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Undid revision 433020786 by Esoglou (talk) this is very interesting, but the article is about *Christian* thought
Esoglou (talk | contribs)
31,527 edits
I don't mean to edit war, but what the section gives on non-Xn Aristotle's ideas needs to be balanced by accounts of ideas more in vogue in 1st c. AD. If you disagree, please revert again (this will not be an edit war) and we'll discuss on Talk.
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==1st Century AD and the Classical World==
==1st Century AD and the Classical World==
{{seealso|Christianity in the 1st century}}
{{seealso|Christianity in the 1st century}}
Abortion was widely performed in the classical world, but there is disagreement about the frequency with which abortion was performed in the general population, and which cultures were most influential on the beliefs of early Christian scholars. Both [[ancient Greece|ancient Greek]] thought and [[Jewish history|ancient Jewish]] thought are considered to have had an impact. Important Greek scholars such as [[Aristotle]] believed a fetus in early gestation has the [[soul]] of a vegetable, and only later in gestation does the soul become "animated" as the result of "[[ensoulment]]." For the Greeks, ensoulment occurred 40 days after conception for male fetuses and 90 days after conception for female fetuses.<ref name=bioethics/><ref name=religioustolerance>[http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_hist.htm ReligiousTolerance.org]</ref> Consequently, abortion was not condemned among the Greeks if performed early.<ref name=bioethics>[http://books.google.com/books?id=6HZ2aOV2BSQC&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=thomas+aquinas+abortion&source=bl&ots=f5BTQJS5vP&sig=MxsDkvYEch61rI2B_AKVRczR5LY&hl=en&ei=gHuTSs3oJuC3twew7ahM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8#v=onepage&q=thomas%20aquinas%20abortion&f=false A companion to bioethics] By Helga Kuhse, Peter Singer</ref><ref name=religioustolerance /> According to Bakke and Clarke&Linzey,<!--Is this true, or are they talking about later writers? I have no access to the books--> early Christians adhered to Aristotle's belief in delayed ensoulment,<ref name=bioethics/>{{Failed verification|date=February 2011|reason=this speaks of the Hippocratic Oath and mediaeval writers; nothing about alleged early Christian acceptance of Aristotle}}<ref name=religioustolerance />{{Failed verification|date=February 2011|reason=says nothing about early Christian acceptance of Aristotle's ideas}}<ref name=bakke /><ref name=dictionaryethics>[http://books.google.com/books?id=idsNAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=thomas+aquinas+abortion&source=bl&ots=HNbIm-uNYm&sig=crecWRHW3W3lTw3Xz3nxk2xiHTs&hl=en&ei=aHqTSuboApiCtgevmMVC&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9#v=onepage&q=thomas%20aquinas%20abortion&f=false Dictionary of ethics, theology and society] By Paul A. B. Clarke, Andrew Linzey</ref><ref name="Stemcells"/> and consequently did not see abortion before ensoulment as homicide.<ref name=bakke />{{rp|150}}<ref name=dictionaryethics /> According to David Albert Jones, this distinction appeared among Christian writers only in the late fourth and early fifth century, while the earlier writers made no distinction between formed and unformed, a distinction that Basil explicitly rejected.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=VSG94ZH0SxEC&pg=PA73&dq=%22sixtus+v%22+%22gregory+XIV%22+murder&hl=en&ei=zbdJTa30HYeXhQePurSoDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22sixtus%20v%22%20%22gregory%20XIV%22%20murder&f=false David Albert Jones, ''Soul of the Embryo: Christianity and the Human Embryo'' (Continuum International 2004 ISBN 9780826462961), pp. 72-73]</ref>
Abortion was widely performed in the classical world, but there is disagreement about the frequency with which abortion was performed in the general population, and which cultures were most influential on the beliefs of early Christian scholars. Both [[ancient Greece|ancient Greek]] thought and [[Jewish history|ancient Jewish]] thought are considered to have had an impact. Important Greek scholars such as [[Aristotle]] believed a fetus in early gestation has the [[soul]] of a vegetable, then of an animal, and only later in gestation does the soul become "animated" with a human soul as the result of "[[ensoulment]]". For Aristotle, ensoulment occurred 40 days after conception for male fetuses and 90 days after conception for female fetuses.<ref name=bioethics/><ref name=religioustolerance>[http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_hist.htm ReligiousTolerance.org]</ref> Consequently, abortion was not condemned among the Greeks who accepted this view, if performed early.<ref name=bioethics>[http://books.google.com/books?id=6HZ2aOV2BSQC&pg=PA5&lpg=PA5&dq=thomas+aquinas+abortion&source=bl&ots=f5BTQJS5vP&sig=MxsDkvYEch61rI2B_AKVRczR5LY&hl=en&ei=gHuTSs3oJuC3twew7ahM&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8#v=onepage&q=thomas%20aquinas%20abortion&f=false A companion to bioethics] By Helga Kuhse, Peter Singer</ref><ref name=religioustolerance /> Schools of philosophy that arose later than 4th-century-BC Aristotle held views that differed from his. The [[Stoic]]s maintained that the living animal soul was received only at birth, through contact with the outer air,<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=m52fjYyOAOoC&pg=PA237&dq=stoics+soul+birth&hl=en&ei=WQXuTazNOITKhAee-vmoCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&sqi=2&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=stoics%20soul%20birth&f=false A.A. Long, ''Stoic Studies'' (University of California Press 2001 ISBN 9780520229747), p. 237]</ref> and was transformed into a rational soul only at fourteen years of age.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=_Av8mS_SCtQC&pg=PA155&dq=stoics+soul+birth&hl=en&ei=JwnuTdSYKtKGhQehj5i3CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBTgK#v=onepage&q=stoics%20soul%20birth&f=false Tad Brennan, ''The Stoic Life'' (Oxford University Press 2005 ISBN 9780199256266), p. 155]</ref> [[Epicurus]] disagreed and saw the origin of the soul as simultaneous with conception.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=svJKZ5_9BYUC&pg=PA201&dq=epicureans+soul+birth&hl=en&ei=ewruTfCuEsmxhAe-5oi1CQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=epicureans%20soul%20birth&f=false Norman Wentworth DeWitt, ''Epicurus and His Philosophy'' (University of Minnesota 1954), p. 201]</ref> In spite of this diversity of views, early Christians, according to Bakke and Clarke&Linzey, adhered to Aristotle's belief in delayed ensoulment,<ref name=bioethics/>{{Failed verification|date=February 2011|reason=this speaks of the Hippocratic Oath and mediaeval writers; nothing about alleged early Christian acceptance of Aristotle}}<ref name=religioustolerance />{{Failed verification|date=February 2011|reason=says nothing about early Christian acceptance of Aristotle's ideas}}<ref name=bakke /><ref name=dictionaryethics>[http://books.google.com/books?id=idsNAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=thomas+aquinas+abortion&source=bl&ots=HNbIm-uNYm&sig=crecWRHW3W3lTw3Xz3nxk2xiHTs&hl=en&ei=aHqTSuboApiCtgevmMVC&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9#v=onepage&q=thomas%20aquinas%20abortion&f=false Dictionary of ethics, theology and society] By Paul A. B. Clarke, Andrew Linzey</ref><ref name="Stemcells"/> and consequently did not see abortion before ensoulment as homicide.<ref name=bakke />{{rp|150}}<ref name=dictionaryethics /> According to David Albert Jones, this distinction appeared among Christian writers only in the late fourth and early fifth century, while the earlier writers made no distinction between formed and unformed, a distinction that Saint [[Basil of Caesarea]] explicitly rejected.<ref>[http://books.google.com/books?id=VSG94ZH0SxEC&pg=PA73&dq=%22sixtus+v%22+%22gregory+XIV%22+murder&hl=en&ei=zbdJTa30HYeXhQePurSoDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CC0Q6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22sixtus%20v%22%20%22gregory%20XIV%22%20murder&f=false David Albert Jones, ''Soul of the Embryo: Christianity and the Human Embryo'' (Continuum International 2004 ISBN 9780826462961), pp. 72-73]</ref>


