Posted on 12/04/2008 9:08:03 AM PST by Alex Murphy
What is your stand on abortion?
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church takes a firm stand against abortion. Our reasons rest upon what the Bible teaches as to the sacredness of human life. And we hold the Bible to be the inspired, infallible Word of God.
1. In Genesis 1:26 & 27 we are told that God created mankind in His image. In Genesis 9:6 God says, "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God He made man." That image distinguished man from animal creation. Once truly human, that image of God establishes the product of conception to be endless in its continuous, conscious existence.
2. The Bible teaches the fall of our first parents in the Garden of Eden (see Genesis 3). The "death" threatened is more than the cessation of bodily life. It is not only separation of soul and body, but eternal separation from the goodness of God, with divine wrath on those who die under the curse of Adam's fall as well as that which is due to actual transgressions. (See Romans 3:1-19; Mark 9:42-44; Jude (verses) 12 & 13; Revelation 20:13-15.)
3. The Bible teaches that God sent His incarnate Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to save hell-deserving sinners (John 3:16; 6:14; Acts 4:12). It further teaches that children are born sinners and need to be taught their need of salvation through Christ (Psalm 51:5; Mark 10:13-15; Matthew 18:6 & 7).
4. Finally, the Bible teaches that unborn children are human beings, beginning with conception (Luke 1:35), in which the Virgin Mary was told that when Christ was conceived in her, he was already "the Son of God." And in verses 41-44, when Mary met Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist, Elizabeth's child leaped in her womb at the presence of Mary bearing the Christ Child.
Consequently, the Sixth Commandment (Exodus 20:13) forbids the wanton taking of human life. If the unborn child is a human being (and medical evidence underscores the biblical teaching that it is), then abortion is forbidden. One other aspect of the difference between animal and human life is that, at creation, God gave man dominion over the sub-human creatures (Genesis 1:26), but God retains dominion over His image-bearers, so that the killing of animals is not forbidden, but the killing of man is (with the exception of murderers, who may be executed by civil authorities under God's delegated authority to them as His ministers or appointed agents).
I have given you more that you asked. But what one believes is not important till you learn why he believes it. This I've tried to do.
For further information, see the Report of the Committee to Study the Matter of Abortion presented to the thirty-eighth General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (1971) and the Statement on Abortion adopted by the thirty-ninth General Assembly of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (1972).
The answers come from individual ministers in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church expressing their own convictions and do not necessarily represent an "official" position of the Church, especially in areas where the Standards of the Church (the Scriptures and the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms) are silent.You can read the entire Westminster Confession of Faith on Free Republic starting here. The WCF does not have a section that addresses abortion specifically.
The OPC does maintain an official position on abortion, however. It was formalized as early as 1971, in their 38th and 39th General Assemblies. That position is summarized as follows:
Abortion. The 1971 Assembly—two years before the infamous Roe v. Wade decision of the U.S. Supreme Court—denounced the practice of voluntary abortion except possibly for the purpose of saving the mother's life.
OPC has always been more conservative (as is UPC and EPC). It’s the PCUSA that is mainline....and fallen away.
I’m confused. I thought Calvinism taught that sin destroyed the image of God in man. Why quote Genesis?
That issue can’t be solved - an unborn child is both - a human beeing and a part of it’s mother. So it has a right to live and the mother has a right to have it removed.
As it concernes nature the consciousness sets in even AFTER birth so that can’t be a criteria. Ca. 44 to 48 days after ovulation nerves begin to interconnect - so somewhere there will be the point where sensing starts.
Drawing a line here would be appropriate.
What/who gave you that idea?
"As early as 1971"?? That would be 3 years after Humanae Vitae and nearly 100 years after the Holy Office of the Catholic Church wrote in 1884 that "it cannot be safely taught in Catholic schools that it is lawful to perform . . . any surgical operation which is directly destructive of the life of the fetus or the mother."
