Addressed by The Word: Theology, Ethics and Abortion

Theology and ethics are inextricably bound. Our a priori perspectives, interpretive and deductive labors, and ultimate conclusions in either theology or ethics profoundly determine the shape of the other. This is not surprising to Presbyterians who have constitutionally maintained the principle that “truth is in order to goodness,” that is, our understanding of truth or reality is necessarily bound to a certain and appropriate response.

But this simple premise is not easily maintained and history has repeatedly shown that this fact can be perverted by either of two errors. The first lies in separating a specific behavior or ethic from theology, leaving it isolated and unfettered from any basis while maintaining its authority. The other, while affirming in some degree or another a theological premise nevertheless denies, ignores, or abbreviates any corresponding ethical response. While nearly opposite courses are followed in each of these responses, the effect is the same: theology and ethics are rent and held in isolation from one another. But this is neither Christian nor Reformed. Properly done theology, lest it become mere noetic insight, expects and even demands a response that is correspondingly appropriate, while properly done ethics must be founded upon truth lest it be mere subjective opinion or cultural whim.

Clearly the Presbyterian Church (USA) has struggled in recent years—some would say decades—with both theology and ethics. Recent Christological controversies have combined with the longstanding debates on sexuality to suggest we are certain of neither our theological basis for our ethics nor our ethical response to our theology. That uncertainties, disagreements, and trauma exist is undeniable. More difficult to grasp or explain is why or how this may be so.

It is the aim of this brief study to provide some reflection upon this question by looking specifically at the issue of abortion. While other ethical issues could be addressed, abortion provides the clearest approach to the questions at hand for a variety of reasons. First, it is huge. To deal with the issues, theology, and ethics of abortion is to already, initially, have dealt with a broad array of other issues. This is not as easily said of the (more pervasive) debates on sexuality and ordination standards. Second, our understanding of theology and its corresponding ethic is perhaps more clearly seen in abortion than other areas that may be addressed. Third, as both a cultural and ecclesial issue, abortion allows us to appraise the larger worldview and its corresponding values, their nature and validity, and most importantly, their influence upon the church. And finally, abortion is a greater moral issue than any other the church is facing. If the premises held by prolife movements are correct, then the loss of literally millions of infants through human-induced miscarriage (or worse) remains a vastly more important and pressing issue than any other the church is currently facing or fighting over. Indeed, issues of sexuality and ordination standards—as important as these are—pale before the ethical and theological issues raised by abortion.1

The Elephant in the Living Room—Abortion in the PC (USA)

To say that the abortion debate is the elephant in the living room of the PCUSA is neither hyperbole nor mere rhetorical device. Clearly we face here issues that touch upon deep questions regarding our understanding of individual rights and freedoms, sexuality, parenting, sickness and health, and the role of the church in caring for the lost, hurting, helpless, and broken. Decisions made regarding abortion do not remain in isolation but influence related issues of euthanasia, assisted suicide, cloning, and stem cell and fetal tissue research. And, appropriately, the debate is not isolated to ethics. Theology too is shaped and expressed in our questions, methods, and decisions made regarding abortion. Our ethic on abortion shapes such doctrines as the sovereignty of God, His providence, will, and very involvement in the human order, and our understanding of creation, life and stewardship. Christology falls under the shadow of the abortion debate and becomes inseparable from it as the incarnation is understood as occurring not in the adult Jesus (adoptionist heresy) or even the infant born of Mary but at the conception itself. Issues, questions, and decisions made on abortion touch and shape the faith and practice of the church and its ethic raised in response to the gospel is profoundly influenced by issues raised with the abortion question.

Yet for all its importance and gravity, for all the implications it bears in both ethics and theology, abortion has, in the Presbyterian Church (USA) been kept from the center ring of discussion. In recent years issues around the sanctity of life have been eclipsed by the seemingly endless debates on human sexuality and ordination standards. But, the church (and the larger culture) has, for additional reasons, avoided significant or intentional discussion of abortion. There are a number of reasons for this. First, the issue is largely perceived as too painful, too complex, and too controversial to enter with any hope of fruitful gain. From arguments and experiences to policies and opinions, the abortion question is perceived as too vast, opaque, and too odious to produce any edifying or definitive conclusion. Consequently the entire topic is shunned, hushed, and avoided.