It is thought unlikely that abortion was punished in classical Greece, and punishment for it in the Roman Republic was inflicted as a violation of the father's right to dispose of his offspring.<ref name="christianperspectives">[http://books.google.com/books?id=fVZXBeNCffwC Johannes M. Röskamp, ''Christian Perspectives On Abortion-Legislation In Past And Present'' (GRIN Verlag 2005 ISBN 978-3-640-56931-1)]</ref>{{rp|3}} Suzanne Dixon, a senior lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Queensland, writes that abortion was a threat to traditional power structures in the classical [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] world. A husband had power over his wife, her body, and their children. She explains that writings from the classical world portray abortion as expressions of an ideological agenda where men maintain or reestablish patterns of power between the sexes, not as information about historical realities.<ref name=bakke/>{{rp|27}} However, theologian Odd Bakke argues that Christians in the 1st Century AD were more notably influenced by [[Judaizers|Jewish ideas]] on the subject of abortion and that Jewish discussion generally centered around two schools of thought. Bakke writes that only one school of thought was based in Greek or Roman thought:
It is thought unlikely that abortion was punished in classical Greece, and punishment for it in the Roman Republic was inflicted as a violation of the father's right to dispose of his offspring.<ref name="christianperspectives">[http://books.google.com/books?id=fVZXBeNCffwC Johannes M. Röskamp, ''Christian Perspectives On Abortion-Legislation In Past And Present'' (GRIN Verlag 2005 ISBN 978-3-640-56931-1)]</ref>{{rp|3}} Suzanne Dixon, a senior lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Queensland, writes that abortion was a threat to traditional power structures in the classical [[Ancient Rome|Roman]] world. A husband had power over his wife, her body, and their children. She explains that writings from the classical world portray abortion as expressions of an ideological agenda where men maintain or reestablish patterns of power between the sexes, not as information about historical realities.<ref name=bakke/>{{rp|27}} However, theologian Odd Bakke argues that Christians in the 1st Century AD were more notably influenced by [[Judaizers|Jewish ideas]] on the subject of abortion and that Jewish discussion generally centered around two schools of thought. Bakke writes that only one school of thought was based in Greek or Roman thought:

Revision as of 19:32, 7 June 2011

See also: Religion and abortion and Christianity and abortion

Early Christian thought on abortion is interpreted in different ways. There is no mention of abortion in the Christian Bible, and at different times, early Christians held different beliefs about abortion,[1][2][3] while yet considering it a grievous sin.[4][5][6]

1st Century AD and the Classical World

See also: Christianity in the 1st century

Abortion was widely performed in the classical world, but there is disagreement about the frequency with which abortion was performed in the general population, and which cultures were most influential on the beliefs of early Christian scholars. Both ancient Greek thought and ancient Jewish thought are considered to have had an impact. Important Greek scholars such as Aristotle believed a fetus in early gestation has the soul of a vegetable, then of an animal, and only later in gestation does the soul become "animated" with a human soul as the result of "ensoulment". For Aristotle, ensoulment occurred 40 days after conception for male fetuses and 90 days after conception for female fetuses.[7][8] Consequently, abortion was not condemned among the Greeks who accepted this view, if performed early.[7][8] Schools of philosophy that arose later than 4th-century-BC Aristotle held views that differed from his. The Stoics maintained that the living animal soul was received only at birth, through contact with the outer air,[9] and was transformed into a rational soul only at fourteen years of age.[10] Epicurus disagreed and saw the origin of the soul as simultaneous with conception.[11] In spite of this diversity of views, early Christians, according to Bakke and Clarke&Linzey, adhered to Aristotle's belief in delayed ensoulment,[7][failed verification][8][failed verification][1][12][13] and consequently did not see abortion before ensoulment as homicide.[1]: 150 [12] According to David Albert Jones, this distinction appeared among Christian writers only in the late fourth and early fifth century, while the earlier writers made no distinction between formed and unformed, a distinction that Saint Basil of Caesarea explicitly rejected.[14]

It is thought unlikely that abortion was punished in classical Greece, and punishment for it in the Roman Republic was inflicted as a violation of the father's right to dispose of his offspring.[15]: 3  Suzanne Dixon, a senior lecturer in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Queensland, writes that abortion was a threat to traditional power structures in the classical Roman world. A husband had power over his wife, her body, and their children. She explains that writings from the classical world portray abortion as expressions of an ideological agenda where men maintain or reestablish patterns of power between the sexes, not as information about historical realities.[1]: 27  However, theologian Odd Bakke argues that Christians in the 1st Century AD were more notably influenced by Jewish ideas on the subject of abortion and that Jewish discussion generally centered around two schools of thought. Bakke writes that only one school of thought was based in Greek or Roman thought:

The Alexandrian school, with a minority in the Palestinian school, held that the fetus acquired the juridical status of a human person at one particular point in time, while the Palestinian majority held that the fetus and the mother were one, so that the fetus on its own had no legal existence. The latter point of view entailed that abortion was allowed, or indeed even demanded, in certain situations. We must, however, emphasize that the Palestinian school discussed abortion almost exclusively in relation to "the problem of the legal and cultic status of the fetus, especially in relation to miscarriages and certain necessary (and usually late) abortions. Abortions in the early stages of pregnancy, 'on demand' or as a means of birth control 'is very likely not even contemplated in the Mishnaic law.'"[1]: 111 

