I think the quest for respectability is one of the easiest traps to fall into and has some of the worst consequences for one's soul in matters of religion. That doesn't mean that all ideas are equally valid, but the Christian faith and its moral implications are always scandalous in some way or another to every society.
For the record, this sort of thing is very much a trap I have fallen into myself and could easily in the future but for the grace of God, so I'm not throwing stones without pitching back at me.
Wright's cliched dodge about leaving questions of viability and personhood to "the philosopher doctors" is grotesque and shameful, given his supposed intellect.
A rational person can reason out that the unique DNA of the newborn baby existed from conception. However, having acknowledged that fact, the person then has to face the reality of what "terminating" that unique human being would entail. N.T. Wright would apparently rather stick his head in the proverbial sand. Disappointing in the extreme.
Well a “plummy” accent can fool the respondents that indeed NT Wright was correct in defending abortion. It’s really quite disgusting and elitist to decree some lives are not worth living. Sound familiar?
I am so glad to be Catholic. This half as*ed weak sauce of a response does not exist in the Catholic Church. I am an adult convert and it was escaping Protestantism with its focus on being part of the cool kids that was the reason.
Honestly though it wouldn't surprise me if Martin gave a similarly wishy-washy answer here in the name of being "pastoral." And there definitely are compromised priests out there on the issue, and who knows how many laymen, sadly.
Wright continues to be highly adept at being unable to give a simple, direct, and unequivocal answer to what really is a simple, direct question. His notoriety for giving five different answers to any given question will undoubtedly be undiminished in the coming weeks as he gets asked about this ridiculous “answer “.
Clarity and moral courage are essential when addressing abortion or any moral issue. This doesn't require impugning N. T. Wright's entire theological legacy based on these recent remarks. His biblical scholarship has influenced generations of thinkers across denominations, liberal and conservative, who do not question his spiritual integrity or moral fervor. Contesting his prudential judgments on complex issues does not require recasting him as a cautionary tale of elite betrayal or theological compromise. The church needs leaders who speak plainly and act boldly—but also those who model the gravity and complexity that pastoral discernment demands. Nuance is not moral evasion, nor institutional credibility inherent evidence of corruption.
I agree that clarity and moral courage are essential when addressing issues like abortion.
I have always had independent reasons for not finding Wright's biblical scholarship particularly significant, though I realize others disagree. However, whether that work is significant or not, it's entirely appropriate for statements of anthropological heresy--which is what these comments amount to--to mar his legacy. By indicating that there could be a stage at which the unborn child has less than full human dignity, he is also, it should be said, committing Christological heresy, since this would imply there was a point at which the unborn Christ was less than fully human.
Abortion is not a "complex issue," nor should it have been difficult for Wright to give the young woman who wrote in seeking his guidance a clear answer. "Nuance" is not always moral evasion, but sometimes it is precisely that.
You're free to point out where I say that institutional credibility constitutes "inherent evidence of corruption." That is certainly not my argument here.
By asserting abortion "is not" complex, you assume you've already established this point, when the complexity or simplicity of the issue is precisely what's in dispute--which years of pastoral experience have taught me working with mothers, and families, in anguish about this life-and-death matter. To dismiss Wright—whose pastoral experience is considerable—or the voices of mothers grappling with this profound issue, in the crude and reductive language you've chosen (“throat-cleared his way into an extended apology for selective child murder”; “Christians need to inhabit a very specific Goldilocks zone: not too infanticidal, not too embarrassingly pro-life, but just Wright”) is precisely the kind of rhetoric that fuels fratricide among Christians on a matter so fundamental, it insults the Spirit of Christ. Like you, liberals can be a lot better than talking that way themselves.
Once again, I must gently reassert that you are simply mistaken here. Either the child in the womb is a human being or he is not. If he is (and unless we want to relitigate the science of embryology, that would seem established), then his deliberate killing would be murder. I realize Wright wants to say that murder could be the "lesser of two evils" sometimes, but let's speak plainly about what he's actually saying.
