Bonhoeffer and the Biosciences

The hermeneutics of human life is one of the most challenging issues in the fields of bioscience and of ethics today. Recent breakthroughs in bio science challenge the prevalent metaphors and paradigms which define human life in the human and natural sciences, that influence our understanding of «diseases», «illness», «therapy», «aging», «dying», and, consequently, also shape medical practice. In the essays collected in this book, scientists, ethicists, philosophers and theologians bring Bonhoeffer's ethics and his theological anthropology into dialogue with bioscience and explore current bioethical and anthropological issues. All articles were first presented as lectures at the Third International Bonhoeffer Colloquium at Freie Universität Berlin, 2009. Bonhoeffer's Ethics, as presented in this book, helps to articulate a semantics of human life which stimulates a debate between science and ethics, and which assists in finding fresh ways for understanding human life and the related tasks of scientific research and medical practice.

The Editors: Ralf K. Wüstenberg is Chair and Director of the Department for Protestant Theology at Flensburg University. He is a graduate of Humboldt-University Berlin (Ph.D. on Dietrich Bonhoeffer 2005) and Heidelberg University. In 1996 and 1999 he was Research Fellow at the University of Cape Town and in 2002 the Visiting Bonhoeffer Teaching Scholar at Union Theological Seminary, New York. From 2005-2009 the author was Visiting Professor at Free University Berlin, from 2003-2005 he served as minister (Pfarrer) in the Lutheran Church at the Berliner Dom. He is author and editor of several books. Stefan Heuser is Lecturer at the Chair of Ethics in the Institute for Systematic Theology at the University of Erlangen (Germany), and Vicar in the Evangelical Church of Hessen and Nassau. He is the author of several books and various articles in the field of ethics. Esther Hornung studied theology and history in Würzburg and Berlin. She is research assistant at the Institute for Protestant Theology at Free University Berlin. Her main interests are religion and politics, modernities, the challenges of ideologies, postcolonialism, and gender. She has published a various number of books and articles.