When Does Human Life Begin? Gen 2:7
The subject that we are discussing on the origin of
human life has to do with two aspects: the origin of human life, as described in
Genesis 2 with the creation of man in v. 7 and the creation of the woman in vv.
18-22; but it also has to do with the transmission of life and when life
begins. It is amazing how few people have any real objectivity when it comes to
something of this nature. We have to look at what the Word of God says. We
should never be afraid to accurately analyze what the Scripture says. We will
look at what are deemed problem passages by some. Whenever we talk to somebody
about these things they will usually bring up two or three passages, and there
are one or two that are problems for either position. No matter how we want to
take it, they present problems the way they are normally used. Sometimes things
just aren’t what they seem to say on the surface and yet everybody wants to
jump to an immediate conclusion that abortion is murder or abortion is wrong,
or not wrong, or whatever. Very few people want to sit down and consider what
the Word of God says. Some people are just uncomfortable with the truth.
In John chapter three Jesus is
having His discussion with Nicodemus. “Jesus answered and said unto him,
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the
kingdom of God.” That was a confusing statement to Nicodemus because in Judaism
there were six different ways in which a person could be born again. Nicodemus
had passed through all of these stages, so he just wonders, “How can a man be
born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and
be born?” He recognizes what is implicit in this conversation, that they were
not talking about conception as the beginning of the spiritual life, but birth
as the beginning. It is not until one is actually born again that there is the
presence of eternal life. So what is implicit in this conversation between
Jesus and Nicodemus is that birth is the starting point of the new life. In
other words, there is a distinction between what is going on inside the womb
and birth. In v. 5, “Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a
man be born of water [physical birth] and of the Spirit [Holy Spirit], he
cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” Born of water also has to do with the
picture of cleansing as seen in the new covenant, Jeremiah 31:33. So the
emphasis is that birth is what begins the new spiritual life.
What happens, then, in pregnancy?
First of all there is an ovum that is fertilized, and at that point is becomes
a zygote. The zygote is later going to split and that will develop into two
cells, then there are four cells, then eight, and sixteen cells; and that
beginning zygote does not have all of the genetic information that is necessary
to produce human life in the long term. It will pick up and absorb information.
But this is going to divide a couple of different ways. After it reaches a
certain stage it is going to become a cell mass, and at that point some of
these cells are going to develop some specialization. Part of it will break off
and form the placenta. Other cells are going to break off and form into various
fetal membranes. The point is, without getting too technical, is that this is
cellular life, biological life, and the fetal membranes are cellular/biological
life. But nobody would say that that is human life. There is no soul there.
There are other problems with a soul creation at conception because if this
mass splits at this point—so that you have triplets or
quadruplets—was there one soul there before? What do you have now?
Biological life does not necessarily imply the presence of a soul. There are physical
traits there, a DNA, information that is then going to produce a biological life, a
physical body that is going to have various physical traits, talents,
limitations, and trends of the sin nature. That is part of the sin nature that
is passed on genetically from father to children.
One of the problems you get into
when talking about this is, if the soul is created at the time of birth, how
then does that interact with the various traits and talents and limitations?
The brain and the body is the home of the soul. So you have a physical home,
and that physical home is going to have certain limitations, both in terms of
the physical body and in terms of the physical brain. The brain is a machine
that is run by a ghost, and that ghost, that immaterial thing that sits in the
driver’s seat of the brain is the soul. But the soul is limited by what that
physical structure can do. How does this affect volition? Volition isn’t
affected at all because the soul can still use the physical body to sin. When
someone has a stroke, the development of something like Alzheimer’s, or other
forms of dementia, how does that affect the expression of the soul? There are
many questions there that we can’t answer because we don’t know what is really
going on inside that person. Perhaps the best explanation is that the physical
genes, the genetic make-up, etc., limits how the soul can express itself, but
the expression of the soul is still determined by volition and the ultimate
issue in volition is going to be salvation. This also helps to understand how
the soul that is created and simultaneously imparted by God to the human body
is corrupted by sin, God is perfect and can’t create anything less than
perfection. So when we were born, at that instant that we started to take that
first breath of life, God had instantly created a soul and imparted it, and
that is perfect. But as soon as that soul joined with a physical body that is
corrupt because of Adam’s sin, the result is that the soul becomes corrupt. We
have a physical body that inherits from Adam a sin nature, physically and
genetically passed on from father to child. At the instant that soul life is
imparted to the physical body, at the same time the justice of God imputes
Adam’s original sin to the genetic sin nature, so that the person is born
spiritually dead but physically alive. God is not the author of sin because in
His justice He is imputing that which has affinity to the sin nature, which is
Adam’s original sin, and just as the soul is created in the image of God as
Adam’s was, so the sin nature comes to the genetic home of the biologically
transmitted sin nature and the person becomes a fallen creature.