You're not reasserting; you're flattening. To say either the child is a human being or not may sound clarifying, but it's actually reductive. Of course, the unborn child is human—so is the mother. The ethical question isn't what it is, but how to weigh competing human claims in a world where tragedy doesn't always yield to syllogism. Wright isn't denying the gravity of killing; he's refusing to treat moral complexity as a failure of nerve.
If we must “speak plainly,” let’s also speak fully. Otherwise, what you call clarity may be little more than a rhetorical shortcut.
I'm sorry, but this is just so much footstomping to evade the fact that a child is sacred, and the sacred is inviolable. No one is denying things like the trauma of rape or the tragedy of disability. The solution is not to compound evil. And if you've counseled women to abort, then I urge you to repent while there is still time to seek God's mercy.
Calling a child sacred doesn't end the moral question—it deepens it. If we truly value the sacred, we must also honor the person whose body and future are part of that reality. Jesus didn’t enforce choice. He lifted burdens, restored agency, and stood with the wounded. The unborn have no choice—but neither does the person, if we deny them one. Moral clarity isn’t found by erasing one life to elevate another. It’s found in mercy that sees both.
“The best and the brightest” always have an available support structure just like the rest of us —the glory of God. Von Balthasar once said that Jesus never asked his disciples, of varying levels of education, to accept things they could not understand, only to see and accept his glory. We must use our brains mindful of the fact that our rational faculty has a blind spot that makes it ignorant of Gods glory and susceptible to hubris. (The conceit of the human rational faculty has been interestingly portrayed by Iain McGilchrist). Why our smartest in many instances turn out to be our dumbest. We have to have patience with them but also be ready and willing to call out the hubris.
"Fully actual"? Both Aristotle and Aquinas adhered to the concept of delayed ensoulment. Aristotle stated that the soul enters the male fetus at 40 days and the female at 90 days. Aquinas asserted that the rational soul is infused only once the body is suitably organized, following Aristotle's theory. Neither Aristotle nor Aquinas regarded the fetus as fully human. Summa Theologica (Part I, Q. 118, Art. 2)
Aquinas condemned abortion as sinful, but the gravity of the act depended on whether the fetus was "ensouled" or not. He did not hold the modern Catholic view that life begins at conception in the same strict sense.
Aristotle said, "It depends." Reasonable moral discourse leaves room for such ambiguity, with personal convictions tempered by genuine respect for contrary positions. Aristotle wrote (Politics - Book 7, Chapter 16) that abortion was permissible before the embryo develops sensation and life: "for the line between lawful and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive"... being fully actual.
Calling a child sacred doesn't end the moral question—it deepens it. If we truly value the sacred, we must also honor the person whose body and future are part of that reality. Jesus didn’t enforce choice. He lifted burdens, restored agency, and stood with the wounded. The unborn have no choice—but neither does the person, if we deny them one. Moral clarity isn’t found by erasing one life to elevate another. It’s found in mercy that sees both.
The woman is not being "erased." She is being called to fulfill her high and noble duty as mother and protector, and to be spared from a lifetime of guilt for complicity in murder. How many devastated post-abortive women have you counseled?
If the role of women is so “high and noble,” why is it only fulfilled through self-sacrifice, subjugation, and the denial of agency? Protecting life includes respecting a woman’s conscience, complexity, and circumstances. You use guilt as a weapon, not compassion. If you truly care about post-abortive women, start by respecting their choices—not shaming them.
Many women suffer greatly from post-partum depression or otherwise face overwhelming odds when attempting to raise their already born children. Would you accuse me of these various things if I said these women should be prevented from infanticide?
Dr. McGrew is not doing this, nor are other pro-lifers. ignoring or minimizing the woman's suffering. It's saying that killing the child is inherently wrong, so that isn't on the table to relieve the suffering.
"Protecting life while acknowledging hardship is moral clarity, not hypocrisy."
That includes the tragedy of weeping with someone in incredibly difficult circumstances. And yes, we can be compassionate on someone who has had an abortion whether their circumstances were defensible or indefensible. However, it's just as important to moral and spiritual growth for a person to acknowledge he or she (the he being the boyfriend/husband who pushed for an abortion) committed great sin, no matter how mitigating the circumstances may be. It's not compassionate to say something is ok when it's actually not.