Long before that, The Fathers of the Church unanimously maintained the same doctrine. In the fourth century the Council of Eliberis decreed that Holy Communion "should be refused all the rest of her life, even on her deathbed, to an adulteress who had procured the abortion of her child. "
Abortion didn't begin with Roe v Wade. What took ya so long?
I’ve not heard of that... we are created in God’s image — our sin separates us from God... but we’re still created in his image.
Hoss
But when in doubt, I'll always go with God - Who has already spoken on this issue. He's always right...and we are not.
"This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live..." Deut. 30:19
Hoss,
Your summary is good Christian teaching. I agree with it.
Unfortunately (to my understanding) the Reformation took the nature of the fall much farther.
Traditionally the Church Fathers balanced two dynamics here by stating that in the fall we lost the likeness (relationship of communion with the Holy Trinity and accompanying grace of God) but retained the image (fixed in our nature.)
John Calvin and others felt compelled to emphasize that the nature was altered so severely because they needed to justify monergism to completely eliminate the Church (it would seem) from the equation of salvation.
Is it possible that post-protestant society retained the disdain for mankind that lurked in Calvinist distinctives?
See my Calvin quote to Alex
The mother has a right to have her child removed; it is called giving birth. She also has a duty to protect the life of the child before, during and after the “removal”.
you shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is begotten.The Didache, ca. AD 100
That's an accurate, but seriously out-of-context quote from Calvin's Commentary on Genesis.
In context, the quote appears in a discussion of Genesis 1:26-27. Specifically, Calvin used the occasion to discuss various Church Fathers' comments re the difference/distinction between the use of the phrase image of God and likeness of God in the Scriptures. Placing your quote into that discussion, the section it appears in begins with this:
In our image, etc Interpreters do not agree concerning the meaning of these words. The greater part, and nearly all, conceive that the word image is to be distinguished from likeness. And the common distinction is, that image exists in the substance, likeness in the accidents of anything. They who would define the subject briefly, say that in the image are contained those endowments which God has conferred on human nature at large, while they expound likeness to mean gratuitous gifts.It later states this, about two paragraphs before your quote appears, putting that quote firmly into it's larger context:
Since the image of God had been destroyed in us by the fall, we may judge from its restoration what it originally had been. Paul says that we are transformed into the image of God by the gospel. And, according to him, spiritual regeneration is nothing else than the restoration of the same image. (Colossians 3:10, and Ephesians 4:23.) That he made this image to consist in righteousness and true holiness, is by the figure synecdochee for though this is the chief part, it is not the whole of God’s image...Your quote, in regards to the image of God and not the likeness of God then appears - and please note that Calvin has already commented on the restoration of the image of God in man, prior to your quote.
The section is concluded thusly:
...The solution is short; Paul there alludes only to the domestic relation. He therefore restricts the image of God to government, in which the man has superiority over the wife and certainly he meant nothing more than that man is superior in the degree of honor. But here the question is respecting that glory of God which peculiarly shines forth in human nature, where the mind, the will, and all the senses, represent the Divine order.
It is worth adding in the Calvinist understanding regarding Total Depravity here, in consideration of this "destroyed image."
Total Depravity is probably the most misunderstood tenet of Calvinism. When Calvinists speak of humans as "totally depraved," they are making an extensive, rather than an intensive statement. The effect of the fall upon man is that sin has extended to every part of his personality -- his thinking, his emotions, and his will. Not necessarily that he is intensely sinful, but that sin has extended to his entire being.The unregenerate (unsaved) man is dead in his sins (Romans 5:12). Without the power of the Holy Spirit, the natural man is blind and deaf to the message of the gospel (Mark 4:11f). This is why Total Depravity has also been called "Total Inability." The man without a knowledge of God will never come to this knowledge without God's making him alive through Christ (Ephesians 2:1-5).
In the article at the top of the thread the term "image bearers" is used in a universal sense to designate all of mankind. Hence the prohibition on the taking of human life for we are all made in the image of God.
