It is true that the very ancient Hebrews had a different idea of "soul" than we do. It isn't that they didn't have a word for soul, they did; however, like you pointed out, to them it was not a thing wholly separapable from the body, and, consequently, it wasn't necessarily even immortal. "It came about that as her soul was departing (for she died) that she called him Benoni . . . ." Genesis 35:18. The idea of a distinct and immortal spirit did come through the Greeks, I think. The Greek word "psyche" means "life" or "self" which isn't much different than the Hebrew word as far as I know. It is just a matter of adding another idea, a Greek one, "pneuma" to the mix which gives us an immortal part. I do not understand yet the distinction between "spirit" and "soul" sometimes found in the New Testament. One passage from Hebrews reads: "For the word of God is living and active and sharper than a two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart." Hebrews 4:12. To my mind, from this passage we can safely deduce two things: first, that behind the words soul and spirit are two different things, and second, that these two things are somehow bound very tightly together. Of course, from this passage alone we shouldn't assume that the body is itself distinct from these two things. But in Matthew we read the words of our Lord Himself: "Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell." Surely from these words we can believe that the soul and the body are separable, at least ultimately, if not in this life. Christ was speaking to His disciples when He said this; since all of the disciples were Hebrew, if it safe to assume that they at least had heard of immortality and were willing to believe Him.

The problem with your idea, I think, has two parts, one which isn't such a big deal maybe, and one which is. The first problem I see is that it is simply primitive in the sense that it ignores the whole revelation of the New Testament regarding this subject. The letter of Paul to the Romans and the two letters to the Corinthians are filled with implications of a soul distinct from the body. Your idea strikes me as being something like a guy who is content to ride a unicycle when he could have a bike.

The second problem is bigger and makes me think of Jon's syllogism. If the soul and body just mean the same thing, that is, a person, or a person's life, then what becomes of that life when it is extinguished? What would Freud say? "Nil", that's what. You rightly say that life is not "totally extinguishable", but if we are standing there looking down at a corpse in a casket, what exactly is it that hasn't extinguished? I'm looking at Uncle Fred and saying to myself, "Sure looks like he's been extinguished to me." So, whether or not the spirit or soul is separate from the body at creation-time, it is clear that the two things are separable at death. But I don't think taking this view would be a huge leap for you.

I see what you are trying to do as far as how this idea informs the abortion debate. Avoid the question of when the thing gets its soul. Like I told Jon I think that is a wise move. Again, the issue is what is a fetus. Is it a person or is it not a person? But just for you, why not think of the life/death cycle you mentioned backwards? The immortal soul departs the body at death. When would it make sense that the soul goes into the body, is "breathed" into it by God? Doesn't that sound a lot like the event in Genesis concerning the first man? The Hebrews knew that God breathed life into Adam. St. Paul went further telling us (by implication) that that life contains an immortal part which is bound up with and yet distinct from the body. On Jon's syllogism, the conclusion that losing my hair = losing some of my soul from the premise that the soul arrives as soon as new DNA appears is a sound argument, but not necessarily true. That conclusion assumes that the soul and the DNA are the same thing, which they aren't if we believe Socrates as refined by St. Paul.

Maybe we should abandon the abortion problem and talk about "snakes and snails and puppy dog tails". Or better yet, "sugar and spice and everything nice".

Also, we can edit our own posts, just not our comments. Isn't that right?

P.S. Next time I see you, Kelly, you MUST tell me which pathologies you are thinking of. I have to know, for my own well-being.

Jon, first: I insist that you are a philosopher, maybe not professionally, but from what I know of you all that means is that you don't charge people a fee when you give them truth. Philo (lover) + Sophist (of Wisdom). That you are.

Second. Now we are cooking with gas! No, I am not thinking specifically of the spirit in me. Your question brings up a big issue, but one that need not concern the abortion debate as I perceive it. Just one more useless sidetrack, rather. However, I think your question belies a bit of a conflation of two ideas which we may as well talk about to be clear.
One: The "me of me" which you suggest we may not be able to even talk about could simply be "Todd" or "Jon" as conceived in the mind of God, which is to say, there never has been a time when we were not on His mind, as He can never have a new idea. I think that is what you mean when you say the "me of me". Is that right?

Second: The spirit is an altogether different thing, though. Surely the spirit is a created thing, is it not, at some point in time, unlike the idea of me, described above. How it becomes part of the flesh, who knows? The precise nature of man's dual nature is a mystery. Whatever we are, I do not think we are simply a spirit poured into an empty shell. But neither is my spirit cemented to my flesh, at least not forever.

