At the Margins: A Life in Biomedical Science, Faith, and Ethical Dilemmas

By D. Gareth Jones

As a Christian who has functioned at the interface of biomedical science and faith for the whole of his professional life, Gareth Jones is aware of the tensions and misunderstandings that frequently arise both inside and outside the church. In this book he argues that Christians should not underestimate the importance of scientific contributions to an understanding of God's world. He works this out by reference to his own experiences in approaching a number of contentious topics. These include the use of embryos in reproductive technology research; the place of vaccines in combatting viral pandemics like COVID-19; and understanding the gender debate. Other examples he uses are the treatment of a genetic condition like cystic fibrosis and the importance of using only donated bodies for teaching and research in anatomy. In working at these borderlands, he recognizes that the best of biomedical science brings glory to God and enhances human existence. All these areas are transformed by applying Christian values, such as the dignity and equality of human beings. Over the years he has learned how to be comfortable working in these borderlands, even as they raise questions that trouble many within both society and the churches.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Sep 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781666744736

Book preview

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A Life Mired in Conflict

Unexpected Directions

Life can take unexpected turns. I could not possibly have imagined when I set out as a medical student in 1958 that I would end up as an anatomist, and in particular a neuroscientist, and one with a profound interest in both ethical and administrative issues. Neither could I have contemplated that my thinking would be undertaken within a predominantly Christian context. In 1965, even as I started out on an academic career in the anatomy department at University College London, I still could not have envisaged that it would take me along such apparently circuitous paths. On the surface it may look as though not too much has changed, apart from changing universities and countries. After all, I am still in an anatomy department, and for many years neuroscience constituted the dominant part of my academic life; it was only after a number of years that bioethics gradually emerged and became integral to my academic endeavors. Alongside these developments was an additional one, and this was an interest in, and commitment to, a wide range of administrative undertakings. Throughout all these changes and transitions, I have sought to be guided by my Christian faith. I have never left behind my allegiance to science and the scientific method, nor to the commitment that, when used wisely and with discernment, this is an important means by which God blesses human beings. For me, the broad framework within which I have functioned has been that of a robust and well-grounded Christian faith.

My digressions into bioethics have never deviated from this fundamental stance. I have never become a professional (fully paid-up) bioethicist, but, as I have always phrased it, I am a scientist (more specifically, anatomist) with a serious interest in applied ethics. It was this that led me into the emerging field of anatomy and ethics. At heart I am a scientist committed to the rigors of scientific analysis. The same applies to my thinking as a Christian. I have never sought to leave my science behind, an attitude that helps explain my unease whenever I encounter theologians (and bioethicists) who seek to address questions around early human development, or a viral pandemic, with practically no reference to any scientific input. For me this amounts to a denial of the whole scientific enterprise and of all the good things that God has bestowed upon his creation through the human creativity underlying science and, in my case, biomedical science. Only in this way do we get a full-orbed glimpse into God’s wonderful world.

Neither could I have envisaged that these approaches would lead me into a world of unease and tension, on occasion in the academic world but more frequently in the Christian world. It is as if much that I have thought about and written about has been at fault lines, akin to geological fault lines, where there is always some movement but from time to time much more dramatic shifts of the tectonic plates as one plate rubs over another to cause a substantial eruption at the surface. The biomedical world is replete with developments that for some are disturbing and for others exciting but generally a mixture of the two. How else can one describe the furor in the reproductive area, whether it be the emergence and blossoming of in vitro fertilization (IVF) to CRISPR gene editing, or the production of artificial human embryos (iBlastoids) without resorting to the fertilization normally dependent upon eggs and sperm all the way to the production of human-monkey chimeras? Some days it seems the possibilities and ingenuity of scientists are endless, but with endless possibilities come equally endless ethical and, for Christians, theological quandaries.

To make matters more demanding, the immediate responses to most of these developments are either alarmist and negative or unduly positive. Neither is helpful for serious ongoing debate, but all too readily simplistic solutions or responses dominate. My role, as I have seen it, is to bring a Christian perspective to these fast-moving debates, taking seriously the science and its potential contributions to human health and the welfare of a broad swathe of people but always aware of the overconfidence of some scientists.

