Christian Bioethics 1995, Vol. 1, No.2, pp.

128-152

1380-3603/95/0102-0128$6.00 Swets & Zeitlinger

Orthodox Christian Bioethics

Fr. George Eberl
Director, The St. Anne Institute

ABSTRACT
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We cannot ignore the multitude of differences in Christian doctrines. There are more and more divisions and autogenetic beginnings. In talking about religion, we cannot ignore these differences, especially when we are trying to help the seeker. Neither can we ignore these differences when we talk about medical ethics. Care demands that we address both religious and medical issues. We must not, however, attempt to formulate a new religious bioethics in the context of any failure to address the differences and similarities as the record of Christian history reveals. History can reveal to us many things we may not know about ourselves as Christian. Understanding our Christian heritage is essential in order to understand our approach to any Christian bioethic. This essay will look at Christian history to articulate the differences in Orthodox and non-Orthodox formation. Primary focus will be on the Great Schism and the value of natural law theology in the development of Christian bioethics. Reference will be made to end-of-life decision making to clarify the issues.

I. THE INCOMMENSURABILITY OF ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN AND NON-ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN BIOETHICS The Orthodox Christian approach to bioethics and health care policy is strikingly different from that of Western Christianity. It focuses neither on natural law nor on scriptural quotations. It is not a body of rules or regulations or set of proscriptions. Orthodox Christian bioethics is, however, integral to a life lived by married Christians or by celibate Christians in monastic dedication and liturgical worship. Orthodox Christian bioethics invites those challenged by health care policy to step into the community of liturgical worship wherein bioethics is seen as a way to holiness. In simple terms, Orthodox Christian bioethics takes for granted that
Correspondence: Fr. George Eber, The St. Anne Institute, 550 Columbia Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74104, U.S.A.

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one has accepted a set of directives based on the revelation deposited with the Apostles and preserved by the Fathers.? One does not, therefore, do abortions, aid in assisted suicide, or practice euthanasia. These commandments result from the divinity manifest in the faithful through worship. Consequently, when the Orthodox are asked how they come to terms with a bioethical challenge, they defer to a life of holiness manifest in prayerful participation in the liturgical life." Surely, doing abortions, assisted suicides, or euthanizing are incompatible with a life, of holiness. Yet, while it is one thing to say holiness is not a simple set of rules to be followed, it is another to say how holiness is acquired (a holiness that by nature both knows and does what the commandments describe). Therein lies the key to bioethical awareness and fulfillment, the union of the will and action between God and man: "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Lord's Prayer). While Orthodox Christian bioethics answers particular bioethical questions with an invitation to enter into the liturgical life of the Church and Her mysteries, the bioethics of Roman Catholicism and various Protestant religions tends to respond with a list of rules." Orthodox bioethics is always properly a road back into the revealed undertaking of a Christian life. As a result, it does not provide isolated rules that are supposed to be satisfactorily applied outside the life of the Orthodox Christian. The nonOrthodox who seek guidance can surely be told not to perform abortions, commit suicide, or aid in euthanasia. But they must be told that honoring of such proscriptions is difficult and insufficient (Romans 8). One must also convert and become an Orthodox Christian. Only then will those proscriptions be part of a bioethics that is in reality the holy life of the divine-human body of Christ found on earth, the Holy Church. This difference in approaches to bioethics that separates the Orthodox from the non-Orthodox Christian is the result of a thousand years of growing apart, during which the various Western Christian religions took on characteristics different from their own Christian roots. When one looks back into the first millennium, one finds a common Christianity in both the West and the East, a common understanding of the Christian life of holiness.l Because of these common roots, many Christian religions employ similar terms, though they have now taken on quite different meanings as new doctrines were developed, thus separating many contemporary Christians from the faith of the Apostles and Fathers. One importance of a non-ecumenical approach to Christian bioethics lies precisely in the task of seeing the important differences hidden in superficial similarities. This essay will outline the origins of the differences among the Chris-

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tian religions and their implications for Christian bioethics. The goal will be to show how the differences that separate the Christian religions separate Orthodox Christian from non-Orthodox Christian bioethics. The account of the development of these differences will be the task of the next two sections of this essay. The fourth and fifth sections will focus on the distinctive character of an Orthodox Christian bioethics. The sixth section then studies by way of illustration, the Orthodox Christian approach to death and dying.

II. THE EMERGENCE OF TWO CHRISTIANITIES

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Two characteristic periods identify Orthodox Christian and non-Orthodox Christian history, the almost eleven hundred years before the Great Schism and the nine hundred years since. Persecutions and theological struggles characterized the growth of Christianity before the Schism. While Valerius Galerius in 311 and the Emperor Constantine in 313 freed the one unified Church from persecutions, the Seven Ecumenical Councils assembled to resolve disputes and maintain unity. Yet, old troubles reemerged and new troubles emerged, and continued for two hundred years preceding the 1054 Schism within the then existing unified Church of the Seven Councils. The Schism resulted in two Christianities. That Schism now divides Orthodox Christianity and non-Orthodox Christianity as well as the bioethics that emerges from each group. In fact, the incommensurability of their bioethics is an epiphany of the many and often conflicting understandings of theology and ecclesiology. The ethics and bioethics found in today's various Christian confessions and experienced in different views of reproduction, suffering and death reflect this early and great Schism. The multitude of these conflicting approaches to major passages of life underlie the importance of the non-ecumenical nature of Christian Bioethics. The differences that separate the various Christian faiths and bioethics continue to address matters of enduring importance. The dissimilarity among these many existing (and schismatically selfjustified) Christian churches makes it difficult for Christians to speak substantively among themselves. "Christianity" is now, more than ever, difficult to define. Conversations between competing confessions often break down after a necessary and somewhat meaningless and insignificant confession that Jesus Christ is Lord." A shallowness in inter-Christian communication reflects not only an inability to articulate differences clearly, but also the lack of clarity regarding the historical identity of

