Paul Ramsey’s Ethic of Covenant Fidelity

Abstract

In 1970 a book appeared bearing the provocative title, The Patient as Person. It was written by a Protestant moral theologian diffident about his qualifications to do more than properly pose and explore some important (if seldom asked) questions in medical ethics, but confident that such questions were “now completely in the public forum, no longer the province of scientific experts alone” (Ramsey, 1970b). Medicine had grown morally problematic. What had long been taken for granted-the ways of doctors with patients and of researchers with subjects-now required reflection and rethinking. Not least due to its sometimes sudden and stunning successes, modern medicine was embarked on a precarious, possibly even wayward course. Scientific research had acquired “an omnivorous appetite” and “therapeutic technology... a momentum and a life of its own.” In the absence of moral reflection, Ramsey (1970b) claimed that the principles enunciated in professional codes of medical ethics, though admirable, were likely to be eroded and overrun “by what it is alleged must be done and technically can be done.”