Bioethics in the Light of the Christian Doctrine

The purpose of this article is to determine the dependence of the confessional vision of problems of bioethics on the doctrinal features of various directions of Christianity. The positions of the Russian Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church and the main Protestant denominations on abortion and euthanasia, reproductive technologies, medical genetic engineering, blood and organ donation and transplantation are considered in the article. Christian denominations solve these problems through the doctrine of sin and salvation. A comparison of the positions of the main directions of Christianity suggests that there are two lines in this religion to solve the problems of bioethics: conservative and liberal. Liberal Christian bioethics is based on the idea of God-given freedom of choice in personal situations. Conservative bioethics, on the contrary, considers the Christian person part of the Church, of the "body of Christ", and argues that the commandments determine the correct, "saving" choice of a person. In diff erent directions of Christianity, these two lines have diff erent expressions. The "dichotomy" of the liberal and conservative lines is most clearly manifested in Protestantism, which allows the individual to determine himself in ethics. In Catholicism, in general, the conservative line remains, but certain issues of bioethics related to the self-determination of the individual are brought into the fi eld of discussion, that is, they give possibility of a variable solution. Orthodoxy takes the most radical conservative position, it does not allow any freedom of choice in matters of bioethics, the positive solution of which contradicts the Church tradition.