We at Tekton have not in the past done much on social issues, but with many more hours a week now available (and hopefully, they will continue to be available) it's time to open a few more barn doors and chase some of the animals out of corners. One previously brought to our attention -- and thereafter on our list -- was one Brian Elroy McKinley (not to be mistaken for "McKinsey" though they are from the same exegetical family). Elroy's page is full of obnoxiously neighborly "ha ha" pieces of the usual "here's what I think the Bible actually says" and "let's annoy the religious right" formation; again let it be noted for the record that as a politically mixed voter with no allegiance to any party I find such presentations amusing. At any rate, we begin with a look at one of McKinley's items, in which he argues that not only is abortion not forbidden in the Bible, the Bible can be interpreted and twisted to positively support abortion. The pro-termination crowd would probably like to hear that one, but let me save them from using that point. (We'll also take the chance here to sweep out some other arguments used by various folks where abortion and the Bible are concerned, notably Dan Barker, the folks over at religioustolerance.org and postfun.com, and a few other places that deserve to remain nameless.)

Beyond the irony of slapping those who don't read their Bibles or take verses out of context, how does McKinley position his argument? He does make a certain point against incomplete and popular interpretations. It must be counseled that "thou shalt not kill" is not a very good verse to use against abortion -- as shown here, "kill" has the connotation of killing after the manner of a predatory animal, and while one might (in some cases properly) ascribe predatory motives to those in the abortion industry, this doesn't help as much in addressing the act itself. Elroy also makes the point that certain passages (Ps. 139:13-16 and Jer. 1:5 for example) used to defend the personhood of a fetus do not "state that during the creation the fetus is indeed a person." Well, that's one for the Unreasonable Expectation Award. There isn't a verse anywhere that says that adults are persons, either; the modern psych-term as such had yet to exist. But there is a bit of a catch here. Under the Semitic Totality Concept a "whole person" consisted of physical body and immaterial spirit. A body without a spirit was dead; a spirit without a body was incomplete. There was never one without the other, and they rightly belonged together. There is therefore a strong burden -- even based on this conception alone -- for the pro-termination crowd to prove that the writers of the Bible would not have considered a newly-conceived human to be a person. The fetus would have to be believed to be "dead" before it is even born.

But back to Elroy, who goes on to spend a great deal of time addressing those who take verses out of context, but the only context he apparently knows is "read it in modern English and announce your opinion." That this is so is evident in that he pulls out the "God is willing to maul children to death if they make fun of a bald guy who just happens to be in God's favor" argument (which the me-toos at religioustolerance.org also follow). Anyone with the least knowledge of exegesis, social background data, and cultural data wouldn't venture such a summary of the situation.

At the least, though, verses like Jer. 1:5 do speak of the foreknowledge and creation of God -- and suggest that to interfere with the process upon one's own volition is not a matter to be taken lightly. Most in the pro-life movement (indeed all the people I know) concede "life of the mother" issues (rare as they are!) to be the only real justfication for an abortion. With this I concur. Matters can and should be weighed in the balance, and life-for-life is the heaviest. On the contrary, not wanting more children doesn't pass the test (though the pro-termination crowd may vehemently argue this), especially when such a broad range of social options are available. But this now ranges into matters beyond our present scope; let us focus again on how McKinley abuses the Biblical text.

Elroy wishes to dispose of Jeremiah 1:5 and its implications by presumptive means. We are told:

This is a special event -- the birth of a prophet. God brought the prophet Jeremiah into the world for a divine purpose, and because of that, God was planning Jeremiah's life "before" he was even conceived. God was preparing him to do miraculous things, such as speak on behalf of God while still a child and setting him up as an overseer of nations and kingdoms. But the anti-abortionists simply overlook this on their way to claiming that the one phrase they quote proves God sees us as individual people while still in the womb. God saw Jeremiah in that way, but to claim it applies to all of us is akin to saying that we were all prepared as children to speak for God, and that God has placed all of us "over the nations and over the kingdoms" of the world. In essence, to claim this verse applies to anyone other than Jeremiah is to claim that we are all God's divine prophets. We are not; therefore, we cannot apply these verses to our own lives.

And another pro-termination writer states of Jer. 1:5:

...[T]he passage is highly personal and specific. It is not a rational discourse on how God creates people or whether every fetus should be counted as a person. Jeremiah declared that God knew him, formed him and consecrated him; he is making no similar claim for everyone.

And the pillow-fighters at religioustolerance.org add:

To say that this passages [sic] proves that a fetus is human appears to be faulty logic; the passage would then also say that all ova and sperm are also a human being before fertilization.

That's really quite droll, but the lightning bolt has missed Shazam entirely. What Elroy offers is akin to arguing that because Exodus 22:1 says, "If a man shall steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it, or sell it; he shall restore five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep," it means that the man can send his wife around to nab the ox and there won't be any punishment. After all, it says "if a man". It is the Hebrew word for a man, a male, not for "man" in the sense of the human race. So just send the Mrs. out to do cattle rustling next time and everything with be A-OK at the OK Corral.

