Official Workbook PDF page source text

LCMS 2026 Convention Workbook: Reports and Overtures, PDF page 232

2026 Convention Workbook
197
THEOLOGICAL DOCUMENTS  —COMMISSION ON THEOLOGY AND CHURCH RELATIONS
THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS
9
are never valued on the basis of our merits or even for our functional capabilities, but always an existence that is “merely 
o w e d .”46 Bayer puts it so well: 
/T_his means that humankind — any human without exception — is, without any merit or any worth that he could 
grant himself or expect from other humans as recognition, unconditionally and absolutely recognized and val-
ued by his creator, redeemer and perfecter. /T_his means that he has an inviolable and indestructible dignity. Since 
this dignity is not conferred on him by any human person, no human being can deny it to him.
47
/T_his does not imply that a right view of human dignity /f_lows only from a theology of creation. Lutherans, following 
Luther, base their view of the dignity of man in a theology centered in the cross and in a theology of justi/f_ication. While it 
is “broadly anthropological” and equally applicable to all, we cannot escape the fact that it must also be seen through the 
lens of salvation and concerned with matters of eternity.
48
We are and ever shall be creatures, made by our Creator. However, the basis for our dignity rests on an interconnect-
edness of what Bayer calls “three irreducible respects. ” In addition to being made by God, we are those who have become 
corrupted and lost our dignity (
ROM. 3:23) and yet persons who have been redeemed by Jesus Christ and set free from the 
systemic corruption of our original creation. Viewed from the perspective of the cross, one might say that what makes us 
human is a universal need to be justi/f_ied by faith.
49
Rather than basing human dignity on something intrinsic to us, as if we owned it and were owed deferential treatment 
because of it, our dignity must always be viewed as a bestowed endowment. And because of the irrevocable and uncon-
ditional grant of dignity by the Triune God, it will always be extrinsic to our abilities, functional capacities and merits. 
/T_his last point bridges the gap between creation and redemption. Lutheran theology views both creation in Eden and 
consummation in eternity through the lens of justi/f_ication and the cross of Christ. Justi/f_ication addresses the loss of our 
original dignity and secures it for all humankind, as those for whom Christ died, regardless of one’s faith or lack thereof. 
In short, “ According to Luther, human dignity … is warranted only by the triune God: the creator, redeemer and perfecter 
of humans and the world around them. ”
50
But if we are radically and irrevocably dependent on God as our “creator, redeemer, and perfecter, ” then dependence 
on others cannot be seen as a necessary loss of dignity. Creaturely dependence marks and circumscribes the very meaning 
of our identity. To be creaturely is to know our true dignity as those created in the image of God. An embodied existence as 
creatures involves a dependence in faith upon the One who is Lord of life. It also means that we are placed in community 
where we willingly give aid to others and receive it from them.“When we act for the bene/f_it of another, we do not simply 
act heroically or philanthropically. We are doing what we have been given to do. As co-workers with God in the ongoing 
work of creation, we are given the task of supporting and securing the life of others. ”
51
Unlike arguments based on the instrumental value of a person (how much they can do, earn, contribute, their level 
of cognitive capacity or physical ability, and the like), Christians base their understanding of life’s preciousness on the 
46 Oswald Bayer, “Martin Luther’s Conception of Human Dignity, ” in /T_he Cambridge Handbook of Human Dignity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Marcus Düwell, Jens Braarvig, Roger 
Brownsword and Dietmar Mieth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 103.
47 Bayer, “Martin Luther’s Conception of Human Dignity, ” 102. Bayer cites Luther’s three seminal works on this topic of human dignity as /T_he Disputation Concerning Man (1536), On the 
Freedom of the Christian (1520), and his dispute with Erasmus, On the Bondage of the Will (1525). See also Andrew Ronnevik, “Lutheran Conceptions of Human Dignity in a Global Context: A 
Conversation with Indian Dalits and European/Americans, ” Dialog: A Journal of /T_heology 59, no. 4 (December 2020): 325–333.
48 Ronnevik, “Lutheran Conceptions of Human Dignity in a Global Context, ” 326.
49 Bayer, “Martin Luther’s Conception of Human Dignity, ” 102–103, referencing Luther’s central thesis 32 of the Disputation Concerning Man.