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Christianity. As Orthodox Christians we often find it difficult to express our commitments to other Christians because we understand similar terms differently from them. Trinity, grace and church have quite different meanings for the Orthodox and non-Orthodox. This problem of similar terms hiding differences is evident as well in discussions in bioethics. Not only are there real differences in the ways in which ethics and virtue are understood, there is much disagreement regarding what is at stake in the bioethics of reproduction and of death. For instance, we are not in agreement about the meaning of the "good death." Consequently, we must recognize that which separates us in order not to fail to recognize different understandings hidden in seeming agreement on terms. The term "catholic church" can help to introduce some of the fundamental differences between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Christian bioethics. "Catholic Church" was first recorded by St. Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 100 AD) who wrote: "[ w]herever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church" (Ignatius, p. 261). Catholic and church were always used together to proclaim the fullness and the universality of salvation revealed in Christ within the Church (Meyendorff, 1983, p. 7). The early Christian communities in Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, Alexandria and Rome evidenced a oneness and unity with Christ and the Apostles in theory and practice. They maintained, individually and in union the "one, holy catholic and apostolic" nature of Christianity. 7 Difficulties arose when different understandings of theology, ecclesiology and spirituality emerged. "Catholic" mutated to "catholicity" when other "catholics" separated from the original "oneness" and "wholeness" of the presence of Christ. Professor John Meyendorff (1983, p. 8), continues: [t]hese were the "heretics" (splitters of the truth) or the "schismatics" (dividers of the community). So, gradually, the term "catholic" was used as an equivalent of "orthodoxy," which designated the holders of "right opinions," who rightly glorified the God within the unity and holiness of the Spirit and in conformity with the original apostolic faith. The term "Orthodox Catholic Church" came to identify the community in which the fulness of salvation was and continues to be revealed and steadfastly maintained in spite of the schismatics.f The original "catholic church" community was shattered with the Great Schism. With the two emerging Christianities carne a different understanding of "catholic." "Catholic Church" identified for many those in Rome, who, once in unity, had adopted differing opinions. "Orthodox

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Catholic Church" referred to the Sees who retained the original teachings. Those who changed suffered a corruption of salvific wholeness. The significance of the Great Schism lies in the corruption of the "salvific wholeness." Salvation is sacrificed when one separates from the orthodoxy of the Apostolic Church. Characteristically, the wholeness of the Orthodox Catholic Church was expressed in the interdependence of doctrine and worship. Doctrines both expressed and protected divine life. The central doctrines of the Trinity and two natures of Christ as affirmed in the Seven Ecumenical Councils properly articulated the nature of the Orthodox Catholic Church (the Catholic Church before the Schism) and its wholeness. When doctrine is corrupted, changes in worship soon followed. These changes are evidence of the death that comes with the breaking of "wholeness." Today's Orthodox Christians identify themselves as the early "Catholic Church" now rightly called the "Orthodox Catholic Church." They proclaim themselves as that "one holy, catholic and apostolic church" (Antiochian Archdiocese p. 10).9 They see themselves as "the people" of God bound together in a New Covenant. They are a continuation and fulfillment of the original Old Covenant. Like those of the Old Covenant, the Orthodox Catholic Church saw and sees itself as a people called out in response to a deity who intervenes and, as the "kahal," remains united to the saving "wholeness." The Orthodox Catholic Church was and is "a people" who respond, not a people who create. 10 The idea of "creating a church" is far from Orthodox Catholic thinking. One can only join what Christ has begun. That which Christ gave is that which they join. That which they join is the community begun in the Old Covenant and fulfilled in the New. It is a community based not on isolated moral principles, but on an ontological and organic divine-human communion. The early Christian communities of Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, Alexandria, and their children in Eastern Europe (Russian, Rumanians, Bulgarians, etc.) are the continuation of this early "catholic church." Orthodoxies in America emerged when immigrating Orthodox Christians from these ancient Sees carried the faith from Greece, Russia and the Middle East to the New World. They all share the same "wholeness" and rightly call themselves the "catholic church." The Great Schism do.es not void the "wholeness" of these remaining Orthodox Catholic Sees. Their teachings are the same now as they were in the first thousand years. We acknowledge these two-thousand-year-old Sees and the newer Sees that are in union with belief and worship, as the Orthodox Catholic Church." 11 Absent from these original five Sees that comprised the orthodox catholic church are those of Rome

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and her Protestant children. This absence points to the Schism in the original "Catholic Church," which is the epiphany of the incommensurability of Orthodox theology and bioethics with non-Orthodox Christianity's theology and bioethics.'? The "wholeness" retained in the Orthodox Catholic Church is salvific holiness, and the cornerstone of Orthodox bioethics. It is a holiness beyond intellectual conceptualization and moral response. Though intellectual distinctions and arguments are important for the Orthodox moral life, they, for the most part, function as warnings regarding what not to do, regarding how not to live, regarding how not to be. They show limits that are real and heuristic. They are invitations to make a choice, for a metanoia to convert and to participate in the life of the Church. Conceiving of bioethics within the context of salvific holiness is in great measure exotic for many in the West who have trouble moving beyond a bioethics of rules and principles to a bioethics of holiness and virtue. Orthodox bioethics is properly part of a life of holiness, an intimacy between the divine and human natures. To see bioethics in these terms is to articulate the issues first and foremost within a way of life rather than within set discourses and considerations. In this respect, Orthodox bioethics contrasts with the natural law bioethics of the Roman Catholics. The Orthodox approach continues to stand in contrast even with attempts on the part of Roman Catholics to revise their theological approaches in the light of the postVatican II crisis of Roman theology. Walter Kasper, for example, observes: "[i]f Catholic theology is to survive at all, it has to free itself completely from the fetters of the neo-scholastic system." But he then proceeds to endorse the Ttibingen Catholic school and to see as integral to it the view that "theology must be scholarly, or scientific" (Kasper, p. 5). Orthodox Christian theology is not the product of scientific or scholarly activity; it is ultimately a liturgical theology. This is a crucial, indeed essential difference that divides radically the bioethics of Roman Catholics and that of the Orthodox, even after Vatican II. To advance this case, we turn now to exploring the nature of the gulf between the bioethics of the Orthodox Catholic Church and the bioethics of the separated Catholic Church of the West by exploring the different theologies that separate these religions. This gulf reflects radically different understandings of ethics. The difference between Orthodox Catholic bioethics and usual Western reflections regarding bioethics turns on issues so foreign to Western moral reflections that Westernized Orthodox bioethicists at times obscure the force and significance of Orthodox bioethics by using language that unwittingly casts their points in false terms. As this essay shows, Orthodox bioethics is not to be found through a philo-

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sophical exploration of natural law but through the mysteries that fund the Orthodox Christian divine-human relationship. Orthodox Christian bioethics is in its essence liturgically and sacramentally focused on holiness rather than on rules. This difference between the Orthodox Christian Church and the other Christian religions is subtle and crucial, but repeatedly misunderstood and overlooked. Even the best of Western theologians and philosophers seem to pass by it unnoticed. All the philosophizing of the Fathers is not necessarily integral to the theology of the Orthodox. The crucial divide is between pursuit of discursive knowledge and virtue verses a pursuit of holiness. This divide separates much of the philosophizing of many who are Fathers of the Church from their theologizing as Fathers. Here is the crucial divide between the Western academic appreciation of theology and the liturgical theologizing of the Orthodox. Here, too, lies the subtle but important difference between Orthodox bioethics and the bioethics of the various Western Christian religions.

