As a predicate to this discussion and my comments, keep in mind that when I address this issue of the personhood of the unborn child it's really addressed at the specific circumstance that she finds herself in, a circumstance in which you have Christians talking. People who are committed to the notion of biblical revelation but who then try to argue for the legitimacy of abortion based on the personhood argument.

I'll tell you what happened in this class as far as I understand it. The teacher, who has some background in ethics and has done some advanced studies, is thinking through the issues and for that I applaud him. But what I am a little concerned with is the way this discussion is being framed and some of the questions that are being asked. Mind you, I'm not at all bothered that the question that I'm about to share with you was asked. I'm glad that it was, and if it was just asked rhetorically as a kind of thought exercise to get them to think more deeply and thoroughly about the issue rather than trying to come up with a pat answer, then I would be glad for that. And that may be the circumstance because the question was asked at the end of the class. There was some discussion and the issue was to be dealt with more thoroughly at the following class. That's when this person's more personal viewpoints would be made public. But more often than not, in my experience, these kinds of questions are raised to legitimize a more liberal perspective and also to call into question a more conservative point of view. So I'm not sure what the circumstance is in this particular class.

Be that as it may, the question that was raised revolves around this issue of personhood. At this point in the discussion in the class, apparently the students were asked to list characteristics of personality or personhood. What is it that makes a person a person? Then those characteristics were listed on the board. There was some attention given to the personhood of God and some of the characteristics of God's personhood and these were noted as well. The upshot was the question that was asked at the end to get people thinking about the legitimacy of the personhood question.

I do know that part of the reason this questions was raised is because Louis Smeads, a professor of theology and also involved in Christian ethics at Fuller Seminary, has raised the question that if the unborn child is not a person then it opens up a number of possibilities of how Christians would deal with an unwanted pregnancy.

The question that seemed to bring this issue to a point was this: If God did not have the qualities of personhood would He still be a person?

The first time I heard this question was last week and I have to admit that at the time I was a bit stumped because there are questions that are asked that are so clever that we are caught, as the people in this class were apparently caught. We don't know how to respond. These people were caught so forcibly by this question that it was almost like an "aha!" was happening in their minds. Like, "Ah, it's all clear to me now that there are aspects of personhood that one can define so that if you removed them from an individual they would no longer be a person. So we can't argue for the value of that person who in fact is not a person. They become a different category of human being and should theoretically be dealt with not as a human person with value, but there are other alternatives that could be employed in dealing with an unwanted pregnancy."

In fact, the people who heard this question at the moment thought they had been had. They'd been caught unawares. They'd been asked a question that when answered destroyed their case of the conservative thinker on this issue who says an unborn child should be protected because by this assessment it seems clear that a unborn child is not a person. Even if God did not have these characteristics He would not be a person either.

Well, the question itself is misleading. And I would claim that the question is completely illegitimate.

The question can be framed like this: Are all human beings person? In this case the unborn human being. I'm going to give you three points why I think this is a dangerous way to approach the question.

First, where do you get this idea that there is a distinction between being a human being and personhood? How do you justify the notion that there is such a thing as a human being who is not a person? Where do you get the right to draw those categories such that we can say this is a human being but not a person? Where does this concept come from?

I'll tell you where it came from historically. It came from the pro-abortion movement who has lost the battle on the argument of the humanness of the unborn child because a separate human being exists from the point of conception. That is our argument biologically, scientifically, even in many cases legally. They have lost that argument. The unborn child is not part of the woman's body; it is a separate individual domiciled within her womb. In order to continue to support their cause they have to find a different issue, so they have made what becomes an arbitrary distinction between personhood and humanness. Yes, it's a human. We can see that. But is it a person with the characteristics of personality? If it's not a person then it's not worthy of being protected.

When I hear a question like would God be a person if He didn't have these characteristics of personhood it's kind of like if my mother-in-law had wheels would she be a trolley car. The point is that God has these characteristics because He's a personal being, not the other way around. He is not arbitrarily defined to be personal because He has certain characteristics. In a sense, all the question really asks is, "If God were not a personal being would He be a personal being?" It's a nonsense kind of question. God is a personal being therefore He has these characteristics. We don't define Him as personal because of these things that He does. We discover his personal nature through His self-revelation.

Personhood is not a separate, added quality that gives human beings significance. It is a property that is essential to being human. Humans are personal beings. It's part of the package. For example, an essential part of being a sphere is to have volume. A sphere without volume is not a sphere but a circle. All spheres have volume. In the same way part of what being human entails is being a personal being.

And that is the error of approaching this question of human worth from a perspective of personhood. The tail wags the dog. People are persons because a human is a personal type of beings. Certainly no human actualizes all of the qualities of humanness at any given time; some never actualize certain qualities. If one of the personal qualities of a human being is to communicate, well, we're not always communicating. Sometimes we're asleep and not communicating, but are we less human when we're not expressing that quality? Some human beings can't speak at all. Some can't move at all because of some defect but that doesn't make them less human because at the moment they can't actualize some qualities of their humanness. In that sense, personhood has certain qualities that express the personality of the human being but it doesn't mean that one must actualize all of those qualities in order to be considered a human person.

Even a child born without a cerebral cortex, like Baby Theresa in Florida last year, is still a human being, severely marred, but still human. What would we call her if she wasn't a human being? She's not a cat or a dog or an insect of some sort. She is not a non-being, a nothing. She is some kind of being and every kind of being falls into a category because it has a source, it come from something. Every being, as far as we've been able to tell, reproduces after its own kind. By the way, that is also biblical. Human beings reproduce other human beings. Every human being that is a product of a human union is a human being by very nature and definition. So the issue is not personhood at all.

