Hebrews Lesson 87 May
10, 2007
NKJ Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp to my
feet And a light to my path.
Alright, we are continuing
our study here on the subject of the origin of life and transmission of the
soul which is what comes out of our study in Hebrews 7:9-10 where we have the
passage that talks about Levi paying tithes while he is still in the loins of
Abraham.
Now we have talked about that
to some degree; but the broader issue, the broader doctrine that comes behind
that has to do with two issues. One is the origin of the soul and the other is
the transmission of the soul. I have
gone through some things as I have been refining my thought reading some
contrary literature the last week or so to just get some ideas of what some of
the critiques have been on this position.
It has been kind of interesting because (unfortunately I think) the way
this argument has often been presented has been way overstated and in the
context of that has created some rather strongmen arguments of its own. The other side, at least in terms of a
doctrinal dissertation which I just read, created its own set of false
assumptions and strongmen arguments. And
so I want to just want to go back over a couple of things we have done
already.
One thing I pointed out at
the very beginning is that there are two basic positions on the origin of the
soul – traducianism and creationism.
Traducianism teaches the view that both the material body and the
immaterial soul are transmitted through physical pro-creation. As I pointed out this was first articulated
by Tertullian around the 2nd – 3rd century AD. His dates are 155 to 220. This view was declared heretical by Thomas
Aquinas and by other Roman Catholic theologians in the Middle Ages. Now one of the things that I have come to
understand a little more clearly in recent weeks is that a number of Roman
Catholics take a position (or probably the vast majority takes a position) that
is known as conception creationism. They
don’t take it – that is not the official traducianism is not the official
position of the Roman Catholic Church.
It is the second position that we are talking about here creationism that
only the body is generated through physical generation, but the soul is
directly created and imparted by God.
Now the difference is there are those that hold that the soul is
imparted at conception; others that hold that it is imparted at birth. Okay?
So we have to make sure that we correctly identify a number of these
positions.
What I found interesting in
this particular dissertation is the inference was there - if not the direct
statement that the vast majority of… No,
he did say the vast majority of creationists held to creationism at
conception. And he footnoted it. So I went and checked the footnotes and they
didn’t say that either. One did, but it
wasn’t footnoted. It was a Bible dictionary. Now Bible dictionaries are notorious for
making generalized statements. But,
there was no documentation. In reading
that I have done over the years, I have never seen a protestant theologian say
such as Calvin or Hodge or Burkhoff or some of the others argue that creation
of the soul was imparted at conception.
It was always understood to be from birth although I have to admit in
many cases they don’t state that. But
that is how it was presented when I was in seminary and I knew at least two
professors that were teaching in the Systematic Theology Department at Dallas
Seminary when I was there who were creationists – birth creationists, as
opposed to conception creationists. So
this is a viable position that has been held down through the ages by numerous
believers. Now the crux passage where a
lot of people go and I have spent a lot of time on this passage already is
Genesis 2:7. Just to remind you of the exegesis
here.
NKJ Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the
dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man
became a living being.
The first phrase has to do
with the verb yatsar which generally has to do with shaping something
physical. Now when God is forming the
dust of the ground, He shapes it into the physical body of the man. He then breathes into his nostrils or blows
into his nostrils and that of course is an anthropomorphism because God doesn’t
breathe or have breath any more than He has eyes or ears or fingers or anything
like that. So this part of the verse is
clearly anthropomorphic in relationship to God.
That “God breathing into his nostrils” - the “his nostrils” refers of
course to the nostrils in the body that God has just shaped for the man and
that is literal. That’s not
anthropomorphic. So that is literal and
then he breathes in the breath of life.