So, back to the Debate. I don't see how getting into an argument about the spirit can help when, apparently, many people who say they believe in a spirit, or something in man which is immortal, will still argue that a woman should be permitted to kill the fetus is she chooses. They say it's not a person, therefore, it has no spirit. A sound argument for sure.
And so, we argue, "oh, but it is," or, alternatively, "it surely COULD be." We start with a definition of what a person is and go from there.

I like your syllogism. "My spirit is in my DNA?". This makes me think of something along similar lines; the argument that the fetus is just "part of the mother". If that is true, it follows that if the fetus is male, then the mother has four kidneys, eight limbs, and a penis.
Does this get us away from the spirit questions as far as this debate is concerned?

Lastly, does it bug anyone that I hog up space by making these posts instead of just comments? I tend to get lost down there in the comments section.

Pertinent

When do we meet for libations?

I couldn't agree more. Arguments from Scripture won't work on folks who don't believe it is infallible,and often times those who do argue from scripture wrest passages out of context and so lose credibilty anyway. Furthermore, one thing the most visible group of anti-abortion folks (i.e., the screechers on t.v. and in newspapers) get wrong is that they do the same thing the abortion-rights people do in that they claim to "know" something which they simply do not. In fact, I am not even sure the abortion rights people do this all the time. I think some just say, "Yeah, we don't know, but who cares, it's her right to choose" which is at least an honest, albeit a very odd honest approach.

So, like you, I think, I don't think a search of the scriptures is going to do a lot of good. I am curious as to why you posed the question in the negative, however, that is, to go looking for instances of a fetus being treated as "less than human" as opposed to simply ascertaining what the texts say about the unborn, if anything. What you described sounds like the gearing-up for an exercise in proof-texting. At any rate, if you approach a document which is between 2000 and 6000 years old with concepts behind a word like "fetus" on the brain you are probably headed for trouble. A serious study of the Pentateuch requires more than a curiosity about what an ancient Jew might think about 21st century western culture's take on abortion, which is what I think such an undertaking will really amount to. The ancient Jew doesn't care about us, could scarcely begin to comprehend, much less approve or disapprove of us. Like Augustine, who the court in "Roe" mentions briefly in one of its myriad touch-and-go nods to antiquity, the ancient Jews knew little about human gestation and nothing about genetics. My guess is that God knew that when He handed them the Books. Nevertheless, as you pointed out getting our noses in Scripture is never a bad idea.

So, my reference to the passage from King David was merely intended for us "insiders", so to speak. Again, I know that many non-believers may not give one whit about what David says and so arguing from the Bible will get us nowhere. But that doesn't matter. We don't have to convince many people that murder, polygamy, rape and incest are immoral because the scriptures say so, do we? I'm not even sure that we could.

One argument is simply that since we don't know when life begins, we shouldn't abort fetuses, since, well, they might be alive, or people. This goes to humility, the willingness to submit to not knowing, and acting like we don't know, even when it is difficult to do that. Which reminds me, we should get our terms straight. When I say "when life begins" I mean "when a person starts". I think we are straight on this. For my money, I see a person once the sperm and egg become an altogether different thing with its own genetic code. The creature is the very beginning of a process of changes which terminates at death. Zygote, embryo, fetus, baby, child, adolescent, adult. So, I find it no more troubling to think of a zygote as a person than I do a young child or a debilitated old man. The talk of the fetus not being viable makes me say, "So, what? Neither is a baby." Or, if by viable the argument is that the fetus cannot survive without more gestation, or incubation, does that mean that a fetus delivered away from medical care is not a person, but one delivered in a hospital is?

These are, of course, more "beginnings" of the whole debate. We can go anyway you like, though I suggest we leave Darwin out of it since his own followers no longer believe much of what he said, and the same goes for Freud. Those guys are to evolution and pyschology what Copernicus is to physics. As for psychologists, dreams don't mean anything, or maybe they do, they urge us to believe.

Whatever we do, I have no doubt that I will gain more from any discusion we have than you two guys will, so if no one is up to basically instructing me, I understand. I am, admittedly, coming late to this and am quite stupid to boot. Maybe we should simply start with discussing what we know versus what we believe.

Finally, I was in no wise flattering Jon. I had a good hearty laugh and owed him a heartfelt thanks. That is a great story.

