What the Bible Says about Abortion, Euthanasia, and End-of-Life Medical Decisions E-Book

Wayne Grudem

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: What the Bible Says about . . .
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Seitenzahl: 103

Beschreibung

Abortion and euthanasia are hot-button issues in our world today, accompanied by many differing views, deeply held convictions, and personal experiences related to privacy, sexual behavior, personal desires and responsibility, pregnancy, and children—but deeper than all these is the nature of human life itself. In this timely book, adapted from his larger work Christian Ethics, Wayne Grudem argues that human life is rooted in God's image, and it is therefore morally wrong to put an innocent human to death, whether at the beginning or end of life. He offers a biblical guide to these topics, defining his terms clearly, exploring science and politics, and weighing opposing arguments—answering questions about the protection of an unborn child, abortion in the case of rape or danger to the mother's life, and when to stop medical treatment at the end of someone's life. This short book will help all who seek to understand what the Bible teaches about these important issues that deal with human life.

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“If you want to understand what the Bible teaches and what Christians think about these vital matters of life and death, this book is for you!”

John F. Kilner, Professor Emeritus of Bioethics and Contemporary Culture, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

“Wayne Grudem has faithfully offered a biblical-theological groundwork for making some of the most difficult decisions at the edges of life—its beginning and end. How does one who is committed to the sanctity of every human life approach questions about abortion, euthanasia, and other end-of-life issues? Digest this book to find out.”

C. Ben Mitchell, Graves Professor of Moral Philosophy, Union University

What the Bible Says about Abortion, Euthanasia, and End-of-Life Medical Issues

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What the Bible Says about Abortion, Euthanasia, and End-of-Life Medical Issues

Wayne Grudem

What the Bible Says about Abortion, Euthanasia, and End-of-Life Medical Issues

Copyright © 2020 by Wayne Grudem

Published by Crossway 1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

The content of this book has been adapted from “Abortion” and “Euthanasia” in Wayne Grudem, Christian Ethics: An Introduction to Biblical Moral Reasoning (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 566–605 (chaps. 21–22).

Cover design: Jeff Miller, Faceout StudiosCover Image: Shutterstock

First printing, 2020Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are from The New American Standard Bible®. Copyright © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Scripture references marked NRSV are from The New Revised Standard Version. Copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Published by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-6830-5 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-6833-6 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-6832-9 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-6831-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Grudem, Wayne A., author.  

Title: What the Bible says about abortion, euthanasia, and end-of-life medical decisions / Wayne Grudem.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019034880 (print) | LCCN 2019034881 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433568305 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433568329 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433568312 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433568336 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Christian ethics—Biblical teaching. | Abortion—Religious Aspects—Christianity. | Abortion—Biblical teaching. | Euthanasia—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Euthanasia—Biblical teaching.

Classification: LCC BJ1275 .G78 2020 (print) | LCC BJ1275 (ebook) | DDC 241/.697—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034880

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019034881

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2020-03-25 10:15:57 AM

Contents

Introduction

Part 1: Abortion

Biblical Evidence for the Personhood of an Unborn Child

Scientific Evidence for the Personhood of an Unborn Child

Other Arguments against Abortion

Countering Arguments for Abortion

What Laws Should Governments Enact Regarding Abortion?

Objections to Laws Restricting Abortion

The Importance of This Issue

Part 2: Euthanasia

Biblical Teaching

The Crucial Difference between Killing and Letting Die

Arguments against Euthanasia from Reason and Evidence apart from the Bible

Objections

Recent Legal Trends

The Importance of This Issue

Appendix: Artificially-Administered Nutrition and Hydration

Questions for Personal Application

Special Terms

Bibliography

Scripture Memory Passages

Hymns

General Index

Scripture Index

Introduction

What does the Bible teach about the protection of an unborn child?

Is there scientific evidence that the unborn child is a distinct person?

What about abortion in the case of rape or to save the life of the mother?

Is it wrong to put to death a person in great pain who has no hope of recovery?

How can we know when to stop medical treatment near the end of someone’s life?

Should the law allow doctors to perform euthanasia when a patient requests it?

This book examines the Bible’s teachings on two subjects—abortion and euthanasia—that in many ways are subcategories of the same topic, the protection of human life, both at the beginning of life (in the mother’s womb) and at the end of life (in a hospital bed).1

In the Ten Commandments, we read this:

You shall not murder. (Ex. 20:13)

But this commandment is not confined to the Old Testament. It is repeated several times in the New Testament (see Rom. 1:29; 13:9; 1 Tim. 1:9; James 2:11; 4:2; 1 John 3:12, 15; Rev. 9:21; 16:6; 18:24; 21:8; 22:15; see also Jesus’s teaching in Matt. 5:21–26; 15:19; 19:18). The New Testament authors frequently affirm the continuing moral validity of the commandment “You shall not murder.”

