|
(詳細はWhen Children Became People: the birth of childhood in early Christianity ) by Odd Magne Bakke〕〔("Abortion and Catholic Thought: The Little-Told History" )〕〔(and the Politics of Motherhood ) by Kristin Luker, University of California Press〕 Other scholars have concluded that early Christians considered abortion a sin at all stages; though there is disagreement over their thoughts on what type of sin it was〔〔(S. Iltis, Mark J. Cherry, ''At the Roots of Christian Bioethics'' (M & M Scrivener Press 2010 ISBN 978-0-9764041-8-7), p. 166 )〕〔(J. Gorman, ''Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish, and Pagan Attitudes'' (InterVarsity Press 1982 ISBN 0-87784-397-X), p. 50 )〕〔(Stem cells, human embryos and ethics: interdisciplinary perspectives: Lars Østnor, Springer 2008 )〕 and how grave a sin it was held to be, it was seen as at least as grave as sexual immorality.〔(Robert Nisbet, ''Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary'' (Harvard University Press 1982 ISBN 0-674-70066-X), p. 2 )〕〔 Some early Christians believed that the embryo did not have a soul from conception,〔〔(Richard P. ''The HarperCollins encyclopedia of Catholicism'' )〕〔(Oxford companion to Christian thought'' )〕〔(of ethics, theology and society ) By Paul A. B. Clarke, Andrew Linzey〕 and consequently opinion was divided as to whether early abortion was murder or ethically equivalent to murder.〔〔 Early Christian texts nonetheless condemned abortion without distinction: Luker mentions the Didache, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Saint Basil.〔 Early church councils punished women for abortions that were combined with other sexual crimes, as well as makers of abortifacient drugs.〔 Father of the Church Augustine affirmed Aristotle's concepts of ensoulment occurring some time after conception, after which point abortion was to be considered homicide,〔(The Janus face of prenatal diagnostics )〕 while still maintaining the condemnation of abortion at any time from conception onward.〔(Daniel Schiff, ''Abortion in Judaism'' (Cambridge University Press 2002 ISBN 978-0-521-52166-6), p. 40 )〕 Thomas Aquinas reiterated Aristotle's views of successive souls: vegetative, animal, and rational. This would be the Catholic Church's position until 1869, when the limitation of automatic excommunication to abortion of a ''formed'' fetus was removed, a change that has been interpreted as an implicit declaration that conception was the moment of ensoulment.〔 Consequently, in the Middle Ages, a less severe penance was imposed for the sin of abortion Contemporary Christian denominations have nuanced positions, thoughts and teachings about abortion, especially in extenuating circumstances.〔("Religious Groups’ Official Positions on Abortion" ) Pew Forum〕〔("Where does God stand on abortion?" ) USA Today〕 The Catholic Church,〔(The Catholic Teaching on Abortion ), ''Allocution to Large Families, Nov. 26, 1951'', Pope Pius XII〕 the Eastern Orthodox ChurchOriental Orthodoxy, and most evangelical Protestants oppose deliberate abortion as immoral, while allowing what is sometimes called indirect abortion, namely, an action that does not seek the death of the fetus as an end or a means but that is followed by the death as a side effect.〔(Christopher Robert Kaczor, ''The Ethics of Abortion''(Taylor & Francis 2010 ISBN 978-0-415-88468-6), p. 187 )〕 Some mainline Protestant denominations such as the Methodist Church, United Church of Christ, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, among others, are more permissive of abortion. More generally, some Christian denominations can be considered pro-life while others may be considered pro-choice. Additionally, there are sizable minorities in all denominations that disagree with their denomination's stance on abortion, an example of which is the group Catholics for a Free Choice.〔 ==Influences== Both ancient Greek thought and ancient Jewish thought are considered to have had an impact on early Christian thought about abortion. According to Bakke and Clarke&Linzey, early Christians adhered to Aristotle's belief in delayed ensoulment,〔(companion to bioethics ) By Helga Kuhse, Peter Singer〕〔(ReligiousTolerance.org )〕〔〔〔 and consequently did not see abortion before ensoulment as homicide.〔〔 Lars Østnor says this view was only "presaged" by Augustine,〔 who belongs to a period later than that of early Christianity. According to David Albert Jones, this distinction appeared among Christian writers only in the late fourth and early fifth century, while the earlier writers made no distinction between formed and unformed, a distinction explicitly rejected by 4th-century Saint Basil of Caesarea,〔(Albert Jones, ''Soul of the Embryo: Christianity and the Human Embryo'' (Continuum International 2004 ISBN 978-0-8264-6296-1), pp. 72-73 )〕 who also, though earlier than Saint Augustine, does not belong to the early-Christianity period. While the Hebrew text of the Bible only required a fine for the loss of a fetus, whatever its stage of development, the Jewish Septuagint translation, which the early Christians used, introduced a distinction between a formed and an unformed fetus and treated destruction of the former as murder.〔(Daniel Schiff, ''Abortion in Judaism'' (Cambridge University Press 2002 ISBN 978-0-521-52166-6), pp. 9, 24 )〕 It has been commented that "the LXX could easily have been used to distinguish human from non-human fetuses and homicidal from non-homicidal abortions, yet the early Christians, until the time of Augustine in the fifth century, did not do so."〔(Paul T. Stallsworth, Ruth S. Brown (editors), ''The Church & Abortion'' (Abingdon Press 1993 ISBN 978-0-687-07852-3), p. 42 )〕 The view of early Christians on the moment of ensoulment is also said to have been not the Aristotelian, but the Pythagorean: Scholars generally agree that abortion was performed in the classical world, but there is disagreement about the frequency with which abortion was performed and which cultures influenced early Christian thought on abortion.〔(bioethics ) By Helga Kuhse, Peter Singer〕 Some writers point to the Hippocratic Oath as evidence that condemnation of abortion was not a novelty introduced by the early Christians.〔 Some writers state that there is evidence that some early Christians believed, as the Greeks did, in delayed ensoulment, or that a fetus does not have a soul until quickening, and therefore early abortion was not murder;〔 Luker says there was disagreement on whether early abortion was wrong.〔 Other writers say that early Christians considered abortion a sin even before ensoulment.〔(Evelyn B. Kelly,''Stem Cells'' (Greenwood Press 2007 ISBN 0-313-33763-2), p. 86 )〕 According to some, the magnitude of the sin was, for the early Christians, on a level with general sexual immorality or other lapses;〔(Robert Nisbet,''Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary'' (Harvard University Press 1982 ISBN 0-674-70066-X), p. 2 )〕 according to others, they saw it as "an evil no less severe and social than oppression of the poor and needy".〔(''Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish, and Pagan Attitudes''(InterVarsity Press 1982 ISBN 0-87784-397-X), p. 50 )〕 The society in which Christianity expanded was one in which abortion, infanticide and exposition were commonly used to limit the number of children (especially girls) that a family had to support.〔(and Thomas Wiedemann, ''The Roman Household: A Sourcebook'' (Routledge 1991 ISBN 0-415-04421-9), p. 98 )〕〔(Ethics in the Ancient World'' (Georgetown University Press 2001 ISBN 0-87840-848-7), p. 123 )〕 These methods were often used also when a pregnancy or birth resulted from sexual licentiousness, including marital infidelity, prostitution and incest, and Bakke holds that these contexts cannot be separated from abortion in early Christianity.〔(people: the birth of childhood in early Christianity ) By Odd Magne Bakke〕 Johannes M. Röskamp agrees that one reason for Christian disapproval of abortion was that it was linked with attempts to conceal adultery, but stresses that the main reason was the "all new concept" of concern for the fetus,〔(Johannes M. Röskamp, ''Christian Perspectives On Abortion-Legislation In Past And Present'' (GRIN Verlag 2005 ISBN 978-3-640-56931-1) )〕which, Michael J. Gorman declares, "distinguishes the Christian position from all pagan disapproval of abortion".〔(Michael J. Gorman, ''Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish and Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World'' (WIPF & Stock Publishers 1998 ISBN 978-1-57910-182-4), p. 77 )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of Christian thought on abortion」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|