This is so disingenuous. Truly with abortion, Stalin's purported maxim that one killing is a tragedy and a million is a statistic applies. In a fallen world, there will be genuine tragedies towards the mothers, arguably the greatest in medically borderline situations or in situations where the evidence is clear but the doctor hesitates out of more concern for prosecution than saving the woman's life, but those are conveniently nameable and identifiable. That type of situation should be mourned and things like policies, training, and the like improved. On the other hand, every successful abortion results in at least one murdered child.
Whatever on a legislative or compromise side might have to be condoned in a society for hard cases (life of mother, rape/incest), "I don't wanna have a baby," which is the overwhelming majority of abortions, is vastly, vastly outwieghed by the basic right the child has to actually live.
I also would reject the idea that rape/incest present morally "hard cases," although if I were a legislator trying to move the ball forward and had to settle for an imperfect law with those carveouts, I would take it as an incremental win.
That's my position as well - the only one that requires nuance in the care/approach is life of the mother, and even then there's a wide difference in intent and action between an abortion and say removing an ectopic pregnancy that theoretically could be implanted in an artificial womb if the technology existed.
I was speaking on the legislative/incrementalist side as far as that part of the argument goes, basically in the sense that "let's discard the exceptions that tend to swallow up the general rules."
Thank you for this article. Do you think there are some very simple but silly temptations that we keep giving in to that allow things like this to happen, namely (1) our temptation for human heroes who we can rely on to be right about everything (2) the temptation for those potential heroes to accept the mantle and try to be right about everything?
Why on earth is there a show called Ask NT Wright Anything?
Yes, this has clearly gone to Wright's head. A symbiotic relationship between his ego and people's need for an answer man. However, since Justin left Unbelievable it's no longer his circus nor his monkeys. :)
I think the quest for respectability is one of the easiest traps to fall into and has some of the worst consequences for one's soul in matters of religion. That doesn't mean that all ideas are equally valid, but the Christian faith and its moral implications are always scandalous in some way or another to every society.
For the record, this sort of thing is very much a trap I have fallen into myself and could easily in the future but for the grace of God, so I'm not throwing stones without pitching back at me.
Wright's cliched dodge about leaving questions of viability and personhood to "the philosopher doctors" is grotesque and shameful, given his supposed intellect.
A rational person can reason out that the unique DNA of the newborn baby existed from conception. However, having acknowledged that fact, the person then has to face the reality of what "terminating" that unique human being would entail. N.T. Wright would apparently rather stick his head in the proverbial sand. Disappointing in the extreme.
World-class article and much needed context on Wright, but my absolute favorite part was the amazing puns on "Wright" :D
They... Wright themselves. :)
Well a “plummy” accent can fool the respondents that indeed NT Wright was correct in defending abortion. It’s really quite disgusting and elitist to decree some lives are not worth living. Sound familiar?
I am so glad to be Catholic. This half as*ed weak sauce of a response does not exist in the Catholic Church. I am an adult convert and it was escaping Protestantism with its focus on being part of the cool kids that was the reason.
You do have your James Martins though!
Martin is a heretic on sex and gender issues but so far he is anti-abortion.
What astonished me was learning NT Wright was still alive. He must be about 100 years old.
Honestly though it wouldn't surprise me if Martin gave a similarly wishy-washy answer here in the name of being "pastoral." And there definitely are compromised priests out there on the issue, and who knows how many laymen, sadly.
Wright continues to be highly adept at being unable to give a simple, direct, and unequivocal answer to what really is a simple, direct question. His notoriety for giving five different answers to any given question will undoubtedly be undiminished in the coming weeks as he gets asked about this ridiculous “answer “.
Clarity and moral courage are essential when addressing abortion or any moral issue. This doesn't require impugning N. T. Wright's entire theological legacy based on these recent remarks. His biblical scholarship has influenced generations of thinkers across denominations, liberal and conservative, who do not question his spiritual integrity or moral fervor. Contesting his prudential judgments on complex issues does not require recasting him as a cautionary tale of elite betrayal or theological compromise. The church needs leaders who speak plainly and act boldly—but also those who model the gravity and complexity that pastoral discernment demands. Nuance is not moral evasion, nor institutional credibility inherent evidence of corruption.
