Life's beginning and the incarnation

The stakes in the current abortion debate are high. In 2008, 202,158 abortions were carried out in England and Wales. On average, 18 out of every 1,000 women aged 15-44 will have had an abortion during 2008.

How we respond to these statistics necessarily depends upon when we consider human life to begin. If we are of the view that it is at the point of conception (fertilisation) then these statistics are utterly tragic. They present a damning indictment of our society — a society in which 202,158 innocent lives were taken in the past year alone. I would say the situation is far worse once we recognise that these statistics do not even include the vast number of embryos destroyed in medical research, IVF treatment, or by post-fertilisation contraception.

Of course, our assessment of the situation would be quite different if we take the view that human life begins post-conception. So the crucial question is: when does human life begin?

Beginning of human life

Christians have typically sought to answer this question by reference to a number of scriptural texts, among the most well known of which are: ‘Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me’ (Psalm 51.5); and ‘For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb’ (Psalm 139.13).

While these texts point towards human life beginning at conception, objections have been raised about their use in the context of the abortion debate. It is not my intention to address those objections in this article (although they certainly can be addressed). Rather I wish to focus on an argument grounded upon the doctrine of the incarnation as stated by the fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon in AD 451. In a nutshell, the argument is that if we deny that human life begins at conception we end up falling into one of the heretical positions condemned by that Council.

Sanctity of human life

We must begin by considering what it is that makes human life intrinsically valuable and protected by God.

In the contemporary abortion debate it is common to speak about personhood, and questions about the ethics of abortion are commonly resolved by reference to whether the embryo is a human person. This language of personhood is, however, quite alien to the Bible. The Bible roots the sanctity of human life not in personhood but in human nature. Genesis 9:6 states: ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image’. The word translated ‘man’ means humanity. It is human nature (the body-soul unit) not personhood which is made in the image of God and intrinsically valuable as a result. Therefore, the question is: at what point does human nature come into existence? With this in mind we can consider the Chalcedon Definition and the events that preceded it.

Christological heresies

The Ecumenical Councils sought to set out the received understanding of the biblical Christian faith against the background of the heresies that were current at the time. To understand the Chalcedon Definition we need to understand the heresies it was seeking to combat. There are two of particular importance to us:

Apollinarianism: Apollinarius of Laodicea lived in the fourth century and taught that the Son of God assumed a human body but not a rational human spirit in the incarnation. In essence, he claimed that Jesus’s humanity consisted only of his body. He did not have a human mind or soul. Apollinarius was vigorously opposed by Gregory of Nazianzus, who insisted that our salvation rests on the fact that the Son took on the entirety of human nature, because ‘what has not been assumed has not been healed’.

Nestorianism. Nestorius of Constantinople fell into the error of denying a true union between the Son’s divine nature and his human nature. Instead of speaking about a union (distinct but not separate) he spoke of a ‘conjunction of the natures’ — Christ was both the Son eternally begotten of the Father and the human son born of Mary. These two natures were not united in one being but instead stuck together like two pieces of balsa wood.

The Chalcedon Definition

The Chalcedon Definition explicitly rejected both heresies. In relation to Apollinarianism, the Definition stated that the Son is ‘very God and very man, of a reasonable soul and body consisting, consubstantial with the Father as touching his Godhead, and consubstantial with us as touching his manhood’. In relation to Nestorianism, the Definition stated that ‘the Son and our Lord Jesus Christ is to be confessed as one and the same, that he is perfect in Godhead and perfect in manhood … confessed to be in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably’.

Christological implications

If we deny that human life begins at conception, we end up with a Christology that is either Apollinarian or Nestorian and, therefore, contrary to the Chalcedon Definition (orthodoxy that is recognised by the entire church — East and West, Catholic and Protestant).

Either we conclude that the Son united himself to some form of sub-human nature at conception — perhaps a soulless body — which is to fall into Apollinarianism. Or we conclude that the Son only assumed his human nature once it had reached the necessary stage of development to be considered a human being. This not only contradicts the ‘Formula of Union’ (AD 433 — accepted by the Council of Chalcedon) which stated that ‘God the Word was made flesh … and from the very moment of conception united to himself the temple he had taken’; it also falls into the Nestorian heresy of claiming that Christ’s human nature had an existence separate from him.

The strength of this argument was recognised in the early 7th century by Maximus the Confessor, who wrote that ‘nature’s very maker, by the mystery of his incarnation, [was] the champion and infallible teacher of this doctrine [that a human body and soul exist from conception]’ (Ambigua 2, 49).

Delayed ensoulment

Of course, not all Christians have held to the view that a human receives a soul (and is therefore fully human) at the moment of conception.

There is a long line of thought going back to Augustine that a foetus receives a soul at some point at or around 40 days. How do such people reconcile this view with the doctrine of the incarnation? Thomas Aquinas is perhaps the best-known exponent of ‘delayed ensoulment’. He was heavily influenced by Aristotle’s primitive embryology which held that the development of the embryo involved a succession of souls corresponding to the development of the embryo’s body through various stages. It was only when the body was formed (at 40 days for a male and 90 days for a female) that the foetus received a rational soul and was considered to be a living human being. Aquinas reconciled this view with the doctrine of the incarnation by arguing that Christ’s body did not develop in the normal manner. He was never an embryo but was instead conceived as a ‘perfectly formed’ foetus (Summa Theologica IIIa Q.33 art 1).

There are two main problems with this view. First, it is hard to reconcile with the fact that the Son remained in Mary’s womb for the full nine months. Second, it is based on a flawed embryology. Central to Aquinas’s understanding was the view that the soul must correspond to the body. Since, for Aquinas, a human body could not exist until it possessed recognisable human organs and limbs, a rational soul could not be received until this time. With the benefit of modern biology, Aquinas would have been able to see that the fundamental organisation of living matter is genetic and that an embryo possesses all the necessary genetic material from conception. Moreover, he would have seen that conception marks a sudden start to the process which is followed by progressive and continuous development. With this knowledge it is highly likely that Aquinas would have accepted immediate ensoulment of the embryo.

A second line of argument that might be advanced in response to the position stated in this article is that the Son assumed a sub-human body at conception which only later became a fully human body. This view obviously veers towards Apollinarianism and is directly contradicted by Sophronius’s synodal letter which was officially approved by the Third Council of Constantinople in AD 680. That letter stated that the Son ‘assumed our human substance completely ... flesh consubstantial with ours and an intellectual soul of the same stock as our souls ... he became in truth a human being from the very point of his conception’.

High stakes

As we have seen, the stakes in the current abortion debate are unimaginably high. If life begins at conception, as I have argued, then society is sanctioning the death of millions of children each year through abortion, destructive embryo research and post-fertilisation contraception. Christians should be as shocked by this as we are by other genocides. But the stakes are just as high for Christians who would deny that human life begins at conception. Such a view might alleviate our concerns regarding the widespread destruction of embryos, but that is at the expense of the orthodoxy of our Christology and, with it, the truth of the gospel.

Ralph Cunnington is a student at WEST, Bridgend.