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III. THE GREAT SCHISM AND DIFFERENT CHRISTIAN BIOETHICS In separating from Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem in the East, the See of Rome affirmed innovative doctrine. By the 9th century the Church in the West had changed its understanding of God (by adding the filioque), its understanding of ecclesiology (e.g., by claiming universal papal jurisdiction) and its understanding of marriage and the priesthood (e.g., by forbidding married men from becoming priests). Other differences in discipline and spirituality had emerged as well. Building on a new understanding of the Petrine Promise and the filioque, Christians in Rome attempted to assert their authority over all the Sees. Such was the case when Pope Nicholas refused in 861 to reject the filioque or to recognize Saint Photius as Patriarch of Constantinople (Nicozisin, p. 57f). The Great Schism was the consummation of a theological, spiritual, and ecclesiastical separation that had already taken substance centuries beforehand. Two different "catholics," the Orthodox Catholic Church of the East and the separated Catholics in Rome constitute this separation to this day. From 1054 the Orthodox Catholic Church and Rome continued in different directions. Though they pursued reconciliation, they never achieved it. The social, political, and theological differences had grown too deep. Still, the attempt at reunion in 1204 during the bloody Fourth Crusade

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was more coercive than consensual. The East, to secure military help and protection against invasion, undertook the Unions of Lyons in 1274 and the Council of Florence in 1438. Rome was willing to provide support if the East submitted to its authority and accepted its new doctrines. Against all odds at Florence, St. Mark of Ephesus resisted such false union. The death knell of Rome's attempt to fashion a union was when Pope Eugenius IV recognized St. Mark's brave refusal to agree with the new doctrines of the West. "If Mark has not signed, we have accomplished nothing" (Nicozisin, p. 70)! St. Mark understood that one cannot belittle theological differences even to preserve the Empire. By the fourteenth century the differences had widened further and the Schism had taken on further substance. The struggles of Gregory Palamas (1296-1359) reflected the increasing force of the differences regarding reason and grace (Meyendorff, 1964, p. 120f), differences that would have significant implications for bioethics. Palamas, in contending with Barlaam's dogmatic relativism, was able to preserve the Orthodox Catholic Church teaching on grace as the uncreated energies of God. Barlaam, building on the spirit of the Renaissance and Hellenism, considered the profane philosophers as "enlightened by God." In so doing, he reduced grace to a natural gift. Barlaam equated secular philosophical ideas with those of the Fathers. Palamas countered by arguing that the philosophy of the natural order does not bring us face to face with God. What he opposes is the idea that knowledge of God (and ultimately salvation) is available through reasoning in the natural order. The dispute was an argument over the nature and significance of grace. Palamas argued that grace was the uncreated reality of the divine that could not be found in a world separated from the divine by the fall. An appeal to a natural law theology or reason would not serve as a substitute. Palamas was resisting the reduction of the Christian faith to the profane which can lead to loss of salvation. At stake were different understandings of what it was to know about morality and the moral requirements of God. These differences, as we will see, support quite different bioethics. Here it is enough to observe that these differences form substantially different understandings of the moral life. In particular, these differences were integral to the growing interest in a philosophically grounded natural law theology which was part of a moral understanding that deprived the separated Western church and Western culture of the Christianity of the Orthodox Catholic appreciation of the moral life and bioethics as a life of holiness. These developments exacerbated the already fragmented and legalistic character of Western ethics and bioethics. If Barlaam had been correct, there would be no need for sacraments as

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the Orthodox Catholic Church understood and understands them. Christian bioethics would not be founded on the holiness manifest from within the worshiping community. Any appeal to an intellectual argument would be sufficient to show people how to live. This would change the role of the Orthodox Catholic Church from that of providing "salvific wholeness" to one of being a commentator upon independent intellectual and academic pursuits underlying bioethics. Actually, "any church" could comment as far as it produced reflections on natural law. The unique ability of a specific community to provide the "wholeness of salvation" would be lost and forgotten in the change of primary accent from that of the worshiping community to that of the academy. The church, or for that matter any well group (educated or not - religious or not), could then peddle salvation (given the premise that grace was naturally inherent in reason) through self-authenticating claims of enlightenment. Philosophical reflection could show how people should live. Bioethics could be a mere scholastic or discursive undertaking open fully to all without grace. Subsequent scholastic and reformed theologies and the contemporary character of bioethics reflect these aspirations. The legacy of the Great Schism is the proliferation of many competing groups arguing to establish "their own way" - "their own bioethics." Some are founded on the assumption of new revelations, others on the abilities to reestablish true Christianity through reformation after centuries of its universal loss or corruption, others on the ability through reason to develop new doctrines. The common denominator of novelty in each of the phenomena contradicts the idea that Christ, who is the same yesterday, has established the incarnate divine-human community, today and forever; with the promise that the worshiping community can experience salvific wholeness. Instead, innovative and creative theologies are developed as the basis for new ecclesiologies and bioethics. The whole concept that a new idea is needed is alien to the early Orthodox Catholic Church. Orthodox always addressed new problems with revaluation. Instead of creative theology or bioethics Orthodox Catholic Christianity offers the theology and bioethics of the Apostles and the Fathers. The Orthodox Catholic Church offers a liturgical bioethics because its knowledge of God and morality is knowledge founded in the transfiguring life of worship. In contrast, Catholic Rome offers a scholastic and natural law bioethics and the Protestants a scriptural bioethics. The Roman option became a model for others, even in the end for secular and many Protestant bioethicists. Presented with the choice between Christian mystery or secular reason many have chosen and continue to choose secular reason. Autogenetic and self-authenticating communities have followed the lure

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of discovering moral reason without grace. They have sought to know about good and evil, and to be like God, apart from the energies of God. 13 The result has been disconnection from the original Orthodox Catholic foundations for bioethics, where, when asked for an answer to bioethical questions, they hear again the Orthodox Christian response, "taste and see." 14 In embracing secular reason much of Christian bioethical approaches have stepped back from the liturgical mysteries wherein creation, and subsequent insight and ability, is restored through communion with the divine. IS

IV. ORTHODOX BIOETHICS IS NOT FOUNDED ON THE NATURAL LAW Because moral knowledge cannot be separated from true worship, an appeal to a natural law theology cannot restore the breach between God and man, and man and cosmos. Neither can a natural law theology provide the foundation for Orthodox bioethics. Although the Orthodox theologians Stanley Harakas and Vigen Guroian point to a natural law element (or foundation) in Orthodox thinking and theology; we must temper any attempt to find any Orthodox Christian dependence on natural law theology and place their observations in context. Harakas speaks of a "universal moral standing, a natural moral law" as a directing component common to our shared humanity (Harakas, p. 14). Guroian suggests that the eternal law is "imprinted in the rational creature as the natural law" (Guroian, p. 21). The natural law, however, cannot be known apart from responding with all our life to God in the mysteries. No moral order is objective and real apart from divine-human relationship found in the mysteries. The natural law and moral order can only be known through union with God. When Gregory Palamas argues against the view that one can know God through a philosophical examination of the natural order he appeals to the mysteries, especially baptism, as establishing communion with God. "From these two acts (Baptism and Eucharist) depends our entire salvation, for in them they review the whole of the divine-human economy" (Meyendorff, 1964, p. 160). All knowledge will be inaccurate and misguided the more one is separated from the natural law . The law of the Old Covenant was given because of our need for correction. Mankind was not "naturally" doing God's will nor did he know the law apart from God. The law was to teach of sin and incite repentance. What was unfulfilled "in" any natural law was unfulfilled "with" the natural law. The natural law did not keep us from sin (Chrysostom, Hom-

