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Justin BuzzardCH500

Research PaperFuller Theological Seminary

Nathan P. Feldmeth

Abortion & the Early Church

“And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” (Luke 1:41)

Introduction

The practice of abortion was not uncommon 2,000 years ago and beyond.

From the earliest days of the Greco-Roman world on up to the time of Augustine

and Chrysostom, abortion was readily pursued by pagans and occasionally

practiced by Jews and Christians.1 Rather consistently, the populous Greeks and

Romans of pagan antiquity supported the practice of abortion while the lesser

represented Jews, by and large, opposed the practice.2 Birthed into such a

disparate Greco-Roman world, the early church presents a consistent,

comprehensive witness against the practice of abortion, the likes of which the

ancient world had never seen. In sum, the early church practiced the abortion of

1 Michael J. Gorman, Abortion & the Early Church. Downers Grove: IVP, 1982. p. 14.

2 However, many Jewish writings recognize an ethical vs. legal distinction in abortion cases. The early church did not follow this path of their spiritual fore-fathers.

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abortion. And to appreciate this startling literary record of the earliest Christians

we must first consider their larger Greco-Roman world.

Abortion: Motives & Methods

Ancient motives for abortion were as manifold as the persons who

pursued them: rich and poor, married and unmarried, promiscuous and

monogamous. Abortions were sought in order to conceal illegitimate sexual

activity, to limit family size, conserve wealth, correct ineffective contraception, to

save an endangered mother3, and to preserve beauty and avoid the physical

effects of pregnancy on ones’ figure.4 Commenting on this last motivation, the

great Roman satirist Juvenal, writing in the early 1st century, suggests that such

women preferred not to, “get big and trouble the womb with bouncing babes.”5

Methods of abortion also varied. Both chemical and mechanical

procurements were available to the pregnant of antiquity. It was not difficult for a

woman to purchase either oral drugs or compounds induced directly into the

birth canal aimed at destroying the fetus.6 More precise (and gruesome) are

antiquity’s mechanical methods. Writing in the second century, Tertullian of

3 Unless otherwise specified, herein I intend by, “abortion,” both the practice of therapeutic and nontherapeutic abortions.

4 Ibid., p. 15.

5 Juvenal, Satire VI. Quoted in Gorman, Abortion & the Early Church, p. 15.

6 Ibid., pp. 15-16.

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Carthage, the great Christian apologist, describes one of these rather involved

mechanical procedures:

among surgeons' tools there is a certain instrument, which is formed with a nicely-adjusted flexible frame for opening the uterus first of all, and keeping it open; it is further furnished with an annular blade, by means of which the limbs within the womb are dissected with anxious but unfaltering care; its last appendage being a blunted or covered hook, wherewith the entire foetus is extracted by a violent delivery.7

As we shall see, Christian Tertullian vehemently opposed this and all other forms

of abortion. In a lengthy 1st century medical treatsie Celsus the physician vividly

describes a much more dangerous procedure of aborting the fetus in the third

trimester:

An operation must be done, which may be counted among the most difficult; for it requires both extreme caution and neatness, and entails very great risk…The surgeon…should first insert the index finger of his greased hand, and keep it there until the mouth is opened again, and then he should insert a second finger, and the other fingers on the like opportunity, until the whole hand can be put in…But when the hand has reached the dead foetus its position is immediately felt...If the head is nearest, a hook must be inserted which is completely smooth, with a short point, and this it is right to fix into an eye or ear or the mouth, even at times into the forehead, then this is pulled on and extracts the foetus. …Now the right hand should pull the hook whilst the left is inserted within and pulls the foetus, and at the same time guides it…But if the foetus is lying crosswise and cannot be turned straight, the hook is to be inserted into an armpit and traction slowly made; during this the neck is usually bent back and the head turned backwards towards the rest of the foetus. The remedy then is to cut through the neck, in order that the two parts may be extracted separately.

