You’re confused about why Christians are against abortion… Raising hysterics that it is a method of bringing in The Kingdom of God lmao it is very simple, we view abortion as murder, as we always have for thousands of years… It is a standard crime like any other kind of murder, and we are glad when people are protected from it Here is the Bible teaching us that the fetus is a human being in the womb: Genesis 25:22 "But the children struggled in her womb: and she said: If it were to be so with me, what need was there to conceive? And she went to consult the Lord."
Nowhere does the Bible teach that abortion is murder. The passage you cited does not require that conclusion. You are reading your own ideas into the text, and then are delighted to find that text magically agrees with your convictions. Sound exegesis doesn't work that way.
I thought you said that the Bible nowhere teaches the personhood of fetuses… can one be a child while not even a human?
There is nothing in the passage you cited that either teaches fetal personhood or declares abortion to be murder. It is a narrative, written in colloquial language; it is not law, written in the precise language of carefully defined terms and imperatives. She felt movement in her womb and took it at as a sign of things to come, as the ancients sometimes interpreted such things. She could not have known from the mere movement in her womb that she was having multiples, nor would they at that stage have been capable of literally "struggling" with one another. A more complete quotation of the passage is: The babies jostled each other within her, and she said, “Why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the Lord. The Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.” When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment; so they named him Esau. After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to them. Genesis 25:22-23 NIV This is what biblical scholars since Gunckel have referred to as etiology: a story set in ancient time that is intended to explain some aspect of then-present-day reality, the setting of which was usually one of the two post-Davidic kingdoms. This type of framework recurs throughout Genesis, and is one of the things that makes it such a fascinating book. The passage is saying that the Israelites and the Edomites are descended from ancestors who were actually brothers, and that the pattern of struggle initiated between the brothers continued in their descendants up to the present day (from the original author's perspective). To read it as some kind of backdoor legislation in disguise is to do violence to the plain meaning of the text. Interpreting it correctly should be part of what it means to have respect for it.
I’m not talking about whether the Bible has verses that say abortion is murder… I’m asking whether a pre-born fetus is already a human in the eyes of God, or is only a proto-human as argued by the modern secularists So if according to God a fetus is already a child (above), if God says he knew Jeremiah in his womb, or John the Baptist “leaped for joy” in the womb of Elizabeth… the conclusion is pretty simple right?
Whether it's human isn't the issue. Of course it's human. What else could it be? My foot is human, too, but it is not a person.
Okay then, can one be a child and not be a person?.. same question Can John the Baptist be attributed an independent agency (leaping inside Elizabeth), or can Jeremiah be known as his own person by God whilst he is still only in the womb?... How do you explain away so many verses where God seems to relate to fetus as an independent human being separate from his mother
What is a child but a developing human? If the child has developed to the point that it exists independently (in the biological sense), then it is a person, i.e., an individual. If it has not, then it is not. More fundamentally, with all these examples, you are trying to take an English translation of a text that wasn't written in English, and that was communicated in the style of popular storytelling or poetry, and make it mean something highly technical and precise in a modern American context, when conveying such information was clearly not the intent of the authors themselves.
Wouldn't you agree that Christians for thousands of years have understood it in my sense?.. I don't see what America has to do with it, you have Christians in the 1st century AD taking exactly the same position as I am
Yes, some Christians have read it differently in the past. We aren't bound by such interpretations if they turn out to be erroneous. At least that's what the Anglican formularies teach. We wouldn't be talking about this in this way if we weren't living in America in the 21st century, for heaven's sake; living in America has everything to do with it. America has always had a weird civic religious understanding of God and man that owes a lot to gnostic and revivalist influences, and which has then been incorporated into whatever denominational habits prevailed in a given locale. Disconnecting those two things is extremely difficult, as this thread has illustrated in abundance. Pretty much everything weird, new, and strange in global Christianity today originated here in the U.S. The author Michael Horton has written a good bit about why that is.
Weren't Christians categorically opposing abortion in the 1st century AD Roman empire?... I don't understand what you're trying to say Weren't the 1st century AD christians sneaking out into garbage dumps to rescue aborted fetuses, to raise them up as human beings?... That seems to me far more extreme than anything in the pro-life movement today I really don't understand what you're saying
TEC position: it has never been murder to kill a human child so long as you kill him/her at the right location and in the right stage of development.
