Euthanasia and Patristic Tradition (Reading John Damascene and Symeon the New Theologian on Christian Bioethics)

A critique of contemporary bioethical thought, drawing on the Patristic tradition to develop a Christian anthropology that offers an alternative approach to bioethics.


Euthanasia and Patristic Tradition presents secular and Christian bioethics as opposing forces in dialogue, highlights the importance of the Christian Patristic tradition in revealing disguised characteristics of bioethics in our era, and challenges the idea of individualism in modern societies through the development of a Christian individualism. While the book is focussed on euthanasia, it also offers important perspectives on other ethical dilemmas.

Ioannis Bekos applies Panagiotis Kondylis’s theory for the emergence of worldviews as a function of power where all ethical theories have been proved to be subjective. Bringing together bioethical theories and just war theory, he exposes the disguised power claims of modern bioethics over human existence. Then, through an account of the history of thought, society, and politics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Bekos delivers a profound critique of the idea of common morality, popular theories such as principlism and contractualism, ethicists like Peter Singer, and philosophers like Habermas.

Using the works of St John Damascene and St Symeon the New Theologian, Bekos shows the fundamental elements of a Christian anthropology regarding the constitution of man, the character of pain and death, and the importance of the free will in man, offering a critique of modern bioethics.