Related Ideas

Some Evangelical writers have placed great stress on certain biological facts about the embryo or fetus. These facts divide into two groups: (1) those, like the number of chromosomes, that tend to show that all of the elements of a unique individual are present, and (2) those, like tiny fingernails, that suggest similarities to infants.

These biological facts tend to be more prominent in popular rather than philosophical or theological arguments. Bajema, for example, does not find the biological facts fully convincing. In the end, his view of personhood depends not on biological facts but on a status conferred by God. This status is indicated when we say that God created man in his image.

As with secular philosophers, the more basic issue is not one of biology but of some other kind of status that is not fully reducible to biological facts. Just as a secular philosopher may ask when the embryo/fetus acquires rights, Bajema asks when it comes to bear the image of God. A Catholic moral theological may ask when it is ensouled. In every case there is a conceptual layer above the biological level where the real controversy is located.

Each of these questions arises within a different intellectual framework. They are parallel but not identical. For example, Bajema does not ask when the embryo/fetus is ensouled. He regards that question as misleading because it implies too much of a separation between body and soul. Such a radical separation is, in his view, an unfortunate Greek influence on some Christian thought.