The subject of this thread is the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and we've learned a thing or two about the biblical text since the 1st century. There are many extreme things one finds in the early church, and in all subsequent ages. Here it is, in summary (I've already argued each of these points above): There is no biblical prohibition of abortion; There is no biblical teaching of 'conception-personhood'; Abortion as such is not murder; Once biological viability is achieved, the State has a compelling interest in protecting the unborn potential person; Subsequent restrictions on abortion in both Judaism and Christianity were inferred from principles derived from their respective readings of the text; It is not necessary to subscribe to 'conception-personhood' in order to morally oppose elective abortion, viz., those sought when the pregnancy was not the result of rape or incest, or not a threat to the life and health of the mother. It is consistent with the nature of a free society - i.e., one in which laws are made by equal consent according to a majority-decision rule - to ban things that have a legitimate use, merely because they can be used in a way that a minority of the population considers to be immoral; It is inconsistent with the nature of a free society for the privacy of citizens to be violated in the course of acquiring goods or services that have a legitimate use; Therefore, Banning abortion outright is neither necessary nor warranted; The procedure should be regulated such that those seeking care may do so safely with minimal risk to the life and health of the mother; The mother's privacy throughout the process should be respected; Doctor's should not perform the procedure post-viability unless one of the three aforementioned exceptions is present; The health care system overall should be structured such that unwanted and unintended pregnancies may be reduced to a minimum; Social resources should be made available for post-natal care for the poorest citizens. That's it in a nutshell. If those steps are followed, you will see abortions over time brought down to a minimum, without having to put anyone in jail, and at the same time, we would be alleviating poverty, and promoting more stable families, and all at a fraction of the cost of what it would take to maintain a police state to enforce draconian new restrictions on doctors and their female patients, and on minority populations that are already over-policed. The Right's stance on this is cruel and counterproductive; there's no good reason to address this issue the way they are insisting on addressing it, and the consequences in terms of the human cost will be dramatic. Beyond that, I don't know what else I can say about it, other than to say that the association of Christianity with extreme right-wing politics will have dire consequences for the Church's long-term prospects as a healthy, growing set of institutions that have the public trust. In many cases, liberal Churches are the recipient of hostility toward right-wing politics, simply because they're more visible (and often the general public doesn't know the difference). The next generation of Americans is considerably more secular and simply isn't going to put up with this stuff. Whatever gains the Right thinks they're making now will only be temporary. But the Church will bear the lion's share of what remains of the costs, after the immediate victims of these ill-conceived policies, of course.
Sound exegesis in the Anglican church is not performed in a vacuum but is informed by church tradition, through the Councils and church fathers...and church tradition is quite clear in its view that abortion is murder.
The tradition is wrong. Church tradition only has authority if it is consistent with Scripture. In this case, it is not, as I have demonstrated in this thread. There is no rule of Anglican exegesis that says all interpretations must defer to the Church Fathers. In fact, there is no specifically ‘Anglican’ method of exegesis at all. Abortion is not murder, and to treat women who have received the procedure as criminals is a crime in itself.
Were Christians extreme right-wingers for fishing out aborted fetuses and raising them up as children?… Were Christians extreme right-wingers for opposing abortion in every century for millenia? I think you may be confusing extreme right-wingers with Christianity as such, with Christianity itself There is no compromise with the world, and we don’t intend to compromise with it, we never have, in any century you’d find us in I don’t see what part in your steps would lead to a diminishing of abortions of over time, perhaps you missed a step? We live in an over-sexed culture, where the only momentum is to have more sex with more and more people.. And the more sex there is, the more abortions there will be This is why Planned Parenthood sponsors sex-ed, especially in schools, because they know they get nice profits on the backend of that ingenious diabolical program The only way to truly diminish abortions is to return to chastity as a core cultural value, and to teach people to have as little sex as possible, and with only their spouse for life (as God has taught us)… There is no clever progressive “plan” or “tactic” that can substitute for God’s will
I think it's more accurate to say, church tradition has authority if it is not inconsistent with Scripture. The reason is, Scripture leaves some things unsaid or uncertain, and it is precisely for these things that we turn to the early church's understanding of the faith for our guidance. I could appreciate your protest against tradition in this question if it were contradictory to Scripture; however, it is not. I'd like to reprint a prayer from our Bp. Julian Dobbs: Almighty and everlasting God, we thank you that all human beings are created by you and in your image. Grant us grace, wisdom and courage to promote and respect the sanctity of every human life from conception to natural death. We pray that our witness for Christ would be faithful and humble, that we would always point people to the cross and wisely declare the faith once for all entrusted to the saints. Grant to those in our nation and around the world who are distressed by the decision of the Supreme Court the grace and quietness, to hear the loving, forgiving and reassuring words of the Lord. Continue to protect the little ones Lord, for to such as these belong the kingdom of heaven. In Jesus name. Amen.
I’m afraid I don’t see the distinction. In English, ‘consistent’ = ‘not inconsistent’. There is no basis in the Scriptures for the teaching that abortion is murder. To assert such a thing is tantamount to making additions to the divine law.