Scripture, Exegesis, and Abortion: Refuting the Lies of Progressive “Christianity”

Claim: So-called “Christians” who support ab*rtion are willfully ignorant, lie purposefully, or do not know how to exegete Scripture.

One of the saddest consequences of social media is the emergence what I call “TikTok theologians”—individuals who lack exegetical training yet feel qualified to speak on matters of Scripture. Yet false teachers are nothing new, and neither is the fact that they “exploit [people] with fabricated arguments” (2 Pet 2:3) and “entice unsteady souls” (2 Pet 2:14). An interesting feature about Peter’s discourse on false teachers in 2 Peter 2 is that these false teachers emerge from within the church, pushing a moral code that contradicts apostolic teaching. Despite claiming to be “Christians,” Peter calls these people “irrational animals, creatures of instinct born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant” (2 Pet 2:12). Peter warns that these individuals “feast among you” (2 Pet 2:13) yet are not true servants of the Lord. These are people who take part in communion, the shared meal of the church, yet denounce Christ through their teachings.

So it remains today, especially on matters of morality. You may have heard uninformed people claim that Scripture does not prohibit ab*rtion and has nothing to say on this issue, but this is a well-crafted lie. The biblical case is clear: Life begins at conception and killing a child in the womb is murder. There is no serious exegetical case that defends ab*rtion, as we will see momentarily.

The best place to begin our analysis on this issue is in the Covenant Code (Exodus 20:22–23:19), a legal text nestled within the larger Exodus narrative. Scholars have noted similarities to other ancient Near Eastern legal texts as well as some very important differences. The Codex Hammurabi, the best-preserved ancient Near Eastern legal text, written in Akkadian and composed in Babylon ca. 1755–1750 BC, is especially important here. Compare the following two texts, one from Scripture and the other from Codex Hammurabi:

𝐂𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐱 𝐇𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐢 §𝟐𝟎𝟗

𝘴̌𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘢 𝘢𝘸𝘪̄𝘭𝘶𝘮 𝘮𝘢̄𝘳𝘢𝘵 𝘢𝘸𝘪̄𝘭𝘪𝘮 𝘪𝘮𝘩̮𝘢𝘴̣𝘮𝘢 𝘴̌𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘣𝘣𝘪̄𝘴̌𝘢 𝘶𝘴̌𝘵𝘢𝘥𝘥𝘪̄𝘴̌𝘪 10 𝘴̌𝘪𝘲𝘪𝘭 𝘬𝘢𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘮 𝘢𝘯𝘢 𝘴̌𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘣𝘣𝘪̄𝘴̌𝘢 𝘪𝘴̌𝘢𝘲𝘲𝘢𝘭

“If a man strikes the daughter of a man and thereby causes her to miscarry her fetus, he shall weigh and deliver ten shekels of silver for her fetus.”

𝐄𝐱𝐨𝐝𝐮𝐬 𝟐𝟏:𝟐𝟐–𝟐𝟓 (𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐞𝐫𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐂𝐨𝐝𝐞)

וְכִי־יִנָּצוּ אֲנָשִׁים וְנָגְפוּ אִשָּׁה הָרָה וְיָצְאוּ יְלָדֶיהָ וְלֹא יִהְיֶה אָסוֹן עָנוֹשׁ יֵעָנֵשׁ כַּאֲשֶׁר יָשִׁית עָלָיו בַּעַל הָאִשָּׁה וְנָתַן בִּפְלִלִים׃ וְאִם־אָסוֹן יִהְיֶה וְנָתַתָּה נֶפֶשׁ תַּחַת נָפשׁ׃ עַיִן תַּחַת עַיִן שֵׁן תַּחַת שֵׁן יָד תַּחַת יָד רֶגֶל תַּחַת רָגֶל׃ כְּוִיָּה תַּחַת כְּוִיָּה פֶּצַע תַּחַת פָּצַע חַבּוּרָה תַּחַת חַבּוּרָה׃

“If men struggle with each other and strike a pregnant woman so that her children come out, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined according to what the wife’s husband imposes upon him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. 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.”

𝐀𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐬

The legal logic of the Codex Hammurabi makes a human fetus little more than personal property that can be compensated with monies offered by the guilty party. The ten-shekel penalty is also telling. In the preceding sections, 30 shekels is required for the accidental murder of Babylon’s privileged class (i.e., the 𝘢𝘸𝘪̄𝘭𝘶𝘮 class; see CH §207) and 20 shekels were required for the accidental death of a commoner (i.e., a 𝘮𝘶𝘴̌𝘦𝘬𝘯𝘶; see CH §208). Therefore, according to the legal code of King Hammurabi, a human fetus was worth 1/3 of a societal elite and ½ of a commoner. Does this remind you of anything? (Think Three-Fifths Compromise).

