The drive to repeal and relax abortion laws is proving remarkably, if not startlingly, successful. Within the last three years, more than a dozen states have “reformed” their legal codes to permit interruption of pregnancy for reasons other than saving the life of the mother. Next year a full-blown campaign for permissive national legislation providing for abortion on demand may be waged in the halls of Congress. The U. S. Supreme Court could overthrow restrictive abortion laws in cases now pending.
Christian denominations are getting into the forefront of the battle. A United Presbyterian committee, in a report to the General Assembly last month, argued that “abortion of a nonviable foetus should be taken out of the realm of the law altogether and be made a matter of the careful ethical decision of a woman, her physician and her pastor or other counselor.” The 1970 United Methodist General Conference adopted a statement that speaks approvingly of laws intending to make “the decision for sterilization and abortion largely or solely the responsibility of the person most concerned” (thus implying that the fetus is not a person).
Currently in the United States there are said to be about one million illegal abortions each year, and many of these are performed under something other than optimum medical conditions. This is often advanced as a reason for easing abortion laws, but such an argument circumvents the ethical question. Some 15,000 persons are murdered in the United States every year. Should we on that account legalize murder?
Abortion on simple demand, when it involves no mitigating circumstances except inconvenience, lack of desire, economic sacrifice, and the like, is to those who believe that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception nothing less than murder. This is true whether the woman alone or with her husband makes the decision. The physician who aborts this fetus is an accessory after the fact.
The fact that abortion may be approved by law is not, for the moment, the question. We are talking here about the rightness or wrongness of the act in the sight of God. What the laws of men sanction is one thing; where they cut across the laws of God, Christian conscience is bound to God’s law, not Caesar’s. It is more than passing strange that some who mobilize to stop killing on the battlefield are among the chief proponents of abortion and that some of the strongest opponents of capital punishment favor unrestricted abortion. And vice versa!
Shall we not boldly face the other crucial issue? Should the Christian impose on society rules that are acceptable to him as a Christian but are abhorrent to those who are not? Shall the people of the world be free to do whatever they please and be governed by their own concepts of morality, however much they flout biblical teaching?
On the matter of abortion, the mainline denominations seem to be doing an about-face. They have been arguing in favor of a vast range of restrictive legislation. But on abortion they suddenly declare that laws ought not to inhibit personal conduct.
We are not asserting that the Church as Church ought to get into this fight, one way or another. We are asking whether individual Christians as members of Caesar’s kingdom as well as God’s kingdom have a responsibility. Here we must argue vehemently that they do! Life is of one piece. The Christian must bear witness to God’s saving grace for salvation, and in society. In this context we cite a cogent argument recently presented to the New Jersey Legislature by Dr. Edwin H. Palmer:
If the unborn baby is a person, then according to biblical ethics and generally accepted American morality, the government must exercise all its power to protect the life and freedom of that person. The unborn baby is then not just a part of the mother’s body to be disposed of at the whim of the mother.
In fact, the very ethic of the pro-abortionists of the privacy of the individual turns against them. They spoke very eloquently about the rights of the mother in her private affairs and the unjustifiable interference by the government into the privacy of her bedroom. They were moving when they pleaded the rights of the minority view, meaning the rights of the mother who wanted an abortion.
But, if—and this is what the whole problem hinges on—if the unborn baby is a person with a separate identity and is not just an appendage of the mother’s body, then all the stirring arguments of the pro-abortionist apply not only to the mother, but also to the child within the mother. Then, he too has rights that the mother may not interfere with. And his prime right is the freedom to live. He is not just a “thing” that a mother may dispose of like a tonsil or a scab. And the state’s duty is to protect him against any unwarranted deprivation of his life and pursuit of happiness.