Now this can’t be anthropomorphic because…
So this is that which
indicates the presence or absence of life is breath. I will show you some Scriptures on that in
just a minute. Then the last phrase which I pointed out last time, nephesh
hajah. Hajah is the Hebrew
feminine noun which means a living thing or an animal, that which has
life. Then nephesh is the word
that sometimes we translate it soul, but here it is more the idea of the
animating principle. It is a compound
word and one of the things or mistakes that can be made is to go in and break
these phrases down into their components because often a phrase is more than
the sum of its parts. So if you break it
down where you emphasize nephesh as opposed to the phrase nephesh hajah you can end up creating as
I pointed out the last time more of a
platonic view of the soul which is foreign to Old Testament contexts. You just can’t find a lot of documentation
from Hebrew scholars that would substantiate that use of nephesh
here. In fact what you have is the
phrase nephesh hajah is used for the sense of something that is fully
alive three other times in the creation narrative. It is used of birds in Genesis 1:20. It is used of sea creatures in 1:21. It is used of animals in 1:24. So to argue that nephesh hajah here means
living soul creates a problem when this is the fourth time the phrase is used
in the creation narrative and you wouldn’t translate it living soul in the
previous other three instances. Okay? That has led some to over emphasize the
immaterial dimension of man and to treat this as more of a Greek concept of
soul that a Hebrew concept of soul.
I just have some passages
here which utilize the word neshamah to indicate breath as the evidence
of life. Genesis 7: 22 talks about the
destruction of everybody on the planet other that Noah and his three sons and
their wives.
NKJ Genesis 7:22 All in whose nostrils was the
breath of the spirit of life, all that was on the dry land, died.
This is talking about
everybody who was alive.
NKJ Deuteronomy 20:16 "But of the cities of these
peoples which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall
let nothing that breathes remain alive,
This is the instructions to Moses
for holy war, to the Israelites as they are about to take the land.
That indicates both physical
animals such as domestic animals such as cattle and sheep and goats as well as
humans. It’s interesting when you get
into this debate about what is life biblically because we all know that there a
certain amount of greenies running around with a couple of screws lose who
think that if they talk to their plants that their plants are living beings and
they will respond to them and all of this other nonsense. The Bible doesn’t use nephesh hajah of
single-celled creatures or of plants.
One reason I make that point is because Adam and Eve were vegetarians in
the garden.
So if you want to make an
argument in the creation evolution controversy you say that there was no death
until Adam sinned you are always going to get some smart aleck come along and
say, “Well, what happened when they ate that first piece of corn? They killed it.”
No, it is not the same word
used for life. There is recognition in
the Hebrew narrative of different categories of life in birds and fish and
animals and the sea creatures. These are
breathing creatures and that seems to be what makes them living creatures. That is a quality that indicates life.
So we can’t push nephesh
too far. I haven’t been doing that. I have been arguing that nephesh
indicates that what animates the physical body is that which is
immaterial. You see this connection
through here of words like nephesh and ruach like we have back here
in Genesis 7:22.
These are terms for that which
is breath, wind, that which is invisible.
NKJ Joshua 10:40 So Joshua conquered all the land:
the mountain country and the South and the lowland and the wilderness slopes,
and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed,
as the LORD God of Israel had commanded.
There are a whole lot of
passages in the conquest section in Joshua, in Judges, and on into Samuel that
uses neshamah in terms of the destruction of all that breathes. You have Joshua 10:40 that they are to
utterly destroy all that breathes.
NKJ Joshua 11:11 And they struck all the people who were
in it with the edge of the sword, utterly destroying them. There was
none left breathing. Then he burned Hazor with fire.
Genesis 2:7 has been used. The
way it has been structured and the way some people have presented this in such
a way that it becomes a sort of pattern for all other birth. It is and it isn’t. It isn’t in the sense that when God is
creating the physical home for the soul of Adam, it is not the same. It can’t be made parallel to what is
happening in the development of the baby inside the womb. God is shaping the clay. There is no heart beat. There is no blood flow. There is no cell life. There is no brain activity. It is not an analogy. To be honest the creationist position never
uses it that way. It is clearly recognized
that it was an immediate creation by God and that physical - the physical
dimension of man, the material dimension - is passed on indirectly. God is indirectly in charge.
I pointed out several
passages where the Old Testament attributes events to God as if He directly did
it when in fact He did it indirectly through human means. God saved me.
