Addressing the Greatest Human Rights Atrocity of our Age
The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture (Second Edition), Scott Klusendorf. Wheaton: Crossway, 2023. Softcover, 390 pages.
What do you call an annual death-toll of tens of thousands that has been happening for decades in our country? It’s an atrocity. That’s what abortion is. It is the greatest human rights atrocity of our era. Nothing surpasses it. Because it happens behind closed doors, though, we can safely keep it out of our minds and not be too bothered by it.
However, can we really do that if we’re Christians who believe God’s Word? Scripture says in Proverbs 31:8-9: “Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.” King Lemuel’s mother taught him those words. If we share Christ’s royal office through his Holy Spirit, then surely we ought to follow that same instruction.
This book is intended to help Christians do that. Scott Klusendorf is an experienced pro-life advocate based in the United States. His thesis in The Case for Life is two-fold. He first intends to argue that “a biblically informed pro-life view explains human equality, human rights, and moral obligations better than its secular rivals.” Then he wants to convince us that “rank and file pro-life Christians can make an immediate impact provided they’re equipped to engage the culture with a robust but graciously communicated case for life” (p.3).
The Case for Life breaks down into five parts:
- Part 1 – Pro-Life Christians Clarify the Debate
- Part 2 – Pro-Life Christians Address Worldview Questions
- Part 3 – Pro-Life Christians Survey the Major Thinkers
- Part 4 – Pro-Life Christians Answer Objections Persuasively
- Part 5 – Pro-Life Christians Teach and Equip
The book includes numerous references to other helpful pro-life resources.
Klusendorf is particularly strong in two areas. One is responding to pro-abortion rhetoric. For example, perhaps you’ve heard of the “Burning Fertility Clinic Illustration.” A hypothetical fertility clinic is burning down and you have to choose between saving a screaming five-year-old child and a container with 1000 human embryos. Klusendorf has a powerful retort to this thought experiment in chapter 4.
Another area of strength is with regard to exposing the inconsistencies in the worldviews undergirding pro-abortion ideology. In chapter 6, for instance, he turns the tables on abortion rights by asking whether such “rights” are natural (prepolitical and transcendent) or legal (granted by government). If the latter, then the government which grants rights is also within its realm to take them away. If the former, however, “then the abortion-choice advocate had that right from the moment she came to be, that is, from conception! Thus, according to the logic of many abortion-choice advocates, unborn women don’t have a right to life, but they do have a right to an abortion!” (p.98).
I can recommend this book, but only with some caveats. There is a strong apologetics component (especially in Part 2), but it’s not Reformed apologetics the author uses. Two names appear repeatedly in the footnotes: J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig. Both of them are explicitly Arminian classical apologists. Under their influence, Klusendorf refers on a couple of occasions to Christianity as possibly the best explanation. At one point, he says Christian theism cannot claim certitude (p.190). We can’t? Doesn’t the Bible give us warrant to do exactly that in passages like John 17:17? Worse, he says on page 176 that “it’s possible that Christian theism is mistaken in part or in whole (though that’s highly unlikely)….” Because Christian theism is found in God’s Word and it’s impossible for God to lie or be mistaken, it’s impossible for Christian theism to be mistaken. Klusendorf concedes far too much ground to unbelievers – when he shouldn’t be conceding any whatsoever.
Regrettably, the author also compromises on the clarity of God’s Word when it comes to creation. For beginners, he states that “big bang cosmology challenges the materialist claim that the universe has always existed” (p.179). However, big bang cosmology is contrary to the creation account given in Genesis. As an example of just one incongruity, Genesis teaches us that creation took place in six ordinary days; big bang cosmology requires deep time involving billions of years. Further, Klusendorf quotes theistic evolutionist J.P. Moreland who asserted that “God rigged the dice ahead of time so life could appear” (p.180). Rather than simply creating the conditions in which life could begin, the Bible tells us that God created every living creature by the word of his mouth.
Until someone else comes along with something better, Klusendorf’s book will be my go-to resource for refuting pro-abortion arguments. The Case for Life has some weaknesses, but I trust that readers will be able to “chew the meat and spit out the bones.” It is a must-read for pro-life advocates, in other words for all Christians. Abortion is murder. Let’s do what we can to “rescue those who are being taken away to death” (Prov. 24:11).
