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Top Ten Pro-life Passages #8 // Proverbs 24 Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering towards slaughter. If you say, ‘But we knew nothing about this,’ does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will he not repay everyone according to what they have done? [Proverbs 24:11-12 NIV] Our journey through key Old Testament texts has focused on what God’s Word teaches about the child in the womb, only in passing touching on abortion (mainly when discussing Exodus 21:22–25 and Jeremiah 20:17–18). This reflects the comment of Old Testament scholar Meredith Kline that: “[t]he most significant thing about abortion legislation in biblical law is that there is none. It was so unthinkable that an Israelite woman should desire an abortion that there was no need to mention this offense in the criminal code.”[1] Nevertheless, before we transition to the New Testament, it is necessary, given our contemporary context, to say something about abortion. We do so bolstered by a better grasp of the Scriptural understanding of the unborn child and mindful of John Stott’s principle that “it is our evaluation of the foetus which will largely determine our attitude to abortion.”[2] To do this we will examine what the Old Testament teaches regarding our duty to protect and preserve human life, with particular reference to its condemnation of all forms of child sacrifice. A couple of texts from Proverbs set the scene. Proverbs 24:11–12 is a good place to start: 11 Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. 12 If you say, “Behold, we did not know this”, does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work? Three things stand out. Firstly, God’s people have a duty of care to those who are in mortal danger. Scripture values human life so highly that necessary precautions should always be taken in everyday life, such as when constructing a house (see Deuteronomy 22:8). If the Bible cares about “health and safety,” then it certainly has something to say about deliberate slaughter. When it comes to an all-out attack on human life, the stakes are raised, and inaction becomes inexcusable. This is the second point (see verse 12): pleading ignorance is no excuse. As much as the abortion industry wants to hush up the reality of the slaughter, the Church should be proclaiming it from the rooftops. Knowledge without action becomes culpable (see James 4:17 for a New Testament equivalent for this principle). How many churches have health and safety policies and compulsory risk assessments for their activities? Yet how many churches do you know which have a policy on abortion or a plan to actively challenge it? Thirdly, our view and action on abortion matters, precisely how we respond to this moral crisis is seen by Almighty God, and he will hold us accountable for our courage – or lack thereof – in speaking out and acting on behalf of our unborn neighbour: “will he not repay man according to his work?” (verse 12). All God’s people have a responsibility here, but Christian teachers will be judged more strictly (James 3:1). We see similar themes elsewhere in Proverbs, e.g., Proverbs 31:8–9, an oracle in which a mother exhorts the “son of her womb” (Proverbs 31:2) to defend the vulnerable (Proverbs 31:9). Those without a voice (Proverbs 31:8)[3] surely includes the unborn child, for whom we must speak. When combined with the powerful witness against child sacrifice in Scripture, the biblical case against abortion becomes even clearer. Abortion may not be directly addressed in the Old Testament, but God’s people lived amongst pagan nations who sacrificed their infants to various false gods, notably Molech. Leviticus 20:1–5 is a good example of a passage where God treats child sacrifice as the most serious kind of offence, a crime for which one was cut off from the people – with God himself taking such action if his people did nothing to intervene. Child sacrifice is frequently termed an “abomination” in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 12:31; 18:9–12; 2 Kings 16:3; 2 Chronicles 28:3; Jeremiah 32:35). This latter verse, like Jeremiah 7:31, teaches that such a wicked practice is utterly opposed to God’s character: “it did not come into my mind,” (literally “heart” in Hebrew). God’s heart is rather to love and protect children – new-born and unborn – not to kill them. As well as the moral revulsion of child sacrifice, the practice has serious long-term spiritual consequences. As Psalm 106:37–38 makes clear the land is polluted or defiled when this occurs: 37 They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons; 38 they poured out innocent blood, the blood of their sons and daughters, whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with blood. The culpability or “guilt of blood” involved in the poor design of one’s roof in Deuteronomy 22:8, is replicated on a far greater and communal scale through the mass slaughter of children in Psalm 106. The whole nation is affected by this stain. Is it any wonder then that we do not see meaningful revival or mass conversions within the UK, or elsewhere in the Western world, where abortion happens on such an industrial scale?[4] Simply claiming that the situation will change once people are converted will not do, and may even exacerbate the problem, if the hardness of the ground has its roots, in part, in the scandal of abortion. It is a major blot on the Church’s record in this generation that so few churches, including those which claim to take the Bible seriously, speak out on abortion. Child sacrifice impedes the Church’s mission and it also impedes one’s prayer life: 31 When you present your gifts and offer up your children in fire, you defile yourselves with all your idols to this day. And shall I be enquired of by you, O house of Israel? As I live, declares the Lord God, I will not be enquired of by you. (Ezekiel 20:31). The stakes then could hardly be higher. Will God’s people in this generation choose a different path, will they choose life as God desires (Deuteronomy 30:11–20), or will they continue to be mute in the face of an ever-increasing slaughter that drenches the land in innocent blood, year after year? [1] “Lex Talionis and the Human Fetus,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 20 (1977), 193. [2] Abortion (London: Marshall Pickering, 1985), 10-11. [3] The NLT translation of this verse inspired the title of Camilla Olim’s excellent book For Those Being Crushed: Confronting Our ‘Social Justice’ Blind Spot (London: Kingdom Publishers). [4] Within the UK the last revivals of note occurred in Wales in 1904–1905 and the Hebrides in 1949–52 – both long before abortion became legal in 1967. NEXT WEEK IN THIS SERIES: God becomes an unborn child Login and subscribe to be notified of the next new post.

Top Ten Pro-life Passages #7 // Jeremiah 1 The word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.’ [Jeremiah 1:4-5 NIV] So far various insights have emerged from the Old Testament regarding the unborn child, including God’s intimate involvement in the creation of every child in the womb, both in terms of physical formation (Job 10) and moral character (Psalms 51:5; 139:13–16). God makes all people with the same care and attention he lavishes on a Jacob, a Job or a David (Job 31:13–15). We have also seen how a person’s character is evident before birth (Gen 25:22–26). In a related way the Old Testament also traces vocation back to the womb. This is particularly seen in the lives of Samson and Jeremiah. In Judges 13 the nation of Israel is at a pretty low ebb. They need a deliverer. And God provides, in the person of Samson. But unlike previous judges, such as Gideon, Samson is called from the womb: the announcement of his birth and his calling happen simultaneously. The angel of the LORD informs Samson’s mother that “the child shall be a Nazirite to God from the womb, and he shall begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines” (Judges 13:5). Nazirite vows were usually voluntary, so this is already unusual. Even more astonishingly, Samson’s vocation begins while he is as an unborn child. This is why his mother must temporarily adhere to Nazirite observations for the sake of the child growing inside her (Judges 13:4, 7) – she is essentially being instructed “to create a Nazirite environment for the fetus in the womb.”[1] Judges 13 gives us a biblical glimpse of the extraordinary, organic, vital connection between mother and her unborn child. The narrative gives us confidence that Samson’s mother follows the angel’s instructions, in contrast to Samson himself, who appears to show little regard for his Nazirite status as he grows up. If Samson fails to live up to his high calling and prenatal commission, the prophet Jeremiah presents a different story. The longest single book in the Old Testament begins with God’s formation and sanctification of Jeremiah as an unborn child. 4 Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” This aspect makes Jeremiah’s calling distinct from the call narrative of other prophets such as Samuel (1 Samuel 3); Isaiah (Isaiah 6) and Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1–2). Notice how this understanding is not the result of Jeremiah’s own reflections, but a revelation directly from God (Jeremiah 1:4). It is sometimes argued that Jeremiah 1:5 is only concerned with God’s foreknowledge of the prophet before he was conceived, and so it is irrelevant to understanding the unborn child. But it is really both/and. Of course God – being outside time – knows Jeremiah long before he was formed in the womb.[2] Several people in the Bible are spoken of before their conception, e.g., Isaac (Gen 17:15–21; 18:9–15); Samuel (1 Sam 1:11, 17–20, 27); Solomon (1 Chronicles 22:9); Josiah (1 Kings 13:2) and of course John the Baptist (Luke 1:13–17) and Jesus (Luke 1:31–35; 2:21). But notice that the second “before” relates to the time before Jeremiah was born, but while he was still within the womb – the Hebrew could equally be translated “before you emerged from the womb.” Further confirmation of God’s in utero preparation comes in Jeremiah 20:14–18, where, much like Job, he wishes he had never been born, even that he had been killed as an unborn child (Jeremiah 20:17). Jeremiah is acutely aware that it was within the womb that he was set apart to be a prophet, thus his desire amounts to a radical renunciation of his vocation at the point of its very origin (cf. Job 3:3). This of course was not God’s desire for Jeremiah – or any child – we have no record in the Bible of anyone seeking to kill their unborn child, in stark contrast to our own “progressive” society. God’s creative work and sovereign purposes are well captured by the word “form” in Jeremiah 1:5. This is the same root as the word “potter” in Jeremiah 18, where God is pictured as moulding his people’s future throughout history. “Form” is also the verb used in Genesis 2:7 for Adam’s creation, so although Jeremiah is made by God for a particular mission (as the Servant of the Lord is in Isaiah 49:5, using the same word), this does not detract from God’s formation of all people in the womb (see also Jeremiah 10:16 = 51:19). Jeremiah is shaped and sanctified to be “a prophet to the nations.” Biblical scholars are divided as to whether this is primarily a negative or positive role, but in reality we see both aspects in the book (judgement of nations: Jeremiah 1:10; 10:25; 25:15; 46–51 and hope for the nations: Jeremiah 3:17; 4:2, 16; 16:19). As prophet to the nations Jeremiah anticipates the vocation of the great “Apostle to the Gentiles,” Paul, a fellow Benjaminite (Romans 11:1; Philippians 3:5), who is also called from his mother’s womb to fulfil God’s saving purposes in his generation (Galatians 1:13–16). Just as God had a plan in mind for Jeremiah and Paul, God has a purpose for every single life conceived on this planet. Ending the life of any child in the womb not only destroys an image-bearing human, it also opposes God’s good purposes. [1] Susan Niditch, Judges: A Commentary, OTL (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2008), 143. [2] It is unclear anyway what this would change: if God knows people before they come into existence, then surely he also knows people – the verb indicates an intimate, personal relationship – while they are inside the womb! NEXT WEEK IN THIS SERIES: Can you handle these warnings? Login and subscribe to be notified of the next new post.

Top Ten Pro-life Passages #6 // Psalm 139 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. [Psalm 139:13–16 NIV] The Psalms have stood the test of time as the worship compendium of God’s church, the vividness of their spiritual and emotional register as relevant today as ever. The Psalms chart the full breadth of human experience, exploring God’s interaction with people in every circumstance of life. In several places the Psalms attest that God’s personal knowledge and relationship with individuals extends beyond birth into the womb. The Psalms speak of a dependence on God that begins in utero (Psalms 22:9–10; 71:6). The intimation of personhood is also manifest in humanity’s flawed nature from the womb (Psalm 58:3). David knows himself to be thoroughly sinful and that this tendency characterised his life even at conception – a powerful statement of personhood at this stage of life. In keeping with these insights, Psalm 139:13–16 is the Psalms’ most systematic treatment of these themes. Thematically God’s knowledge frames the psalm (Ps 139:1–3, 23–24), which is intensely personal, featuring a profusion of first and second person pronouns. As with other psalms, this personal dimension does not preclude wider application and appropriation for others. Allen Ross describes Psalm 139 as “applied theology, and so always relevant.”[1] If the overall message of Psalm 139 is that the psalmist is known by God, the particular contribution of verses 13–16 is that God knows the psalmist because God made him (cf. Ps 94:9). As Calvin writes, it is no surprise that “God, who formed man so perfectly in the womb, should have an exact knowledge of him after he is ushered into the world.”[2] We will work through the four verses in turn, pulling out their implications for the unborn child. Firstly, verse 13 13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. God fashions the psalmist’s “inward parts,” in Hebrew literally the “kidneys” (elsewhere translated as “heart” or “mind”). The kidneys are a shorthand for the spiritual, ethical, volitional and emotional dimension of human beings. They can indicate the conscience (e.g., Psalm 16:7; Jeremiah 12:2) and are tested by God in the moral examination of all people (e.g., Psalms 7:9; 26:2; Jeremiah 11:20; 17:10; 20:12). The kidneys can communicate distress (Psalms 73:21), as well as joy (Proverbs 23:16). So whereas Job 10:8–12 emphasised the physical constitution of the unborn child, the psalmist in verse 13 is making a statement about the creation of his moral anatomy. His deepest spiritual and ethical intuitions were created in the womb. This extraordinary creative work is likened to being knitted or woven together. The verb connects this verse with Job 10:11 and helps to determine the sense here. Secondly, verse 14 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. The Hebrew of verse 14 is difficult and the ESV alternative reading for the first part of the verse should probably be followed: “for I am fearfully set apart.” The verb is used is used of the Lord distinguishing the Israelites from the Egyptians during the plagues (Exodus 8:22; 9:4; 11:7). Later in Exodus 33:16, the idea is of the people being marked out by God’s abiding presence (the same word is used in Psalms 4:3; 17:7). In this context the emphasis would be on God’s formation of him as a distinct human being. It would suggest that every pregnancy involves God’s creation of a totally unique child. The language here places God’s action in the womb on the same level as his wonderful work at creation (Job 9:10); the exodus (e.g., Exodus 3:20; Judges 6:13; Psalm 106:7, 22; Micah 7:15) and the giving of the law at Sinai (Exodus 34:10). William Brown writes: “the formation of the human self, physically and morally, is rendered comparable to . . . [God’s] ‘wonderful deeds’ that elicit praise and covenantal obedience.”[3] Thirdly, verse 15 15 My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Although the unborn child is hidden to human sight, God sees him or her perfectly as he fashions the child “in secret”. The previous idea of being knit together is here expanded to suggest intricate weaving. The verb suggests fine variously coloured embroidery threads. Elsewhere in the Old Testament this word is used exclusively for the furnishings of the Tabernacle (Exod 26:36; 27:16; 36:37; 38:18) or priestly attire (Exod 28:39; 39:29). The womb is holy ground and the unborn child is “clothed” with great reverence. The final poetic twist is that this all happens “in the depths of the earth.” Again there is the sense of darkness and inaccessibility. This idea also conveys the fecundity – the womb, like the earth, is the fertile ground from which the child emerges. Finally, there is the motif of humankind’s creation from the earth in Gen 2:7. Just as God forms Adam from the earth’s “womb,” so he forms the psalmist in the depths of the maternal womb. God the Creator coming close to mould the human person occurs in every pregnancy. In the most sustained reflection on the unborn child (Job 10:8–12; Ps 139:13–16), Genesis 2:7, the verse that describes in greatest detail God’s creation of the first human being, echoes in the background. Finally, verse 16 16 Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Verse 16 begins by reiterating the initial idea of verse 15. The word translated “unformed substance” occurs only here in the Bible. Related words (“wrap up, roll,” 2 Kings 2:8; “garment,” Ezekiel 27:24) perhaps indicate the “folded up” nature of the unborn child. Thus the sense of someone hidden or latent, who will emerge with time, seems to be intended. One scholar suggests the child should be viewed: “not as unformed but as being-formed.”[4] The unborn child’s development is as yet incomplete, but God perceives the “finished article” from this embryonic stage of human existence. The hiddenness and appearance of the unborn child at this stage are no reason to reduce his or her humanity. For these reasons something like “my embryonic form” is preferable to the ESV’s “my unformed substance.” The rest of the verse forms a single idea: from conception (indeed prior to this) God foresees the totality of the psalmist’s life – all his days – which are already recorded in God’s “book”. The psalmist’s life is definitively “shaped” by God, with the verb again recalling Genesis 2:7. Although here the emphasis is not on the fashioning of clay, as the formulation of purpose (e.g., Isaiah 22:11; 37:26; Jeremiah 18:11). The psalmist recognises an underlying continuity to his experiences, that allows him to identify the unborn child with the person he is now.[5] Psalm 139:13–16 culminates in a strong affirmation that the unborn child is not a potential person, but a person with potential,[6] and a potential that is anchored in divine foresight. [1] Allen P. Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms (3 vols, Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2012-16), 3:816. [2] Calvin’s Commentaries on the Psalms, transl. James Anderson (5 vols, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949), 5:217. [3] William P. Brown, Seeing the Psalms. A Theology of Metaphor (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 211. [4] Jones, Soul of the Embryo, 10. [5] O’Donovan, Unborn Child,15: “[i]f the psalmist was not there in his mother’s womb, he would be less interested in God’s concern for whatever was there. God’s concern, for a foetus his mother was bearing, strikes him immediately and unquestionably as concern for him.” [6] Cf. Stott, Abortion, 16: “[the foetus is not] a potential human being, but already a human life who, though not yet mature, has the potentiality of growing into the fulness of the individual humanity he already possesses.” NEXT WEEK IN THIS SERIES: Do you know your calling? God determined it before you were born Login and subscribe to be notified of the next new post.

