For nearly four hundred years, anti-murder was the orthodox Christian ethic. Abortion was considered murder. Thus, infanticide in any form, be it abortion or exposure, was deemed anti-Christian. So much so that those who participated in the practice were placed outside the believing community as a consequence for their actions. Working our way back, we begin with the late 4th and early 5th century figures, Augustine of Hippo and John Chrysostom.
[Disclaimer: Our aim in these articles is to demonstrate that during the foundational centuries of Christianity, there was a clear and unbroken stance on the practice of abortion. The mention of certain individuals and groups does not mean we necessarily agree with all of their theological interpretations and/or ecclesiastical opinions.]
Augustine & Chrysostom
The most prominent figures of the late 4th, early 5th century were Augustine (354-430) and Chrysostom (ca 347-407). They both denounced abortion. Michael J. Gorman in his book “Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish & Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World“, introduces the two in this way:
“…their approaches to the issue and their specific answers reflected in almost stereotypical fashion the differences between theologians and preachers and between West and East.”
Of all the church Fathers, Augustine was the most attentive to the subject of abortion. His theological proclivities lent him to a more comprehensive consideration of the origins of life. While clearly anti-abortion, he was not one to shy away from queries concerning the genesis of the soul. Gorman states that Augustine “seems to have thought at various times that it is pre-existent, that it comes from the parents like the body, that it is created and given by God at conception, or that it is infused at the point of formation.”
Though it may seem a valid point of contention that Augustine fluctuated on the origin of the soul, the limitations of the medical science of his day actually worked to strengthen his anti-abortion position. Gorman says that Augustine’s “speculation about the origin of the soul, about the human and nonhuman fetus, about the meaning of original sin now gave way to his long-held conviction that all human life is “God’s own work.” Faced with human inability to ascertain when the fetus begins to live, Augustine chose to emphasize the value of all life, whether “actual or potential.”
Despite the seriousness of his existential questions and the impotence of the biological understanding of the time to provide an answer, Augustine held fast to his anti-abortion position. While he acknowledged and grappled with the ambiguity surrounding the ontology of the human soul, the value of individual human life was clear.
However, with Chrysostom there were no such fluctuations nor intellectual perplexity. Gorman describes Chrysostom as “an example of impassioned moral conviction.” He goes on to say that “his [Chrysostom’s] sermons in the late fourth and very early fifth centuries, which later earned him the name Chrysostom (“golden-mouthed”), thundered against moral laxity in society and the church.”
Chrysostom was not one to mince words nor varnish his ethical and moral opinions. From his Homily 24 on the letter to the Romans, Chrysostom says this:
“Why sow where the ground makes it its care to destroy the fruit? Where there are many efforts at abortion? Where there is murder before the birth? For even the harlot thou dost not let continue a mere harlot, but makest her a murderer also. You see how drunkenness leads to whoredom, whoredom to adultery, adultery to murder; or rather to something even worse than murder. For I have no name to give it, since it does not take off the thing born, but prevents its being born. Why then dost thou abuse the gift of God, and fight with His laws, and follow after what is a curse as if a blessing, and make the chamber of procreation a chamber for murder, and arm the woman that was given for childbearing unto slaughter? For with a view to drawing more money by being agreeable and an object of longing to her lovers, even this she is not backward to do, so heaping upon thy head a great pile of fire. For even if the daring deed be hers, yet the causing of it is thine. Hence too come idolatries, since many, with a view to become acceptable, devise incantations, and libations, and love-potions, and countless other plans. Yet still after such great unseemliness, after slaughters, after idolatries, the thing [fornication] seems to many to belong to things indifferent, aye, and to many that have wives, too.”
Chrysostom’s stance is evident: abortion is murder, “something even worse than murder.” On this there is no ambiguity for him.
As it pertains to the 4th and 5th centuries, Augustine and Chrysostom demonstrate that both the pensive theologian and the ardent evangelist held to the positions of their predecessors on the practice of abortion and the evils that accompanied it.
The Church Fathers
The preceding and contemporary generation of anti-abortion Christian voices were no less influential than they were unwavering. Basil of Caesarea (known as Basil the Great), Ambrose (Bishop of Milan), and Jerome of Stridon, were all outspoken in their condemnation of the practice of abortion. All three considered the act to be murder and affirmed the humanity of the fetus. Below are quotes from all three regarding abortion. For a more extensive survey of these three, see Gorman: Abortion and the Early Church, chapter five entitled “Christianity Established: The Fourth and Fifth Centuries.”
