In the most recent issue of Touchstone magazine, W. Ross Blackburn takes on Richard Hays’ ambiguous stance on abortion. (Blackburn’s article is not available online, and that is why you must get a subscription to Touchstone magazine as soon as humanly possible!) Richard Hays’ The Moral Vision of the New Testament is widely regarded as the most influential book on New Testament ethics today. It has been proclaimed by Christianity Today as one of the most enduring books of the twentieth century, an eminent work of “evangelical scholarship.” Yet many evangelicals might be surprised to learn that Richard Hays’ position on abortion is somewhat left of the evangelical mainstream.

Pastor John Piper tells the story of a woman who “prophesied” over him after a church service one day: “Once a woman prophesied over me that my pregnant wife would give me a daughter not a fourth son, and that my wife would die in childbirth. That was not a helpful prophecy. It was pointless. And, as you know, it proved false. Love did not govern the use of that gift. That is not the way saving faith uses gifts” (source).