Hello, friends. Welcome to the Case for Life podcast. Does the Bible teach that the unborn are not living human beings until they breathe air through the lungs after birth? We’re going to tackle that today because that’s a question that keeps coming up again and again in the election cycle we’re in right now. In fact, the latest is coming from a scholar named Bart Ehrman. Many of you know him. He is a critic of conservative theological He is not a guy who holds to evangelical or orthodox teaching when it comes to the scriptures. And he has now been recruited, you might say, to come out as a scholar arguing that there is no life in the womb until birth when the child can breathe with lungs open. like we all do. And the passage that Armin is going to point to, and I’ll get to it in just a minute, the passage that Bart Ehrman is going to point to is Genesis 2 versus 7 to 8, roughly speaking. And I’m just going to watch his clip and interact with it a little bit. I’ll let you hear it. And, uh, You’ll see what he’s going to argue here. Let’s take a look. In Genesis chapter 2, God’s ready to make a human being. He makes this clay in the dirt, you know, and it’s like this humanoid figure. It’s like a little statue lying on the ground made out of clay or mud. And it’s just this thing. It’s just, you know, dead. And then God breathes into it. God breathes his breath into this dead thing, and Adam comes to life. And then Adam becomes a human being. So the question is, when does human life begin? In this creation story, it begins when the human being can breathe. All right, let’s take a look at this because there’s a lot there, but I think we can make sense of it very quickly. Right out of the gate, notice that Ehrman makes a colossal mistake. He talks about this dead thing formed out of mud, basically, from the earth that was the inanimate atom, and says that Adam wasn’t living until God breathed into him. Well, duh, obviously any adult that God creates directly out of mud, out of the dirt of the earth, is not living until God breathes life into them. The question for Bart Ehrman is this, did you begin that way? Did I begin that way? The next thing I want to ask is this. Do dead things grow? Something’s growing in the womb. So how do you equate a growing, maturing fetus in the womb with a dead, inanimate object that’s basically a formation of clay, as Ehrman puts it? How do you equate those 2 as being morally or even physically relevant? And the answer is you can’t. This is absurdity, and I’m really kind of surprised that a guy of Bart Ehrman’s stature would even make this argument, and I’m wondering, was he motivated to do this because he was pressured to? Because I’ve seen him in other debates where he’s far more animated and persuasive, and though I don’t agree with his conclusions, he just doesn’t strike me as persuaded by this, but he’s saying it nonetheless. Another thing I’d point out is this. If it’s true that you do not become a living human being until you breathe air through the lungs, that means newborns immediately after birth can be killed. We can slit their throats because many of them do not breathe air through the lungs for up to 30 seconds to maybe 2 minutes after birth. You know, the old saying, the doctor has to slap the baby on the rump to get it to cry and breathe. Well, it would mean before the baby got a swat, we can slit his throat. I mean, that’s an absurd conclusion. So this argument really proves too much. Thirdly, I would add this. The word nephesh, which is used for soul or living soul, that is used by pro-abortionists in this passage, really doesn’t make the case they want it to. In fact, I think they misuse the word terribly. The Hebrew word nephesh, living soul, roughly translated, is applied in this case only to physical breath but wait a minute god is not a physical being and yet the word nephesh is appeared is applied to him as a soul it also is used throughout scripture to apply to animals does that mean animals are human too because they have nephesh or breath So I think that there’s a real problem here when you try to use Genesis 2 to prove that abortion is morally permissible. Again, just to review, number one, Bart Ehrman makes a mistake in saying that because God created Adam out of an inanimate body, mud or dirt that therefore he’s not living until he breathes a point I will agree with but that’s not how you and I began we were growing in our mother’s wombs in fact we were breathing in the womb it’s sort of like this instead of taking oxygen directly through the lungs we were taking it through the umbilical cord It’s like switching from AC current to DC current. The mode changes, but the breathing was there all along. There was an oxygen transfer all along. We know that from embryology studies. But beyond that, I think the real problem here is you cannot take a special creation of Adam being the first human and say, Adam began that way, therefore we can come up with a normative principle that it’s okay to kill the unborn, because until they breathe through the lungs, they’re not living. Well, the science of embryology doesn’t support the claim that they’re not living, and I don’t think this biblical text does either. And it leads to absurd conclusions, like we can kill newborns who aren’t yet breathing immediately after birth. This is Very poor reasoning on a scholar’s part of the stature of a Bart Ehrman. there it is. It’s out there. And in a political cycle like what we’re in right now, I suppose nothing surprises me. This is just another rehash of something that tends to come up again and again. Now, I cover this argument and other arguments allegedly supporting abortion in this book, the second edition of The Case for Life. I encourage you to get it. We look at other things that pro-abortionists put forward to try to claim that the Bible’s in their favor, things like Numbers 5, Exodus twenty one and other passages they try to cite to make their case. But you don’t need to be fooled, pro-lifer. There are solid arguments against what people like Bart Armin are saying, and I want you to be equipped to respond to them. So please get a hold of that book if you haven’t already. One other thing I want to state here, and this came up through the mailbag, somebody reached out to us this last week, a pastor, as a matter of fact, and he He went at it a little differently than Bart did. This pastor, very good guy. He’s a brother in the