New Testament
John the Baptist
"For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither
wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even
from his mother’s womb." (Luke 1:15)
Can something non-living be filled with the Holy Spirit? The child
was indeed inspired even while in the womb, "For behold, when
the voice of thy salutation came into mine ears, the babe leaped in my
womb for joy." (Luke 1:44).
"Before these two boys were born, we are told, their
relative importance was announced when the fetus of John the Baptist,
while still in the womb, leaped to salute the fetus of Jesus (Luke
1:41-44). Surely no one would seriously argue that this story was
literal history!" (Bishop John Shelby Spong, The Sins of Scripture,
p. 21).
Suppose, however, that it is literal history. Can any believer
exclude John, in his status in the womb, from the protection of
Exodus 20:13, "Thou shalt not kill."
- “However, even
these have life, each of them in his mother’s womb.
Elizabeth exults with joy, (for) John had leaped in
her womb; Mary magnifies the Lord, (for) Christ had
instigated her within. The mothers recognize each
their own offspring, being moreover each recognized by
their infants, which were therefore of course alive,
and were not souls merely, but spirits also.”
- (Tertullian, A
Treatise on the Soul, Chapter 26).
|
|
Testimony
Some modern readers might be surprised at the medical competency of the ancients,
in both the field of pharmacology and surgery. Abortion is not a modern
innovation, it was practiced in antiquity both by surgical and
pharmacological means; it's mentioned in the Hippocratic Oath, and by Galen: "Now abortifacent drugs [αμβλωθριδιοις,
see αμβλοω, Liddell & Scott, 'cause to miscarry,'
φαρμακοις] or certain other
conditions which destroy the embryo or rupture certain of its membranes
are followed by abortion. . ." (Galen, On the Natural Faculties, Book
III, Chapter XII, p. 285 Loeb edition). Plato, in his Republic, who famously
recommends the sexual congress of all and sundry, nevertheless does not
want the children of unauthorized unions to see the light of day: "And
we grant all this, accompanying the permission with strict orders to
prevent any embryo which may come into being from seeing the light: and
if any force a way to the birth, the parents must understand that the
offspring of such an union cannot be maintained, and arrange
accordingly." (Plato, Republic, Book V, 461). So the technology was
there. How did moralists respond?
Christians were against it. The Christian authors quoted below
are fallible human beings who say, sometimes very profound things, sometimes
rather silly things. But these early authors did understand their Christian
faith to forbid abortion:
- “...you shall not abort a child or commit infanticide.”
- (Didache, 2.)
- “And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit
murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what
principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person
to regard the very fetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore
an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it;
and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable
with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to destroy it.”
- (Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians, Chapter 35).
- “Thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy
it after it is born.”
- (Epistle of Barnabas, Chapter 19).
- “In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in
the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is
merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born,
or destroy one that is coming to the birth.”
- (Tertullian, Apology, Chapter 9)
- “There is also (another
instrument in the shape of) a copper needle
or spike, by which the actual death is managed in this furtive robbery of
life: they give it, from its infanticide function,
the name of εμβρυοσφακτης,
the slayer of the infant, which was of course alive. Such apparatus was
possessed both by Hippocrates, and Asclepiades, and
Erasistratus, and Herophilus, that dissector of even adults, and the milder
Soranus himself, who all knew well enough that a living being had been
conceived, and pitied this most luckless infant state, which had first to be put
to death, to escape being tortured alive.”
- (Tertullian, A Treatise on the Soul, Chapter
25).
- “And I see that you at one time
expose your begotten children to wild beasts and to
birds; at another, that you crush them when
strangled with a miserable kind of death. There are
some women who, by drinking medical preparations,
extinguish the source of the future man in
their
very bowels, and thus commit a parricide before they
bring forth. And these things assuredly come down
from the teaching of your gods.” - (Minucius
Felix, Octavius, Chapter 30, p. 379 ECF 0_04).
- “Thou shall not slay thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that which
is begotten; for 'everything that is shaped, and has received a soul from
God, if it be slain, shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed.'”
- (Apostolic Constitutions, Book 7, Section 1, III.)
|
|
In the fourth century the Christian emperor Valentinian outlawed
both infanticide and abortion. Both surgical and chemical abortion were available in antiquity:
"But how few gilded beds contain a female sweating in labor!
It shows how fatal the skill, how potent the drugs, on babe or
Mother, when an abortionist gets high prices to kill
Mankind in the womb. Rejoice, poor husband; give her the pill
Or the dose yourself." (Juvenal, The Satires of Juvenal, VI. 594-598).
No statistics are available, but Seneca believed many women
resorted to this measure:
"You have never been ashamed of your fruitfulness as
though it were a reproach to your youth: you never concealed the
signs of pregnancy as though it were an unbecoming burden, nor did
you ever destroy your expected child within your womb after the
fashion of many other women, whose attractions are to be found in
their beauty alone." (Seneca, On Consolation to Helvia (His Mother),
Chapter XVI).
Closing out the era of antiquity, Procopius, in his
hit-piece against the Empress Theodora, recounting the early days of
her theatrical career, says, "She frequently became pregnant, but as
she employed all known remedies without delay, she promptly procured
abortion." (The Complete Procopius Anthology, The Secret History,
Kindle location 8668).
Evidently this procedure could be lethal, not only to the child,
but also to the mother, on occasion. The emperor Domitian
impregnated his niece Julia, then compelled her to have an abortion:
"Later, when she was bereft of father and husband, he loved her ardently
and without disguise, and even became the cause of her death by compelling
her to get rid of a child of his by abortion." (Suetonius, The Lives
of the Twelve Caesars, Domitian).
