Creation, Kinds and Destiny: A Christian View of Genome Editing

The discovery of the double helix structure of DNA by Crick, Franklin and Watson in 1953 caused a paradigm shift in our understanding of the nature of both humankind and creation as a whole. Subsequently in 2003, the mapping of the human genome by Frances Collins and his colleagues and the ensuing development of techniques to alter it, raise fundamental questions about our destiny – whether we ourselves can and should shape it in a way previously outside our ability and known only to God. The Christian understanding of the Fall – the movement of humanity from an initial state of perfection or at least of being ‘very good’ (Genesis 1v 31) in God’s sight, to a state of obvious imperfection has always raised questions of normalcy in relation to our current ‘fallen’ state compared to what was originally intended by the Creator. This paper explores Christian visions of the ethical possibilities of genome editing using Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the nature of the material world and the effects of the Fall upon it as a model and continues with an exploration of wider implications of other elements of the creation account. It will be argued that, far from supporting the popular understanding of genetic determinism with its implications for the concepts of both free will and human responsibility, our greater knowledge of genomics weakens such a determinist view. The paper concludes with a consideration of the telos of humanity in relation to gene editing and an examination of the concept of the