Justin Taylor's Blog, page 6

You Can’t Improve on This Definition of “Worldliness”

What is worldliness?

that system of values, in any given age,

which has at its center our fallen human perspective,

which displaces God and his truth from the world, and

which makes sin look normal and righteousness seem strange.

It thus gives great plausibility to what is morally wrong and, for that reason, makes what is wrong seem normal.

—David F. Wells, Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 4.

If you want to begin receiving these blog posts as an email newsletter, click here .

You Won’t Improve on This Definition of “Worldliness”

What is worldliness?

that system of values, in any given age,

which has at its center our fallen human perspective,

which displaces God and his truth from the world, and

which makes sin look normal and righteousness seem strange.

It thus gives great plausibility to what is morally wrong and, for that reason, makes what is wrong seem normal.

—David F. Wells, Losing Our Virtue: Why the Church Must Recover Its Moral Vision (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 4.

A Gospel Moment on YouTube: Alistair Begg on the Thief on the Cross

Alistair Begg, the senior pastor of Cleveland’s Parkside Church, delivered the clip above in a sermon:

You know, I always think about this in relationship to the thief on the cross when he arrives at the portals of heaven. You imagine that interview process?

“What are you doing here?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, who sent you here?”

“What? No one sent me here. I . . . I . . . I’m here!”

“Well, are you . . . Have you been justified by faith? Do you have peace with God?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, do you know anything?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you know?”

“The man on the middle cross said I could come here.”

A Gospel Moment on YouTube: Ligon Duncan’s “Take and Eat”

Ligon Duncan—the Chancellor/CEO of Reformed Theological Seminary and the John E. Richards Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology—delivered the memorable clip above at the 2018 Together for the Gospel conference.

Loving our neighbor is hard. In fact, we can’t do it. If the gospel were “love your neighbor and live” it would be profoundly bad news. None of us loves our neighbor purely or perfectly. None of us loves our neighbor in the way Jesus taught in John 15: “Greater love has no man than that he lay down his life for his friends.”

But the good news of the gospel is that we have a neighbor who loved us and laid down his life for us. And this neighbor didn’t lay down his life for his friends, but for his enemies. We can enjoy God’s blessing and know his grace because our Savior obeyed the first and second great commandments for us. This good news releases us from condemnation and sets us free to love our neighbor as ourselves.

This truth is gloriously manifested every Lord’s Day around the communion table.

As we gather in Jesus’ name, we hear Jesus say the words “take and eat.” It’s as if Jesus, recalling the words from Genesis 3 about Eve “taking and eating” of the serpent’s fruit, says, “watch this, Satan!” Then he repeats the words by offering himself as a sacrifice: “take and eat. This is my body, given for you.” What were once words leading to condemnation are now, on the lips of Jesus, words of salvation. This is what enables us to love our neighbor. We’ve been set free from the bondage of sin to finally be who God made us to be. In Christ, we now image God again by loving him and our neighbors as ourselves. Brothers, let no one say that anyone can outdo us in love.

The Preaching Class with John Piper: 30 Videos of Lectures and Workshop

John Piper—co-founder of Desiring God, former preaching pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church, and author of The Supremacy of God in Preaching and Expository Exultation: Christian Preaching as Worship—has recorded 19 mini-lectures on preaching (about 10 minutes each, for a total of about four hours). This is then followed by a two-and-a-half hour workshop where Piper is joined by three younger local preaching pastors to talk through various issues.

J. I. Packer on “Impressions”

J. I. Packer’s essay, “Guidance: How God Loves Us,” in God’s Plans for Us (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001), 89–106, is a really important read.

Halfway through, Packer covers what he has argued thus far:

I have already said that God ordinarily guides his children in their decision-making through Bible-based wisdom.

I have dismissed the idea that guidance is usually or essentially an inner voice telling us facts otherwise unknown and prescribing strange modes of action.

I have criticized the way some Christians wait passively for guidance and “put out a fleece” when perplexed, rather than prayerfully following wisdom’s lead.

He acknowledges that at this point, some readers might be muttering in response.

Some readers may believe that I have played down and thereby dishonored the guiding ministry of the Holy Spirit. One cannot say what I have said in today’s steamy Christian atmosphere without provoking that reaction. So there is need now to discuss the Holy Spirit’s role in guidance in a direct way.

The last thing I want to do is to dishonor, or lead others to dishonor, the Holy Spirit. But the fact must be faced that not all endeavors that seek to honor the Holy Spirit succeed in their purpose. There is such a thing as fanatical delusion, just as there is such a thing as barren intellectualism. Overheated views of life in the Spirit can be as damaging as “flat tire” versions of Christianity that minimize the Spirit’s ministry. This is especially true in relation to guidance.

So, Packer asks, “What does it mean to be ‘led by the Spirit’ in personal decision-making?”

That phrase, found in Romans 8:14 and Galatians 5:18, speaks of resisting sinful impulses, not of decision-making. However, the question of what it means to be Spirit-led in choosing courses of action is a proper and important one.

The Spirit leads by helping us understand the biblical guidelines within which we must keep, the biblical goals at which we must aim, and the biblical models that we should imitate, as well as the bad examples from which we are meant to take warning.

He leads through prayer and others’ advice, giving us wisdom as to how we can best follow biblical teaching.

He leads by giving us the desire for spiritual growth and God’s glory. The result is that spiritual priorities become clearer, and our resources of wisdom and experience for making future decisions increase.

He leads, finally, by making us delight in God’s will so that we find ourselves wanting to do it because we know it is best. Wisdom’s paths will be “ways of pleasantness” (Prov. 3:17). If at first we find we dislike what we see to be God’s will for us, God will change our attitude if we let him. God is not a sadist, directing us to do what we do not want to do so that he can see us suffer. He wants joy for us in every course of action to which he leads us, even those from which we shrink at first and that involve outward unpleasantness.

Packer knows that virtually no Christian would deny what he has written here. But he does know that some would say this is only “half the story.”

Part of what being Spirit-led means, they would tell us, is that one receives instruction from the Spirit through prophecies and inward revelations such as repeatedly came to godly people in Bible times (see Gen. 22; 2 Chron. 7:12-22; Jer. 32:19; Acts 8:29; 11:28; 13:4; 21:11; 1 Cor. 14:30). They believe this kind of communication to be the fulfillment of God’s promise that “your ears shall hear a word behind you saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it,’ when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left” (Isa. 30:21 RSV). They are sure that some impressions of this kind should be identified as the Spirit-given “word of knowledge” in 1 Corinthians 12:8. They insist that this is divine guidance in its highest and purest form, which Christians should therefore constantly seek. Those who play it down, they would say, thereby show that they have too limited a view of life in the Spirit.

Packer responds:

Here I must come clean. I know that this line of thought is sincerely believed by many people who are, I am sure, better Christians than I am. Yet I think it is wrong and harmful, and I shall now argue against it. I choose my words with care, for some of the arguments made against this view are as bad and damaging as is the view itself. The way of wisdom is like walking a tightrope, from which one can fall by overbalancing either to the left or to the right. As, in Richard Baxter’s sharp-sighted phrase, overdoing is undoing, so overreacting is undermining.

He then distinguishes the real issue from what he is not insisting or implying:

The issue here is not whether a person’s life in the Spirit is shallow or deep, as if the further one advances spiritually, the more one will seek and find guidance through prophecies and inward revelations. Nor is the issue whether God has so limited himself that he will never communicate directly with present-day Christians as he did with some saints in biblical times. In my view there is no biblical warrant either for correlating spiritual maturity with direct divine guidance or for denying that God may still directly indicate his will to his servants. The real issue is twofold: what we should expect from God in this regard and what we should do with any invading impressions that come our way.

When Christians feel that God has directly told them to say or do something, Packer says they should face up to the following three facts:

1. If anyone today receives a direct disclosure from God, it will have no canonical significance. It will not become part of the church’s rule of faith and life; nor will the church be under any obligation to acknowledge the disclosure as revelation; nor will anyone merit blame for suspecting that the disclosure was not from God. If the alleged disclosure is a prediction . . . , Moses assures us that there is not even a prima facie case for treating it as from God until it has come true (Deut. 18:21ff.). If the alleged disclosure is a directive (as when a leader claims that God told him to found a hospital, university, mission, or crusade of some kind), any who associate themselves with his project should do so because wisdom tells them that it is needed, realistic, and God-honoring, not because the leader tells them that God directly commanded him (and by implication them) to attempt it.

People who believe they have received direct indications of what God will do or what they should do should refrain in all situations (worship services, board meetings, gatherings of family or friends, preparation of publications, or whatever) from asking others to agree that direct revelation has been given to them, and Christians should greet any such request with resolute silence.

2. Guidance in this particular form is not promised. For it to occur is, as we have said, extraordinary, exceptional, and anomalous. No Scripture leads us to hope or to look for it. Isaiah 30:21, which may seem to point this way, is actually a promise of wise teaching through wise teachers. No one, therefore, who believes that he received a direct revelation at any time should look for this event to recur. The idea that spiritual persons may expect this sort of guidance often or that such experiences are proof of their holiness or of their call and fitness to lead others should be dismissed out of hand.

3. Direct communications from God take the form of impressions, and impressions can come even to the most devoted and prayerful people from such murky sources as wishful thinking, fear, obsessional neurosis, schizophrenia, hormonal imbalance, depression, side effects of medication, and satanic delusion, as well as from God. Impressions need to be suspected before they are sanctioned and tested before they are trusted. Confidence that one’s impressions are God-given is no guarantee that this is really so, even when they persist and grow stronger through long seasons of prayer. Bible-based wisdom must judge them. . . .

Some people conclude that the Holy Spirit never gives specific impressions and that every claim to them must be a delusion. Packer says this is wrong.

Impressions—not revelations of information but focusings of concern—belong to Christian living. When we say we have a “vision” or “burden” about something, we are referring to an impression. When our concern is biblically proper, we are right to regard our impression as a nudge from the Holy Spirit.

Nehemiah speaks of what “God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem” (Neh. 2:12 RSV), and by prayer, persuasion, and push, Nehemiah got the job done. Paul and Silas “attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them” (Acts 16:7 RSV)—that is, an inner impression restrained them. God, as they soon discovered, was leading them to Greece. Paul’s “mind could not rest” while evangelizing Troas, because Titus had not come (2 Cor. 2:13; mind is “spirit” in the Greek, meaning a mind enlightened by God’s Spirit). So Paul left, construing his restlessness as God prompting him to go in search of Titus rather than continue the Troas mission. These are biblical examples of saints pulled or pressed by God in particular directions. This is an experience that most Christians know.

My point is not that the Spirit of God gives no direct impressions, but rather that impressions must be rigorously tested by biblical wisdom—the corporate wisdom of the believing community as well as personal wisdom. If this is not done, impressions that are rooted in egoism, pride, headstrong unrealism, the fancy that irrationality glorifies God, a sense that some human being is infallible, or similar misconceptions will be allowed to masquerade as Spirit-given. Only impressions verified as biblically appropriate and practically wise should be recognized as from God. People who receive impressions about what they should believe or do should question such impressions until they have been thoroughly tested.

Nor can one be certain even then about one’s impressions. Some impressions seem to be instances of clairvoyance, sanctified for restraint or encouragement (as in recorded cases of Christians feeling constrained to leave trains and planes that later crashed or when C. T. Studd saw in the margin of his Bible the words “China, India, Africa,” the three parts of the world where he subsequently served as a pioneer missionary). There is no certain way to test such impressions. Sometimes one will not be able to tell whether they are a message from God or a human fancy. The correct conclusion to draw is that as we seek to do what by biblical standards best serves God’s glory and the good of others, God will be with us—just that.

The radios of my youth would crackle with atmospherics, making clear reception impossible. All forms of self-centeredness and self-indulgence, from surface-level indiscipline and lawlessness to the subtlety of grandiose elitism or the irreverence of not obeying the guidance one has received already, will act as atmospherics in the heart, making recognition of God’s will harder than it should be and one’s testing of impressions less thorough and exact. But those who are being “led by the Spirit” into humble holiness will also be “led by the Spirit” in evaluating their impressions, and so they will increasingly be able to distinguish the Spirit’s nudges from impure and improper desire. “He . . . teaches the humble his way” (Ps. 25:9 RSV). Blessed, then, we may say, are the pure in heart. They shall know the will of God.

This Doctor Performed 1,200 Abortions. Until Something Changed Him Forever.

Warning. The following video is very difficult to listen to. It is Congressional testimony from obstetrician/gynecologist Anthony Levatino, who performed 1,200 abortions in his career. He tells exactly how he did it. And the events in his personal life that changed him forever.

J. I. Packer: Don’t Like the Term Biblical “Inerrancy”? Fine. But What about the Concepts?

An excerpt from J. I. Packer, God Has Spoken: Revelation and the Bible (Wheaton: Crossway, 2021), 126–31.

[W]ords, being tools of thought and tokens of meaning, are neither magical nor impregnable, and we abuse our minds if we think otherwise. Anything you really understand you can express in more than one form of words, and no verbal formula is exempt from the possibility of reinterpretation, misinterpretation, and debasement by those who come after its framers.

It is well to remind ourselves of this as we weigh two words which twentieth-century English-speaking theologians have regularly applied to the view of Scripture as God-given verbal revelation which this book has been setting forth. The words are infallibility and inerrancy, both denoting qualities which adherents of this view ascribe to the Bible.

The first thing to say, in light of the last paragraph, is that nobody should feel wedded to these words. We can get on without them.

If we speak of Holy Scripture as altogether true and trustworthy, or as wholly reliable in its own terms, making no false assertions, claims or promises on its own account (however many lies told by good men, bad men, and devils it records), we shall be expressing in formula terms exactly what these words mean.

If we prefer these formulae to the words themselves (both of which, be it admitted, have turned into noses of wax, malleable and often misshapen in recent discussion), that is our privilege, and none should want to deprive us of it.

Conversely, adherence to traditional terms does not necessarily argue the profoundest grasp of what they stand for; it may only be a sign of a traditional mind.

Yet this is an age in which the view I am stating is often dismissed without argument, and indeed without understanding . . . In such an age, it is more useful to explain and defend the words, and rebut the criticisms, than to renounce the words because they have been mishandled. Rightly understood, they are useful theological shorthand, and by explaining them we can clarify and develop some of the implications of what this chapter has said so far. Briefly, then (or as briefly as we can!):

[1. The Meaning of the Terms]

First, their meaning.

Infallibility is the Latin infallibilitas, signifying the quality of neither deceiving nor being deceived.

Inerrancy is the Latin inerrantia, meaning freedom from error of anything, factual, moral, or spiritual.

Infallible as a description of the biblical Word of God goes back at least to the English Reformation.

Inerrant is an adjective that gained currency in the second half of the last century, in debates that arose from the budding “higher criticism.”

Both words take color from the contexts in which they were mainly used; thus, though they are virtually synonyms, infallible suggest to most minds Scripture determining a faith-commitment, while inerrant evokes rather the thought of Scripture undergirding an orthodoxy. But for practical purposes the words are interchangeable.

[2. The Significance of the Terms]

Second, their significance.

Though negative in form, they are positive in thrust, like the Council of Chalcedon’s four negative adverbs about the union of Christ’s two natures in his one person (“without confusion,” “without change,” “without division,” “without separation”). What those adverbs say is that only within the limits they set is truth about the incarnation found.

What infallible and inerrant say is that only those who accept as from God all that Scripture proves to tell us, promise us, or require of us can ever fully please him. Both words thus have religious as well as theological significance; their function is to impose on our handling of the Bible a procedure which expresses faith in the reality and veracity of the God who speaks to us in and through what it says and who requires us to heed every word that proceeds from his mouth. The procedure, best stated negatively, is that in exegesis and exposition of Scripture and building up our biblical theology we may

not (i) deny, disregard, or arbitrarily relativize anything that the writers teach,

nor (ii) discount any of the practical implications for worship and service which their teaching carries,

nor (iii) cut the knot of any problem of Bible harmony, factual or theological, by allowing ourselves to assume that the writers were not necessarily consistent with themselves or with each other.

It is this procedure, rather than any particular results of following it, that our two words safeguard.

[3. The Justification for the Terms]

Third, their justification.

The ground for affirming that Scripture is infallible and inerrant is its inspiration, which we defined earlier in this chapter in terms of God-breathedness or divine origin.

No Christian will question that God speaks truth and truth only (that is, that what he says is infallible and inerrant). But if all Scripture comes from God in such a sense that what it says, he says, then Scripture as such must be infallible and inerrant, because it is God’s utterance.

What our two words express is not confidence that by our own independent enquiries we can prove all Scripture statements to be true (we can’t, of course, and should never speak as if we could), but certainty that all Scripture can and should be trusted because it has come to us (in Calvin’s phrase) “by the ministry of men from God’s very mouth.”

[4. How the Terms Are Misunderstood]

Fourth, how these words are misunderstood.

Critics persistently suppose that both words, highlighting as they do the divinity and consequent trust of the Bible, express or entail a policy of minimizing the Bible’s humanity, either

by denying its human literary sources or ignoring the marks of its human cultural milieu, or

by treating it as if it were written in terms of the communicative techniques and conventions of the modern West rather than the ancient East, or

by professing to find it in “technical-scientific,” as distinct from “naïve-observational” statements about the natural order, when the “technical-scientific” study of nature is less than five centuries old.

It is understandable that Christians who have not weighed the differences between our culture and that (or those!) of the biblical period should naively feel that the natural and straightforward way to express their certainty that the contents of Scripture, being divine, are of contemporary relevance (as they certainly are) is to treat Scripture as contemporary in its literary forms. No doubt many have done this, believing that thus they did God service.

But our words have no link with this naivety; they express no advance commitment of any kind in the field of biblical interpretation, save that whatever Scripture, rightly interpreted (interpreted, that is, a posteriori, with linguistic correctness, in terms of the discernibly literary character of each book, against its own historical and cultural background, and in the light of its topical relation to other books), proves to be saying should be reverently received, as from God.

[5. The Self-Involving Logic of the Terms]

Fifth, the self-involving logic of these words.

For me to confess that Scripture is infallible and inerrant is to bind myself in advance to follow the method of harmonizing and integrating all that Scripture declares, without remainder, of taking it as from God, however little I may like it, and whatever change of present beliefs, ways, and commitments it may require, and of seeking actively to live by it. Both words are often seen as belonging to worlds of doctrinaire scholasticism, but in fact they express a most radical existential commitment on the Christian’s part.

[6. The Objections to the Terms]

Sixth, the objections to these words.

Some deprecate them because using them, they think, has a bad effect.

Affirming inerrancy is thought to cause preoccupation with minutiae of Bible harmony and factual detail to the neglect of major matters, and to encourage the unhistorical kind of exegesis that we glanced at two paragraphs back, and thus to thwart good scholarship.

Asserting infallibility is held to spawn a superstitious bibliolatry which reveres the Bible as a sort of everyman’s-enquire-within-about-everything, and also, thwarts good scholarship.

It may be replied that none of this is necessarily so, and that it is worth disinfecting both words from association with these failures in responsible biblical interpretation. But if it is still thought best to eschew the terms as tainted, the point is not worth pressing; as we said, we are not wedded to words.

Others, however, reject the terms on the grounds that factual, moral, and theological error in the Bible is now proven.

Here I must limit myself simply to replying: not so at all.

A responsible biblical scholarship exists with inerrancy as one of its methodological presuppositions; it appears no less successful in embracing and making sense of the phenomena of Scripture than is the scholarship which lacks this presupposition. (All scholars, of course, borrow from and interact with each other, and share a community feeling in consequence, whatever their presuppositions, but that is not the point here.) As long as a consistent Bible-believing scholarship can maintain itself in debate on problem passages, it is sheer triumphalist obscurantism to say that error in the Bible has been proved. And even if adequate Bible-believing scholarship were lacking, “proved” would still be too strong a word, for the various skeptical hypotheses are never the only ones possible.

 

Why Some Covid-19 Vaccines Were Developed Faster Than Any Vaccine Ever

An interesting explainer above on how Pfizer and Moderna are part of a new age of vaccine technology, in which we can send our own bodies the instructions on how to protect themselves:

Researchers working on Covid-19 vaccines have smashed speed records, bringing new vaccines from development to distribution in less than a year. They did this with the help of billions of dollars of unprecedented global investment—but also, in some cases, with a new type of vaccine technology. There are four traditional types of vaccines, and they all require the growing and handling of live pathogens in a lab, a time-consuming process than can add months or years to development. But two new types of vaccines skip that step altogether by moving that work from the lab to our bodies. mRNA vaccines, like the ones from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna; and Adenovirus vaccines, like those from Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca; do this by sending genetic instructions directly into our cells, which then produce the harmless protein the body needs to learn to fight Covid-19. Because these proteins are produced from within cells rather than injected from the outside, they may be less likely to provoke adverse reactions in the recipient. The result has been a host of vaccines developed faster than ever. But it’s also ushered us into a new age of vaccine technology, one in which we can send our own bodies the instructions on how to protect themselves. That technology is already being used to drive research on vaccines for HIV and cancer. These new types of vaccines are weapons we developed to fight the coronavirus—but their real impact is just beginning.

HT: @JohnDyer

Christian Discipleship and the COVID-19 Vaccine

For those open to hearing a considered Christian case for these vaccinations, consider reading this piece by Matthew Arbo, C. Ben Mitchell, and Andrew T. Walker:

Why We Plan to Get Vaccinated: A Christian Moral Perspective

They address three ethical areas raised by COVID-19 vaccines: (1) safety and efficacy, (2) complicity with evil, and (3) compliance with authority.

Here is their conclusion:

According to the New Testament, faith and obedience to Jesus Christ in discipleship involves dying to self, taking up his cross. The apostle Paul goes so far as to describe it as no longer the person who lives but Christ that lives within them (Gal. 2:20). Disciples love God and love their neighbor, as God commands. Loving another person can involve many things, but it at least involves seeking their good, a good that includes their health and vitality.

It is not possible to properly love a person and to act unnecessarily to jeopardize their health. By this, we mean displaying wanton disregard for the health of others. If by the minimal burden of wearing a mask, we can potentially protect others from grave illness, then it seems we have a moral obligation to wear a mask. The same can be said for COVID-19 vaccinations. If by being vaccinated we can protect others from illness, then we have a corresponding obligation, given our Lord’s command to love neighbors, to be vaccinated. Vaccinations not only protect me, but also protect other vulnerable members of society. At the same time, we acknowledge that the call to love one’s neighbor does not justify—carte blanche—all action taken to lessen transmission or the forfeiture of one’s own conscience.

A disciple may be vaccinated out of love for God and neighbor, but perhaps also because it is wise. Christians are not rash or foolish about their lives. They are instead sober-minded and ready, on the basis of evidence furnished by reality itself, to form judgments on particular courses of action. It seems wise to be vaccinated, because doing so may protect one’s own life and the lives of others.

Being vaccinated likewise demonstrates that we care about the common good. We wish for all to enjoy a whole, joyful life for as long as the Lord provides. Disciples of Jesus do not wish for anyone to be cut off from the fruits and joys of human community and fellowship, but for all to give and receive in grace and hope. Vaccinations assist us in joining together to share in the goods we have in common.