Top Ten Pro-life Passages #5 // Job 31 “If I have denied justice to any of my servants, whether male or female, when they had a grievance against me, what will I do when God confronts me? What will I answer when called to account? Did not he who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same one form us both within our mothers? [Job 31:13-15 NIV] We have already seen that Job plumbs the depths of human experience. Alongside this Job demonstrates an impressive theology of creation – this after all forms the substance of God’s response to Job in chapters 38 to 41. God’s creation encompasses the child in the womb. It is at conception that a new life comes into existence (Job 3:3) and Job goes into great detail about God’s creation of him before birth (Job 10:8–12). Despite all this some people argue that Job’s intensely personal descriptions are really only autobiographical. Perhaps God did knit Job together in the womb, just as he made David (Psalm 139:13), but that is because Job and David were special individuals, whose stories formed part of Scripture. Like Jacob (Genesis 25:21–26); Jeremiah (Jeremiah 1:5); John the Baptist (Luke 1:15, 41–44) or the Apostle Paul (Galatians 1:15), they all had a special mission within salvation history, so it makes sense that God was uniquely involved in their lives before they were born. But, according to this way of thinking, it is impossible to extrapolate from their prenatal life to the value of other unborn children. Before we explore Job 31:13–15 it is worth recognising how odd an argument this is. Original context is crucial for interpretation, but this cannot be allowed to circumscribe the wider application of the biblical text. Nor practically does anyone limit Scripture’s application to its original subject in this way. Who would argue that because Psalm 23 is ascribed to David, it is impossible for any other believer to speak of the Lord as “my shepherd”? Taken to its logical conclusion this would reduce the Bible to a series of irrelevant spiritual memoirs, as opposed to “examples for us,” “written down for our instruction” (1 Corinthians 10:6, 11; see also Romans 15:4). With this introductory framework in place, let’s look at Job 31:13–15: 13 “If I have rejected the cause of my manservant or my maidservant, when they brought a complaint against me, 14 what then shall I do when God rises up? When he makes enquiry, what shall I answer him? 15 Did not he who made me in the womb make him? And did not one fashion us in the womb? Job is presented as a model of the righteous man and for good reason. In his social context Job demonstrates a tremendously enlightened attitude to his male and female servants, treating them as human beings, rather than property, to the extent of investigating their complaints against him! In spite of his great wealth Job knew that he was also a servant of God (Job 1:8; 2:3). His ethic comes close to the New Testament, where those in positions of power and authority are warned to remember that they too have a master in heaven who is watching their conduct (Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 4:1). God is universal judge, hence Job’s first reason for fair treatment (Job 31:14). His second motivation is that God is also universal Creator (Job 31:15). Inherent human dignity stems from there being just one Creator of all people: rich and poor, black and white, etc. Earlier Job reflected that the grave is the great leveller of social distinctions (Job 3:13–19). But human equality is not an afterthought, evident only in death. It is the Creator’s original intention, whatever distortions people subsequently impose upon society. Job moves here from personal relationship (Job 10:8–12) to shared reality. What is true for himself is true for humanity without exception. And the sphere for this universal creation is unambiguously the womb. We are all fashioned by the same God with the same care in the same place (Job 31:15). Various important implications flow from this insight. There is a “solidarity in the womb” – we are all, in the words of Paul Ramsey, “fellow fetuses”![1]Every person on the planet was once, as we were, a vulnerable unborn child. This solidarity (based on common creational history in utero) should shape our response to fellow human beings. Elsewhere the Israelites are exhorted to kind treatment of vulnerable groups by reminding them of their previous status as slaves and sojourners in Egypt (e.g., Exodus 22:21; 23:9; Leviticus 19:33–4; Deuteronomy 10:19; 15:12–15; 16:12; 24:17–22). If shared past experience is a powerful motive for just treatment of those currently in a similar situation (e.g., refugees), it must also be a strong motive for compassion and kindness towards the child currently within the womb. In Job 31:13–15 it is precisely God’s incontrovertible creation of every person in the womb that makes human dignity and value meaningful and universally applicable. On Job’s logic, it makes no sense to refuse to extend human dignity and inherent value to unborn children, those who are at the very stage of development that demonstrates most completely their status as created by God. Tragically, although historical manifestos on human rights have acknowledged safeguards for the unborn child, today organisations purporting to defend the human rights of all – such as Amnesty International – deny human personhood, dignity, worth and protection to the unborn child, choosing instead to aggressively promote and expand abortion globally. Not only is this a desperately sad distortion of a once noble heritage, it fundamentally undercuts one of the key reasons the Bible presents for equal and humane treatment for all people: our common origin in the womb.[2] As Christians we need to expose such perversions with the light of God’s truth. There is no better place to start than Job 31:13–15. [1] Paul T. Ramsey, “Reference Points in Deciding about Abortion” in The Morality of Abortion, ed. John T. Noonan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), 67. [2] The Jewish theologian Robert Gordis, calls Job 31:15 “the most striking affirmation in the Bible – unsurpassed anywhere else – of the equality of all human beings, which is rooted in their common origin as the handiwork of God.” See Robert Gordis, The Book of Job. Commentary, New Translation and Special Studies (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America Press, 1978, 339). Ominously Gordis goes on to note that a commentary on Job written by German scholar Gustav Hölscher in 1937, at the height of the Third Reich, simply omitted this verse from his discussion. God’s word and genocide do not mix. NEXT WEEK IN THIS SERIES: What happened in the secret place? Login and subscribe to be notified of the next new post.

Top Ten Pro-life Passages # 4 // Job 10 “Your hands shaped me and made me. Will you now turn and destroy me? Remember that you molded me like clay. Will you now turn me to dust again? Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese, clothe me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews? You gave me life and showed me kindness, and in your providence watched over my spirit. [Job 10:8-12 NIV] The most detailed descriptions of the unborn child’s creation come within the Psalms and the Book of Job. Psalm 139:13–16 is understandably the most well-known and a future article will focus on that passage. But Job 10:8–12 is equally remarkable and deserves to be better appreciated, given its depiction of life in the womb (Job mentions the womb more often than any other book in the Bible). Job is a difficult book and in chapter 10, as in chapter 3, Job is at a very low point, even wishing he had never been born. He complains that God is slowly destroying his own handiwork (Job 10:3). If this was God’s plan all along, why was Job made with such exquisite care in the womb? Job feels the tension because he believes in God’s love, power and wisdom. Job’s suffering and wrestling with the Lord produces some of the profoundest theology in the Old Testament, including this beautiful portrayal of the unborn child: 8Your hands fashioned and made me, and now you have destroyed me altogether. 9 Remember that you have made me like clay; and will you return me to the dust? 10 Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese? 11 You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews. 12 You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit. There is a lot packed into these five verses in highly poetic language and we can only skim the surface here. The first thing to recognise – and this is a theme we will see repeated – is that when Job reflects on the beginning of his existence, he is drawn, as if irresistibly, to the language of Genesis. In other words, the creation of human life in the womb evokes in profound and significant ways God’s first creation of human beings in Eden. As the great 19th century German Lutheran biblical commentator Franz Delitzsch puts it: “a creative act similar to the creation of Adam is repeated at the origin of each individual . . . The primal origin of man . . . is repeated in the womb.1 We have previously looked at the first creation account in Genesis 1, but Job has in mind the complementary narrative in Genesis 2:7. Here God comes close to creation and like a potter sculpts Adam from the ground. The earthy aspect of human life is emphasised – we are of the same substance as the rest of creation – yet we are also animated by the divine breath. In the very same way God moulds Job, as if from clay, in the womb. Job 10:10 reflects the embryological theory of his day, in which the embryo was thought to “curdle” like soft cheese before taking greater definition and form. We might not often have compared the foetus’ growth to cheese-making(!), but it is one of several domestic crafts, including pottery (Job 10:8–9) and weaving (Job 10:11), that Job utilises to convey God’s artistry in shaping the infant’s body. The important point is just how consistently Job’s formation is viewed as God’s work. Job is not an accident, nor is his development simply explicable by science. God is behind his existence, and the life of every child in the womb. It is God who “clothed” and “knitted” Job together (Job 10:11). The fabric/clothing imagery will of course reappear in Psalm 139:13–16. When God clothes someone in the Bible it typically confers a certain status (e.g., Isaiah 22:21; Zechariah 3:4; see also Exodus 28:41; Genesis 41:42; Esther 6:11) and clothing is connected to personal identity (Genesis 27:15–16) and human dignity (Genesis 3:21). This verse also goes into a high level of anatomical detail. In fact this intense focus on the body (typical of Job) led the Church Father Ephrem to argue that Job here foreshadows the incarnation of Jesus. The only other time these four terms (bones, sinews, flesh and skin) occur together elsewhere in the Bible is in Ezekiel’s stunning vision of the resurrected army (Ezekiel 37:6–8). Just as God initially creates human life (Job 10), so he is able to recreate it in all its glorious complexity and individuality (Ezekiel 37). Nothing related to the composition of the physical body is lacking in the unborn child and the miracle of resurrection is comparable to the mystery of life in the womb (see Ecclesiastes 11:5).2 Job 10:12 reiterates that Job is alive because of God’s undeserved kindness (Hebrew: chesed). God’s covenant loyalty or “steadfast love” is traced by Job back to his conception. At a stage of development where many would see the unborn child as wholly insignificant, sub-human even, God’s concern is evident. The word “care” in fact is the same root as the word in Psalm 8:4 which speaks of God’s remarkable “care” for human beings. From the womb, the work of God’s hands is only “a little lower than the angels” (Psalm 8:5). Job is a complex book and not every opinion voiced within it is accurate, as God himself insists (Job 42:7), but Job’s words are not censured in the same way. When the dust has settled, faulty doctrine has been corrected and Job’s fortunes have been restored, Job 10:8–12 remain a compelling vision of the unborn child. This is a rich theology to correct, inspire and tell a better story about the most vulnerable people in the world. It can also help us when we are overwhelmed by feelings of low self-worth, despondency, even despair. God’s love for us has been present from conception and his providence is witnessed in every cell of our bodies. [1] Carl F. Keil and Franz J. Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament (10 vols, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978, repr. ed.), Job, 2:166-67. [2] In the period between the Old and New Testaments the Jews wrote a series of works that became known as the Apocrypha. This collection help us to understand the development of doctrine and thinking during this period. The Books of the Maccabees relate the struggle to maintain religious identity under fierce persecution. In 2 Maccabees 7:22–23 we find exactly this argument: the mystery of the unborn child in the womb points to God’s power to resurrect people after death in readiness for the last judgement and eternal life. NEXT WEEK IN THIS SERIES: Social justice begins in the womb. Login and subscribe to be notified of the next new post.

Top Ten Pro-life Passages #3 // Exodus 21 “If people are fighting and hit a pregnant woman and she gives birth prematurely but there is no serious injury, the offender must be fined whatever the woman’s husband demands and the court allows. But if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise. [Exodus 21:22-25 NIV] Exodus 21:22–25 is an important Scripture in its own right for what it communicates about pregnancy, birth and children, but it has also been harnessed – probably more than any other Bible passage – in defence of abortion. So it is vital we understand this text. Before we explore these verses it is worth remembering the consistent picture within the Old Testament is one where life begins at conception (e.g., Job 3:3; Hosea 9:11) and children are a gift from God to be celebrated (e.g., Psalms 127:3–5; 128:3). Because children and pregnancy are such a blessing, “a miscarrying womb and dry breasts” are wished upon enemies in Hosea 9:14. Like similar desires in the Psalms this requires careful interpretation, rather than imitation, but it indicates how ingrained the belief was that children are a blessing to be treasured, including those still within the mother’s womb. Miscarriage and stillbirth were viewed as tragedies (Numbers 12:12; 2 Kings 2:21, etc.). One of the horrors associated with invasion was pregnant women being ripped open, killing them and their unborn children (see 2 Kings 8:12; 15:16; Hosea 13:16; Amos 1:13). In Exodus the rapid growth of God’s people (Exodus 1:7) is seen as a good thing and a fulfilment of God’s creation purposes. It is Pharoah who wants to stop the Hebrew women having healthy baby boys. Although pregnant women and their offspring (including Moses!) are threatened at various points in the book, God’s will is that they and their children be protected. The midwives Shiphrah and Puah, as well as Moses’ mother Jochebed; his sister Miriam and Pharoah’s daughter are presented as heroines. It would be very odd if later on in Exodus Moses gave the people a law promoting abortion! Exodus 21:22–25 follows God’s revelation of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. It comes within a section of Exodus known as “The Book of the Covenant,” which includes practical application of the Ten Commandments, as various scenarios are presented together with their consequences and punishments. Exodus 21 contains various short case laws on several diverse topics. A little over halfway through the chapter is the relevant passage: 22 “When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman's husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. 23 But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, 24 eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 25 burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. (ESV) Two or more men are fighting. There is no indication that they mean to do the woman (or her unborn child) harm, but their brawl has got out of control and a pregnant woman is injured as a result of their actions. But what exactly are the injuries and who sustains them? The NRSV translates verses 22-23: “When people who are fighting injure a pregnant woman so that there is a miscarriage, and yet no further harm follows, the one responsible shall be fined what the woman’s husband demands, paying as much as the judges determine. If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life…” It appears that a distinction is made between the death of the child (“a miscarriage”) and “further harm” to the mother, with her potential death covered by the category “life for life.” In other words, the argument goes, there is a qualitative difference between the death of a child in the womb (where a fine suffices) and the woman’s death (which is deemed a capital offence). The unborn child’s life on this interpretation is viewed as less valuable than the adult’s. We will come back to whether these are automatic conclusions or not, but first we need to recognise that versions such as the NRSV are deeply problematic. Similar wording appears in the GNT and NJB, which, together with the NRSV, are less recent translations. For a start the word “further” does not exist in the Hebrew. It is added to clarify the “miscarriage” interpretation. In fact the word translated as “miscarriage” is not the usual Hebrew word for this (which is used a couple of chapters later in Exodus 23:26). It is instead a verb meaning literally “to come out,” which never on its own refers to miscarriage or stillbirth without qualifications indicating that the child was already dead. This word instead describes the healthy births of living children (Genesis 25:25–26; 38:28–30; Job 1:21, 3:11; Ecclesiastes 5:15; Jeremiah 1:5, for example). Moreover, the Hebrew “her children” is the usual word for a child once he or she is born. This confirms the humanity of the child and makes the miscarriage interpretation even less likely, as a word did exist to describe a miscarriage or stillborn child and occurs in Job 3:16, Psalm 58:8 and Ecclesiastes 6:3. The most natural reading of Exodus 21:22–25 is that the brawlers are fined for the distress caused by the premature birth, with additional penalties if further injury or death results to either mother or child. If either mother or child did die it is probable that the capital sentence could be reduced to a financial penalty, given the deaths were unintentional (compare Exodus 21:12–13, 18–19, 28–30). This brings us back to the “miscarriage” interpretation. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the NRSV, rather than the ESV, is correct, does it really make the case for abortion? Not at all! The men are still liable to pay criminal damages even if what happened was accidental, this is hardly a proof-text for deliberately ending a life in the womb, which is the purpose of every abortion. The Old Testament is clear how precious unborn children are so it would be a serious offence to destroy the person God so lovingly creates in the womb (Job 10:8–12; Psalm 139:13–16, etc.). Even so, someone might argue, does the “miscarriage” interpretation not present a diminished view of the unborn child’s humanity or personhood, as somehow less valuable than the adult mother’s? Again, this hardly follows. At several points in Exodus 21 the death of non-free Israelites is dealt with (Exodus 21:20–21, 28-32). There is a clear disparity in punishments when these victims slaves are compared with free Israelites. This reflects the complex social framework in which Israel existed and these laws were given. Does it imply that slaves were somehow less human than anyone else? Of course not! No theologian makes that argument today. Yet as Russell Fuller points out: “there is more evidence to suggest that the slave was not a person than that the fetus was not, since the slave was explicitly called property ([Exod] 21:21).”1 Perhaps it is possible, when discussing these laws, to talk in terms of a lesser legal status, but never a lesser ontological status. A person is a person whether their legal value is judged to be three shekels or fifty (see Leviticus 27:1–8). Exodus 21:22–25 does not present any argument against the full humanity or personhood of the unborn child. Even less does it provide a biblical warrant for abortion, if anything it suggests the opposite. For more on this passage see the article by John Piper: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-misuse-of-exodus-21-22-25-by-pro-choice-advocates As well as pages 142-43 in Scott Klusendorf, The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture (Wheaton: Crossway, 2009). [1] Russell Fuller, “Exodus 21:22–23: The Miscarriage Interpretation and the Personhood of the Fetus,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, 37:2 (1994), 174. “Property” in Hebrew is literally “money.” NEXT WEEK IN THIS SERIES: Hope for the downcast soul Login and subscribe to be notified of the next new post.

