Our Bodies are Selves

Description

Our Bodies Are Selves’ looks at what it means to be human in a world where medical technology and emerging ethical insight force us to rethink the boundaries of humanity/spirit and man/machine. This book gives us a fresh look at how our expanding biological views of ourselves and our shared evolutionary history show us a picture that may not always illuminate who and where we are as Christians. Offering up Christian theological views of embodiment, the authors give everyday examples of lives of love, faith, and bodily realities that offer the potential to create new definitions of what it means to be a faith community in an increasingly technological age of medicine. Philip Hefner is Emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology at the Lutheran School of Theology, Chicago. He was editor of ‘Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science’, 1988-2007. His ‘Technology and Human Becoming’ 2003 is in widespread use as a college text. Ann Milliken Pederson is Professor of Religion at Augustana College, Sioux Falls, SD. She is the author of ‘The Geography of God’s Incarnation’ 2013. Susan Barreto is a journalist, whose work appears on the website of the Lutheran Alliance for Faith, Science and Technology www.luthscitech.org and ‘The Lutheran’ magazine. She is also editor of ‘InvestHedge’. ‘In one way or another, most of us work to figure out life. Meaning is complex and often elusive. We are especially challenged when facing the uncertainties of personal illness and decline. This text helps to show us the way. A new paradigm, ‘bodyself,’ forcefully challenges the old mind-body dualism of the venerable Descartes and some now antiquated views of medical practice. Hefner, Baretto, and Pederson’s perspective is compelling, with a reasoned approach that draws the reader in.’ Jerome W. Freeman, John C. Sall MD Professor in Medicine, Professor and Chair, Neurosciences, USD, Sanford School of Medicine.