Lounging on Molech's Altar
Lounging on Moloch's Altar
“So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” - Gen 1:27 (NASB)
“Whoever sheds human blood,
By man his blood shall be shed,
For in the image of God
He made mankind.
“As for you, be fruitful and multiply;
Populate the earth abundantly and multiply in it.” - Gen 9:6-7 (NASB)
“The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. I myself will set my face against that man and will cut him off from among his people, because he has given one of his children to Molech, to make my sanctuary unclean and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do at all close their eyes to that man when he gives one of his children to Molech, and do not put him to death, then I will set my face against that man and against his clan and will cut them off from among their people, him and all who follow him in whoring after Molech.”- Leviticus 20:1-5 (ESV)
The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, “When you assist the Hebrew women in childbirth, observe at the delivery: If it is a son, kill him, but if it is a daughter, she may live.” - Exo 1:15-16 (NET)
“Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, ‘All sons that are born you must throw into the river, but all daughters you may let live.’” - Exo 1:22 (NET)
“For You created my innermost parts;
You wove me in my mother’s womb.
I will give thanks to You, because I am awesomely and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from You
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully formed in the depths of the earth;
Your eyes have seen my formless substance;
And in Your book were written
All the days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them.” - Psalm 139:13-16 (NASB)
“But Jesus called for the little ones, saying, “Allow the children to come to Me, and do not forbid them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”” - Luke 18:16 (NASB)
“It is better for him if a millstone is hung around his neck and he is thrown into the sea, than that he may cause one of these little ones to sin.” - Luke 17:2 (NASB)
“After [the Wise Men] had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up, take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to look for the child to kill him.” - Matt 2:13 (NET)
“When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he became enraged. He sent men to kill all the children in Bethlehem and throughout the surrounding region from the age of two and under, according to the time he had learned from the wise men.” - Matt 2:16 (NET)
“...Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born.” - Rev 12:4 (NET)
“You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born." - The Didache, Chapter 2, Section 2, 50-100 AD (1*)
“You shall not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shall you destroy it after it is born.” - Epistle of Barnabas, 70-132 AD
"And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very foetus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God's care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it." - Athenagoras of Athens, Legatio Pro Christianis, 177 AD
"For, in order to conceal fornication, they use deadly medicines, which lead altogether to destruction, and together with the fetus they destroy all humanity." - Clement of Alexandrai, Paedagogus, Book 2, Chapter 10, Section 96, 195 AD
“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." - Tertullian, Apology, Chapter 9, Section 8, 197 AD
"Are you to dissolve the conception by aid of drugs? I think to us it is no more lawful to hurt a child in process of birth, than one already born." - Tertullian, Exhortation to Chastity, Chapter 12, 197 AD
“There are some women who, by drinking medical preparations, extinguish the source of the future man in their very bowels, and thus commit a parricide before they bring forth.” - Minucius Felix, Octavius, Chapter 30, Section 2, 200 AD
“She who gives an abortifacient to another will herself be cast into the fire; and the woman who takes it to expel her fetus will be plunged into the abyss." - Ephrem the Syrian, De Timore Dei, Section 10, 370 AD (2*)
“The woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder. With us there is no nice inquiry as to its being formed or unformed.” - Basil the Great, Letter 188, Canon 2, 374 AD
“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.” - Jerome, Letter 22 (To Eustochium), Section 13, 384 AD
“Why sow where the ground makes 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 do you 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?” - John Chrysostom, Homily 24 on the Epistle to the Romans, 391 AD
“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.” - Augustine of Hippo, On Marriage and Concupiscence, Book 1, Chapter 15, 419 AD
“"No woman should take potions for purposes of abortion, because she should not doubt that before the tribunal of Christ she will have to plead as many cases as the number of those she killed when already born or still conceived. ... Indeed, she will be held guilty of as many murders as the number of those she might have conceived or borne…” - Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 1, Section 12, 470-542 AD (3*)
“Those who give drugs for procuring abortion, and those who receive poisons to kill the fœtus, are subjected to the penalty of murder.” - The Council in Trullo / Quinisext Council, Canon 91 (692 AD)
“"If he who destroys by abortion what is conceived in the womb is a murderer, how much more is he unable to excuse himself of murder who kills a child even one day old?"” - Pope Stephen V in an Epistle to Archbishop Liutbert of Mainz, 885-891 AD (4*)
“How great, therefore, the wickedness of human nature is! How many girls there are who prevent conception and kill and expel tender fetuses, although procreation is the work of God... For those who have no regard for pregnant women and who do not spare the tender fruit are murderers and infanticides." - Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis, Volume 4, 1544 (5*)
“The fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being, and it is almost a monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a foetus in the womb before it has come to light. On these grounds I am led to conclude, without hesitation, that the words, 'if death should follow,' must be applied to the foetus as well as to the mother.” - John Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony, Volume 3, Commentary on Exodus 21:22, 1554 AD (6*)
“The supposition of inanimate embryos capable of being developed, is, at the present day, an absurdity. From the moment of conception it must be alive, for immediately it begins to be developed” - Hugh L Hodge, On Criminal Abortion; A Lecture Introductory to the Course on Obstetrics, and Diseases of Women and Children, 1854 AD (7*)
“He must assert and maintain the momentous truth, that the mother's womb is the asylum of a living and growing being; that its rights are as sacred as those of the adult; that its life is no more to be taken away with impunity than that of a child after birth; and that it makes no difference whether the fetus be unformed, or in the embryo state, or whether it be fully brought forth.” - Hugh L Hodge, Foeticide, or Criminal Abortion: A Lecture Introductory to the Course on Obstetrics, 1869 (8*)
“This Assembly regards the destruction by parents of their own offspring, before birth, with abhorrence, as a crime against God and against nature; and as the frequency of such murders can no longer be concealed, we hereby warn those that are guilty of this crime that, except they repent, they cannot inherit eternal life.” - Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, Volume 18, Overture No. 44, 1869 AD (9*)
“Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, 1940AD (10*)
“If man is not made in the image of God, nothing stands in the way of inhumanity. There is no good reason why mankind should be perceived as special. Human life is cheapened. We can see this in many of the major issues being debated in our society today: abortion, infanticide, euthanasia…” - Francis Schaeffer, Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, 1979 AD (11*)
“Abortion is the destruction of a human being created in the image of God. It is a sin against God and man, a violation of the greatest commandment, to love God, and the second, to love our neighbor as ourselves.” - John Piper, Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian, 2011 AD (12*)
“Is it right to hire a hitman to solve a problem? You cannot, it is not right to kill a human being, regardless of how small it is, to resolve a problem. It is like hiring a hitman.” - Pope Francis, General Audience Address, St. Peter's Square, October 10, 2018 AD (13*)
“The Orthodox Church... asserts that human life begins at the moment of conception, and that the termination of developing life in the womb is the taking of a human life, and as such is an evil to be repented of and refused.” - For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church, 2020 AD (14*)
“We state unequivocally that abortion is murder, and we reject any position that allows for any exceptions to the legal protection of our preborn neighbors…” - Southern Baptist Convention, Resolution 2: On Abolishing Abortion, 2021 SBC Annual Meeting, 2021 (15*)
“You shall not murder.”
Exodus 20:13 (NASB)
Here I Stand
I declare before God and man my clear position: The willful, deliberate ending of a human life in the womb, by physical violence, chemical intake, or any other means for any reason is, without exception, murder. This is the teaching of Christ’s church from its inception and now for the last 2000 years because it is the teaching of the scriptures and, therefore, the teaching of our God. Those that partake in the sin, whether that be in the active process, willful engagement, coercion, encouragement, material support, or any other element, are destined to eternal hellfire unless they repent and submit themselves to Jesus Christ as their Lord God and savior.
Woe to us
What a Great and Evil day we are witnessing. The earth beneath our feet is drenched in the blood of children. Every day the monstrous torrent of their shed blood cries out for justice to be wrought against our people. With our diseased minds and evil hearts we contrive wickedness beyond comprehension, challenging the Great Flood God smote against vile mankind, not a strike in opposition to Him but against ourselves, manufacturing a flood of our own, wishing the world to be drowned in blood rather than water; and this time there will be no ark.
As I write this, the trial for the murderer Lindsey Clancy is proceeding. This woman murdered her three children by slow, deliberate strangulation, one after the other. The jury is deliberating (the 6th so far) over whether she is criminally liable for the crime she has pleaded “not guilty” to by way of insanity. She committed the crime. She declares under oath that she committed the crime. The judge and jury know she committed the crime. Yet justice hangs on whether she was “insane” during her actions.
Many cultural divides already present have become stark thanks to this case. Women by the thousands, tens of thousands are shouting their support, broadcasting their alignment with a child murderer across the internet, their faces and full names attached to these proclamations. Worse, they are expressing solidarity with viral phrases like “Same, Lindsey” while holding their own children.
How have we come to this?
Quick tangent - there are roughly 3000 abortions per day in America (1 every ~30 seconds).
A People of Unclean Lips
The discussion surrounding the trial has centered around “mental health” mixed thoroughly with all the other various clinical and socioeconomic buzzwords you might hear from a leftwing political activist. Whether or not a person is adequately supported (financially, socially, medically, etc.) in times of mental distress is supposedly the determining factor in adjudicating Lindsey’s guilt.
There are problems with this line of thinking, obviously, but I saw it best illustrated by a favorite artist and author of mine, Owen Cyclops. In speaking on mental illness he reframes it this way (my paraphrase):
An intern visiting a psych ward: “Oh my gosh, why is that man punching himself in the face over and over?”
Psychiatrist: “Ah, you see, he has Punchhimselfintheface Syndrome, or PHF.”
Intern: “Oh ok, yeah. Sad.”
Humorous. A joke yet it strikes at the heart of the problem. The modern American method for explaining the world (especially humans and morality) is extraordinarily clinical in expression, though nearly devoid of real substance. Naming the observable reality is not an explanation of why, it is nothing more than a description of how. Why is the man punching himself in the face? “Because he is crazy” is not an answer, it is a description. I know he is crazy - he is punching himself in the face. “You can tell he is crazy because he is doing crazy things” does not explain the reasons behind the behaviors. It’s like saying “that man is fat because of how heavy he is.” See the problem? We need to ask “What is the cause that induced the crazy behavior?”
Let me posit an actual answer, something that would likely be considered horribly offensive to our modern sensibilities. A person like Lindsey Clancy murdered her children because she was an evil person who made an evil decision in accordance to and participation with her evil nature and evil desires.
As another quick side point, in 24 states (depending on exactly how you count the various legal frameworks) abortion is functionally an at-will process at any time, for any reason.
A People of Unclean Hands
Humans make excuses - often very good ones - for the things we do wrong. In the case of this trial, the argument is that she 1) was suffering from post-partum depression, 2) lacked support necessary, 3) was suffering further from the rejection or failure of those she sought help from.
My assertion that she is evil does not discount those exacerbating variables (if they were even present, which, the evidence seems to say they were not) but actually accounts for them in a more holistic way. Post-partum hormone effects on the brain are intense and mental health conditions are serious, no doubt. But they don’t “make” a person do things, they just make certain decisions easier to make. What kind of decision making does an evil creature, when stressed by outside forces, turn to? Does this evil creature turn toward love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, or self-control? When pressed on seemingly every side, does the liar finally tell the truth? Does the violent suddenly show tenderness? Does the evil one act righteously?
If Lindsey were indeed suffering from depression, chemical imbalances in the brain, societal abandonment, financial stress, then these things were not the cause of the behavior but catalyzing factors. They expedited and intensified the evil she already possessed, evil she had fed and grown across the span of her life. The cause of her actions, the reason she murdered, is because she chose evil.
This is the same process each of us undergo whenever we willfully, knowingly sin. We come to a “fork in the road” and are prodded on by aggravating factors, now forced to confront the moral momentum of our lives. From within our hearts the strong allure of Desire, the ruthless driving whip of Wrath, the lying tongue of mammon, and all the other vices we become well-acquainted with, drive us to our decision. Externally, we feel the crushing weight of poverty, the seemingly avoidable consequences of past bad decisions, the goading words and behaviors of our friends urging us to join in. Whether it is pressure from sources internal, external or a mixture of both, we eventually come to the inflection point. We must choose left or right, up or down, this or that. The decision is our own. And that decision is the cause of the actions that follow. To say otherwise is to call Paul (and, ultimately, God) a liar when he says by way of the Holy Spirit “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” (1 Cor 10:13).
But what of the people that lack reason, those we call the “insane?” Turn to Mark 5 and read about the demoniac among the tombs (also found in Matthew 8 and Luke 8). Note that after the demons were expelled, the man was “in his right mind.” There are several things we can infer from this. First, the man was not in his “right mind” during the demonic possession. This is obvious from the self-harm, raving, and other atypical behaviors described. Second, while he was possessed he was not in a state of grace and would have been condemned in his sins should he have died in that state. He was delivered from his hellish state by Christ and only after this did he attempt to follow Jesus. His demonic stupor, therefore, can be understood to have put him outside the realm of “rationality” and yet he was still culpable for his sinful actions.
I’m not saying all demonic possession leads to insanity, nor am I saying all insanity is caused by demonic possession. What I am saying is that this story demonstrates that someone “not being in their right mind” does not excuse them from moral guilt. It is quite possibly a sign of their deliberate moral depravity.
Oh, one other thing, around 75% of women report financial rationale as a primary reason for murdering their child.
The Festival of the Death of the Two Prophets
I will speak directly to it now. Lindsey, the impotent justice system, and the hordes of supportive women, are causally inseparable from the great crime of child murder in our land. There are three specific facets of this abomination that heap burning coals of condemnation on our heads and lead us to the state of ever more egregious darkness.
First, abortion is a Christological heresy. Jesus Christ is the eternally begotten son of God, existing before creation in communion with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He is the Word which was in the beginning with God and was God. That is, He is truly God by nature. Then he became flesh and dwelt among us. In the very moment of his miraculous conception, the second person of the trinity was Jesus, the human being. The human organism, though only a single cell at that stage, was truly the divine person of the Son. There was no point in which the body, the human flesh, had no personhood (an empty vessel) nor was it ever a different person subsumed by Jesus. Jesus was a human person from the moment of conception. To say otherwise is to deny his true human nature and throw in your lot with the heretical Gnostics. If he were to simply enter into or inhabit a body which was formed apart from him, he would not have been made *incarnate* but rather would be an avatar, the same mode in which pagan gods of old would appear. Put simply, Jesus is truly man by nature. (For further reading on this, see (16*) for the Chalcedonian Creed.) The denial of personhood is often seen by the murderous line “it’s not a person” or “it’s just a clump of cells.” A Christian that denies the personhood of any human at any stage of development, denies Christ’s personhood (Matthew 25:41-46). To deny Christ’s true nature as a human person from the moment of the existence of his body is engaging in arch-heresy.
Second, abortion is an inverse eucharistic invocation. Let’s start with the words used to declare the “reproductive right”. They say “It is my body,” a phrase every Christian knows and instinctively hears the words “broken for you.” Here, the woman is declaring “your body broken for me,” a total inversion of the sacrifice of Christ. In a sick mockery of our Lord Jesus, the Son of the Living God, the guiltless child (a baby) dies for the guilty (a parent). The body is broken and the blood is spilled. Yet it is upside-down and backwards. Jesus said he has the power to lay his life down and pick it up again, the power to choose life or death. We are “dead in our sins,” people that are unable to bring ourselves to life. In abortion, the one who possesses the power of life and death kills the one who has no power over their own life. The blood is spilled not in self-sacrifice, nor in love, but by hateful violence seeking selfish gain. All the core elements of the sacrament are used, just in reverse.
Third, the sacrifice is made unto the void. This modern practice of abortion, often done only for selfish gain, is often compared to the pagan child-sacrifice of old. They did it to make the rain fall and the crops grow, we do it so she can get that promotion and the salary increase. Somehow, though so much like the old ways, our new method, so sterile and clinical, is far worse. The pagans, when they murdered their own children, did so with eyes turned towards gods that promised them something in return. Moloch, Baal, Dagon, Ashtaroth, and many other demon-gods were present, at least in represented form, to accept the sacrifice and worship. Today, we commit the same sacrifices but the altar is empty. No god presides over the slaying of the child. Instead the whole affair is done in secret and the dead body of the baby is discarded quietly, discreetly, not offered to anyone or anything, not given in covenant, not offered up for some purpose to a recipient. The woman and the sacrificial priest (read: abortionist) are present but the god is missing. The babies are offered to the Void, the Nothing, the Uncreation, the Formless Emptiness that existed before the world was. The mothers attempt not merely to kill the child, but to “un-exist” them. The babies are stripped not only of life but also sacrificial purpose or meaning, which then purges them from memory altogether. A woman cannot even say, “I gave Dagon my baby and was blessed in return for his life.” Instead the god they give their offspring to is Emptiness itself, the sacrifice intentionally and permanently forgotten lest its crimson meaninglessness haunt the wicked perpetrators.
How is it related to the Lindsey Clancy trial? Because the slaughter of American children in an abortion center is not morally different than a mother strangling her three children in their own home. A people that permit the first type of crime are a people that will grow to permit the second. They will invent excuses via complex legal privileges that allow for it, even grow to praise it. We devise new evils but the Lord does not change. “Six things the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him… hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil…” (Proverbs 26:16-18). The great and terrible wrath the Lord God wields is dealt out according to the actions each person makes, regardless of legal protections, mental stressors, or any other excuse we can concoct. Woe to those that shed innocent blood for their end will be great and terrible.
The title of this section is pulled from Rev 11 specifically referencing verses 9 and 10. “For three and a half days all peoples and tribes and tongues and nations will view their bodies and will not permit them to be laid in a tomb. And those who dwell on the earth will gloat over them and celebrate and send one another gifts, because these two prophets had tormented them” (ESV). Regardless of your eschatological views, this section is illustrative of how the enemies of God react to the declaration of His truth, the servants He sends, and how they behave in relation to His commands. They revel in death, find it a cause for celebration, even invent an anti-Christmas.
Ti Estin Aletheia
When Jesus, the Messiah, was handed over like a lamb to the slaughter, he said that the Jewish rulers had “the greater sin” compared to the Roman authorities. The Jews had the light of the Law, tradition, and modern instruction, especially the priests and councils. They knew better. And yet, they were the very hand by which the great betrayal was completed when the people of God condemned their own God to death under the pretense of following the Law of God.
Oughtn’t we also know better? We have the light of modern embryology verifying the fact that biological life begins at conception, scientific certainty regarding the continuation of the selfsame organism from conception to death, the solid philosophical framework of universal human rights, the benefit of historical data detailing millennia of ritualistic human sacrifice. Does all this avail us of anything other than more guilt? How much more wrath are we storing up for ourselves, a people who dare stand full in the noon-day light of God and defy Him in highhanded rebellion.
Like Lightning he fell
Satan was humiliated by the advent of a tiny human in the form of a tiny cell. The virgin conceived and the Mighty God was called Immanuel. Satan’s doom was nigh and his rage was great, but that squirming baby boy was greater, even before he had grown arms, legs, or even a brain. Having been so greatly humiliated once, do you not see that Satan now seeks to destroy the constant reminder of his failure and the sure sign of his everlasting defeat? Does this not explain why the whole sick affair mocks our Lord’s sacrifice? Every baby’s cry reminds Satan of that tiny little Jesus that grew into a mighty warrior-king who will come again mounted on a warhorse to slay him and cast him into eternal death.
Solomon said “Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth” (Psalm 127:4). The wisest man in history understood the incredible position God places children in. On the one hand, children are foolish, selfish, silly little creatures. On the other hand, they are the model for how to come to Christ, the reward we are given from God, and the weapon in our hands against the enemy. Satan knows the words of this verse. It is why he seeks to extinguish the life of every child he can. Though he succeeds in damning the souls involved in the crime of child murder, he takes no higher pleasure than destroying the nascent image of God while also defiling the reminder of the Messiah’s great victory.
I can do no other
This is a dark subject, I know, but this is an issue of first importance for me and, therefore, for everything that springs from Regeneration Publishing. Why relate this to children's media? Because producing (Gen 1:28), raising (Prov 22:6), and protecting (Matt 18:6) children is our baseline function and duty as God’s creatures. The monstrous violation we euphemistically call “abortion” - such an unimaginably hideous thing that we must hide its true nature behind clinical language - must be fully resisted and all Christians must strive for the total eradication of this practice from our own lands and, finally, from all the wide reaches of the earth.