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ilies on Romans, p. 375), much less was sin abolished with the written law. As Chrysostom points out, neither by law nor conscience was man freed (Homilies on Romans, p. 430). Even the law of Moses does not give us accurate knowledge (Homilies on Romans, p. 423). Finally, and most importantly, even if the natural law provided a reliable witness to the good, it could not break the bonds of death. It is the curse of the law to which the mystery of the incarnation, death and resurrection of Christ speak (Antiochian Archdiocese, p. 11). The law tells us how mired we are in the clutches of death. The written law reminded us of what any natural law fails to produce. It pointed to the need for God's intervention (Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans, p. 375). In short, the moral law can not be known by examining nature without first knowing God. Moreover, if one could know the moral law without turning to God, such moral law would not suffice to guide the moral self. Appeals to the natural law are dangerous. They jeopardize the salvific life of the mysteries found in the community by reducing the mysteries to a secondary or optional role in salvation. If one could know God through a philosophical study of nature and without opening one's heart to the energies of God, one could realize salvation and ethics in ideas of selfactualization and self-empowerment. Guroian's use of the "rational creature" could suggest that the rational element transcends the fall and holds the key to ethical development. However, neither reason nor any natural law it might try to establish can bring us salvation. Since St. John Chrysostom tells us it is not out of ignorance that we sin (Homilies on Romans p. 428), being smarter may not help. Neither does reason have the power to envision the good. These comments remind us once again, that salvation is through deification, not through discursive reasoning over any natural or written law.!" Guroian's references to Romans and the Spirit seem to appropriate the work of the Spirit. He adds to the text "the Law of the Spirit," the phrase "speaks to the heart." Yet the text says "in Christ Jesus." What does it mean to be "in Christ Jesus" if it does not include participation in the mysteries? It is the cooperation of the believer with the efficaciousness of the mysteries that enables one to be in Christ and ultimately to be ethical. This is the work of the Holy Spirit in worship. For that which you had no power to do under the Law, now, ... you will be able to do, to go on uprightly, and with no intervening fall, if you lay hold of the Spirit's aid. For it is not enough to walk after the flesh, but we must also go after the Spirit ... (Chrysostom, "Homilies on Romans", p. 434).

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The Spirit is active in the mysteries. In the Divine Liturgy we proclaim, "[s]end down the Holy Spirit upon us and these gifts here spread forth" (Antiochian Archdiocese, p. 114). Within a natural law theology, the liturgical community, whose efficacy is in manifesting the divine-human body of Christ, is obscured, made suspect and abandoned (if not in form but more often in meaning). A natural law theology and bioethics can suggest that the individual can find salvation and bioethical insight outside the liturgical community. Liturgical bioethics fights against such individualism. The community (founded on the divinity of Jesus Christ) gives the individual identity both as a person and the ability to be ethical. Outside the community of the mysteries the individual can find only isolation and death. Communities with false teachers and teachings lead many sincere seekers astray.

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V. ORTHODOX BIOETHICS IS A LITURGICAL BIOETHICS The Orthodox Catholic Church is committed to a liturgical bioethics. Simply put: God is uncreated and man is created. Man is created in communion with God and that communion is broken with the fall. Death, the separation between God and man, characterizes the fall. In death man is subject to, and dependent on, the physical world for temporary existence. The will of man is in bondage, and his intellect is clouded. God and the future remain unapproachable. The material world, now plagued with corruption, works against people. There is no means by which humanity can by itself break the bonds of death and restore the lost communion with God. Lovingly, however, God comes and restores that communion. In this drama of the fall and salvation, however, death is the living reality of man's profound separation from God. In contrast to non-Orthodox Christians, the Orthodox do not understand death to be a part of creation. Death is unnatural, as is all evil. It is a scandalous perversion of the good. Physical death is not seen as an escape from an evil or corrupt body. Both the body and soul ultimately participate in salvation. The reality of being born into a world subject to death declares that people are blind to goodness and subject to corruption.!" Humanity is unable to manifest the goodness of its original created nature. Neither can it behave properly nor triumph over death. It is constrained to toil on the earth, in order to survive. Void of grace, man begins to survive at the expense of his neighbors. Humanity maintains self-importance and self-protection at the neighbors' expense. The inability to see and stop this behavior funds the unethical. Life becomes unethical because it lacks divine communion

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and is bound by death. Most important, however, is the understanding that just as mankind is unable to free himself from the bonds of death, he is unable to become ethical by himself. The moral life is properly the life of holiness, not just virtue. It requires for holiness a knowledge and response that is drawn from a liturgical relationship with the incarnate Christ. Help must first come from the divine. The incarnation provides an ontological deifying "help" to creation. Divine reality is not given through an academic intellectual insight or a rational solution to a philosophical problem. No secular knowledge or effort can restore the needed relationship with God (Meyendorff, 1964, p.167f). The liturgical activities of the Orthodox Catholic Church offer divine recreation in the living Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Because of the presence of the divine (who is ethical), the recreated or restored person becomes a person with restored potential to be ethical. Therefore, Orthodox bioethics is not an activity that seeks first to articulate discursive answers. Instead Orthodox bioethics is foremost an activity that gives creation the reality of life not bound to death. The presence of the living God within the worshiping community is whole, not divided and diverse. The Orthodox Catholic Church realizes and maintains this divine-human existence in worship. The worshiping community gives birth to a life that is ethical.!" It is an ontological reality in which the uncreated is united to the created, the ethical to the unethical. The doctrinal and ecclesiastical separation that divides the orthodox catholic community brings a corruption of the ability for any person or community to realize and maintain the divine-human (ethical) existence. The inability of mankind to bridge the gap caused by the fall, and the efficacy of the Orthodox Catholic Church in its liturgical mysteries, provide the background against which one must address ethical and bioethical issues. Orthodox Catholic liturgical worship restores communion between God and man. It allows man to be "in Christ." Ethics is, therefore, an expression of the restored communion found in the liturgical life, not a reality founded on knowledge or a natural law. In particular, the Baptismal, Chrismation and Eucharistic liturgical mysteries effect the divinehuman restoration.l? Within many traditions Baptism has taken on the symbolic expression of a decision to believe. For many it has no power in itself. How can the mind even comprehend the magnitude of God? How can the decision manifest change. This, I believe, is the evidence of gnostic academic theologies.Yln stark contrast Orthodox tradition understands that the Spirit descends upon the baptismal waters as in the creation account in Genesis (Gen. 1:2). Something new is created in both events.

