Overview

This book provides both a biblical approach for addressing any bioethical question and an application of that approach to key end-of-life and resource allocation issues. The general approach explains what it means for a Christian bioethics to be God-centered, reality-bounded, and love-impelled. The end-of-life section explores such crucial issues as withholding and withdrawing treatment, suffering, and assisted suicide. The resource allocation section examines the medical, social, and other criteria that determine who receives scarce health care resources. A major case study opens and closes the book.

Full Product Details

9780802806307

Table of Contents

Reviews

James F. Childress --University of Virginia ""I enthusiastically commend John Kilner's Life on the Line. It offers a very careful and helpful interpretation of a Christian ethics as God-centered, reality-bounded, and love-impelled and then uses this framework to illuminate two major contemporary problems in health care -- ending patients' lives and allocating vital resources. In this book Kilner makes a major contribution to Christian ethics, particularly in its application to health care."" Arthur J. Dyck --Harvard Divinity School ""For anyone who wishes to learn what ethical guidance a Christian biblical perspective can offer when illness puts 'life on the line, ' this book is an excellent place to begin. . . . The book should be widely read: what is has to say will nourish the individual reader and will offer valuable suggestions for public policy."" Robert Wennberg --Westmont College ""Few contemporary issues are of greater importance than those addresses in this book -- ending patients' lives and allocating scarce medical resources. To these tough issues John Kilner brings appropriate Christian sensitivities, a wealth of biblical knowledge, theological and ethical sophistication, common sense, and considerable practical knowledge from his own firsthand experience in the hospital setting. Professor Kilner is himself a special resource that the evangelical community, along with the larger Christian community, should liberally take advantage of.""

James F. Childress --University of Virginia I enthusiastically commend John Kilner's Life on the Line. It offers a very careful and helpful interpretation of a Christian ethics as God-centered, reality-bounded, and love-impelled and then uses this framework to illuminate two major contemporary problems in health care -- ending patients' lives and allocating vital resources. In this book Kilner makes a major contribution to Christian ethics, particularly in its application to health care. Arthur J. Dyck --Harvard Divinity School For anyone who wishes to learn what ethical guidance a Christian biblical perspective can offer when illness puts 'life on the line, ' this book is an excellent place to begin. . . . The book should be widely read: what is has to say will nourish the individual reader and will offer valuable suggestions for public policy. Robert Wennberg --Westmont College Few contemporary issues are of greater importance than those addresses in this book -- ending patients' lives and allocating scarce medical resources. To these tough issues John Kilner brings appropriate Christian sensitivities, a wealth of biblical knowledge, theological and ethical sophistication, common sense, and considerable practical knowledge from his own firsthand experience in the hospital setting. Professor Kilner is himself a special resource that the evangelical community, along with the larger Christian community, should liberally take advantage of.

Author Information

John F. Kilner holds the endowed Forman Chair of Christian Ethics and Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and serves as the director of bioethics degree programs at Trinity International University, Deerfield, Illinois.

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