Wright Gets Abortion Wrong

This transcript was generated from the episode’s YouTube captions and lightly edited for readability: filler words and the mid-show announcements have been removed. It may still contain transcription errors.

Hello friends. Why is it that otherwise smart people get very dumb when it comes to the issue of abortion? We’ll talk about it on this edition of the Case for Life Show. Thanks for joining us. Great to have you with us. Before we get started, I want to remind you that we have a course called Prolife 101 that will equip you to be smart on abortion, not dumb. And you can visit the websites to get information on that. And I want to tell you that it’s important in this day and age to be intelligent, thoughtful, and clear because a lot of intelligent people today are not very clear when it comes to the topic and ethics of abortion.

We’re going to talk about an example of that today. Now, before I get started, let me say this. It’s important when people who are otherwise good apologist or otherwise good defenders of the Christian worldview when they say dumb things on something like abortion or gay marriage, it’s right to criticize them. But I think it’s important to set a little balance and point to the good things they’ve done and not just completely sweep them away. And what I want to talk about today is a recent set of comments from theologian Tom Wright or NT Wright as he’s known.

You may have heard of Tom Wright. I’ll tell you something. He said something very dumb on abortion recently and we’re going to talk about that. But I was almost tempted to overlook it. And you might be thinking why would I overlook that? Because Tom Wright has written without question the most robust defense of the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, this is his book here, the resurrection of the son of God. It is a brilliant defense of the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

He debunks all the naturalistic counterex examples and counterarguments that try to disprove the resurrection. He makes a very strong case that history is objective and we should investigate it trying to get at the truth. That no history is not merely constructed from one’s viewpoint. There are actual facts and there’s actual evidence we can look at to determine if the resurrection happened. And he comes to the conclusion that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is overwhelming. I read his book in grad school.

I still refer to it often whenever I give talks relating to the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and I commend that book to your reading the resurrection of the son of God. But I don’t know why but as my colleague Greg Cunningham points out when it comes to the topic of abortion Christians who are intelligent immediately suffer it seems about an 80 to 90 drop point a point drop in their IQ. They suddenly can’t think clearly. They’re brilliant at thinking clearly on other issues related to theology, related to apologetics.

And suddenly though, when it comes to abortion, it’s like they have no ability to think clear and come to the right conclusions. And Tom Wright is an example of this recently. Here’s what he did. He was on an interview, and I’m going to read you some of what he said. What he basically argued is that Christians may terminate a pregnancy when there’s an issue of rape, fetal deformity, or the health of the mother might be in question. He wanted to make it clear that he was not advocating for all abortions.

So, I’ll read you here the exact quote he starts with. He says there are many many cases where it’s about the mother’s health versus the health of the child or whatever and particularly that as you cited in cases of rape and incest there may be very very strong arguments for saying this ought not never to have happened. Well, I agree rape should never happen to a woman and it’s a terrible tragedy when a woman is ever assaulted. He goes on though, and with sorrow and because we do not want to do this in principle, we have a bit of shame and we have sorrow, but the best thing to do as soon as possible terminate the pregnancy.

Now, right away as I read that, I thought to myself, why feel shame about terminating a pregnancy if there’s nothing wrong with abortion in principle? If it’s not wrong to kill a human fetus, then why should we feel sorrow or shame about doing it? He wants to have his cake here and eat it, too. He wants to say, “Look, abortion’s not good. We shouldn’t applaud it. We should do it with a sense of shame and sorrow. We ought to grieve it, but you know what?

Go ahead. It’s probably the best thing to do.” This isn’t any different than Bill Clinton saying in the early 1990s that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. And of course, the obvious question is, why should it be rare? If there’s nothing morally significant about killing a human fetus in the womb, why care how many abortions there are? Who cares if it’s rare or if it’s common? And in this case with NT Wright, why feel shame if there’s nothing in principle wrong with abortion?

Of course, he does not answer that question. So, he goes on here. He talks about how Christians historically have rejected abortion and that’s true. As a historian, he has to know that. He is u very qualified to look at the history of Christianity and he comes to the right conclusion on that where a lot of people today don’t. Christians all the way back to the first century in Palestine, the first century Christians were absolutely opposed to abortion. Their literature makes that abundantly clear.

You look at things like the dedicay and it’s clear that abortion is not just frowned upon, it’s condemned robustly. He’s right about that. He goes on to say this though. It’s okay to terminate early pregnancies because it doesn’t appear to abort a viable human being. So basically he’s going to put forward a standard that viability is what determines whether or not one has a right to life. Now he wants to make it clear that he’s not advocating for all abortions. But here’s the problem.