7 Tertullian, De Anima 25.

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This is done with a hook which resembles the one mentioned above, but has all its inner edge sharp. Then we must proceed to extract the head first, then the rest, for if the larger portion be extracted first, the head slips back into the cavity of the womb, and cannot be extracted without the greatest risk…There are also other difficulties, which make it necessary to cut up and extract a foetus which does not come out whole.8

A third mechanical method of abortion, not at all uncommon among those

without the funds to pay for a surgical procedure, was for a woman to attempt

an abortion herself. In such cases a woman would either bind her own body

tightly around the womb (to crush the unborn child) or violently strike her

womb so as to expel the fetus.9 Such were the motives and methods of antiquity’s

abortions.

Abortion in the Ancient, Pagan World of Greece and Rome

Ancient convictions concerning the practice of abortion are as diverse as

its motives and methods, and at times, just as gruesome. The extant writings of

Greek philosophers, Roman orators, Jewish scribes, Christian apologists, and

others reveal this diversity of perspective. While, as will be seen below, the

ancient Greeks and Romans present a favorable opinion of abortion, and the

Jewish writers hold a much more negative conviction, it is not until the late 1st

century A.D. that we discover a truly comprehensive and thorough rejection of

abortion from the writers of the Christian church.

8 Celsus, De Medicina. Quoted in Gorman, Abortion & the Early Church, pp. 17-18.

9 Ibid., p. 16

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The ancient Greeks were strong supporters of abortion. As one historian

puts it, “Greeks enjoy the dubious distinction of being the first [in the Ancient

Near East or Western world] positively to advise and even demand abortion in

certain cases.”10 In his Republic, Plato (427-347 B.C.) discusses the role of women

in the ideal republic and encourages, even commands, women to abort once they

reach a certain age:

A woman, I said, at twenty years of age may begin to bear children to the State, and continue to bear them until forty…and we grant all this, accompanying the permission with strict orders to prevent any embryo which may come into being from seeing the light; and if any force a way to the birth, the parents must understand that the offspring of such an union cannot be maintained, and arrange accordingly.11

Thus Plato views abortion as, when necessary, playing a positive role for the

state. Similarly, in his Politics, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) champions abortion as a

means of limiting family size as he discusses how to produce the finest human

material through the state’s regulation of marriage and procreation:

The question arises whether children should always be reared or may sometimes be exposed12 to die. There should certainly be a law to prevent the rearing of deformed children…a limit must be placed on the number who are born. If a child is then conceived in excess

10 Roger John Huser, quoted in Gorman, Abortion & the Early Church, p. 21.

11 Plato, Republic. Dialogues of Plato, Jowett translation, J.D. Kaplan editor. New York: Washington Square Press, 1951. pp. 321-323.

12 It should be noted at this point that “exposure,” the practice of leaving an infant to die immediately after birth, is also widely approved of among the Greeks and Romans of this period.

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of the limit so fixed, abortion should be induced before sense and life have begun in the embryo.13

These Platonic and Aristotlean excerpts reveal that ancient Greek support for

abortion centered largely upon its “positive” role in regulating the health of the

state. Concern for the fetus is nowhere to be found.

Opposite Plato and Aristotle, the ancient Stoics opposed abortion, though

not for the same reasons as the later Christian opposition. The Stoics perceived

abortion as a practice detrimental to the common good of the state. In their view,

abortion limited the size and power of the family and the state. And although

opposed the practice, the Stoic position did not believe the fetus to be a person

until after taking his or her first breath outside the womb. In a similar vein the

ancient Oath of Hippocrates (460-357 B.C.) speaks of resolve against abortion, “I

will not give a woman a pessary to cause abortion,”14 yet this is for medicinal

reason only, a medical ethic showing concern for the safety of the mother not also

the fetus. Indeed, there is no such thing as fetal rights in Greek antiquity. All

rights are subordinate to the welfare of the state.15 In sum, “Although the Stoics

13 Here Aristotle does not identify when “sense and life have begun” in a fetus, making abortion inappropriate. Aristotle, Politics, Ernest Barker translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 223.

14 Quoted in Gorman, Abortion & the Early Church, p. 20.

15 Several Greek inscriptions from ancient temples mention birth, miscarriage, and abortion as events that cause ritual impurity. The issue here is not moral impurity, but the simple prescription that an abortion or a birth would inconvenience one’s ritual status in the temple. Ibid., p. 24

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differed from Plato and Aristotle, they all shared a common view of the welfare

of the family and state—not the rights or life of the unborn—as the foremost

consideration in the question of the propriety of abortion.”16

! In concert with the Greeks is the ancient Roman view of abortion. Indeed,

“That the fetus is not a person was fundamental to Roman law.”17 Not until the

3rd century, and likely due to the influence of the early church, did the Roman

Empire enact forms of legislation against abortion. Yet even still, such legislation

did not protect the fetus, but, most generally, the father. The Romans adopted the

Stoic view, opposing abortion because of its detriment to large families, male

influence, and a strong state. Again, specific concern for the fetus is not a part of

their legislation. In fact, punishments were prescribed for women who

underwent abortions without a husband’s consent, for, “it might appear

scandalous that [a woman] should be able to deprive her husband of children

without being punished.”18 Thus when the revered Seneca (ca 3 B.C.-65 A.D.)

praises his own mother for having not, “in the manner of other women whose

only recommendation lies in their beauty, tried to conceal your pregnancy as if

an unseemly burden, nor have you ever crushed the hope of children that were

16 Ibid., p. 23.

17 Ibid., p. 32.

18 Ibid., p. 30.

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being nurtured in your body,”19 it is out of gratitude for the state that he writes,

not out of concern for unborn children. By and large, the pagan Greek and

Roman world supported the practice of abortion and granted no concern or legal

right for unborn babes.

Abortion & the Jewish World

! This frequent practice of abortion in antiquity was opposed by the Jews.

Even so, their cry of dissent would not grow to a comprehensive wail until

revised and reverberated by the later Christians. The Jewish view is well

represented by Philo of Alexandria (25 B.C.-41 A.D.). In his Special Laws, an

exposition of the Ten Commandments, under a section on the commandment

“Thou shalt not kill,” Philo writes:

But if any one has a contest with a woman who is pregnant, and strike her a blow on her belly, and she miscarry, if the child which was conceived within her is still unfashioned and unformed20, he shall be punished by a fine, both for the assault which he committed and also because he has prevented nature, who was fashioning and preparing that most excellent of all creatures, a human being, from bringing him into existence. But if the child which was conceived had assumed a distinct Shape in all its parts,

19 Seneca, To Helvia on Consolation 16.3

20 Philo’s distinction between the formed and unformed fetus comes from an interpretation of Exodus 21:22-25, a legal text dealing with pregnant women, abuse, and penalty. Significantly, the Septuagint translators rendered the Hebrew, “there is no harm,” to read “there is no form, ” thus introducing a distinction between the formed and unformed fetus. Traditionally scholars have noted a division between the Alexandrian Jews (who followed the Septuagint) and Palestinian Jews (who tended to follow the Hebrew text) regarding abortion. Gorman (pp. 34-45) suggests a much less firm divide. Analysis of the intricacies of this Jewish view warrants another paper.

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having received all its proper connective and distinctive qualities, he shall die.21

Here Philo’s chief concern is the immorality of the abortion act. However,

representing Jewish thought quite well, Philo distinguishes between the formed

and unformed fetus, thereby supporting a distinction between moral and legal

culpability in abortion. According to Philo, to harm an unformed fetus is but a

slight legal infraction, but to harm a fetus “having received all its proper

connective and distinctive qualities” warrants the strictest of Hebrew legal

penalties: “a life for a life.” Thus, while the Jews possessed a strong moral

opposition to abortion (presumably holding moral outrage at the destruction of

even unformed fetuses), they simultaneously evidence a notable degree of legal

permissiveness. Jewish law did not ascribe legal rights to the fetus.

Consequently, Jews recognized that when a mother’s life was in danger,

therapeutic abortions were necessary:

If a woman was in hard travail, the child must be cut up while it is in the womb and brought out member by member, since the life of the mother has priority over the life of the child; but if the greater part of it was already born, it may not be touched, since the claim of one life cannot override the claim of another life.22

Moral abhorrence at non-therapeutic abortion, the practice of therapeutic

abortion, legal fines, and capital punishment for the taking of life constitute the

21 Philo, Special Laws, 108-109.

22 Babylonian Talmud, Niddah, quoted in Gorman, Abortion & the Early Church, p. 42.

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Jewish view. This is the scaffolding the ancient Hebrews offered the early church,

scaffolding from which the Christians would construct an abortion polemic of

new heights.

The Early Church & Abortion

Within this historical context of variegated Greek, Roman, and Jewish

abortion viewpoints, Christianity was born. And this infant church shook its new

cradle. She would not be still. Imprinted upon the church’s first five centuries of

getting her feet are the footprints of a comprehensive abortion opposition dealing

with four focal themes: creation, murder, guilt, and grace. The following is a

chronological analysis of these many early church writings.

Didache

One of the earliest Christian references to abortion is found in the Didache.

It represents the first Christian statement opposing abortion. A late 1st century or

early 2nd century document, the Didache is essentially a code of Christian

community life complete with instructions on morality, worship, ritual, and

politics. In a section expounding the commandment,“Love your neighbor as

yourself,” the Didache lists a series of “thou shalt not” statements, including

prohibitions against murder, adultery, illicit sex, theft, and practicing magic.

From the middle of this list comes the prohibition, “you will not murder

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offspring by means of abortion.”23 Further along comes a list of those who are a

part of the “way of death.” Alongside “those persecutors of the good” and “those

not showing mercy to the poor,” stands the condemnation of “those murders of

children, those corrupters of God’s workmanship.”24 Here, the Didache links

abortion with murder and presumes the humanity of the fetus. With this first of

many Christian statements against abortion, “thou shalt not abort” becomes

aligned with the ancient Hebrew commandment against murder, presenting the

abortion-frequent Greco-Roman world with a vital countercultural path.

Epistle of Barnabas

Written at approximately the same time as the Didache, the non-canonical

Epistle of Barnabas also denounces abortion. The numerous later writers who

borrow heavily from this epistle demonstrate the importance of this early,

revolutionary text.25 In the middle of a “thou shalt…” instructional section sits:

“Thou shalt love thy neighbor more than thine own soul. Thou shalt not murder

a child by abortion.”26 It is immensely significant that the epistle places its

condemnation of abortion immediately after a commandment to love one’s

neighbor. The words of Jesus echo. Here the Epistle of Barnabas not only equates

23 Didache 2.2 Aaron Milavec, The Didache: Faith, Hope, & Life of the Earliest Christian Communities. Mahwah: The Newman Press, 2003, p. 15.

24 Didache 5.2, Ibid.

25 To be commented upon later.

26 Epistle of Barnabas 19.5.

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abortion with murder, but also identifies the fetus as “thy neighbor.” Non-

canonical Barnabas elevates the fetus to a human, neighbor status. This was not

the Greco-Roman world’s way of “conceiving” the unborn. Already, in but her

first trimester, the early church is forming its extensive abortion censure upon her

4 limbs of creation, murder, guilt, and grace.

Apocalypse of Peter

! Roughly contemporary with the works above, the non-canonical

Apocalypse of Peter (which was given canonical status by many, including

Clement of Alexandria) provides a scathing condemnation of both the act and

“actors” of abortion:

And hard by that place I saw another strait place wherein the discharge and the stench of them that were in torment ran down, and there was as it were a lake there. And there sat women up to their necks in that liquor, and over against them many children which were born out of due time sat crying: and from them went forth rays of fire and smote the women in the eyes: and these were they that conceived out of wedlock and caused abortion.27

In continuity with the works above, the Apocalypse defines abortion as an act of

murder. Unique to the Apocalypse is its treatment of the destiny of those who

commit abortion. With traditional apocalyptic language, this text envisions the

horrific punishment to be suffered in hell by women who seek abortions.28 For

27 Apocalypse of Peter 26.

28 Methodius of Olympus, writing in the 3rd Century, likely alludes to this portion of the apocalypse to support his own denunciation of abortion. See Gorman, Abortion & the Early Church, pp. 61-62.

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the first time in the ancient world, the Apocalypse of Peter views abortion as an

evil warranting not only legal consequence, but, more significantly, eternal

consequence.29

Clement of Alexandria

In his Prophetic Ecologues Clement of Alexandria (ca150-ca215) quotes

approvingly the Apocalypse of Peter, declaring, and extrapolating, that aborted

children will be delivered to safety by angels as their parents suffer

punishment.30 Later in his Paedagogus, written near the turn of the 2nd century,

Clement calls his Christian audience to live lives in contrast with their immoral

Alexandrian neighbors. This call includes an injunction against abortion: “for

those who conceal sexual wantonness by taking stimulating drugs to bring on an

abortion wholly lose their own humanity along with the fetus.”31 Even more

explicitly than the Didache, Clement emphasizes the humanity of the fetus and a

conviction that abortion opposes God’s plan for humanity. For Clement, abortion

destroys a human life (the fetus) and, metaphorically speaking, still another

human life (the one who receives an abortion).

29 My research yielded no other ancient text that spoke of eternal punishment for committing an abortion. It is of course possible that such texts exist, but of them I am not aware.

30 Gorman, Abortion & the Early Church, p. 52

31 Clement, Paedagogus 2.10 96.11

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Athenagoras

Moving on from the earliest writings of the church into that of the

apologists, Athenagoras leaves behind a clear footprint in his mid-second

century Legatio. This work addresses Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius and

defends Christians against a series of false charges, including that of cannibalism

(arising from a misunderstanding of the Eucharist). Herein Athenagoras states

that Christians would not even go so far as to watch a murder (as in the popular

gladiator fights). He goes on to say:

How could we kill a man--we who say that women who take drugs to procure abortion are guilty of homicide and that they will have to answer to God for this abortion? One cannot at the same time believe that the fetus in the womb is a living being--as such in God's care--and kill one already brought forth into the light.32

Athenagoras states that his position is the common conviction of the early

church. He is among the “we who say.” Athenagoras aptly articulates this

emerging early church witness: abortion is homicide (the killing of “a living

being”), abortion-committers stand guilty (“have to answer to God”), and

potential abortion-targets are under divine care (“is a living being—as such in

God’s care”).

Tertullian

32 Athenagoras, Legatio 35, 36.

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Tertullian (ca160-ca240) offers, perhaps, the early church’s strongest

polemic against abortion. In his most acclaimed work, Apology, addressed to both

the Roman emperor and a series of Roman governors, bold Tertullian proclaims:

In our case, murder being once for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the foetus in the womb, while as yet the human being derives blood from other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing; nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born, or destroy one that is coming to the birth. That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in its seed.33

As other early Christians had proclaimed, Tertullian reiterates the most basic

Christian reason for opposing abortion: that it is murder, the destruction of God’s

creation. Tertullian recognized life in the womb. In a later work, De Anima (On

the Soul), the great apologist urges mothers to attest to this general Christian

conclusion:

Now, in such a question as this, no one can be so useful a teacher, judge, or witness, as the sex itself which is so intimately concerned. Give us your testimony, then, ye mothers, whether yet pregnant, or after delivery (let barren women and men keep silence),--the truth of your own nature is in question, the reality of your own suffering is the point to be decided. (Tell us, then,) whether you feel in the embryo within you any vital force other than your own, with which your bowels tremble, your sides shake, your entire womb throbs, and the burden which oppresses you constantly changes its position? Are these movements a joy to you, and a positive removal of anxiety, as making you confident that your infant both possesses vitality and enjoys it? Or, should his restlessness cease, your first fear would be for him; and he would be aware of it within you…

33 Tertullian, Apology 9.

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[these]are conditions of the soul or life, he who experiences them must be alive.34

Again, arguing that the soul, and thus life, comes into being at conception,

Tertullian appeals directly to Scripture:

Brother (in Christ), on your own foundation build up your faith. Consider the wombs of the most sainted women instinct with the life within them, and their babes which not only breathed therein, but were even endowed with prophetic intuition…Elizabeth exults with joy, (for) John had leaped in her womb; Mary magnifies the Lord, (for) Christ had instigated her within. The mothers recognise each their own offspring, being moreover each recognised by their infants, which were therefore of course alive, and were not souls merely, but spirits also. Accordingly you read the word of God which was spoken to Jeremiah, "Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee." Since God forms us in the womb, He also breathes upon us, as He also did at the first creation, when "the Lord God formed man, and breathed into him the breath of life." Nor could God have known man in the womb, except in his entire nature: "And before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee." Well, was it then a dead body at that early stage? Certainly not. For "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.35

No other Christian writers had yet made this exacting connection between

Scripture, the Incarnation, and the practice of abortion. Like a trump card,

Tertullian made known to his audience (he is no longer addressing Roman

officials) that the very word of God, the very incarnation of the Son of God,

testifies to the humanity of the fetus and the horror of abortion.36 Unto a Greco-

34 Tertullian, De Anima 25.

35 Ibid., 26

36 Tertullian opposed therapeutic abortion as well. See Gorman, Abortion & the Early Church, p. 57.

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Roman world that did not recognize the life of the fetus, nor grant the unborn

any legal protection, Tertullian’s writings present a life-preserving alternative. 37

Hippolytus

Contemporary with Tertullian, Hippolytus (ca170-ca236) continues the

early church’s wail against abortion in declaring it an act of murder, an act

meriting guilt, and an act against a living being. In his Philosophumena

(Refutation of all Heresies) Hippolytus disparages the fact that pagan culture and

its abortion practice had infected the church:

Whence women, reputed believers, began to resort to drugs for producing sterility, and to gird themselves round, so to expel what was being conceived on account of their not wishing to have a child either by a slave or by any paltry fellow, for the sake of their family and excessive wealth. Behold, into how great impiety that lawless one has proceeded, by inculcating adultery and murder at the same time! And withal, after such audacious acts, they, lost to all shame, attempt to call themselves a Catholic Church!38

Cyprian

! Spiritual son and pupil of Tertullian, Cyprian (ca200/210-258) continued

Tertullian’s strict polemic against abortion. In a letter to pope Cornelius

highlighting the many faults and sins of the heretic Novatian, Cyprian brings

Novatian’s crimes to a climax when he writes:

37 Origen would perhaps have disagreed with Tertullian’s defense of the unborn. Due to his highly allegorical hermeneutic it is difficult to tell, but in his homily on the important text of Exodus 21 Origen appears to make a distinction between formed and unformed fetuses. Gorman, Abortion & the Early Church, p. 59.

38 Hippolytus, Philosophumena 9.7.

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The womb of his wife was smitten by a blow of his heel; and in the miscarriage that soon followed, the offspring was brought forth, the fruit of a father's murder. And now does he dare to condemn the hands of those who sacrifice, when he himself is more guilty in his feet, by which the son, who was about to be born, was slain?39

Declaring abortion to be a sin greater than idolatry, Cyprian continues the early

church’s first steps to forge a new and living trail leading out away from the

world’s vacant wombs.

Council of Elvira

In 305 nineteen bishops and twenty-six priests met in modern Spain to

determine a variety of disciplinary measures regarding lapsed Christians. This

gathering, known as the Council of Elvira, presents the first collective Christian

statement on abortion. It is also the first Christian body to issue punishment for

abortion. Among the 81 “canons” produced by the council, Canon 63 concerns

the proper treatment of those who have procured an abortion: “if a woman

conceives in adultery and then has an abortion, she may not commune again,

even as death approaches, because she has sinned twice.” 40 The severity of

penance mandated by Canon 63 reveals just how grave a sin the early church

regarded abortion. Abortion meant exclusion from Communion, even at death.

Penance for life. Though, as we shall see, grace was not far off.