50 Bayer, “Martin Luther’s Conception of Human Dignity, ” 106.
51 Arand, “Personal Autonomy versus Creaturely Contingency, ” 397.
THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS
10
bestowed value of persons as created in the image of God and those for whom Christ died. As Bartlett and Rehder put it:
Christians do well to build our responses on the Truth of God’s Word, which says that: 
(1) human life is sacred regardless of condition or health, 
(2) God is Lord over all matters of life and death and we can trust Him to do what is right according to His will, 
(3) God has demonstrated His goodness and love for us in the cross of Jesus and nothing can separate us from 
His love, 
(4) God has a purpose for every life.
52
B. Death with Dignity?
Driving the engine of the “death with dignity” crusade have been two central ideas: (1) an absolutist approach to human 
autonomy and its corollary of self-determination, and (2) an emotion-laden desire to limit or relieve suffering.53 “A d v o c a t e s  
of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide believe that ‘dignity’ demands the freedom to call our own shots — when we can 
end our lives before we become ‘helpless’ and dependent on others to care for us. ”
54 Indeed, much of the literature in favor of 
physician assistance in the dying of patients takes for granted that patient “wishes” bear the weight of moral obligation.55
/T_his emotional tilt toward autonomy does not always come packaged with coherent rational explanations. /T_he same 
physician who would defend abortion on the grounds of the woman’s right to determine what should happen to her body 
might ignore a suicide note pinned to the shirt of an ER admission with slashed wrists and proceed to attempt to save the 
person’s life despite the patient’s expressed intents.
56 Beyond that, one might legitimately question whether “doing what the 
patient wants” can truly escape the physician imposing his or her values on the patient at the end of life’s journey.57
Behind the central arguments, however, stand a couple of additional factors. First, the 1960s and 1970s were an era of 
rebellion against authority that affected medical care. Physicians were no longer automatically trusted to act in a patient’s 
best interests, almost as a parent. /T_heir judgments were questioned, second opinions were sought, and patients became 
more consumerist in their desire to make their own choices and decisions for modalities of care. Second, despite the pub-
licity attendant to laws respecting advance directives, patient wishes continued to be set aside for various reasons.
58 Some of 
the reasons for the success of efforts to legalize physician-assisted suicide, then, originate in a reaction to how patients have 
been treated in hospitals and by physicians. Pathologist turned physician-assisted-suicide crusader Jack Kevorkian summed 
it up on his way to jail: “If I have lost my freedom, I have lost something more valuable than life. /T_herefore, continuing life 
52 Bartlett and Rehder, “Ventilators, Feeding Tubes, and Other End-of-Life Questions, ” 1.
53 Trueman, /T_he Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, especially 64–70, discusses the implications of “psychological man and expressive individualism” shaping the societal idea of what it means 
to be a “self ” in the contemporary world. /T_he absolutist approach to human autonomy accompanies the sociological and philosophical shi/f_ts chronicled by Philip Rieff and Charles Taylor that 
Trueman explains. Indeed, without these changes, a slogan such as “death with dignity” would be difficult to understand. A valuable analysis of the autonomy-based and utilitarian arguments for 
assisted suicide can be found in Neil M. Gorsuch’s /T_he Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). /T_he Supreme Court associate justice concludes: 
“ A/f_ter considering arguments from history, fairness, autonomy doctrine and theory, and utilitarianism, I suggested that courts and legislators may wish to consider a less frequently voiced per-
spective on the assisted suicide and euthanasia question, one grounded in the recognition of human life as a fundamental good. Under this view, private intentional acts of homicide are always 
wrong” (217–218).
54 Bartlett and Rehder, “Ventilators, Feeding Tubes, and Other End-of-Life Questions, ” 1.
55 See, for example, Tom Beauchamp and James F . Childress, Principles of Bioethical Ethics, 8th ed. (New Y ork: Oxford University Press, 2019). 
56 Stanley Hauerwas, Suffering Presence: /T_heological Re/f_lections on Medicine, the Mentally Handicapped, and the Church (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 1986), develops this exact scenar-
io in his discussion of suicide and the ethics of autonomy, 100–101.