Top Ten Pro-life Passages #2 // Genesis 25 Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was childless. The Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant. 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 25:21-26 NIV] One of the most extraordinary accounts of life in the womb occurs in the story of Rebekah’s twin pregnancy. Before we dive in, it is worth recognising that in the Bible God is consistently presented as the one who enables conception. God alone can open (Genesis 29:31; 30:17; 30:22) and close (Genesis 16:2; 20:18; 1 Sam 1:5–6) the womb. Jacob may not be a particularly sympathetic husband, but even he recognises this truth in a heated exchange with Rachel (Genesis 30:2). Like the earlier matriarchs, Hannah rejoices when she becomes pregnant with Samuel, because God has “remembered” her (1 Samuel 1:19; compare Genesis 30:22). Far from being a remote and distant deity, the Lord is intimately involved with his people, and knows their joys, struggles, hopes and frustrations. God is sovereign over every life, including the unborn. There are no unexpected or unwanted pregnancies in God’s eyes. Rebekah’s story has parallels with many other women in Scripture. Her marriage begins a lengthy period where she is unable to conceive. The account is found in Genesis 25. Rebekah is a sensitively drawn figure in the narrative. The story of how she became Isaac’s wife (Genesis 24) is the longest chapter in Genesis. Rebekah is presented as a resourceful and active woman, in contrast to her more contemplative husband. In many ways she, rather than Isaac, parallels Abraham (compare the blessing on Rebekah in Genesis 24:60 with the blessing promised Abraham in Genesis 22:17). Interpreted against this backdrop, her later actions to ensure Jacob receives Isaac’s blessing appear less as deceitful scheming and more as seeking to honour the Lord’s promise to her while pregnant (Genesis 25:23). The foetal movements most mothers treasure signal for Rebekah the beginning of her problems, as the unborn Jacob and Esau “struggled together within her.” This is a strong word, in fact Gordon Wenham translates: “[t]he children . . . smashed themselves together inside her.”[1] Understandably perturbed, Rebekah goes to “enquire” of the Lord, a verb often associated with kings seeking God’s counsel through prophets (e.g., 2 Kings 3:11; 22:13, 18). With Rebekah we don’t read of any mediator and her faith is rewarded with an explanation from the Lord. She is in fact bearing the progenitors of two “nations” or “peoples” (Jacob/Israel and Esau/Edom), whose current strife prefigures their future hostility and that of their descendants. God’s word to her is shown to be trustworthy as in due course she gives birth to twins. The birth is just as unusual, as Jacob emerges from the womb gripping his brother Esau’s heel. “Jacob” puns on the Hebrew word for “heel,” from which is formed the verb “to supplant.” Esau uses this word in Genesis 27:36, when complaining that his brother has cheated him out of the blessing, effectively “supplanting” him as the firstborn son. More positively as Jacob’s character develops we see him struggling not only against Esau and Laban, but wrestling with God in a transformative episode (Genesis 32:22–32). What is fascinating is that Jacob’s actions even at this early stage of life inform the Bible’s portrait of him: “In the womb he took his brother by the heel, and in his manhood he strove with God” (Hosea 12:3). In the New Testament Paul traces God’s purposes of election through the story of Jacob and Esau, making the point that God chose Jacob while he was an unborn child (Romans 9:10–13). As twin brothers Jacob and Esau couldn’t be more different and their story is a good reminder that personhood begins in the womb. It is here that Jacob’s character is first glimpsed and where, according to Paul, God’s plan for Jacob’s life took shape. Not only calling, but personality too is traced back beyond birth. Genesis 25 is a powerful statement of the personhood of the unborn child and a critique of attitudes that regard life in the womb as just a blob of tissue. In a culture where abortion is celebrated and where one undesired baby in a twin pregnancy can be killed, God’s Word tells a better story and celebrates life. [1] Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 16–50 (Waco, TX: Thomas Nelson, 1994), 175. NEXT WEEK IN THIS SERIES: Is this a biblical warrant to abort? Login and subscribe to be notified of the next new post.

Top Ten Pro-life Passages # 1 // Genesis 1 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” [Genesis 1:26-28 NIV] In the first chapter of the Bible we read about God’s creation of humankind. This foundational statement of human nature is significant for its placement and the concluding summary that God, surveying what he had made, described it as “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Several libraries could be filled with the books on what exactly the image and likeness of God means! Several points stand out: Human beings are different from the rest of the animal world. No other creature is made in the image and likeness of God. Contrary to atheist philosophers like Peter Singer, people are qualitatively different from even higher mammals like chimpanzees. Human life is more valuable than non-human animal life, we are in fact only “a little lower than the angels” (Psalm 8). The Bible helps us understand that this difference is part of God’s creational intentions. Part of being made in the image of God entails responsible stewardship of the created order (see Genesis 1:26), but that is not the whole story. All human beings are made in the image of God The exact Hebrew phrase referring to the “likeness” or “image” (the words here are generally held to be equivalent) of God only appears in two other places in the Bible, but these references assure us that human nature as created in the image of God survives both the Fall (Genesis 5:1) and the Flood (Genesis 9:6). The New Testament encourages neighbourly behaviour on the basis that all people are made in God’s image (James 3:9). All people, in all places and at all times, young or old, male or female, and of whatever ethnicity, are made in the image of God. The image of God is about human nature not “functionality” This image of God is less about a status we achieve or behaviours we acquire, than about the essence of human nature. As Christopher Wright puts it: “[t]he image of God is not so much something we possess, as what we are. To be human is to be the image of God. It is not an extra feature added to our species; it is definitive of what it means to be human.”[1] Disastrous consequences have ensued whenever one group of people has tried to undermine the “imaged status” of another grouping (e.g., black Africans, Jews), who then come to be viewed as less than human and treated accordingly (the slave trade, the Holocaust). In the same way the attack on unborn life begins by undermining the humanity of the unborn child (“just tissue,” “a clump of cells,” etc.). God made human beings to create other image-bearers One of the reasons human beings exist as male and female is so that they can together (pro)create more image-bearers. This is stated explicitly in Genesis 1:28 (see above). The Bible gives a lot of attention not only to births, but also pregnancies, recognising that this is the point at which a new life comes into existence. The introduction to the first child Cain is typical: “Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have produced a man with the help of the Lord.”” (Genesis 4:1). Moreover, Genesis 5:1–3, which begins a list of Seth’s descendants, uses the language of God’s original creation (“image” and “likeness”) to describe Adam fathering Seth. In a way that parallels Genesis 1:26–27, the child resembles the parent. Alongside family likeness, the continuing presence of God’s image (Genesis 9:6) makes it clear that Seth is created in God’s image too. The formation of every child, occurring in like manner to Seth’s conception (Gen 4:25; 5:3), invites us to see human procreation as enabling the transmission of the imago dei. Whenever a new human life is created he or she is made in the image of God. There is, according to Scripture, no other way in which a human life can exist! Despite all this some Christians have been fooled into thinking that the baby in the womb is not yet a person, who does not reflect God’s image and likeness. As we will see in this series, denying the humanity of the unborn child is not only logically and scientifically problematic, it contradicts the rich theology of unborn life we find throughout the Bible. From conception a new human life exists, as precious as any other human being, and every bit an image-bearer as the rest of us. God speaks his “very good” over the child in the womb and expects us to honour this child as we would any other person. God regards any attack on the unborn child with the same seriousness as any attack on human life and dignity. [1] Christopher J. H. Wright, Old Testament Ethics for the People of God (Leicester: IVP, 2004), 119. NEXT WEEK IN THIS SERIES: Why were the twins fighting with each other in the womb? Login and subscribe to be notified of the next new post.

Podcast Transcript | About Abortion with Dave Brennan Image of God: human doings or human beings? Ft. Beth Davey | 2 Aug 2022 | Episode 8 Dave Brennan: Hello and welcome to this week's episode of About Abortion. Today I am joined by Beth Davey. Beth, welcome. Beth Davey: Thank you for having me. Dave Brennan: It's great to have you on. Thank you for joining me. This actually your second podcast today, isn't it? Beth Davey: Yes it is. We just did a very brief one for the church earlier. Dave Brennan: OK, fantastic. And so you are member of the church that I'm a member of, and in our church you wear a number of different hats, don't you? Beth Davey: Yes. Dave Brennan: Your grandmother, however, was a woman of many shoes, so I understand. And you think maybe 50 pairs? Beth Davey: More or less. I know my sister inherited 11 pairs after she died. And we threw out a lot more. Dave Brennan: I heard tell from your grandfather that she had a special tactic for giving the impression she wasn't buying so many new shoes. She used to buy a pair, put them in a cupboard for six months, and then only first wear them later that year. So that when he said, “Oh, are those new?”, she could truthfully say, “No, they're not. I've had them for a while”. Beth Davey: I can believe that. Dave Brennan: A cunning lady, a wonderful lady, now in glory. We miss her and are grateful for her life. But you are a woman of many hats and one of the hats you wear in our church is to teach the children in Sunday School for which my wife and I are very grateful. Our two little girls keep your hands, I'm sure, more than full in Sunday school. Another hat you wear is you come out as one of our educators in our public education team, CBRUK, Norwich, and perhaps another time we'll do an episode where we'll get a couple of you guys in to talk about your experience of that work, and how you're finding it. But if you were to just sum it up for us in three words, what would be your three words of your experience so far, being one of the educators in our CBR UK team? Beth Davey: I would say, probably it's challenging, really challenging. Warfare. But also inspiring. That's three words. Dave Brennan: Brilliant. Maybe that could be the title of our episode on hearing from the front lines. But that's not we're talking about today. Today we are talking about the image of God. And for those who've been following this podcast, they will have heard us talk about a general overview of the Bible. We had Tim Lewis on a few weeks ago, talking about what the Bible has to say about abortion. You don't tend to get the word ‘abortion’ in our English translations of the Bible. And so some people would go so far as to say the Bible's got nothing to say about it. Of course, that isn't true. For anyone who hasn't heard that, I just encourage you to go back and listen to that one. Now, during that podcast we did touch on the image of God, but I think it really merits a whole episode because it's such a foundational concept. The image of God. How important do you think it is to Christianity but also to the issue we're talking about, abortion? Beth Davey: I think to humanity itself being made in the image of God, as you said, it is foundational and so we use it in church and it's a fuzzy woolly term. I don't think many people know actually what we mean when we say it, but we use it a lot. Particularly for this issue, I think being made in the image of God needs unpacking more because a lot of Christians use it for this sense saying we defend the unborn because they're made in the image of God. So what does that mean? Dave Brennan: And that's what I'd love us to dive into today. So to get us started, what are the actual biblical references that speak directly of the image of God? Beth Davey: There are only actually three references to humanity being made in the image of God. The first one is in the very first chapter of Genesis. Genesis 1:27: So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. So I think the fact that it's in the very first chapter of the Bible shows how foundational it is. Then we skip forward to chapter five, where we see it again, Genesis 5:1 & 3: 1 When God created mankind, he made them in the likeness of God. 3 When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, Beth Davey: And so you see that as children go on, they're still in that likeness. And finally, Genesis 9:6. This is God speaking to Noah. 6 Whoever sheds human blood by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind. Dave Brennan: Brilliant. So those are the three direct references. Let's just spend a bit of time on each of those. So firstly, Genesis 1, God has made the animals, hasn't He? So He's made living things. And I'm not sure we can define exhaustively what the image of God is. There's some mystery wrapped up just in the way we can’t understand God in all his entirety, there is mystery, but there are certain things I think we can say. So the fact that only human beings are made the image of God, what does that tell us about humanity, as opposed to the animals, and the way God actually speaks of human beings as opposed to animals? Beth Davey: I think it gives a foundation for the human rights of value and dignity that animals don't seem to have in the same way. Yes, all of creation is indeed important because God has made everything, but the fact that it's only humans who are made in his image, it seems to be that there's a unique relationship that they have between themselves and the Creator, that the rest of creation doesn't seem to have. But also then a unique task that they have being in the image of God that the rest of creation doesn't have. Dave Brennan: And that follows on straight away, doesn't it? So having said, “Let us make man in our own image”, it then says, “God created man in his own image.” Male and female, crucially. And I don’t know how much time we're going to have to unpack that, but it's so key, isn't it? The male and female together were made in the image of God. Perhaps we can talk about that in a bit. But then instantly the next thing we hear is, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it”. So there's what people might call the creation mandate. Beth Davey: There seems to be some sort of functional role that's included in this image of God. For society today, we think of images being very visual, don't we? With Instagram and YouTube videos and everything, images seem to be visuals, but it doesn't really seem to be a visual image. It's not that humanity is made visually to look like God. The instructions to be fruitful, increase, fill the earth, subdue it, rule over it, it seems to be a functional image that's being portrayed here rather than a physical image. Dave Brennan: So His representatives or His deputies, or something like that, continuing the creative work, the subduing work. That’s helpful. We'll definitely come back to the functionality of this. But then the other thing that happens very soon after this is, of course, God says it's “very good” as opposed to just “good”. When He made the sea, the dry land, the sky, the stars, whatever, that was good. The animals: still just good. The people: very good. So I think we can safely say human beings are the pinnacle of God's creation. So that's just a very quick look at the first reference. The second one, how significant is it that we see this happening after the fall? So we’ll turn to Genesis 9 for that, because that's the specific reference. But in Genesis 5 first of all then, this echo we get in verse 1: “God created man in his own likeness.” “Adam had a son in his own likeness, in his own image.” What light does that shed on what it might mean that we're made in God's image? Beth Davey: I think it definitely means that it’s something intrinsic to humanity, that it's not just for Adam and Eve, but it is something that is passed down. I think here it maybe goes beyond something that's functional, because these children, they're maybe not functioning in extending the rule and reign of God and ‘subduing the earth’ at that time, and yet they're still in that image. So it seems that it's something more intrinsic to what it means to be human than just a function that we perform. Dave Brennan: I think that's really helpful because of course, this son he had in his own likeness, started life as a fertilised egg, a zygote, an embryo. And yet it seems pretty clear from the get go, he was in Adam's image and Adam was in God's image. So the image of God can't be reduced to functionality. I think that's really key. Do you think it could also suggest that being made in God's image means that we reflect him, maybe not visually, but we reflect him in a way that a son reflects his father, that there is almost a familial likeness? Beth Davey: Yes, and I think the very physical nature of the family and seeing that passed on is a symbol of what we've got between us and God. I think you see that between Jesus and the Father. In Christ the fullness of God dwells, and we see that He was the image of the invisible God. And so you can see that relationship between reflecting who the father is, and that continues throughout. Maybe you get the sense of, after the fall, you can lose that family likeness. As the generations go on, you can see you don't maybe have your grandfather's ears or your grandmother's nose. Dave Brennan: You can still have her shoes though! Beth Davey: I do have her shoes! But you start to lose that sometimes. And I think that represents what we see after the fall maybe, that we start to lose some of that likeness, but it is still there. Dave Brennan: So degeneration. That's very helpful. And again, Genesis 1, we see that they are made in God's image and then straightaway: “Be fruitful and multiply.” Is there something even in our pro-creativity, which is itself, part of being in the image of God? Because God gives life, God creates. And what an incredible privilege we have as human beings, those who are called to parenting, that we actually procreate. Is that part of the image of God, do you think? Beth Davey: I think so. Fundamentally. God in himself is Father and Son and Spirit. And so fundamental to the being of God is that Fatherhood and Sonship, and so to be Father, He has to eternally be Father. He can't become Father at some point, otherwise he wouldn't be eternally Father. Same with the Son. He has to eternally be Son, and so that family relationship within the being of God is completely represented in being made in the image male and female, and that command to be fruitful and multiply. It's within the family unit, which is the bedrock of society, that I think we see the image of God at its fullness. It's not just the individual, but it's person in communion. Dave Brennan: So the family dynamic within the Godhead is intrinsic. Therefore, if we're made in his image we should expect to see that. And that is very striking, isn't it? Genesis 1, male and female made in God's image together. It's inherently interpersonal, isn't it? It is inherently a relational concept, which does rub against the modern concept of personhood, doesn't it? Whereas, I know we've talked a bit about Ann Furedi’s book, the Moral Case for Abortion, but she's by no means