If life is in the blood, then a great many things we currently believe to be alive are in fact not alive. Plants, trees, sponges, coral, perhaps even insects, could be categorized as non-living if that were true.

Well, I'll be ... So men can multitask!
Sorry but that's funny all over again.



It's probably better to have it out in the open so there is some on-going discussion.
It sounds as if you're handling the exchanges well - it's done with humor, sadness, amazement - and a good amount of grace provided just when you need it most.

(Is your sig line new - or just new to me. :like: )

One of our really smart guys gave a brilliant lesson on ensoulment and conception just a few days ago - it cleared that up for me - before he explained it to me, I was in the "I don't care when ensoulment happens, life begins at conception so I am going to defend life". He showed me how human life is not human life without a human soul. When I get back from the doctor I will try to find that thread for you.

I believe that one of the central scriptures to this point is Jeremiah !:5

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.

I think this is pretty explicit that the material is blessed before birth (consecration is uniting material to spiritual gift). However it also leads me to believe that the soul existed before the material.... I believe the most widely accepted theological theory, immediate ensoulment, presupposes the soul to be invested when sperm and egg unite because that is when it actively begins to develop by its 'own' power. I think a lot of this can be reasoned out by looking at end of life issues similar, where even missing several faculties the potential for humanity still exists.....

No, not really. I know I've shared the letter with you before about the converts who were Protestant missionaries in central America. One of her statements was similar to "so what we get down to is that in order to be saved you have to be educated, have the Bible, a concordance, defenders notes, Strong's Greek/English interlinear lexicon, etc, etc". The point was that her method of "being saved" didn't work for those people. It only worked if you were a well off, college educated English speaking American, but they could be Catholics, no problem.

The existence, and certainly use thereof, of all these reference materials and the presence of defender's notes right on the pages of the Bible, all testify to the error of sola scriptura.

I disagree. What you have in this case is a Protestant who is not properly catechized.

In the 35 years I spent as a non-Catholic, not one church I attended, none of the people I knew--even casually--would have spouted such tripe.

umm... immediate creation of the rational soul by God is a dogma (immediate, not meaning necessarily at the fertilization of the egg, but that God directly creates the soul at the conception of the person, which is either at the same time or after fertilization)

And I would say, even missing several faculties, humanity, not its potential, still exists. Its potential would allow for killing that thing which is not human but only potentially so. Just as we do not call it murder when we kill eggs and sperm before fertilization at least.

That said, Jeremiah 1:5 is literally referring to Jeremiah. Traditionally, this is taken both with regard to his predestinated role, and to his being cleansed from original sin while in the womb. We need only look at a fuller context

And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Before I formed thee in the bowels of thy mother, I knew thee: and before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and made thee a prophet unto the nations.

I quote the DR for two reasons. One the thee and thou, meaning a singular, not a plural you. Jeremiah is being addressed personally. Second, the translation sanctified rather than consecrated. I don't know Hebrew that well, but it is singular there and the verb can mean sanctify or consecrate. In any case the "and made thee a prophet" clearly does not apply to all!

No, I don't think it would create a challenge to the teaching against Contraception, because we are forbidden to use contraception long before there is a soul to be worried about. It is about being open to God's Will, about the total self-giving of the spouses to each other (rather than only being pleasure seeking), and about not mutilating the procreative nature of the marital embrace. None of that depends on the moment of ensoulment.

I could see it having a bigger effect on the abortion debate, because it could potentially reduce the termination of a pre-ensoulment pregnancy to an issue of prevention rather than ending a human life. Catholics would still be against it, for the same reasons that we are against contraception, but we might be the only ones.

I have attended many many non-Catholic churches - literally thousands of them (I was on the evangelistic field full time with my family until my early 20's). I have heard this sort of teaching from well educated as well as from poorly educated people who claim the name Christian.

It is a blessing that you never ran into those who feel they can interpret verse by verse any way they see fit. Your experience, sadly, was not the norm.

You do realize that the assertions I made came directly word for word from Martin Luther? Do you suppose that Martin Luther was poorly catechized and didn't understand Protestantism?

In point of actual fact the so called 'perspicuity' of scripture, i.e. that scripture is self interpreting and can be easily understood by anyone is a common principle of both branches of the Protestant movement, the Lutheran and Calvinist.....check the Westminster Confession, Calvin's Institutes and the Book of Concord for more complete explanations of this doctrine, or even just Google the phrase 'perspicuity of scripture' and take a look at what comes up.

'Scuse me for not being more clear.

None of the non-Catholic Christian churches I attended, none of the non-Catholic Christians I knew, would ever have believed what Bumble's MIL said.

I shoulda quoted the correct quote. My bad.

Thank you. I do mean humanity not potential. I was actually trying to get at that second point in your parenthesis, when is conception/ensoulment completed? I think that ensoulment/conception is completed immediately at fertilization. This is more logical to me because if it were to happen gradually or after, we can fall into that "what percent of all our functions do we need to be human?", which is a slippery slope. My cotton-brained use of 'potential' being a case in point.