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 than 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 heartbeat. 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-sequiturs, 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 frontloaded 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.
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 sum 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.