Today’s “Five on Friday” is five things to know about the Christian pro-life worldview, excerpted from The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture by Scott Klusendorf.
Pro-life advocates present a formal case for their position.
That case is summarized in the following syllogism:
P1: It is wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being.
P2: Abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being.
C: Therefore, abortion is wrong.
That abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being is conceded by many who perform and defend the practice.
Abortionist Warren Hern writes, “We have reached a point in this particular technology [D&E abortion] where there is no possibility of denying an act of destruction. It is before one’s eyes. The sensations of dismemberment flow through the forceps like an electric current.” Feminist Camille Paglia frankly admits, “abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue.” Feminist Naomi Wolf calls aborting a human fetus a “real death.”
The Bible is pro-life even if the word “abortion” does not appear.
Scripture is clear that all humans have value because they bear the image of their maker (Genesis 1:26-28; James 3:9). In laymen’s terms, that means humans are valuable in virtue of the kind of thing they are rather than some function they perform. Humans have value simply because they are human.
Because humans bear the image of God, the shedding of innocent blood is strictly forbidden (Exodus 23:7; Proverbs 6:16-19; Matthew 5:21). Abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human being. Thus, the passages in Scripture that forbid the shedding of innocent blood apply just as much to the unborn as they do every other innocent human being.
Pro-life Christians tell a better equality story.
Does each and every human being have an equal right to life, or do only some have it in virtue of some characteristic that may come and go within the course of our lifetimes? Indeed, the abortion-choice position undermines human equality. That is, if humans only have value because of some developed characteristic like self-awareness that none of us share in equal measure, it follows that since that characteristic comes in varying degrees, basic human rights come in varying degrees. Human equality is a myth!
Theologically, it’s far more reasonable to argue that although humans differ immensely in their respective degrees of development, they are nonetheless equal because they share a common human nature made in the image of God.
The remedy for post-abortion guilt is not avoidance. It’s forgiveness.
Post-abortion men and women do not need an excuse. They need an exchange: Christ’s righteousness for their sinfulness. Like all forgiven sinners, post-abortion men and women can live each day assured God accepts them on the basis of Christ’s righteousness, not their own.
rusty tugman 