The Witness of the Church
Nineteen centuries of Christian teaching on the conceived child, East and West — and the datable moment it broke.
DRAFT — awaiting editorial review.
Three claims, weighed separately
We are often told this series argues a Roman Catholic peculiarity or a modern novelty. It is neither — it is what the church taught, East and West, until about a hundred years ago. But the treatise refuses to argue sloppily: it separates three claims and asks you to weigh each on its own evidence. First, that the conceived child may not be killed — the load-bearing claim, with the strongest witness. Second, that children within marriage are a blessing to be sought. Third, that drugs taken to prevent a child belonged, for most of Christian history, in the same moral category as drugs taken to end a pregnancy.
Where the witness is unbroken it says so plainly; where it is complicated it shows the complication — “a case that has to be tidied is a case not worth making.”
On abortion the church has never wavered
From the earliest Christian document outside the New Testament to the twentieth century, the church condemned abortion as murder, without regard to the child’s stage of development. The Didache (c. AD 70–120): “You shall not murder a child by abortion nor kill that which is born.” Athenagoras (c. 177) states it as the settled Christian position; Tertullian (c. 197): “To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man-killing… you have the fruit already in the seed.” Basil (374) refuses “nice enquiry as to its being formed or unformed.” Jerome and Chrysostom speak the same way.
The Reformation held the line: Calvin calls the unborn child “already a human being,” and the Westminster Larger Catechism forbids “whatsoever else tends to the destruction of the life of any.” Bonhoeffer, under the Third Reich: “nothing but murder.” Eleven witnesses across eighteen centuries who agreed on little else — they agreed on this.
Children: a blessing to be sought
The second strand is about what Christian marriage is for. It begins at Genesis 1:28 — God’s first word to the first couple, a blessing tied to fruitfulness. Augustine grounds the good of wedlock in the propagation of children; Luther says couples “can be certain that God does not lie” about the ordination of marriage to beget and care for children; Calvin calls fruitfulness a gift dispensed by God.
The confessions then make it definitional: Westminster (1646) says marriage was ordained “for the mutual help of husband and wife; for the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue… and for preventing of uncleanness” — and the Baptists of 1689 took the clause over almost word for word. Baxter holds both halves: children are an end of the institution, and yet a marriage without them is fully a marriage, “because there are other lawful ends.” A tradition like this cannot be squared with treating fertility as a hazard to be neutralised.
The contraception witness — strong, but honestly qualified
The historic Protestant case against contraception rests largely on Genesis 38. Calvin calls Onan’s act an attempt “to destroy a part of the human race”; Luther calls it “a most disgraceful sin”; Henry and Wesley concur (though Wesley drew on Henry — one tradition, not two independent verdicts). Jerome had condemned sterility potions twelve centuries earlier, and the American Comstock Act of 1873 put contraception and abortion in the same statutory sentence.
Then two honest qualifications. First, many careful readers hold that Onan was judged for refusing his levirate duty, and the text gives that reading room. Second — more important — most of these writers addressed methods that prevent a life beginning, not methods that end one already begun. The series’ argument does not rest on the Onan tradition; it rests on the post-fertilisation mechanism, and on the fact that a human being already exists when it operates. What the history shows is narrower: the assumption that the church never had anything to say here is itself the novelty.
Where it broke — and why the wall was unmanned
The change is recent, datable, and was contested. In 1920 the Lambeth bishops issued “an emphatic warning” against contraception. In 1930 the same conference passed Resolution 15, by 193 votes to 67, and the Church of England became the first major Christian body to permit contraception in any circumstances — narrowly, reluctantly, hedged with conditions no one now observes. The treatise corrects its own case: a Methodist conference in New York had moved first; Lambeth was when the dam broke. The American Federal Council of Churches followed in 1931 — and was resisted in print at the time.
Why did the resistance fade? Because in those same decades evangelicalism was undergoing the “Great Reversal” — the retreat from public engagement — so when the question came to this gate, the wall was unmanned. The treatise ends by stating exactly what it does and does not prove: none of these men knew the modern mechanisms; what they establish is that this framework was ordinary Christian teaching within living memory. “The burden of proof does not lie with us. It lies with 1930.”
Questions to sit with
- The treatise says the burden of proof “lies with 1930.” Do you agree? What would the losing side of that vote say to your church today?
- Which of the historical witnesses surprised you most, and why do you think you had not heard them before?
Go deeper
Further material on this subject from allied abolitionist ministries (these links open external sites):
- Abolitionists Rising — articles on the church and abolition (Abolitionists Rising)
- End Abortion Now — helping churches recover a public witness (End Abortion Now)
Check yourself
5 questions on what you have just read. Answering is what makes it stick.
1Why does the treatise insist on weighing its three historical claims separately?
- Because only one of them is true
- Because they are not equally strong, and the strongest must not borrow credit from the weakest — correct
- Because church history is unreliable
- Because the Reformers disagreed with the Fathers
The claim that the conceived child may not be killed is the load-bearing one, and the witness for it is strongest. The claims about children as a blessing and about contraception are argued on their own evidence — "a case that has to be tidied is a case not worth making."
2Which sentence of Basil of Caesarea (AD 374) settles the modern argument about developmental stages?
- "The soul enters at the fortieth day"
- "With us there is no nice enquiry as to its being formed or unformed" — correct
- "The unborn are innocent but not yet human"
- "Abortion is a matter for the magistrate alone"
Basil ruled that the woman who purposely destroys her unborn child is guilty of murder — refusing any distinction of stage. Tertullian had said the same: "That is a man which is going to be one; you have the fruit already in the seed."
3How do the Westminster Confession (1646) and the 1689 Baptist Confession treat the begetting of children?
- As a private preference of no theological weight
- As part of the very definition of marriage — ordained for mutual help, "the increase of mankind with a legitimate issue," and preventing uncleanness — correct
- As a command binding every couple to a set number
- As a lesser calling than celibacy
The confessions name three ends of marriage and rank none as the whole. The increase of mankind stands alongside mutual help — which cannot be squared with treating fertility as a hazard, but neither does it reduce marriage to childbearing.
4On what does the argument of this series rest, with respect to contraception?
- On the Reformers' reading of the judgment on Onan
- On the Comstock Act of 1873
- On the post-fertilisation mechanism of certain methods — the fact that a human being already exists when that mechanism operates — correct
- On the assumption that all contraception is identical to abortion
The treatise gives the Onan tradition honestly — and then sets it aside: most of those writers addressed methods that prevent a life beginning, not ones that end a life begun. The series' case rests on the mechanism that operates after fertilisation.
5Which body had sanctioned birth control before the Lambeth Conference of 1930?
- The Federal Council of Churches in America
- The New York East Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church — the only ecclesiastical body in Europe or North America to do so first — correct
- The Church of Scotland
- None — Lambeth was strictly first
The treatise makes this correction against its own case, from a 2023 Journal of Ecclesiastical History study. Lambeth 1930 (Resolution 15, carried 193 to 67) was the moment the dam broke, not quite the first crack — and the substance stands: no communion of any size permitted contraception before 1930.