Few hot-topics in our culture have more potential for conflict than human cloning. On one side are many who promise phenomenal blessings from various forms of cloning, while on the other are those who prophesy gloom and doom. A good question, then, is how should Christians think about human cloning in light of the Bible?
There are three main kinds of cloning. One is embryo cloning, which seeks to duplicate the process that nature uses to produce twins. Another is therapeutic or biomedical cloning, which creates an embryo so as to harvest its stem cells, which are useful for regenerating damaged tissue and organs. The third kind of cloning is reproductive cloning, which seeks to produce a duplicate of an existing animal. So far reproductive cloning has produced a sheep and other animals, but it is not know to have been performed with humans, which is illegal in many countries. Biblically, how are we to assess these kinds of cloning.
One place to start with ethical questions is the Ten Commandments. The sixth commandments forbids the murder of human life (Ex. 20:13). Because most people still agree that murder is wrong, the question becomes how to define human life. In my view, the sixth commandment ought to instill in us a profound conservatism when it comes to taking life, so that the burden is not on those who define embryos as human beings and not on those who deny them this status. Those in favor of cloning, especially biomedical cloning for the use of stem cells, vigorously deny that embryos created for this purpose are really humans, apparently because their intent is to keep them from ever developing very far into life. TIME magazine’s Michael Kinsey callously argues that since embryos do no have hands or feet, “there is nothing human about them.”1 I sometimes answer people with such views by bringing forth one of my little children and asking, “At what point after conception would it not have been her?” It is obvious that had we aborted or harvested one of my children as an embryo, it would have been the so-human child we know today that we would have killed. Philip Ryken rightly says, “There is little doubt that an embryo is a human being. What else could it be? It must be a human, because it is the genetic product of two other humans.”2 The Bible agrees, frequently speaking of human personhood for those in the womb (Ps. 51:5; Ps. 139:13; Jer. 1:5). Ryken concludes, “Once we understand this, it becomes apparent why embryonic stem cell research is immoral: It inevitably involves the destruction of a human being designed to be in the image of God.”3
Another reason why cloning is immoral is that it dehumanizes humanity. In 1995, the Ramsey Colloquium ruled that “A being that is human is a human being.”4 But that leaves human to decide what constitutes being human – that is, it leaves a certain small group of people to make such a decision. If an embryo needs hands and feet to be considered human, what about those born with defects so that they lack hands and feet? Are they not human? If being human requires reasoning ability, what does say about the mentally retarded and Downs syndrome children? What about elderly people suffering from Alzheimers Syndrome? To give sinful humans the power to decide the definition of humanity is a chilling prospect indeed.
Another concern we should have about cloning is the increased capacity for human folly and evil to manifest itself. This is especially true with regard to reproductive cloning. One advocate asserts that “human cloning allows man to fashion his own essential nature and turn chance into choice. For cloning’s advocates, this is an opportunity to remake mankind in an image of health, prosperity, and nobility; it is the ultimate expression of man’s unlimited potential.”5 It is not difficult to hear echoes of the original hubris that Satan displayed in the Garden, promising Eve that by rejecting God’s boundaries, “You will be like God” (Gen. 3:5). Given mankind’s track-record in producing utopias, we ought to view reproductive cloning with a particular dread. In the place of man made in the image of God, humans made in the image of sinful human designers are far more likely to become monsters than messiahs. At the heart of designer-cloning is a profound rebellion against God and a great pride that must surely go before an even greater fall.
Sometimes people ask if a cloned human duplicate would possess a soul and thus be genuinely human. I am not qualified to answer such a question, although I would be biased in the direction of dignifying any human with all the dignity God has bestowed on our race. But the question itself reveals an inevitable product of cloning, namely, that cloned human beings will be seen as tools rather than brothers and sisters. It is evident in God’s moral law that human beings are not a means to another end. This is an important objection to biomedical cloning (stem-cell research), that we sacrifice one human’s life to serve the interests of another. This would be greatly exacerbated in full reproductive cloning. It is inevitable that we would create clones to meet some desire of our own: be it companionship or recreation or labor. If we consider ourselves the creators and designers of cloned humans, it is certain that we will make ourselves their masters. At present, we create embryos for stem-cell treatments and grant ourselves the right to kill them. It is certain that we would regard full-fledged clones as our slaves.
Man always justifies his usurping of God’s role and authority by promising a new paradise. This was the case with the Tower of Babel, just as it was the Pax Romana and Nazi Germany. But the result is always cruelty and death. We must remember this when we hear and read the golden promises made regarding a new dawn for humanity through cloning. Cloning would make us Pharaohs over a slave people of our own making. God’s opinion of this endeavor was given not only in the Ten Commandments, but was acted out in his violent judgment of Pharaoh. In the end, cloning will enslave and destroy our humanity, just as sinful rebellion against God always does, and result in God’s judgment for the horrors we will inflict.
1 Michael Kinsey, Time, June 25, 2001, 80.
2 Philip G. Ryken, My Father’s World, (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2002), 133.
3 Ibid., 134.
4 Ibid., 133.
5 Patrick Stephens, “Cloning: Toward a New Conception of Humanity,” The Reproductive Cloning Network, accessed at www.reproductivecloning.net.
Rev. Richard Phillips is the chair of the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology and senior pastor at First Presbyterian Church Coral Springs, Margate, Florida
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