From 'Brave New Biocracy':
'What I fear is that the abstract, secular notion of 'a life' will be sacralized, thereby making it possible that this spectral entity will progressively replace the notion of 'a person' in which the humanism of Western individualism is anchored. 'A life' is amenable to management, to improvement and to evaluation in a way which is unthinkable when we speak of 'a person'. The transmogrification of a person into 'a life' is a lethal operation, as dangerous as reaching out for the tree of life in the time of Adam and Eve.'
''A life' is the most powerful idol the church has had to face in the course of its history. More than the ideology of empire or feudal order, more than nationalism or progress, more than nationalism or progress, more than gnosticism or Enlightenment, the acceptance of 'a Life' as a God given reality lends itself to a new corruption of the Christian faith.'
'When the Lord announced to Martha 'I am Life' he did not say 'I am a Life.' He says 'I am Life', tout court. This Life has its historical roots in the revelation that one human person, Jesus, is also God. This one Life is the substance of Martha's faith. In the Christian tradition, we hope to receive this Life as a gift; and we hope to share it. We know that Life was given to us on the Cross and we cannot seek it except on the Via Crucis. This life is gratuitous, beyond and above having been born and living. But, as Augustine and Luther constantly stress, it is a gift without which being alive would be dust.'
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