faith. He is not a flamethrower. He was simply trying to wrestle with the text and try to come up with nuance on abortion. And he probably has people he ministers to who are confused on this issue. Well, he reached out to me and said, hey, would you take a look at what I read? first of all, can I just commend the guy for doing that? Let’s salute it here. Sometimes I think it’s easy to get upset and angry that so many people we deal with don’t want to engage with argumentation. They don’t want to engage with thoughtful arguments. They just want to throw their darts and be done with it. This guy did not do that. In fact, I may even see if he’s willing to come on the show at a later point and just, we’ll have a discussion. We’ll see what happens. But what this friend of mine said, uh, I’ll call him Todd because that was his name. He said, well, the scripture doesn’t say a lot about abortion. In fact, the word isn’t there. You’ll be at a loss to come up with a command against abortion. What should we as Christians have as our posture on an issue that the Bible does not seem to address directly? Okay, fair question, all right? At least he’s wanting to know what does the Bible say. That’s refreshing for a change, especially in our era where everything is deconstructed and nobody gives a salute to biblical authority. This guy cares what the Bible says, so let’s salute him for that. And he cares about having a reasoned discourse about this. So let me just respond to this notion, first of all, that the Bible doesn’t say much about abortion, if anything. I’m going to grant, as I’ve said before on this podcast, that nowhere does the Bible use the word abortion. And I’ll go a step further. Let’s say nowhere does it teach the unborn are human. And thirdly, nowhere does the word abortion appear, much less a condemnation against it. And I can take all 3 of those premises, grant them, and still argue the Bible is pro-life. And here’s how we do that. If you want to know how to explain to a Christian friend that is buying into arguments that the Bible is silent on abortion, here’s your response in 3 steps. And these aren’t hard. The first step is to ask a very simple clarification question. Are you saying that whatever the Bible does not expressly condemn or mention, we’re allowed to do that thing? In other words, if the Bible doesn’t expressly condemn something, does it condone it? Of course, the only answer that makes any sense at all is to say no. And then, again, be gracious, but press this question, well, then what’s the point of pointing out that the Bible is silent here? And there really is nothing that follows from the Bible not mentioning the word abortion. The Bible doesn’t mention that you can’t use your neighbor for shark bait. The Bible doesn’t condemn gay bashing. It doesn’t condemn shooting abortionists. But no pro-life Christian thinks we can do these things simply because the Bible is silent on them. So arguments from silence are always fallacious. The second thing I would point out is this. We don’t need the Bible to say abortion is wrong before we can know that it’s wrong. And let me give you an argument for that rather than just asserting it. Here’s your argument. Premise one, Scripture teaches that all humans have value because they bear the image of God. Genesis one teaches that in the old covenant. James 3 teaches it in the new. Well-established in Scripture. Premise 2, because humans bear the image of God, The shedding of innocent blood, meaning the intentional killing of innocent human beings, is strictly forbidden. Exodus 23 teaches this. Proverbs 6 teaches this. Isaiah one teaches this. And a host of other scriptures teach this point that the shedding of innocent blood is a particularly egregious wrong in scripture. Now, that leaves us then with just one question. Are the unborn human? Now, at this point, somebody comes back and says, well, the Bible nowhere says they are. Well, I got news for you. The Bible nowhere says that Americans are human or that Canadians are human or that the French are human. The reality is specific people groups are not mentioned. What is taught in Scripture is that all humans have value because they bear the image of God, and thus we are not to intentionally kill innocent human beings. So now the only question we need to grapple with is this. Are the unborn members of the human family? And if they are, the same commands against the shedding of innocent blood in Scripture apply to the unborn as they do everybody else. And we know for a fact from the science of embryology that from the earliest stages of development, from the one-cell stage, you were a distinct part living and whole human being. That’s the science of embryology. Now let’s take that scientific truth that we know and go back to the scripture. All humans have value because they bear the image of God. Because they bear the image of God, the shedding of innocent blood is forbidden. The unborn are human from conception. Therefore, to conclude our argument, they too are image bearers and they too should not have their blood intentionally shed. That’s our argument from Scripture, and that’s something that Bart Ehrman completely missed in this particular clip that we looked at. And I don’t find his argument or others who argue from Scripture to be persuasive at all. Again, I want to invite you to go to scottklusendorf.com. or caseforlife.com and get a copy of our book, The Case for Life. I go into detail there about these arguments and give you what you need to defend the pro-life view, as we do in our course on abortion, which I would encourage you to enroll in, where you can learn how to defend the pro-life view at a very sophisticated level, engaging scholars like Bart Ehrman, Michael Tooley, Peter Singer, Kate Greasley, David Boonin and others that we wrestle with in the course. I would invite you to enroll for that. Would love to have you be part of that. Thank you for joining us today. Let’s stay sharp in our thinking and let’s let’s not let those who have an agenda knock us off message. Abortion is wrong because it intentionally kills an innocent human being. Full stop. That’s all we need to make our case by saying we don’t need to be distracted by others that want to distract from what they say is true or what they think we believe is true by getting us off message. Stick to the main thing. Keep the main thing the main thing. Until next time, we’ll see you then.