Once you make the argument that viability is what gives you a right to life, then you’ve just justified every abortion leading up to the point of viability. So he may say, “Oh, I only want abortion in cases of fetal deformity or when it’s a hardship for the mother or the health of the mother is in question or the health of the fetus. I don’t want it for any reason.” But the minute you say that the unborn are not valuable human beings, that they’re not imagebears until viability, which is the essence of his argument here, that viability is what gives you the right to life, then you can’t stipulate, oh, but only in cases of deformity, only in cases of hardship or threats to the mother’s life or health.

You’ve opened up the door that there’s no valuable human being there until viability. Now, of course, viability itself is a problematic standard for determining who lives or dies. Viability does not measure the intrinsic worth of the human being. In this case, the human in the womb. Viability measures our technology. A child that is in the womb at 23 weeks to 24 weeks in New York City or any other major US city with state-of-the-art medical facilities can be viable weeks ahead of full term with no problem at all.

They can initiate early delivery, a C-section, they can get that child into a neonatal unit and provide the care it needs and it’s viable. But that same child in Bangladesh may not be viable until well past 24 weeks because the medical technology is not as up todate as a US or Western nation major city is. So it measures our technology to see how absurd this viability standard is. Think of this. A woman who’s pregnant, let’s say at 24 weeks, boards an airplane at JFK in New York, and she’s going to fly to let’s say India where viability we’ll say is at 28 weeks, not 24.

I don’t know that to be a fact, but bear with me. We’ll just say some third world country. Okay. She gets on the plane and she’s there in New York where her child would live at 24 weeks. Do we really want to say that her child is valuable with a right to life because it’s v it’s viable in New York as long as she’s in US airspace? But the minute she leaves US airspace and let’s say she’s landing in India, she enters Indian airspace, does her child suddenly change from valuable human being with a right to life to one that has no right to life simply because the technology on the ground isn’t as good?

I mean, that’s just silly. And why NT Wright would make a silly argument like that is beyond me. He goes on to make some other things here. He says, listen, when you combine the possible severe threat to the mother’s health, the possible deformity of the child and the possible mental health issues the mother might have bringing this previable pregnancy to term. That if you take all that together, it presents somehow a compelling case for pursuing an abortion. Here’s the problem with that.

You can’t just string a bunch of bad arguments together and think you end up with one that holds water. This is what Anthony Flu, the famous atheist, referred to as the leaky bucket syndrome. You can’t just string a bunch of facious arguments together and think you’ve now got a persuasive case. Your cumulative case is only as good as your weakest link. If there’s a weakness in that argument, the whole cumulative case falls apart. And every link here with Tom Wright’s standards of what constitutes a justification for abortion is a weak link.

He wants to go further and say we need to deal with this pastorally. Now I want to stop right here. Whenever you hear someone say, “Hey, listen. We need to do more than just look at this ethically or theologically, we need to be pastoral,” that is almost always a code word for we’re going to compromise. Get ready. Some principle is about to be thrown under the bus in the name of being pastoral. We saw this recently, for example, with Fuller Seminary.

Fuller Seminary wants to have its cake and eat it, too. It published new guidelines on sexuality and the Bible. And the first paragraph reads really good. It says, listen, we affirm the biblical sexual ethic that sex is to be within marriage of one man and one woman, and that is the biblical guideline. But the very next paragraph, it says, “However, we understand that there are other narratives out there that are just as legitimate.” What? You can’t just say it’s the biblical ethic on sexuality that is exclusive between one man and one woman in the covenant of marriage and then say others who reject that are equally legitimate.

That doesn’t work. That I mean you’re trying to have your cake and eat it too. And what it what often happens is people want to say, “Oh, we think abortion’s bad. We condemn it, but we need a pastoral approach.” Now look, there’s nothing wrong for saying women who face problematic pregnancies, whether they’re the result of rape or they’re carrying a child with deformities or there’s health risks involved, that they deserve our compassion and care. Everybody agrees with that and there is a pastoral response.

But here’s the pastoral response. You don’t throw ethics under the bus in the name of being pastoral. And that’s what Tom Wright does here. He says this. Indeed, one of the problems has been particularly in the Roman Catholic Church when women, say a girl who’s been raped or who’s had incest committed on her, she then dis she then goes to an unmarried man from the Catholic hierarchy. And you have unmarried men telling her what she can and cannot do. Okay, stop right there.

I think that’s the dumbest thing he says. He ought to know better. Arguments do not have genders. They rise and fall on their merits. You can’t dismiss an argument by saying, “Oh, that’s a man making it.” That’s just not at all acceptable from a logical point of view. In fact, we could say this. Let’s say that these priests that he refers to, and I think he’s hinting about this, let’s say that they are ethically challenged, they’re guilty of all kinds of wrongdoing morally.