an outlier. How do people today see personhood? What is that? Beth Davey: We see this on the streets all the time. That to be a person, it's an individual with consciousness and the ability to reason. And so if you are not an individual with those abilities, you're not a person. I don't think that's scripturally what we see at all. It seems to me that there's something so much more intrinsic to who you are, that even if you don't have those abilities, you are still in the image of God. You've still got personhood status. It's not based on mental capacity. Dave Brennan: I think that's so key for our listeners and all of us to get a hold of, that the functionality, be it how we relate to people, our mental capacities, these spring from the fact we're made the the image of God. But our dignity in being made in the image of God cannot be reduced to any one function. It's bigger than that. It's deeper than that. And I think that's so important in a very functional society, which values, almost in a utilitarian way, if you can't do certain things or even if you can't enjoy certain things, you don't count. And it seems to me, and we'll look at some of these scriptures, the Bible very directly speaks against that idea. Just briefly, the third reference there. What differences does it make? This is after the flood. It's clearly after the Fall, God reiterating. Beth Davey: I think it's really important that he reiterates it in a New Covenant after those times, that we still have the image of God. We can't claim that we've lost the image of God in mankind. He quite clearly divinely speaks the word that God has made man in His image, and then by extension, anyone who dishonors his image, through killing or shedding blood, in effect, dishonours God himself. Because this is a representation of who He is, an extension of His presence and rule in the world. In shedding blood or killing the image, you haven't killed God himself, but you have disrespected Him, dishonored Him, and it's a personal afront to who He is, that you have thought that you can go as far as to hurt his image. Dave Brennan: Yes. I believe in our country, it's an offense, isn't it, even to tear up an image of the Queen? It's taken as a personal afront. How much more if we actually kill one of God's, whatever you want to call it, deputies, ambassadors? He takes it personally. And I think it's also really interesting in Genesis 9 that the command to be fruitful, and multiply, and increase in number, is reiterated as well. And I remember as quite a young boy being struck by this, because it's easy to look around at the world and think so much has gone wrong, we've gone so far off the rails, is it even a good thing to beget children, to bring about the next generation? I remember consciously reading this and thinking, wow, no, even after the flood, where every thought of everyone was only wicked all the time, God still reiterates ‘In the image of God’, go forth and be fruitful. So we Christians don't need to be birth-strikers, though that's a force that's rising in our generation, isn't it? Beth Davey: It's very popular right now, isn't it? Dave Brennan: Let's talk a bit about image of God in the cultural context. So where do we see this idea, this phrase in other ancient near Eastern literature, and how does that inform our understanding? Beth Davey: In the surrounding cultures, ‘image of God’ was still used. I think that's to be expected if everyone came from Adam and Eve and they understood that humanity is made in the image of God, when they spread out, and different religions would come up, they would still have that fundamental understanding. A lot of the times in the ancient near East it was mainly the kings though, who were made in the image of God. And the idea was that the rest of humanity was made as servants to God. So I think this contrasts with what we see in scripture, that it's not only the elite who are made in the image of God, but all of humanity has that value and dignity, which other surrounding cultures, they didn't have that understanding. It was just the rulers who were made in the image of God. Dave Brennan: That's interesting. It mirrors what we see in our society and in cultures throughout history where the personhood, (if we want to use that term,) or value dignity, gets narrowed, doesn't it, just to some people? Be it the highest caste in a caste system, or be it people of certain skin colour, or kings, or people of certain social standings. The image of God gets narrowed. Now sadly, I think some Christian theologians have adopted that same trend where they've said the image of God is primarily or even purely functional, and it's for ruling and reigning, which can leave those who are unable to rule and reign somewhat in the gutters. Have you come across that people saying the image of God is just a functional thing? And how can we combat that scripturally? Beth Davey: I've come across it particularly with the idea of perhaps women who are infertile. They are unable to live up to the cultural mandate, that command to rule and reign, and so somehow in them, the image of God is broken or distorted because they can't fulfill that command. I think biblically, Psalm 8 gives a great combat to this. Psalm 8:4 & 5, the Psalmist writes, 4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? 5 You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour.’ I think that in itself just shows it's not necessarily the performative aspects, he goes on to say, 6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet. But it’s human beings as human beings, who are primarily in the image of God. And it's amazing because it makes you think what is it about humanity that God thinks so highly of them? There's nothing about us particularly, except that one intrinsic part of our nature that we are in His image. Dave Brennan: And it seems to me, although the scriptures don't keep banging on about the image of God in so many words, Genesis of course is foundational, and that prohibition that you can't just kill people because they're made in God's image, it's one of the first commands really we see in scripture and it's foundational to all the Mosaic Law. And it's expanded and expounded and we see it playing into so many different things. But what's really interesting about the biblical ethic is protection extends to the children, the elderly, the foreigner, the disabled. So it seems to me, that is an application of this concept. It clearly goes against the cultures of the day, the other cultures of the day. And I think the most striking example, of course, is the way Jesus himself behaved. It seems that Jesus had a bias towards the social outcasts. He even said, “the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these,” bringing up a child. Probably people thought he was joking, but no,He kept dignifying children, women, elderly, the sick, the outcast, the demon-possessed, the people who were not deemed helpful to society. So it seems to me there's no biblical support of this idea that people lose the image of God if they're not exercising certain forms of dominion. Beth Davey: No. It seems to be something that's intrinsic despite what you can do. It is fundamentally part of who you are, not what you are. And I think that's something that we maybe get wrong. A lot of the time we focus on what God is in terms of his functional characteristics; that He is creator, He is King, He is ruler. But we don't often focus on who God is. And I think that gives us a distorted view of who we are. And we focus on our function, what we are, what we do, rather than our intrinsic who-ness - who we are. Dave Brennan: That's really helpful. Probably my favorite reference on this is Job 31:13-15. This is really striking. We talked about this in the podcast with Tim Lewis, but it's worth repeating. Job is talking about his servants here. So in that culture, you really didn't have to care too much about what your servants thought about how you treated them. They're pretty much your property. 13 “If I've denied justice to my menservants and maidservants when they had a grievance against me, what will I do when God confronts me? That's a pretty radical idea. God confronting you about how you treat servants, verses 14 & 15: 14 what will I answer when called to account? 15 Did not he who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same one form us both within our mothers.” Now that doesn't use the phrase image of God, but I think it's ever so clear that what puts them all on a level playing field here is one Creator, in His image. The social standing is really not important compared to that. So it's more than just functional. But there is a functional aspect. Let's think about the fact that if we're made in the image of God, what then do we make of these very frequent references throughout scripture, as to God seeing things, God hearing things, God being moved with compassion, His mighty hand intervening to bring salvation or whatever? Even these references to mother-like love, as a mother has compassion with her children. How do we understand those? Are these just anthropomorphic, biblical writers trying to help us to understand a picture of what God might be like? Is it that way around, or how should we understand this? Beth Davey: I think lots of people think that it is just human beings trying to understand God in concepts that make sense to them. I think though, there's something more going on here. Image is used throughout scripture. It's not just used in these 3 image of God references, but we see time and time again images relating to idols in surrounding cultures. And so I think maybe some of their understanding is helpful for us as well. They believed, in surrounding cultures, that idols were a representation and a physical extension of the God. And they would go through these idol washing ceremonies to open the eyes, or the ears, or the mouth. And we hear Jeremiah mocking them for these things, that they think that they can use bits of stone or wood to actually hear or perform functions that we see attributed to God in scripture. But if in Genesis 1 we are the image of God, and what we see in surrounding cultures is the idol, the presence in a physical form, and God has placed us as his image in his cosmic temple, the world, then it makes sense that as we are his representation, what breaks our heart breaks His heart, what we see He sees, what we do He does. And we see this continued through into the New Testament that we are the body of Christ. And what our hands do, it's part of His body doing those things. Where we go, it's part of His body going to those places. And so I think there's a much more complex and nuanced understanding of the relationship between the creator and His image that we can see in this sense. Dave Brennan: That's helpful. It’s about which is primary, which comes first. Of course, God comes first. It's not that He's in our image, we're in His image and therefore, I think we shouldn't be dismissive of when it talks about Him, for example, hearing the cries of the poor and acting. Okay, maybe he doesn't physically hear in the way that we physically hear, and yet, think of it this way, why has he given us our ears? Why do we have eyes? Part of that's to enjoy creation. Part of it's just to relate. But I think part of it is to be able to respond appropriately to God's world. And in particular, injustice actually. Because so often we see God seeing or hearing, or acting, it's in response to injustice or sin, or people's cries for help. And I'd like to come back to that towards the end. Because if we take seriously the fact we made the image of God, it actually affects how we are called to behave, not just who we are called to care about. Perhaps we'll come back to that. Colossians 3:10 says that we're being renewed in knowledge in the image of our creator. What's your understanding of that? What's that saying? Beth Davey: My understanding would be that, like with Romans, we need to be renewing our mind. As we've turned away from our Creator we lose some of that image. It's like a mirror reflecting. If we're facing towards God, we're reflecting and imaging him, but as we turn away, we lose that reflection. And so in being renewed, we need to turn back and understand, get rid of the false concepts and ideas that we've got about what it means to be human, and actually look to the one who created us for our grounds of being. And I think we see this as well as we're called to become more Christlike, as Jesus images God perfectly, we see what it means for ourselves to image God. He is the true and better Adam, isn't he? What Adam was called to do as the image of God, He does perfectly. And so as we strive through the power of the Holy Spirit to press on in sanctification, to become more and more like Him, in, as you said, meeting the down and outs, the people who have been trampled on by society, those outcasts. I think that's partly as we start to step out in those ways, reframe that image and turn back to our Creator. Dave Brennan: That's really helpful. So you turn back, you reflect more accurately and that's one aspect of our redemption story, that we are being renewed and we're being restored to that image-bearing role that we have somewhat lost, not entirely. Even unbelievers are imaging God to some extent, but part of our redemption is to recover that. Before I come onto my last couple of questions, is there anything I should have been asking, that I haven't been asking? Beth Davey: I don't know that you should have asked this, but I think there is something interesting in Genesis 3, that we haven't spoken about, where Satan tempts Adam and Eve, v4 & v5, he says to Eve: 4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” I just think it's interesting, there seems to be something about the likeness of God is extending His ethics and His morality, that good and evil. They already had the likeness of God, which we read in chapter one, but Satan tempts them to disobey God by the idea that they will be like God. And there seems to be this thinking that, Philippians 2, they can try and grasp equality with God. They're not just the image of God, but they can become a God for themselves, and define what's good and evil. And I think we see that everywhere today, don't we? People trying to define good and evil for themselves. Not extending God’s morality and ethics. And so in a way they're rejecting the image, and setting up their own image. And they're wanting to be like God, but their own God. Not like the God that created them. Dave Brennan: That's interesting. So it sounds quite similar linguistically, trying to be like God, we're made like God, but actually there's a big difference between faithfully being his deputies and actually trying to usurp him. I'm reminded of Psalm 50:21: 21 …you thought I was altogether like you. And that's a rebuke because these are people who, (and we hear this on the streets, not just on the streets in our work, but across the board) you hear people saying stuff like, “I think God should think this. God should be pleased with me, I've lived a good life”. Or, “How can God do this?” Or,“Why isn't God doing that?” And it's all very much who I think God ought to be. Because I think I'm making him and my image. And of course the ‘my body, my choice’ mantra is very much, I'm God. And I'm in charge of my body and even the body inside my body. Beth Davey: But even in that way, they are in a sense rejecting the image in which they're created. Because they are not submitting themselves to what God's standard of good and evil is. But they are redefining it for themselves. Dave Brennan: Someone said over the last couple of years, that “When we try to become more than human, we actually become less than human.” I think it was in the context of those far-reaching claims: “We're going to kill the virus, we can control nature,” but actually in those attempts to control nature, we end up doing very dehumanising things. Just on that, the fact that we're not called to usurp God, there are obviously aspects of God's character we're not called to. There are roles, there are things that God does, we're not called to join in on. So we're not called to judge in the same way. We don't decide what's right and wrong. Are there particular aspects of who God is and what God does, that you think we're meant to hone in on, in particular, in imaging Him? Beth Davey: I think in particular for our culture today, that relational aspect which we've lost and people are seeking it in identity politics. They're looking for these groups, these communities, because there is something intrinsic in them that they need other people. But I think what we've done is we've lost the male and female family aspect. And so I think what we should be honing in on in society really is rebuilding that family unit and encouraging people that children are good. God says children are a blessing and yet we've got this warped idea from society that they hate children, children are an inconvenience. And that seems to go against who God is as eternal Father, eternal Son. Dave Brennan: Can I share a little anecdote on that? Twice in recent history, I've looked somewhere to take my little girls camping in wider North Norfolk, and then in a great deal of Kent. In both locations, I could only find one campsite in about a 20 mile radius that would even accept children, which is quite interesting. There are loads of child free holiday places you can go on, and it's a small thing, but actually there is this growing sense of children are a nuisance. They get in the way of your career, they get in the way of your relationship, your autonomy, whatever. And I think it was Kamala Harris even said recently, “There are women getting pregnant every day in the States and it’s a massive problem.” As if pregnancy is a disease, a pandemic. A pandemic of pregnancy and children are a curse. That's the sort of the sense I think increasingly we're getting. But as we come into land, let's just talk about this particular thing that comes out from being made in the image of God. Of course it dignifies the unborn child, that made in the image of God from the get go. There's no such thing as a human being not made in the image of God. No matter how developed. From the get go, they’re made in the image of God. Psalm 139 talks about God's interest in the baby in the womb very powerfully. But I want to close by focusing on what we're called then to do about this. Because you get plenty of people saying, “I believe in sanctity of life. I believe people are made in the image of God,” but it doesn't seem to really materialise in what they're willing and prepared to do. So it seems to me how we treat people, to some extent, reveals how we treat God, and in particular how we treat the vulnerable. It's been said that the measure of society is how it treats its most vulnerable. And I think that's true. That is the litmus test. It shows where we're at spiritually to some degree. Of course, there's more to be said. One passage that talks about this James 3:9, it talks about praising God, but then cursing men who have been made in God's likeness, it says in v10: 10 Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. It suggests that actually, you can't praise God with one breath and then curse people who are made in his image. That's like you’re cursing God. Beth Davey: It's similar to what it says in 1 John, isn't it? “You can't love God and hate your brother.” Hate, I think is an active thing you can do, but it's also a passive thing you can do. Just leaving them to their fate or ignoring them when they're crying out for help. That can show hate as well, can't it? Dave Brennan: Because we're talking about biblical love here. We're talking about agape, self-sacrificial, a decision, an act. We're not talking about fuzzy feelings. But also when Jesus talks about the great commandment: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, He says the second is like it doesn't he? The second is like it. Love your neighbour as yourself. Now what does he mean by ‘like it’? Beth Davey: I suppose that it, if you are not loving God, if you're not in that place with God, then you're not going to be reaching out to your neighbour. But if you are in that relationship with God where you love God, and you want to serve him, the outpouring of that is going to be to everyone around you. He goes on to say, doesn't He, “The law and the