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Well, the reader may be inclined to say, that is too bad. Someone should attend to that. But compared to the really significant issues the church is facing, it sounds pretty marginal, pretty academic. Nothing could be further from the truth. Impending developments in neuroscience, genetics, reproductive technology, and other fields, combined with already existing realities (abortion on demand, for instance, and the growing acceptance of euthanasia), are converging to pose daunting challenges to our sense of what it means to be a human being—what it means to have or be a living soul.

What sort of challenges? You don't have look far. For starters, simply read the science section of the New York Times every Tuesday. The front page for October 20, 1998, for instance, featured a story by Nicholas Wade headlined "Human or Chimp? 50 Genes are the Key." The article began thus:

Theologians may ponder the difference between God and the creature made in His image, but biologists have always asked a humbler question: How do humans differ from other animals? A proposal now under active discussion promises to provide an answer of possibly disconcerting precision.

The idea is to identify the genes that are special to humans by sequencing the genome, or full DNA, of the chimpanzee and comparing it with the human genome.

Wade goes on to speak both of the possible benefits of such research (including medical benefits; the scientists already engaged in this comparative work are studying chimpanzees' greater resistance to AIDS) and of ethical concerns: "the temptation to engineer more human humans through enhanced versions of the specially human genes, and the ethical problems inherent in trying to test the role of these genes by inserting them into chimpanzees."

The prospect of "more human humans" is indeed unsettling. And those enhanced specimens will surely share the planet with a number of less human humans, will they not?

From this article and thousands of others like it, reporting on the work of scientists and biotech entrepreneurs around the world, we can glimpse possible futures: not in detail or depth—such knowledge is not granted to us—but in rough outlines. No tabloid-style whoppers needed; the plain facts are more than enough.

The announcement, two weeks ago, of the first cloned human embryos shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone who has been reading the newspaper or watching the news. It is long past time for the church to catch up.

John Wilsonis editor of Books & Culture and editor-at-large for Christianity Today.

Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

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December (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45