Hellenism, Humanism, and the Value of Life: A Christian Response to Abortion and Ancient Ethics (Part 2)

Voxology

Religion & Spirituality, Philosophy, Society & Culture

4.7 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 19 February 2019

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How the ancient Greco-Roman worldview around deformity, ability, and perceived human "worth" continues to influence our modern ethics on abortion, disability, and human dignity. Mike Erre returns to the cultural and spiritual roots of the abortion debate, drawing deeply from early Christian history, Hellenistic philosophy, and his own experience as the father of a child with Down syndrome. This episode (Part 2 of the abortion conversation) explores how early Christians responded to practices like infanticide and exposure—not with protest, but with sacrificial love—and what that could mean for Christians in today's world.

Key Takeaways:
• Hellenism Then and Now – How the ancient Greek worldview placed human perfection and reason at the center of worth, and how that ethos lives on today in modern humanism and cultural values.
• Exposure and Infanticide in the Roman World – Examining the brutal treatment of infants deemed “unfit” or “imperfect,” especially those with disabilities or born female, and the philosophical justifications behind these practices.
• Early Christian Response to Abortion and Infanticide – How the early church countered cultural brutality not with politics or protests, but through rescuing and raising unwanted children as acts of love and defiance.
• Human Value Beyond Utility – A powerful reflection on how the worth of Seth (Mike’s son with Down syndrome) challenges a society obsessed with IQ, productivity, and physical “perfection.”
• Embryo Selection and the Return of Eugenics – Addressing emerging medical technologies like IQ-based embryo profiling and their disturbing parallels to ancient and modern eugenic thought.

Notable Quotes:

“We don’t call it Hellenism anymore—we just call it humanism.”
“The earliest Christians didn’t protest Caesar—they just walked into dump sites and rescued babies.”
“Any system that seeks to build a hierarchy of image bearers over other image bearers is demonic and from the pit of hell.”

Resources Mentioned:
• Destroyer of the gods by Larry Hurtado – [Link]
• The Rise of Christianity by Rodney Stark – [Link]
• “The Eye of the Deformity” by Robert Garland – [Link]
• Medical article on embryo IQ screening – [Link]
• Book of the Didache – [Link]
• Tertullian and Early Church Writings on Infanticide – [Link]

As always, we encourage and would love discussion as we pursue. Feel free to email in questions to [email protected], and to engage the conversation on Facebook and Instagram.

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Learn more about the Voxology Podcast

Subscribe on iTunes or Spotify

Support the Voxology Podcast on Patreon

The Voxology Spotify channel can be found here: Voxology Radio

Follow Mike on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mikeerre

Music in this episode by Timothy John Stafford

Instagram & Twitter: @GoneTimothy

As always, we encourage and would love discussion as we pursue. Feel free to email in questions to [email protected], and to engage the conversation on Facebook and Instagram.

We're on YouTube (if you're into that kinda thing): VOXOLOGY TV.

Our Merch Store! ETSY

Learn more about the Voxology Podcast

Subscribe on iTunes or Spotify

Support the Voxology Podcast on Patreon

The Voxology Spotify channel can be found here: Voxology Radio

Follow Mike on Twitter: www.twitter.com/mikeerre

Music in this episode by Timothy John Stafford

Instagram & Twitter: @GoneTimothy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Myself, my wants, my will, my desires, my dreams, my goals.
0:12.0	We don't call it Hellenism anymore, we just call it humanism, which I am worried that people like myself and many, many others would be edited out of society.
0:29.4	Hey, everybody, Mike here. Welcome to the Vox podcast. So glad you're tuning in. Grateful for you
0:36.0	and grateful that we get to play a small part on your journey.
0:40.1	What we want to do this episode is continue the conversation from last episode that began with a
0:46.2	question that we got via the interwebs that simply said, Mike, what's your view of abortion
0:51.4	and what advice would you have to give to someone struggling
0:55.5	with the decision of whether or not to have one? And, you know, holy cow, I mean, what a huge,
1:01.3	what a huge question. And we recognize, I recognize, of course, as a man that I can't understand,
1:09.3	empathize with what the decision-making process must feel like.
1:14.4	In fact, I got an email from someone this morning that was just talking about how painful it was to give your child up for adoption.
1:19.9	You know, we make it sound like that's an easy decision, and I can't imagine how hard that decision was.
1:27.1	And so I want to be very gentle as we
1:30.0	approach these topics. We want to, we want to, you know, frame these things relationally as a
1:37.0	community. And we want to talk through. We don't want to shy away from the hard questions that people
1:41.7	are asking and the arguments that are being put forward
1:44.5	in the public sphere. One of the fun things about doing this podcast is that I keep hearing from a
1:51.9	significant number of our listeners who are not Jesus followers. And I love that you're engaging and I love
1:58.1	that you're wrestling and I love that you're disagreeing or agreeing or whatever. I think that is incredible. But I also, you know, that also we cause, that causes us to
2:09.2	recognize that there's a load of, you know, opinion on this. And so what I want to do today
2:17.0	is I want to answer the first part of that question.
2:20.5	What's your view of abortion? Obviously, I come at it from a Jesus follower perspective,
	...

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