prophets hang on these two commands”, and throughout the Torah, you see these commands to not harvest to the edge of the fields so that those aliens and foreigners around you, they have something to eat. And things like this. And so it seems that if you are loving God, you will love your neighbour. It's the only logical progression. But if you're not loving your neighbour, then maybe you're not loving God. Dave Brennan: Exactly. And it says in James 2, it refers to love your neighbour as yourself, as the “royal law.” And I think, perhaps as little more than a play on words, but it strikes me that the way we are told to treat children, the elderly, the disabled, whatever, the foreigner, we are to treat them as if they're royalty, regardless of how powerful they are. And again, James is really worth reading the whole way through to get a grip on how we treat the vulnerable and what that means about our spirituality. As you say, if you don't love your neighbour, do you even love God? It's a searching question, but in James 5 it talks about: 1 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. And it talks about, 4Look, the wages you failed to pay the workman who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. And it's pretty serious. Now, these guys, they just failed to pay people. Perhaps there is violence, there is bloodshed, but even failing to pay properly is seen as an afront against the God Almighty. And as Jesus said,“What you did for the least of these, you did for me”. But let's just close with thinking about what it means for us, for our listeners here, because we've all heard that saying, “Look, if you don't like abortion, don't have one.” And many Christians have been all too willing to comply with that mantra. “Look, you don't like abortion, fine. Don't have an abortion yourself. But don't try and stop someone else having an abortion.” What's the Christian response to that in the light of all we've been saying about the image of God? Beth Davey: I think Bonhoeffer says it best: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” And I think God takes it very seriously. We see that in Genesis 9. It's very serious, the shedding of the blood of one of His images. And so if we are not willing to speak up, I think, like you see in the society of Noah's flood, we will be washed away with the flood. It's only the righteous, those who are seeking after God, and then by extension, are loving their neighbour correctly, that will be able to stand. Dave Brennan: Someone said recently that law without consequence is just good advice. If there's no consequence, it’s just good advice. And in a similar way, belief in the sanctity of life or saying you're pro-life, or saying you believe we’re made the image of God, that doesn't look like anything, in a society where every day 500 image bearers are being violently killed here in the UK. I don't think people in that situation really do believe we’re made in the image of God. And I want really to close this with a challenge to these people. And I myself have been there. This is not me pointing the finger. I spent most of my life being passive on this issue. But if we say we take the Bible seriously, and it's ever so clear we're all made the image of, and yet we don't lift a finger, we don't say a word in defense of God's image bearers, do we really believe we're made in the image of God and do we really love God? We might say we do. We might even think we do, but do we biblically? Someone wrote an article in Premier recently opening with, “I'm a Christian, I'm pro-life. I believe in the sanctity of life,” but went on to say that abortion laws should be supported. So that's my challenge to people. If you want to show it, it's not so much an answer you give with your mouth. It's something you show with your actions. If you do believe in the image of God, one of the ways you can do that is to go to CBRUK.org/join. You can join the movement and you can get involved and do what Beth's doing out on the streets. Be one of our educators engaging in the public, being a voice for voiceless. That's one of the ways I just want to encourage people to do that. We'll put the link below, but Beth, do you have a final take home point you want to put out there for people as we finish? Beth Davey: For me, it keeps coming back to that relationality of God and being made in his image. We are relational. We can't just be images of God by ourselves. A man is not an island. And I think for me the foundational image of God of the unborn is that, before they can do anything functionality wise, before they can extend the rule and reign of God, from the moment of conception, they are in relationship, they are a child and they have a mother. And that is fundamental to who they are. And I think that shows, aside from anything that they can do, that they are still in that image of God. And it's vital, like Jesus says, “Which one of these loves their neighbour? Go and do likewise.” That we have to stand up and do something because from the moment that the sperm meets the egg, they're in relationship with their mother and we need to protect that. Subscribe to podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aboutabortion Watch episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0GiY1Vt9Ik Login and subscribe to be notified of the latest post

Podcast Transcript | About Abortion with Dave Brennan The C of E's Abortion Act: How the Church ushered in a genocide | 6 Sept 2022 | Episode 13 Hello and welcome to this week's episode of About Abortion. I'm Dave Brennan. Thank you so much for joining. We are today carrying on our journey looking at how we got to the place where we are today. For those of us who've been with us from the very beginning, you'll know that in this series of episodes we're looking at the landscape of abortion in the UK. What is going on with abortion in the UK? We've looked at it statistically, we've looked at the sheer scale of abortion. We are now at 10 million babies since 1967. More than 500 every day. That's one in four babies killed in the womb. We've looked at what abortion actually is, what happens in an abortion, what happens to the child in the womb, whether that's through what we call medical abortions, the poisoning of children, or surgical, the crushing, decapitation, dismembering of children. And we've really been exposing this issue from every angle. But more recently over these 3, 4, 5 episodes, we're looking at the journey historically of how we came to be here. How do we end up in this place? And we've looked at that legislatively, looking at how abortion law has changed the landscape. We've looked at it culturally - what are the big shifts in cultural norms that have led to the status quo, in particular, the sexual revolution? But today we're looking at the spiritual dimensions. In particular, we're looking at how the Church has actually helped us to get to where we are today. And in this episode and the next episode, we're going to be looking at five different books or documents which serve as milestones for us as we track the journey from the sixties to the present day. Where's the Church been on this issue and how's the Church actually influenced the nation to be where we're at today. Every abortion clinic: Open by permission of the Church Francis Schaeffer said every abortion clinic should have a sign in front of it saying ‘Open by permission of the Church.’ We can extend that in the UK context to say this: the Abortion Act of 1967 should have a preface saying ‘Passed by permission of the Church’ and the abortion industry all over the UK should indeed have the sign, the label; ‘We are operating with the blessing of the Church’. Am I going too far? Am I exaggerating for effect? Bear with me and judge for yourself. Perhaps, I say perhaps, almost certainly you've heard of the Abortion Act in 1967. It was passed in 67, brought into effect in 68, and since then, as I've already mentioned, it's taken the lives of 10 million children in our nation. But have you heard of the Abortion Act 1965? The Abortion Act 1965 was a draft abortion bill written by guess who? The Church of England! The first document we're going to look at today is this, it's called Abortion - an Ethical Discussion. It was produced by the Church of England's Board for Social Responsibility in 1965, and it actually ends, it has an appendix, with the Church of England's own draft abortion bill. The Abortion Act 1965 actually requests, in clause six of this draft abortion bill by the Church of England, that this act may be cited as the Abortion Act 1965. And so to tell you the end before the beginning, the Church of England produced an Abortion Act two years before David Steele's Abortion Act got through Parliament. Not only did the Church fail in the sixties to stem the flow of evil. Not only did it fail to speak up. Not only was it silent, it would've been better had it been silent. The Church actually encouraged this waterfall of violence and wickedness actively through this document that I'm going to just lay bare before you. In this episode, we're going to be looking at ‘Abortion - an ethical discussion’. Then next week, tune in and we're going to be looking at, much more briefly, four other books, documents, which chart for us the journey of the UK Church. And thankfully there is better news in next week's episode than there is in this, but we've got to face our heritage. And this is particularly of course, about the established Church, the Church of England, but as we'll see next week, it's not as though the non-conformists, and the non-Anglicans can imagine that our hands are clean. We too share in a very problematic heritage. But today we're focusing on this document, and I do believe it would be very difficult to overstate the significance of this document, just how much this has changed history, and although it's not a very well-known document, I guess you probably haven't heard of it, it's not that easy to get hold of these days. It's not something that's read very commonly, but as I’m going to show you, it changed history for the worse. The document opens with a page explaining who the members of the committee are, who are these people who wrote this paper; a number of clearly churchmen, theologians, reverends, etc... Fellows at Oxford and Cambridge, tutors, professors, also a number of doctors. Someone called Abercrombie, formerly President of the College of General Practitioners. Someone called Portier Holman, Dr. Holman, senior physician in psychological medicine at the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital. Miss Audrey Catford head medical social worker, Charing Cross Hospital. Now I don't know whether those people were professing believers, whether they were Christians. One assumes the ordained people were. But whether these other medical professionals were Christians, I don't know. But it's interesting that already we can see, and we're going to see this throughout the document, this idea that the doctors are the experts on a moral issue. It’s beginning to bubble up to the surface. I'll come back to that in a moment. But what's really quite striking in this introductory page is the acknowledgements section. Only two organisations are mentioned by name with grateful thanks for their contribution to this piece of work. Listen to this: “Members of the committee gratefully acknowledge the help given readily to them by the Abortion Law Reform Association and by professional and academic colleagues whom they have consulted for information and advice.” In case you're unaware, Abortion Law Reform Association, that is the leading pro-abortion lobby group that's been in operation for nearly a hundred years now in this country. They've been campaigning steadily for the liberalisation, the relaxing of abortion law since about the 1930s, and they still work today. They've changed their name to Abortion Rights, but it's the same group and they readily gave help. I have no doubt they very readily gave help. I'm sure they were only too happy to help the Church of England with this particular piece of work. And the other organization is the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Planned Parenthood is the main abortion provider in the United States. These are the organisations to which the Church of England turned for advice on abortion morality. They went on to say: “The committee has of course made its independent judgment on the material brought before it, and it takes sole responsibility for the opinions which it has expressed.” Now credit where credit is due, they are taking responsibility for their document, but they are woefully mistaken if they think they're making an entirely independent judgment on the material brought before it. Because what we're going to see in this document is they are heavily influenced by pro-abortion ideology. And I was reminded as I was looking at afresh at this document of Psalm 1. I'll just read Psalm 1for us because it's pertinent as we deal with the issue of abortion generally, but in particular this document which stands in stark relief as we consider the words of Psalm 1. “1Blessed it as the man who does not walk in the council of the wicked nor stand in the way of sinners nor sit in the seat of mockers, 2but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law, he meditates day and night. 3He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither, whatever he does, prospers. 4Not so the wicked. They are like chaff, that the wind blows away. 5Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous; 6for the LORD, watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.” There are two worlds painted in this Psalm, two ways of journeying through life. One is to delight in the law of the Lord, and meditate on God's word. The other is to take our cue from the wicked, bad counsel. And this document is a brilliant example of what happens when we disregard God's word, and instead draw from bad counsel. Because in this document, I may have missed something, but in all the 60 or 70 pages, I could only find one direct reference to scripture. One direct reference to scripture! Lots of reference to the so-called experts, the medics, the theologians, the Church's own tradition, but precious little treatment of scripture. And in fact, the one reference I could find is immediately undermined in that its application to this situation is trivialised. Let me quickly talk you through some of the key points of this document. It opens with this: ‘Doctors and men of science call that which is conceived an embryo, a foetus, but ordinary mothers and fathers call it the child in the womb, for it already is in most cases, for them, an object of hope because of its potential future as a child of theirs.’ Already we are seeing the moral and theological chaos being introduced. What you've got here is the doctors and the men of science up here. They're the great experts, and notice already, they are being given not just scientific expertise, they're not just having that ascribed to them, but also they're the philosophical experts and they're the moral experts. And that's a trend that we've talked a bit about on this podcast that I'm going to keep coming back to because people keep misunderstanding abortion as a medical issue. And I've said it before and I'll say it again: Abortion is not a medical issue. Suicide isn't a medical issue. Assassination isn't a medical issue. Yes, you may well use instruments used also in medicine. You may use drugs, you may use tools, but they're not medical decisions. They're moral decisions. Abortion is a moral decision. And yet we have abandoned our duty, as well as our authority, to speak morally into this issue, because we say it's just a medical issue, it's a healthcare issue. It's for the doctors to decide. And already in the sixties, the kind of gross expansion of medical to include moral is well underway. So what we have here on the one hand is the doctors, the men of science, well they're the experts and they know what's going on. And then at the other end, we've got the ordinary mothers and fathers who have their sort of sentimental personal values and it says for them, this might be as a person because of the potential future and so on. And so on the one hand, you've got this kind of expertism, and then you've got the kind of moral relativism, what something is for me, for you, for her, for him. And in the middle of all that, where's the Church? Where's God's word? Where's objective truth? It's nowhere. And this paper really continues in that vein. Church affirms sacrificing the unborn child In the opening pages of this document, and I'll quote directly so you can hear I'm not exaggerating, it talks about sacrificing the unborn child. Sacrificing a human foetus as a reasonable consideration. Listen to this: “The crux of the matter is surely in the decision that the life of the foetus has to be sacrificed to the interest of the mother”. Let me read a bit further down. Talking here in this instance, specifically about whether a baby is born with some kind of abnormality, it's deformed. “The question is raised again, whether the life of the foetus should be sacrificed in the interest of the mother. The mother and her husband may look with dread on having to rear a defective child…..” This is the Church of England! “…perhaps to the detriment of their existing family, or indeed perhaps imposing such a handicap on them that they may shrink from having a further child or children. The question then arises, ought the life of the foetus to be sacrificed to these family interests? And then there is the interest of the unborn child itself. Is it better to allow it to be born, the calculable, statistical probability of deformity of some sort, or for it to be not born at all?” Where do you begin with this? One is reminded of the phrase in German, [Lebensunwertes Leben] the life not worthy of life, those whose lives aren't worthy of being lived. And they call it mercy killing, children with handicaps, we’ll make that decision on their behalf. But where else have I read about child sacrifice? In scripture. But this document doesn't take scripture seriously. And so they can introduce, not as something horrific to be condemned and avoided and repented of, and warned against, but as something to be considered seriously as an option, child sacrifice. This is a document that actually suggests child sacrifice is a good way forward, and this is meant to be the conscience of the nation. This is the national Church, the established Church. People understandably look to the Church of England, or at least are meant to and perhaps used to, for moral theological guidance. And yet this is what's coming out in the first few pages of this document. And so it opens with this melay of situations and difficult dilemmas and the impact that's being made here is that there are only grey areas and there are lots of different parallel approaches, and this document never nails its colours to the mast on any kind of objective truth. The first chapter finishes like this: “If the Church has anything to offer from its own theological and moral tradition, it will make its contribution as it studies the facts of the matter, interpreted by those who are professionally occupied with them. It is on this basis that the present committee's undertaken its work.” Do you hear that? If! If the Church has anything to offer. And actually the one thing the Church could have offered through this document, it didn't offer. The Church tried to act the lawyer, tried to act the doctor, tried to act the politician, the legislator. It tried to adopt the pragmatic well we'll try and take in a range of views and come up with some kind of middle ground. Is there any scripture to be found? What this document doesn't do is what only the Church can do, which is bring the clear Word of God to bear with all moral clarity. And then, fine, we have to let the legislators ultimately do their work. The Church is not the legislature, but the Church failed to do what only the Church could do. But notice what the what the pool of wisdom is according to this paper: “..anything to offer from its own theological and moral traditions”. A subtle but very important distinction between our tradition and the Word of God. We don't look to ourselves and our tradition for moral guidance. All that does is set in motion this circle where we look to ourselves, we find a lack of clarity, or whatever