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The new divine-human creation in baptism provides the foundation for seeing, choosing and doing correctly (ethically). Chrysostom (Homilies on Romans, p. 410) tells us that baptism sets aright free choice.?! Chrismati on enhances the divine-human relationship by sealing the person with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Bishops or priests anoint the forehead, eyes, ears, mouth, heart, hands and feet with the holy chrism to "seal" with the Holy Spirit. With the seal of the Holy Spirit the person has the presence of the divine to do with his members as he ought. With the energies of God one has the ability with God to give rather than to take. We sustain the divine-human life born in water and strengthened with chrism in the Eucharist, which we partake "for remission of sins and the communion of the Holy Spirit" (Antiochian Archdiocese, 1971, p. 122).22 These mysteries are not magic. Synergy expresses man's response to the saving presence of God in the mysteries. Each person must now work out his own salvation (Phil. 2: 12). While the mysteries provide the necessary divine reality, the faithful must cooperate to manifest divine behavior. This synergistic relationship is foundational to Orthodox doctrine and ultimately to bioethics. It further identifies the Orthodox relationship between works and faith. Faith lies in the belief that in the mysteries of worship the divine-human life is born and sustained. Faith also implies an action wherein the faithful (as individuals and community) responsibly live out that divine-human (and now ethical) life. Synergy respects the person's right to uncoercedly choose as a matter of faith the mysteries and the effort. One participates in their own salvation. In this divinehuman synergistic living we find that ethics and faith are intimately conjoined. The Orthodox understand, then, that in addressing bioethical questions, they are directly addressing their faith in the liturgical mysteries and the works appropriate to them.

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VI. ORTHODOX BIOETHICS AND END-OF-LIFE DECISION MAKING Death, as separation from the divine, is the opposite of the synergistic life in the Orthodox Catholic Church. The synergistic person shares in the resurrected life of Christ through worship. Synergistic life meets death at every step and turns it into life. St. John Chrysostom (Homilies on Romans, p. 413) identifies four different kinds of death: (1) the death of Abraham; (2) the death of the soul; (3) the mortifying of members (Col. 3:5); and, (4) the death that takes place in baptism. This last death holds the key to life (and for our purposes, for proper ethical behavior and

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decision making). The "old man" is put aside in baptism.P The passions are destroyed in asceticism, God comforts Abraham even after death.i" It is the job of the Orthodox Catholic Church to protect against the death of the soul, a death that is evident even when alive. In contrast, medicine struggles with physical death. Secular bioethics, and often the bioethics of many Christian religions differ from the bioethics of the Orthodox in their views of death and salvation. They also differ in failing to recognize that death is our enemy or how it is our enemy. The orthodox catholic church recognizes in physical death the struggle for the soul. Consequently, when addressing bioethical issues Orthodox Christians are addressing issues of salvation. End-of-life bioethical issues dramatically show the substantial contrasts between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Christian bioethics by showing this difference in their understanding of how to approach the enemy, death. Orthodox Catholics are not preoccupied with sin. They are concerned with the bond between death and sin. It is death that they fight. The good news of the Gospel is that Christ rose from the dead. Physical death is destroyed. Yet physical death speaks to the death of the soul, a death that man can do something about. Still, physical death is involved with man's salvation. Outside a fully realized salvation man sins for fear of death. The fear of death forces him to survive at the expense of his neighbor. In so doing his soul is lost. The spiritual labor and goal is to die without a dead soul. In facing physical death the Orthodox Catholic believer finds resurrection for the body and the soul. With the resurrection and the divine-human reality found in the worshiping community the faithful can . synergistically accomplish this task of dying without a dead soul. 2S Consequently, it is at the critical time of death that Orthodox bioethics is so preoccupied with the condition of the soul. End-of-life treatment decisions must then be set within the context of salvation not merely of postponing or hastening physical death. This is the case because death is our enemy. Death brings upon us helplessness and despair. We are helpless to care for ourselves while others are at a loss about what they should do. Possessions lose their value and importance. These possessions offered false security and are now about to be taken from us. This involuntary asceticism recalls the voluntary asceticism that should have been practiced, as a preparation for death, throughout one's life. Death and her daughters, helplessness and despair, can be a friend by directing one to find God. They open the door of humility. Humility is where God is found. Humility as integral to holiness is not a natural virtue, but a broken-heartedness in the incarnate presence of Trinitarian mercy. Humility destroys pride,

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seeks reconciliation, and sets the liturgical synergistic stage whereon salvation is played out. Caution should be taken to protect against attacking death (via helplessness and despair) with active euthanasia or assisted suicide.t'' No one knows the difficulties the active euthanasia and physician assisted suicide will bring. Nevertheless, we will be reminded again that rules and reasoning will not provide the comprehensive ability to address the complexity of this practice.?? Life and death decisions should not be made in the face of death with a disdain for the body. We often wrongly think of spirituality as escaping the body. We can think of the withered body as evil and irrelevant to salvation. However, this is quite contrary to Orthodox thinking and to the Orthodox bioethics approach to end-of-life decision making. The person needs both soul and body. The body is to be restored and transfigured. We see its final destiny in the icon of the transfiguration, in which Christ shows the dignity and destiny that the body-soul (as well as the person) is to achieve. We decide with respect to the person as body and soul. The prayers for the parting of the soul attest to the work of the people in responding to this condition (Hapgood, p. 360f). Great terror now imprisons my soul, trembling unutterable and grievous, when forth from the body it must go: Comfort thou it, 0 Allundefiled One. For as an organ of speech I am altogether extinguished, and my tongue is bound, and mine eye closed. In contrition of heart I entreat there: 0 my Deliverer, save me. The destruction of ties, and the overthrow of nature's laws of union, and of the whole corporeal structure, cause me anguish and distress intolerable ... Lo, all my days are vanished, of a truth, in vanity, as it is written, and my years also in vain; and now the snares of death, which of a truth are bitter, have entangled my soul, and have compassed man round about. Treatment decisions should be directed toward providing time for patients to be about their spiritual business. Whether or not a person is ready for death, having completed his spiritual journey or not,28 it would be inappropriate for the patient to die alone after extended days in an ICU in the name of doing "everything possible" to postpone death as much as possible. All of life should have