So this leads to the next question,
which is, What then is the value of the physical body in the womb? For that we
need to look at Psalm 139:13, 14, “For thou hast formed my inward parts: thou
hast covered me in
my mother's womb [bebeten]. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully
made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.” Psalm 139
focuses on the development inside the womb of physical life. The verb that is
used in Psalm 139:13 and Jeremiah 1:5 is the verb yatsar, which has to do with the
formation of the physical body. “Inward parts” is a term used in the Hebrew to
describe the physical organs inside the body. “You covered me inside my
mother’s womb.” What this shows is that God is involved in the formation of
biological life. This is done indirectly through the procreative processes that
God set up in Adam and Isha at creation. But even though God uses indirect
means to do something we still speak of the fact that God is the ultimate
cause. When the Psalmist is talking about his own development inside the womb
he is not just talking about himself. He is talking about himself as a human
being, that God has designed each of us to have the physical home that would
best represent His image and likeness. Because God is involved physical and
biological life is important, but it is still only physical life, the soul
isn’t there yet.
Jeremiah 1:5 is a passage that is often used to
support the fact that there is full life in the womb, but that is not what the
passage says. The Lord is talking to Jeremiah and says: "Before I formed
you in the womb …” So what we have here is a temporal preposition of time
indicating action prior to the event of the main verb. So this is going back
before conception, actually hundreds of years into the plan of God. The verb is
yatsar,
and yatsar
has to do with the physical formation of the body inside the womb—bebeten, not
outside of the womb. Yatsar indicates once again that this is talking about physical
formation. So God is saying, “Before I formed you, I knew you…” This is the qal
perfect of yadah,
a term for the omniscience of God. Omniscience refers to the fact that God
knows all the knowable. He knows everything that will happen and everything
that could happen. He knows every potentiality that could ever happen. In
foreknowledge God knows what will take place, what will actually transpire in
human history. God also on the basis of His foreknowledge sets forth a plan. He
has a plan and He has purposes, and within those purposes and plan He has
assigned certain goals to certain people, called their destiny. And because He
determines that destiny for that individual before time began it is called
pre-destiny or predestination. It doesn’t mean that God makes their decisions
for them, it is not a form of fatalism; what it means is that before time
begins there is going to be a man here named Jeremiah and God is going to make
him a prophet, and he is going to have a unique ministry to Israel. It is not
talking about Jeremiah as a full person inside the womb. Once again He is
talking about the fact that “Before you were even in the womb, before I was
even forming your physical life, I set you apart and ordained you a prophet to
the nations.” In God’s foreknowledge He knew Jeremiah would be a believer and
He decided to bestow upon him the office of prophet. All of this is to say that
there is no mention of what is going on inside the womb.
Problem passages: Luke 1:15, talking about John the
Baptist. “For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink
neither wine nor strong drink; and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even
from his mother's womb.” String drink here is beer. He will also be filled with
the Holy Spirit—this is still the Old Testament dispensation and it is
still talking about the special enduement of the Holy Spirit that was limited
in the Old Testament. Very few people had this special enduement in the Old
Testament. None of those who were filled with the Holy Spirit were unbelievers.
What people try to do is say that this shows that in the womb John the Baptist is filled with
the Spirit. The phraseology in the Greek is EK KOILIAS [e)k koiliaj], which is the translation for mibeten—outside the womb. If John the
Baptist is filled with the Spirit in the womb then he is the only person in
history who is filled with the Spirit before he is saved. This is a major
theological problem. John the Baptist cannot get the Holy Spirit, even as an
infant, until he is old enough to understand the gospel. We cannot understand
how John the Baptist can be filled with the Spirit prior to an expression of
faith alone in Christ alone. That would violate everything else in Scripture.