At the same time, we also acknowledge the sincerity of those whose consciences disagree in good faith. Perhaps there are parents who, once a child vaccine is developed and approved, are sincerely fearful that the rushed nature of the vaccine’s development has long-term unknown costs. Despite our own convictions about the rigorous protocols to ensure safety and efficacy, we believe that Christian liberty requires that each person be free to choose whether or not to receive these new vaccines.

Still, blanket appeals to Christian liberty are not sufficient. They require evidentiary substance. The libertarian-minded citizen who reflexively rejects any claim of authority has not adequately met the necessary threshold to refuse vaccination. Those appealing to Christian liberty or conscience have the burden of demonstrating what goods are procured, secured, or respected that surpass the goods associated with vaccination. We are not saying such arguments are impossible to make or possibly worthy to act upon. However, we do believe the goods associated with vaccination outweigh the risks or goods born of refusing vaccination.

Because we believe that concerns about vaccination do not rise to the threshold necessary to justify forgoing it, we believe that it is strongly morally advisable to get vaccinated. However, even if this rises to the level of a moral “ought,” that does not mean we think churches should discipline their members if they refuse to get vaccinated. Nor does it mean that an individual who forgoes the vaccine is necessarily sinning. Vaccination is a salutary act born of Christian love for neighbor and community, not a test of faithfulness.

Christians, pastors, and local churches should approach this conversation with forbearing love. We should refuse the temptation to harshly or condescendingly judge those with whom we have disagreements.

You can read the whole thing here.

Abortion Is Immoral: An Animated Roadmap of the Argument

In an earlier post I introduced the work of Wardenclyffe Academy formed by Peter Kinney and Logan Zeppieri, two young and creative analytic philosophers who want to help people understand the structure of foundational ideas through creative mind maps.

Their latest project is a four-part summary of an essay by Patrick Lee and Robert P. George: “What Is Wrong with Abortion,” in Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics, ed. Andrew I. Cohen and Christopher Heath Wellman (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005): 13–26.

(Dr. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University.

Dr. Lee is a professor of philosophy who holds the John N. and Jamie D. McAleer Chair in Bioethics and directs the Center for Bioethics at Franciscan University of Steubenville.)

The videos are below, followed by my brief summary to get you oriented.

We live in an age that has little time or patience for careful philosophical moral reasoning. I’d encourage readers to set aside some time—perhaps with a family member or friend—to watch these videos and to think through the logic of them. If you don’t get the thesis or an objection or their response to it, pause the video and go through it again and think about these things.

These videos take hundreds of hours to produce, but the end product can be viewed in just over a half hour. I promise that it will be worth your time.

Introduction

Lee and George point out that many people who oppose abortion have not considered the philosophical foundations for the view that abortion is immoral.

Thesis

The choice to have an abortion is objectively immoral.

Why? Because abortion kills a human being.

This human embryo is a whole (albeit immature) living member of the species homo sapiens. It is the same kind of entity as you or I, only at an earlier stage of development.

Objections

There are two main objections to this argument.

The No-Person Objection. The embryo may be human, but it is not a person. Therefore abortion is not wrong since it does not involve the death of a person. (Dualist versions of this objection define “person” in terms of being or existence—the thing that is you. Evaluative versions say that “person” is a value judgment—someone who is valuable and therefore a bearer of rights.)The Not-Intentional Killing Objection. The embryo may have a right to life, but it does not have the right to use its mother’s body for life support. So abortion is not a case of intentional killing but rather a case of denying assistance or of eviction.Responses

Lee and George carefully demonstrate what is wrong with both objections.

Against the dualist form of the no-person objection, they show that at conception a person comes into being. Agains the evaluative form of the no-person objection, the physical organism is intrinsically valuable and a bearer of rights (specifically, a right to life).Against the non-intention killing objection, they argue that it is wrong for  parents to choose an abortion (death) over the significantly lesser harms of carrying and caring for the child because parents have a special obligation to the child in virtue of their biological and social relations with the child.Conclusion

Their thesis stands; the objections fail: abortion is unjust and therefore objectively immoral.

If you want to support seeing more videos like this, contribute to PayPal.Me/wardenclyffeacademy.