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.

Are there pro-life arguments Christians should not use? Yes, there are, and I’ll explain why on this edition of the case for life. Welcome friends, great to have you with us. I want to play for you a short clip by a very good Christian Author, a guy by the name of Eric Maxis. You may know him from his book on Dietrich Bon Hoffer or on Wilbur Force. He’s also written on women who have changed history. Prolific author, good Christian worldview guy. He did recently publish a clip on abortion and I want us to watch it and then I’m going to explain to you why I have some concerns about it.

Now, don’t take this as me trying to criti Eric Maxis in general, because he’s a fine author. I just want to take issue with this one way of stating the pro-life case and convey some of my concerns with the way it’s been conveyed in this particular clip. So let’s go ahead and take a look. Okay, here’s the pro lifee punchline, Susanna Wesley, who is so important in world history, undeniably, inescapably important. She was the 25th of 25 children. Her parents didn’t sensibly say: you know what?

We’ve had 20 kids, we’re done. In those days, parents had a lot of kids. This, of course, is almost unbelievable. If she had not been born, Charles and John Wesley would have not been born, would have not been raised by this amazing woman, we wouldn’t have had the Wesleyan Revival, we wouldn’t have had Wilbur Forest, the abolition of the slave trade, all that follows. That is the value of a single human life. All right, first of all, it’s a powerful story.

It’s a heart tug story. A woman who was born into a family with 20 plus other siblings, which strikes us as odd in today’s world. But her parents were not asking the question: what’s in this for us? They were interested bringing into the world children who would make a difference. All of that’s fine. Here is my concern, though. The pro-life argument is not that abortion is wrong because it kills future gifted people. Remember our syllogism. It’s 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. We would argue that abortion is wrong even if it kills a future homeless man, just as wrong as if it kills a future Steve Jobs or a future wilburforce or a future Wesley. Abortion is not wrong because it kills gifted people. It’s wrong because it intentionally kills innocent human beings, whatever their stage of development, whatever gifting they might one day exploit. The fact of the matter is we need to make a good argument that accurately conveys what we are arguing.

And here are my concerns with a clip like this. And again, I’m not trying to pick on a particular author here. I just think this clip is indicative of a lot of the pro-life argumentation that goes on out there. That is problematic. In fact, it’s seldom the case that I will escape a speaking event without someone saying to me something along these lines. Why didn’t you use the most powerful pro-life argument we have? You ignored it completely. And they’ll go on to say: you should have mentioned, for example, that we’ve probably aborted the doctor Who would have cured cancer or maybe, a future gifted musician like the next Beethoven.

Well, whoever says that to me didn’t listen to the argument I was making, because, again, we’re not arguing that abortion is wrong because it deprives us of future benefits from people who are loss to abortion. Rather, are argument is that abortion is wrong because it’s always wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being, and that’s what abortion does. What that individual becomes in the future is irrelevant to the claim we are actually making here, okay. So why am I troubled by that?

Well, number one is it distorts the pro-life argument, and I just explained why on that. But second and this is something I think a lot of Christians don’t draw clear distinctions on it confuses intrinsic dignity with attributed dignity. Now you might be going, wait a minute, that sounds really complex. Let me unpack that for you. If you look at, for example, a beach bum on one hand who does nothing but lay on the beach and waste his life away although that sounds kind of a good way to go you might think.

Think of a beach bum on one hand and a university scholar on the other, a professor who is mastered in area of expertise. For example, let’s say he is a renowned physician who’s developed cures for all kinds of illnesses and he is as smart as they come. He’s brilliant. He went to Ivy League schools. He applied himself, worked hard to master his craft. We rightly attribute to that Professor what we call attributed dignity, and by attributed dignity here’s what we mean.

We give credit for the effort he has put in to expand his human flourishing. He has applied himself in such a way by going to school, learning his craft, investing lots of money to learn and be the best he can at what he does, and so we rightly attribute to him honor in virtue of the position he has achieved through hard work and Merit. That’s what we mean by attributed dignity. So we, for example, if we were trying to decide, are we going to hire the beach bun or the university professor at a medical school?

I think we know the answer here. But the reason we would hire the professor has nothing to do with his intrinsic dignity. It has to do with his attributed dignity. Now, intrinsic dignity is different. The beach bum and the university Professor have equal intrinsic dignity, and by that we mean each is valuable simply because of the kind of thing they are. A human being, which is Christian, we know, bear the image of their maker. But when what happens is when we start making arguments that you know what, when we have abortion, we are potentially losing some really gifted people who might help us in the future, we are getting wrong our concept of dignity.

Because abortion is not wrong because it deprives us of something in the future. It’s wrong because it intentionally kills a human being who has equal intrinsic dignity to every other human, regardless of your economic status, regardless of your academic status, regardless of your level of learning or professional success. Attributed dignity has to do with our position that we have earned through Merit. Intrinsic dignity has to do with what we are by nature, whose image we bear by nature, and that is equal for all of us.

And when we say abortion is wrong, what we are essentially arguing? Uing is that it is wrong because it strips a dignity Bearer, someone who Bears the image of their maker, of their life, and it’s that. It’s that, that intrinsic dignity that’s in play here, not the attributed dignity. Now, sometimes this gets confused by people on the academic and cultural left. They will say things like this: well, you know, you prol lifers talk about dignity, but you don’t want equal pay for workers.

You want people to be paid in a way that isn’t equal. That is unfair. Why you want the CEO to be making six figures, but you’ll pay the janitor just above minimum wage. That’s an attack on human dignity. That is not treating people with dignity to have unequal pay. I beg to differ. And again, once again, what’s happening Here is people are confusing attributed dignity with intrinsic dignity. The janitor and the compy CEO have equal intrinsic dignity in virtue of being Human beings who equally bear the image of God.

They are valuable for what they are intrinsically, not what they do functionally now. It is also the case, though and we need to make this distinction very clear that the two do not have equal economic value. The janitor has a different economic value to the company than the CEO does. For example, the CEO goes to bed every night worrying about the following questions: how do I keep people employed? How do I turn a profit for this company so that everyone can benefit that’s involved with it?

How do I make sure I account for marketing changes that every day, it seems like the equation and goalposts are being moved? How do I keep our company competitive and on the edge of public mindset so that we continue to be relevant to an ever Changing Marketplace? Okay, the janitor does not go to bed every night with that on his brain. The CEO does. And oh, by the way, the CEO invested a lot of money going to get, perhaps, an MBA, going to grad school in business, perhaps taking, additional cert certification courses, maybe doing internships to sharpen his or her skill set so they could run the company effectively.

The janitor does not have the same economic value to the company that the CEO does, but they have absolutely equal intrinsic value, or dignity, if you will. So we want to make sure we don’t confuse the two and my concern with these kinds of pro-life arguments that go along the lines of: well, we may have aborted a future John Wesley, or we may have, aborted, a great hymnwriter like Charles Wesley, or hey, maybe we’ve lost the doctor that would have cured cancer or AIDS, or covid, who knows? Pick whatever you want.

The point is, when we make those kinds of arguments, we are getting wrong. The concept of the IMO day. Now here’s what’s interesting in scripture. Scripture teaches that all humans have value because they bear the image of God. So far, so good. Here’s where people mess it up and where things get really. They start trying to figure out: well, what does it mean to be made in the image of God? And they start putting forth things that aren’t found in scripture.

I’ve looked in scripture and nowhere does it tell me that there’s some trait that means I’m made in the image of God. For example, you’re not going to find in scripture that the IMO day is linked to rational thought, the ability to reason, the ability to have a moral compass, the ability to interact with your environment or even your ability to commune with God. Scripture simply says: all humans have value because they bear the image of God. Genesis 1 teaches that, James 3 teaches that.

It’s taught throughout the pages of scripture in between. But what I want you to see here is this: the moment we start linking the imod day, the image of God, to traits that none of us share equally, and traits that may come and go in the course of our lifetimes, we are in deep dooo, if you can pardon the term. Sorry to be so earthy there, but the reality is the minute you link traits, or link the aod day to traits that come and go, the minute you link the aod day to that, you’re in a position where you’re going to result in savage inequality.

And here’s why. Because if it’s those traits that give us value rather than simply being Human, if it’s those traits, we don’t share them equally, which means those that have more of those traits would have greater fundamental rights and be more in the image of God than those of us with less, and that’s a deeply problematic position to hold. So we want to be careful that we don’t go beyond what scripture says. Scripture simply says all humans have value because they bear the image of God.

Period, stop right there. We air when we start trying to go into. Well, what is it that gives us the AO day? Is it our rational self? Is it our, intellectual abilities, our cognitive abilities that are greater than other animals? No, it simply says humans have value because they bear the image of God. Now we know it’s not cognitive ability, and here’s why angels in heaven have greater cognitive ability than humans here on earth. But Angels aren’t said in scripture to be made in the image of God, the way that man is.

So I think we can say that tying the image of God to traits is not a good way to go. So we don’t want to make an argument for the pro-life position that really assumes the performance view of human value, and by performance view I mean the idea that what gives us our dignity and value are things we can immediately exercise, like cognitive ability, like rational thought, like self-awareness, valuing Your Existence over time or having immediately exercisable desires. All of those are things that are sufficient for us to recognize they’re being a person, but they are not necessary for you to be a person.

You may lack them and still be yourself. And the reason for this is we recognize that humans, in their identity and in their value, are grounded in the kind of thing they are, not some function they perform. A quick way of saying that is: humans are equal by nature, not function. We’re valuable for what we are, not what we do. For example, think about to borrow an example from a colleague, Stephanie Grey Connor’s imagine the difference between an omba and an embryo.

Both are not rational, right? I mean, the amiba is not rational, it’s not self-aware, it does not value his existence because of the kind of thing it is. Amibas, by nature, do not have the capacity for self-awareness, self-consciousness or valuing their existence. Okay. But an embryo does have that. It just can’t exercise it yet because it is too young, it is yet to mature to the level where it can function as a self-aware entity. But by nature, the amiba is not a rational being.

The embryo is, and so if we look at it that way, we can see that the only foundation for human equality is to say that we are equal because of our nature, not the functions we perform, which will always vary person to person. You can also point out that these arguments result in savage inequality. As I mentioned a moment ago, the minute you ground human value in traits that none of us share equally, that come and go, whether you pick self-awareness, rationality, ability to interact with your environment or whatever arbitrary trait that somebody picks out.

That, by the way, they never tell us why those traits are value giving in the first place. Whatever arbitrary trait they select, none of us are going to have it equally and it may come and go in the course of our lifetime. For example, you could lose self-awareness, regain it and lose it again. That’s a fact of life. People, for example, may come in and out of Comas, temporary, reversible Comas that while they’re in those Comas they are not self-aware, they don’t see themselves existing over time, but we still recognize them as valuable human beings.

Why? Because all their, although their traits may change, although their ability to immediately exercise some function like self-awareness may come and go by nature, they remain the same kind of being, the same exact being they were through all the changes of their physical lives. That’s the reality that we mean when we say we ground human value and identity in our nature, not in our functions that vary from person to person. Now, when we come back, we’re going to take a break.

When we come back, I want to say just a few things about a worldview of the human person that’s idling behind these kinds of arguments that are. Value is based on what we can do functionally, not what we are by nature. I’ll go into that in just a minute. We’ll take that up just after this break.

Welcome back everybody. Great to have you with us before the break. I mentioned that I wanted to talk about a world viw of the human person that lurks beneath these debates we’re having as a culture over what makes us valuable in the first place. On one hand, you have pro-lifer, embracing broadly what we would call the endowment view that says humans are equal and valuable by their nature, not some function they perform. They are equal and valuable because we all equally share a human nature, and if you’re a Christian or a theist, you realize that that human nature we bear is a reflection of the image of God in us.

The omod day, Or if you’re a secular person, you want to argue this way. You could say: well, all humans by nature are rational, even though they can’t immediately exercise their rational faculties. For example, an amoeba isn’t rational because of the kind of thing it is. Amibas, by nature, are not the kind of thing that will ever be rational. An embryo, however, even at the earliest stages of development, is a rational being by nature. It is the type of being that, as it grows and matures, as its Essence unfolds, it does not become a new kind of thing.

Rather, it develops according to the kind of thing. It is by nature, and embryos, by nature, will become rational unless they are prevented from doing so by illness, disease or injury. But even if that injury happens to them by nature, they remain a rational being or an image Bearer in the Christian world view, regardless of their ability to function that way. Now, the world view that would argue against this is what is known as the performance view of human value, and that view goes like this: being human is nothing special, it doesn’t mean squat.

Quite frankly, what matters is strictly your functional abilities, your ability to have consciousness that is immediately exercisable, your ability to be self-aware and value your existence over time, or some other cognitive function they arbitrarily select as being value giving. Again, they don’t ever argue for why it’s value giving, but they assert that it is so. But what I want you to see is this: the performance view and the endowment view are at a clash in our culture. They’re butting heads right now in debates over abortion, doctor assisted suicide and things like that.

