Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Flourishing: Health, Disease, and Bioethics in Theological Perspective by Neil MesserElizabeth AntusFlourishing: Health, Disease, and Bioethics in Theological Perspective Neil Messer GRAND RAPIDS, MI: EERDMANS, 2013. 238 PP. $35.00The meanings of "health," "disease," and "illness" in discussions of flourishing are hotly debated, and Neil Messer sets out to clarify these terms from a distinctively Reformed Christian theological perspective. This is a massively important task, and one relevant to Christian ethics; definitions of health determine who receives care and what quality of care they are provided. Messer argues that human flourishing is about being teleologically oriented toward responding to God's call revealed in Christ. Health is, more specifically, what Barth calls the "strength for life" (xv) that is involved in this flourishing, and disease threatens this strength. The sciences can give us real insight into the details of human living in response to God, though they cannot answer ultimate questions about what makes a meaningful human life.Chapter 1 offers a literature survey of philosophical debates about defining health and disease over the past several decades. At one end of the spectrum, health is understood diffusely as the entirety of human well-being. At the other end, health is understood as the absence of disease, medically and statistically defined. Messer resides somewhere in the middle. Chapter 2 explores debates about the social and medical models of disability. Here Messer interrogates assumptions about "normal" health and argues for the reality of multiple possibilities for flourishing. Chapter 3 introduces Messer's explicitly theological perspective, wherein he examines four Christian sources: Christian practices of healing and care for the sick, Barth's discussion of health, Aquinas's account of teleology, and theological perspectives on disability. Chapter 4 reveals Messer's theological vision in its fullness: a "Barthian-Thomist" perspective that defines humans as creatures who are teleologically oriented toward responding to God's call as illuminated in Christ. Within this perspective, health is a discrete but crucial element of creaturely orientation, and disease and illness are evils that should be resisted through proper health care. Messer thus affirms the importance of bodily integrity without subscribing to a "one-size-fits-all" conception of flourishing that delegitimizes the lives of people with disabilities.The strengths of this text are many: Messer's writing is detailed, balanced, and interdisciplinary. He demonstrates a deep understanding of how and why theologians should critically appropriate the insights of secular disciplines, and he makes a convincing case for why a Barthian-Thomist approach here is not [End Page 220] only licit but auspicious. However, the detailed interdisciplinarity also causes some confusion in the structure of the argument. Messer's exploration of other disciplines is weighed down with excessive detail to the point where his voice often seems buried, and his explicitly Christian approach arrives halfway through the text when it would more effectively fuel the argument from the beginning. Furthermore, Messer leaves the answers to key questions, especially regarding the content of the universal proximate goods to which everybody is oriented, notably undeveloped (170–72). For example, although he suggests the importance of deemphasizing rationality as a constitutive part of human flourishing, he seems at the same time—possibly—to want to rehabilitate some version of it here (169). Overall, however, this is an erudite, provocative text on philosophical and theological accounts of health, and it can be assigned in graduate theology courses on ethics or theological anthropology. It will interest anyone exploring questions about Barth, Aquinas, bioethics, Christian approaches to health care, and theological uses of philosophy to conceptualize accounts of flourishing today.Elizabeth AntusJohn Carroll UniversityCopyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics...