The contemporary discourse surrounding abortion in American media frequently suffers from a fundamental deficiency in rigorous philosophical and theological analysis. This deficiency was recently exemplified in a segment on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, wherein host Joe Scarborough advanced arguments regarding abortion and Christian theology that warrant careful examination and substantive critique. Scarborough’s central contention that abortion cannot be considered a core Christian concern because Jesus Christ never explicitly mentioned the practice represents a troubling oversimplification of biblical hermeneutics and moral reasoning. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the arguments presented on Morning Joe, critiques the show’s approach to this complex ethical issue, and offers a formal analytical perspective on the theological and philosophical dimensions of the abortion debate.
The Argument from Silence: A Flawed Hermeneutical Approach
Scarborough’s primary argument rests on what philosophers and theologians recognize as an argument from silence. Specifically, he contends that because Jesus did not explicitly mention abortion in the recorded Gospel accounts, and because abortion was practiced during the first century, Christians cannot legitimately claim that opposition to abortion represents a central tenet of Christian ethics. This reasoning suffers from multiple critical deficiencies that undermine its persuasive force.
First, the argument from silence constitutes a well-recognized logical fallacy. The absence of explicit mention of a particular practice or principle in a given text does not constitute evidence for the permissibility of that practice. Jesus did not explicitly condemn numerous practices that contemporary society universally recognizes as immoral, including various forms of violence, exploitation, and injustice. The failure to mention these specific practices does not indicate divine approval or moral neutrality regarding them.
Second, Scarborough’s argument demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of biblical literature and Christian theological method. The biblical texts, including the Gospels, do not constitute comprehensive ethical codes that exhaustively enumerate every possible moral question. Rather, biblical literature represents what theologians describe as task-oriented theology, addressing specific concerns, questions, and challenges faced by particular communities at particular historical moments. The Pauline epistles, for instance, address concrete issues confronting early Christian communities, not every conceivable ethical question that might arise across subsequent centuries.
The Historical and Cultural Context of Early Christianity
A proper understanding of why abortion receives limited explicit attention in New Testament texts requires careful consideration of the historical and cultural context of early Christianity. The first Christian communities consisted primarily of Jewish converts who maintained a fundamentally Jewish moral framework. Within Second Temple Judaism, the value of human life, including prenatal life, was firmly established through the Torah and subsequent Jewish ethical teaching.
Extra-biblical sources from the period, including the Didache, one of the earliest Christian catechetical texts, explicitly condemn abortion. The Didache presents a moral framework contrasting the way of life with the way of death, categorically placing abortion within the latter. This demonstrates that early Christian communities understood abortion as incompatible with Christian ethics, even if the canonical New Testament texts do not extensively discuss the practice.
Furthermore, the cultural context of ancient Israel and early Jewish Christianity did not create significant temptation toward abortion. Children represented inheritance, the continuation of family lineage, and divine blessing. Barrenness was considered a curse, as evidenced by numerous biblical narratives. In a context where Israel faced hostile surrounding nations, where God had commanded his people to be fruitful and multiply, and where children represented both practical necessity and theological significance, abortion would not have gained cultural traction within Jewish communities. The absence of extensive discussion of abortion in biblical texts reflects not moral ambiguity but rather the absence of significant controversy regarding the practice within the communities to whom these texts were addressed.
The Consistency of Divine Character Across Biblical Testaments
Scarborough’s argument implicitly suggests a discontinuity between Old Testament and New Testament ethics, as if the teachings of Jesus somehow supersede or contradict earlier biblical revelation. This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of Christian theology. Orthodox Christian doctrine maintains that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are one and the same. The book of Hebrews explicitly states that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, affirming the consistency of divine character and moral standards across redemptive history.
The Old Testament contains numerous passages that establish the value of human life and condemn the shedding of innocent blood. Exodus twenty three, Proverbs six, and Isaiah one, among other texts, explicitly prohibit the killing of the innocent. The question regarding abortion, therefore, reduces to a single empirical and philosophical question: Are the unborn innocent human beings? If embryological science and philosophical reasoning establish that the unborn are indeed distinct, living, whole human organisms, then the biblical prohibitions against shedding innocent blood apply with equal force to prenatal human life as to postnatal human life.
The Selectivity of Scarborough’s Hermeneutical Principle
A particularly troubling aspect of Scarborough’s argument is its selective application. He applies the principle that Jesus’s silence indicates permissibility exclusively to abortion, while presumably not applying this principle to numerous other moral questions. Jesus did not explicitly condemn many practices that Scarborough would undoubtedly consider immoral, including various forms of discrimination, exploitation, and violence. The selective application of a hermeneutical principle suggests that the principle itself is not driving the conclusion but rather serving as post-hoc rationalization for a predetermined position.