The Covenant Code, however, operates by a very different legal logic. Instead of imposing a financial penalty on the aggressor, the Covenant Code operates on the principle of 𝑙𝑒𝑥 𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑖𝑠—an eye for an eye. The Covenant Code, unlike Codex Hammurabi, does not view the fetus as subhuman, but as a full living creature—so much so that killing a fetus results in the loss of the aggressor’s life. The phrase נֶפֶשׁ תַּחַת נָפֶשׁ “life for life” implies that the fetus enjoys the ontological status of a full living being. Furthermore, the penalty in the Covenant Code is not transactional like it is in the Codex Hammurabi. One might argue that in Codex Hammurabi restitution occurs only to offset the financial loss of the family who lost the child, but the Covenant Code concerns itself with a loss of life, a crime that must be punished with a symmetrical force.

More stunning is that in the Covenant Code, a fetus enjoys the same protection as the societal elite and other members of society: “Whoever strikes a man so that he dies shall be put to death” (Exod 21:12; מַכֵּ֥ה אִ֛ישׁ וָמֵ֖ת מ֥וֹת יוּמָֽת). In fact, in the Covenant Code, the death penalty is reserved for gross infringements on human life, including slave trafficking (Exod 21:16).

𝐎𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐁𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐓𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐬

The Scriptures are replete with other texts that teach children are fully human from the time of conception. In Luke 1:41, a pregnant Mary comes to greet her sister Elizabeth, and the narrator tells us, “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb.” Three verses later, Elizabeth reports the same thing: “For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” Importantly, Elizabeth’s baby, John the Baptist, is here ascribed agency while he is still in the womb through the active verb ἐσκίρτησεν/𝘦𝘴𝘬𝘪𝘳𝘵𝘦̄𝘴𝘦𝘯 “leaped.” Moreover, the child in Elizabeth’s womb is able to experience ‘joy’ (ἀγαλλιάσει), an emotion characteristic of animate beings. The term used to describe the in-utero John the Baptist is βρέφος/ 𝘣𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘴, which elsewhere in the New Testament is used to describe infants who have already been born (Luke 2:12, 16; 18:15) and newborn babes (1 Pet 2:2). There is no hard distinction between the two in ancient Jewish thought. Old Testament texts also speak of children in the womb as having agency. In Gen 25:22, Rebekah conceives twins, Jacob and Esau, and the narrator tells us that “the babies jostled each other within her.” When Rebekah inquires of Yʜᴡʜ, He tells her that their wrestling in the womb is indicative of the fighting that will occur between them later in life. Once again, human attributes are assigned to preborn Jacob and Esau.

Other texts emphasize God’s active role in creating children in the womb, and these passages usually emphasize their intrinsic worth and purpose from the moment of conception. Yʜᴡʜ famously tells Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jer 1:5). Yʜᴡʜ is the one who actively creates (יצר) Jeremiah in the womb and sets him apart as a prophet. Interestingly, the same verb used to describe Yʜᴡʜ forming Jeremiah in the womb appears in Gen 2:7, where God forms (יצר) a fully mature Adam and Eve. There is thus no ontological distinction to be made between the fetus (the Latin word for “offspring”) and an adult human—both are created (יצר) by Yʜᴡʜ. Yʜᴡʜ not only creates children in the womb, He endues them with purpose. To kill a child in the womb is to commit an act of violence against an image-bearer, and thus to commit violence against God Himself (cf. Jas 3:9). Paul picks up on the prophetic motif of being called from the womb (see also Isa 49:1–6) when he writes in Gal 1:15–16: “But when he who had set me apart before I was born, and who called me by his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, in order that I might preach him among the Gentiles…” In Judg 13:3–5, the angel of Yʜᴡʜ states that Samson is to be consecrated as a Nazarite “

The psalmist is even more explicit: “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them” (Ps 139:13–16). Other texts that affirm the same point abound (see, e.g., Job 10:8–12, Ps 71:6; et al.)

The church fathers also consistently denounced ab*rtion as murder—the consistent witness throughout the history of Christianity has been to stand against the evil of killing preborn children. Another lengthy post would be required to address this issue in early Christianity and beyond, but for now take a look at the article from scholar Michael J. Gorman in the comments.

To sum up, then, there is no biblical basis for support of ab*rtion. Any individual who supports the murder of unborn children does so against the Scriptures and is morally culpable before God for their complicity with this grievous evil. Even worse are those who lie and claim that Scripture supports ab*rtion. Per Scripture, these false teachers are ignorant and unstable, and they twist the Scriptures to their own destruction (2 Pet 3:16). In this hour, the church needs to break with weak, beta pastors who are unwilling to stand up for the unborn. The “let’s just all get along and sing kumbaya” type pastor is useless in our cultural context. God send us prophetic leadership from the highest ranks of the church down to the lay teacher!