it might be, and then we use that as a basis for carrying on the same vein. Even more confusion. And yet that's what this paper does explicitly. It doesn't seek to take from the Word of God, and of course the theologians of old are going to have wisdom for us to learn from, but there is a distinct lack of clarity on what the authority here is even meant to be. Wisdom is not sought directly from the Word of God, but from tradition. And then notice the facts of the matter are interpreted by those who are the professional experts. And so it's reality according to the doctors and so on. They know what they're talking about because this is a medical issue. And of course we believe in common grace. We believe there are such a thing as medical experts, but the Church was not leading here. The Church is following. OK, so into chapter two, this is where we finally get to our first mention of scripture and only, I think. And it's in the context of looking at abortion law in the UK, and where various theologians have spoken into the issue and they mentioned Tertullian, about AD200. And they quote from him as very clearly condemning abortion, very clearly. And they link this condemnation to Exodus 23 v7, part of Mosaic Law ‘insontem et iustum non occides’, ‘the innocent and righteous slay thou not’. And then it goes on to say this, and this is one of the things that really grieves me about this paper, is that it actually seems to understand and to be able to articulate quite clearly what the Biblical, and Orthodox, and straight up Christian response to abortion is - the simple pro-life position. It actually manages to articulate that really quite plainly and faithfully, but then it goes on to undermine and reject that, and replace it with a whole load of confusing and competing voices. It says here: “Christians have consistently extended the protection of this law to the child in the womb. At what point in its development, the foetus became entitled to this protection was, from early times, a matter of doubt.” Now, I think this paper somewhat exaggerates the historic confusion of Christians on abortion. Certainly, our history is not squeaky clean, and certainly our recent history is not squeaky clean. But you look at the Didache, you look at the Epistle of Barnabas, you look at of course the Bible itself, and it's just impossible. As my friend Matt Cliff likes to say, “You have to do hermeneutical gymnastics to argue from scripture that abortion is ever morally justified.” And yet what this paper does is it homes in on where the Church has not been faithful, and then uses that as a rod against which to measure ourselves and to carry on in the same vein, rather than using God's word as the the standard. So it goes on: “Well before the time of Saint Augustine of Hippo, Christian theologians and those responsible for pastoral discipline, had accepted a theory of animation, which was to influence deeply the development of European law. Scholastic writers attribute this theory to Aristotle. At conception, according to this tradition, the soul of the zygote was vegetative only. After a few days, it was informed by an animal soul, and later by a rational soul, between the 30th and 40th day for a male, and between the 60th and 80th day for a female.” What is this? Does this sound like Christian thought to you? If you actually look at what the Bible has to say, it's ever so clear that what's present in the womb from conception is a living human being with a soul, with personhood, if we want to use that term. A morally significant being made in the image of God. In Psalm 51v5 David speaks for himself as a person from conception. He says: “…sinful from the time my mother conceived me”. He said he was a sinner from conception. A bunch of cells cannot be a sinner. An organ cannot be a sinner. David didn't say, “A bunch of cells was conceived, and then later his soul arrived.” He said from conception he was a sinner. And the Lord Jesus was not born of the Holy Spirit, he was conceived of the Holy Spirit. That's to say His earthly life began at conception. It wasn't that a bunch of cells was conceived, and then later Jesus informed that bunch of cells. No, that's a heresy that's been thoroughly refuted. His earthy life began at conception. Life begins at conception. That's a central Christian doctrine. It's there in the doctrine of the incarnation. Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and yet this document wants to side with Aristotle, or his tradition, and talk about a human being at some point having an animal soul. Where did they get this stuff from? This is in no way Christian thinking, and yet it's entertained and given time of day, alongside a whole load of other conflicting ideas. The problem is this document never lands on any of these multiple possibilities. It just sets up a maze with dead ends and unfinished thoughts, just presenting these deeply significant claims, just setting them alongside one another and never getting anywhere. Moving on to the next chapter. Again, this grieves me. Listen to this. It's not as though they don't understand what the Christian position's meant to be. They articulate it very well: “In traditional Christian terms, this value talking about the value of the unborn life rests on the belief that the human embryo is informed with a human soul, that it is a person in God's sight, created by God for eternal fellowship with himself. Theologians and canonists of earlier times may have claimed that this informing of the embryo with the soul occurs at the moment in conception.” Brilliant. All good so far. “But it has already been shown that the acceptance of the Aristotelian theory of animation at some time up to 80 days brought along another strong and persistent tradition into the Church's thinking and practice.” And what? That in no way suggests that that's a theory that should be accepted. The fact that it did get accepted in the Church, that in no way proves that it's acceptable in God's sight. Today we have all sorts of ideas that have made their way into the Church. Does that in and of itself, commend those theories to us, those thoughts? But here's the absolute lack of using God's word as the standard. We won't have time to go into it today, but there's a real confusion evident here in that they try to drive a wedge between this idea of a living soul and a person. This idea that there might be a living soul, but it's not really a person yet. Because already in the sixties we're seeing not just in the nation, but in the Church, ideas of personhood being down to what you are capable of, your functions, how clever you are, what you can bring to the table, your relational qualities or capacities. That's already making it into the Church. And these crazy ideas of a child being a potential person are taken seriously in this document. Again and again, it talks about different arguments that can be developed, and we could say this, denoting the traditional Christian approach, but then others will say that and it never lands. And indeed the absolutist defence is often put in almost sneer quotes, inverted commas, that to be absolutist, it even says somewhere, ‘one could adopt the absolutist approach of Jesus and the Apostles, but of course, we want to be far more nuanced than that’. So without really arguing from scripture how they got to this place, about halfway through the document, it says: “This discussion will proceed therefore on the supposition that there may be cases in which, granted this general right of the foetus to live and develop, this right may be offset by other conflicting rights”. They just decided that abortion is sometimes OK, not having established when life begins or begins to matter, but simply fudging that. It goes on then to denote various situations in which abortion may be justified or even commended. And then this document finishes, after its general summary, which says this, they talk about: “..the mother's life or wellbeing and hence inescapably her health..” We’re seeing here again the expansion of social to mean mental health, to mean medical health. Very vague and ambiguous terms. They're saying that abortion may be permissible for the mother's wellbeing, because that may affect her health. And of course, if something affects your health health, that is one of the great idols of our day. If it touches your health, well that's the end of the discussion. It talks about weighing of future probabilities that may affect the mother's wellbeing. Now listen to how this comes out in their draft abortion bill. This is appendix number two. This is their own draft abortion bill amending Lord Silken's bill. Lord Silken put forth the bill during the sixties. It didn't get all the way, but it was in motion at the time. Here is one quote from the Church of England's draft abortion bill. They say that: “It's lawful for registered medical practitioners to terminate pregnancy in good faith and the reasonable belief that if the pregnancy were allowed to continue, there would be grave risk of the patient's life or of serious injury to her health, or physical or mental wellbeing.” Listen: “In determining whether or not there is grave risk of serious injury to health or physical or mental wellbeing, account may be taken of the patient's total environment, actual or reasonably foreseeable.” So the doctor is entrusted not just to make a medical assessment, but an assessment of mental wellbeing, dependent on ‘reasonably foreseeable’ circumstances. This is almost like fortune telling. But it's saying that a human baby may be sacrificed according to what's thought might happen in the future. I wish I could say that this document didn't have much impact. It just sat on the shelf, very few people read it, and no doubt, almost everyone listening in this podcast has never heard of the document or certainly hasn't read it. It's not easy to get hold of today. But in ‘67, when Lord David Steele brought his Abortion Act into Parliament as a private members' bill, he publicly thanked this document and said it was the best thing he'd ever read on abortion. He said this document enabled him to become a pro-choice Christian. And this document inspired and influenced him as he brought his bill through Parliament with the help of the Abortion Law Reform Association, who also helped the Church of England to write this document. Very interesting. 50 years later, as abortion was imposed onto Northern Ireland, this same David Steele, once again, he hasn't forgotten this document. We might have forgotten it, but he hasn't. He thanked the Church of England once again for this document, said how good it was. He even talked about how this document, the thoughts, the ideas, the principles of this pro-abortion, pro-choice stance, would enable women to live what he, and this is his wording, “to live in the biblical phrase, abundant life.” So the Church of England has helped David Steele to believe that having your baby killed, sacrificing your baby, for even social reasons, is what abundant life looks like. This is the heritage, this is the legacy left by the established Church, and the effects rumble on today. Still to this day, the Church of England will not come clean against abortion. When abortion was pushed onto Northern Ireland, in the end, only a minority of Bishops even vote against it. Not one of them spoke against it. The established Church continues today through silence and passivity, the help it gave in the sixties, explicitly out loud in writing. And so to come back to Francis Schaffer's quote, how have we got to where we are? How did the abortion act come to pass? How have we got 10 million babies dead in this nation? In large part, the answer to that question is this, thanks to the established Church. Now we're not going to stop there. Next week we're going to talk about how the non-conformists have their part to play, but if we are going to learn what it really means to take account of our history, to repent and to take up the deeds that demonstrate true repentance, fruit of repentance, we need to understand what it is we're turning from and just how gravely we have corporately together, laying aside questions of the visible Church, the invisible Church, the reality is this is we are part of this. This is where we're coming from. We need to start by facing just how badly wrong we've got it. Thanks for listening in, and tune in next week for the rest of the story. 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Podcast Transcript | About Abortion with Dave Brennan Frozen at the mouth ft. Matt Cliff | 15 Nov 2022 | Episode 23 Introducing Matt Dave Brennan: Hello and welcome to this week's episode of About Abortion. I am thrilled to be introducing my old friend and coworker, Matt Cliff, who is calling all the way from Australia. Matt, thank you so much for dialing in. Matt Cliff: No problem, Dave. Thank you for having me, a privilege. Dave Brennan: What time is it there where you are? Matt Cliff: It's ten to seven here. Dave Brennan: Wow. You used to live up in the northwest of England. I do think that was quite a distance, but you're now several thousand feet beneath me actually, aren't you? You're under my feet by a few thousand miles probably. Matt Cliff: I wouldn't know. It's a long way away there. Dave Brennan: Thanks so much for making time and just introduce yourself a bit, Matt. Tell us, you've literally just moved to Australia, three weeks in? Matt Cliff: Yes, three weeks in. I went to Bible college at London School of Theology. I did a BA and I did a master's degree there. And whilst I was down there, I pastored at a church as well, Chenies Baptist Church, which is just outside of Watford. And then whilst I was pastoring, I met my wife who was from Australia. So that was interesting for our future. We had some decisions to make regarding where we're going to be long term. And then Brisbane won, so I'm happy. And that brought me all the way to Australia and we made the decision to come at last. And we actually moved three weeks ago. So it's all a bit fresh. It's all a bit new. We're excited. Been a bit overwhelming as you can imagine, but God's been good in that process as well for us. Dave Brennan: Brilliant. I see you've managed to maintain your accent so far. Matt Cliff: Honestly, Dave, when I went down to London, I had to learn to speak slowly, and now I feel like I'm going all through that process again. Now in Australia, when I'm talking to people, they're just looking at me. I’m thinking, you have got no idea what I've just said. So it's all good. I've been there before. I'm experienced in this department now. Dave Brennan: So just smile and nod, smile and nod. Matt Cliff: That's it. That's what they do to me. Dave Brennan: Great. And you've got a baby on a way first. First baby. Matt Cliff: First baby on the way, early February. So yeah, we're super excited about that as well. Dave Brennan: That's good. Wonderful. We're praying for you guys. It's great. Now for those who have been listening in on this podcast thus far, you might have picked up that Matt Cliff is the guy whose hard work I came in and just plagiarised a couple of weeks ago, looking really at the silence of the church. It was your Masters, wasn't it, looking at what extent there is a silence in the UK evangelical church when it comes to abortion. So really that was quite pioneering work, wasn't it? I'm not aware of anyone else having really done that kind of analysis. Matt Cliff: Yeah. I'll share how I came to that conclusion. Basically I was looking to do something for my Masters and then I was going do it actually on Paul's theology or something like that, the real biblical route. And then I was in a Waitrose one day and just standing in a queue and I just looked on my left. And I saw an article and this must have been about five years ago, 2017, and it talked about Cathy Warwick, who was on the board of the Royal Midwives Union [Royal College of Midwives] and also on the board of BPAS at the time as well. And I just thought that was strange. That seems like a bit of a conflict of interests. And what she was trying to do was sign up the Royal Midwives Association to what BPAS were doing. And I'll be honest, again, as we talked about, I was notionally pro-life, you know what I mean? But that was it. I had a sort of conviction, a cognitive conviction, basically, no action or anything like that towards it. The Church’s silence on abortion And my first question when I read that article was, Where's the Church on this issue? That's exactly what I thought in Waitrose that day. And to be honest, that's been my heart for the last five years. Nothing's changed really. I keep coming back to that question about where is the Church, where is the prophetic voice on this issue, specifically in the UK? Obviously it's a completely different issue in America. But in the UK there is a silence. That was my hypothesis if you like, and then my Masters was trying to prove that. And God was good. I got so many doors opened and through that I obviously got to meet you guys. I got the chance to be blessed. I got the chance to go to the Evangelical Alliance and essentially what happened was I found out very quickly that there was hardly any scholarship with regards to UK evangelicals on this issue. That made it very difficult to do a thesis on it, so I needed a conversation partner as it were. And I chose the Evangelical Alliance as my conversation partner and basically did a historical survey of their documents, and that led me to the figures that I came up with in my thesis. So yeah, it's been an interesting journey. Dave Brennan: And thank you for that work you did there, because I think it's really critical. It's one thing to just posit that there's a silence or observe it anecdotally. But what you've done is you've helped to really quantify that silence and in particular to place the silence alongside how we respond to other issues. And that really brings it into sharp relief, doesn't it? We're quite happy to talk about poverty or racism, climate change, and in recent times, Covid-19. You don't get many churches saying, “Oh, we shouldn't really mention Covid-19. It's a distraction from the gospel”. So when you see it laid alongside those other issues, it really is objectively very stark, isn't it? We've gone over that a bit. A couple of episodes ago we looked at your work and also a more recent bit of research as well, quantifying that silence and it really is stark. And then just more recently an episode with Ben John. Just drilling down on the fact that biblically there really is a mandate to speak. This is not an optional extra, it's not something we can just afford to say, “Okay, there's a silence, but we are just here to preach to the gospel.” No, there is a very clear mandate to speak. What I'd love to explore with you today is really, why is there this silence? We've seen that there is a silence. We've seen that there shouldn't be. Why is that? What's the blockage? So can you help us, Matt, just to think through what are those hindrances? I'm thinking particularly here of church leaders, preachers, teachers, because as we've said many times, “Silence in the pulpit leads to confusion/ ignorance... A mist in the pulpit is a fog in the pews,” or something, isn't it? What happens in the teaching of a church is so impactful and so huge. If people are not getting an example to follow it leaves that vacuum for worldly voices to fill. So I'm thinking especially of those who are listening in who are pastors, but also many who are listening in are members of churches and they have a deep desire that really concerns them, that their own local church is not engaging with this. Can we try and help these people, be they leaders or just members of the church? What are the problem points and how can we address them? So what is it? Is it errors of thinking? Is it a heart issue? What's your perspective? Matt Cliff: This is the million dollar question, Dave. And ultimately at this point it is very theoretical. I'm doing a PhD in this, so leading on from my Masters. So to go back a step, we have the empirical data. I think that's pretty much solid and been laid down that we can confidently say there is a silence on the issue of abortion within the contemporary evangelical church. Seeker sensitive church And the next question you are asking is the right one. Why? And that's where we want to get to. And I think again, there are many different ideas on