Yes, but He did it indirectly through somebody, my parents, who gave me
the gospel. Yet I still talk because God
even though He is the ultimate agent He didn’t immediately save me. He indirectly or mediately saved me through
human instrumentality. So the Bible uses
very direct language for both mediate and immediate involvement of God because
everybody recognizes that God is the one who gives life and gives soul life
whether it is done through a traducianist view – they would all say that we
believe that God gives the soul and creationists. You can’t misrepresent other positions just
to try to make our own position look a little bit stronger. But there is this reaction, this knee jerk
reaction that you find today because people think that a creationist position at
birth automatically legitimizes abortion.
So I thought well, I would
read something to you to give you a little different perspective. I thought I would put this up on the overhead
because it is a long quote. Normally I
don’t like to read long quotes, but there are a couple of lengthier quotes that
I want to read tonight just to educate you a little bit about this whole
issue.
This is an article from the Encyclopedia
of Judaism which was published in 2000. One
of the editors was Jacob Noisner who is a very well-known rabbinical scholar
and several others. In this article they
write…
The
Jewish legal and moral attitude toward abortion based on biblical Talmudic and
rabbinic sources…
Note that. They’re not
dealing with modern Jewish formulations.
They are going back to Mishnaic interpretation, rabbinic interpretation,
Talmudic interpretation of the Bible.
The
Jewish legal and moral attitude toward abortion based on these sources including
the response literature…
That is some modern
literature that has been described in detail in English by various authors. It states…
In Jewish law an unborn fetus is not considered to be a
person.
Now let me pause here. That is really critical terminology because
I am going to read something written by Harold O. J. Brown earlier and he
argues a number of non-secularists. I think in his position that if it human –
let me make another aside here – what is in the womb is human. It is not non-human. It is not something else. It is going to be a human being. It is human.
Unfortunately some people have inadvertently overstated the case and say
that it doesn’t matter.
“It is just a mass of
biological cells.”
No, it is human. But he makes the supposition that it is human
therefore it is a person. Person gets
into a legal definition. Let me set that
aside until I come back and address it later on.
So he says here…
Jewish law an unborn fetus is not considered to be a
person.
That means a legal entity
that can own property, transfer titles, be legally recognized. The person in Hebrew is considered nephesh
literally soul which is what I have been pointing out.
It
is not a person. It is not nephesh
until it is born. The fetus is regarded as part of the mother’s body and not a separate
being until it begins to egress from the womb during parturition. Until 40 days after conception the fertilized
egg is considered mere fluid.
Those 40 days – where does
that come from? That comes back from
Aristotelian thought that at forty days there was a quickening. What is that based on? Who knows?
But that was it. At 40 days there
was a quickening and that is when it begins to become human. So that is where the 40 days comes from.
Intentional
abortion is not mentioned directly in the Bible, but a case of accidental
abortion is discussed in Exodus 21:22-23.
Now, that is the passage
where it talks about case law. You have
two men fighting and they want to do each other bodily harm, but they
inadvertently and accidentally hit a pregnant woman and the pregnant woman has
a baby. One position that some people hold is a view that that is a miscarriage
and that it is not a live birth. But it
is recognized by most scholars that the Hebrew word that is used there
indicates live birth and is always used of live birth and so that’s the
position that must be understood there.
It is a live birth which means that at the point of birth the baby is
alive. Any damage that is done is post
birth. So if life begins at birth, then
obviously you have a living baby because it is after birth. We will get into that in detail when we look
at the exegesis of that passage.
So they are going to give the
Jewish interpretation and this is only one Jewish interpretation and I have a
host of other Jewish scholars who hold to the live birth view. They argue that this is the miscarriage view.
NKJ Exodus 21:22 " If men fight, and hurt a
woman with child, so that she gives birth prematurely, yet no harm follows, he
shall surely be punished accordingly as the woman's husband imposes on him; and
he shall pay as the judges determine.
NKJ Exodus 21:23 "But if any harm
follows, then you shall give life for life,
That miscarriage view would
be that “if there other misfortune to the mother”. So that is how they
interpret that. The issue here is that
by issuing a fine they are showing that what happens is significant. It is not insignificant. It is not just a mass of non-entity non-human
cells.