Basil the Great said regarding abortion:
“She who has deliberately destroyed a fetus has to pay the penalty of murder. And there is no exact inquiry among us as to whether the fetus was formed or unformed. For, here it is not only the child to be born that is vindicated, but also the woman herself who made an attempt against her own life, because usually the women die in such attempts. Furthermore, added to this is the destruction of the embryo, another murder, at least according to the intention of those who dare these things. Nevertheless, we should not prolong their penance until death, but should accept a term of ten years, and we should determine the treatment not by time, but by the manner of repentance.”
Ambrose of Milan takes specific issue with the practice of abortion among the wealthy:
“The wealthy, in order that their inheritance may not be divided among several, deny in the very womb their own progeny. By use of parricidal mixtures they snuff out the fruit of their wombs in the genital organs themselves. In this way life is taken away before it is given.… Who except man himself has taught us ways of repudiating children?”
There is serious force behind the words penned in 384 by Jerome of Stridon with regard to the use of abortifacients:
“[they] drink potions to ensure sterility and are guilty of murdering a human being not yet conceived. Some, when they learn they are with child through sin, practice abortion by the use of drugs. Frequently they die themselves and are brought before the rulers of the lower world guilty of three crimes: suicide, adultery against Christ, and murder of an unborn child.”
Gorman notes that:
“Contemporary with Basil, Ambrose, and Jerome was a manual of Christian life and behavior compiled in Syria (ca 380). It was indebted in form and content to two second-century works, the Epistle of Barnabas and the Didache, and came to be called the Apostolic Constitutions or the Constitutions of the Holy Apostles.” We will be covering the Epistle of Barnabas and the Didache in later articles. For now, suffice it to say that the Apostolic Constitutions was a later restating of long-held Christian positions.
Gorman comments and then cites the document as follows:
“In a list of immoral practices including illicit sexual relations, magic, witchcraft and fraud, this statement appears:
Thou shalt not slay thy child by causing abortion, nor kill that which is begotten. For every thing that is shaped, and hath received a soul from God, if it be slain, shall be avenged, as being unjustly destroyed.”
The convictions shared by the individuals and the documents aforementioned were bolstered by two early 4th century Councils.
The Councils
The Council of Elvira (305) and the Council of Ancyra (314) were the first Christian councils to write legislation concerning abortion.
The Council of Elvira stated thus in Canons 63 and 68:
Canon 63: If a woman becomes pregnant by committing adultery, while her husband is absent, and after the act she detroys [the child], it is proper to keep her from communion until death, because she has doubled her crime.
Canon 68: If a catechumen should conceive by an adulterer, and should procure the death of the child, she can be baptized only at the end of her life.
The Council of Ancyra stated in Canon 21:
Canon 21: Women who prostitute themselves, and who kill the children thus begotten, or who try to destroy them when in their wombs, are by ancient law excommunicated to the end of their lives. We, however, have softened their punishment, and condemned them to the various appointed degrees of penance for ten years.
With regard to the Council of Elvira, Gorman comments:
“…abortion seems to have been considered more serious than the death of a slave and as serious as sexual perversion. It is probable that this local synod viewed abortion as a combination of adultery and murder, punishable by the gravest penalty. Despite this severity, Elvira and most Christians did not exact the death penalty for any sin, including abortion, although the theologian Ephraem the Syrian (ca 306–373) recommended capital punishment for abortion.”
Regarding the Council of Ancrya, he then notes that Canon 21 “changes an earlier legal punishment, probably that of Elvira, from life excommunication to one of ten years’ time. However, the immorality of abortion is not questioned nor its seriousness diminished.”
What these two Councils elucidate is that, into the 4th and 5th centuries, not only did abortion remain a serious issue that the early Christian community needed to address, both internally and externally, but that the Christian stance regarding abortion as murder, the fetus as human, and human life as sacred, remained as well.
Conclusion
What we’ve demonstrated via our brief survey of the 4th and 5th centuries is that the Christian position on the practice of abortion, along with the other evils that accompanied it, was both ardent and consistent. Even those such as Augustine of Hippo, who grappled with ontological questions, maintained that all human life, whether actual or potential, was “God’s own work.”
The evidence supports the statement that to be Christian was to be anti-abortion and pro-life.