Suppose that’s true. That doesn’t mean that the church’s argument on abortion is wrong. It could still be right even if the priests in question are immoral individually. Now, I’m not arguing they are immoral. I’m just granting his line of reasoning here and saying it doesn’t work. The argument for the pro-life view stands or falls on its merits, not the person making it. We’ve said this again and again on this show, and it can’t be repeated enough. It’s so often in today’s world that everybody wants to make something about the personal.

It doesn’t matter whether that woman is talking to another woman, a man, a Christian, a non-Christian in terms of the validity and soundness of the argument that’s in question. So, he’s engaging here in an odd ad hominemum attack. He’s not refuting the actual arguments that are in play here. And that’s just too bad for a guy that is a whole lot smarter than this. Again, the main problem I have is this. He wants to have his cake and eat it too.

He wants to say abortion is not good. Christianity has historically rejected it and we should frown upon it and perhaps we should feel some shame and we ought to feel some sadness when it’s when we do it. But there are cases where it might be the right thing to do. Now let me get to what is the most fundamental problem with his argument and it’s this. He assumes the unborn are not human. Go back to what he said earlier where there may be cases where a woman is has been sexually assaulted and is pregnant or she has a pregnancy involving a child with physical deformities that it might be in her best interest to have the abortion early.

And get it done. That might be the best thing to do. Notice these arguments assume the unborn are not human. For example, look at it this way. Would he argue that it’s okay to kill a 2-year-old that has physical deformities? Suppose we had a child with Down syndrome in front of us and it’s a hardship on his parents to raise him, which undoubtedly it is. It’s challenging. I know we have families in our church that have children with disabilities and it is a challenge, but these parents heroically raised these kids.

But would NT Wright suggest that it’s okay to kill a toddler with physical or cognitive challenges? Would that be okay? I think he would say no. In fact, I know he would say no. So the only reason he can give for treating a human fetus poorly because of its deformities or challenges is to assume that the fetus in question is not human. But that’s question begging because the entire abortion debate comes down to the question, what is the unborn? And Wright makes no argument for why we should consider the unborn nonhuman and not having a right to life other than to vaguely appeal to viability.

But again, no argument as to why viability is valuegiving. I mean, think of it another way. Let’s suppose we say that you don’t have a right to life until you can live independent of another human being. That viability is indeed the standard. Okay. I wonder what Tom Wright would do with the Henchel twins, for example. Many of you have seen Brittany and Abigail Henchel. They are now in their early 30s, but the press has followed them since infancy. And here’s why.

They are conjoined twins. You look at a picture of them, and if you go online, you can see pictures of them from infancy all the way up to their current stage of life, adults in their early to mid30s. You look at these two girls, they’re joined literally at the hip. You see one set of legs from the waist up, two body trunks, two shoulders, two heads. Now, what’s interesting is you cannot separate these two women without killing both of them because they share a circulatory system.

They share many vital organs. If you tried to separate them, you would kill them. But if it’s true, as NT Wright seems to suggest here, that viability is the standard for being a human being, then it would be okay to kill those young women. And that’s just ridiculous. Another thing here, Mr. Wright says he doesn’t know if his if his mind can determine whether or not the unborn are human at a previable state. Listen, if we don’t know if the unborn or human, we should not be killing them.

Ignorance of a being’s status is no justification for intentionally killing it. For example, suppose you are driving home tonight at the twilight hour and you see what looks in front of you as a old rough coat in the middle of the road, an old long coat. You think it’s a coat, but it could be an old man who had a little bit too much to drink and fell in the street. Are you going to run the coat over? No, you’re not.

If you even think it’s possible there’s a human being there instead of a coat, you will air on the side of caution and you will go around the coat so as to avoid killing an innocent human being. Or use another example that Ronald Reagan famously put forward. If you’re out hunting and you see bushes rustling in front of you and you don’t know if it’s that 10point buck you’ve been after or your best buddy, are you going to open fire? I suppose not unless you’re Dick Cheney, right?

For those of you that didn’t get that, Dick Cheney when he was vice president accidentally shot his best friend when they were out hunting. The friend lived. There was no harm to the friend, but it became a running joke that Dick Cheney shot his best friend. Well, if you don’t know if it’s that deer or a human being, you should heir on the side of caution. If NT Wright clearly does not know the status of the unborn, then he shouldn’t be advocating abortion because he might be advocating intentionally killing an innocent human being.

And this is something we ought not be doing. So again, I want to make it clear. I don’t want to just with a broad brush condemn everything NT Wright has done. Again, this book has been a valuable help to Christian apologists. The resurrection of the son of God. I do commend it to your reading. But again, it’s just sad when we see Christian people who ought to know better, who are otherwise brilliant, suddenly wander into muddled thinking when it comes to the issue of abortion.