They say, “Well, if they had
even considered it to be human, there would have been more than a fine.”
No, what is interesting is if
you get into looking at the Mosaic Law if a Jew harms another Jew there is a
penalty. If he kills a Jew (a Hebrew
kills a Hebrew) there is a death penalty.
But if he kills a slave it is a fine.
A slave was fully human, but there is inherent recognition of a difference
of a value of life. That goes through a
number of different laws in the Mosaic Law.
The writer of this article in the encyclopedia goes on to say…
Most biblical commentators…
That would be Jewish – it is
a Jewish encyclopedia. Don’t get
confused and think these are Christians.
Most
biblical commentators interpret “no other misfortune” to mean no fatal injury to the woman following her
miscarriage. In that case the attacker pays
only financial compensation for having unintentionally caused the miscarriage no
differently than if he had accidentally injured the woman elsewhere on her
body. Thus when the mother is otherwise unharmed
following trauma to her abdomen that causes the fetus to be lost the only
concern is to have the one who is responsible to pay damages to the woman and
her husband for the loss of the fetus.
The major Talmudic source for
abortion rulings in Judaism discusses a case of danger to the mother. This reading reads…
If a
woman is having difficulty in giving birth and her life is in danger one cuts
up the fetus within her womb and extracts it limb from limb because her life
takes presence over that of the fetus. But if the greater part was already born
one may not touch it for one may not set aside one person’s life nephesh
for that of another. Commentators
explain that the fetus is not considered to be a nephesh or person until
it has left the womb and entered the air of the world. One is therefore permitted to destroy it to
save the mother’s life. Once the head or
the greater part of the body of the infant comes out the infant may not be
harmed because it is considered as fully born and in Judaism one may not
sacrifice one life to save another.
There
are many other Talmudic sources which support the non-person status of the
unborn fetus. In fact during the first
40 days of conception the Talmud considers the fertilized zygote to be nothing
more that mere fluid however after 40 days have elapsed the fetus is deemed to
be fashioned to form. Laws of ritual uncleanness
must be observed for fetuses older than 40 days implying that the unborn fetus
although not considered to be a living person nephesh still has
considerable status. In fact Jewish law allows
one to desecrate the Sabbath to save the life or preserve the health of an
unborn fetus so that the child may observe many Sabbaths later. The permissibility to kill the unborn fetus
to save the mother’s life rests upon the fact that such an embryo is not
considered a person nephesh until it is born. Mimodades and Karo present another reason for
allowing abortion or an embyotomy prior to birth where the mother’s life is in
danger. The argument of pursuit which
understands the fetus to be pursuing the mother.
The point of this whole
article (and it goes on for another two pages) is that in Jewish thought that
because it is potential human life that apart from any other accident or any
other factor all things being considered
what will result from what is in the womb is a human being. God is putting together a human being bit by
bit. So nobody has the right to go in
and stop it once this process has begun.
You can’t go in and test. In
rabbinical law you can’t test for any kind of diseases. You can’t test for Down’s syndrome. You can’t do any of these things because there
is no stopping life. That’s the position
because they recognize inherently that what is in the womb is the image of
God. Therefore that involves both the
physical and the soul dimensions. So you
just can’t mess with it. This is
extremely serious stuff.
On the other hand as I
pointed out last time it is not deemed murder.
I think that is a very important distinction to make. I am going to bring out something in just a
minute. We talked about that and this
just shows that the position I am articulating which to a lot of evangelicals
sounds really bizarre that you don’t have life until birth.
In fact in this next article
that I am going to read by Harold O. J. Brown he says, “Who could ever imagine
that the fetus could make it to birth without a soul?”
Where is your evidence for
this? Remember, that is an important
word when I read you this next article.
Where is your evidence?
So we talked about the fact –
what I have shown you is that this is not a position that is unique to Christianity;
but it is one that is also consistent with the teaching of the rabbis going
back to the Mishnah which is roughly at the time of Christ. The Mishnah was written and codified in the 2nd—3rd
century AD it represents an oral history that goes back to the 2nd,
3rd, maybe 4th century BC.
