Is the Fetus a Human Being?

[redleghunter]

Can't do it, just like you can't show me 'born prematurely' in the Hebrew. That's why I don't rest on this one verse either.

I did look up all 24 verses of the word shakol though. That was a new one I must admit. But having read all of them I find most don't seem to talk about abortion at all, even though Strong's even defines it almost solely as the definition. And when I checked the RSV I did find that it also did define shakol as a miscarriage of sorts. But it also blames God in that same verse. Hmmm so is God pro abortion or just Hosea wishing He was?

Hosea 9:14 Give them, O LORD -- what wilt thou give? Give them a miscarrying/shakol womb and dry breasts.

Let me ask you a question; Are you a dichotomist or a trichotomist, when defining a human being? The reason I ask is because all of your 'Princeton' and medical support for definition of a "zygote" or "embryo" or "person hood" all seem to miss some things in 'biblical' proportions which no one has so far even mentioned, let alone addressed.

You are actually asking about when a soul enters a human body?

Ask the question....when did the human soul of Jesus of Nazareth enter Him?

 

[The Times]

The stage at which Devine Providence is in play is the very ACT by God to Create Life. A person's reaction to try and cancel it is an act that is by far more sinister than murder. The spark of life that God gives the Fetus is the Devine Providence. It would be like someone trying to uncreate what God is Creating to bring into the world.

Stopping the progression of life is the act to prevent the Creator from Creating Life. The charge is more series and severe than mere murder, it is an act to sabotage the works of the Holy Spirit, an unforgive-able sin, that results in the immediate expulsion from God's presence.

There is no excuse to prevent life, regardless of the situation and Jesus made that point very clear.

John 9:3
"Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.

Is the works of God in the Fetus?

If so, then those who abort a Fetus are preventing the works of God from being put on display and this act is a willful act to prevent the Holy Spirit from Creating Life and is an unforgivable sin.

We are talking about aborting the Fetus, the topic is not related to saving the life of the mother. Abortion is something that is now common practice and is an act to uncreate what God creates.

Think about it very carefully before you respond for or against, because your position on this issue may affect your salvation and your relationship with God the Holy Spirit.

 

[ubicaritas]

Interesting points I've never heard of before also. But I suppose none of this really is a 'lock down' as to what we're all discussing tonight either IMO. What did the Puritans and Judists base their 'actions' upon I wonder?

They considered movement a sign of rational life, as did Aristotle. They believed it was the time that God created the rational soul within a human being. Before then, the fetus was considered to have animal life, but not be a rational human person. So many medieval and renaissance Christians had the view that human personhood develops gradually along with the human body.

It was not until after the Reformation that Rome developed the notion that human personhood begins at conception, and their ideology is the dominant one that has become the rhetoric of the pro-life movement.

It is true some Church fathers in the ancient church thought personhood was present at conception, but they also thought that every sperm was also somehow an individual person, at least potentially, so they tended to equate masturbation with murder and imposed severe penances upon both masturbation and abortion, as if they were somehow close to being equivocal.

I'm sure you know the old Monty Python song,

Every Sperm is Sacred,
Every Sperm is Great,
If a Sperm is Wasted
God gets Quite Irate.

That was sort of the logic.

 

[redleghunter]

Actually, I don't. Those things are irrelevant to questions of law and also to some extent, ethics (there are secular pro-choice arguments that do acknowledge that the fetus may be a person, but still does not have rights to a womb). It is widely recognized by experts in Constitutional Law that there is no concept of fetal personhood within the Constitution. Antonin Scalia himself said "person" in the Constitution refers to people who "walk around", not fetuses. If you want it otherwise, you must come up with a Constitutional ammendment declaring it so.



According to the Nicene and Chalcedonian theology, a divine person took upon himself a human nature. Jesus was not a human person, and to say otherwise is a christological heresy.

You are in error. One Person two natures. Truly God and Truly man. The truly man was as human as we are.

 

[ubicaritas]

You are actually asking about when a soul enters a human body?

Ask the question....when did the human soul of Jesus of Nazareth enter Him?

It didn't have to be at conception, that's for sure. His personhood is his divinity, not his humanity in essence.

 

[ubicaritas]

You are in error. One Person two natures. Truly God and Truly man. The truly man was as human as we are.

I am not in error. I've studied more patristics than you can shake a stick at, and our church has the Nicene and Chalcedonian creeds as dogma that I learned in my catechesis when I joined this religious denomiantion years ago. Jesus is a divine person with a human soul and body. He has a divine nature owing to his divine personhood as the Son, and a human nature according to his birth from his mother Mary.