Secondly, fresh debate is restricted too by the power of precedence. What can be said that has not already been stated? With little hope then of finding any new or helpful, let alone ultimate, answers to the debate, many remain content to allow past decisions—from the Supreme Court or the General Assembly studies—to provide the basis of policy, perspective, and ethics. Such guidance is, in the absence of anything better, made definitive and authoritative. The debate then is cognized as answered, if not perfectly, then at least as well as can be expected. And again, the subject is relegated to the margins, an unwanted and unneeded debate and thus little more than a troublesome cul-de-sac in the life and witness of the church.

Finally, the issue is held to be not only complex and essentially resolved, for many, it is functionally irrelevant. In spite of the number of problem pregnancies and the literally millions of aborted children, the issue remains an academic and thus non-essential debate for most. This, combined with the two areas above renders it easy and often desirous for individual believers, congregations, and whole denominations to keep this divisive subject at arm’s length.

The perceived complexity, opacity, and irrelevancy of the debate are increased by the silence of the New Testament on the subject. Obviously, the Bible makes no explicit reference to abortion2 and this silence, combined with the church’s increasing proclivity toward pragmatic-romantic reasoning, has become the dominant force in determining the values, goals, and ethics of the issue. Arguments for (and often, even against) abortion rights are derived more from the cultural milieu than Reformed theology and its corresponding ethic. This methodology is, of course, not unexpected when done by the larger culture in a post Christian age. That the church has followed this course and allowed its position and understanding of abortion to be primarily shaped by cultural values, secular rationalism, short term pragmatism, and romantic subjectivism is surprising, and in the end both unhelpful and unfaithful.

There are two pressing reasons why abortion must be courageously, openly, and seriously discussed by and within the Presbyterian Church (USA). The first lies in the fact that more than a decade has passed since the church last initiated a serious study of the subject of abortion. Consequently, the last (and therefore definitive) study mandated by the 1988 General Assembly and received by the 1992 General Assembly is seriously outdated. At the time the report was written personal computers used the DOS operating system, Microsoft’s Windows was in its infancy, and the internet was only just being created.3 More to the point, changes in medical technology—unheard of in 1987-92, have raised complex questions the 1992 report did not and could not address. The Presbyterian Church (USA) has not adequately studied or seriously addressed such issues as stem cell or fetal tissue research, genetic engineering, cloning, partial birth and post-viability abortions,4 and such drugs as “the morning after pill,” or RU-486. Additionally, the last ten years have brought profound advancements in neo-natal care, dramatically extending the viability of prematurely born infants.5 Such details are of extreme relevance for the abortion debate but are yet to receive any serious study by the Presbyterian Church (USA). Finally, the church has never addressed the effects of abortion on women’s health, though recent studies indicate abortion is more dangerous and harmful than previously understood.6 In short, the Presbyterian Church’s latest study is not only outdated, it remains completely silent on the labyrinth of issues raised over the last decade.

While the obsolescence and inadequacies of the 1992 report are themselves sufficient cause to warrant a new study, it is not the primary reason one should be done. A second, and for the church, more pressing issue is at stake: the Presbyterian Church (USA) has yet to discuss, debate, or wrestle with the issue of abortion and its constituent details from a primarily theological perspective. Certainly Scripture, theological reflection, and prayerful deliberations have played a role in the previous studies. But this does not change the fact that the past two studies—1983 and 1992—are culturally, sociologically, and pragmatically, not theologically controlled. In other words, the initial and governing frame of reference is not the Scripture, theology, and tradition of the church but personal needs, social implications, and cultural values.7 And in the end, the only unique word the church has to furnish is the biblical-theological one. It is this word alone that must determine the church’s belief and practice and it is uniquely this word the church has to provide to the larger debate, whether it is heard or not. But it is this word the PC (USA) has failed to provide, restating instead the values and perspectives of the culture which then are sanctified and allowed to define the debate.

This brings us back to my initial points. If ethics are the appropriate response to a foundational and determining belief, what does our current approach on abortion reveal of our actual belief and theology? And, conversely, does what we say we believe, actually and faithfully correspond to an appropriate ethic of abortion? To put it most clearly and simply, how exactly are we approaching these debates and in what sense are they faithful to our theology and thus right or wrong?

Off to a Bad Start…

We have been unable to adequately or helpfully address the issue of abortion (and homosexuality) because of our faulty starting point. The dominant worldview of contemporary, twenty-first century western culture is the result of a tectonic joining of two vast and different intellectual forces. The first is Enlightenment8 modernity, manifesting in pragmatic rationalism and the second is post-modernity manifesting in romantic subjectivism. These combine to provide a specific worldview or frame of reference from which our debates are raised, analyzed, and answered. Because a worldview or frame of reference is both universal and tacit it remains uncritically held and essentially ignored. This subtlety, rather than diminishing its influence, actually increases its leverage upon the debate and its conclusions. The overwhelming scope and power of the worldview engendered by these combined perspectives has influenced nearly every theological-ethical debate within the Presbyterian Church (USA). Enlightenment rational pragmatism and postmodern romantic subjectivism have combined to shape the questions we raise, the answers we seek, and the conclusions we reach. Thus, like the illustration above—though far more complex—an uncritically and broadly held worldview has determined a perspective that is then affirmed or accurately described in its conclusions. So how then do these intellectual forces actually work to shape our theological and ethical debates?

Enlightenment rationalism and postmodern subjectivism have perhaps had their greatest influence on our understanding of doctrine of revelation9 and epistemology10. How do we know something to be real and true? Where does knowledge come from and what makes it valid? Does or should the Christian view of knowledge differ from that of the surrounding culture? The relevancy of such questions is both obvious and foundational. When we discuss either theology or ethics in general or a specific point such as abortion, we must ascertain the source, validity, and authority of our knowledge. In any ethical or theological debate, opinions, details, “facts” and claims of truth may abound. But in what sense can any of these be said to be true, valid, and authoritative? As Christians the issue must go even deeper, for perspectives and conclusions must have more than an empirical or utilitarian validity. Looming above such issues is the far greater issue of God’s will on the matter. Does he care about abortion and the decisions we make regarding it? Does he reveal his will and if so, how can it be known? All of these epistemic questions have been radically altered by the overwhelming perspectives of Enlightenment rationalism and postmodern subjectivism which have combined to govern and control our debates and the decisions they reach.

The concept of revelation is essentially a modern concern, becoming decisive only in the wake of critical questions raised by the Enlightenment, as the knowledge of God became problematic and no longer assumed. The authority of reason had not only supplanted the Bible but had challenged its inspiration and verity. Questions once unknown and unthinkable swirled increasingly through the intellectual currents of the day, becoming, through the cultural worldview, both respectable and relevant while decisively affecting the traditional understanding of the Christian faith and its articulation. Revelation itself became a dubious concept as a Newtonian and mechanistic worldview was all but universally assumed, making God a transcendent watchmaker, uninvolved and unneeded in a self-governing, self-sufficient world of self-evident truths.

Even more, the fact that questions of the nature, means, and actuality of revelation had become, for the church, a vital concern suggests that theology no longer derived its life from the reality of revelation. God, for the modern world, was no longer the objective basis of faith from which theological and ethical deductions were made, but had become, instead, the problematic object of human understanding. Inquiry and interpretation of God’s nature and acts fell before the epistemic questions of how and how much any of this could be known. Tacitly felt or explicitly stated, theologians and biblical scholars were forced to do their work under the pressure of a critical scrutiny which not only challenged the central tenets of the Christian faith but the very concepts of revelation and Scriptural authority upon which they were based. Under the pressure of the Enlightenment worldview theological labors turned from dogmatics11 deduced from revelation to justifying the validity and place of revelation itself.

Ethics were consequently isolated from theology and reforged to show their inherent rationality. Traditional ethics derived from revelation were seen as insufficiently grounded to bear any universal authority. Only those which demonstrated to reasonable criticism a broad or universal validity were maintained while those failing to meet this standard were dropped, ignored or denied. Ethics, in short, became defined not by God’s will revealed to His people, but by what made sense and what worked.

This had a profound—though again largely tacit—effect upon the church, ironically touching both its left and right wings. Those within the liberal side of the church became increasingly skeptical of many traditionally held positions and their epistemic basis. Many doctrines, under the light of critical reason, came to be regarded as merely irrational superstition, incongruous and implausible to a modern illumined age. Ethics too were sardonically regarded as archaic legalisms or imperialistic attempts at control. Ironically those on the right, ensconced within the same worldview, rose to defend traditional beliefs and ethics from the very underlying assumptions as their opponents. Modernity had brought a perspective conservatives decried and condemned for its incredulity, even as it tacitly determined their own worldview and ultimately gave primary shape to their methodology and critical response. Liberals, turning from revelation and using the assumptions and tools of modernity sought a new and higher way. Conservatives, rising to the challenges presented by modernist expectations also turned from revelation, endeavoring to demonstrate the inherent rationality of traditionally held beliefs and values. Largely unbeknownst to either side, faith and revelation had ceased to bear any epistemic value, being replaced by a rationalism that decreed the true and valid was determined by reason and empirical validation alone.