My Faith Journeys

My journey as a Christian began during my teens, as I struggled with religious questions and where they fitted alongside my growing awareness of evolutionary humanism and how it sought to make sense of humans within a vast, evolving universe. A dominant attraction for me at that stage was evolutionary thinking and evolutionary humanism, as in the writings of Julian Huxley, who even advocated a religion without revelation. I did not see any great conflict here, because I found these writings attractive and stimulating. What was of lasting relevance for me was the pull of broad evolutionary thinking trying to make sense of the world, the centrality of science and especially of human science, and religion. I found all in their different ways enticing and informative. I was not in a position to delve into any of them in great detail, but that was not of paramount importance for me at that stage of my thinking. Little did I know how significant each of these was to be as my life course developed and took form over the coming years.

My upbringing in a traditional non-conformist Protestant church had in no way prepared me for what I was to later regard as truly Christian thinking. I had not been brought face-to-face with the good news of Jesus Christ. I had heard about the importance of being concerned about the state of society, and there is no doubt this stemmed from Christian concerns. This was an expression of social Christianity, and one can sympathize with why this was so emphasized in urban South Wales, with its poverty, drudgery, ill health, and unrelenting work in coal mines and steel works. But there was no confrontation with the person and work of Christ in salvation.

I was searching for an elusive something, since I was well aware that my religiosity was not the answer. That finally came from biblical preachers in the Pentecostal and Evangelical traditions, through which I was learning more about the gospel and its Christ-centered message. Each year brought me closer to Christ as I read and thought more and more about Christianity from numerous, often conflicting, sources. Things were falling into place, and I was becoming increasingly knowledgeable about the gospel and convinced about its significance for me. I was also beginning to think about how the sort of Christianity I was being introduced to would fit in with my interest in evolutionary biology and anthropology. Everything eventually fell into place a month before I left the Welsh valleys for medical school in London, and the stimulus came from the New Testament and the apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans (Rom 10:1–4):

Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. I can testify that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened. For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.

This spoke directly to me; this was precisely where I was at. I had been trying for the previous few years to be zealous for God, to earn my salvation, and now I realized that there was only one answer, and that lay outside myself. It was to be found in God’s initiative and in Jesus Christ and in him alone. There was no need to argue one’s way into the kingdom of God or to prove that he was the creator of all things. He alone was the key to salvation. My life had been set on a new trajectory.

It is probably true to say that my conversion had a powerful intellectual core. It had taken place gradually over three years or so, and the elements had been slowly falling into place. While I am unable to put my finger on all the constituent parts, I had looked closely at a host of Christian beliefs alongside my ongoing fascination with evolutionary humanism. For me, some of the grand vistas of scientific thinking were far more compelling than what I had known of Christianity previously. However, an encounter with Jesus Christ was vastly different, and, as I came to appreciate in the years ahead, it was to prove intensely satisfying intellectually. But one thing was clear to me even at that time, and this was that I had no interest in a faith characterized by simplistic answers and a restricted view of the world and reality. I wanted an exciting vista, one that took serious note of the big questions raised by the world I was encountering.

Consequently, I have always placed major store by the centrality of the mind for the Christian faith, not some arid intellectualistic faith but one that consistently seeks understanding at all levels. I have never been attracted to an emotionally-driven faith, even as I concede the importance of the Christian faith for our emotions, our longings, and our strivings. The faith, after all, has implications for every facet of our beings. Nevertheless, for me the cognitive element is a crucial element I have never wished to downplay. I return to this in chapter 9.

The date of my religious awakening was well-timed, as it was just a month before I exited the Welsh valleys for University College London (UCL). I had little idea what lay ahead, nor did I have any insights into the caliber or character of the medical school that I was entering. Only later did I realize the significance of a medical school that was an integral part of a leading university that extended far beyond the confines of medicine and science. I may have spent too much time trawling around the stacks of the main library, but for me they represented a door into a fascinating, intriguing world, especially with their insights into the history of medicine and science. Against this backdrop, two influences in London stand out as crucial for my future development. The contrast between them is remarkable: a scientific humanist and an evangelical non-conformist preacher.