why there is a silence. Now personally I've shared this with you before. One of the big areas I think, is our view on church models - how we structure our churches, e.g. if we have a ‘seeker sensitive’ model, which was obviously massively popular in the US, and a lot of churches in the UK actually inherited that model. And the onus on that model is to become, ultimately, a great model in terms of how to build a big church. Evangelistically it's a great model if that's what you want. However, the problem with the seeker sensitive movement is I really feel it's damaged us from a discipleship point of view, because if your model is to be geared towards having people come and feel welcome, (which again, we don't want to be negative, we don't want to be against this, obviously, we want that). But there's more to the calling of a church. There's more to the vision a pastor should have for a church. And ultimately, I think that model has been detrimental to discipleship, and again, if you've got that model, you are not going to want to speak on abortion in your church because it goes completely against what you're trying to achieve. So I think, around church models, that's one big area. Belong before you believe And another area I would say is, I spoke to a pastor at a well-known Baptist church and he went to a Baptist theological college. And he was taught this sort of model that you have to belong before you believe. So you've got to understand that a lot of pastors are going to these colleges and being taught these things. And he shared with me privately, that for years he was taught that, he tried to implement that. The problem was for him that they would never believe. So he spent all his time just making people feel welcome and that they belonged. And again, how does it affect our teaching on ethics, our teaching on discipleship? Because if you are trying to get people to belong, you're not going to want to talk on divisive issues. The traffic light system And I'll give you another example. I remember when I was at Bible college, I heard there was another big church that was doing what's called a traffic light system. So basically they would have red, amber and green, and they would talk on issues. So you could bring your friends to a green service and you wouldn't want to bring them to a red service. It's nonsense really, but this is what's being taught. So in one sense I don't want to throw pastors under the bus. I want to encourage them, because, being a pastor, I understand the temptation to look round and think, wow, their church is flourishing, but I'm preaching biblical truth, but my church isn't growing, and there's a temptation there to water down what you're preaching. I can understand again for pastors, being one, how difficult it is. Dave Brennan: That's really helpful. So not only is there this seeker sensitive current flowing through the UK Church, but it's actually expressly taught. This is at college. People are saying, “Don't touch this,” or, “Just get people to belong before they believe.” And so people would probably say in quite a considered way, that they have adopted this as their approach to ministry. I was reminded as you were speaking there, of an episode I was involved with a church where, it was very painful actually, because we had agreed we were going to teach about abortion, and then it started a sort of civil war within the leadership. A couple of them were in favour, a couple were really strongly opposed. And in the end what had been agreed was decimated. And something still happened, but it was nothing compared to what was meant to have happened and what had been agreed anyway. During this whole tussle over whether it was even right to do this, a very interesting phrase came out from one of the leaders in opposition, which was, “We can't see the missional value in doing this,” which is really interesting because it raises the question of what do we mean by missional? Whose mission? What mission? And of course they were thinking of mission in terms of getting people in and yes, certainly seeing them come to Christ, but it was an approach to mission, which was: avoid offense, seeker sensitive, get them in, and there may well be a sort of some kind of aspiration to address the harder issues one day, somewhere further down the line. The difficulty is, does that day ever come? The reason I recognise this approach is because I've been there myself and I probably still am there in many ways. I remember as a sort of teenage / early twenties Christian, that was certainly my default approach to evangelism. I’ve just got to make sure everyone likes me, avoid offense, be everyone's favourite guy. And then they'll listen when I tell them the gospel. The problem is, (and this is I guess Satan's part to play in that whole equation,) is what I not only underestimated, but didn't think about at all, is just how bad it was for my own heart to have a methodology to evangelism which massages my pride and my idols. Because it is really quite nice, having an approach whereby, the critical factor is, everyone likes you. And there's never any conflict or whatever. It's intoxicating actually because you are forever putting off the cost, for yourself and for those you're seeking to reach. And then it becomes very difficult one day to turn that all around, and come back again and say, “Actually, there's some hard stuff we need to talk about.” What does a successful church look like? Matt Cliff: I think you're right, bro. I think what's interesting is the flaw, as you're saying, is in our methodology. That's where it starts, and the next question is what does a successful church look like? And if, e.g., you are looking at the American, huge megachurch model, success there looks like big and relevant. Now again, we're not against relevant, we're not against big. But if that's your primary goal, it's going to shape the way we do evangelism. What about discipleship? How are we going to fulfil our mandate to grow our believers as well? And sadly, sometimes that gets left behind. And ultimately at ground level, this has affected a lot of ethical issues, not just abortion. So the flaw is in the methodology I would say. Dave Brennan: That's really helpful, because I think a lot of people wouldn't make that connection. Where's the church on abortion? Actually it's to do with church’s methodology. It's what we think we're here for, what the church is about. And I do think that this seeker sensitivity has actually spread much further than the churches who would consciously subscribe to it. I think it's spread even into some of the very conservative reformed churches who would certainly not see themselves as seeker sensitive, and would probably even warn against such an approach. But in practice, many of the same effects can be observed. So I'm thinking about churches who, e.g., on sexuality, would certainly hold to a very orthodox position, but they never talk about it, certainly not from the front. And the reason given is that it's a very sensitive issue, we wouldn't want people to be distracted from the main thing. They're not getting anywhere close to changing their actual doctrine on these issues, but they're not wanting to talk about it. And there's a sort of distaste or even a kind of fatigue when it comes to being countercultural, that it's seen as somehow combative or nitpicky and, we just want to keep to the main thing. I think even the very conservative churches that I'm thinking about, during the whole Covid-19 thing, just hearing some responses from within some very conservative churches… We're not talking about really charismatic, aspiring to be megachurches at all, but a major concern being, what will people think of our response to what's going on? It's that what's the PR element here? And there's a place for that. Certainly, we don't want to bring the gospel into disrepute, but it's just interesting how often I think decisions are filtered through How's this going to be received? What are people going to think about this? And that, again, can very easily become not just a consideration, (which it should be), but it can become the authoritative filter on what happens and what doesn’t. Matt Cliff: I think you're right. Again, we come back to the earlier point: seeker sensitivity is one element. That doesn't mean it's necessarily the case for every single church and we’ve also got to acknowledge that there will be some churches that are talking on this issue as well. There are obviously some. We would want more. But there are pastors who are faithfully teaching this, and bless them, are trying to walk their congregations through this. I think with the more conservative, maybe reform-type churches, there are a few issues. John Stott in his book said this, that, “At the end of the day, we can have a pro-life position, but it comes down to courage. Are you going to be courageous or not to stand up there and talk?” So that's one issue as well. Ultimately, it's not just a theoretical understanding, it's actually putting your will to action and standing up there and be willing to do that. And that's hard. I've done it. Pastors need help The other issue is, again, I want to be empathetic with pastors. Some pastors just may not understand how to think this through. That's the reality Dave. We think that they should have all the answers and it should be easy for them, but it's sometimes not as easy as we think, and they need education as well. That’s why Brephos is great. They need that help. They may not be getting that at their Bible colleges. We can't presume that they're getting that education there. And also, I think they need encouragement, but they've got to also understand that Paul says, “I have so many things to tell you, but you cannot bear them.” I'll give you an example. It may not be wise for a pastor, e.g., to listen to this podcast and speak to his congregation on Sunday about this issue. It may be, but ultimately, as a pastor, you've got to shepherd your people. You've got to acknowledge where they are, what they can bear and walk them to where they need to be. And I'm not saying this is the model, but what I tried to do, before speaking on the issue of abortion, was start talking around areas of authority of scripture - trying to put these foundations in place. Theological method, ethical method - how do we think through these difficult issues? And then when we come to abortion, it's not such a huge jump for them. Because they can logically understand. And I think that's how I'd look to encourage pastors, to say, “Look, I understand the conviction to speak on this issue ASAP, and some churches who have that foundational element in place, you can probably go and speak on that in a month.” But for others, they may think, actually I need to take a step back. As you're saying about models, think where am I being intentional about my discipleship? Because that's the issue. Am I preparing my people for what they're going to face in the world, one of them being abortion? And once you lay the groundwork there, you can then start talking about these issues. And again your people will understand where you're coming from. Speaking on abortion: massive evangelistic opportunity And Dave, as you said, a lot of people see abortion as going against their strategy for evangelism. And I just want to encourage anyone listening that this is a massive evangelistic opportunity. I was just with a woman in the week who was giving a talk from the stage. I'll tell the story quickly. She wasn't going to church, had an abortion, and later on, as we know, 10 years down the line, the trauma started to kick in. She broke down at work, had to go home, was seeking help, went to the doctor. These two psychologists come see her. She said it didn't help one bit, but she said there was a pastor that approached her from across the street, who had stayed in for cancer, and said he gave up his time of evening, the little time he had left to shepherd her through this issue. She came to the Lord and is now speaking all across the world, 39 countries she's spoken in. And just again, when I'm listening to that, I think, wow, what an opportunity we've got for the church, for pastors. What an evangelistic opportunity. Because as we know, one in three women are having an abortion these days. So it's a huge opportunity for pastors, and we need to be able to disciple our folks on this, and equip them when they're in conversations with their friends, family members, who may be dealing with the trauma of this issue, because it affects more people than we know. They're able to come alongside them. Dave Brennan: One hundred percent. I think a lot of people say, and no doubt mean, that they want to be relevant, culturally on point and the conclusion they then arrive at is therefore we don't talk about the thorny issues. But actually the opposite is the case, isn't it? Because actually when we address this huge issue, which as you say is affecting one in three women very directly, and affecting a whole load of other people less directly. is there a more important issue out there on which to convey the gospel? And it is a huge evangelistic opportunity. Huge. And when we go out on the streets doing our public education work, we often find that starting by talking about abortion actually helps to provoke a conversation about the gospel because you're meeting people where they're at with real life issues, with worldview stuff, with life and death, guilt, forgiveness. And there's an opportunity there to speak of Christ. And I think we've been trained to think, many of us, the way to do evangelism is to tiptoe around the tough subjects. But interestingly it doesn't seem to be Jesus's approach. And actually, as you've been speaking about the traffic lights, red, yellow, green, I was thinking, what traffic lights would we apply to Jesus' public ministry? I think it'd be red pretty much the whole time. It's don't go there! Don't mention money to the rich guy. Don't do something on the Sabbath in front of the Pharisees. Don't ask the woman at the well about her husband, but Jesus seems to make a beeline for that! Matt Cliff: In evangelism classes Jesus fails straight away at that moment. That's the reality. Dave Brennan: It's true. But He's the master. And I think when we're looking at how to build my church, what is an effective church look like, how do we evangelise effectively, we so often just bypass the Master, and we look to modern techniques or whatever, but it's all there. And we see Jesus going for difficult issues precisely because He's trying to reach the heart of the people He's speaking with. The rich man cannot come to Christ with his love of money still intact. That's got to go. The woman at the well who's seeking satisfaction in man after man cannot come to Christ and keep that approach to life intact. She's got to choose which well she’s going to be drinking from. And I think when pastors and others get hold of this it's a really exciting thing to realise, that when it comes to real Christ-centred mission, actually engaging with issues like this is a gift which is going to accelerate true evangelism and real discipleship. And that ought to excite us. Matt Cliff: And one that He is also intricately involved with. He wants to reach these women as well. And I really feel that the church would rediscover its prophetic voice for a start, but I really believe that the Lord will bless the church as well. That's the irony. We’ll see the growth that we want to see. One of the questions that you've got face as a pastor, when I meet Jesus face to face, He's not going to say, “Matt, did you build a big church?” He's not going to say, “How relevant was your church?” He's going to ask me, “Were you faithful?” And that's the key. And that often doesn't get the applause. That doesn't get the recognition from a worldly sense. But I'm not perfect in this area at all, but what I need to be seeking is recognition from our Lord, not from the world. Discipleship Dave Brennan: I just want to pick up on the other thing you said there about the journey of the shepherd, the sort of incremental leading of the flock. And that's something we do see in scripture. You mentioned Paul there. We see it in the way Jesus spoke with his disciples, but actually throughout scripture, revelation is gradual, it's progressive, it's incremental. And the reality is that a lot of issues come together in something like abortion. There are people's attitude towards the media - do they just believe what they're read in the media or do they question it? Ideas of feminism and what it means to be a fulfilled person, that are going to feed into this. Whether they consider the medical profession and doctors to be infallible or even morally authoritative - all of these things will need addressing. And ultimately, before the Lord, it's going to be in particular the teachers, the elders of a church who stand to account for how they've pastored their church. And just to be clear, for anyone listening, I'm certainly not presuming to be some church's pastor. I'm not. I've got no authority. We're trying to help. We're trying to resource local churches, local pastors in the work which only they can do actually. And sure, if invited, we come in and we do some teaching and we are delighted to serve in that way. But ultimately, before God, it is the local leaders, the pastors who know where their flock's at, and what's the next step along that journey. And we just want to encourage that. And certainly from my trips around different churches in the UK it is very clear very quickly which churches are more ready for the message, and which ones aren't. And that's not to say it was wrong to do it. I think, at the end of the day, there's no perfect way to address these things. You've just got to do it. And then you might find, okay, this has come to the surface, so now we've got to address that. I'm not saying it was premature and therefore wrong, but what I am saying is churches that clearly had been well taught and well discipled in the authority of scripture, in being comfortable in confronting the culture where we need to, and bearing the cost of that persecution, suffering for Christ being actually a privilege. When these building blocks are in place, addressing something like abortion is pretty easy actually. It’s just another issue along the line. And that's because all that preparatory work has taken place. I just agree with what you said there, that we are not going to be able to solve this all in one. We need to prayerfully and wisely turn up the temperature in a way that brings people with us. But again, we've got to be wary of what scripture says about the heart being deceitful and no one can understand it. It's very easy for that approach then to obviously become an excuse and we never get there. We've got to, as you say, bear in mind our accountability before the Lord, but acknowledge that every church has its own strengths and weaknesses, and the journey may look slightly different from church to church. Matt Cliff: I think, for me, what I don't want people to come away with is thinking that we don't value evangelism as well. I want to be clear, those people, I do believe that they genuinely want to see people come to know Jesus Christ. I just think it's a flawed perspective. So I'm not hammering them in any way. I'm just calling them hopefully back to a model which is more biblical. And this comes back to, ultimately, churches that are intentional about discipleship, it's easier to speak about abortion. I think we've lost that intentionality with discipleship. Just another area: home groups. When I was a pastor, I had to really think through what are we trying to achieve here? What happening here? I felt like my people weren't getting much discipleship anywhere other than a Sunday morning and again, we were aware that were unbelievers in the midst. So I was seeking a platform where I could go deeper. So we used to do something on a Wednesday night called Be Equipped. And when they came they understood that this is going to be deep. But they came with that mindset already, so it wasn't a shock for them, and if they didn't want to come, that's fine. I have to pastor them. But I think that being intentional about discipleship is crucial and it's going to be crucial going forward, the harder it gets in our culture. Because it's naive to think that our people aren't getting discipled at all. They're getting discipled