Collection › LCMS Convention Workbook (St. Louis, Missouri) › 1981 · 54th Convention › Page 408
LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1981, Page 408

Scan: The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

408

THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS

Il. BY WAY OF RECAPITULATION

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down payment of the age to come.

While illness and death comprise an intrusion into life, they are allowed to
carry on their destructive work under God's permissive will as reminders that
we have here no abiding status and ought to look forward to the “‘city which
has foundations, whose builder and maker is God’’ (Heb. 11:10). At the same
time, pain and dying are experiences which can serve the further useful
purpose of recalling people to the awareness that they are not autonomous.
Life as a gift from God is an endowment whose disposition lies in the hands of
God Himself, working as Creator, Preserver, Savior and Sanctifier.

Against this background the suggestion of deliberately accelerating death
Tuns counter to what the biblical revelation offers by way of both moral prin-
ciple and spiritual insight into man’s nature and destiny as these are woven
into the fabric of God's saving intent. This situation calls for increased accep-
tance of the disciplinary challenges inherent in personal suffering as well as of
the opportunities for service to the ill and the dying. Concurrently, the poten-
tials of medical technology in all of its ramifications for good or ill make it
imperative for the medical profession to rethink the whole matter of life and
death in such a way as to do justice to the will of Him who created life in the
first place and who has redeemed it and still keeps sanctifying it

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Ill. BY WAY OF RECAP{TULATION

The incalculable advances in medical technology which characterize our
age have created extremely complex questions that call for a reexamination of
fundamental principles in ethics as they apply to the question of euthanasia.
This need has become particularly acute since humanity now has the power to
shorten or to prolong some form of human life almost at will. We are today
confronted in a more disturbing way than ever before by the issues of life and
death in their most mysterious dimensions.

We have noted the potentials for confusion that lie hidden in the use of such
distinctions as active and passive euthanasia as these are advocated primarily
by “‘social engineers’’ rather than by trained medica! personnel. For its basic
arguments this study has used the word euthanasia in the sense of mercy
killing, lamenting attempts by well-meaning humanitarians to use various
modifiers of the word to push their own views at the price of obscuring the
central spiritual and moral issues at stake in taking a human life which owes its
beginning, its continuance and its ending to nothing less than the life-giving
and sustaining power of the Creator.

We have stressed the need for care and concern in dealing with terminally ill
persons and have rejected the suggestion that every kind of extraordinary
measure must be taken to maintain existence. At the same time this study has
underlined the responsiblity of the medica! profession for looking at life as a
whole, since, in the last analysis, it is the physician's considered judgment
which enters into specific decisions on individual cases.

Certain legal questions raised by the irrevocable revolutionary changes in
the field of biomedicine have been indicated in the section dealing with defi-
nitions. Legislators have great difficulty keeping up with developments,
including such challenges as providing an adequate definition of death. As a
legal instrument ‘The Living Will has raised a whole host of issues crucial to
a proper understanding of the fuller dimensions pertaining to the issues of life
and death.

Some major elements of theological import have been presented to exam-
ine the issue of euthanasia from inside the Christian faith as this is articulated
in the Apostles’ Creed. Over and again we have retumed to underlining the
mysterious depths of life as God's gift. Specific medical cases were adduced to
flesh out the nature of the question of euthanasia.

People have been endowed with life for the purpose of living in response to
God's will by virtue of the fact that every human being is fashioned in the
image of God. The defacement of that image, brought on by humanity's
tebellion against the Creator, has been made good by the work of the
Redeemer, whose saving activity is continued by God's Spint. serving as the

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IV. GUIDING PRINCIPLES

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