When does the soul come into being? One evangelical scholar who has studied the abortion issue in depth contends that a strong theological argument can be built for the rights of the nonviable fetus. Dr. John Warwick Montgomery offers this capsule scriptural survey to argue that a new person has been brought into being at the very moment or very soon after the sperm and egg meet:
Man is not man because of what he does or accomplishes. He is man because God made him. Though the little child engages in only a limited range of human activities, Jesus used him as the model for the Kingdom—evidently because, as one of the “weak things of this world that confound the wise,” he illustrates God’s grace rather than human works-righteousness. Even the term brephos “unborn child, embryo, infant,” is employed in one of the parallel passages relating children to God’s Kingdom. The same expression appears in the statement that when Mary visited Elizabeth, the unborn John the Baptist “leaped for joy” in Elizabeth’s womb and she was filled with the Holy Spirit. Peter parallels the ideal Christian with a brephos, and Paul takes satisfaction that from Timothy’s infancy (apo brephos) he had had contact with God’s revelation. Moreover, the Bible regards personal identity as beginning with conception, and one’s involvement in the sinful human situation as commencing at that very point: “Behold, I [not “it”] was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me [not “it”].” For the biblical writers personhood in the most genuine sense begins no later than conception; subsequent human acts illustrate this personhood, they do not create it. Man does because he is (not the reverse) and he is because God brought about his psycho-physical existence in the miracle of conception.
A study of the ethics of abortion does not end here. Who can fail to exercise compassion for pregnant women suffering mental or physical strain, particularly those in poverty or unmarried? Who can deny that there are times when the taking of life appears to be the only sensible course, prior to birth as well as after (as in self-defense)? The Christian mandate calls for love and forgiveness circumscribed only by the law of God objectified in Scripture.
The unborn child warrants consideration, too. All of us were at one time at the mercy of would-be abortionists. Most of us are glad we’re here, and thankful that the persons “most concerned” did not terminate our existence at an early stage.
Of Fathers: Heavenly, And Not-So
Carl F. Burke, the Baptist jail chaplain who gained a national reputation through his work with delinquent and slum kids in Buffalo, New York, has captured in their own language the prayers and devotions of some of his charges—“God’s bad-tempered angels with busted halos.” Several prayers, reproduced in the little volume Treat Me Cool, Lord (Association Press, 1968), make good reflection for Father’s Day:
“Thanks, God, that we can call you father. Sometimes we don’t know for sure what that means, but just like we think a father should treat you we hope you will treat us. We are thankful that even though parents may walk out on you, you never will … We’re glad we can think you are a father maybe like we wish we got.”
In the spontaneous argot of the asphalt jungle, these troubled youngsters were saying: “God is the way we’d like our fathers (if we have them) to be.” The children, with realistic insight, avoid equating earthly fathers, some of whom have little in common with the heavenly one, with God. They correctly observe that none of us earthly fathers can be “God” (if we ever thought we were) to our children.
The prayers contain good theology, too. When we say “God our father in heaven,” we are implying the ideal. An ideal conception is a priori—first seen in heaven. God alone, the father in heaven, is perfect. Only he can be the flawless model, our pattern, the faultless father figure. God is not simply a human father on a higher plane. He did what no earthly father can: he so loved all his children that he gave his only begotten Son so that all who believe in him may have everlasting life.
But there is more. Human fatherhood takes its meaning from the fatherhood of God (Eph. 3:15). We are enjoined to “be … perfect, even as your father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). There is a goal for human fathers to strive for; we have a standard of perfection. The qualities of love, compassion, tenderness, discipline, and judgment can be practiced by earthly fathers because they are evident in the heavenly father.
A sobering thought for fathers and sons: Our knowledge of God, and our children’s, always comes in conjunction with our knowledge of the world and persons about us. That means your child’s experience of God (or lack of it) largely depends on what he sees in you, dad.
How To Make A Marriage
Weddings, like brides and grooms, come in various shapes and sizes. A couple alone or with a dozen elegantly attired attendants may repeat the time-honored vows that bind them together “till death us do part.” Organ and choir or guitar and folk singer may accompany the rite; diamonds and candles may twinkle in already sparkling eyes.
But marriages are not made in cathedrals or church offices, with white gowns and diamonds, by music and ministers. Rather, marriages are made by sharing the dailyness of toothpaste tubes, coffee cups, and moonlight walks, by fulfilling the wedding vows to love, comfort, honor, and keep one another “for better or for worse.”
Marriage, as John Donne described it, welds a man and a woman together like two arms of a compass: because of the bond between them, they are never completely separate and always draw toward one another. For the Christian, marriage is even more; it is a husband loving his wife “just as Christ loved the Church and sacrificed himself for it” and a wife submitting to her husband “as the Church submits to Christ.”