The thing to keep in mind is this: the world view of the human person idling behind performance accounts a human value, meaning the idea that we’re only valuable for what we can do, not what we are by nature is a worldview known as body self dualism. And let me simplify what that means. It sounds very academic, but you see it all the time say, for example, you’re watching television and a male shows up on the screen and says: I’m really a woman trapped in a man’s body.

All right, you’re hearing body self dualism. Body self dual dualism is the belief that your identity, in other words the real you, has absolutely nothing to do with your body. Your body has no intrinsic purposes. It has no markers pointing to what you ought to do to fulfill and flourish in this life. Rather, your body is mere physical matter. You are free to redefine and manipulate any way you want. So if you feel like you’re a woman trapped in a man’s body, you can go have your body surgically, mutilated and changed to that of a woman if you want.

You’ll still be a male. Biologically, you’re still chromosomally going to be male. But body self dualism says the real you has nothing to do with your physical body. It is just your thoughts, your desires, your cognitive self that really matters. Now you can see how this plays out in the transgender debate, because what it does is basically says: my desires determine my identity, not my body. My body has nothing to do with my identity. But it also plays out in the abortion debate.

This way, people say, well, that embryo is physically and biologically human, but there’s no identity there until it has consciousness or the ability to connect memory over time, or continuity of thought, or has immediately exercisable desires. Again, whatever trait they pick out, they will argue that there’s no you there until you have these cognitive traits, that the real you has nothing to do with your body, only your cognitive self. That’s body self dualism. But, as we have explained on other occasions, this view of the human person is rather counterintuitive.

And let me give you an example of why I think that. How many of you have hugged your mothers? Well, I would. I would hope all of us you know, involved in this program today have done that. If not get with it. If you’ve hugged your mother, you have just disprove body self dualism, because you don’t hug desires, thoughts or a cognitive flow of consciousness. You hug a body. If you look over my shoulder, you’ll see a lamp in the background.

As you’re looking at that lamp, your physical eye is taking the image in and your mind, the material part of you, is making sense of it. Now that that works for me because that aligns with a biblical worldview that says human beings are a dynamic Union of body and soul. In this case, your physical eye is doing a physical act of taking in the image, making contact with it, but your mind, your cognitive self or soul, or whatever you want to call it, is making sense of what you see.

In other words, humans by nature Are not Mere bodies, They’re not Mere Spirits, they’re not ghost in ghosts in a machine. Rather they’re a dynamic Union of body and soul. That makes a lot of sense. And also, if you embrace this idea of body self dualism, you end up saying some rather absurd things. You have to say things like: well, my body showed up before the real me did. That’s kind of bizarre. So I think we can safely say that body self dualism is a problematic way of looking at the human person.

But every time we start reducing humans to having value because of the traits they can immediately exercise, we’re assuming a view of the human person that says they’re not valuable by nature, they’re only valuable for what they can do, and we’re also assuming a view about their identity, that their real self, their real, true being, is based on thoughts and cognitive processes, not their bodies, which is not a biblical or a coherent worldview of the human person even outside the body. It’s counterintuitive for reasons I just gave you. So these are some problems I have.

Again, I want to make it clear that, as prol lifers, we want to make the best argument, and the best argument is this one: it’s wrong to intentionally kill innocent human beings. Abortion does that. Therefore, it’s wrong. We don’t want to be stipulating that abortion is wrong because it deprives us of future gifted people. No, no, it’s wrong, even if it only deprived us of a homeless man. Abortion is wrong because it intentionally kills an innocent human being who’s an image Bearer whose value is based on his nature as a human being, not his functional abilities.

Those are the kinds of arguments we want to make. Again, not to be critical of Eric in particular here. I just want to point out that we want to be careful to make good, solid and persuasive pro-life arguments, not one that are easily shot down by our critics as being inconsistent with the worldview we espouse, and the quickest thing a qu a critic could do in this case is say: well, most abortions don’t abort gifted people like John Wesley’s or William Wilbur forces or beethovens or the next doctor that will cure cancer.

They don’t kill people of that nature, and that would mean it would only be wrong to have an abortion if you deprive the world of somebody who’s really gifted, and that would be a very bad way for pro-lifers to argue. We don’t want to assume the premises of our opponents. We want to assume premises that can account for human equality, that show that we’re equal by nature, not what we do functionally. We can make good arguments that we can make a case for human value that our secular critics can.

Thanks for joining us today. I look forward to seeing you in our next show.