57 Dr. Patricia Wesley, a psychiatrist, observes (in Dyck, Life’s Worth, 15): “It is frighteningly naïve to assume that when our guide to medical practice is ‘doing what the patient wants, ’ we will 
escape the imposition of the physician’s values on the clinical encounter. Personal values can be sequestered in the question not asked, or the gentle challenge not posed, when both should 
have been. ”
58 Sometimes hospitals do not have a copy of the patient’s advance directive on hand. Clinical circumstances may have changed to render obsolete the original intention of the author. /T_here may 
be disagreements with a family about treatment decisions.  
THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS
11
is pointless. It’s as simple as that. ”59
Public arguments for euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide almost always conjoin these two factors: an absolutist 
approach to human autonomy and self-determination together with an emotional desire to limit or relieve suffering. We 
o/f_ten hear pleas for allowing people who are suffering greatly to request assistance in “ending it all. ”60 One may wonder 
how o/f_ten this is “a purely strategic maneuver aimed at keeping the argument for the time being a relatively narrow one. 
Whatever our judgment of motives, however, the fact is that, simply as a matter of logic, the two prongs of the argument 
will gradually become independent of each other. ”
61
Once we grant the overarching signi/f_icance of self-determination, why does it matter whether one is suffering 
“greatly” or not? How does one’s degree of suffering enter in as a factor in the moral equation? If self-determination is but 
one aspect to be considered and if it must be evaluated along with “great suffering, ” what kind of suffering is reason enough 
for ending one’s life? Would a young athlete who sustained a career-ending injury have the right to claim that the loss of 
fame and /f_inancial security was sufficient justi/f_ication for assisted suicide?
/T_he other prong of the argument proves problematic as well. If the great suffering of a person makes such powerful 
moral claims on us that we should kill to end his agony, why would we insist that the person be self-determining or com-
petent to request it? We readily ask veterinarians to intervene to “put down” our pets whose bodies are consumed with 
cancers and painful maladies. We consider it merciful to do so.
/T_he conventional defense of a “right to die” advances by promoting two ideas, both of which can easily expand the 
class of candidates for such merciful ministrations. “/T_hose who suffer greatly but cannot request relief and those who 
request help even though their physical pain is not great will begin to seem more suitable candidates. ”
62
Evangelical writer Joni Eareckson Tada has lived for 55 years since suffering a fracture between the fourth and /f_i/f_th 
cervical vertebrae at age 17 and becoming a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the shoulders down. Her years of living with the 
limitations of her condition have afforded her ample time to re/f_lect on the questions of the quality-of-life ethic and end-of-
life decisions. She wisely observes: “When we clamor about the sanctity of our individual rights, we may be reinforcing an 
all-too-human failing, and that is the tendency to place ourselves at the center of our moral universe. We label our desires 
‘rights’ as if to give those willful determinations a showy kind of dignity. ”
63
/T_he doctrine of creation establishes the principle of partnering with God as co-regents called to exercise dominion 
over His creation. But this takes place in the context of our creaturely receptivity and response to God who is the Creator. 
In this context, the idea of self-determination can never be the de/f_ining value by which human lives are lived. Our dignity 
does not lie in our autonomy, but in our dependence.
59 Quoted in Arand, “Personal Autonomy versus Creaturely Contingency, ” 387.
60 Many arguments for PAS appear shaped more by the life experience of the writer rather than upon enduring principles. Famed Roman Catholic theologian Hans Küng, for instance, readily 
admits his argument in favor of PAS has been formed in the context of watching his brother die a very painful death from a brain tumor. Hans Küng, “ A Digni/f_ied Dying, ” Section 145 in /T_herese 
M. Lysaught, On Moral Medicine: /T_heological Perspectives in Medical Ethics, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012).
61 Meilaender, Bioethics: A Primer for Christians, 75.
62 Meilaender, Bioethics: A Primer for Christians, 76.
63 Joni Eareckson Tada, When Is It Right to Die? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1992), 73.
THEOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS
12
C. The Quest for Absolute Autonomy
64
As Arand has observed, exalted notions of autonomy elevate isolation and separation, ultimately excluding relevant others 
from moral conversation and decisions; relationships become merely voluntary associations based on my absolute de-
cision-making authority. Callahan shows that this leads to an atrophy of our sense of obligation toward others and their 
obligations to us.
