Jane-Q
...pain...
One of the key arguments employed by the Pro-Life side of the ongoing Abortion debate (at least in America) is the Pro-Life assertion that life begins at conception.
There is some good science which might be enlisted to support this contention (and just as much good science that might suggest otherwise).
But (while I support one side of the abortion debate for sociological - i.e. "good public policy" - reasons . . . which I will elucidate at the bottom of this post, for those interested), I am more concerned here in discussing historical/linguistic considerations as they merge with theological ones.
Specifically:
The Bible does not support the contention that life begins at conception.
The Old Testament theologically assumes that life begins at birth.
And the New Testament adds nothing to countermand this theological assumption.
When God created Adam in Genesis 2, God formed Adam out of material elements . . . and then God breathed His spirit into Adam and Adam was alive.
The Hebrew word for "breath" and for "spirit" is ruach. It literally means "breeze" or "wind."
But in the Bible, God gives an individual human being the breath of life (God's spirit) at birth. Then, at the end of life, God takes-back His divine spirit unto Himself at the moment when the person dies (i.e. breathes his or her last).
The picture in the mind - God's spirit as the breath of life - is a very poetic commonsense understanding. For the ancient world. But it is also rather profound, theologically:
God's gift to every human person on this planet . . . is that He lends you His spirit for all the days that you are alive. But when you die, the spirit which saw you through life . . . is returned to God.
A fetus in the womb (mammal or human) in large part replicates the journey of evolution: developing from a one-celled creature to a multi-celled creature, to a creature with a central-nervous-system and a circulatory system (heartbeat), to a gilled fishlike creature, to a lunged reptile-like creature, to a social creature with emotions (a mammal). And on to a smart primate creature with a proactive prefrontal cortex. This is how DNA builds living creatures, using "sequencing triggers."
When the fetus's heart starts beating the fetus is essentially an early form of fish. When the fetus develops the "capability" for feeling emotions, it is a ferret-like early-mammal in the womb. But it needs interaction with a fellow creature to actually "feel" an emotion - i.e. to trigger the capacity to feel any emotion - after it is born into the world and starts to interact "socially" (which scientists are now telling us is happening even at day-one after an infant is born). Birth is the trigger-mechanism.
Same with the prefrontal cortical building of neural-networks. All neural-network-building is potential in a fetus (latent). But nothing specific is actually built until after the trigger-event: birth. An infant (from day-one after birth) is "smart." A fetus is not.
i.e. (and this fact is crucial) . . . what makes a human liken to God (i.e. "made in God's image" . . . full of God's spirit) does not arrive until you take your first breath. Out of the womb. The newborn human (from day one) is acting in the world as a smart social creature. A creature that is intelligent and moral. A creature with God's spirit within him or within her.
i.e. Birth is the key event in the human spiritual rise toward divinity. There is no intelligence and there is no morality in a fetus. Both intelligence and morality are not latent but proactive. Intelligence starts "out of the womb" actively perceiving and constructing the world. And morality starts when (also "out of the womb") the infant begins transacting socially with fellow creatures.
So (to me) the ancient Hebrew writers basically got it right. "Life" - your journey with God - begins at birth.
Jane.
{ Abortion is a remarkably complicated political and moral question. My personal view is pragmatic. In the 1920s in American cities, on Saturdays women lined up around the block to get back-alley abortions. It was against the law. Most religious denominations condemned it. Many women died of complications or due to unskilled practitioners. The women were not ignorant of these facts. But a certain significant percentage of women kept coming. Like Prohibition in the 1920s (outlawing consumption of liquor), the outlawing of abortion sounds good on paper. But in practice it is just very bad social policy. It generates far bigger social problems than it solves. All morality is situational and relative. And has a practical side. God gets that. Because that is the way God works in the world, too. God never tried to make a "perfect" world, just an ever-improving one. If something is not working very well, you try something else. And until something better comes along, that means (in my pragmatic view) we publicly accept the existence of low-cost, medically-safe, widely available abortions. Because there will always be a certain significant percentage of women (like in the 1920s) who will seek them out, legal or illegal. Despite all the education and preaching you patronizingly throw at these women. }