Ovid's girlfriend survived an abortion: "My rash Corinna, seeking to rid
herself of the burden she bears in her womb, hath risked the loss of her
own life." (Ovid, Amores, Book II, Elegy XIII). Ovid, along with
several other pagan authors, realizes this procedure kills a living human
being, "O women, why will ye desecrate your entrails with the instruments of
death? Why offer dread poisons to infants yet unborn?. . .Many a time she
slays herself who slays her offspring in the womb." (Ovid, Amores, Book II,
Elegy XIV).
Aulus Gellius, in the Attic Nights, condemns the practice in
passing: "They do this with the same insensibility as those who endeavor by
the use of quack medicines to destroy their conceptions, lest they should
injure their persons and their shapes. Since the destruction of a human
being in its first formation, while he is in the act of receiving
animation, and yet under the hands of his artificer, nature, is deserving
of public detestation and abhorrence. . ." (Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights,
Volume II, p. 323, Book XII, Chapter I). Cicero reports a trial for abortion which resulted in conviction, though
unfortunately the grounds are somewhat unclear in his account:
"I recollect that a certain Milesian woman, when I was in Asia, because
she had by medicines brought on abortion, having been bribed to do so by the heirs in reversion,
was convicted of a capital crime; and rightly, inasmuch as she had destroyed the hope of the father,
the memory of his name, the supply of his race, the heir of his family, a citizen intended for the
use of the republic." (Cicero, For Cluentius, Section
XI, 32).
Quintilian mentions this case in his Institutes of Oratory, Book VIII, Chapter IV,
11.
Clement of Alexandria mentions in passing, "Thence also the Romans, in the
case of a pregnant woman being condemned to death, do not allow her to
undergo punishment till she is delivered." (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata,
Book II, Chapter XVIII). It is ironic that a polity that did not protect the
right to life of already-born children should be so considerate! Infanticide
was freely and openly practiced right up to the Christian
period. Indeed in some cases in pagan antiquity, the state required
the murder of children born imperfect. What changed all this was
Christianity.
Which is not to say that the pagans felt no unease; Diodorus
Siculus mentions the practice in Egypt, as also elsewhere, of
deferring the execution of a female criminal condemned to death, but
pregnant, until she delivers, on grounds which include recognition
that killing the guilty mother would involve also the unjust murder
of an innocent, "Pregnant women who had been condemned to death were
not executed until they had been delivered. The same law has also
been enacted by many Greek states, since they held it entirely
unjust that the innocent should suffer the same punishment as the
guilty . . ." (Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History, Book I,
Chapter 77, Section 9).
The danger to the woman was one factor evoking unease about
abortion, but the child's murder is a second,
independent matter, as Basil, writing in the fourth century, explains:
"A woman who deliberately destroys a fetus is answerable
for murder. And any fine distinction as to its being completely
formed or unformed is not admissible amongst us. For in this case not
only the child which is about to be born is vindicated, but also she
herself who plotted against herself, since women usually die from such
attempts. And there is added to this crime the destruction of the
embryo, a second murder—at least that is the intent of those
who dare these deeds." (Letters of Basil, Letter CLXXXVIII,
Chapter II, St. Basil, The Letters, Volume III, pp. 21-23 Loeb
edition).
Basil also considered the woman who provided the abortifacient as a murderer:
"And so women who give drugs that cause abortion are
themselves also murderers as well as those who take the poisons that
kill the fetus." (Letters of Basil, Letter CLXXXVIII, Chapter VIII,
St. Basil, The Letters, Volume III, p. 35 Loeb edition).
At the close of the early church period, Jerome writes to
Eustochium, "Some go so far as to take potions, that they may insure
barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their
conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their
sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when (as often happens) they
die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the
guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and
child murder." (Jerome, Letters, Letter 22, Chapter 13, p. 118,
ECF_2_06).
There are no early Christian authors who were in favor of
abortion, that I can find. Again, what men who were not reliably inspired by God believed in antiquity is neither here nor there respecting the personhood
of an unborn child. However for some reason this circumstance is often misstated
in contemporary debates. Abortion is not a modern innovation. Pagan moralists hold varying views, while the
Christian authors are united in their opposition to the practice.
These Christian authors are not, from the evangelical perspective,
authoritative, but their united witness should be confronted.
To go beyond 'uninspired' to 'disreputable,' the
third-century Roman author of the Clementine Homilies considered
abortion to be child-murder: "But I say, that even if these dreadful
things do not occur, it is usual for a woman, through association
with an adulterer, either to forsake her husband, or if she continue
to live with him, to plot against him, or to bestow upon the adulterer
the goods procured by the labor of her husband; and having conceived
by the adulterer while her husband is absent, to attempt the
destruction of that which is in her womb, through shame of conviction,
and so to become a child-murderer; or even, while destroying it, to be
destroyed along with it." (Clementine Homilies, Homily 4, Chapter 21).
While reluctant to quote pseudepigraphic works, I would like to
emphasize the unanimity of the church in that era.
Equally disreputable with 'Clement' are the Sibylline oracles, quoted above,— the
'Sibyl' is as much who she claims to be as is 'Clement,'—
nevertheless, believers in that day responded to abortion just as do
believers in our day.
Abortion was criminalized by the Christians, once they had
obtained enough political power to make it happen:
"Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor, was
succeeded by Valentinian I (364-375), a professing Christian. As
noted in chapter 2, Valentinian continued on a path that promoted
the effects of the Christian transformation by criminalizing
abortion and infanticide, two widely accepted barbaric practices in
the Greco-Roman world." (Alvin J. Schmidt, How Christianity Changed
the World, p. 37).
|