But our worldview is more than merely modern. A second intellectual force, postmodern romantic subjectivism, has combined with Enlightenment rationalism to form the governing perspective of our age. Because postmodernism is intrinsically a theory about language and the interpretation of texts, it has profoundly shaped the church’s understanding of the Bible. The postmodern perspective contends that the traditional way of reading a text makes a number of misleading and faulty assumptions about the very nature of the text itself which leads to misinterpretation. Traditionally, a reader would approach a text assuming its language bore an inherent perspicuity and was thus capable of expressing the ideas intended by its author, across time and culture, without its inherent meaning being changed. The source of meaning lay in authorial intent and language could be depended upon to convey this accurately if not always clearly.

Postmodernism approaches the written texts from a nearly opposite direction, challenging three essential premises of traditional interpretation: that language is fixed and unchanging, that a text has an invariable or unified meaning, and that the author’s intended meaning can be known (or matters). The meaning of a particular text has become, within the postmodern hermeneutic, something fluid and bound not to language or authorial intent but interpretive perspective. Here the text has little or no inherent gist and the author no longer speaks. Meaning instead lies within the interpreter who brings to the texts and creates from the texts the only valid meaning. A text then bears not one meaning but potentially as many interpretations as there are interpreters, and all legitimate.

Our worldview at the end of the twentieth and start of the twenty-first century is an amalgamation of the Enlightenment-modern and postmodern understandings. The perspectives these forces engender are broad, diverse, subtle, and even paradoxical. Yet there can be no question that they exist and have exercised profound influence upon every ethical and theological matter faced in the last three decades, including abortion. This worldview has made us what we are and in turn has become the lens through which we see and interpret our world. Church and culture alike, ever malleable under the pressures of the governing worldview, are continually forced to bear its imprint and thus we are a culture—and church—characterized primarily by skepticism, individualism, rationalism, and utilitarianism.

Shaped by modernity and postmodernity, both our culture and church are fundamentally skeptical. If modernity taught us to doubt the indemonstrable,12 postmodernity has taught us to doubt everything. Consequently, we live in an age characterized by a profound and broadly held skepticism that ultimate truth or reality exists and can be known. Perhaps more significant is the belief that the ultimate is in fact irrelevant. Since truth is not given by that which is beyond us, but drawn from that which is around us (Enlightenment-rationalism) and within us (romantic-postmodernism) there is a perception that we have all we need within ourselves. While we might believe in God, we are skeptical of miracles, leery of claims of revelation and doubtful that God can be objectively known. Our denomination has increasingly come to perceive faith more in terms of personal opinion or journey than response to an objective reality or fact. Theology then becomes more a look inward than upward and ministry an act of affirming, clarifying, and encouraging one’s innate and natural union with God than a leading of others to one who is wholly Other. Theology becomes individual spirituality and ethics simply its personally determined expression. And our every labor becomes governed by the questions, who really knows what is true, what is right, what is of God?

Shaped by modernity and postmodernity, both our culture and church are fundamentally individualistic. From Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” to the postmodern axiom that we each “have a story,” our current worldview is profoundly self-centered and self-absorbed. The Enlightenment with its confidence in the powers of human reason has combined with postmodern confidence in the epistemic powers of human intuition to create a highly subjective and romantic epistemology. If the former affirmed the right of each individual to discover truth, the latter provided unbridled confidence in the ability of individuals to determine truth that, while perhaps not ultimately, was nevertheless subjectively and therefore legitimately real. Each person’s story is true and valid not in spite of its subjectivity but because of it. Diversity can be celebrated because no particular view is superior (or inferior) to another; rather all perspectives may claim a relatively equal verity.13 Both theology and ethics are stripped of any objective character and allowed, even required, to bear the seal of individual affirmation to attest and maintain its validity. Abortion then becomes a thing of choice, inherently neither wrong or right, for such assessments can only be individually and perhaps culturally, but never ultimately determined. Skeptical of objective or ultimate truths faith and practice must be personally determined as each decides in his/her own eyes what is right and true.