Now the next question that we
are addressing is the question of when does God impart the soul? How do we know this? Now I have gone into Scripture to show that
the Bible uses this language of “from birth to death”. It is interesting one of the strongman
arguments that I saw in this dissertation he just cited all of these things
that creationists would argue from birth, from birth, from birth.
But, in all the passages he
cited there was also the other end of the formula which is from death; but he left
that out and said, “See they are basing everything on the use of a word.”
That was faulty
argumentation.
So we have to ask the
question, when does God impart the soul and how do we know the soul is there?
Can you measure it? Can you weigh
it? Can you see it? Is there something physical that demonstrates
the presence of the soul?
Now that is a very important
question. Well, in doing my research I
ran across this second article which came out in the Trinity Evangelical
Divinity School Journal. The Trinity
Journal came out (volume XIV) in 1993.
It was written by Harold O. J. Brown.
Now this is significant because Harold O. J. Brown is probably one of
the top 5 significant protestant theologians who pushed the whole anti-abortion
movement from the inception. In fact, in
the article he tells a story. Let me see
if I can find it here. He tells a story
about when Roe v. Wade first came down.
He says, “Unfortunately for
those who consider abortion a moral evil indeed under most circumstances a
crime, the evangelical community was very slow to react to Roe. Prominent Christian leaders such as W. A.
Criswell (He was a pastor of First Baptist up in Dallas which at the time was
the largest Baptist church in the world.) greeted Roe v. Wade with favor. In some cases apparently what seemed to be a
reflex anti-Catholicism. The question on
his stand on this writer Dr. Chriswell…
See Harold O. J. Brown was of
such stature he could call up W. A. Chriswell on the phone and ask him, “What
are you going to do about this?”
He did the same thing with
Billy Graham. Harold O. J. Brown is
probably in his mid to late 80’s now. He
was a major figure in neo-evangelicalism in the 50’s through the early
90’s.
He talks about when they
first formed one of the earlier anti-abortion movements. Billy Graham was first
on the board, but then when he saw where it was going he got off the board. He just didn’t understand all of this. He went on to talk about the fact that it was
really the writing of “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” by Francis Chaffer
and C. Everett Coop that galvanized the religious evangelical community into an
anti-abortion stance. I remember going
to see (they did) a full media film presentation of that series in Dallas in
about 1979-1980. I remember going to that
(just like I did with “How Shall We Then Live?”) with Tommy and Charlie and a
bunch of other guys. We all sat there and went through the whole thing. But that’s what galvanized the action.
Now who’s this guy Harold O.
J. Brown? I think it is important to
give you a little idea of who this guy is and what his credentials are. At the time he wrote this he held the
Franklin Forman Chair of Christian Ethics and Theology and was a professor of
Biblical and Systematic Theology at Evangelical Divinity School. He is now professor Emeritus from there. He served as a pastor in Switzerland. He taught on the faculty of Trinity for
numerous years. He earned his four
degrees. He is well-educated. He earned his four degrees from Harvard
University and Harvard Divinity School.
I have been to Harvard
Divinity School. They didn’t teach the Bible there. When I first went there and looked at the
list of courses was in about 1981 or 1982 and there wasn’t a Christian course
there. Now they had Christian books in
the bookstore. They had some Greek and
Hebrew tools in the bookstore that I bought because I hadn’t seen those prices
in 10 years. That is probably how long
they had been in the bookstore.
He has a degree from Harvard University
and Harvard Divinity School. He received
a Bachelor of Arts in Germanic languages and biochemical sciences, a Bachelor
of Divinity in theology, the Master of Theology in Church history and a Doctor
of Philosophy in Reformation studies. He
also studied at the University of Marburg (Germany) and the University of
Vienna (Austria) and taught courses in Basel, Switzerland and in India. Now I just want you to be aware of those
credentials because of a couple of things he is going to say.
