Posted on 06/15/2009 2:07:35 PM PDT by wagglebee
Scripture alone, but Scripture is never alone.
Indeed; +Clement and +Cyprian, two of the finest of their age, with an ageless and timeless wisdom.
Aye--Church precedes and defines Canon.
Those poor early Christians really did not understand God as well as liberals in modern times.
For some rationalization aficionados, if they can't double-click on a black and white commandment to reveal more selfishly advantageous gray details, then they err on the side of personal convenience.
I love discussions/writings that dig deep whether for the purpose of upending assumptions or for revealing additional support leading from already concrete foundations.
So, I enjoyed the post.
But, I've gotta say that I find it difficult to believe any reasonable Christian, even when limited to strictly biblical text, could NOT be convinced that abortion is sin.
God names and speaks of knowing, communicating with and making future plans for unborn children - old testament and new. And, quite clearly, He is speaking of humans beings not non-viable tissue masses.
My favorite has to be in Luke. That is where the prophesied and promised (to his parents) John the Baptist was still what liberals would call a "choice", yet he excitedly acknowledges the presence of the recently conceived Jesus Christ while the newly pregnant Mary visits the six months showing Elisabeth.
Where would we be today if either of these fine women had succumbed to an evil thought and terminated what God so clearly considered identifiable individuals? Particularly, since one was actually His Son, I think God might not have approved the "choice".
The Father also actually "hated" Esau while he was yet in the womb, but He still did not drive Esau's mother to Planned (de)Parenthood so that she could concentrate on her career.
**in the first three centuries after Jesus all Christian authors who mentioned abortion considered it a grave sin. This opposition was not merely local: Christian sources in Spain, Italy, Tunisia, Greece, Egypt, Turkey and Syria recognized abortion as forbidden by God and in the same category as any other murder. The condemnation was universal and unanimous.**
If only this were really true today.
I just finished reading a series of books about life in Rome — novels by Francine Winters. One of the characters asks the Christian (not then revealed) slave to put the baby on the rocks to die.
Instead the slave girl takes him to a St. John’s community — yes, in Epesus.
Very true, no reasonable person could ever read the Bible and conclude that abortion was permissible.
Even Romans 1 highlights how people suppress the truth evident in nature.
Anybody who believes in a Creator -- and that's a high % of Americans -- to turn around & then conclude that He started to create you only to be dismembered in what's supposed to be one of the safest places on earth (the womb)...is suppressing truth already there in one side of their brain.
Since the object has no value to them, "thou shalt not steal" apparently would not be the prosecuting precedent. And since "thou shalt not commit involuntary and unnecessary surgery to remove not-yet-human cell collections" is not specifically mentioned as prohibited by God, then it must be OK.
The Ten Commandments are very clear, “Thou shalt not kill.”
Unless I am mistaken, EVERY time a woman in the Bible is pregnant, the baby is referred to as a baby or child, the baby is NEVER called a “fetus” or “embryo” or “clump of cells” or whatever else the left would like us to believe.
There is this view that immediately after St. Paul died the church became heretical and corrupt. The result of this view is that the Scriptures are pitted against the Church. This explains one of the many reasons for the growth of so many heresies and cults that claim to be following Scripture alone. The Scriptures were written by the church, for the church, and in the church. The Bible is truly the Church’s book. Because it is the Church’s book, all the teachings of the Church must conform to it.
Deliberate obfuscation.
Consider the Hebrew Bible, in which you are not even supposed to spill your seed on the ground.
Some believers assume God is directly involved in "creating" each and every embryo. Some just assume nature itself is His "creation" and various reproductive functions are just the work of amoral body fluids and genetic programming. Either way, abortions are a cancer on His designs.
There is a reason why "Don't commit adultery" ranks right up there with "Don't commit murder" in seriousness. Because the words "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh" is not just some common sense tips on family planning that accidentally left out the in-case-of-career exceptions.
Rather it is a brief though, for some, unfathomably deep description of our holy commission as currently physically reigning fleshly replicas of the Creator Himself and of His eternal spiritual family.
The quote above from Genesis might seem, to some Christians, like God's version of a romantic Hallmark moment. It's NOT!
When He says the two "shall be one flesh", that is His way of explaining to the DNA-ignorant, no-clothes-wearing, fruit eating Adam and Eve that they have divinely complimentary roles to play in His majestic plan. (And, by the way, while avoiding the gory details, He is quite clear that His plot will completely fall apart if casting gives the roles to Adam and Steve.)
Two people become one flesh. One new unique "creation". As designed. Perhaps the final blessing on one branch of the millions promised to Abraham. Perhaps a new pinnacle of a pyramid of blessings as numerous as "the sand which is upon the sea shore." We don't know. He does.
All WE know for sure is that the dead branch of abortion violates His glorious design and that its perpetrators inform Him that their section of His main avenue of blessing is not reliably open for traffic.
FANTASTIC ARTICLE!!!!
Of course the texts include symbolic, analogous and allegorical references. A chapter after the 10 commandments are revealed the OT includes the description of the penalty for causing the death of a pregnant woman's kid. It uses, for example, both "child" and "fruit" to describe the unborn victim.
Other words are used elsewhere, but the subject is:
ALWAYS alive.
And NEVER a choice.
Babies and toddlers were abandoned all the time before Christian values became dominant.
Now that so many Christian churches have gone awry, the old barbarisms are back, including the devaluing of the lives of innocent children.
Great article, thank you. I’ll likely cut some pieces out of this and send it off to some of my “social justice” leaning friends.
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