The scientific humanist was J. Z. Young (1907–97), head of the anatomy department at UCL. He was a zoologist and comparative anatomist, not a human anatomist, and was probably one of the foremost invertebrate anatomists of the century. He was one of the people who taught me to think, and a highlight of my time in anatomy were the one-to-one tutorials I had with him during my honors year in anatomy. It was the comments he made on my essays that were so penetrating and educational. I lapped up his book Doubt and Certainty in Science (1950) and the later Philosophy and the Brain (1982). During our preclinical medical course, he gave a weekly lecture on aspects of human biology, such as population numbers and evolution, and later published them as An Introduction to the Study of Man. I was engrossed, even if the clinically-minded were less so.

In religious terms, J. Z. was a leading scientific humanist in Britain, and yet it was he from whom I gained a huge amount of insight that was of inestimable value for my thinking and analyzing ideas and concepts. Years later, as I have looked back on this, it demonstrated to me that it is possible to learn from those with quite different philosophies and perspectives from your own. To restrict yourself to those with identical horizons to your own is to erect a fence around your world, and for me that has always been self-defeating and limiting.

A counterpoint to J. Z. Young was provided by Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899–1981), the other seminal influence on my thinking. It would be difficult to get two more contrasting figures. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, widely referred to as the Doctor, was minister of Westminster Chapel London. When I attended this church in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he was at his height as a preacher and biblical expositor, an intellectual of no mean stature. And so, while I have commented on the contrast, there was this similarity—they were both intellectual giants. And for me this was life-changing. In their different ways both taught me to think and analyze.

I lapped up the theology and the thinking, as my mind was stretched by the Doctor’s detailed analysis of Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians and a series of lectures on revivals. I can well remember Sunday evening evangelistic sermons on the later chapters in the Gospel of Matthew as he spoke about man, meaning human beings and their future. I was entranced. I had never heard anything like this before. This was an influence that has never left me, no matter how much I may subsequently have queried some aspects of Reformed theology as expressed in their twentieth- and twenty-first-century guises. It laid the foundations for my theological thinking and set me on the path of always doing my best as a non-theologian to apply theological thinking to all the applied issues to which I have given attention over the years. Unfortunately, perhaps, it has made me critical of papers delivered in science-faith conferences that provide good analyses of the science but fail to engage seriously with relevant Christian perspectives.

It was during these years that I started thinking seriously about going into scientific research rather than into clinical medicine. There were many reasons for this change of direction, and some Christians around me expressed the view that this was not the direction a young Christian should take. The reason: I would lose my faith. While listening respectfully to these dire warnings, I ventured on. My faith in God was too strong and too well thought through to be deterred by what I interpreted as well-meaning detractions.

I have always regarded myself as a biblically-based Christian in the sense that I have sought to be guided and directed by biblical precepts and applied principles emerging from these. I abhor being known by any label, since labels can be used to bring debate to an end and categorize people into alien categories. I have benefited from a wide range of theological writers, including those with perspectives quite different from my own, especially on ethical questions. In short, I have felt that I have benefited from a wide a circle of people of faith and of no faith. I have never wanted to limit the scope of insights available to me.

My worldview stems from the Reformation and its many heirs. While the dominant theologians have varied in their emphases, there are clear threads running through their stances, threads that have had a profound influence on my own thinking. No matter what the differences between many of these, they have been one in what have come to be regarded as the four characteristics of the evangelical expression of the Christian faith, the so-called Bebbington quadrilateral: ultimate authority lies in Scripture; emphasis on the atonement based in Christ’s crucifixion; the centrality of the conversion experience; the gospel has implications for how we live in this world.¹

These headings do not provide all the answers to any of our contemporary issues, but they are the ingredients from which I have never wished to depart. They constitute the essential thrust of my faith and of my way of thinking. They serve as the departure point for my analyses of, and attitudes towards, most topics, and to which I have sought to cling throughout what have frequently been turbulent waters. They provide the basis of a robust form of Christianity, a faith that is not for the faint-hearted. I have never had the slightest temptation to become a fundamentalist or literalist. This was not my background, and my thinking has always been far broader than this. I simply do not function in this way; it is alien to my DNA.²