I agree that clarity and moral courage are essential when addressing issues like abortion.
I have always had independent reasons for not finding Wright's biblical scholarship particularly significant, though I realize others disagree. However, whether that work is significant or not, it's entirely appropriate for statements of anthropological heresy--which is what these comments amount to--to mar his legacy. By indicating that there could be a stage at which the unborn child has less than full human dignity, he is also, it should be said, committing Christological heresy, since this would imply there was a point at which the unborn Christ was less than fully human.
Abortion is not a "complex issue," nor should it have been difficult for Wright to give the young woman who wrote in seeking his guidance a clear answer. "Nuance" is not always moral evasion, but sometimes it is precisely that.
You're free to point out where I say that institutional credibility constitutes "inherent evidence of corruption." That is certainly not my argument here.
By asserting abortion "is not" complex, you assume you've already established this point, when the complexity or simplicity of the issue is precisely what's in dispute--which years of pastoral experience have taught me working with mothers, and families, in anguish about this life-and-death matter. To dismiss Wright—whose pastoral experience is considerable—or the voices of mothers grappling with this profound issue, in the crude and reductive language you've chosen (“throat-cleared his way into an extended apology for selective child murder”; “Christians need to inhabit a very specific Goldilocks zone: not too infanticidal, not too embarrassingly pro-life, but just Wright”) is precisely the kind of rhetoric that fuels fratricide among Christians on a matter so fundamental, it insults the Spirit of Christ. Like you, liberals can be a lot better than talking that way themselves.
Once again, I must gently reassert that you are simply mistaken here. Either the child in the womb is a human being or he is not. If he is (and unless we want to relitigate the science of embryology, that would seem established), then his deliberate killing would be murder. I realize Wright wants to say that murder could be the "lesser of two evils" sometimes, but let's speak plainly about what he's actually saying.
You're not reasserting; you're flattening. To say either the child is a human being or not may sound clarifying, but it's actually reductive. Of course, the unborn child is human—so is the mother. The ethical question isn't what it is, but how to weigh competing human claims in a world where tragedy doesn't always yield to syllogism. Wright isn't denying the gravity of killing; he's refusing to treat moral complexity as a failure of nerve.
If we must “speak plainly,” let’s also speak fully. Otherwise, what you call clarity may be little more than a rhetorical shortcut.
I'm sorry, but this is just so much footstomping to evade the fact that a child is sacred, and the sacred is inviolable. No one is denying things like the trauma of rape or the tragedy of disability. The solution is not to compound evil. And if you've counseled women to abort, then I urge you to repent while there is still time to seek God's mercy.
Calling a child sacred doesn't end the moral question—it deepens it. If we truly value the sacred, we must also honor the person whose body and future are part of that reality. Jesus didn’t enforce choice. He lifted burdens, restored agency, and stood with the wounded. The unborn have no choice—but neither does the person, if we deny them one. Moral clarity isn’t found by erasing one life to elevate another. It’s found in mercy that sees both.
“The best and the brightest” always have an available support structure just like the rest of us —the glory of God. Von Balthasar once said that Jesus never asked his disciples, of varying levels of education, to accept things they could not understand, only to see and accept his glory. We must use our brains mindful of the fact that our rational faculty has a blind spot that makes it ignorant of Gods glory and susceptible to hubris. (The conceit of the human rational faculty has been interestingly portrayed by Iain McGilchrist). Why our smartest in many instances turn out to be our dumbest. We have to have patience with them but also be ready and willing to call out the hubris.
"Fully actual"? Both Aristotle and Aquinas adhered to the concept of delayed ensoulment. Aristotle stated that the soul enters the male fetus at 40 days and the female at 90 days. Aquinas asserted that the rational soul is infused only once the body is suitably organized, following Aristotle's theory. Neither Aristotle nor Aquinas regarded the fetus as fully human. Summa Theologica (Part I, Q. 118, Art. 2)
Aquinas condemned abortion as sinful, but the gravity of the act depended on whether the fetus was "ensouled" or not. He did not hold the modern Catholic view that life begins at conception in the same strict sense.