God is the Creator and sustainer of human life, and human beings are the pinnacle of his creation, for only human beings are said to be created “in the image of God” (Gen. 1:26–27). Therefore, God absolutely forbids human beings to murder one another.2

PART 1: ABORTION

Abortion is one of the most controversial topics in society today. Differing views about this topic are related to deeply felt personal convictions about privacy, human sexual behavior, pregnancy, parenthood, and human life itself.

In this section, I will attempt to give an accurate summary of biblical teachings related to abortion and also to represent fairly the arguments of people who disagree with my position. I will use the term abortion to mean any action that intentionally causes the death and removal from the womb of an unborn child.

A. Biblical Evidence for the Personhood of an Unborn Child

By far the most powerful argument against abortion is the consideration that the unborn child is a unique person. Several passages in the Bible indicate that an unborn child should be thought of and protected as a person from the moment of conception.

1. Luke 1:41–44. Before the birth of John the Baptist, when his mother, Elizabeth, was in about her sixth month of pregnancy, she was visited by her relative, Mary, who was to become the mother of Jesus. Luke reports:

And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, . . . “Behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” (Luke 1:41–44)

Under the influence of the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth called the unborn child in the sixth month of pregnancy a “baby” (Greek, brephos, “baby, infant”). This is the same Greek word that is used for a child after it is born, as when Jesus is called a “baby [brephos] lying in a manger” (Luke 2:16; see also Luke 18:15; 2 Tim. 3:15).

Elizabeth also said that the baby “leaped for joy,” which attributes personal human activity to him. He was able to hear Mary’s voice and somehow, even prior to birth, feel joyful about it. In 2004, researchers at the University of Florida found that unborn children can distinguish their mothers’ voices and distinguish music from noise.3 Another study, reported in Psychology Today in 1998, confirmed that babies hear and respond to their mothers’ voices while still in the womb, and the mothers’ voices have a calming effect on them.4 More recent research (2013) has shown that babies learn words and sounds in the womb, and retain memories of them after they are born.5

2. Psalm 51:5. In the Old Testament, King David sinned with Bathsheba and then was rebuked by Nathan the prophet. Afterward, David wrote Psalm 51, in which he pleads with God, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love” (v. 1). Amidst confessing his sin, he writes:

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,

and in sin did my mother conceive me. (Ps. 51:5)

David thinks back to the time of his birth and says that he was “brought forth” from his mother’s womb as a sinner. In fact, his sinfulness extended back even prior to his birth, for David, under the direction of the Holy Spirit, says, “In sin did my mother conceive me.”

Up to this point in the psalm, David is not talking about his mother’s sin in any of the preceding four verses, but is talking about the depth of his own sinfulness as a human being. Therefore, he must be talking about himself, not about his mother, in this verse as well. He is saying that from the moment of his conception he has had a sinful nature. This means that he thinks of himself as having been a distinct human being, a distinct person, from the moment of his conception. He was not merely part of his mother’s body, but was distinct in his personhood from the time when he was conceived.

3. Psalm 139:13. David also thinks of himself as having been a person while he was growing in his mother’s womb, for he says:

You formed my inward parts;

you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. (Ps. 139:13)

Here also he speaks of himself as a distinct person (“me”) when he was in his mother’s womb. The Hebrew word translated as “inward parts” is kilyah, literally “kidneys,” but in contexts such as this it refers to the innermost parts of a person, including his deepest inward thoughts and emotions (see its uses in Pss. 16:7; 26:2; 73:21; Prov. 23:16; Jer. 17:10).

4. Genesis 25:22–23. In an earlier Old Testament example, Rebekah, the wife of Isaac, was pregnant with the twins who were to be named Jacob and Esau. We read:

The children [Hebrew, banim, plural of ben, “son”] struggled together within her, and she said, “If it is thus, why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her,

“Two nations are in your womb,

and two peoples from within you shall be divided;

the one shall be stronger than the other,

the older shall serve the younger.” (Gen. 25:22–23)

Once again, the unborn babies are viewed as “children” within their mother’s womb. (The Hebrew word ben is the ordinary word used more than forty-nine hundred times in the Old Testament for “son” or, in plural, “sons” or “children.”) These twins are viewed as already struggling together. Before the point of birth they are thought of as distinct persons, and their future is predicted.

5. Exodus 21:22–25. For the question of abortion, perhaps the most significant passage of all is found in the specific laws God gave Moses for the people of Israel during the time of the Mosaic covenant. One particular law spoke of the penalties to be imposed if the life or health of a pregnant woman or her unborn child was endangered or harmed:

When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, butthere is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. (Ex. 21:22–25)6

This law concerns a situation that arises when men are fighting and one of them accidentally hits a pregnant woman. Neither one of them intends to do this, but as they fight they are not careful enough to avoid hitting her. If that happens, there are two possibilities:

1. If this causes a premature birth but there is no harm to the pregnant woman or her unborn child, there is still a penalty: “The one who hit her shall surely be fined” (v.