We who live in this post-modern late twentieth century culture are still children of dualism. For a variety of rather complex reasons we continue to split apart and treat as radical opposites body and spirit, medicine and religion, sacred and secular, private and public, love and justice, men and women. Though this is still our strong tendency, we are beginning to discover both the futility and the harm of such dualistic splitting. Peoples of many ancient cultures might smile at the belatedness of our discovery concerning the commonalities of medicine and religion. A cur sory glance back at ancient Egypt, Samaria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome would disclose a common thread - the close union of religion and medicine. Both were centrally concerned with healing, health, and wholeness. The person was understood as a unity of body, mind, and spirit. The priest and the physician frequently were combined in the same individual. One of the important contributions of this significant volume of essays is the sustained attack upon dualism. From a variety of vantage points, virtually all of the authors unmask the varied manifestations of dualism in religion and medicine, urging a more holistic approach. Since the editor has provided an excellent summary of each article, I shall not attempt to comment on specific contributions. Rather , I wish to highlight three 1 broad themes which I find notable for theological ethics.

Edwin C. Hui draws on his training as both a medical doctor and a theologian to show how a Christian understanding of personhood sheds light on contemporary biomedical dilemmas.

Cahill, a theological ethicist and progressive Catholic calls for progressive religious thinkers and believers to join in the effort to reclaim the best of their traditions by engaging political forces at both community and national levels to ensure that access to health care is the top priority of "participatory bioethics." Georgetown University Press

Catholic health care is one of the key places where the church lives Catholic social teaching (CST). Yet the individualistic methodology of Catholic bioethics inherited from the manualist tradition has yet to incorporate this critical component of the Catholic moral tradition. Informed by the places where Catholic health care intersects with the diverse societal injustices embodied in the patients it encounters, this book brings the lens of CST to bear on Catholic health care, illuminating a new spectrum of ethical issues and practical recommendations from social determinants of health, immigration, diversity and disparities, behavioral health, gender-questioning patients, and environmental and global health issues.

Theologians and theologically educated participants in discussions of bioethics have been placed on the defensive during recent years. The dominance of religious perspectives and theological voices that marked the emergence and establishment of "bioethics" in the late 1960s and 1970s has eroded steadily as philosophers, lawyers, and others have relativized their role and influ ence, at best, or dismissed it entirely, at worst. The secularization of bioethics, which has occurred for a variety of reasons, has prompted some prominent writers to reflect on what has been lost. Daniel Callahan, for example writes, " . . . whatever the ultimate truth status of religious perspectives, they have provided a way of looking at the world and understanding one's own life that has a fecundity and uniqueness not matched by philosophy, law, or political theory. Those of us who have lost our reli gious faith may be glad that we have discovered what we take to be the reality of things, but we can still recognize that we have also lost something of great value as well: the faith, vision, insights, and experience of whole peoples and traditions who, no less than we unbelievers, struggled to make sense of things. That those goods are part of a garment we no longer want to wear does not make their loss anything other than still a loss; and it is not a neglible one" ([2], p. 2).

Just about everyone will face a difficult bioethics decision at some point. In this book a theologian, ethicist, and lawyer equips Christians to make such decisions based on biblical truth, wisdom, and virtue. Though a relatively new discipline, bioethics has generated extraordinary interest due to a number of socially pressing issues. Bioethics and the Christian Life places bioethics within the holistic context of the Christian life, both developing a general Christian approach to making bioethics decisions and addressing a number of specific, controversial areas of bioethics. Clear, concise, and well-organized, the book is divided into three sections. The first lays the theological foundation for bioethics decision-making and discusses the importance of wisdom and virtue in working through these issues. The second section addresses beginning-of-life issues, such as abortion, stem-cell research, and infertility treatments. The third section covers end-of-life issues, such as living wills, accepting and refusing medical treatment, and treatment of patients in permanent vegetative states.

Amid continuing advances in medical research and treatment, Gilbert Meilaender’s Bioethics has long provided thoughtful guidance on many of society’s most difficult moral problems—including abortion, assisted reproduction, genetic experimentation, euthanasia, and much more. In this fourth edition, Meilaender updates much of the data referenced in the book and responds directly to recent developments, such as the CRISPR/Cas9 method of gene editing. Christians seeking discernment in this new decade will appreciate Meilaender’s circumspect writing and his ability to address the nuances of each issue while maintaining strong and clearly stated moral convictions.