Of course the answer to my facetious example is that Ex. 22:1 is part of an ancient law code and serves a didactic purpose. There are overarching principles behind this and every ancient law code; Ex. 22:1 is merely an example, and the law is the same even in the unlikely event that a woman would take up cattle rustling in the ANE. Jer. 1:5 is not part of a law code, but it is part of an overarching theological premise evident throughout the OT: God is sovereign, God is Creator, God is possessor of Heaven and Earth (Gen. 14:9). If he foreknew Jeremiah and had a plan and place for him, and if God is sovereign, how can it be argued then that the same is not said for all with respect to their place? That we only read of such instructions with regard to a few (Jeremiah here, and in Romans 9, Jacob and Esau) does not lead to the conclusion, in the context of a God with foreknowledge, that only these three guys had a calling of any sort. It has nothing to do with being uniquely a prophet; the argument is a presumptive absurdity. (Elroy and the tolerance torquers also make the same mistake the Mormons do with this one, when they think Jer. 1:5 teaches pre-existence; for more on this see Chapter 3 of The Mormon Defenders. It's so interesting how much crossover this kind of study has [grin]! As for the "ova and sperm" appeal, this runs again into that "what is a person" argument we have discussed earlier, but is easier to deal with: In that case the Hebrews would not suppose that a body could be divided in two parts thusly! There is further no indication at all that "seed" was regarded as having a spirit. Indeed the very term, used as it was also of plants, has an inherent meaning of potentiality versus actuality.)

This sort of "well, this was an exception" argument seems to be the best Elroy can do. The awareness of John the Baptist in the womb means only that John was special (assuming that is granted; another writer merely plays the standard skeptical game of dismissing the event as "theological fiction"). We wouldn't be allowed to abort prophets; the rest are OK! "...[O]nly divinely-inspired babies understand the spoken words of the mother of Jesus and can leap in recognition." Of course even if not all babies came under this rubric, we would want to know how Elroy knows which babies have a place in God's plan and which don't. Once the doctrine of divine foreknowledge is allowed, the floodgates open, and who gave Elroy the authority (or any abortionist or person, for that matter) to decide who has what level of divine calling or inspiration?

Elroy's argument is thus an exegetical act akin to pulling colored hankies out of one's sleeve. The next presto he offers is proof that the Bible actually supports abortion -- if we take certain verses out of context. And that is indeed right. Verses like Eccl. 6:3-5 ("If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, however many they be, but his soul is not satisfied with good things, and he does not even have a proper burial, then I say, `Better the miscarriage than he, for it comes in futility and goes into obscurity; and its name is covered in obscurity. It never sees the sun and it never knows anything; it is better off than he.'") do reflect quality of life issues, but they do far more than that. Ecclesiates (and Job), as we note here, belong in the genre of the ancient wisdom dialogue in which arguments were batted back and forth like tennis balls in order to reach a conclusion. Works like A Dialogue About Human Misery and Pessimistic Dialogue Between Master and Servant from Babylon; The Man Who Was Tired of Life from Egypt; and the book of Job and Ecclesiastes from the OT, are all examples of this genre in which problems were discussed and resolved via dialogue. The modern Western mind has little patience with this sort of logical construction, and it is no surprise to see that critics have no appreciation for the implied intent of such literature: "Work out the problem yourselves," vs. "Give me an answer in a can, to go." In such contexts the verses Elroy cites represent the "negative" view which is batted against the positive, and the answer is always in the last punchline (the admonition in Ecclesiastes to serve God; God appearing in Job and telling him he don't know nuttin'). If Elroy agrees that he can't actually justify abortion from these and other cites, allow me to assure him that you truly can't at all -- and I would put to task anyone (like those at religioustolerance.org) who said so.

This leads to a final area in which Elroy supposes -- not joking this time -- that the Bible has indications that abortion is not as serious a crime as we would think, Biblically. It's Exodus 21:22-5:

And if men struggle and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is no further injury, he shall be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

Elroy regards this as a "very illuminating passage." His summary is as follows: "In it we find a woman losing her child by being stuck by men who are fighting. Rather than it being a capital offense, however, it is relegated to a civil matter, with the father-to-be taking the participants to court for a settlement. But, as we read on, if the woman is killed, a 'life for a life,' then the men who killed her shall be killed...Thus we can see that if the baby is lost, it does not require a death sentence -- it is not considered murder. But if the woman is lost, it is considered murder and is punished by death."

