The Joint Commission
on Theology and Doctrine
North American
Lutheran Church
Lutheran CORE
In the name of the Father, and of the
+ Son, and of
the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The beginning of human existence,
i.e., nascent
life, carries in it the fullness of
the genetic code, the
complete chromosomal material of an
individual.
The strengths and characteristics
given to us by
God have not yet blossomed for all the
world to
see, yet they are fully present in the
beauty of His
love. “Before I formed you in the womb
I knew you,
and before you were born I consecrated
you; I
appointed you a prophet to the
nations.” (Jeremiah
1:5) Luther’s Small Catechism
proclaims, “I believe
that God has created me and all that
exists,” so in
faith we continue to proclaim that our
life, and every
life, comes from God and belongs to
God. In our
earthly dependency upon the womb of
our mothers
for protection, nourishment, and love
from the first
moments of our lives, we see in the
creation of
each life the shape of faith. We will
always be fully
dependent upon God for life, for
shelter, and for
mercy — the God who uses men and women
to
bring forth every generation of His
creation.
How we in the North American Lutheran
Church
and Lutheran CORE speak about the
dignity of
nascent life is indicative of so much
more. As the
fullness of God’s mercy calls us into
newness in
each day, we come to know that no day
in our lives
is beyond His care. God himself has
given us a
pattern by which we know His love: the
conception,
gestation, and birth of our Lord
Jesus. As we reflect
upon when life begins and what life
means, we look
to what God has done in sending His
Son to live
among us from conception, to death, to
resurrected
life.
In the Annunciation of the Good News
given to
Mary, the Mother of our Lord, we come
to know the
gift of every life in a new way, and
we come to know
the holiness of her womb as a
sanctuary of mercy
for all humankind. She who is our
Mother in the
faith shelters the One who is the
Savior of the world
with her very body, a model of love
beyond all fear,
of obedience beyond all personal
security, of faith
in the One who is yet unseen.
In the self-emptying (kenotic)
movement of God in
the incarnation, He was never more
vulnerable,
more helpless than when He was in
utero,
swaddled in amniotic fluid. He was
also never more
intimately protected, swaddled in the
myriad layers
of a mother’s love. It is the vision
of this love that is
ever so needed in this day — a death
defying love,
an eternal love, a fierce love, a
sacrificing love. It is
this vision that we are called to bear
for the sake of
generations to come. For in the
disordered loving of
a fallen world that removes sexual
intercourse from
the fidelity, trust, and delight of
the marriage bed,
there will continue to be the littlest
among us, made
in the image and likeness of God, who
without a
holy love, will be unprotected from
the lies that say
they are neither human nor of any
value. In a time
in human history when the laws of many
nations
sanction the destruction of new lives
simply
because they are an inconvenience, the
North
American Lutheran Church and Lutheran
CORE,
and all who belong to the Body of
Christ, are called
to teach and preach the message that
the Lord who
created the heavens and the earth, the
Lord, who in
the power of the Holy Spirit grew in
His mother’s
womb, the Lord, who in obedience gave
His life for
all, The Lord is with you.
“The Lord is with you.” This is what
we are called to
speak to every woman with a child in
her womb.
The Lord is with you, regardless of
the
circumstances of your pregnancy. We
urge the
NALC to commit itself as a church, as
the Body of
our Lord on earth, along with those
joined with it in
mission in Lutheran CORE, to be with
you as well.
We seek to attend to your needs, to
help you, to
guard you, and to guide you that you
may bear your
child in a community of love. Whether
a husband
and wife, or a mother alone raises
that child or puts
that child into the arms of another
family, we will
provide spiritual counsel so that
parents and child
will have the abundant life that
Christ Jesus has
promised them. We do not want a woman
who is
overwhelmed by the news of an
unintended
pregnancy to abort an innocent child,
a child whose
cries for life cannot yet be heard, a
child who is of
great value to God, regardless of the
circumstances
of the child’s birth. Whatever the
circumstances of
the pregnancy, the termination of the
life of their
child will not make a mother’s or
father’s life better.
Apart from victims of sexual violence,
the NALC
and Lutheran CORE should call to
repentance all
men and women who have engaged in
sexual
behaviors outside of marriage. Men and
women
who are not married to each another
and who have
used their procreative abilities
irresponsibly and
then have chosen to abort a child, as
well as
husbands and wives who have aborted
children
whom they do not want, are called to
confession,
contrition, and amendment of life. God
wants us to
know His joy, and until we acknowledge
our sin and
throw ourselves upon His mercy, we can
never live
rightly. The wanton destruction of a
human life for
matters of one’s own convenience is
sin. The
casual use of abortion as a final
solution for a
conception born of recreational sex is
sin. The
intimidation and emotional blackmail
to undergo an
abortion that women have received from
the men
who have impregnated them is sin.
The church also has great concern for
those among
us, who under the advice, counsel, or
persuasion of
family and/or medical personnel, have
aborted a life
in utero as a result of rape,
incest, severe
abnormalities of fetus, or
endangerment to the life
of the mother. In these cases, we as a
church seek
to be a vessel of compassion and
consolation.
Even in the most difficult situation,
the termination
of the pregnancy will not necessarily
bring an end to
the intensity of the current pain. The
end of any of
new life, even when it comes to be the
only
apparent solution that one believes
can be
endured, will still carry layers of
sorrow. Again, we
urge the NALC to commit itself as a church
body,
along with its partners in Lutheran
CORE, to
provide pastoral care to all parties
who are
involved, for there are no decisions
in such times
that will be without familial grief.
