The Silent Witness Speaks
Abortion & Richard Hays’s Moral Ambiguity
by W. Ross Blackburn
"In a case where the New Testament offers us no clear instruction, it is perhaps inevitable that Christians will in good conscience reach different conclusions.” The writer is Richard Hays, George Washington Ivey Professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School and internationally recognized New Testament scholar, writing in his book The Moral Vision of the New Testament, perhaps the most influential book on New Testament ethics today ( Christianity Today declared it one of the best and most enduring books of the twentieth century).
The subject is abortion. The “case” referred to above is framed through the experience of Bill and Jennifer, a couple wrestling with whether or not to abort their child with Down syndrome. Hays uses it to ask the question: “Could the New Testament provide any guidance on this agonizing decision?”
Misleading Categories
Although troubled by abortion, Hays contends that Scripture is ultimately silent on the matter, an argument that is often a foundation for religious people seeking to justify abortion (the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, for example). I want to look at how he arrives at his conclusions—for he makes interpretive moves common to the religious “pro-choice” movement—and in so doing, explore how Scripture does speak to abortion, both in condemning abortion and in giving guidance on how to reach out to pregnant women in troubled circumstances.
How Hays arrives at his conclusion that Scripture is silent is relatively simple: He imposes a category upon Scripture that precludes him from hearing how Scripture speaks to abortion. This is somewhat surprising, because one of the most helpful insights he offers addresses the categories by which we ought to speak of the unborn.
Reflecting on the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37), he argues that the lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbor?” is a self-justifying question designed to circumscribe his compassion. In other words, the lawyer was asking Jesus who qualified as a neighbor that he, the lawyer, was required to love. In telling the parable in response, Jesus rejects the category of neighbor and non-neighbor.
Hays sees exactly the same self-justifying move when people seek to define the fetus as a “non-person.” “It is inappropriate to approach the issue of abortion by asking ‘When does human life begin?’ or ‘Is the fetus a ‘person’?’ . . . There is no basis in Scripture for answering—or even asking—such questions.”
Hays is surely right. But ironically, it is here his argument falters. Formally, he is aware of the danger of imposing foreign categories upon Scripture, warning that “we must not get trapped by the way the world defines the issue,” but “must frame [our] moral reflection within the categories offered to us by Scripture.” Yet, he himself imposes a crucial category upon Scripture that precludes him from hearing its voice: the category of the unborn child, or “fetus.”
No Fetus
W. Ross Blackburn is the rector of Christ the King, an Anglican Fellowship in Boone, North Carolina. He also writes weekly reflections for the Human Life Review's website on matters of life.
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