This is an artificial category that has nothing to do with the issue. Humans are persons by very nature, not because they have certain characteristics. Therefore, even Baby Theresa is a human being and she has innate, intrinsic value. How do I know that? Because the Bible says (and right now we are talking from a Christian perspective) that humans are made in the image of God and therefore have value.

Where do people come up with these categories, the qualifications of personhood? Are they listed somewhere in the sky or in some kind of special revelation? No, people take a vote. People list what they think are characteristics of personhood. Personhood is not the issue, humanness is because human beings are by nature personal beings.

Second, from a scriptural perspective God doesn't seem to be the least bit concerned about personhood as distinct from humanness. He doesn't discuss it at all, but rather identifies all human beings as made in His image and therefore they are intrinsically valuable.

When we try to address this issue of personhood, especially in the context of Christian revelation, we have forfeited the argument already because we have agreed that the question is a valid question. It's not a valid question because nowhere does Scripture identify this as a legitimate distinction. It never says that human beings are valuable because they're persons.

Here is the simple issue and this is why the personhood issue is a distortion. Why are humans valuable? People are valuable because they are made in the image of God. God simply declares that human beings are made in His image and therefore He declares that they are valuable. Now He doesn't sketch out all that's entailed with being in His image, but by what liberty do we make an arbitrary list that makes disposable people God calls precious?

Genesis 9:6 "Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man." God institutes capital punishment. Whether that's still legitimate or not is another discussion, but it seems clear that at that point He institutes capital punishment because of the inherent value of human kind and because of this value they must be protected.

So, human beings are valuable because they are made in the image of God. God doesn't say they are valuable because they are persons. He says because humans are in His image. What that means is since human beings reproduce after their own kind everything that is the product of the reproduction of two human beings is also a human being and is therefore in the image of God from the moment that it is a separate being, and it is therefore valuable regardless of any subsequent tail wagging the dog discussions about personhood. We know they're in the image of God because God tells us. They're in the image of God, so they are ipso facto valuable. All human beings are valuable .

Now, you can do work after the fact and try to figure out what the phrase "image of God" actually entails. But what you can't do is to make a list of characteristics and say this is what personhood entails and then go backwards with your arbitrary list and disqualify people from value that God has declared valuable.

I kind of want to keep going over and over the point because I'm afraid people aren't going to get it, but I don't know what could be simpler. It is a very straight forward and very uncomplicated.

God declared that He had made man in His image, then He said to go out and reproduce. All creatures reproduce after their own kind. Therefore every product of the reproduction of a male and female human being is necessarily, by very nature, a human being, even though all aspects of that human nature are not yet developed or functioning. It is a human being regardless of what it looks like at any stage of development, because humanness is a " be like " kind of thing and not a " look like " kind of thing.

So the personhood argument is an utterly arbitrary, an after-the-fact list of qualifications that have nothing to do with innate human worth from God's perspective.

Third, not only is the personhood issue arbitrary and invented, but it leads to applicational problems that are grotesque. What you do when you draw personhood lines is you're saying that any human beings on one side of this arbitrary personhood line are valuable and worthy of being protected and any human beings on this other side of the personhood line are not valuable and not worthy of being protected. After all, what's this discussion about? It's about whether we can kill unborn children based on whether they're persons or not.

I can understand a non-Christian making that list, but for goodness sake, where does any Christian get the idea that we can divide up humanity into two groups, persons and non-persons, such that non-persons are slated for destruction? This is precisely what the Nazis did. I apologize for raising this issue once again because I realize that many people raise the Nazi issue in illegitimate ways for the emotional impact, and certainly I'm not trying to do that. I think this is an accurate historical parallel. It started out at virtually the same point too, with helpless children considered to be a burden on society, those with congenital defects or dementia, and escalated to include youngsters who were racially impure or teenagers who were delinquents until eventually those who were included in the non-human group were Jews, Gypsies, Poles, homosexuals, and political dissidents and they were literally slated for the ash heap.

When you are faced with this kind of thing I want to encourage you to ask a simple question: What does personhood have to do with it? Why is that a factor? Please justify the distinction between a human being and a person. Do not accept the terms of the argument. Place the burden of proof on them. The question as originally posed forces the burden of proof on you so you find yourself in a position of having to justify why an unborn child is a person based on characteristics that they have given you. Once you put yourself in that position you're lost because it's very hard to justify.

Don't accept the terms. Make them justify the distinction. This is an invented category. It does not come from Scripture but comes from the mind of man who makes an arbitrary distinction that contravenes Scripture, that actually goes against Scripture.

Ask "Is baby Theresa a human being?" If they say no then ask, "Well, what kind of a being is she?" The answer of course is, yes, she's a human being. She's severely marred but she can be nothing else than a human being. "Well, Scripture identifies human beings as made in the image of God and therefore necessarily valuable. Why are you relegating to the ash heap this human being who God says has transcendent value? And why are you doing so by some rhetorical sleight of hand, by introducing a new category called personhood that is arbitrary and foreign to the issue. Justify that. How can you call them non-valuable when God Himself calls them valuable?"

You don't have to answer the question of personhood because personhood is not the issue. Don't be pulled into the trap of assuming the burden of proof to demonstrate that an unborn child is a person. That concedes the argument.

The issue is not personhood. The issue is humanness. All human beings are persons by very nature.

I hope that helps start you thinking about this and helps you to make a defense for this critical issue of the value of the humanness of the unborn child.

At least that's the way I see it.