Now, he makes a couple of
telling comments (and I think self-damming comments) that are dangerous to his
position within his article. In one
section of the article which he entitles “The Question of the Soul – Unanswered
or Irrelevant?” He recognizes that for
some people it is important to know when ensoulment takes place. Now you would think that he had made that
decision – that if he is this hardcore frontline evangelical anti-abortionist
that he would have understood that issue.
I am just going to read some
spot paragraphs here.
He writes in one place.
It
is interesting that some of the medical and legal discussions about abortion are
now turning to speculation concerning the time of ensoulment.
That is in the medical and legal
community because he is saying that there is recognition that if we are going
to take the life of the fetus we have to decide when a soul gets there If they are materialists and Darwinists they
can’t really talk about a soul. So he is
recognizing that this is as a problem for their position.
He says that …
This
discussion is now turning to the time of ensoulment even though neither
academic medicine nor law has hitherto had much to say about the nature of the
human soul or even whether such a thing as a soul actually exists.
He goes on to say…
It
is precisely because ensoulment on the one hand from the purely scientific
point of view cannot be brought into the relationship with life or divification
however defined but on the other hand is precisely associated in folk thought.
You see it is the popular
people that are concerned about when the soul gets there. But what he is pointing out here is something
I didn’t realize. The whole pro-abortion
argument has developed completely apart from any discussion of ensoulment. It has nothing to do with it. That never
enters into their discussion behind it.
He says…
On
the other hand precisely associated faux pas popular culture with quickening
and thus with life that the concept of ensoulment is creeping back into the
discussion despite its self evident religious or theological nature.
Now here is the point. He recognizes here that the question – when
does the soul get there- is one that is theological or religious in
nature.
He goes on to say…
In
order to bring the question of ensoulment into the picture when discussing the
morality of abortion, the present factual situation must be studiously ignored,
(According to him.)
Factually
the government is not prepared to take the question of the presence or absence
of the human soul into account.
Why not? They don’t have an epistemological basis to
do it. He later recognizes that we don’t
want the government trying to decide when the soul gets there.
It goes on to say…
It
is neither prepared nor equipped to consider whether such a thing as a human
soul exists. Thus the discussion of
ensoulment for all practical purposes is necessarily confined to those
religious circles especially, but not only Christian ones who do believe that
man has a soul. If it were possible to
argue that for a certain time during gestation the fetus was without a human
soul this would have only limited bearing on abortion law and abortion practice
in the United States.
You see that is what he is
recognizing. Even if we could prove when
the soul got there, it wouldn’t have any relevance on the legal decision. The courts didn’t care when the soul got
there. That wasn’t a factor.
He says…
Because
however everyone understands ensoulment, it is not possible to assume that the
fetus remains without a soul until live birth.
What an assumption he has
made! See he has front loaded this with
his own.
He says, “I can’t even
imagine that a fetus would make it to live birth without a soul. Nobody would do this.”
He says that…
Very
few evangelical thinkers have proposed that the baby becomes a living person
only when its first breath takes its first breath based on Genesis 2:7.
The problem is he gives no
substantiation for that. He just can’t
imagine it so he generates it from his own arrogance.
Then he goes on to say in a
separate paragraph several pages later…
The
question of ensoulment cannot be answered scripturally.
Hello! Here is this guy with all of these degrees -
master of theology and PhD gone to Harvard, Harvard Divinity School, gone to a
lot of conservative schools, teaches at conservative schools and is
conservative to the core and he says that the Bible can’t tell you when the
soul gets there. After he has made a
critique of both creationism and traducianism, his conclusion is that the Bible
can’t tell you when ensoulment gets there.
So my question for him is - why
are you saying it is a full human life at conception? You don’t know when the soul is there. Maybe the soul is not there. How do you know? He says that the Bible can’t tell him.
“So the question of
ensoulment,” he says, “cannot be answered scripturally as the Scripture makes
no reference to the process at all.”