Aristotle said, "It depends." Reasonable moral discourse leaves room for such ambiguity, with personal convictions tempered by genuine respect for contrary positions. Aristotle wrote (Politics - Book 7, Chapter 16) that abortion was permissible before the embryo develops sensation and life: "for the line between lawful and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive"... being fully actual.
The beat goes on— long after the question began.
Calling a child sacred doesn't end the moral question—it deepens it. If we truly value the sacred, we must also honor the person whose body and future are part of that reality. Jesus didn’t enforce choice. He lifted burdens, restored agency, and stood with the wounded. The unborn have no choice—but neither does the person, if we deny them one. Moral clarity isn’t found by erasing one life to elevate another. It’s found in mercy that sees both.
The woman is not being "erased." She is being called to fulfill her high and noble duty as mother and protector, and to be spared from a lifetime of guilt for complicity in murder. How many devastated post-abortive women have you counseled?
Also, the unborn child is a person, to be clear.
If the role of women is so “high and noble,” why is it only fulfilled through self-sacrifice, subjugation, and the denial of agency? Protecting life includes respecting a woman’s conscience, complexity, and circumstances. You use guilt as a weapon, not compassion. If you truly care about post-abortive women, start by respecting their choices—not shaming them.
Many women suffer greatly from post-partum depression or otherwise face overwhelming odds when attempting to raise their already born children. Would you accuse me of these various things if I said these women should be prevented from infanticide?
Of course not—protecting life while acknowledging hardship is moral clarity, not hypocrisy.
Dr. McGrew is not doing this, nor are other pro-lifers. ignoring or minimizing the woman's suffering. It's saying that killing the child is inherently wrong, so that isn't on the table to relieve the suffering.
"Protecting life while acknowledging hardship is moral clarity, not hypocrisy."
That includes the tragedy of weeping with someone in incredibly difficult circumstances. And yes, we can be compassionate on someone who has had an abortion whether their circumstances were defensible or indefensible. However, it's just as important to moral and spiritual growth for a person to acknowledge he or she (the he being the boyfriend/husband who pushed for an abortion) committed great sin, no matter how mitigating the circumstances may be. It's not compassionate to say something is ok when it's actually not.
Yes. My point exactly.
Then we agree—compassion and moral boundaries can coexist. !
This is so disingenuous. Truly with abortion, Stalin's purported maxim that one killing is a tragedy and a million is a statistic applies. In a fallen world, there will be genuine tragedies towards the mothers, arguably the greatest in medically borderline situations or in situations where the evidence is clear but the doctor hesitates out of more concern for prosecution than saving the woman's life, but those are conveniently nameable and identifiable. That type of situation should be mourned and things like policies, training, and the like improved. On the other hand, every successful abortion results in at least one murdered child.
Whatever on a legislative or compromise side might have to be condoned in a society for hard cases (life of mother, rape/incest), "I don't wanna have a baby," which is the overwhelming majority of abortions, is vastly, vastly outwieghed by the basic right the child has to actually live.
I also would reject the idea that rape/incest present morally "hard cases," although if I were a legislator trying to move the ball forward and had to settle for an imperfect law with those carveouts, I would take it as an incremental win.
That's my position as well - the only one that requires nuance in the care/approach is life of the mother, and even then there's a wide difference in intent and action between an abortion and say removing an ectopic pregnancy that theoretically could be implanted in an artificial womb if the technology existed.
I was speaking on the legislative/incrementalist side as far as that part of the argument goes, basically in the sense that "let's discard the exceptions that tend to swallow up the general rules."
Thank you for this article. Do you think there are some very simple but silly temptations that we keep giving in to that allow things like this to happen, namely (1) our temptation for human heroes who we can rely on to be right about everything (2) the temptation for those potential heroes to accept the mantle and try to be right about everything?
Why on earth is there a show called Ask NT Wright Anything?
Why on earth does he continue to agree to do it?
Can you ask Justin for me?!
To be "Wright" about everything, you mean? :D
Yes, this has clearly gone to Wright's head. A symbiotic relationship between his ego and people's need for an answer man. However, since Justin left Unbelievable it's no longer his circus nor his monkeys. :)