So that is a problem. He is filled with the Spirit from the womb or outside the
womb at some point after he becomes saved.
The next passage that is a problem is in Luke 1:41, “And
it came to pass, that, when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe
leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit And she spake
out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is
the fruit of thy womb.” Why did the baby leap in her womb? In verse 41 it
doesn’t mention the baby leaping for joy, that is mentioned in v. 44. But
notice that in verse 44 this is a quote from Elizabeth. There are one or two
ways to handle this. One has to do with the grammar. In v. 44 when she says,
“the babe leaped in my womb for joy,” this is an EN [e)n] plus the dative of AGALLIAO [a)galliaw], a
word for extreme joy or excitement. Interestingly enough, it is used in the
Psalms to express the joy of salvation, and this would be related to the coming
of the Messiah who would provide salvation. But this particular construction,
the preposition EN plus the dative, expresses something that marks the
circumstances in which the baby in the womb leaped. So this is not saying that
the baby had joy but that the mother had joy. Another way that could possibly
be used to handle this is that perhaps this is simply Elizabeth’s
interpretation of what was taking place because this is her sentence; it is not
necessarily a comment by the Holy Spirit but an accurate recording of what she
said at the time imputing some sort of emotion to the baby. However, the best
solution to the problem in the passage is that it was the circumstances in
which the baby in the womb leapt. Why is it that the baby leaped? How can this
take place inside the womb under the influence of the mother’s emotion?
There is one more in Exodus 21:22, “If men strive, and
hurt a woman with child, so that she gives birth prematurely, and yet no
mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband
will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.” The word
“prematurely” is not in the original. Some versions will read that she has a
miscarriage. Miscarriage is not in the original Hebrew. What is in the original
Hebrew is, “strike a woman who is pregnant [she has conceived] so that the
child goes forth,” and the Hebrew word there is yatsah, “and the child comes out,”
literally. And it says, “no harm follows.” In other words, the child is born
and there is no further harm. The person who struck the woman shall be
punished. Then in vv.23-25 it states, “And if there is any injury, then thou
shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for
foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” The point is
that if the child is born and then dies, then the law of retribution is
imposed—or if there is some injury.
Some attitudes toward abortion. The view of creation,
that the soul is created at the point of birth, is an ancient view. It goes
back to the early church and goes further back in Jewish interpretation. Jews
never thought of abortion, especially in the Old Testament. Why? The child
might be the Messiah. The early church did not view abortion as a solution. For
one thing it often meant the death of the mother, and for this reason abortion
was outlawed in the Roman Empire. They were protecting the life of the mother.
What should the believer’s attitude toward abortion
be? First of all, there is just biological life there and no soul. It cannot be
murder. It may at times be a sin or immoral, but there are many things in life
that we do that are sins and immoral that are not illegal and not a matter for
law. No nation has ever given full rights to fetal life. Furthermore, if you
cannot know when soul life is present except through revelation, then it cannot
be a matter of general law. God never holds the unbeliever accountable for what
the unbeliever can’t know. If the only way you can determine when that soul
life is present is through revelation, then the unbeliever can’t know. All he
can know is when there are signs of life but he cannot tell when the soul is
actually present or not. An example is found in the Old Testament where God
pronounced judgment on the nations. He never pronounced judgment of them for
violation of the Mosaic Law. The Mosaic Law was for Israel only. Abortion, like
slavery, was practiced in the Roman Empire, and yet the Scriptures don’t ever
mention it. Why is that so? The silence says a lot.
As believers we need to recognize that when a
pregnancy occurs God may be involved, and that God is involved in the process
of biological life. So there may be legitimate reasons for an abortion at
times—it is between the believer and the Lord—but abortion should
not be used as a birth-control method of the masses, which is what is happening
today. If you are going to stop something that God has started then you need to
have a responsible reason for it.
What about someone who has had an abortion? Well it is
not murder. It may have been a sin, but it is not a sin that is worse than any
other sin or better than any other sin. All sins are handled by confession of
sin, 1 John 1:9.