by the culture. So it's even harder for us and we need to be even more intentional. We can't assume now they have a Christian view or Judeo-Christian foundations. We can't assume that anymore. So we have to be intentional about discipleship. The strategies Satan uses in our churches Dave Brennan: Thanks for saying that, And I think in all of this we've got our battle against the flesh, we've got a battle against the world, then certainly UK culture, but maybe even more than others. I'm not saying it's easy anywhere, but British culture is very much, if something's a bit awkward, just don't say it. Some parts of the country you're not even allowed to say hello as you walk past someone in the street. When it comes to something like this, there's a very strong maybe unspoken message from the world: don't touch this, don't go there. So we're battling against our own flesh, we're battling against the world, but there's also, of course, our great adversary Satan, who is very wily in his schemes. He deceives us into thinking that for the sake of the mission, don't touch this. But quite specifically, one thing that Satan convinces church leaders in particular about is this exaggerated idea of just how awful it would be if you did speak about this issue. There's a real fear about engaging this issue and it's been said, “False evidence appearing real: F. E. A. R..” And there's a sense that if I address abortion on Sunday, my church will almost literally explode. People are going to be on the floor, people are going to be leaving in droves, people are going to be arguing and deeply offended and it's all going to fall apart. Now the reality is, I would say, having spoken in dozens of churches now, the fear beforehand is totally out of proportion with the reality that actually takes place. And what happens in the vast majority of cases from the vast majority of people in the congregation, is just gratitude that it's happened. And a sense of that was right, we needed that, including for people who've had abortions. Often that's a specific fear - what about those who've had abortions? I don't want to raise this issue and cause further hurt and damage. Actually, it's often especially those people who come up and say thank you. I remember one lady, she must have been in her seventies, had an abortion decades ago, and she came up to me after a preach and said, “Every 16 year old girl in the country needs to see that.” Often it's the very people we are afraid of hurting. And again, that's genuine. I'm not saying that's a made-up excuse. I think that's a genuine concern, but it's those very people who are often most grateful and certainly most in need of addressing this. So, I think just noticing those fears and Satan's favourite tactic probably is fear. It's obviously lies, but it's often with fear mixed in there because if we listen to fear, if we allow fear to rule, it makes obedience impossible. There's a reason isn't there that the most repeated phrase in the whole of scripture is, “Don't be afraid.” Set free from the trauma of abortion Matt Cliff: You know what, brother, I think you're right. I've been with you and heard you do these talks a few times. And then I've been in the congregation in these talks when you've spoken, and there have been women that have been set free. Or I remember in a church you spoke at, a woman didn't want to come. And she came and ultimately learned to confront this trauma that she had very deep inside, and she was set free. That’s the goal, isn't it? Obviously to educate people and to not let this happen, but also to set these women free, cause that's the trauma. And that's why it's so sad. My heart feeling for this issue is not so I can promote a certain political agenda or anything like that. Ultimately it's to set these captives free. Because we know the trauma’s there and there's nothing better than that, and there's nothing more rewarding. And all the flak I'm sure that you take, that makes it worth it. Because that's what the Lord wants. As the devil wants to keep these people in captivity, bondage, in that guilt and shame, and that message obviously brings light and it's amazing. And that's why, again, we want to encourage pastors, because this type of thing can happen. We aren't to be naive. We know that in our congregation this is happening. Dave Brennan: And I think just to encourage pastors out there and anyone else, what we're encouraging here is not actually a burdensome thing. It's not a trip to the dentist, where I’ve got to get through this. Actually, this is the real stuff. This is Gospel ministry. This is setting captives free. We were encouraged just the other day. Someone sent through a photo of a little baby boy at church I went to speak at about a year ago now. And after the service, a lady in the congregation went and shared what she had learnt with her friend who was pregnant and had one abortion early in her life, and was planning to have an abortion this time round as well. But she shared what she picked up from the service and this lady changed her mind and had the baby. And a year down the line, we just got sent a picture of this gorgeous little baby boy. And it's impossible, I think, to imagine this side, when we haven't yet talked about it, to imagine this positive fruit we're talking about - literally lives saved. Women, men who've been burdened by guilt for years, even decades, set free. This is a real joy. And what we are advocating here is not that busy pastors who are trying to do what they're called to, we're not saying do this alongside, we're actually saying, “No, don't do this alongside being a pastor, don't do this instead of being a pastor, do this because you're a pastor, because this is a real gift to pastoral ministry.” Matt Cliff: And I think just to add to that, you would assume that the pastors have got some sort of strategy for evangelism, so say, “Look, don't see this as something outside of that.” Again, this issue will be a great evangelistic opportunity for us. I’m obviously in Australia at the moment, in Queensland, and it's just introduced the most liberal abortion law in the world, up to birth. And I can feel a lot of discouragement, but ultimately this is also a great opportunity for the Church to be the Church now, because the cliche the deeper the darkness, the greater the light. And it's a great opportunity. And so I just want to encourage pastors to think about how can I speak on this issue, when can I speak on this issue? Dave Brennan: Brilliant. Matt, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed this conversation. And for those listening, especially church leaders, please do be in touch if there's any way we can help you, encourage you, if you're looking for resources, speakers, we've got speakers dotted around the UK. We've even got one in Australia, so do be in touch. We really mean that. We're available and we just want to be a blessing. We want to serve the local church. And if you've been appreciating these, please do share them. If your church isn't yet speaking about this issue, why not pop this in a note to your pastor or to others in your church and see what happens? Let's try and help churches across the UK to break the silence on this issue and speak out. Matt, are there any parting comments you want to make? Any final encouragements to any pastors out there or members of churches? Matt Cliff: I think we haven't touched on the people in the pew as well. I think what I would say to you is, “Bear with your pastors. Be patient with them. Encourage them.” Because I know they will have an issue thrown on their desk probably once every two days. Love them. Again, pray for them, and if you want to get your pastor to talk on this issue, invite him for a coffee out, or take him for a cup of tea. Talk about your heart to him and ask him, “Have you thought about this issue? Where are you at with this issue?” The presumption is that pastors know everything, but that's not generally the case. And hopefully you've got one humble enough to say, “Here's where I'm at on the issue.” Dave Brennan: Brilliant. Thank you so much, Matt. Really appreciate your time with us. Do share this and we'll see you next week as we’re really coming towards the end now of this phase of analysis, and very soon we're going to be focusing much more on equipping: how can we be those effective voices for the voices that we need to be? Stay tuned for that. Thank you so much for listening in. Subscribe to podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aboutabortion Watch episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s_W1QKBuO8&list=PLDpjMeLBA2s04iqEts4y4_3cxGqOGj-dU&index=23&t Login and subscribe to be notified of the latest post

Podcast counterpart // About Abortion with Dave Brennan Womb with a view: God as midwife? Ft. Tim Lewis | 14 March 2023 | Episode 39 The Bible is chock-full of metaphors that describe God: shepherd, warrior, potter, eagle, lion, even rock and stone. None of these are woodenly literal, nor are any perfect in that the “source domain” the metaphor draws on will always be limited and unlike the Lord in profound ways. Nevertheless they provide rich insights into God’s character and convey deep truths in terms of what God does within creation and how he relates to people. Less appreciated is the fact that the Bible utilises a number of feminine metaphors to picture God’s actions. For example the Lord gives birth to his people (Numbers 11:12; Deuteronomy 32:18), and can even cry out like a woman in labour (Isaiah 42:14). God comforts Israel like a mother (Isaiah 66:13). Jesus compares God’s desire to save Jerusalem to a mother hen gathering her chicks under her wings (Matthew 23:37, reflecting a frequent OT theme, e.g., Psalms 17:8; 91:4). So perhaps the idea of God being like a midwife should not be too much of a surprise. Midwives can be male or female, but within the Bible only feminine forms are used for midwives, so this is also part of the feminine imagery. Midwifery in Biblical Context In an ancient Near Eastern context with limited medical provision and high maternal and infant mortality rates skilled midwives were vital. Although even the presence of a midwife did not always prevent tragedy, as when Rachel dies giving birth to Benjamin (Genesis 35:17, cf. 1 Samuel 4:20). At other times midwives appear as witnesses to God’s salvation historical purposes. In Genesis 38:28–30 a midwife helps Tamar deliver Perez and Zerah, identifying the first baby to emerge (Zerah), and also prophetically recognising that it is actually Perez and his offspring who will have the greater part to play in God’s story (Genesis 49:8–12; Ruth 4:12, 18–22; Matthew 1:3; Luke 3:33). Most famous are the midwives Shiphrah and Puah who defy a Pharaoh bent on the murder of Hebrew baby boys, as they courageously stand for life (Exodus 1:15–22). The two midwives, along with a number of other women in Exodus 1–2, further God’s (pro)creational purposes, in the midst of a culture of death. Shiphrah and Puah, like others in Scripture (Esther 4:11–16; Daniel 3:16–18; 6:10; Acts 5:29) realise that sometimes obeying God means disobeying sinful laws. By saving countless lives they are actively involved in fighting for the Lord against dehumanising evil. This is very much “muscular midwifery.” Any occurrence of the midwifery metaphor inevitably taps into this broader network of associations with midwives, particularly the Exodus narrative. Psalm 22 Twice in the Psalms God is portrayed as midwife. Firstly in Psalm 22:9–10: 9 Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts. 10 On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God. (ESV) Verse 9 narrates the first moments of life outside the womb, stressing the divine guidance that ensured the psalmist’s safe delivery. Even the colostrum that nourishes the infant in the first hours after birth, and helps mother and baby to bond is understood as part of God’s provision. In Hebrew the pronoun “you” occurs at the beginning of verse 9 and as the last word of verse 10, thus “[t]he divine you encloses child and mother.”1 The midwifery metaphor, which merges at times with broader connotations of motherly nurture, resonates with God’s life-giving, other-focused, compassionate character. The idea of God as midwife continues in verse 10 as the Psalmist is “cast” upon God at birth. While this could have a figurative sense, one theologian calls it “an excellent description of child delivery— the baby being expelled from the birth canal into the awaiting hands of the midwife.”2 It is worth recognising here that women in the Old Testament tended to give birth in an upright position (cf. the description in 1 Samuel 4:19). In a poignant comparison, in Ezekiel 16, Jerusalem, under the figure of a new-born infant girl, is exposed at birth, literally “cast” into the open field – the same verb as Psalm 22:10. The lack of parental compassion in Ezekiel 16 is in stark contrast to the Psalmist’s experience. Whereas human agents are involved in infanticide, the Lord is a specialist in perinatal care. Psalm 71 The midwife metaphor is reprised in Psalm 71:6: Upon you I have leaned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you. The author of Psalm 71 is in the latter years of life (see v. 18). The word “continually” (Psalm 71:3, 6, 14), reinforces the sense that since the womb God has been a constant within the Psalmist’s life. The same concept and language occur in Isaiah 46:3–4, where God carries Israel from before birth to old age and grey hair. There are obvious similarities with Psalm 22:9–10, and several new themes are developed. The verb “to lean” is used of Samson resting his full weight against stone pillars in the House of Dagon (Judges 16:29), and is used figuratively of dependence on God – who, unlike the Philistine architecture, will not give way! In the Psalms “to lean” is consistently used of God sustaining (Psalm 3:5) or upholding people (Psalms 37:24; 51:12; 54:4; 119:116; 145:14). God is a sure support for the psalmist before his birth, sustaining him within the womb. And again, like a midwife, God takes the initiative in delivering the child from the womb. The Hebrew word translated “took me” only occurs here in the Bible, although the related noun is used of cut stone. This has led to speculation that the cutting of the umbilical cord is intended, or even an emergency Caesarean delivery. For one scholar the strong implication is that the situation involves maternal death, with the midwife (God) delivering the infant from an identical fate.3 Elsewhere in Scripture national catastrophe can be compared to a labour that does not progress naturally, such as when the baby is in a breech presentation, with potentially fatal results (2 Kings 19:3; Isaiah 37:3). God, the nation’s midwife, is able to bring about a different fate, delivering the people, just as he oversees the birth of healthy new-borns (Isaiah 66:7–9). Implications So what does the midwifery metaphor in Scripture say about God, pregnancy and childbirth? The psalmists in Psalms 22 and 71 discover God’s intimate protection at a time of real vulnerability. Portraying God as a midwife demonstrates God’s presence in one of the most perilous moments of life. Juliana Claassens emphasises how this metaphor makes explicit “God’s profound commitment to life. The conviction that God is the God of life, who works ceaselessly to bring life into the world.”4 Good midwives are also concerned about mother and baby during pregnancy. God’s providential involvement in the birthing process reveals a continuity of care that began in the womb and continues as the child grows. Put differently, God is Pro-Life and like the Pro-Life midwives Shiphrah and Puah in Exodus, the Lord does all he can to safeguard vulnerable mothers and their children. From conception every single life is precious to God. The Child in the Womb What about the unborn child? Psalms 22:10 declares that “you have been my God” within the womb, indicating that even here there was covenant relationship. “My God” is uttered in the first verse of Psalm 22, in very different circumstances, where the focus is on God’s perceived absence and distance. Whatever in life might threaten a sense of God’s presence and closeness was wholly absent for the Psalmist as an unborn child. The womb evokes God’s steadfast love. In fact Psalm 71:6 can be read in such a way that the psalmist’s continuous praise began when he was still in the womb. The unborn child glorifies God, just as the new-born baby does (see Psalm 8:2; Matthew 21:16). Jewish tradition actually pictures unborn children singing hymns to God at the crossing of the Red Sea. We may find that bizarre, and such an imaginative idea is inspired by the biblical text, rather than taught by it. Yet as sober an exegete as Calvin can remark that Psalm 71:6 “not only celebrates the goodness of God which he had experienced from his childhood, but also the proofs of it which he had received previous to his birth.”5 On the basis of this and other Scripture there seems little grounds to doubt this. The New Testament might not feature babies singing in the womb, but Luke’s Gospel does begin with an unborn baby leaping for joy (Luke 1:41, 44)! This response expresses John’s Spirit-inspired praise (see Luke 1:15) at the presence of the still embryonic Jesus. Midwifery Finally what does it say about midwives? At a time when professional midwifery bodies are increasingly allied with the abortion industry and students can be suspended from university midwifery courses for even expressing a Pro-Life viewpoint, the Bible provides a better vision for this wonderful vocation. It is a calling that Scripture draws on to illustrate aspects of God’s nature and purposes. God shares this determined stance of protection on behalf of pregnant mothers and their babies. We might often picture God as shepherd, but even the wisest, kindest, most courageous shepherd is still looking after sheep, not bringing image-bearing human beings into the world! As Exodus shows us, midwifery could be just as perilous as a shepherd fighting off lions or bears. Centuries before the Hippocratic Oath the Hebrew midwives are committed to preserving life, recognising that their care for pregnant women always involves more than one patient. Shiphrah and Puah risk their own lives to protect children. In a very real sense they are imitating God’s character. And in doing so they take their place in God’s salvation drama, where his people in every age find themselves pitted against the forces of darkness, destruction and death. Today Shiphrah and Puah would be outside abortion facilities praying for women and children; doing all they could to expose and prevent a state-supported slaughter of unborn children, possibly getting arrested in the process. Pro-Life activism is not some anomaly, it has a long pedigree in the history of God’s people, because it expresses God’s heart of fierce love for precious, vulnerable infants. Scripture makes clear that Satan’s violent rage continues to be directed against pregnant women and their children until the end of time (see Revelation 12). But we know how the story ends. The dragon will be thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:2, 10), just as Pharoah’s hosts were drowned in the Red Sea. God’s people will overcome, if we are faithful and stand, like the midwives Shiphrah and Puah, with the vulnerable. This is the right side of history. The side of life. Whose side are you on? Subscribe to podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/aboutabortion Watch episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGBdI8h529s&list=PLDpjMeLBA2s04iqEts4y4_3cxGqOGj-dU&index=77&t Login and subscribe to be notified of the latest post [1] All Bible quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV). [2] Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Overtures to Biblical Theology. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), 61. [3] John Makujina, “Male Obstetric Competence in Ancient Israel: A Response to Two Recent Proposals,” Vetus Testamentum, 66.1 (2016), 88 and fn 46. [4] See L. Juliana M. Claassens, Mourner, Mother, Midwife. Reimagining God’s Delivering Presence in the Old Testament (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 75-77. [5] Mourner, Mother, Midwife, 77. [6] John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries on the Psalms (5 vols, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949), iii.84.