Shaped by modernity and postmodernity, both our culture and church are fundamentally rationalistic. From Enlightenment rationalism we have learned to believe that the real or most real is that which is verifiable, provable, and demonstrable. From postmodern subjectivism we have come to believe that in the absence of universals, diversity of belief and behavior are normative and tolerance of this reality is the most reasonable ethic. Underlying this perspective is an optimistic theology which understands human reason and deductions as tantamount to God’s will and mind. God has become a transcendent, unknowable, and uninvolved spectator. Naturalism,14 has replaced supernaturalism to become the regnant belief system from which traditions are evaluated and ethics defined. Since God’s will is seen as either unknowable (postmodernism) and little or no different than that which may be rationally deduced (modernism), our concepts of right and wrong are determined not by deductions made from God’s self revelation but from individually or culturally determined perspectives perceived to be most reasonable and most functional. Ironically (at least for the church) the issue of God’s will has become inapplicable. In a rational-individualistic culture we are left to determine a course that makes the most sense for an individual and is most practically useful in meeting their needs or solving the difficulties they face. Because such answers cannot be universal in any real sense, rational ethics are ultimately relative,15 subjective, and utilitarian. It is from this premise that the church has approached abortion, sexuality, ordination standards, and nearly every other ethical issue it has faced in the last forty years.

Shaped by modernity and postmodernity, both our culture and church are fundamentally utilitarian. We are less concerned with ideas than practice, theory than pragmatism. If reality is determined by demonstrability, value is determined by practicality. From diet plans to self improvement, from doctrine to ministry, what we most esteem is that which best works. In approaching abortion, our guiding principle is not concern for some ultimate right or wrong but what works best to solve a specific difficulty, namely, a “problem pregnancy.” Utilitarianism has become the basis of our ethics and theology nothing more than a divine justification for what we have already decided is best, true, and expedient.

Personhood, Abortion and a Rational-Subjective Age

These intellectual pressures and influences have redefined our understanding of personhood and it is this “new” understanding that most affects our current ethical and theological debates. Skepticism, individualism, rationalism, and utilitarianism have defined our perception of God, ourselves, our theology and our ethics. Under these influences, personhood has become perceived in essentially volitional-experiential terms. That is, a person is one who possesses both a will and specific personal existence which is both determined by and made manifest in subjective experiences. Full personhood is realized where these realities are allowed full expression, while, conversely, personhood is diminished where they are restricted, annulled or denied.

The effects of this on our theology and ethics are obvious. From the Enlightenment we have believed as axiomatic the premise that “man is endowed by his Creator with certain inalienable rights.” Volitional personhood requires the free and unrestricted exercise of individual rights, be they gun rights, property rights, democratic rights, reproductive rights or others. Thus, to be human is to possess, as our own, certain rights and freedoms. The church, accepting uncritically a volitional-experiential anthropology has made itself the defender of personal choice and liberties, tacitly accepting the maintenance of free volition as tantamount to realizing and maintaining personhood as God created it to exist. To deny a person’s right to have an abortion, to refuse a gay man’s right to serve God in ordained office, to denounce choice of lifestyle or behavior is nothing less than the stripping of the inalienable right of personal choice and thus the corrosion of full personhood.

This is only deepened and furthered by postmodern influences which have led us to understand that personhood is not merely volitional but experiential. Here life is defined by subjective experience thus making experience life’s primary reality. The experiences we bring to choice and the choices we make from subjective experiences are deemed as fundamentally and primarily valid. We possess or own our lives, are masters of them and alone determine what is right and best. Full or right expression of these attributes leads to the full actualization of personhood, while the limiting, loss, or denial of any or all is seen in turn to be destructive to the concept and reality of a person. Value and truth are determined by what helps, fulfills, equips, or encourages me.

Again, the effects on our debates are obvious. With ultimate truth unknowable and the Bible ultimately meaningless, with individual volition and experience the definition of personhood, with life understood as a personal right and possession, and with truth a personal and thus relative reality, our theology has taken a decidedly un-Reformed characteristic. Our theology and ethics are done now “from below,” being wholly shaped by subjective feelings, personal opinions, and cultural values. No longer is humanity defined by God in his self revelation; instead it is God who is defined by our opinions and experiences and thus made to take a shape and will that affirms our a priori choices, beliefs, and ethics. Our contemporary worldview has made God no more than the One who divinely affirms our choices, attitudes, and beliefs, however diverse, contradictory, and vapid they may be. In the end, this is not Reformed theology but idolatry, the making of God into the image and being we desire and the raising of our own perceptions and opinions to the level of ultimate. And it is this idolatry that has often shaped the church’s faith and practice, from abortion to ordination standards.