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been a time of preparing for this end.i? One would hope that the patient has already had time to attend to necessary family and spiritual obligations. At the end, as we finally face death, it becomes time to "rest" in a "painless, blameless and peaceful manner" (Antiochian Archdiocese, p. 108). We can redistribute lCU resources elsewhere than to a desperate struggle to avoid death. Christians fail to be properly Christian bioethicists, insofar as they treat death and dying without recognizing the central task of attending to end-of-life spiritual obligations. "Eternal security" doctrines foster such a failure as do legalistic accounts of the rights and duties of patients, physicians, hospitals and families in the face of death. They fail to recognize that a "good death" is a good living and dying in a right believing and worshiping community. Failure to place bioethical concerns within the liturgical context of death and dying can reduce end-of-life decisions to academic, emotional or psychological exercises divorced from the work of salvation. Orthodox Catholics understand that Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. They cannot presume that one is going to heaven. Judgement remains as a pending reality. 30 They are sure that a just Judge receives the faithful (repentant and humble). They should then be about the task of getting ready to approach the Judge. Conversely, because of the failure to recognize the serious task at hand, it seems that many who have a doctrine of eternal security have an inner void which spiritually propels out of fear and despair to demand the heroic efforts to keep oneself or one's loved one alive. There is almost the realization that they are dying with important unfinished business. Bioethics cannot adequately approach what is at stake in death and dying apart from concerns and doctrines about salvation. Death provides an opportunity to teach as well as repent. Final confessions are often sought with impending death. Final prayers seek forgiveness and absolution. Who knows better the sins of youth (other than God)? They might have or need to attend to the business of repentance and reconciliation. Time is given and needed to attend to unfinished business. We should recognize and not hinder this God-given appointed "time." Not only must the dying attend to their own souls but they can also teach others. Their death alone teaches us to reflect upon our death and the meaning we place on life. Great wisdom and insight can be given to the family and community- from the dying who, when facing death honestly, see and judge their lives more sincerely as a whole. The power of this moment to teach others about creation and redemption is most extraordinary.

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Hear how a father shares with his children... The copy of the Testament of Reuben, what things he charged his sons before he died in the hundred and twenty-fifth year of his life. When he was sick ... his sons and his sons' sons were gathered .. , And he said to them, My children, I am dying, ... rise ... that I may tell to my brethren andto my children what things I have hidden in my heart ... Hear, ... give ear ... what things I command you. I call to witness against you this day the God of heaven, that ye walk not in the ignorance of youth ... (Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, 1994, Hendrickson, p. 205)
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The focus on the end-of-life decisions should be on the use of time and the struggle for salvation of the whole community. There should be a close link between the spiritual condition of the person and communion with God in Christ and family. In addition one must not forget that the prayer of the community is beneficial for the soul of the dying. We also give the holy Eucharist even in the face of the patient's mental impairment. Innocence and humility remain the proper offering, not intellect. After all, we regularly give young babies the Eucharist. Who knows the depths of the spiritual world and the power of the communion within the mystery of salvation? The compassion shown to Ivan Ilyich (Tolstoy) was a small step forward in developing some redeeming factors. Yet it remained far short of developing an all-encompassing religious meaning for his life and those round him. We must also put suffering into the context of salvation. Orthodox Christians do not seek suffering. In fact they pray for a "blameless, painless, and peaceful death" (Antiochian Archdiocese, p. 117). Within the mysteries we afford comfort. Also, rather than blaming God for suffering and death we recognized God's compassion in response to a world that we, with Adam and Eve, have broken. Still, in our repentance suffering becomes an image of suffering souls. We have not made great strides in eliminating suffering (humanity still dies), but we can do a lot about saving souls. Suffering tells us how ugly this distance from God really is, and how far God came to save and call for all to return. When discussing the allocation of resources the Orthodox can also recognize issues of fasting, of selling all and giving to the poor, and giving one's life for another. Orthodox fast from foods, pleasures, fame and other material and personal conditions. Fasting, the opposite of heedless consumption (gluttony), evidences the restored divine-human relationship. Adam and Eve's failure to fast in paradise brought separation

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from God and brought death to the world. Their sin had dramatic bioethic consequences. They were then bound to the land and remained in bondage to death. The faithful (the firstborn in Christ) restore their communion with the divine through fasting. They fast from the deceptive things given in the fall for temporary survival. They feast on the living food of the banquet table, the life-giving mysteries. They substitute eternal food for temporary food. So in facing death one can invite almsgiving so that all may be provided for. However, it takes ethical ability to act in this manner. It is the mysteries that can provide the necessary strength" Unlike Roman Catholic bioethical reflections on distinctions between ordinary and extraordinary care, between proportionate and disproportionate medical interventions, Orthodox Christian bioethics insists on placing all moral distinctions fully and completely within the life of deification and holiness. Drawing morally appropriate distinctions between ordinary and extraordinary medical interventions is not possible, unless those distinctions are found within a life of holiness. The same will be the case for Protestant bioethicists who attempt to frame bioethical issues through a scriptural exegesis. The difficulty will be that the Scriptures and the truth of Christianity are only fully known within the life of true worship and belief. Outside this liturgical context of true worship and belief, moral distinctions will always somewhat miss the mark, remain somewhat amiss and misleading.

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VII. CONCLUSION Orthodox bioethics provides a matrix of beliefs and practices that touches all elements of health care. Orthodox Christian bioethics is about calling all people to the worshiping community in which death is destroyed and the restoration of humanity is accomplished. Bioethics must be understood through this dynamic because bioethics is inseparable from the issues of living and surviving. Orthodox bioethics is an immersion into the life of the unknowable God who becomes knowable in the mysteries. God is addressed and humanity finds its identity, life and future in communion with the divine. This is a wonder and mystery. In liturgical worship the Orthodox encounters and becomes the truth of the divine-human relationship. Here one finds an ethics or bioethics which confronts death as an enemy, but without fear of death. Orthodox bioethics contrasts with other Christian and non-Christian bioethics in not being an ethics of rules, principles or virtues. It is the way to holiness. Orthodox Christian bioethics recognizes that natural law re"

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flections in so far as possible can give guidance sufficient neither for salvation nor for a well-constructed bioethics. Different understandings of the mysteries of Baptism, Chrismation, and Eucharist define our religion and distinguish Orthodox Christianity from non-orthodox Christian bioethics. Orthodox Christian bioethics stands out against other Christian bioethics because of differences in theologies of creation, fall, death, and salvation that shape the life of the Orthodox and which contrast with what has become the modern way of life and the life of many Christians. Orthodoxy is not a modern religion. It is a timeless religion, the religion of the early Orthodox Catholic Church. It remains ever vigilant to the challenge of new technologies, responding with age-old concerns for salvation. In everything, Orthodoxy asks for nothing less than everything. For the Orthodox there can be no answer but that of the transfigured life found in the divine-human mystery affected and sustained in the historical worshiping community of faith. This as much as anything goes against the grain of the time and babble of competing bioethics. John Meyendorff (1974, p. 176) articulates the view of Orthodox Catholic Church: [i]n the Byzantine tradition, there has never been any strong tendency to build systems of Christian ethics, and the Church has never been viewed as the source of authoritative and detailed statements on Christian behavior. Church authority was certainly often called upon to solve concrete cases, and its decisions were seen as authoritative criteria for future judgements; but the creative mainstream of Byzantine spirituality was a call to "perfection" and to "holiness," and not a propositional system of ethics. It is the mystical, eschatological, and, therefore, maximalistic character of this call to holiness which gives it its essential difference from the legalism of medieval Roman Catholic, and the puritanical moralism of other Western trends, and the relativism of modern "situation ethics."