Calvin's commentary on Genesis, on the other hand, of which you have posted excerpts, seems to indicate that the restoration of the image of God in man is contingent on man's embracing the Gospel. At least that's how I read it. Here's what I'm reading;
Paul says that we are transformed into the image of God by the gospel. And, according to him, spiritual regeneration is nothing else than the restoration of the same image. (Colossians 3:10, and Ephesians 4:23.) That he made this image to consist in righteousness and true holiness,
Ergo, those who do not accept the Gospel are not "restored" into the image of God. Is that correct? That's a sizable portion of humanity.
If Calvin is insisting that the "image" of God consists of "righteousness and true holiness", doesn't it follow that not everyone has been "restored"? He's talking of spiritual regeneration, right?
I'm confused, too.
I’m not sure what you are saying. Calvin rightly points out that there is a sense (related to ‘government’) in which Paul speaks of man as the image of God and woman not not. But the point we are discussing is that image of God which describes both Adam and Eve.
Do unrepentent sinners bear the image of God? Or is it lost for all in birth and restored only in regeneration - as Calvin certainly seems to say?
The Church fathers said the image is retained. According this older view, the likeness was lost in Adam and his descendents and restored in the new Adam in regeneration.
What say you?
FWIW I think you're reading it right, and no IMO not everyone has been "restored". Calvin did not teach the heresy of universalism. But also, when he talks of the image being destroyed, he is not speaking of an utter annhiliation here. Even the original quoted section mentions "obscure, vitiated and maimed lineaments" that are "remaining in us". The image is totally broken, not totally missing. All mankind, including the unrepentent elements, still retains some part of it.
He's talking of spiritual regeneration, right?
Not spiritual regeneration only, and defintiely not in the context of individuals only. His view on what makes up the whole of the image of God is consirably broader than just an image residing in an individual. Modern evangelicalism, and the Anabapists elements of the Reformation itself, do not see regeneration extending to groups and societies at large. Reformers like Knox and Calvin did, however, and thus for them the whole image of God would reside in the whole of mankind, not complete within standalone individual men. It helps if you make a distinction between Man and Mankind, and also between the original unfallen image and it's current tattered state, when you read the Commentary sections.
So let me see if I can summarize and extrapolate fairly here.
You think that the Reformed tradition generally (for which the OPC is a viable representative) would see the image of God in mankind/and individuals/and groups in their natural state apart from Christ as being retained enough to support the thought that each and every human life is precious in God’s eyes as it bears in a limited sense His image? (It would seem to use this quote in a statement against abortion something like that must be intended.)
Assuming that is a fair statement, I think the nub of the biscuit for the Reformed on Total Depravity is that man (apart from Christ) is a despicable enemy of God. More perp than victim. Perhaps these two thoughts fit together for some but it doesn’t work for me. Closest possible fix is ‘vengeance is mine saith the Lord I will repay’ so the real sin in abortion would be taking the law into one’s own hands or that some of those babies may have been elect so one self-incriminates.
What I don’t see is how the fundamental impulse of the pro-life movement (that every life is a precious (good) gift of God) is not inconsistent with the Reformed teaching on depravity.
I would say yes, IMO you have articulated the Reformed position correctly.
the nub of the biscuit for the Reformed on Total Depravity is that man (apart from Christ) is a despicable enemy of God. More perp than victim.
Again, I would say yes, IMO you have articulated the Reformed position correctly.
Perhaps these two thoughts fit together for some but it doesn’t work for me. Closest possible fix is ‘vengeance is mine saith the Lord I will repay’ so the real sin in abortion would be taking the law into one’s own hands or that some of those babies may have been elect so one self-incriminates.
The former position is the closest to the correct understanding. Your latter conclusion, i.e. that only the elect should be protected from abortion, is completely off-target and fallacious.
What I don’t see is how the fundamental impulse of the pro-life movement (that every life is a precious (good) gift of God) is not inconsistent with the Reformed teaching on depravity.
I think you've made an incorrect jump between the Reformed understandings of righteousness, total depravity and inherent worth, but I've made you wait long enough for the above. I will do my best to answer this seeming inconsistency in a later post.
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