From: ingrcfb@bnr.ca (Charles Board)
Subject: Re: ABORTION: WHEN Does Human Life BEGIN?
Organization: Bell-Northern Research
Date: Fri, 06 Nov 1992 21:19:49 GMT

In article <73889@hydra.gatech.EDU>, rpitts@emperor.gatech.edu (Richard Pitts) writes:
|> In article <Bx9J8z.5F1@news.udel.edu> roby@chopin.udel.edu (Scott W Roby) writes:
|> |In article <72646@hydra.gatech.EDU> rpitts@emperor.gatech.edu (Richard Pitts) writes:
|> |>

Richard, I'm really trying to understand your (and other prolifer's) view of
this passage, but I don't see how you get it.
|> |>Jer 1:5   "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you
|> |>      were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to
|> |>      the nations."
|> |>
|> |>The passage talks about God's foreknowledge - and how he had 
|> |>selected Jerimiah BEFORE HE WAS BORN and BEFORE HE FORMED HIM.
|> |>The point is that if God looks upon a person before he was
|> |>born and before he was born as a person to do great works for
|> |>Him, then how can one say the unborn person has NO worth.  God
|> |>had already planned for Jerimiah to do many things.
|> |
|> |So Jeremiah was known by God before he was formed, i.e., before 
|> |conception.  So:
|> 
|> My position is that God knew before hand - not that Jeremiah
|> existed before hand.  This also has to do with free will.  I
|> believe God knows what is going to happen, but man has the
|> will to do what he wants to do - God knows what man chooses.
|> God doesn't direct our actions, but knows them.

You seem to be saying that God can know something before it exists
(your paragraph above), but can't set something apart before it exists.
If he CAN set something apart before it exists then "before you were
born I set you apart" says NOTHING about whether Jeremiah existed before
birth. Are we agreed so far? I hope so, it's elementary logic.

So the only way this verse can support the view of existence before birth
is to assume that God CAN'T set something apart before it exists. So if
you are to use this verse to oppose abortion the burden falls on you to
show that God CAN'T set something apart before existence (but CAN know it).
Care to take a stab at it? 

|> |BOTTOMLINE:
|> |I don't see how the special case of Jeremiah (set apart) advances the 
|> |cause of either side of the abortion debate anymore than a discussion of 
|> |Mary's special case of conception would further the cause of either 
|> |side of the birth-control debate.
|> 
|> God placed significance upon Jeremiah in the womb by pointing out
|> that that was part of his life, as is the birth as is all if one's
|> life - God know about all of this before hand, but the part that
|> is singled out is the forming of Jeremiah in the womb and is
|> birth - God called him before that, but those are if nothing else
|> given equal standing in the life of Jeremiah.

I can't make any sense of the paragraph above past the first comma -
please try a re-write (without so many confusingly placed pronouns).
As for the part before the comma - you haven't shown yet shown any 
reason to believe the womb-time was part of Jeremiah's life, to do
that you've got to tell us why God can't set something apart before
it exists. And even if you can, then you've only shown that JEREMIAH
existed before birth...I think Scott's point above was that that 
doesn't necessarily say anything about "normal" pregnancies.

|> 
|> For Christ and His Kingdom,
|> Richard Pitts
|> -- 
|> rpitts@cerl.gatech.edu       |    
|> Atlanta, GA                --|-- 
|>                         -|-  |  -|-
|>                          |   |   |
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