter to his son reprises some of the initial themes of ‘natural’ and ‘historical’. This letter meshes well with the next chapter, a discussion of assisted reproduction. One of Meilaender’s questions in this chapter is whether ‘those who adopt do something quite different from what is done by those who make use of new reproductive technologies’ (p. 84). He articulates some of the arguments (pro and con) related to assisted reproduction. On his view, the arguments often unhelpfully emphasize either the importance of blood ties and genetic parenthood, or prioritize a view of God’s graciousness that sees ‘that Christianity does not think it a “tragedy” to be childless’ (p. 79). Against both these, Meilaender draws on his earlier expansive work on nature and grace to suggest that neither of them can quite be true: God’s gracious work in the created world suggests something right about biological parenthood, but, at the same time, over-privileging biological parenthood to the point of seeking some assisted reproduction methods such as in-vitro fertilization can make children seem to be consumer goods, to be desired and sought for oneself. From his Lutheran perspective, Meilaender raises serious concerns about assisted reproduction but still states: ‘we may not want to say that an action is wrong, even though we may also be reluctant to encourage it and inclined to discourage it’ (p. 84). From my reading of his arguments, however, and from my Catholic vantage point, it is difficult for me to think why, if what he suggests about consumer goods is true, we shouldn’t name assisted reproduction as wrong. This is most especially because of the kind of history in which these children are involved, a story in which ‘it will be hard not to commit ourselves to producing the best child possible’, that is to say, a story of eugenics (p. 85).
The final letter to his son emphasizes the importance of adoption in Christian life, especially visible in the sacrament of baptism: ‘Parents hand their child over to God in baptism, and the child becomes part of that new family, the body of Christ’ (p. 88). I would have loved to see further development of this theme in the final chapter of the book. I think it is a theme that needs more engagement.
However, the final discussion deals with adopting embryos. Its presence in this book is intriguing partly because embryo adoption is almost exclusively a Roman Catholic bioethics conversation, so Meilaender’s voice is especially welcome. The connection to adoption is quite simply because one of the proposed solutions to the presence of the ‘hundreds of thousands of frozen embryos’ (p. 91) that have been harvested for the purposes of assisted reproduction but which languish in various locations, is for them to be ‘adopted’ and carried to term by women.
Meilander articulates some of the Roman Catholic arguments against embryo adoption, but suggests that these arguments (‘for the inseparability of love-giving and life-giving within marriage, for children who are not products but who share with us an equal human dignity, and for a woman’s body as the place of her personal presence’, p. 98) are more about assisted reproduction than they are about adoption. Meilaender’s argument, instead, is to compare embryos in need of adoption with already-born children also in need of adoption. In the comparison, he finds that if already-born children are not adopted into families, they face serious harms; on the other hand, embryos that are not adopted and simply remain frozen ‘do not experience new harm’ (p. 104). We live in a world of limited capacities, and ought therefore to direct our attention toward the people in most serious need. Meilaender therefore speaks against embryo adoption and, in the conclusion to this chapter, suggests as an alternative removing the embryos from frozen storage and providing them with the equivalent of a Christian burial.
I find myself intrigued by the argument for Christian burial but much less convinced by the comparison of these forms of adoption. Some of the possible arguments I could envision developing include the following. First, it is not clear how much the question of embryo adoption compares with non-embryo adoption. The couples who consider adoption of already-born children aren’t necessarily the couples who consider embryo adoption, for a variety of reasons. Perhaps those considering embryo adoption should be convinced to be part of the former group, as necessary. Still, I wonder whether the discussion of different forms of adoption invites a false and unhelpful comparison. Second, and along the lines of what Meilaender raises earlier in the book, I would be interested in thinking further about nature, grace, and what it might mean to ‘live into commitments’ we have to these frozen embryos, though we certainly didn’t choose those commitments. In other words, in this final chapter, I didn’t quite see the connection to some of the overarching themes of the whole book, and I would love to see Meilaender treat those more directly. A more thoroughgoing discussion of baptism, as I mentioned earlier, would have enabled a deeper articulation and development of the overall themes.
Meilaender concludes with a beautiful, brief, meditation on yet another story of adoption, the one found in the Anne of Green Gables series by L. M. Montgomery. He emphasizes, yet again, the importance of knowing God’s grace and believing in the fact that we are ourselves caught up in God’s life as God’s adopted sons and daughters, and that this indelible fact does not take away from the importance of nature and biological relationships even as we recognize the importance of adopting children. Meilaender has written a thought-provoking and eloquent book that deserves to be read not only by those interested in the topic of adoption, but by all Christians seeking to know more about what it means to be heirs of God’s kingdom.