This selectivity reveals a deeper methodological problem in contemporary moral discourse. When individuals approach complex ethical questions with predetermined conclusions, they frequently engage in motivated reasoning, selectively deploying arguments that support their preferred position while ignoring or dismissing arguments that challenge it. Rigorous ethical analysis requires consistent application of interpretive principles across all relevant cases, not merely those that align with one’s ideological commitments.
The Scientific and Philosophical Dimensions
While Scarborough’s argument focuses on theological considerations, any comprehensive analysis of abortion must engage with scientific and philosophical dimensions of the question. Contemporary embryology establishes that from the moment of conception, a new, genetically distinct human organism begins to exist. This organism directs its own development, grows through cellular reproduction, and maintains functional unity as an integrated whole. These characteristics distinguish living organisms from mere collections of cells or tissues.
The philosophical question concerns whether all human beings possess equal intrinsic dignity and rights, or whether only those human beings who have developed certain capacities possess full moral status. The latter position, which grounds human rights in the possession of certain cognitive or psychological capacities, faces severe philosophical difficulties. It struggles to explain why human rights should be considered equal, why they should be considered inalienable, and why they should extend to human beings who temporarily lack these capacities due to sleep, unconsciousness, or disability.
The Inadequacy of Media Treatment of Complex Ethical Issues
The Morning Joe segment exemplifies a broader problem in contemporary media treatment of complex ethical and philosophical issues. Television news commentary, constrained by time limitations and driven by entertainment value, frequently reduces multifaceted questions to simplistic talking points. Complex arguments are compressed into sound bites, nuanced positions are caricatured, and substantive engagement with opposing viewpoints is replaced by dismissive rhetoric.
This approach disserves the viewing public by creating the illusion that complex questions have simple answers and that those who disagree with one’s position are either ignorant or malicious. Genuine progress on contentious social issues requires good-faith engagement with the strongest versions of opposing arguments, not the construction and demolition of straw men. Media platforms that claim to inform public discourse have a responsibility to model intellectual rigor and charitable interpretation of opposing viewpoints.
The Role of Consciousness and Personhood Arguments
Contemporary defenders of abortion rights frequently argue that human beings acquire moral status only upon developing certain cognitive capacities, particularly consciousness and self-awareness. This argument, advanced by philosophers such as Peter Singer and Michael Tooley, attempts to establish that early human embryos and fetuses lack the properties that ground human rights. However, this position faces multiple serious objections.
First, the argument from consciousness struggles to identify a non-arbitrary threshold for moral status. If consciousness grounds human rights, at what precise level of consciousness do human rights emerge? Does a human being in deep sleep temporarily lose human rights? Do individuals with severe cognitive disabilities possess diminished rights proportional to their reduced cognitive function? These questions reveal the difficulty of grounding equal human rights in variable and developing capacities.
Second, the argument conflates the possession of a capacity with the present exercise of that capacity. A human embryo possesses a rational nature, even though this nature has not yet developed to the point of immediate exercise. The embryo is not a potential human being but rather a human being with potential, an actual human organism at an early stage of development. Just as a two-year-old child possesses reproductive organs even though these organs are not yet functional, a human embryo possesses a rational nature even though this nature has not yet matured to the point of conscious thought.
Conclusion
The arguments presented on Morning Joe regarding abortion and Christian theology demonstrate the inadequacy of superficial engagement with complex ethical questions. Scarborough’s contention that Jesus’s silence regarding abortion indicates that Christians cannot legitimately oppose the practice rests on flawed hermeneutical principles, ignores relevant historical and cultural context, and applies interpretive standards selectively rather than consistently.
A rigorous analysis of abortion requires engagement with multiple dimensions of the question: the scientific facts regarding human embryological development, the philosophical question of what grounds human rights and dignity, the proper interpretation of biblical and theological sources, and the practical implications of various legal and policy approaches. Media platforms that address these questions have a responsibility to model intellectual seriousness and good-faith engagement with opposing viewpoints.
The abortion debate will not be resolved through simplistic appeals to biblical silence or through dismissive characterizations of those who hold opposing views. Progress requires careful reasoning, charitable interpretation, and willingness to follow arguments where they lead rather than deploying arguments selectively to support predetermined conclusions. Morning Joe’s treatment of this issue falls short of these standards and exemplifies the need for more rigorous and substantive public discourse on matters of profound moral significance. The show, and indeed much of contemporary media commentary, needs a wake-up call regarding the intellectual and moral seriousness that complex ethical questions demand.