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NOTES
I. Fr. George Eber is a Priest in the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese at St. Antony Orthodox Christian Church in Tulsa, Ok . and Director of The St. Anne Institute. Fr. George chairs a bioethics committee at a local hospital and is a member of its Board of Directors. These directives are not understood as a set of rules. They encompass what is known as Holy Tradition. Tradition is the whole of the Orthodox Catholic Christian cult, an interplay of events, practice and teachings. Within the context of this experience the reality of the divine life is manifest. This divine life manifested is bigger than the reality of what is seen and experienced. Tradition has the capability to respond to

2.

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3.

4.

5. 6.

7.

8. 9.

IO.

changing demands. It was the Tradition of the Church that responded to false teachings. The Ecumenical Council reflected in written form the life of the divine already existent in the worshiping community. There is nothing new developed but the reality of the divine at work. The Tradition is both a description of truth and the reality of the truth. It is the revealed presence of Christ, the work of the Holy Trinity. The significance and weight of Tradition reflect the true revelatory nature of the salvific events. To ignore them is to ignore salvation. At work in this article is the perversion of the Tradition by asserting the reason is greater than the revealed presence of the divine. Holy Tradition gives us married clergy, liturgical structure, and male priests (not priestesses), all of which are reflections of the inherent life of the living body of Christ, the ecclesia. Liturgy means work. Orthodox Christians are at work and in that work the reality of salvation (and correspondingly bioethical formation) are manifest. Refer to the concept of "synergy" below. Although both Romans and Protestants argue for sacraments and virtue, it is their belief in the "infallibility of learning" (Khomyakov, p. 43) that utlimately deprives the sacrament of its mystical saving power, making of it a mere symbol and fostering a dependence on reason. Rules soon follow. See, for example, Gregory of Tours, Vita Patrum (Platina, Calif.: St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 1998) The simple confession that Jesus is Lord is often an oversimplification. There are too many other questions that need to be answered before we know what this means. Who was Jesus Christ? What did He say and do? How do we know what we know? These questions are answered in many way, and, no doubt, form the basis for the hundreds of "Christian" religions. Apostolic succession requires both the laying on of hands and the continuity of teaching. Many argue a continuity of laying on of hands but fail to discuss the continuity of teaching. It cannot be argued in the Orthodox Catholic Church tradition that the laying on of hands gives claim to a continuity of grace despite a discontinuity in teaching! With some exceptions (such as the Nestorians and the non-Chalcedonians) unity was sustained, often against great odds (such as the Arians). Others also proclaim that they believe in "one, holy, catholic and apostolic church," by reciting the Constantinoplian - Nicene Creed. Ironically they do so while at the same time changing the meaning and making additions in the name of additional knowledge or willing support of additional moral doctrines. The result remains the same; the separation from that original wholeness of the Orthodox Catholic Church. The "one, holy ... " portion of the creed is there for very specific reasons. It can not be used to justify innovative doctrines. The idea of "starting a church" is alien to Orthodox thinking. Many self-generating Christian churches are started when someone claims an anointing to teach from and about the Bible. We must first understand that the Bible cannot start a church. It was instituted by Christ and the Apostles as a continuation of the Old Covenant relationship between God and man. All mankind was called to join. The Bible is a book published by that particular community, that community that existed with meaning and structure. The Bible then did not exist in a vacuum. The interpretation was already evident in the worshiping community. As such it does not stand alone. It comes packaged with worship and understanding. The Bible is one of the many existing texts belonging to the worship community. Secondly we must understand that to claim a new anointing one must somehow deny the earlier. This gets quite confusing, especially with so many teachers claiming a new anointing to teach (and

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II. 12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

each having a different interpretation - my how God does change). Such a practice denies the nature of the Trinity, corrupts the doctrine of the incarnation and perverts the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Orthodoxy throughout the ages is none other than those who have joined this church, begun by Christ and preserved by the Holy Spirit. "Orthodox Catholic Church" will be used interchangeably with "Orthodox (Christian) Church". Non-Orthodox Christians include those in Rome as well as the Protestants and their descendants. From an Orthodox point of view it might even be argued that the Romans are the first Protestants (Khomyakov, p. 480. The Orthodox make a distinction between the energy and essence of God. The essence is beyond understanding and approach. Yet the real God is know in his energies. God can be, therefore, unknowable and knowable. The holiness of God is not void in the energies. Grace then as an energy is not void of holiness, it is in fact not created. God is transcendent without being compromised or contained. This phrase is often sung in Orthodox services with reference to the Eucharist. When the faithful "taste" of the body and blood they "see." At question is the doctrine of knowledge. The soul in communion with the divine renews the mind. It is not the mind that renews the soul. This is also an important consideration when discussing questions of reason and natural law theology. A comment on "faith" is needed here. We must concede that everyone has "faith." We all believe in something. The question is what you believe in. It can be said that many believe in "god." What God are they talking about. This brings us back to the confusion that the multiplicity of faiths brings us. It is not sufficient to say we all believe in the same God, for some trust (or have faith) in a transfiguring liturgical system while others have faith in reason, or one particular person's presentation. It must not be understood that the Fathers rejected reason. Reason was a tool to be used. But as a tool it had its limits. In could not breach the separation between God and man, neither could it see beyond certain boundaries. Reason needed to be "saved." The Fathers took intellectual argument seriously (in fact many were trained in rhetoric - a training which often led them to the Christian faith) nor denied philosophy. These tools could reveal a great deal concerning moral obligations and the moral life. But unlike the West, the use of reason did not develop into a faith in reason. In this seemingly small difference in accent lies a major difference between orthodox and Western Christian understandings of reason and its role in morality and its contributions to ecumenical discourse. If one shares a common Orthodox Christian culture, then indeed reason should help to unite those in disagreement. Reason can be a heuristic, a rhetorical tool, an invitation to conversion. However, reason will not bridge differences in faith, for different faiths provide different initial premises and rules of moral inference. Nor will it substitute for the act of conversion. It is only in the liturgical experience of God's uncreated energies that one comes to obtain a moral constitution and grow in the knowledge of these premises that should articulate the moral life (or reality of the divine-human existence). It is in the liturgical experience, not in philosophical discussion, that one is taught God's statutes and learns to understand and live His commandments. Chrysostom proclaims that it is the sacrament that "makes our intellect brighter than fire ... " (St. John Chrysostom: Commentary on St. John the Apostle and Evangelist Homilies J -47, Homily #46 p. 470). In Orthodox theology death and resurrection are central themes. It seems that sin and sinful nature take up the emphasis in non-Orthodox Christian churches. (Remembering that the Orthodox do not have a doctrine of sinful nature. One is born into a world subject to death.) Death is the enemy that holds creation in bondage. We cannot underestimate the importance of this doctrine. It provides the basis for understanding

