Great questions guys! (Both the one about Hosea, and the question from the Bible's silence on abortion).
First of all, as sklipstein mentioned, the Bible doesn't specifically say 'thou shalt not commit abortion', just like it doesn't outright condemn the killing of toddlers, drive-by shootings, the shooting of the elderly, lynching of blacks, genocide.... Surely no one would suggest that whatever the Bible doesn't specifically condemn, it supports. All of these evils are wrapped into the words 'thou shalt not kill'. It no more needed to be said that the unborn were included in this command, than that toddlers were.
But just to illustrate this point, here's a brief section of a speech made by Mr. Scott Klusendorf at a right-to-life convention in La Mirada, CA., 1995.
Can "E.T." Give Us a Clue?
The Bible's alleged silence on abortion does not mean that its authors condoned the practice, but that prohibitions against it were unnecessary. Here is why I know.
If a visitor from another planet were asked to examine the Biblical documents for clues on abortion, he would have to admit that the word does not appear. But a visitor with a sense of history might say, "Tell me what the laws, beliefs and customs were when the Bible was written and from these I shall infer whether or not its authors ever intended to condone abortion."
Turning first to the Old Testament, our visitor would find:
· that the concept of "life" was regarded as the highest good, while "death" was seen as the worst evil. Hence the challenge found in Deuteronomy 30:19--"Today I have set before you life and death, blessings and cursings. Now choose Life, so that you and your children may live"
· that man was not a chance or a mere assemblage of cells, but that he was created in the image of God. Hence, the shedding of innocent blood was strictly forbidden (Genesis 9:6; Exodus 23:7, Proverbs 6:16-17)
· that children were never seen as "unwanted" or as a nuisance (unless later in life they became wicked), but as a gift from God--the highest possible blessing (Psalms 127:3-5, 113:9, Gen. 17:6, 33:5, etc.)
· that immortality was achieved through one's descendants. God's "promise" to Abraham to make of him a great nation was passed on to Isaac, Jacob, etc. "Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children a reward from Him," writes the Psalmist (127:3; See also Gen. 48:16)
· that sterility and barrenness were seen as a curse, a source of great shame and sorrow. Hence, Peninnah's harsh ridicule of Hannah, the prophet Samuel's mother, because of the latter's initial barrenness (1 Samuel 1:6; see also Gen. 20:17-18, 30:1, 22-23,etc.)
· that God was at work in the womb fashioning a human for His purposes (Ps.139:13-16, Isa. 49:1,5 , Jer.1:5)
Among a people who saw life as the highest good and death the worst of evils, who saw man as being created in the image of God, who saw children as the highest possible blessing, who saw immortality as being achieved through one's descendants, who saw sterility and barrenness as a curse, who saw God at work in the womb--among such a people, the concept of induced abortion was extremely unlikely to find a foothold. Hence, the Old Testament's silence on abortion indicates that prohibitions against it were completely unnecessary, not that the practice was tacitly approved. (See Germain Grisez, Abortion: the Myths, the Realities, and the Arguments, Corpus Books, 1970, pp.123-127 for a lengthy discussion of this point.)
In short, liberals who argue for abortion rights from the alleged silence of the Old Testament are committing a gross hermeneutical fallacy. Basic to good Biblical interpretation is the rule that "a text can never mean [to us] what it never could have meant to its authors or his readers."(See Gordon Fee, How to Read the Bible for All It's Worth, Zondervan 1982, p. 60.) In other words, it is important to interpret Scripture within its own intellectual and cultural framework without reading into it a foreign world-view. The idea that the absence of a direct prohibition meant that women had a God-given right to kill their offspring would have been utterly foreign to the Hebrew culture of that day for the reasons cited above.
Turning to the New Testament, our visitor would quickly observe:
· that the first Christians, including all but one of the New Testament authors, were Jewish Christians with an essentially Jewish morality. Hence, if there was a Jewish consensus on abortion at the time, the early Christians most certainly would have shared that consensus.