Bakke goes on to write that in other Jewish thought, abortion was "not envisaged as a possible means of limiting the number of one's children." Rather, abortion was discussed in a "juridical context." He notes that the Exodus discusses what the punishment should be to a man who strikes a woman so that she miscarries, but that some theologians interpreted the passage as rejecting fetal personhood and some interpreted it as implying a moral distinction between a "formed" and "unformed" fetus.[1]: 111 

2nd century AD to 4th century AD

See also: Christianity in the 2nd century, Christianity in the 3rd century, and Christianity in the 4th century

The society in which Christianity expanded was one in which abortion, infanticide and exposition were commonly used to limit the number of children (especially girls) that a family had to support.[16][17] These methods were often used also when a pregnancy or birth resulted from sexual licentiousness, including marital infidelity, prostitution and incest, and Bakke holds that these contexts cannot be separated from abortion in early Christianity.[1] Johannes M. Röskamp agrees that one reason for Christian disapproval of abortion was that it was linked with attempts to conceal adultery, but stresses that the main reason was the "all new concept" of concern for the fetus,[15]: 4  which, Michael J. Gorman declares, "distinguishes the Christian position from all pagan disapproval of abortion".[18]

According to sociologist Kristin Luker:

After the beginning of the Christian era... legal regulation of abortion as existed in the Roman Empire was designed primarily to protect the rights of fathers rather than rights of embryos.
...induced abortion is ignored in the most central Judeo-Christian writings: it was not mentioned in the Christian or the Jewish Bible, or in the Jewish Mishnah or Talmud. Abortion, it is true, was denounced in early Christian writings such as the Didache and by early Christian authors such as Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and St. Basil. But church councils, such as those of Elvira and Ancyra, which were called to specify the legal groundwork for Christian communities, outlined penalties only for those women who committed abortion after a sexual crime such as adultery or prostitution. Most importantly, perhaps, from the third century A.D. onward, Christian thought was divided as to whether early abortion - the abortion of an "unformed" embryo - was in fact murder. Different sources of church teachings and laws simply did not agree on the penalties for abortion or on whether early abortion is wrong.[3]

However, that the early Christians agreed in rejecting abortion is more generally accepted.[19][20][21][22][23] They condemned it as a serious sin,[24][25] even before ensoulment.[26] While agreeing that abortion was seen as a sin, some writers consider that those Christians viewed early abortion as on the same level as general sexual immorality,[27] or that they saw it as a grave contra-life sin like contraception and sterilization,[28][13] while others hold that it was for them "an evil no less severe and social than oppression of the poor and needy".[29] Even in cases where abortion was seen as more than a sexual crime, the practice was still associated with sexual immorality.[1]

In the late 1st century or early 2nd century, the Didache explicitly condemned abortion, as did the Apocalypse of Peter in the 2nd century.[30] However, early synods imposed penalties only on abortions that were combined with some form of sexual crime[3] and on the making of abortifacient drugs:[31] the early 4th-century Synod of Elvira imposed denial of communion even at the point of death on those who committed the "double crime" of adultery and subsequent abortion,[32] and the Synod of Ancyra imposed ten years of exclusion from communion on manufacturers of abortion drugs and on women aborting what they conceived by fornication (previously, such women and the makers of drugs for abortion were excluded until on the point of death).[31][33] Basil the Great (330-379) imposed the same ten-year exclusion on any woman who purposely destroyed her unborn child, even if unformed.[34][35] While Basil thus imposed the penance of exclusion from communion for ten years for abortion, the penance he imposed for killing by a soldier, was exclusion for only three years.[36][improper synthesis?]

See also

Wikiquote has quotations related to Abortion (pre-Reformation).

