Ensoulment

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In Christian theology, ensoulment refers to the creation of a soul within, or the placing of a soul into, a human being—a concept most often discussed in reference to abortion.

Some theologians have believed that souls are newly created within a developing baby, while some believe that souls were created before time and are added to babies while the body develops.

There is considerable debate about the timing of ensoulment during fetal development, with some claiming the moment of conception, some the moment of implantation, some the formation of the heart, some the formation of the nervous system and brain, some the development of viable lungs, and still others the time of quickening. Others place the time of ensoulment at the moment of birth (post-fetal). The presence or absence of a soul is factored into considerations of the moral nature of abortion, particularly whether it is or is not morally equivalent to infanticide and murder.

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[edit] Development history

The early Christians are the first on record as having pronounced abortion to be the murder of human beings. Their public apologists, Athenagoras, Tertullian, and Marcus Minucius Felix (Eschbach, "Disp. Phys.", Disp. iii), refuted the slander that a child was slain and its flesh eaten by the guests at the Agapae, and appealed to their laws as forbidding all manner of murder, even that of children in the womb. The Fathers of the Church unanimously maintained the same doctrine. In the fourth century, the Council of Eliberis decreed that Holy Communion should be refused to an adulterer who had procured the abortion of her child all the rest of her life even on her deathbed. The Sixth Ecumenical Council determined for the whole Church that anyone who procured abortion should bear all the punishments inflicted on murderers. In all these teachings and enactments, no distinction is made between the earlier and the later stages of gestation. For, although the opinion of Aristotle or similar speculations regarding the time when the rational soul is infused into the embryo were practically accepted for many centuries, still it was always held by the Church that he who destroyed what was to be a man was guilty of destroying a human life (Catholic Encyclopedia, see Abortion│http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01046b.htm]).

In the Roman Catholic Church since the Middle Ages, ecclesiastical penalties for abortion have differed based on varying views of ensoulment. In the early thirteenth century, Innocent III stated that the soul enters the body of the fetus at the time of quickening when the mother first felt movement of the fetus. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V issued a Papal Bull, which subjected those that carried out abortions at any stage of gestation with excommunication and punishment by civil authorities. Gregory XIV subsequently limited the penalty of excommunication only to abortions of quickened children. In 1869, Pope Pius IX clarified the Church's current stance in the Bull Apostolicae Sedis (ibid.), enacting the penalty of excommunication for abortions at any stage of pregnancy.

[edit] Old Testament

The Biblical Book of Exodus in the Old Testament, states:

"And if men strive together, and hurt a pregnant woman, so that her fruit [children] come out, and yet no harm follows; the one who hit her shall surely be fined, according as the woman’s husband shall impose upon him; and he shall pay a fine as the judges determine. Nevertheless, if any harm follows, then you shall pay life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth . . . "(Exodus 21:22-23)

"Before I formed You in the womb I knew You, And before You were born I consecrated You; I have appointed You a prophet to the nations." (Jeremiah 1:5)

[edit] New Testament

Two other commonly cited Biblical verses are:

"For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and he will drink no wine or liquor; and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, while yet in his mother's womb." (Luke 1:15)

"But when He who had set me apart, even from my mother's womb, and called me through His grace..." (Galatians 1:15)

[edit] Abortion debate

Some commentators use the verse from Exodus 21 to support abortion; they state that the phrase any harm applies to only the mother. Others who oppose abortion hold it to apply to both mother and child. These verses do not describe ensoulment or a similar act occurring in utero. Rather, they describe a special act of anointing or setting apart, which does not take place for regular people not specially identified and set apart by God. This leaves open the possibility that ensoulment may already have taken place prior to the special anointing described in these verses. In Psalm 139 of the Bible, the psalmist describes God as purposefully forming him as an embryo in his mother's womb:

"You wove me in the womb of my mother, I will thank You, for with fearful [things] I am wonderful; Your works are marvelous, and my soul knows [it] very well. My bones were not hidden from You when I was made in secret; when I was woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my embryo; and in Your book all [my members] were written; the days they were formed, and none [was] among them."

This verse is often cited as supporting the concept of the embryo being fully human once conceived.

Also at issue is the Bible's usage of the phrase breath of life. Some who support the right to abortion hold that this means that life begins with the first breath. They point to the use of this phrase with reference to Adam: "Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being" (Genesis 2:7). Clearly, Adam had no living existence until that first breath. However, there is no Biblical indication whether this same process applies to newborns created in utero, to which the mother supplies oxygenated blood through the umbilical cord. In addition, developmentally, there is no functional difference between a baby which has just drawn its first breath and the same baby, a few seconds prior, when it was still a fetus. The early Christian church held that ensoulement occurs at the moment of conception. For instance, the early Church father, Tertullian (160–220 CE), wrote: "Now we allow that life begins with conception because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does" (Apology 27).

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