Red Square

When you guys saw Sergei's pic of Red Square, could you think of anything but Tetris? That was my first thought. A testament, really, to the initial impression and continuing popularity of the game.

Erratum

I wrote below that the issue for Christians (on abortion) is whether or not it is a good idea for a woman to terminate a healthy pregnancy. You would think that after 1st-year law school one would be able to zero in on a crux of a matter; apparently, my brain sagged there momentarily and I asked a silly question. The issue is, of course: what is a fetus?

I owe a debt of gratitude to both you guys for prodding me (unintentionally, I know) into thinking about this matter. I ran off a copy of "Roe" and am reading it now for the first time. I simply did not know that abortions could be had as easily (within certain time limits) as they could in many states prior to 1973; I see better now precisely what the decision did to affect what states can do regarding abortions.

Also, is it me or is Nebraska just the absolute worst place on the face of the earth to live from about ten in the morning until nine o'clock at night during the whole month of July? Then at nine it's perfect again.

Jon: I was outside tonight after three of our four kids were in bed, twilight, the locusts chirping wildly (I love that sound). Kelly and Stella were sitting on our little patio and I walked down to the shop to bring the lawnmower up to the house for tomorrow. It's about a 500-foot walk and was getting dark fast, so when I got down there and realized I had forgotton the key I swore to myself. As I was walking back I looked toward the house and saw a toddler playfully stomping about on the sidewalk. Of course it was Stella, but for one second I believe I had just a taste of what I think Chesterton is talking about in "Manalive". In that slender moment I got to see her for the first time, and I didn't even have to go around the world to get it, just to the shed and back. If I forgot to say so, thanks for recommending that book and I haven't forgotton that you want to produce a stage version of it. A great idea!

On Warren Zevon. I, too, admired his brave exit of this life. For years I wondered if the man behind the bespectacled, cigarette smoking skull (his trademark, you may know) was as tough as the image he projected and emoted through his music. When I saw the VH1 special chronicling his final months, my question was answered. He died how he lived; apparently, to the fullest, foregoing any cancer treatment which would surely make him feel sicker sooner, and opting instead only for the drugs he needed to keep right on working.

I had mixed feelings about the "enjoy every sandwich" remark. That is exactly the kind of sound-bite that folks in t.v.-land crave, something very broadly rendered and easily digested by billions people. I noticed it circulated like an epidemic across the internet for awhile, was even adopted by Zevon's own son as the title of the Zevon Web Site. I understand what he meant, who wouldn't?

On the other hand, Zevon as a Letterman guest sounded much like what I hear when I listen to his music, i.e., he seemed authentic, what you see is what you get. Letterman asked a simple question and Zevon gave a simple, honest answer. I wonder what Tom Cruise's response would be to such a question.

I will post this here because I fear you'll forget to check the comments section of your own blog.

Jon, you screenname story gave me the best genuine straight from belly out-loud laugh I have had in a very long time. Positively superb. How sad! Sounds like something straight out of Wes Anderson. Actually reminds me of me at that age; any outright attempt to be cool always seemed to backfire. Very courageous of you to share. Thanks.

Russell's Picture

I finally got my filebucket account working again, so here's a picture of Kurt Russell Hoffart.

Jon: I am guessing you'll find some typos in this one.

Thanks. Lots of good remarks here. I will repond very briefly and we can all discuss this maybe when we hook up next time.

My "narcotics" analogy means simply this and no more. Permitting something which is detrimental to the health of a society in order to accomodate those individuals who insist on behaving badly toward themselves and society would make no sense in other scenarios, so why do it in this one? Whether or not certain drugs should be legal was not the point, just an example of a thing I perceive to be similar.

I sense that you may be lumping me in with those self-righteous types who seeth with shrieking rage toward pro-abortion folks. Please don't. They can get on one's nerves, I know. We do tend to see other's sins more readily than our own. But I ask you, does that mean that we ignore the sin altogether? To forgive is not to condone, indeed, to encourage by default. "Go and sin no more," says the Lord, full of compassion, not, "We can fix this at the clinic down the street." The woman who survives the stoning still carries with her the consequences of her actions, though not the guilt of her sin. From that she is saved. Again, we can do what we do to the unborn for one reason; because they are weak. The situation that this or that particular girl is in is irrelevant to the issue of what is to be done. I know we agree on this.