We seek not to
condemn but to console. As anger,
abandonment,
regret, and the depths of despair each
come in their
turn, so the mercy of our ever-present
God will
need to be spoken. The Lord is with
you. The Lord
is still with you.
The rationales, however, for
legalizing abortions in
North America are far from these
limited cases of
“therapeutic” abortion. The arguments
have
changed throughout the 20th and 21st
centuries
from easing the burdens of the poor on
the society,
to the right of a woman to have
autonomy over her
own body (Roe v. Wade; Morgentaler v.
Her
Majesty the Queen, Supreme Court of
Canada,
1976), to sex-selection of children
from cultures that
value male progeny over female, to
simply one of
economic gain, (i.e., not wanting to
support another
child). In too many cases, legalized
abortion has
simply become a form of retroactive
birth control.
Abortion dehumanizes and diminishes
all who are
involved. It affects the father, who
has lost what it
means to be a guardian to his family
and who has
lost the learning that comes from a
relationship in
which spirituality and sexuality are
not divorced. It
affects the mother, whose denial may
break down if
she later conceives and bears a child,
or is later
unable to conceive a child, or whose
guilt may
spiral into the bondage of shame as
she seeks to
keep her abortion a secret. At last,
it affects the
child, the blessed child, a living
human presence
who is denied the fullness of body
that was
intended for him in this life and in
the age to come.
Legalization of abortion puts the
state at odds with
the historic witness of the church,
and so we are
called to listen again to the Word of
God as
proclaimed in the Holy Scriptures, the
wisdom of
the Church Fathers, and the insight of
the
Reformers as we seek to follow Christ
faithfully in
our day. The Didache clearly
speaks the law as
stated in the fifth commandment to the
issues of
abortion and infanticide in the
ancient world, “Thou
shalt not murder a child by abortion,
nor again shall
thou kill it when it is born.”1 The Epistle of
Barnabas
speaks of those who seek to end the
life of one in
utero as “killers of the
child, who abort the mold of
God.”2 The Nicene Creed professes that Jesus is
fully human and fully divine from the
moment of His
conception and in doing so declares
that human life
begins at conception.3 Again and again the
Psalter
sings that fearfully and wonderfully
made, we are
the work of God's hands (Ps 139:14).
John Calvin,
in concert with the early Fathers,
regards an unborn
child as “already a human being.”4 Martin Luther
regards procreation as “the work of
God” and
speaks of those who kill the growing
fetus as an
example of the wickedness of human
nature.5 The
witness of the one, holy, catholic,
and apostolic
church is clear: There is no life that
is beyond God’s
care, beginning at the moment of
conception. The
child in utero is not simply
the possession of the
father or the mother, for each nascent
life is the
handiwork of God. “For it was you who
formed my
inward parts; you knit me together in
my mother’s
womb.” (Psalm 139:15).
The North American Lutheran Church and
Lutheran
CORE strive to witness to the
all-encompassing
love of God in early 21st century
North America,
when nearly 50 million abortions have
been legally
performed since 1973 in the United
States and
1988 in Canada. We urge the NALC and
Lutheran
CORE to commit not only to protecting
the next
generation of children during those
first exquisite
nine months of life, but to helping
those for whom
abortion mars their procreative
histories. As parents
come to healing through the counsel
and ministries
of the church, their witness will be
invaluable. In the
renewal of their faith, the lies that
were told against
the littlest among us will come to an
end. As their
voices then sound within the assembly
of all who
believe that He who is the Savior of
the world is
fully human and fully divine from the
moment of His
conception, so we come yet again to
understand
the giftedness of the creation of our
own bodies.
May each of us seek to live out the
dignity with
which we were created, so that our
lives as the
enfleshment of God’s love will bear
witness to His
love for all the world.
December 14, 2012
Joint Commission on
Theology and Doctrine
Robert D. Benne
Kenneth H. Sauer
Carl E. Braaten
Amy C. Schifrin
John F. Bradosky
Henry Schulte Jr.
David E. Hahm
Paull E. Spring
Benjamin A. Johnson
Sue A. Tolton
James A. Nestingen
Paul T. Ulring
Eric M. Riesen
J. Larry Yoder
1Didache 2:2.
2The Epistle of Barnabas 19:5.
3The
Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.) is explicit, “We
confess the Holy Virgin to be the Mother of God
because God the Word was made flesh, and became
man from the moment of conception.” See also the
Formula of Concord, Epitome, Article VII.10, “Therefore
we believe teach, and confess that the Son of man
according to his human nature is really (that is, in deed
and in truth) exalted to the right hand of the omnipotent
majesty and power of God, because he was assumed
into God when he was conceived by the Holy Spirit in his
mother's womb and his human nature was personally
united with the Son of the Most high.” Book of
Concord:
The Confessions of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church,
trans. and ed. by Theodore Tappert (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1959), 488.
4John
Calvin, Commentaries on the Last Four Books of
Moses, trans. Charles Bingham (Grand
Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1950), 3:41,42.
5Martin
Luther, Luther’s Works vol. 4. ed. by Jaroslav
Pelikan and
Helmut Lehmann (St. Louis: Concordia
Publishing, 1964), 304.
Publishing, 1964), 304.