65 Older cultures either grounded their claim to moral authority on myths (e.g., the oracle of Delphi 
demands it) or on a transcendent appeal to faith rather than fate (e.g., Christianity).66 In both cases, they operated with a 
clear sense of the transcendent and the authority such an attitude toward a “higher power” had on the moral commands 
of the culture. In stark contrast with such approaches, our society increasingly exists without rooting its moral imperatives 
in anything sacred. /T_hat does not relieve us of the necessity to justify our norms, “but they cannot do so on the basis of 
something sacred or transcendent. Instead, they have to do so on the basis of themselves. Ethics, shorn of its reference to 
the transcendent, becomes little more than a statement of personal preferences and, increasingly in our therapeutic culture, 
of ‘feeling. ’”67 /T_he inherent moral instability and volatility of this approach should be obvious.68
Against this, biblical doctrine teaches us that our autonomy is circumscribed and bounded by our creaturely nature as 
those born into community, not into isolation. It holds that relationships are the currency of our creaturely existence, and 
that we are called to render and receive assistance to our fellow human beings. Where in this do we have an autonomous 
right to refuse life or refuse to help our sisters and brothers in their need?
First, Christians affirm the qualitative distinction between Creator and creation. As Creator, God does not cede His 
rights to the creation, but retains them. /T_his is the thrust of St. Paul’s affirmation in 1 Corinthians 6 when he declares: “Or 
do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? Y ou are not your 
own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (
1 COR. 6:19/endash.case20). Christian doctrine insists that all other 
ideologies fail to grasp this central truth of existence that there is an in/f_inite qualitative distinction between the Creator and 
the creation.
Second, the reality of our creatureliness includes an inescapably communal element. Meilaender recounts the lesson 
he learned from one of his students when discussing suicide. She “described her cousin’s suicide and its continuing effects 
on his family by saying: ‘He didn’t just take his own life; he took part of theirs too. ’”
69 We are never able to escape the import 
of the existential question: “ Am I my brother’s keeper?”
/T_hird, Scripture repeatedly affirms that not only does God retain the rights to our life, but He determines the number 
of our days. “Y our eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were 
formed for me, when as yet there was none of them” (
PSALM 139:16). Not only is God in/f_initely higher than we are, and not 
only are we thrown into community with all of its joys and messy obligations, even the length of our sojourn on this planet 
remains properly with the One who is not only our Creator but also our Sustainer.
64 In 1985, bioethicists Tom L. Beauchamp and James F . Childress produced their in/f_luential Principles of Biomedical Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), now in its eighth edition. 
/T_hey put forth a four-principle approach to common medical morality: respect for autonomy, bene/f_icence, non-male/f_icence and justice. /T_hey address the issue of autonomy by speaking of auton-
omy as creating both “negative” and “positive” duties. Negatively, “autonomous actions should not be subject to controlling constraints by others, ” while positively, autonomy requires “respectful 
treatment in disclosing information” so people can make their own decisions. /T_he idea is that the decision-maker should be as free as possible under the constraints of the existing circumstances. 
In developing their other three points, they speak of the duty of non-male/f_icence: “/f_irst do no harm” (“avoiding anything which is unnecessarily or unjusti/f_iably harmful”), bene/f_icence: “do as 
much good as you can, ” and justice: distribute health resources fairly. As they apply the principles, “physician assistance in hastening death is best viewed as part of a continuum of medical care. ” 
/T_hey /f_ind no signi/f_icant moral difference between “comfort-only care that hastens death and PAS and euthanasia, ” Dyck, 45.
65 Arand, “Personal Autonomy versus Creaturely Contingency, ” 399.
66 Trueman helpfully demonstrates the relevance of Rieff to this topic, /T_he Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, 74–82.
67 Trueman, /T_he Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, 79.
68 Trueman, /T_he Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, 76. Rieff refers to this by the nomenclature “third world, ” roughly equivalent to what Charles Taylor means by the “immanent frame. ” It 
denotes a culture where transcendence has collapsed into immanence and partakes of the kind of ethics Alasdair MacIntyre dubs emotivism.
69 Meilaender, Bioethics: A Primer for Christians, 74.