What I call a human being is what any biology professor worth his weight in petri dishes would call a human being; an organism which contains the same genetic material as you and me and that includes a zygote. Of course, the real issue is when is it a person, I know. So, when is it? And here is where we humans stubbornly refuse to submit to mystery, to say, "I do not know", and resign ourselves to the difficulties we face, whether we bring those difficulties on ourselves or not. Do you know what I mean?

Of course abortions will and probably have indirectly resulted in a decline in monogamy. Again, how could they not? I don't see what is so difficult about that when we are talking about premarital and extra-marital sex. Furthermore, the "stigmatizing" of unwanted pregnancies? Give me a break. Do you think that in the last fifty or so years divorce, homosexuality and promiscuity have not each found their way further into the clear light of day. Of course they have. Don't get me wrong, I don't worry much about these things, cultures come and go and cultures past have been more or less as depraved as our own. But the people of those cultures have a luxury I don't have; they are all dead. I have to live in this one and face it and listen to all the mumbo-jumbo excuses for why we do dumb things and how we can (we think, wrongly) undo something with one stroke of a scalpel.

Likening abortion to adoption is ridiculous really. The whole point of abortion is to avoid the hassle of a pregnancy, obviously; adoption demands that the pregancy be carried all the way. I cannot fathom a man or a woman saying, "We can coplulate with whomever we please because we can always give the child away, heh, heh!" To that the world replies, "Yeah, sure, if that's what you want then knock yourself out, er, up". Sure, we are a wicked generation and I, for one, need little encouragement to behave badly. But for heaven's sake, if you tell me that it's not only understandable that I am inclined to beat my wife silly from time to time, but, furthermore, that I am permitted by Caesar to do that, well, gosh, I might just fall over backwards with glee, certainly I will not feel as compelled NOT to do it when the urge comes over me next time.

So, very young children are safe under the constitution. Well, sure, for now! Why on earth could that not change tomorrow? It certaily could and if trends continue the way they have for the past fifty years I see no logical reason how an infant in years to come will be safe from its mother who perceives it to be a nuisance and threat to her well-being.So, these weren't very brief remarks. I gotta go mow now, let's keep talking about this if you guys don't mind. Game?

tm

Also, I didn't mean to compare those who get abortions with thieves or murderers (I don't think I mentioned murderers at all) in order to spew at them. I only chose one type of behavior which most sane cultures prohibit with another one which I think sane cultures should prohibit if they don't already.

The problem comes down to mystery, I think, coupled with a conviction (held by 46% of the population if your figures are right) that our Creator places a value, a high value, on an unborn "human", "person", "fetus" "zygote" or whatever that damn thing is and we would do well to leave it be and deal with it alive when it gets here. See Psalm 139 for what one wise and noble king believed about what God knows about the unborn, bearing in mind that the poem was written long before 1860 (10th century B.C., I think.)

Kelly, there very well could be a distinction between capital punishment and war versus abortion. Capital punishment is certainly permissible, but not necessarily demanded of a society, unless you take the Genesis mandate as binding on us today: "Whosoever sheds man's blood by man shall his blood be shed" War, on the other hand, is, apparently, taken as a fact of life for a society by St. Paul in Romans 13. It is inconceivable that a society can exist for long without wielding the sword from time to time. I wonder if maybe that should be government's sole purpose, but that is another topic.

Jon: Forget about coming off as pretentious. Who you are (young, white, unmarried, childless law student) is wholly irrelevant to the topic if, and only if, the unborn are valuable. Because if they are, then you are affected by how society treats them. If they have no value, which is exactly what current law says, and that is the status quo regardless of what the other 46% want, then we are simply wrong and need to be set straight with a little education and training. Convince me, I say, I am all ears.

I didn't run this post through spell-checker or proof it much so look out!

Thanks, guys. Of course Congress could amend the constitution. I had a brain cramp there.

Jon, wasn't it precisely an advancement in science that got the gov. out of a woman't body in the first place? All that talk about when a fetus is viable didn't affect the court's decision at all? Of course it did.