What you are articulating is in fact Nestorianism.

 

[redleghunter]

Actually, I don't. Those things are irrelevant to questions of law and also to some extent, ethics (there are secular pro-choice arguments that do acknowledge that the fetus may be a person, but still does not have rights to a womb). It is widely recognized by experts in Constitutional Law that there is no concept of fetal personhood within the Constitution. Antonin Scalia himself said "person" in the Constitution refers to people who "walk around", not fetuses. If you want it otherwise, you must come up with a Constitutional ammendment declaring it so.

What does the above have to do with Christians making moral decisions on the sanctity of human life?

 

[redleghunter]

I am not in error. I've studied more patristics than you can shake a stick at, and our church has the Nicene and Chalcedonian creeds as dogma that I learned in my catechesis when I joined this religious denomiantion years ago. Jesus is a divine person with a human soul and body. He has a divine nature owing to his divine personhood as the Son, and a human nature according to his birth from his mother Mary.

What you are articulating is in fact Nestorianism.

Then you should answer my properly posed question on at what point in Jesus's development He received His human soul?

 

[marineimaging]

When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman's husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Exodus 21: 22 - 25

Apparently, in God's eyes the fetus is not a human being. Therefore, the abortion is not the murder.

Life begins at conception. The moment the sperm and egg meld they being the process of creating a living human with a separate and distinct DNA that is of both parents, but actually not a duplicate of either. Unique and surely a human created; for what womb ever gave birth to a rock or a plant or dirt or air or sea or sky? Not one. The result of human consummation is life and only human life. Carried to term you will find it a human every time. According to scientific standards, the result of thousands and thousands of generations of humans to come from the womb verify that only a human will come of the seed of a man and the egg of a woman, therefore no more proof is needed. It will happen every time.

It is the beginning of the ending of that person. Some will die young, some will die old, some will die very old, but the person begins alive and is fully unique and also having rights given by the creator of all things. And in our country, rights that are being stifled in the hallowed halls of justice simply for fear of a riot. Furthermore, Jesus died for that child in the womb just as surely as he died for the elderly preacher, the mother who carried it in her womb, the doctor or midwife who participated in it's delivery and the person who was president and leader of the free world on the day it took its first breath of air that did not come from the host mother. To terminate the life of a person with a unique and separate DNA is considered by the law of the land to be one thing and an egregious act at that. Matthew 25:40 "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

 

[ubicaritas]

What does the above have to do with Christians making moral decisions on the sanctity of human life?

I posted a link here on another thread I started, that unfortunately got shut down, but it is by Pr. Ed Knudson and he correctly points out that according to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, there is really isn't such thing as a "Christian" or "Lutheran" ethics separated from the secular. So legal procedures, if they are fair and just, are always relevant when discussing Christian ethics.

Being a Lutheran is not about belonging to a "worldview" that gives us a wierd perspective on the world or a secret knowledge that only the illuminati among us know. It's about trusting in God's promises. We are not opposed to the fields of law or science informing our ethics. All people know God's law in their hearts and are capable of moral deliberation, and Christians are no better at this than any other, necessarily. So again, drop the Calvinist assumptions that somehow you have the "real" Christianity and the rest of us are just patzers that need to be enlightened.

 

[redleghunter]

It was not until after the Reformation that Rome developed the notion that human personhood begins at conception, and their ideology is the dominant one that has become the rhetoric of the pro-life movement.

No true. I already posted a quote from the Didache which forbids abortion.

 

[ubicaritas]

Then you should answer my properly posed question on at what point in Jesus's development He received His human soul?

I really don't see why that matters? Again, I'm a Lutheran, I don't assume its important to know that, just that Jesus is human in every way that I am or you are. In the meantime here below, there is no magic decoder ring for ethics in that sort of argument, anyways. Ethics is not based on some arcane science only the illuminati can know, such as theology, it's based on moral deliberation in community.

 

[ubicaritas]

No true. I already posted a quote from the Didache which forbids abortion.

Which has about as much authority in my religious tradition as a fortune cookie.

 

[ubicaritas]

No true. I already posted a quote from the Didache which forbids abortion.

The Didache was unknown in the West until the 19th century, it did not inform our tradition at all until then. Furthermore, there are still questions about whether it represents orthodox Christianity. It reflects a pastoral perspective and may have been from rural Syria.

 

[redleghunter]

I posted a link here on another thread I started, that unfortunately got shut down, but it is by Pr. Ed Knudson and he correctly points out that according to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, there is really isn't such thing as a "Christian" or "Lutheran" ethics separated from the secular. So legal procedures, if they are fair and just, are always relevant when discussing Christian ethics.

