Other Scripture passages are worded in such a way as to imply that the biblical authors may have linked the beginning of life with conception: Then she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and your child will be blessed! How could this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For you see, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped for joy inside me.'” - Luke 1:41-44 (CSB) “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped inside her, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. “But the children inside struggled with each other, and she said, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ So she went to inquire of the Lord.” - Genesis 25:22 (CSB) Whatever we conclude, one fact is crucial in the conversation: Numerous passages in the Bible affirm the full personhood of unborn children.Ĭonsider these two passages where unborn fetuses are called “children” (Hebrew habbanim Greek to brephos) and are portrayed as taking personal action: So, to restate the matter: the unique situation of the special creation of Adam does not give sufficient grounds to claim that human life begins at first breath outside the womb.īut then, when does it begin, according to Scripture? Genesis 9:4-6 and Leviticus 17:11 refer to life symbolically being “in the blood,” but does this mean life begins when the baby has a heartbeat and its own circulatory system? Or does it begin even earlier? Later Jewish interpreters used this concept to explicitly argue against abortion, since fetuses have blood circulating in them! This further makes it clear that one cannot say the Bible clearly and unequivocally presents life as beginning at a child’s first breath. In fact, as some scholars point out, beginning in Genesis 9:4-6 and onward the Bible refers to life being “in the blood” (see also Leviticus 17:11 Deuteronomy 12:23). This text says nothing about how life gets transferred from Adam and Eve to their offspring. We are talking about the special creation of the very first human - not about how babies are made (for one thing, they don’t come straight from the ground). One must not ignore the fact that the creation of Adam is a unique and unrepeated situation. Genesis 2:7 portrays (in what many scholars would add is a very stylized and poetic fashion) God instilling life into the first human being. Taking the text literally, presumably Adam was formed from the dust with an adult body, and that body was an inanimate husk until God put the life-breath into him and he became the first living human. Two reasons the argument fails: 1) It involves taking Genesis 2:7 out of its context and applying it to situations it doesn’t bear upon and 2) it overlooks other passages in the Bible where the unborn are depicted as living persons. The Bible does not present human life as only beginning at first breath outside the womb. All I want to do here is make absolutely clear that this argument in particular is fatally flawed. Now, again, it’s not my intention in this post to dismantle or defend either side of the larger abortion debate. This argument has been used by Christians who want to appeal to the Bible for support of a pro-choice perspective. The viewpoint is this: Because Genesis 2:7 says that the first man (Adam) did not become a living person until God breathed “the breath of life” into him, we should not consider unborn fetuses to be human persons until they take their first breath outside the womb. Instead, what I want to do today is address, very briefly, a specific viewpoint I’ve seen going around the Internet that has to do with what the Bible teaches about when life begins. And it is not my intention to do so here! The abortion debate is a very hot-button topic, with a whole host of sub-issues that would need to be addressed if one wanted to articulate a comprehensive Christian perspective on it. When Does Life Begin, According to Scripture? Home › Contemporary Issues/Ethics › When Does Life Begin, According to Scripture?
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