Civil Disobedience
In opposition to “civil disobedience,” some Christians have made statements implying that government, since it is instituted by God, is always to be obeyed. But along with his command to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, Jesus also said that some things are God’s directly, and that in these areas we are to render obedience directly to him. As long as government stays within its realm, the Christian is to render his obedience. Even when it transgresses and the Christian has to disobey, his disobedience is to be limited to the area of transgression.
The Apostle Paul likewise taught obedience to the civil government, but in his own life he was repeatedly in conflict with the authorities, often imprisoned, and eventually executed by them. Presumably, Paul could have avoided all this by obeying the government’s demands that he stop preaching his incendiary message. Paul disobeyed the civil authorities, in this regard, in order to be obedient to the clear command of God.
There are many circumstances even today where Christians have to do this kind of thing. A good example is Rhodesia (see News, page 44). The government there has recently enacted legislation that would seem to require Christians to violate the biblical command that they worship together and conduct their activities regardless of racial and other such differences among them. Whenever in apostolic times the Church let the worldly tendency toward segregation affect it, the Holy Spirit decisively rebuked it. In the realm in which God is to have direct dominion “there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:11).
Although we deplore it, we do concede that the government of Rhodesia can pass repugnant legislation for the secular realm to which Christians should render obedience (while doing what they can to get the government to change). Secular governments can also establish codes that affect, for example, the buildings or contributions of churches as well as other groups. What they cannot legitimately do is tell the people of God what their doctrines must be, or how or with whom they may or may not worship and minister. The Rhodesian Christians who have publicly declared their intention to disobey the laws that intrude into the internal affairs of the churches are to be commended, as are the Christians in many other lands who take similar stands when placed in the difficult situation of having to disobey the laws of man in order to obey the laws of God.
Stretching Pornography
The right of privacy goes back a long way in history, but its merits are being recognized in new ways in modern times. Many statutes have been enacted in recent years to protect a person’s right to be let alone, a right seen as especially needed in our complicated world.
New legal ground in privacy was broken by the Postal Revenue and Federal Salary Act of 1967. Under Title III of this law, anyone can ask the post office to order mailers to stop sending material that the addressee considers “erotically arousing or sexually provocative.” The U. S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of this statute in a unanimous decision last month.
Some still question the wisdom of this legislation, however, because it lends itself rather readily to abuse. The post office is obliged to honor every request under this law, no matter how unreasonable it may seem, and must issue a prohibitive order to the mailer—even if the addressee himself requested the material in the first place. Already, the post office, in response to complaints, has been obliged to issue such orders against such unlikely sources of pornography as Christian Herald magazine and the P. J. Kenedy and Sons Official Catholic Directory.
To forestall capricious demands and to avert a mountain of complaints that would make enforcement utterly impossible, the law may need some modifications. But the intent of the legislation is defensible. We agree with Chief Justice Warren E. Burger’s perspective: “The ancient concept that ‘a man’s home is his castle’ into which ‘not even the king may enter’ has lost none of its vitality, and none of the recognized exceptions includes any right to communicate offensively with another.”
Moment Of Decision
As this issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY reaches the mails, the General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church will be considering a new sex code for the church. The assembly will have before it a document entitled “Sexuality and the Human Community.” Will Oursler, writing in Parade magazine for May 17, pinpoints the issue when he asks: “In this new sex code a liberation for humans or a moral catastrophe?”
The new code repudiates all absolutes regarding sexual behavior. If the Presbyterians adopt it, they will approve: (1) wide-open abortion laws; (2) the churches’ acceptance without stigma of practicing homosexuals; (3) unmarried adults’ living together in a sexual relationship; (4) distribution of birth-control information and materials to unmarried as well as married persons; (5) adultery in “exceptional circumstances” where it “may not be contrary to the interests of a faithful concern for the well-being of the married partner.”