Being a Lutheran is not about belonging to a "worldview" that gives us a wierd perspective on the world or a secret knowledge that only the illuminati among us know. It's about trusting in God's promises. We are not opposed to the fields of law or science informing our ethics. All people know God's law in their hearts and are capable of moral deliberation, and Christians are no better at this than any other, necessarily. So again, drop the Calvinist assumptions that somehow you have the "real" Christianity and the rest of us are just patzers that need to be enlightened.

Lol I'm not discussing a worldview.

Actually what you just posted above is how people develop worldviews married to secular laws and ways.

I asked what does secular law and secular customs have to do with Christian morals as they apply to the sanctity of human life? We've had one Roman Catholic, one Eastern Orthodox and one Evangelical point to the Incarnation as a Christian foundation for the sanctity of human life.

You and the late Bonhoeffer seem to want to point to an ethics system based on perceived just secular laws.

 

[ubicaritas]

Secular "worldviews" are very relevant to Christian ethics because we are called to engage with the world in our process of serving our neighbor. And to serve our neighbor we must enter into their perspective on the world and take it seriously, holding it in creative tension with our own. Moral deliberation comes from listening to others, not just telling others they are wrong and your interpretation of a holy book has got all the final answers. Christians must be students before they can be servants. After all, the only way we can lear to serve others is to allow them to teach us how to serve. To allow them to teach us about their needs and what their world looks like. To do otherwise is to play God, which is to violate the first commandment given by God.

 

[ubicaritas]

BTW, everything I'm talking about is straight from the theological tradition started by Bonhoeffer in his Letters and Papers from Prison. He lays it down as these ideas are stewing in his mind while he sits in a prison cell awaiting judgement, thinking about God in a world that no longer seems to have need for old ideas about God. If he had been allowed to live, he might have written more, but I generally believe the path that mainline Protestants have taken to secularism is the correct one in light of this, in his vision of "religionless Christianity".

Bonhoeffer was my main inspiration for being a Christian as an adult, so I've always gravitated towards his ideas.

 

[ubicaritas]

I could say alot about the Incarnation, and Bonhoeffer is Lutheran so he certainly does so implicitly in his final work. I would say that Jesus was a child born to suffer and die with us, that is God's plan in Christ all along. God dying to Godself. As Bonhoeffer said, it is only when God allows himself to be pushed out of the world and onto a Cross, that God can truly save us. So paradoxically, to be present with us, God must be absent. There is no more thunder on Sinai and no more certainties about what we must do to live. All we have now is the Spirit in prayer to guide us and righteous deeds to do for the sake of our neighbor.

 

[redleghunter]

The Didache was unknown in the West until the 19th century, it did not inform our tradition at all until then. Furthermore, there are still questions about whether it represents orthodox Christianity. It reflects a pastoral perspective and may have been from rural Syria.

The sanctity of human life extends all the way back to Cain killing Abel. Written in stone “You shall not murder" in Exodus 20:13. Compare Exodus 23:7

Also see Genesis 9:5-6

I quoted the Didache because it gives us an indication on how the early church viewed abortion.

We see this also in the Epistle of Barnabas:

You shall not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shall you destroy it after it is born. (Chapter 19)​

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0124.htm

And even a century later:

Tertullian (c. 160 - 240)

They [John and Jesus] were both alive while still in the womb. Elizabeth rejoiced as the infant leaped in her womb; Mary glorifies the Lord because Christ within inspired her. Each mother recognizes her child and each is known by her child who is alive, being not merely souls but also spirits.

- De Anima 26.4



Thus, you read the word of God, spoken to Jeremias: "Before I formed thee in the womb, I knew thee." If God forms us in the womb, He also breathes on us as He did in the beginning: "And God formed man and breathed into him the breath of life." Nor could God have known man in the womb unless he were a whole man. "And before thou camest forth from the womb, I sanctified thee." Was it, then, a dead body at that stage? Surely it was not, for "God is the God of the living and not the dead."

- De Anima 26.5



It is not permissible for us to destroy the seed by means of illicit manslaughter once it has been conceived in the womb, so long as blood remains in the person.

- Apologia, cap 25, line 42

In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the foetus 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. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in the seed.

- Apologia 9.6​

 

[redleghunter]

All we have now is the Spirit in prayer to guide us and righteous deeds to do for the sake of our neighbor.

All neighbors except those the most vulnerable in the womb. Got it.