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h When Children Became People: the birth of childhood in early Christianity by Odd Magne Bakke
  2. ^ "Abortion and Catholic Thought: The Little-Told History"
  3. ^ a b c Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood by Kristin Luker, University of California Press
  4. ^ D'Antonio, Laity, American and Catholic (Rowman & Littlefield 1996), p. 58
  5. ^ Callahan, Abortion: Law, Choice, and Morality (Collier-Macmillan 1970), p. 410
  6. ^ Kelly, Stem Cells (Greenwood Press 2007 ISBN 0-313-33763-2), p. 86
  7. ^ a b c A companion to bioethics By Helga Kuhse, Peter Singer
  8. ^ a b c ReligiousTolerance.org
  9. ^ A.A. Long, Stoic Studies (University of California Press 2001 ISBN 9780520229747), p. 237
  10. ^ Tad Brennan, The Stoic Life (Oxford University Press 2005 ISBN 9780199256266), p. 155
  11. ^ Norman Wentworth DeWitt, Epicurus and His Philosophy (University of Minnesota 1954), p. 201
  12. ^ a b Dictionary of ethics, theology and society By Paul A. B. Clarke, Andrew Linzey
  13. ^ a b Stem cells, human embryos and ethics: interdisciplinary perspectives: Lars Østnor, Springer 2008
  14. ^ David Albert Jones, Soul of the Embryo: Christianity and the Human Embryo (Continuum International 2004 ISBN 9780826462961), pp. 72-73
  15. ^ a b Johannes M. Röskamp, Christian Perspectives On Abortion-Legislation In Past And Present (GRIN Verlag 2005 ISBN 978-3-640-56931-1)
  16. ^ Jane F. Gardner and Thomas Wiedemann, The Roman Household: A Sourcebook (Routledge 1991 ISBN 0-415-04421-9), p. 98
  17. ^ Paul Carrick, Medical Ethics in the Ancient World (Georgetown University Press 2001 ISBN 0-87840-848-7), p. 123
  18. ^ Michael J. Gorman, Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish and Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World (WIPF & Stock Publishers 1998 ISBN 9781579101824), p. 77
  19. ^ Frank K. Flinn, J. Gordon Melton (editors), Encyclopedia of Catholicism (Facts on File Incorporated 2007 ISBN 9780816054558), p. 4
  20. ^ Michael J. Gorman, Abortion & the Early Church: Christian, Jewish & Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World (InterVarsity Press 1982 ISBN 9780877843979), p. 77
  21. ^ New Oxford Review, vol. 50 (1983), p. 32
  22. ^ International Journal of the Unity of the Sciences, 1988, p. 165
  23. ^ Dennis M. Campbell, Doctors, Lawyers, Ministers: Christian Ethics in Professional Practice (Abingdon Press 1982 ISBN 9780687110162), p. 120
  24. ^ William V. D'Antonio, Laity, American and Catholic: Transforming the Church (Rowman & Littlefield 1996 ISBN 9781556128233), p. 58
  25. ^ Daniel Callahan, Abortion: Law, Choice, and Morality (Collier-Macmillan 1970), p. 410
  26. ^ Evelyn B. Kelly, Stem Cells (Greenwood Press 2007 ISBN 0-313-33763-2), p. 86
  27. ^ Robert Nisbet, Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary (Harvard University Press 1982 ISBN 0-674-70066-X), p. 2
  28. ^ Ana S. Iltis, Mark J. Cherry, At the Roots of Christian Bioethics (M & M Scrivener Press 2010 ISBN 978-09764041-8-7), p. 166
  29. ^ Michael J. Gorman, Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish, and Pagan Attitudes (InterVarsity Press 1982 ISBN 087784397X), p. 50
  30. ^ Brian Clowes. "Chapter 9: Catholic Church Teachings on Abortion: Early Teachings of the Church". Facts of Life. Human Life International.
  31. ^ a b Canon 21. Concerning women who commit fornication, and destroy that which they have conceived, or who are employed in making drugs for abortion, a former decree 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.
  32. ^ Canon 63. If a woman conceives by adultery while her husband is away and after that transgression has an abortion, she should not be given communion even at the last, because she has doubled her crime.
  33. ^ An exclusion from communion for ten years was considerably greater than the two or three years that was normal in the 4th to 6th century for grave sins, but it was less than the twenty or thirty years that in that period was the maximum (see Rinaldo Ronzani, Conversion and Reconciliation: The Rite of Penance (Pauline Publications 2007 ISBN 9966-08-234-4), p. 66). [improper synthesis?]
  34. ^ Philip Schaff and Henry Wallace (editors), Basil: Letters and Select Works, p. 225 - Letter 188, to Amphilochius
  35. ^ Matthew Schwartz, Roman Letters: History from a Personal Point of View (Wayne State University Press 1991 ISBN 0-8143-2023-6), p. 151
  36. ^ "In a much-cited passage, Basil the Great declared that Christians who killed, even as legitimate soldiers, had to abstain from communion for three years. … Any killing of human beings was a mortal sin, just like adultery and fraud" (James Q. Whitman, The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial (Yale University Press 2007 ISBN 9780300116007), p. 34).
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