Fetal Personhood

Tim @ Red Pen Logic has posted this.   

He’s one of the good guys, but he’s wrong on this one. 

No, the Bible defines “conception” as the sex act itself, which is distinct from “union of sperm & ovum.”   Moreover he is using statements from biology/medicine not the text of Scripture to argue that embryos are ensouled people.  Since when has science served as a non-arbitrary epistemic warrant for our beliefs about what constitutes a human being, eg personhood?  Never — c’mon Tim you know better than that. The Bible serves as a written account of God’s point of view concerning His own existence, attributes, & authority, & the true state of affairs relative to Himself & His moral & decretal wills. 

In order to successfully argue against the Pro-Life Lobby’s present day narrative that abortion ought to be made illegal because abortion is murder in a universal moral sense, all you need to is the ask just one question —“Where does the Bible et teach that abortion (the early termination of a pregnancy as species of euthanasia) is always murder?” — then carefully & accurately answer that question as a segueway to teaching what the Bible teaches about how to deal with this issue, drawing from the Bible correctly exegeted, exposited, understood, & applied.

The only correct answer is that it does not teach that the early termination of a pregnancy does not qualify as murder regardless of the motives of the moral agents involved.  If it did then 1 Samuel 15 is teaching that Samuel commanded God to murder infants which would be endorsing murder.   That text alone is enough to dispel the myth that abortion is murder regardless of the motives of the moral agents involved.   If the execution of infants in Holy War is not always murder, then by parity of logic, the same obtains for abortion. 

While we’re here, we should also ask where the Bible teaches that the perceived moral status of the infant determines whether or not abortion is murder. The only correct answer is “Nowhere.”   The belief that the perceived moral status of the child is an element of (or the element) of what makes abortion murder is an artifact of Situational Ethics — not Biblical Ethics. 

That objection turns on the idea that God morally condemns the act & determines the moral agent’s (or agents’) guilt on the basis of the *infant’s * moral status & not that of the moral agents themselves.   The Bible  says no such thing.  Murder requires a specific set of motives.  The age of infant may act as an amplifier like the way premeditation functions in Exodus 21 as an amplifier, but the overall judgment of “murder” rests upon the motives of the mother & those around her.  

Condemns & commends based on our motives (1 Samuel 16, Jeremiah 17, Matthew 5, James 1).   Condemnation & commendation based on external factors is how Situational Ethics works.

What, then, does the Bible teach about when the life begins?  

Basically, it teaches that God creates our soul ex nihilo (Zechariah 12:1) & it happens either immediately or not long after fertilization (Psalm 51:5). 

Regarding IVF, It does *not* teach that every embryo is ensouled.   Let’s think this through.   

There are embryos out there that survive as viable corporeal matrices for over a decade.  When we talk about them as people, we speak about them as if they are morally innocent ensouled people.   That sort of thinking overlooks the age of this person & the judicial status of the child before God.  

It’s one thing to believe & teach that an internally generated embryo is ensouled by God & ought to be regarded as a person.  That’s what the biblical evidence addresses.  It’s quite another to believe & teach that all embryos that have yet to be implanted are ensouled people.  The Bible doesn’t teach that. 

If God has ensouled every embryo that is currently stored cryogenically, then that means there are embryos out there over a decade old.  The child isn’t an infant.   That’s just their bodily age.  The older the child gets, the more time the LORD has communed with the child, & since the Bible teaches we are born able to sin, the child is not judicially innocent in God’s eyes & has been remonstrating with God for several years.   If implanted & carried to term the child is actually quite grown up.  That’s never brought up in these discussions.  

In all likelihood, embryos that are stored outside a mother are not ensouled until implantation.  That seems to fit God’s covenantal pattern of behavior moreso than the universal ensoulment of all human embryos at fertilization or not long thereafter regardless of where that happens.

May God bless & keep us all.  Go & sin no more.