Two things strike us as being especially significant about this report. First, it grossly violates the clear teaching of Scripture, contradicts the words of Jesus Christ and the apostles, and nullifies the standards of the Westminster Confession of Faith as well as its basic presupposition that the Bible is the only infallible rule of faith and conduct. If the new code is adopted, the implication will be that anyone can deny anything taught in Scripture simply by applying the same rules that undergird this document. The United Presbyterian Church will come close to the days of the judges, when “every man did what was right in his own eyes.”
Second, this document was produced under the direction of the Reverend John C. Wynn. This Presbyterian clergyman is a professor at Colgate Rochester Divinity School, an institution of Baptist background that has seen many of its graduates rise to positions of prominence in the American Baptist Convention. Mr. Wynn is listed in Who’s Who as an adjunct professor at San Francisco Theological Seminary and a member of the summer faculty of Union Theological Seminary in New York, and he has served or is serving the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches in a variety of posts directly related to the subject of human sexuality. He is on the board of directors of Presbyterian Life, the official United Presbyterian magazine that goes into thousands of homes. Thus he exercises a pervasive influence in a wide range of important places.
We await with interest the decision of the General Assembly on “Sexuality and the Human Community.” Anything less than a complete rejection will be a betrayal of biblical norms. If it is accepted, the church will be well on its way to committing spiritual suicide. Perhaps there will come a time when those faithful to Scripture will be disciplined for upholding the Bible against the unbiblical pronouncements of their church.
Beleaguered Israel
As Cambodia and Viet Nam continue to capture the headlines, many college students and professors concentrate their energies on Southeast Asia, as do the houses of Congress and even the State Department and the President. As a result, far too little attention is focused on Israel and Egypt. Yet what is happening there is far more serious. The threat to the very existence of the State of Israel and the lives of more than two million Jews cannot be minimized. The commitment of Soviet men and munitions should alert us to the dangers.
History had its beginnings in the Middle East, and history will be consummated by the return of Jesus Christ to the Middle East. He will set his feet upon the Mount of Olives. He will come again in a manner like that in which he was seen going into heaven. More and more, events in the Middle East presage the advent of Armageddon and the return of Christ.
America has consistently aided Israel, and millions of Jews who have found freedom and opportunities in this country have sent funds to Israel to keep it financially afloat. The current campaign against U. S. involvement in Southeast Asia (about which there are legitimate differences of opinion) has been helped by large numbers of Jews, and they have been deeply involved in student uprisings. Yet the day may be coming when, in utter desperation and in the face of possible annihilation, the Jews of Israel will look to the only large nation from which they can get the help they need to survive. The present situation suggests that the antigen by which Americans have been inoculated against involvement in military commitments overseas elsewhere may be an effective deterrent to aid for Israel. If American Jews then call for help for Israel, help may be denied. By that time Americans may prefer to sit by and watch Israel die rather than get involved and help.
There are statements in Scripture that suggest that in Israel’s moment of direst need its people will turn again to God and acknowledge Jesus Christ, and God himself will intervene. Deliverance then will come, not from men and nations, but from a sovereign God whose ways and works are known to him alone, and whose liberating power cannot be defeated by men.
‘No Genuine Nexus’
The United States Supreme Court took a long step last month toward preserving religious freedom in America. Its 7–1 landmark decision in the Walz case merely upheld the constitutionality of a state’s right to grant real-estate tax exemption to churches. More important are the opinions accompanying the ruling. They lay a legal groundwork that will undoubtedly be appealed to for many years.
“There is no genuine nexus between tax exemption and establishment of religion,” wrote Chief Justice Warren E. Burger. He conceded that no absolute separation of church and state is possible, but declared that “the hazards of churches supporting government are hardly less in their potential than the hazards of governments supporting churches.”
Associate Justice John M. Harlan, in a concurring opinion, noted with Burger that “religious groups inevitably represent certain points of view and not infrequently assert them in the political arena.… Yet history cautions that political fragmentation on sectarian lines must be guarded against.”
In a second concurring opinion, Associate Justice William J. Brennan wrote that “rarely if ever has this Court considered the constitutionality of a practice for which the historical support is so overwhelming.” He said that “Thomas Jefferson was President when tax exemption was first given Washington churches, and James Madison sat in sessions of the Virginia General Assembly which voted exemptions for churches in that Commonwealth. I have found no record of their personal views on the respective acts. The absence of such a record is itself significant. It is unlikely that two men so concerned with the separation of church and state would have remained silent had they thought the exemptions established religion.”