I think the issue for Christians (and anyone else for that matter, because it is, after all, The Issue) is not what a woman should be allowed or disallowed to do with her body, (does the law permit us to do anything we want with our bodies?) but rather, whether or not it is a good idea to terminate normal, healthy pregnancies at will. All that talk about "viability" is a load of bunk. Be sure that there are those who believe that a woman should not only be allowed to terminate a pregnancy if she wants, but she should also be able to kill any of her children who are too burdensome for her to care for. Following the line of reasoning of abortion-rights folks, I cannot see, try as I have, how that idea is assailable. What is the real difference between an unborn child and a (very young) born one? The unborn are an easy target, probably the easiest target when we line up all the things in life the impede personal gain, ambition, and the "pursuit of happines". Remember, we didn't enslave blacks or push Native Americans out of the way because those peoples were unintelligent or genetically inferior, we did it because they were militarily weak, and, furthermore, in the case of blacks, economically valuable.Don't let us get too enamored with the culture-talk about who has rights and who doesn't; let us think about what we are doing when we make killing human beings (and that is what it is, no play to base emotions intended, I promise) legal. Of course, I mean for now, killing this particular class of human beings in this manner. I realize that to protect the unborn we will have to assign rights to them, but won't that mean simply giving them back the rights we took away? Were the unborn protected prior to 1973 or weren't they? If so, how?

Kelly, you say that abortion is "sinful" but that a government may permit them. That sounds like a resignation and that is O.K. if your government is a dictatorship or a fascist regime where there is little one can do to effect change, but is that all one can do here? Jon points out that our time might be better served helping those who find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy on their hands. Nonsense. We might as well say that instead of outlawing thievery we would do better to simply give the poor thieves the things they want. This argument about how things will be worse because it will lead to unsafe abortions continues to leave me stupefied, mouth agape and choking on my own spittle. I ask you, "worse for whom?" Let me make a confession to you. If our great unicameral passed a law tomorrow which permitted the free trade of narcotics (i.e., only the very Best Weed, heroin and cocaine) I could almost guarantee you that I wouldn't make it back to UNL Law come fall because I'd be too busy snorting, shooting and smoking, in addition to fighting with my wife, my kids, watching my life fall apart while, rest assured, enjoying much of it, because, don't let anyone fool you, it's fun to get high! Of course, that isn't going to happen because no such permission is on the horizon for us. But what about all those poor junkies and coke-heads out there who risk their lives dealing with, well, dealers? Is that fair? Why not let the pharmaceutical companies sell them the stuff . . . safe, clean, available at Wal-Mart? (I am salivating at the very thought of such a thing!)

My point is that abortion is bad for society. We can see its effects today and will continue to see it in years to come so long as things remain status quo. It promotes, even encourages promiscuity (how could it not?) it undermines monogamy, it destroys families, and, most importantly, it destroys a human's life.

I gotta go as I am currently working on a "Very Best of Rush" compilation for my brother (and anyone else interested) complete with cover art. So far I have whittled eighteen studio and two live discs down to five Cds.

Are a research and development center of a pharmaceutical co./waterfront hotel the same kinds of things as a state park or an interstate?

A. No

My reaction to the New London, Conn decision was absolute disgust. During my property class we watched a documentary on the Poletown decision that was handed down in the eighties. In that case a bunch of elderly men and women were forced to give up there home to make way for a greenery that was supposed to surround a new parking lot of the new GM (I believe) factory. These people work working class folk who only knew that they owned a little piece of the earth and had no concept of "eminent domain", but they didn't go down without a fight. They banded together in a real community and protested and the day the wrecking balls came they all huddled up in a Catholic Church (the church sold out to the developer months prior). However, it was all for naught. The families lost their homes and were only compensated at the assessed fair market value of their home. Guess how much a home that is going to be greenery for a new parking lot at a GM factory is worth? Ya, not much.

With my limited background in the foundations of our democracy, one thing I am always reminded of is that property and more importantly, the rights of the citizenry to truly own the property is one of the foundations of a democracy. Further, the first thing (well, maybe second) thing a despot will do is eliminate property rights and claim them it all as his own. This way he limits the power of the public and thereby the threats to his despotism.

While I agree that eminent domain is needed and just when the domain is to be used for actual public use, I do disagree that our democracy has degraded to such a point already that the public has been replaced by private organizations or businesses. The Supreme Court has moved our "democracy" from a probable timocracy to an aristocracy with this unwise decision IMHO. It seems in the present state of the question a person could be robbed of his right to possess certain land at the whim of a local official.

Public use of non-blighted land cannot and should not mean parking lots for private businesses or summer homes for wealthy campaign contributors.

For the reasons above I respectfully dissent (Wow, that is fun to say! Now I know how Scalia feels all the time.) from Kelo v. City of New London.

Checking in...

Everybody cool?