39 Cyprian, Letter 48 (numbered 52 in some editions).

40 Council of Elvira, Canon 63.

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Council of Ancyra

In 314 a dozen bishops gathered in Ancrya, the capital of Galatia. This

Council of Ancyra introduced a theme, formed a final limb, that would grow to

make the early church’s opposition to abortion a truly comprehensive one. The

council introduced grace. While not lightening the church’s hard and fast

condemnation of the abortion practice, the council lightened the church’s

condemnation of the abortion participant:

Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree41 excluded them until the hour of death, and to this some have assented. Nevertheless, being desirous to use somewhat greater lenity, we have ordained that they fulfil ten years [of penance], according to the prescribed degrees.42

Significantly, the Ancyran Council reduced the Elviran ruling of lifetime

excommunication to that of just ten years time. As the early church found her

gait among an abortion-laden culture she began to offer an even more

comprehensive response to the abortion issue. She began extending grace to the

guilty.

41 It is not certain that this reference is to the rulings of the Elvira Council, but it is probable.

42 Council of Ancyra, Canon 21.

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Basil of Caesarea

Continuing in the tradition of the Ancyran Council, Basil of Caesarea

(ca330-379) confronts the abortion issue in a letter to Amphilochius, bishop of

Iconium:

The woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. With us there is no nice enquiry as to its being formed or unformed. In this case it is not only the being about to be born who is vindicated, but the woman in her attack upon herself; because in most cases women who make such attempts die. The destruction of the embryo is an additional crime, a second murder, at all events if we regard it as done with intent. The punishment, however, of these women should not be for life, but for the term of ten years. And let their treatment depend not on mere lapse of time, but on the character of their repentance.43

Here the great church father makes “one of the most profound theological and

ethical statements on abortion during the first four centuries.”44 Indeed, Basil

makes it clear that at issue is not a legal distinction between a formed or

unformed fetus. Rather, through and through, abortion is murder. Yet even so,

this sin of murder can be forgiven. The sin is serious, but so is grace.

Ambrose

Ambrose (ca339-397), the great bishop of bustling Milan, took the early

church’s extensive anti-abortion call to the pulpit:

"The wealthy, in order that their inheritance may not be divided among several, deny in the very womb their own progeny. By use

43 Basil of Caesarea, Letter 188.

44 Gorman, Abortion & the Early Church, p. 66.

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of parricidal mixtures they snuff out the fruit of their wombs in the genital organs themselves. In this way life is taken away before it is born. . . . Who except man himself has taught us ways of repudiating children?45

In this sermon from 387 Ambrose again reveals the burgeoning Christian concern

for life, born or unborn.

Jerome

Jerome (ca342-420), the revered church father and Bible translator,

transcribes a very strong denouncement of abortion in his Letter to Eustochim:

You may see many women widows before wedded, who try to conceal their miserable fall by a lying garb. Unless they are betrayed by swelling wombs or by the crying of their infants, they walk abroad with tripping feet and heads in the air. Some go so fat as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception. Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when (as often happens) they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder.46

Though it would seem Jerome extends no grace to those who have aborted (as he

mentions their guilt-laden presence in “the lower world”), one must recall that

Jerome writes ultimately out of concern for one of God’s greatest gifts of grace:

life in the womb. Additionally, this excerpt is from a letter to a singular

individual, not a book or sermon to a corporate audience. The medium is the

45 Ambrose of Milan, Hexameron 5.18.

46 Jerome, Letter to Eustochim (or, Letter 22).

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message. Through this medium Jerome laments his great concern over the

abortion practice of his late 3rd century world.

Augustine

Augustine (354-430) gave more attention to the practice of abortion than

any other writer of the early church.47 In his work, On Marriage and Concupisence,

Augustine presents a thus-far-lacking component of the early church’s abortion

critique. Here the great African bishop explicitly implicates not only the female

(mother), but also the male (father) in the guilt of abortion:

Sometimes, indeed, this lustful cruelty, or if you please, cruel lust, resorts to such extravagant methods as to use poisonous drugs to secure barrenness; or else, if unsuccessful in this, to destroy the conceived seed by some means previous to birth, preferring that its offspring should rather perish than receive vitality; or if it was advancing to life within the womb, should be slain before it was born.48 Well, if both parties alike are so flagitious, they are not husband and wife; and if such were their character from the beginning, they have not come together by wedlock but by debauchery. But if the two are not alike in such sin, I boldly declare either that the woman is, so to say, the husband’s harlot; or the man the wife’s adulterer.49

47 Gorman, Abortion & the Early Church, p. 70.

48 From this extended sentence Gorman detects an Augustinian distinction between the formed and unformed fetus. Such a conclusion is unwarranted. Reading this excerpt in light of the larger context of On Marriage and Concupisence it is more plausible to conclude that here Augustine is merely discussing life inside the womb vs. life outside the womb. Especially to be noted is Augustine’s condemnation of the parents “preferring that its offspring whould rather perish than receive vitality.” Only the living may suffer to perish.

49 Augustine, On Marriage and Concupisence 1.17.

23

Herein Augustine identifies a complexity of guilt in abortion. Perhaps, Augustine

makes clear, a male is just as guilty, or more so, than a female who undergoes an

abortion. Though the Christian writers above may very well have assumed this,

Augustine alone makes this important truth explicit.50

In his later work, Enchiridion, Augustine mentions the very difficult issue

of therapeutic abortion, an abortion induced so as to save the mother’s life.

Though Augustine does not state his ultimate position on this matter, he does

move beyond the ancient debate over the formed vs. unformed fetus to clearly

assert God’s ultimate position to care for the aborted:

And therefore the following question may be very carefully inquired into and discussed by learned men, though I do not know whether it is in man's power to resolve it: At what time the infant begins to live in the womb: whether life exists in a latent form before it manifests itself in the motions of the living being. To deny that the young who are cut out limb by limb from the womb, lest if they were left there dead the mother should die too, have never been alive, seems too audacious. Now, from the time that a man begins to live, from that time it is possible for him to die. And if he die, wheresoever death may overtake him, I cannot discover on what principle he can be denied an interest in the resurrection of the dead.51

For Augustine, resurrection runs deep. Into tired tombs and wailing wombs the

God of the early church was sure to reach.

50 Cyprian’s denunciation of Novatian does address this issue, however, he appears to be mentioning a case of an accidental abortion.

51 Augustine, Enchiridion 86.

24

John Chrysostom

! Contemporary with Augustine is the greatest preacher of the early church

(and our final subject of this paper!), John Chrysostom (ca347-407). Towards the

very close of the early church era Chrysostom dramatically denounces abortion

in a sermon on Romans:

Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit? where there are many efforts at abortion? where there is murder before the birth? for even the harlot thou dost not let continue a mere harlot, but makest her a murderess also. You see how drunkenness leads to whoredom, whoredom to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather to a something even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take off the thing born, but prevent its being born. Why then dost thou abuse the gift of God, and fight with His laws, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter? For with a view to drawing more money by being agreeable and an object of longing to her lovers, even this she is not backward to do, so heaping upon thy head a great pile of fire. For even if the daring deed be hers, yet the causing of it is thine.52

Continuing the main anti-abortion themes from the earliest Christian writings

such as the Didache and Epistle of Barnabas, Chrysostom regards the unborn as a

gift from God and declares abortion to be “a something even worse than

murder.” In line with Augustine, Chrysostom graciously acknowledges the

multiple layers of guilt that may be involved with an abortion, for, “even if the

daring deed be hers, yet the causing of it is thine.” And in the final sentence of this

52 John Chrysostom, Homily 24 on Romans.

25

sermon Chyrsostom urges his congregation away from abortion (and other evil

deeds) and towards the grace of God:

For in this way we shall be able to enjoy ourselves here, and shall attain to the good things to come, by the grace and love [of God] toward man.”53

Conclusion

Here at the close of the early church era John Chrysostom’s sermon

proclaims again the early church’s collective four-fold opposition to abortion: 1)

the fetus is a beloved creation of God, 2) to abort is to murder, 3) complicity in

abortion makes one guilty before God, and 4) God extends grace to the guilty.

Such a comprehensive and consistent pro-life ethic had never before been

articulated. The early Christians placed ethical, life valuing footprints into the

abortion-laden Greco-Roman land, footprints that had never before run so deep.

Such was the witness of the early church and her first five centuries. Oh, that

today’s church would follow in the footsteps of these that brought her to birth!

Amen.

53 Ibid.

26

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