My promise to those of you that interact with anything Regeneration Publishing related: the image of God found in the form of children, so fragile and beautiful, will always be treated with the dignity, the care, and the love that God requires of us. Children are a treasure (Psalm 127:3) and will always be treated as such, never by me to be portrayed as bothersome burdens, impediments to peace and happiness, or any of the other negative portrayals so common to our current culture.
If you are a Christian, come along with me, let's stand together in blessed unity and do the good work God has prepared ahead of time for us to do. If you claim the title of Christian but reject the position above (the principles, not my exact wording), I say this: submit yourself to the teachings of the church, the apostles, the scripture, and to God. You are in opposition to our holy God regarding the wanton destruction of his image and you must reconcile with Him. Reject the modern cultural influences you have absorbed and enter into happy communion with the saints of God in an obedience that transcends times, peoples, and principalities. For the non-Christians (in regards to this particular subject), I pray that the reality of child-murder, a practice that has plagued humankind since antiquity, might open your eyes to the oppressive presence of sin, not only in our world, but in your own life so that you might come to salvation in the finished work of Jesus Christ, our Great God and savior.
1* – Unless otherwise noted, all English translations of early Christian writings in this article are taken from The Ante-Nicene Fathers (ANF) and A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (NPNF) series, digitized by Kevin Knight at New Advent (https://www.newadvent.org/fathers).
2* – Pseudo-Ephrem, De Timore Dei, 10. Quoted in Michael J. Gorman, Abortion and the Early Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1982), 65. – Ephrem’s writings are not widely translated into English. Indeed, the corpus is so vast and elements are disputed, making sourcing difficult. This particular quote is found via the citation in this footnote.
3* – Caesarius of Arles, Sermons, Volume 1 (1-80), trans. Mary Magdeleine Mueller, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 31 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1956), [insert page number, typically 12-13 for Sermon 1].
4* – Pope Stephen V, Epistola ad Luythobium Archiepiscopum (c. 887–888), in Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum, vol. 3, Monumenta Moguntina, ed. Philipp Jaffé (Berlin: Weidmann, 1866), 336.
5* – Martin Luther, Luther's Works, vol. 4, Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 21-25, trans. George V. Schick, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1964), 304.
6* – John Calvin, Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses Arranged in the Form of a Harmony, vol. 3, trans. Charles William Bingham (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1854), 41–42.
7* – Hugh L. Hodge, On Criminal Abortion; A Lecture Introductory to the Course on Obstetrics, and Diseases of Women and Children (Philadelphia: T. K. and P. G. Collins, Printers, 1854), 12.
8* – Hugh L. Hodge, Foeticide, or Criminal Abortion; A Lecture Introductory to the Course on Obstetrics (Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1869), 17.
9* – Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, vol. 18, Overture No. 44 (New York: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1869), 937.
10* – Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, ed. Eberhard Bethge, trans. Neville Horton Smith (New York: Macmillan, 1955), 130–131. (Note: Though written around 1940, academic citations require referencing the published edition).
11* – Francis A. Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell, 1979).
12* – John Piper, Bloodlines: Race, Cross, and the Christian (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011).
13* – Pope Francis, "General Audience" (address, St. Peter's Square, Vatican City, October 10, 2018), The Holy See, https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2018/documents/papa-francesco_20181010_udienza-generale.html.
14* – Ecumenical Patriarchate, For the Life of the World: Toward a Social Ethos of the Orthodox Church (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2020), para. 60.
15* – Southern Baptist Convention, "Resolution 2: On Abolishing Abortion," 2021 Annual Meeting, Nashville, TN, https://www.sbc.net/resource-library/resolutions/on-abolishing-abortion/.
16* - “We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood;
truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with the Father according to the Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood;
in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, according to the Manhood;
one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably;
the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons,
but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.”
- from The Chalcedonian Creed — Full Text & Commentary | The Chalcedonian Creed | The Chalcedonian Creed