There seems to be a deep preconception in America today that human life-or that essence we call human personhood-resides more in the breath of a person than in his blood. Though the question of human life and when it begins goes much deeper than either breath or blood, the physical imagery of the Old Testament gives much greater support for saying that the life of a human being resides first in his blood.
I have been in the pro-life movement since the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, and I am confounded as to why the logic of human life beginning at conception is not seen clearly by so many good people. Our knowledge of biology has progressed well beyond the physiological but abstract fact that fully programmed new life with its independent forty-six chromosomes is present at conception. We now have accounts of life documented with intrauterine cameras of the movement, sense of pain, and independent personalities of the preborn infant.
It has left me even more confounded that so many of our well-intentioned citizens, even Catholic ones, remain unconvinced that we are dealing with a human person in utero in the same way as after birth. I wonder if there isn’t at work here a deep, subconscious paradigm-similar to a Jungian archetype-that focuses on the baby as human only after its first breath.
Breath
When I first heard the following anecdote almost ten years ago, it seemed so extraordinary that I could not take it seriously. As the press reported it, Bill Clinton-who was then a candidate for the U.S. presidency-was struggling with the abortion question (or perhaps more accurately with how to justify his pro-abortion political stance). He sought out a sympathetic minister to help him solve his dilemma. With Bible in hand, the minister had Clinton turn to Genesis 2:7: “Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.”
The minister’s interpretation was that this shows it is with man’s first breath that he becomes human and receives his immortal soul. By analogy, it can be said that the moment a newborn baby draws its first breath is when he becomes a person. Of course, Clinton adopted this interpretation and went on to be the most actively anti-life president since abortion was legalized.
(In fact, this type of thinking showed up at the bitter end of Clinton’s presidency. Three days before he left office, Clinton put in place a federal law stating that a fetus is not a human being, even after it is born, until a competent medical authority ascertains that it will be able to survive-i.e., to breathe-on its own. The incoming administration of George W. Bush slapped a moratorium on the law.)
Not only did the minister’s exegesis use a text out of its context, but his interpretation is also wrongheaded in a biological sense. Nor can his interpretation stand up to natural philosophical reasoning. The flaw of his literal interpretation becomes clear as we read later of the creation of the first woman. In Genesis 2:21-22, God takes a rib from Adam and builds it into a woman. There is no mention of breath of life breathed into her. Is there perhaps a life force in the rib of Adam sufficient for God’s purposes?
It would sound ludicrous to say that all men owe their formation only to clay and all women only to a rib. Or it would sound unfair to say that only men received the divine breath from God, and women never got it. But one could draw this wrong conclusion using the same kind of literal, isolated reading of the text as Genesis 2:7 received in our earlier example. Scripture asserts, “As you do not know how the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything” (Eccles. 11:5).
Catholics have traditionally focused on the first account of the creation of human beings (Gen. 1:1-2:4a) as the deep source for their Christian anthropology. Human beings were created as unique among all creatures without any accompanying story of the “how” in the magnificent statement of Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (cf. Gen. 5:1-2). The second creation account pictures God in more anthropocentric terms. The focus on God in Genesis 2:7 as a kind of loving potter complements the first account.
Herein is the powerful imagery of the breath of God as that which, mixed with clay, imparted life and is part of the whole creative action. Breath of God is highly symbolic language. That same breath blew over the watery chaos like a strong wind at the beginning of creation (cf. Gen. 1:1-3) and resulted in our ordered universe. That same breath was breathed upon the disciples by Jesus after the Resurrection in the closed room to impart spiritual life and forgiveness (John 20:22). That same breath again appeared as a mighty wind on Pentecost with the descent of the Holy Spirit.
Great studies have been done on the breath (in Hebrew, ruah) of God and its creative, empowering force. It is intimately connected to the gift of life and creativity we as humans enjoy. This is taken for granted in our own English language. To be inspired is to be breathed into with more than our own ordinary life. And to expire (breathe out) is understood to mean that we die.
Some of the Church Fathers reflected on the soul as sprung from this breath of God. But their writings never isolated the breath of God to only the man Adam, nor did they consider this poetic account as the literal way that we receive our souls. As interpreted by Pope John Paul II, the account is more than a giving of physical life but also an orientation to God and eternal life (cf. Evangelium Vitae 34-35).
The term “breath of God” has been understood, from the Fathers to the current pope, to be symbolic language. Breath is a symbolic word for the spirit of God rather than representing the literal chemistry of the air we breathe as the source for our souls or for the gift of life. Otherwise, when we expire one of two things would have to be affirmed: Our souls, our being, cease to exist at that moment, or else the breath returns to and disappears into God.
The Church Fathers always emphasized the immortality of the individual soul. Therefore, the soul’s existence does not have a strict physical connection to biological breathing. But breathing is still important for ongoing physical life. We say rightly that every breath depends on God who gives it.
All this-the symbolic meaning of breath and the faith we possess that the spirit of God creates us and continually sustains us-is expressed in Psalm 104:27-30: “These all look to thee, to give them their food in due season. When thou givest to them, they gather it up; when thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good things. When thou hidest thy face, they are dismayed; when thou takest away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground.”
Blood
The Hebrew scriptures and our Old Testament contain another profound concept: the image of blood as seat of the gift of life from God. In fact, blood and life are attested as lexical pairs in Hebrew and other Semitic poetry. The interplay of phrases in Genesis 37:21-22 shows that, in biblical Hebrew, “shed blood” (shapak dam) was synonymous with “strike the life” (hikka nepesh).