Moving between Science and Faith

Throughout, I have sought to stress two prevailing drivers in my life: my faith and my vocation, or more specifically my faith as a biblically-based Christian and my training as a biomedical scientist. I find it impossible to separate the two, since each influences and informs the other. I have often had occasion to reflect on how different I would have been had I been trained as a theologian rather than as a scientist, or alternatively as a scientist with a secular worldview. While I cannot vouch for the accuracy of any predictions, there is no doubt that, on both counts, I would have approached applied ethical questions rather differently. I have never wanted to divide my life into distinct spiritual and secular compartments. I have wanted my life to stand as a Christ-centered one, where Christ is as relevant in my thinking about scientific and ethical matters as about church-related matters. On most occasions within the academic sphere (as within any professional area) this is not made explicit, but the values I espouse and the hopes I cling onto are, I trust, ones emanating from the Christ revealed in Scripture. It also means I am committed to the view that science can, in some instances, help us come to grips with the Bible and its interpretation.

I want people to think and be challenged so that they can work through their own responses to difficult problems. I have never viewed it as my role to provide them with ready-made answers or with dogmatic stances in murky ethical waters. For those who are not Christians, my aim is to sketch paths that are reasonable and that take the evidence seriously. I want those of faith to take the Bible seriously, and to use it to inform their thinking on very difficult and complex issues. Although the Bible does not provide detailed answers in many of the areas with which I deal, it has exceedingly helpful insights for those who seek to follow Jesus. Accepting that there will not be categorical answers to highly complex contemporary issues within the pages of the Bible, I have no doubt it contains helpful ways forward that will provide a context for responsible decision-making.

I am grateful for what science has to offer. I am also deeply conscious of the subtle temptations created by excessive dependence upon a scientific approach to reality, including the allures of technology. I reject any scientistic answers where science becomes the be-all-and-end-all of existence; that is to make it an idol, with quasi-god-like attributes.³ This is far removed from my stance that we should view Scripture and science as two sides of the same coin, where each has its own special contribution to make to a holistic view of God’s world. Each also operates within its own framework, and, for me, the respective frameworks are to be taken seriously and adhered to as far as possible.

Two passages of Scripture come repeatedly to mind as relevant to my dual quest. When children were brought to Jesus, not only did he welcome them, but he also used the occasion to shine light onto a basic truth about attitude: Anyone who does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it (Luke 18:17). Openness, honesty, truthfulness, and uncomplicated inquisitiveness are basic prerequisites for the life of faith. There has to be a desire to learn new truths and walk in new ways. There is yet much to be revealed if only we will listen and respond. Interestingly, very similar requirements are placed on us by science as we respond to new evidence and new insights.

The other passage comes from Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthian church, with its insistence on the pre-eminence of love over even such crucial attitudes as faith and hope. In working this out Paul reminds his readers that, at present, our understanding and knowledge are partial. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face-to-face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known (1 Cor 13:12). In other words, what we see now is a poor reflection of reality. No matter how it is phrased, even our most magnificent and compelling explanations and insights are, in the final analysis, limited and in time will be revealed as inadequate or at the very least in need of improvement. And this applies to both science and theology. This is a salutary thought for any of us, especially those engaged in cutting-edge academic endeavors. It is more obvious in the sciences, where the life cycle of concepts may be a matter of months or a few years at the most. This does not invalidate the earlier work, but it demonstrates all too clearly the transitoriness of so much we spend so much effort on. Ideas in theology may appear more steadfast, and yet there are cycles of interpretation, so that what was avant garde in the early 1900s is of little more than historic curiosity a century later.

Humility, and an awareness of our far-from-assured grasp of what may appear to be assured knowledge, are basic prerequisites in science and theology. We are limited human beings, and our limitations should keep us from pontificating in both areas. This should set the scene for rich dialogue with others, a willingness to learn from others, and hopefully to share perspectives with others. The fact that life is rarely like this, and that we erect rigid walls to shield us from outside influences, is testimony to our defensiveness and unwillingness to be open to others, even those ostensibly who have much in common with us.

One characteristic that scientists bring to the science-faith area is their discomfort with less-than-precise thinking and their lack of patience with vagueness. This may be why their writing tends to be much sparser than that of those in the humanities. Ideally, they formulate hypotheses or ideas which they then set about testing and disproving. While it would be unrealistic to think that scientists act like this in every area of their lives, if they are consistent in their thinking, they will tend to be logical and precise. This is a far cry from the grand conceptualizing of theology, as it deals with vast questions of meaning and God’s