Ensoulment and the abortion debate

Hypothetically speaking, what would it look like to recognize a life as human but nevertheless undeserving of equal protection under the law? The Nazis had a name for this concept—life unworthy of life—which they used to justify the Holocaust. This concept also has roots in the same eugenicist ideology espoused by Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood.

Last month, author and Calvin University professor Kristin Kobes Du Mez appeared to be asking a related question on a podcast episode titled “Godless Liberals? Faith at the Democratic National Convention.” After lamenting the close connection between evangelicals and pro-life politics, including consensus beliefs such as “life begins at conception” and “abortion is murder,” Du Mez commended a 1968 (pre-Roe) article from Christianity Today that challenges the evangelical pro-life consensus, a consensus that she argues is relatively new.

In an attempt to complexify the issue of abortion, Du Mez raised several questions prompted by the 56-year-old CT article: “When does the soul enter the body? How do we apply this theological question to what we now know in terms of modern science? What a fascinating theological question, and a question that I have not heard asked for at least a generation now or more. Theology around this question has almost not been allowed. I think we have an impoverished theological discourse around this absolutely critical question.”

This podcast clip was posted on X by a popular account, which kicked off an online conversation. Some began to wonder how Du Mez, who is a frequent critic of evangelicalism, has only just now come across theological debates about ensoulment. Others wondered what ulterior motives might drive a person to “just ask questions” that muddy the waters on when a person becomes a person. Surely such an inquiry wouldn’t be motivated by political expediency and an attempt to neutralize the consciences of moderating evangelicals who grew up in the pro-life movement by suggesting that perhaps ensoulment—which confers “personhood” in this view—just might, maybe, occur sometime after whenever blue states allow abortions?

Curious, I looked up the 1968 article, “The Relation of the Soul to the Fetus” by Paul K. Jewett. Evangelical outsiders may be unfamiliar with Jewett. He was a notable progressive in his day who not only rejected Scriptural inerrancy but was also among the first to lead many away from the evangelical consensus on women in ministry (according to Jewett, the Apostle Paul was just flat-out wrong on this issue) and, near the end of his life, even toward the normalization of homosexuality. An interesting example for Du Mez to choose to historian-splain the validity of our inherited evangelical tradition!

Jewett opens his 1968 article with a startling reference to a “small glob of living tissue,” which he later refers to as a “fetus.” Even before he gets to the historical-theological debate about ensoulment, he tips his hand to his convictions about the personhood of this tiny lifeform: “Rather, the issue is that human fetal tissue, left unmolested, will develop into a human being, and there is something about a human being that demands an attitude of reverential respect for his life and concern for his well-being.”

Note carefully Jewett’s distinction here: The living fetal tissue is properly called human, but it isn’t a “human being” until it develops. Then it may be afforded an “attitude of reverential respect.” But when exactly does this occur? Wouldn’t this be mission-critical for this view? And wouldn’t one want to err on the side of caution?

While Jewett raises the question of timing in “ensoulment,” he goes on to survey Scripture and various Jewish and Christian accounts but never gives a definitive answer. Instead, Jewett claims Scripture offers no direct teaching on the subject. The closest he comes is with Psalm 139 when he admits the psalmist’s concept of “self” is located somewhere before birth. But he fails to interact with the Mosaic law’s lex talionis if someone causes the death of an unborn child (Exodus 21:22–24) or John the Baptist’s in utero response to his cousin Jesus in Mary’s womb (Luke 1:41–44). Nor does Jewett account for the more serious theological implications related to Christ’s incarnation.

What Jewett does get right is admitting that this question strikes at the very heart of what it means to be human. To act justly, we must get it right. Thankfully, as Kevin DeYoung pointed out in response to this debate, the Protestant Reformed tradition, of which evangelicals are rightful heirs, offers a definitive, Bible-based answer, which provides solid ground on which to build a pro-life ethic and challenge those “just asking questions.”

Here it is: Human life begins at conception. Unborn human beings don’t “receive” a soul just like they don’t “inhabit” a body. You are a soul, even as you are a body. This is what the Bible teaches: A human being is a psychosomatic (body-soul) unity created in the image of God from the very moment our parents conceive us. As Herman Bavinck says in his Reformed Dogmatics, a human being is a “‘soul,’ because from the very beginning the spiritual component in him (unlike that of the angels) is adapted to and organized for a body.”

So instead of “just asking questions” as if there is a human life that is not a human being, evangelicals should continue to boldly proclaim the dignity and worth of all of humanity—born and unborn—despite partisan pressure from either direction to say otherwise.