Illuminating indeed, but Elroy was switching on the blender, not the lamp. Question: When the offending man was striking the woman, was he trying to kill the baby? Of course not -- for most of the 9 months of pregnancy he would have no sure sign that a baby was there, and even after that in the heat of a fight is hardly going to have the rational capability to take on such a distinction. And even if he did, chances are he wasn't aiming for the baby anyway. It's like shooting into the woods and accidentally hitting a hunter instead of a deer; no one calls that murder, it's an accident. But barring the interpretation linked just above, an accident never earns the death penalty in the Bible. On the other hand, the woman was quite visible and there was no such excuse. Any struggle that affects the woman to the point of inflicting serious injury could hardly be "accidental" as the religioustolerance.orgers argue. (Note that their cites of Babylonian and Hittite parallels are not convincing, since in other cases it is clear that the Hebrew laws are a "step up" from these codes in other areas!)

There's more to this as well. Elroy needs to know that the Exodus covenant was renewed in Deuteronomy, and there were some changes made for a society that would be settled in cities rather than being engaged in pastoral affairs. Accidental deaths would now be covered by cities of refuge (Dt. 19 -- and no, there is no need for fetuses to be specifically mentioned, not in a didactic law code). In any event Elroy's exegesis is off the mark.

From here Elroy tries to pull a few miscellaneous verses for himself:

• "In Leviticus 27:6 a monetary value was placed on children, but not until they reached one month old (any younger had no value). Likewise, in Numbers 3:15 a census was commanded, but the Jews were told only to count those one month old and above - anything less, particularly a fetus, was not counted as a human person." Since there is no more here about what is defined as a "person" than elsewhere, it means no such thing; no more so would it allow infanticide of those under a month old. Elroy forgets to mention that Lev. 27 has to do with dedicating persons to the service of the Lord, and Numbers 3 has to do with assessing for redemption money (3:49) which would support the Levites. You can't dedicate a child to service before it is born (since that involved serving and living at the sanctuary -- cf. 1 Sam. 1:21; note that there was also some flexibility in this), and you don't need to collect taxes to support the unborn (and given the high rate of infant mortality in ancient times, with at least a third of children dying before they reached the age of 6, it would be rather crass and hurtful to collect on a baby that might not survive). The site of a contact of ours adds: "Monetary value was placed on human beings in Leviticus 27 based on the person's ability to perform work for the tabernacle. Since children (and the elderly) are not capable of performing the same tasks as adults, it is clear why they should not be valued as highly for this type of offering. Males between the ages of 20 and 60 were valued the highest simply because of their greater abilities." Elroy has a lot of nerve delivering accusations of reading out of context when he won't even look into the basic background data.

• "In Ezekiel 37:8-10 we watch as God re-animates dead bones into living soldiers, but the passage makes the interesting note that they were not alive as persons until their first breath. Likewise, in Genesis 2:7, Adam had a human form and a vibrant new body but he only becomes a fully-alive human person after God makes him breathe." It is only interesting to note if you have a presumptive agenda. In both of these cases we have living adults as the result -- this speaks not at all to at what point the unborn are alive; moreover, the Hebrew ruach was used to refer to the living breath and the intangible spirit. (Our allied site adds: "...the 'breath of life' exists in the preborn child from the moment of conception. It is the form, not the fact, of oxygen transfer [breath] that changes at birth. Since Adam was not 'born of a woman,' it is only natural that he drew his first breath from his nostrils.")
• "And in the same book, in Genesis 38:24, we read about a pregnant woman condemned to death by burning. Though the leaders of Israel knew the woman was carrying a fetus, this was not taken into consideration." This is Tamar we're talking about, and here again Elroy has a lot of nerve: It is only Judah who calls forth the punishment, not the "leaders of Israel," and this reflects no more than that Judah exercised poor judgment in his anger. It is strange that Elroy doesn't see in this verse some of the exceptional issues he sees in others. (Note as well that the punishment was reversed 2 verses later; there is no need for extra commentary here from God or anyone else!)

Bottom line as usual: The critics can't seem to stop reading their Bible like it was written yesterday. It's even worse when they have the nerve to criticize others for doing essentially the same.

In addition to the arguments used above, here are some other oddities used by folks other than McKinley:

For Numbers 5, see here, here and here, all of which also answers the comments from the religioustolerance.org people. Some also appeal to the destruction of the unborn in war; for notes on that see here.

See our allied site, which also offers an answer to Elroy, here. Our friend adds this note: "This review may be fittingly concluded with a reference to the very first Jewish statement on deliberate abortion. Commenting on the Septuagint version (itself a misrepresentation) of the only Biblical reference, or at least allusion, to abortion in Exodus 21:22-23, the Alexandrian-Jewish philosopher, Philo, at the beginning of the Current Era declared that the attacker of a pregnant woman must die if the fruit he caused to be lost was already "shaped and all the limbs had their proper qualities, for that which answers to this description is a human being . . . like a statue lying in a studio requiring nothing more than to be conveyed outside." (See more here.)

Dennis McKinsey adds an error in Ch. 13 of EBE. He dismisses Ex. 22:21 on the grounds that we are no longer under the law, but as shown here, the law still gives us an idea what God considers moral and right, even if we have not signed on to the covenant. On the other hand he grants based on Luke 1:41 that personhood in the Bible may be reckoned as early as the sixth month.