Remember our argument is very clear. Premise one, it’s wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. Premise two, abortion intentionally kills an innocent human being. Conclusion, therefore, abortion is wrong. Now, if NT Wright wants to show where that argument is either invalid, unsound, or unclear, I’m all ears. But the vague way he advocates for abortion in this particular example is very troubling and very sad to see from a guy who really ought to know better. We’re going to take a quick break and when we come back I want to say something more about Fuller Seminary that I mentioned a moment ago and why that is a particularly troubling thing for us as Christians.

I look forward to seeing you on the other side.

Friends. It’s true. You can equip yourself with the pro-life 101 course to answer stuff like what we’ve been looking at here with NT Wright. You’ll be able to make a case for what you believe. And that is critically important in today’s world where people want to muddy the waters when it comes to issues like abortion. Now very quickly before I jump to Fuller Seminary, let me tell you why Christians should not be in not be confused biblically on abortion. The biblical argument against abortion goes like this.

Premise one, all humans have value because they bear the image of God. And Tom Wright knows this. Genesis 1 teaches this. James 3 teaches this. Both old and new covenants. Premise two. Because humans bear the image of God, the shedding of innocent blood, by which we mean the intentional killing of an innocent human being, is strictly forbidden. Exodus 23 teaches this. Proverbs 6 teaches this, Isaiah 1 teaches this, and the list goes on and on. But there’s some examples right there.

Premise three, the unborn are human from conception. We know this from the science of embryology. Therefore, conclusion. The commands against the shedding of innocent blood apply to the unborn as they do everybody else. The unborn are imagebearers just like you and me. Therefore, it’s wrong to intentionally kill them. That’s a very straightforward argument that somehow escaped Tom Wright’s notice. But let me jump over to Fuller Seminary because many of you saw last week and beginning the week before news that Fuller Seminary, one of the prominent evangelical seminaries in the country, was loosening or changing its position on sexual ethics.

It had historically been a place where conservative pastors would go to be trained theologically. I mean, think about some of the greats that came out of Fuller. Dr. Fuller himself, George Elden Lad, many others that came out of Fuller and taught there that were biblically grounded, sound, and had a high view of scripture. But now what we have is Fuller Seminary saying, “Oh yeah, we affirm a traditional and historical biblical ethic on sexuality. However, we now recognize there are other narratives that are just as legitimate and we’re not going to condemn those narratives.

Well, that doesn’t work. Imagine me saying, “Look, spousal abuse is wrong, but I recognize that there are other people who have a different view about beating your wife, and therefore, we’re going to acknowledge the legitimacy of that view.” But, oh, we think it’s wrong to beat your wife. We affirm a traditional view of marriage where spouses are treated charitably, but we will recognize the legitimacy of others who have a different viewpoint on this. Men and women, that’s relativism that is not pastoral.

And the thing Fuller did it, like Tom Wright tried to do, is pass this off as being pastoral and nuanced. No, it’s not. It’s muddled thinking. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too. Fuller Seminary needs to take a stand. Either say, “Look, anything goes. We’re just not going to weigh in on sexual ethics. You do as you want. You do you. You do as you want. And we’re going to sit here and we’re going to say privately we affirm biblical morality.

But you want to go a different way. We’re not going to say that’s wrong. That’s just as legitimate as our view. That’s relativism. That is not biblical theology. And we’re at a state right now, men and women, where Christians are going to have to be clear on what we believe in terms of theology and right and wrong. This is no time to try to muddy the waters. And I hate to say it, but too many pastors, too many Christian leaders muddy the waters on politics, theology, and morality.

And they try to have it both ways. They want to pretend they still are in our camp that they hold our orthodox views when in fact they no longer do. If you claim to be pro-life, but you tell people to go vote for people who promote abortion wholesale, as some of our leaders did leading up to the last election, they not only, you know, they didn’t just stop with saying, “Look, I have reasons why I can’t endorse a guy like Donald Trump.” They went further and said, “You should endorse and vote for the candidate that was going to promote abortion wholesale, that was going to promote transgender surgeries on children wholesale, that was going to promote homosexual marriage wholesale.

I’m sorry, but once you do that, you were way beyond saying, “Look, I can’t vote for a particular candidate for conscience reasons.” Okay, I might disagree, but I can at least respect that. But telling people that it’s just as legitimate or that they should endorse something the Bible clearly condemns is not being pastoral. That’s being a compromiser. That’s going outside the boundaries of biblical thinking. And we need clarity, not confusion, not muddled talk. Again, our course, Prolife 101, can help you do that.

You’ll learn to see through all these things. See our website for more details on that. Thanks for joining us today. I look forward to seeing you on our next show.