The Theology of Genesis 1-3 Addresses Human Abortion and All Issues

John C. Rankin

[adapted from First the Gospel, Then Politics …, 1999, Vol. 2, not published]

The second seminar I taught on human life and abortion was in early 1984, in what I called the Sanctity of Human Life Seminars (SOHLS). Between 1983 and 1991, I taught some 120+ SOHLS. This one was held at College Church in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was a modest event with some 25-30 people in attendance on a Saturday morning.

Not long afterward, I received a letter from a minister on staff at the church. It was a very gracious thank you. And he said something remarkable – that he had come expecting to be equipped with how the Gospel addresses the debate over abortion, but instead he was equipped with far more, with the foundation to address any issue.

This surprised me, because abortion was the only “issue” I was looking at in that seminar. But as well, as with my first seminar at Pigeon Cove Chapel in Rockport, Massachusetts, I organized its material with a conscious starting point of Genesis 1-3 as the interpretive reality for all the Bible and life. My passion is theological education, and how to bring it to the grass roots of the church, and into the skeptical culture.

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