Being sanctity of life month, I felt compelled to share something that came to me in prayer this morning.
Earlier this week I had to give a presentation on the Trinity. No problem, right? Wrong. Like everyone else, I find this challenging. I recite the whole “person vs nature” thing, but I didn’t have any substance beyond that, so I had to do some research. I think it can be briefly summarized as follows: person answers the question “who?", and the nature answer the question “what?” Some What’s also have a Who and some do not.
What is a rock? A rock. Who is a rock? They don’t have a who.Who is that? Bob. What is Bob? A human. Who is urging me to pray? The Holy Spirit. What is the Holy Spirit? God. And so on…
That was completely insufficient to explain the Trinity, but that isn't where I wanted to go with this either. Instead, I want to talk about abortion. In this discussion on abortion, we spend a lot of time trying to answer the question of “Who is it?" The Dr. Seuss quote comes to mind: "A person is a person no matter how small.” But, we don't have human dignity and human rights because we are a person, we have human dignity because we are human! It is the “what” that matters, not the “who”. So instead, we should focus on "what is the fetus/embryo/zygote?” It is human. When does it become human? At conception. If we then ask the question: How many cells do you need to be human? No matter what somebody answers, you would've been half as many some time before and did the “what” change in that time? No. You can repeat this all the way until you are one cell. All that changes after that is the age of the human. The life begins at conception, because you are human at conception. We believe in true human rights, because that is "what" we are… Human.
I had heard this general argument before from Trent Horn, but I had never connected it with the definitions that outline the Trinity.
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