But,
even if we could answer it, naming and contrast to the prevailing views a late
point in pregnancy our answer would not be relevant to the current legal
discussion in as much as it would move on a theological plane and deal with
issues of which the legislatures and courts are supposed to take notice. Thus the only possible value of the
discussion lies in the fragile support it may give to those Christians and
others who believe in the soul and the effort to convince themselves our
government and much of the medical profession have not embraced the method in
which killing represents the solution.
Okay, what is he saying?
This is completely false.
Did you hear that? He is actually right. We don’t want the government coming in and
determining when the soul is there because the soul can only be determined on
the basis of (he would say) theological or religious basis. I would say you can only know it from
revelation. You can’t know it from
empiricism, rationalism or mysticism.
You can only know it from revelation.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man does not receive
the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he
know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
Okay, that is a key lynchpin
in my argument. You can’t base law for
believers and unbelievers on that which is not knowable apart from their system
of epistemology. You can’t hold
unbelievers accountable for knowledge that is only available through
revelation. Only Christians have access
to revelation.
Now I have my position. I think it is pretty clear. But, over the scope of Christianity there are
two views and Christians don’t agree.
So are we going to base
federal legal statute on information that is only available through divine
revelation only knowable to born again believers and born again believers can’t
agree as to what it means?
Therefore my conclusion is that
this shouldn’t be an issue of federal law or the courts. In my view, you don’t have full human
life. Now that word “full” is very
important the way I am articulating this position because, what is in the womb
is potential and progressively developing human life. It is the physical, material body part of it;
but they both work together. That it is
not murder. To have abortion on demand
or abortion at will or abortion for birth control is tantamount to interfering in
a divine process.
Now I am going to deal with
some other passages of Scripture in there, but that would make it immoral and
sinful but not a matter of federal constitution. That is my point.
Okay, now I want to come back
and deal with some problem passages over the next couple of weeks.
The first problem passage that
was raised to me was Job 3:3. So turn in your Bibles to Job 3:3.
It is very important to look
at the whole context here in Job 3. Job
3:3 says…
NKJ Job 3:3 "May the day perish on which I
was born, And the night in which it was said, 'A male child is
conceived.'
Now the argument that is set
forth here is life begins at conception.
We never said nothing begins at conception. We said something did, something human begins
at conception; but what we are saying is that the soul isn’t present until
birth. But this passage set forth - see
you have a parallelism here and in that second half of the verse a male child
was conceived. See it is full human
life. Well, let’s look at the
passage. The context tells you that the
issue here is primarily birth. All
through this section of Job, Job is bemoaning the fact that he was ever
born.
NKJ Job 3:1 After this Job opened his mouth and
cursed the day of his birth.
Literally, in the Hebrew –
cursed his day. That is the Hebrew
figure of speech for his birthday. So he
is cursing his birthday, not his day of conception.
The second thing we should
note is that this extends throughout - that is a topical sentence. It is narrative. The poetry begins in verse
3. So the narrative says at this point
Job opens his mouth and begins to curse his birthday and Job spoke and said… Verse 3 is the first thing he says.
That is the Hebrew verb jalad
meaning to birth. It is not
conception.
We might as well hunker down
here with the way the rain is going. We have
40 days and 40 nights. We can go for a
long Bible class tonight. I don’t think
we are going anywhere and I don’t think Ann Wright made it in with the cake
tonight so there is nothing good back there to go back and eat.
So in the first stanza he
says…
NKJ Job 3:3 "May the day perish on which I
was born,
Jalad.
Then in the second clause he
said…
And the night in which it was
said, 'A male child is conceived.'
Now a male child has to do
with the properties of the physical body, not the presence of the soul. That is all that we are arguing - that there
are two developments that take place in the development of the human
being. The first has to do with the
development of the body and the second is the giving of the soul. All this second stanza says is that a male
child was conceived.
Now there are people that
come along and say …when you look at some of these passages like if you skip
down to verse 11 Job says…
NKJ Job 3:11 "Why did I not die at birth? Why
did I not perish when I came from the womb?
There is the argument that
because the first person singular pronoun is used there that he was present
there. Well, we have the same kind of
thing, just hold your place and turn over to Psalm 139:13. David says…
NKJ Psalm 139:13 For You formed my inward parts; You
covered me in my mother's womb.
