HUMAN CLONING: DESTINY AND RESPONSIBILITY

In the sixteenth century, the Reformed theologian John Calvin wrote this about childbirth:
Although it is by the operation of natural causes that infants come into the world ... yet therein the wonderful providence of God brightly shines forth. This miracle, it is true, because of its ordinary occurrence, is made less account of by us. But if ingratitude did not put upon our eyes the veil of stupidity, we would be ravished with admiration at every childbirth in the world.'
Four centuries later, we find that infants do not always come into the world through "the operation of natural causes." The miracle of childbirth has already moved beyond "ordinary meaning" through such procedures as in vitro fertilization. Now that we face the possibility of human life springing not from a fertilized egg but from a clone, we are making great account (some would say too much account) of this possible new way for infants to come into the world. Many people wonder whether this is indeed a miracle for which we can thank God or an ominous new way to play God ourselves. At the very least, it represents the ongoing tension between faith and science.
On the one hand, the church has sometimes taken an overly antagonistic opposition to scientific advances, so that Galileo was charged with heresy for supporting the seemingly unbiblical Copernican notion that the earth revolves around the sun. Darwin's theory of evolution (which apparently even frightened him a bit) is still opposed by some Christians who want equal time given to "creationism." Such examples remind us that the church must not assume that faith requires protection by being shrouded in ignorance. We should be able to celebrate human accomplishments, including accomplishments in genetic research, as the result of divinely bestowed gifts of knowledge and technical skill.
On the other hand, the church rightly understands that sin can lead us to use scientific advances for extremely evil purposes. We can never support the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake apart from asking serious moral questions about the implications of that which we seek to know. To date, we have not been able to keep up with the moral and legal implications of adoption, much less of the dilemmas presented by artificial means of reproduction. We certainly are not yet morally, legally, or spiritually prepared to tend to the difficult issues that would arise if human cloning became a reality.