[Vision2020] Abortion and the Bible

[Sue Hovey]

Well not so many years ago, I was sitting in a church service when the 
pastor announced men have one fewer ribs than women....Perhaps he couldn't 
have counted them as easily as teeth, but when I met with him after church, 
he refused to believe me.

Sue Hovey
----- Original Message ----- 
From: <nickgier at adelphia.net>
To: <vision2020 at moscow.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 19, 2006 2:51 PM
Subject: [Vision2020] Abortion and the Bible


> Greetings:
>
> A note to the list before I begin: if you aren't interested in this topic, 
> simply delete the message.
>
> Thanks again to Ralph Nielsen for quoting the only biblical passage (Ex. 
> 21:22ff.) that speaks directly to abortion.  It is important to note that 
> the early Church Fathers believed that the Greek translation of the Hebrew 
> Bible was divinely inspired, and the Greek translation of this passage 
> made a distinction between a "formed" and "unformed" fetus, with only the 
> formed fetus being protected from abortion.
>
> Using the Greek philosopher Aristotle's totally inaccurate science, the 
> good fathers determined that the male fetus was formed at 40 days, but the 
> poor little female fetus had to wait another 40-50 days.  Aristotle also 
> thought that women had one less tooth than men!  It never occurred to him 
> to open a woman's mouth to count her teeth!
>
> For English Common Law being "formed in the womb" became "quickening in 
> the womb," which was accepted as a standard line beyond which abortions 
> were banned.  One might ask the obvious question: how does movement in the 
> womb constitute a moral criterion?  Animal fetuses move in their mothers' 
> wombs, so this does make a moral difference between animals and persons. 
> This is why in the 17th Century Sir Edward Coke wisely attempted to return 
> to the rationality criterion, which had defined human personhood from 
> Aristotle to the Christians Boethius and Aquinas.
>
> As I have argued there are no brain waves significantly different from 
> animal brain waves until the 25th week of fetal development, the beginning 
> of the third trimester where our law now draws the line.  For more see 
> www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/abortion.htm.
>
> As I have mentioned on this list before, this traditional criterion opens 
> up the possibility of whale, dolphin, and ape persons and I believe that 
> we should support the logic of that proposition. There is now a Seattle 
> organization, inspired by "talking" chimps, that is very serious about 
> extending personhood to apes, but not their "unformed" fetuses.
>
> If you are still reading, let us take a look at two other biblical 
> passages.
>
> "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I 
> consecrated you" (Jer. 1:5).
>
> "Thou knowest me right well; my frame was not hidden from thee when I was 
> being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth. Thy 
> eyes beheld my unformed substance ("golem"); in thy book were written, 
> every one of them, the days that were formed for me" (Ps. 139: 15-16).
>
> These are interesting passages but difficult to interpret. They also 
> contain both logical problems and implications that a great majority of 
> Christians would not want to accept. Orthodox Christianity has rejected 
> the idea of the preexistence of the soul implied in both of these verses; 
> and it is difficult to conceive of how even a divine mind could know 
> something before it exists or know it as a possible existent. The passage 
> from the Psalms maintains that the soul is formed in "the depths of the 
> earth," which is a poetic phrase for Sheol, the Hebrew Hell from which all 
> souls come and to which all souls return. No orthodox Christian would want 
> to accept this old Hebrew version of the creation of souls.
>
> In the Jewish tradition "golem" was not taken as a person at all; indeed, 
> it was viewed as a being without a soul, an "unformed" fetus.  In the 
> Middle Ages a legend arose about an giant called a Golem that two Czech 
> rabbis made out of river clay.   They were presumably able to make the 
> huge body live by reciting Kabbalistic chants over it.  Jews in the Prague 
> ghetto were able to protect themselves by having the Golem fight against 
> Christians who attacked the ghetto on a regular basis. There was also the 
> early silent film The Golem that stars a soulless monster bent on 
> destruction. It is obvious that the Jewish meaning of golem is not 
> compatible with the traditional definition of a person.
>
> Yours for sound theology,
>
> Nick Gier
>
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