Pastoral Aesthetics

Abstract

Abstract It is often said that bioethics as a field began in theology during the 1960s but that it became secular during subsequent decades, yielding to other disciplines and professions such as philosophy and law, because it was felt that a neutral language was needed to provide a common ground for guiding clinical practice and research protocols. This common ground was provided by Tom Beauchamp and James Childress in their The Principles of Biomedical Ethics—an approach that became known as principlist bioethics. Pastoral Aesthetics recovers a role for religion in bioethics by providing a new perspective rooted in pastoral theology. Nathan Carlin argues that pastoral theologians can enrich moral imagination in bioethics by cultivating an aesthetic sensibility that is theologically-informed, psychologically-sophisticated, therapeutically-oriented, and experientially-grounded. To achieve these ends, Carlin employs Paul Tillich’s method of correlation by positioning four principles of bioethics with four images of pastoral care. In so doing, he draws on a range of sources, including painting, fiction, memoir, poetry, journalism, cultural studies, clinical journals, classic cases in bioethics, and original pastoral care conversations. The result is a form of interdisciplinary inquiry that will be of special interest to bioethicists, theologians, and chaplains.