· that early Judaism was, in fact, quite firmly opposed to abortion. As Michael Gorman points out in his excellent article "Why Is the New Testament Silent About Abortion?" (Christianity Today, Jan. 11, 1993), Jewish documents from the period condemn the practice unequivocally, demonstrating a clear anti-abortion consensus among first century Jews:
-- The Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides (written between 50 B.C. and A.D. 50) says, "A woman should not destroy the unborn babe in her belly, nor after its birth throw it before the dogs and vultures."
-- The Sibyline Oracles includes among the wicked those who "produce abortions and unlawfully cast their offspring away" as well as sorcerers who dispense abortifacients.
-- 1 Enoch (first or second century B.C.) says that an evil angel taught humans how to "smash the embryo in the womb."
-- Philo of Alexandria (Jewish philosopher, 25 B.C. to A.D.41) rejected the notion that the fetus is merely part of the mother's body.
-- Josephus (first-century Jewish historian) wrote, "The law orders all the offspring be brought up, and forbids women either to cause abortion or to make away with the fetus." A woman who did so was considered to have committed infanticide because she destroyed a "soul" and hence diminished the race.
As Gorman points out, no contradictory texts exist! Given this consensus, the most logical conclusion is that the Jewish Christian writers of the New Testament shared the anti-abortion views of their Jewish heritage--even if they never expressly mention the word "abortion" in their writings.
· that the theology of the New Testament is primarily task theology written to address specific issues in specific churches. In other words, the New Testament as a whole does not constitute a comprehensive code of ethics (although we certainly can derive many principles of right and wrong from what's written), but rather each document deals only with those moral and theological issues which had become problems. Two examples will help here. First, the Apostle Paul does not mention infanticide, a practice common among Romans and other pagans of the time. Why? Because the Christians to whom he was writing were not killing their children. Nor does Paul provide direct teaching on the historical career of Christ (he mentions it only indirectly for the purpose of underscoring the importance of the resurrection in 1 Cor. 15), but this does not mean that he questioned its truth. Rather, it means that a discussion of this sort never became necessary. Writes theologian George Eldon Ladd:
"Many studies in Paul have worked with the implicit assumption that his letters record all his ideas, and when some important matter was not discussed, they have assumed it was because it had no place in Paul's thought. This is a dangerous procedure; the argument from silence should be employed only with the greatest of caution. Paul discusses many subjects only because a particular need in a given church required his instruction.
We would never know much about Paul's thought on the resurrection had it not been questioned in Corinth. We might conclude that Paul knew no tradition about the Lord's supper had not abuses occurred in the Corinthian congregation. In other words, we may say that we owe whatever understanding we have of Paul's thought to the "accidents of history" which required him to deal with various problems, doctrinal and practical, in the life of the churches." (A Theology of the New Testament, EErdmans, 1974, pp.377-8.)
Hence, the New Testament's silence on abortion does not mean that its authors approved of or tolerated the practice, but that a discussion of the issue never became necessary. In other words, there was no deviation from the norm inherited from Judaism. The early Christians simply were not tempted to kill their children before or after birth.
· that many of the texts used by early Christians did condemn abortion. Although these early Christian works eventually lost their bid for canonicity, they do express how the first Christians felt on a variety of issues--including abortion. As Gorman points out, these early writings were read and preached in many congregations throughout the Roman Empire up until the fourth century. Examples include:
-- The Didache : "You shall not murder a child by abortion nor shall you kill a newborn."
-- The Epistle of Barnabas: "You shall love your neighbor more than your own life. You shall not murder a child by abortion nor shall you kill a newborn."
-- Apocalypse of Peter [describing a vision of Hell]: "I saw women who produced children out of wedlock and who procured abortions."
These texts, writes Gorman, "bear witness to the general Jewish and Jewish-Christian attitude of the first and second centuries, thus confirming that the earliest Christians shared the anti-abortion position of their Jewish forebears." (Christianity Today, January 11, 1993)
Given this overwhelming consensus against abortion by early Jewish Christians, our "visitor" would reason that what Jewish morality condemned, the writers of the New Testament never intended to legitimize.
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.... (let me know if you'd like a copy of the complete article, which also covers arguments for abortion based on the passage in Exodus.
For LIFE,
Kristine