Persons in Communion

The Reformed (and biblical) view of personhood is defined by completely different criteria. In the Reformed tradition existence is not predicated on subjective volition or experientialism but upon the decisive act of God’s addressing humanity as a covenant partner. We are addressed as the intended recipients of the Word of God and it is this address and the consequent relationship it creates that renders us human, persons in communion with God. This address is not limited to age, sex, race, economics, or education, but is addressed to human life, at every age in every place. From the womb until death we remain God’s, alive by his Spirit, our lives defined by his will.

God’s addressing us with His word reveals the utter (ontological) distinction between our two realities. We are addressed as creatures by our Creator, as finite by One who is eternal. But this does not take a high and heavy hand. Rather, we are joyously greeted and addressed as those who have been granted the gift of life by One who desires our relationship. The fact that this life is given reveals that it is not us but Another who is Lord. This new life is granted and exists—undeniably in our theology—from conception. For life is not mere bios, life-force, or personal energy. It begins and ever remains a gift of God who sustains every moment and remains involved through its whole course. Human existence is not a right but a loan, not a possession but a gift and as such it is to be lived in response to God’s Word by those who are ontologically and volitionally under it. Because God has so gifted us and thus revealed himself as Creator and Life giver, our ethic must reflect this dependence and contingency. Personhood is defined not by personal choice but Divine act, not by our will but God’s.

God’s address comes not to persons, but a person, singularly addressed as a covenant partner and being in communion. Personhood is defined not by subjective will, reason, or experience but God’s choice and command. This address relates to all, yet not in some vague, anonymous totality but to specific and unique individuals. God’s personal address calls each to that life they were created to know. Each life then must be honored, protected, and given free access to hear this Word. And each person is to be held then to this high and immutable responsibility to care, honor, and defend life as God’s own. It is not personal rights or experiences we seek to protect but life itself, personally given, individually addressed by a loving Creator Lord who has given His Word that each may know and enjoy Him forever.

On the list could go. God’s address defines our existence, describes its course, purpose and goal, provides its meaning, demands its obedience, and meets its every need. Each of us is more than “our stories,” more than the sum of our experiences. “In him,” the Scriptures say, “we live and move and have our being.” If this is so, it stands opposed to the modern/postmodern worldview that has too long been allowed free reign to shape our theology and ethics.

A Basis-based Ethic

Theology and ethics are inextricably bound. Properly expressed and understood theology will always seek to create a practical response through which faith may be concretely manifest. Ethics, when properly done will be founded upon a valid basis from which its goals and parameters are defined. As a church we are concerned with theological ethics, that is, ethics raised in response to God’s acts of redemption and revelation. Where the subjective, romantic, or utilitarian are made determinative, where these or other “words” are allowed near or equal authority to the one Word then the resulting ethic can be called neither theological nor Christian. And it is precisely these perspectives that have governed the policy of the PC (USA) on abortion. Taking the visage of piety and spirituality our current understanding of abortion is in fact clothed in the values of our surrounding culture.

Theology does indeed matter. It is time for the church, at every level, to turn again to honest, serious, and committed theological work in the area of abortion. This may begin in several ways. First, a new study of abortion, from a theological position, must be undertaken by the PC (USA). This will not only address the many inadequacies of the 1992 report, it will provide what our denomination has yet to possess: a theological statement on the nature, purpose, and care for life, a statement that provides a sound theological basis and clear ethical response to it.

Second, abortion must be allowed to become an open discussion across the larger church. Because of the vast theological and ethical issues at stake and because the issues involved touch not only abortion but the debates around Christology, ordination standards, and general revitalization of the church, they should be taken up by the whole church. Abortion and the larger issue of doing proper theological and ethical work are the responsibility of the whole church. It is time for the church to proclaim a biblical ethic based on Reformed theology that enhances, encourages, and defends life at every level.

This article first appeared in Theology Matters, Vol. 8, No. 3 (May/Jun 2002).