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18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

human nature, biblical texts, liturgical mysteries and their impact on bioethical issues. Liturgical life is not a ritual or a mere commemoration of the past. It is an event wherein something happens. When the faithful gather with the canonical clergy something happens; God is mystically manifest to effect a change life. When Orthodox Christians speak of restoring an ethical life they address the transfiguring reality of the presence of Christ. Such a transfigured life knows no evil and lives without want. See the following note. These mysteries are not symbols or rituals. In an Orthodox Catholic theology the symbol participates in the reality of that which it portrays (Schmemann, 1973, p. 135f.). Baptism is neither ajudicial act that frees one from some inherited guilt nor a symbol of a mental belief or confession. It is the necessary mystery in which the divine-human restoration is manifest (Schmemann, 1973, p. 37f). Orthodox theology does not have an anthropology that supports the idea of inherited guilt or the depravity of nature as understood in the Western Christian account of original sin. Humanity is born into a world subject to death. There is no idea of sinful nature, therefore, there is no need for legal justification. The world has, however, been broken by sin. Because no moral behavior or mental activity can break the bonds of death, the presence of the divine nature is necessary to make whole that which was fragmented. Chrysostom sets choice within the work of the Holy Spirit. He correctly proclaims that the will is set free within the context of the transfiguring work of the mysteries (sacraments in Western terms). The consequence of mysteries is the restoration of the ability to choose freely. The fall placed the will in bondage. Why are choice and will so important? They are the image of God in man. When man chooses good subsequent to the reality of the restored good given in the mysteries he is cooperating and proclaiming the salvific work of the Trinity. Mankind has to cooperate with the Holy Spirit to win the battle within (the Kingdom of God is taken by force from within). Choice is also important when discussing "synergy" and the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in relation to salvation and ecclesiology. All three mysteries use the material world to convey the reality of the divine. Water, oil, and bread affect the divine-human relationship. In Orthodox theology the material world is understood positively. The spiritual and the material are united. We know the unknowable God because of the knowable incarnate Christ. Remember that the person is a person only with body and soul. The resurrected body of Christ and the transfiguration of the humanity of Christ proclaim the goal and destiny of humanity. Orthodox Christian theology does not have a doctrine of depravity of nature. They cannot say that there is a sinful nature or inherited guilt. A person is born innocent, but subject to death. His will and sight are darkened and he sins now because of death. This "old man" is restored to a communion with God wherein the potential for holiness and ethical insight and behavior is restored. Abraham is referenced here to show that God is the God of the living even when they are "dead." This deadness that we experience is only a temporary event in the life of the person. All has been and will be restored because of and in the resurrection. God is bigger than death. We take our bioethical soundings from a resurrected reality and not a reality of finiteness within death. The Orthodox Catholic Church teaches that the reality of the resurrection is present in the worshiping community because the life of the resurrected Lord is present in the mysteries. The Orthodox Catholic Church already participates in the first resurrection. One does not "die" (as understood as physical death) and enter heaven, one dies

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26.

27.

28.

29. 30. 31.

to pride and the other passions and experiences the reality of heaven now. Hence the references to "taste and see" through this essay. Consider physician assisted suicide, PAS, in the Netherlands. PAS is considered to be a pain medication. See Henk ten Have and Jos Y.M. Welie, 1995, 'Justifying euthanasia: a critical evaluation of the current situation in the Netherlands,' delivered at "Ethics of Physician Assisted Suicide, Religious, Legal and Medical Concerns," Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Russian people have responded to many of their difficulties with humor. One such humorous story addresses concerns about physician assisted suicide. It seems that it was the custom ofthe people in the far eastern region of the now great Russian Republic to have a family member kill a suffering member of the family. It so happened that one such man was required to kill his suffering brother. When he raised the knife above his brother's heart he could not bring himself to kill him. When pressured to try again he went to a Russian friend in a nearby village and convinced him, after telling of his difficulties, to kill his brother for him. The Russian agreed but for the price of a half pint of vodka. After drinking the vodka the man killed the suffering brother. After a few months the first man became indignant that the Russian had killed his brother for only one-half pint of vodka. How demeaning he thought. He arranged therefore to get revenge. After hiring a fighting expert to pose as another dying brother he again went to the Russian friend asking that he kill another suffering brother. Again a half-pint of vodka was the agreed upon price. The Russian drank his vodka and unsuspectingly entered the room where the fighter was laying in wait. A tremendous scuffle was heard for what seemed like a long time. There were screams, shouts, groans and the breaking of furniture. Eventually the Russian emerged from the room having completed his job. He said, "This is difficult work, but you people are so stupid, why do you kill someone with so much life left in them?" With physician assisted suicide we bring to question at least the issues of the killing of people with life left in them and the hiring of others to do the killing. Should we dare mention our own thoughts? Life is to be spent moving towards, finding and manifesting the holy. Repentance. the destroying of the passions (greed, pride. etc.) and simplicity of life are to be cultured within the liturgical life of the Church. Our time is to be spent finding God, returning to God and establishing one's life in God. The Orthodox liturgy constantly proclaims: let us commend ourselves and each other and all our life unto God. Life is time to return to God. When we fail to take the time when healthy, death gives us an occasion to get about our business. We need to be looking for a good death. In the creed we proclaim that Christ "will come again to judge the living and the dead." The Orthodox faith calls for a simple life that abuses neither man nor creation. St. John Chrysostom tells us not to live beyond our necessity (Homilies on Romans, p. 400). Such an ethic combined with almsgiving would surely provide enough resources for those in need. Strength is not measured in human power, for there is no human power left at death. It is measured as "deification." Deification is the evidence of the reality of the presence of God within the life of the Orthodox Christian. When death comes knocking it finds again the divine life of the Trinity impregnated. Deification is not a moral response to a godly moral example. Neither is it an intellectual measuring. In deification mankind becomes an ethical reality and finds bioethical formation and direction.

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Church History.
Roberts, A. & Donaldson, J. (1994). 'The testaments of the twelve patriarchs', vol. 8, p. 9, Ante-Nicene Fathers, A. Roberts, & J. Donaldson, (eds.), Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts. Schmemann, A. (] 973). For the Life of the WorLd, SVS Press, New York. Tolstoy, L. (1981). The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Bantam Books, New York.