It must not be assumed that this court decision guarantees a permanent tax shelter for churches. The ruling said only that New York’s exemption was constitutional. One of these days, states may decide to begin legislating taxes against churches, and that is when these opinions will count the most.
In anticipation of such a development, it might be well to work for more legally precise definitions of religion than the courts now have. No law ever covers every conceivable situation, and Associate Justice William O. Douglas, in a dissenting opinion, makes much of the distinction between believer and unbeliever. This outlook presupposes that the causes espoused by atheists and agnostics enjoy a super kind of neutrality that transcends religious ideas. Such thinking suggests the establishment of irreligion.
Intolerant Dissenters
Last month defending champion Harvard won the team title again in the annual track and field meet for the eight Ivy League schools plus Army and Navy, but it was a hollow victory. Before the meet, representatives of the eight Ivy League schools drafted a statement to be read and publicized in the name of “the athletes assembled before you, members of the Ivy League teams competing here today.…” The statement made the teams from Army and Navy feel most unwelcome as competitors, and so they withdrew. Army had been considered one of the favorites; the team included defending champions in three of the eighteen events.
Ironically, the students’ statement deplored the “spirit of division and intolerance separating us from our national leaders” while displaying considerable intolerance toward the views of fellow students preparing for careers in the armed forces. Arguments can be presented to justify U. S. involvement in Indochina. One does not have to agree with the views of others in order to defend their right to hold these views, and to do so without prejudicing their participation in areas of life in which these views ought not to be the ground of association.
The Ivy Leaguers’ intolerance of dissent from the dominant student position was expressed by the Yale team captain: “We didn’t want to compromise our position solely for their inclusion in the meet.” It is disturbing that they were able to “deplore the growing tolerance for repression directed against political and racial minorities” by issuing a statement that had the effect of repressing the minority of athletes present who held opinions that are highly unpopular on campuses. How can people protest repression in the larger society while they practice it in the segment of society in which they are the majority? The athletes would have done much better to issue the kind of statement that would promote unity where it exists and set an example of toleration and mutual respect where there are differences.
Love, Law And Conduct
Love comes in for lots of attention these days. Signs everywhere advise us to “make love, not war.” Young people hold love-ins. They feel that there is a lack of honest love in the world and that people are not really concerned for one another as persons. Joseph Fletcher, the apostle of situation ethics, has popularized a view of love that requires one to be willing to lie, cheat, steal, and perhaps even murder if necessary to fulfill the demands of “love.” What are we to think about love these days?
Paul the Apostle says, “The commandments … are summed up in this sentence, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:9, 10). This command to love appears on first sight to work to the disadvantage of the one who obeys it. For the unbeliever is constrained by no injunction of neighbor love. The law of the kingdom of sin and of Satan is the law of the jungle. It says, “Look out for yourself. Never mind the other fellow.” Self-interest dictates that you do your neighbor in if it appears desirable and if you can get away with it. It is a matter of survival of the fittest with no holds barred, no mercy extended.
The believer lives in a world that is opposed to the law of love, and he has no way, humanly speaking, of protecting himself, because he is governed and motivated by the rules of God’s kingdom. He cannot fight back by using the tactics of the world. If he has been cheated, he cannot cheat in turn; lied against, he must speak the truth; experiencing prejudice, he cannot pay back in kind. Hated, he must love.
In this kind of topsy-turvy world the Christian seems to have two strikes against him every time. But does he? No! He takes the long view and sees that whatever temporary disadvantages are his, and they may be many, ultimately he gains even as the man who opposes him loses. He experiences the power of God in his life from time to time as evildoers are overruled and their wicked designs frustrated by God. He also has the privilege of being identified with the Cross of Jesus Christ, who himself felt the hatred of sinners. Best of all, his faith and constancy are proved as they are tried, Christian character is developed, and conformity to Jesus Christ becomes a reality.
Because Christians do love, they work no evil against their neighbors, and in this way, they also work good to themselves. Therefore “love is the fulfilling of the law.”