There is explicit identification of blood with life in Deuteronomy 12:23: “The blood is the life [nepesh-the same word used of Adam, who became a “living being”], and you shall not eat the life with the flesh.” The book of Leviticus locates animal life in the blood and equates the value of blood with that of life: “For the life [nepesh] of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it for you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement, by reason of the life” (17:11).
According to the Levitical writer, the atoning value of the blood accounts for the efficacy of the sacrificial system. The animal’s death, and the dashing of its blood on the sides of the altar or its horns, brought not only atonement but also life to the sinner. The power of blood was life for the Hebrews during the tenth plague and the Passover in Exodus 11 and 12. The Israelites were ordered to apply some of the blood of the Passover lamb to their doorposts and lintels to mark the houses where they dwelt. Thus the lives of the firstborn of the Hebrews were spared when the angel of death passed over their houses.
Of course, the New Testament, and Christians, see the typological sense here and speak of being saved by the blood of the Lamb of God-that is, by Jesus Christ and the shedding of his blood in death. In fact, though he does not die again, Jesus continues to give his blood sacramentally in the Eucharist for salvation and eternal life. One could not imagine a greater life than this. The life Jesus speaks of is not biological or temporary life that might be associated with breathing only. It is immortal, eternal life, and it is associated with blood.
We understand the New Testament language because of the Old Testament revelation that life is in the blood. Blood is the primary vital substance, so much so that it was occasionally believed to be present in life-giving objects considered inanimate by moderns. For instance, wine was “blood of the grape” (Deut. 32:14). Because blood embodied life, it was allotted by biblical legislation to God (Lev. 1:3-4, 8-10, 13-15).
Though blood was eaten by ancients, who saw its nutritional value and gift of vitality (also the sense behind texts such as Isaiah 1:11, Ezekiel 44:7, and Psalms 50:13), the Israelites were forbidden to do so (Lev. 3:17, 7:22-26). They could not eat of the blood of slaughtered animals (Lev. 17:10, 14; Deut. 12:23-25) nor eat the flesh of a slaughtered animal with blood still in it (Lev. 19:26, 1 Sam. 14:32-35). In fact, the blood of a slaughtered animal that had not been sacrificed had to be discarded (Deut. 12:24). To this day, kosher butchering requires the blood to be drained completely and allowed to return into the ground. This symbolizes the offering of the gift of life back to God.
The prohibitions studied thus far were enacted because of the belief that the gift of life resided in the blood. This helps us understand why ancient Israel saw the eating of blood as equivalent to homicide (Lev. 17:4) and constituted treachery against God (1 Sam. 14:33). Obviously, not all blood could be removed from the flesh by the methods mentioned above, but such legislation avoided its unrestricted human consumption. And part of the reason animals or portions of them were sacrificed to God before eating was to purify the intention of the believer that the return of blood, the seat of life, in the animal was intended for God (1 Sam. 14:34-35).
When Moses concluded the covenant between Yahweh and Israel, he sacrificed animals and dashed part of their blood on the altar and part on the people. The blood is termed “blood of the covenant” (cf. Zech. 9:11, Matt. 26:28, 1 Cor. 11:25). With this background we can better understand Jesus’ words over the cup of sacrifice at the Last Supper: “This cup which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood” (Luke 22:20).
Let us return to the human life question. With the discussion of only the terms breath and blood, we see why one should not focus on the first breath of a man as the magical moment of human life. (Likewise, we should not focus on the last breath of a man as the moment he ceases to exist). With this study of the larger and more central role that blood plays as seat of all life, not just human life, we can see the fundamental error in the interpretation of Genesis 2:7 that human life, or ensoulment, starts with the first breath.
Even in our use of the biblical understanding of blood we must take care. Some biologists will note that sometime around the fifteenth day in embryonic gestation a child’s blood appears in the first early cell differentiation. That differentiation continues to the eighth week until we have the heart, which can pump that blood. Thus one might argue reasonably that the beginning of life in a human can be moved back at least to day fifteen in the womb. And obviously, this would be a great improvement over the present situation-that is, if our society worked from this perception that life begins with the presence of blood, many more lives would be saved.
But we should not fall into the error of the breath argument, using one important (even if more important).aspect of biblical understanding as the paradigm for all human life questions. Revelation in the Bible is larger than this or that particular. The entire context, as well as its texts, must be considered. And the biblical context of creation, and human life, is that it is truly a gift from God, sustained by him, and is a process from beginning to end in the providence of God. We experience such a context sense in the Psalms (8, 139 passim), or in Jeremiah and Job when they speak of being formed in their mother’s womb. We surely sense that early inspiration of John the Baptist when Mary visited Elizabeth.
With the advance of science, we are amazed at the complete individuality and map of formation in each human person established at the time of conception until death. Such science has revealed to us that even the presence of first blood or first breath is but a hiccup in the continuous unfolding of this life.
Even more poignant is the argument posed by Catholic novelist Walker Percy in his novel The Thanatos Syndrome. In a discussion, the doctors (the antagonists in the novel) agree that what truly constitutes human beings, different from the other creatures of the earth, is that they are conscious (or self-conscious), rational beings. In his novel, Percy presents a futuristic decision by the Supreme Court that takes into account the unarguable fact that human life does start with conception. But the court decides that neither conception nor first breath nor first viability accounts for when the child truly becomes a person as a self-conscious being. The court holds that this happens with the beginning of the acquisition of language. Thus the fictitious court deems that since society is not dealing with a true human person before that time of language and self-consciousness, infanticide or pedeuthanasia is allowable up to the age of two years.
Given the slippery slope that led to Clinton’s federal law based on breath, pray we do not see an advocacy advancing toward a new court decision like the fictional one in the novel by Percy. Rather, in this new millennium, pray that we witness another scenario of protection of natural human life from conception to death.