They are not somebody
else’s. My soul wasn’t there yet, but
those were mine in my mother’s womb.
They weren’t somebody else’s. So
how else would you articulate it?
See, he says, “Me, I was in
my mother’s womb.”
Well, yes he was but who else
was it? Your body wasn’t in there. There is no other way to articulate this in
English.
NKJ Psalm 139:14 I will praise You, for I am
fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my
soul knows very well.
All of this is using a first
person pronoun to refer to that which is his body.
The point is if you look at
the context of Job 3. He goes on to say…
NKJ Job 3:4 May that day be darkness; May God
above not seek it, Nor the light shine upon it.
NKJ Job 3:5 May darkness and the shadow of
death claim it; May a cloud settle on it; May the blackness of the day terrify
it.
NKJ Job 3:6 As for that night, may
darkness seize it; May it not rejoice among the days of the year, May it not
come into the number of the months.
Then we get down to more
specifics in verse 10.
NKJ Job 3:10 Because it did not shut up the
doors of my mother's womb, Nor hide sorrow from my eyes.
In other words my mother’s
womb was not shut. It was the
birth. You see this whole passage is talking
about the birth of Job. Why didn’t I die
at birth?
We have looked at the
terminology here - mirechem and mibeten. Now one of the things that was pointed out in
this dissertation which I thought did a decent job of this and a corrective in
some sense is that as I pointed out before when you have certain words and
components of words that sometimes you do yourself more damage by breaking down
the particulars and the components than recognizing that the phrase or the
clause or the whole saying has meaning in and of itself that is beyond the some
of its parts. So if you spend too much
time trying to make a case for the preposition min or ek meaning “out
from” as opposed to… I could use the preposition ek or min and say
that I am going to pour this coffee out of this cup. Now it has presence inside the cup and it
comes from the source of the cup and it comes out. You have other passages as we saw in
Scripture if you try to take that meaning and that is a legitimate meaning for
min or for ek. If you take
that meaning and make it cover every use of min or ek you have a
real problem when you come to Revelation 3:10 when God promises that He is
going to keep them out of the tribulation.
I forget the terminology there.
Let me go back and look real quick because that is the same type of prepositional
construction.
Jesus says…
NKJ Revelation 3:10 "Because you have kept My
command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall
come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.
That means you are not going
to go into the trial at all. There are
parallels to that so you can go either way.
So if you press the preposition too far you can create a problem.
But what I did with this one
dissertation as I kept reading, I was chuckling to myself because the writer is
a dispensational pre-trib writer and yet he went so far without paying
attention to the fact that there is an ek over there in Revelation
3:10. He went so far in arguing that min
and ek must always be source that he moved himself right into a post
trib position without realizing it. See,
you have to understand and keep in mind all of these different uses and they
are not hard and fast. Language isn’t mechanical
like that.
What is important as I
pointed out last time is that the uses of mirechem and mibeten
and ek kolia in the New Testament are idioms for “from birth”. That is how they are translated. As I pointed out numerous translations NIV, NASB,
New English Bible, The New English Version - all of these recognize in numerous
places that this is an idiom that should be translated “from birth.” Don’t try to parse it into some kind of
separation from birth or things like that.
It just means “from birth”. It’s not separation out from the womb. It is just an idiom for birth as opposed to
conception because in the Hebrew language they didn’t have a noun for
birth. So the only way to make the
statement “from birth” was to use a circumlocution.
But they did have a noun as I
pointed out the last few lessons, they did have a noun for conception. So that
was available to them. When they do talk
about conception, they talk about two acts – that Eve conceived and gave
birth. These are two different events. They are not viewed as the same. There is the beginning of the process which develops
the physical home for the soul and then there is the actual birth itself.
So Job 3:13 is not a passage
that would argue for conception being a starting point where the soul is. There is no evidence that the soul is there
at conception, only physical masculinity.
But throughout the whole passage the argument is at birth. Birth and death are the parameters that are
given there.
I am going to close in
prayer.