Category Archives: Expecting Parents

Trinity and the Family Analogy

27 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Adam and Eve, Christ and Culture, Expecting Parents, Gender Issues, Homosexuality, Human Experience and Theology, Pregnancy and Theology, Trinity, Trinity and Pregnancy

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The Trinity is a rational doctrine, which can be understood by selecting facets of one aspect of a creature, another facet from creation, and yet another from somewhere else in this world. Then, the necessary step to make it “rationally conceivable” is joining these disparate features from within creation and seeing them together. I am not advocating that the Trinity can be divested of its mystery, but I am contesting the notion that the doctrine of the Trinity is absurdity or inherently contradictory.

With this said, Genesis 1:27 – 28 and Genesis 2:24 point out that God’s self-chosen analogy for Himself is the human family. We first find that both “male and female” constitute the “Image of God” (Imago Dei). These two, who constitute God’s image, are to “become one flesh,” which is an activity representative of the “Image of God.” Yes, sex is representative of God although sadly bastardized into a solely unclean thing in our culture.

Man and woman produce offspring: this child is the active union of the mother and father. Moreover, children exhibit characteristics of his/her parents whether or not he/she has ever met his/her parents. Nurture is not the source, therefore, of a child’s likeness to his/her parents; nature is. Striking indeed is that a woman and a child share the same space while the woman is pregnant with the child. The father, of course, is manifest in the child as well since his very being (genetics) comprises this child together with the wife. So what do we have? We have one person, the child, who is of the same nature as the parents (genetics/biologically), one person (child) sharing the same space as another person (mother), and, lastly, the mother and child are distinct persons.

Thus, in the very being of the child, the father and mother are present, both biologically and in character traits — although it will take many years to see this clearly. A pregnant woman might be the best analogy for the Trinity, requiring the least amount of adaption.

The Trinity is three distinct Persons who completely share the same “divine space,” and who are one in nature; a pregnant woman represents two distinct persons who share the same space (not completely though), and who are one in nature with even the third person (father) represented.

Conclusion: God self-chosen analogy gives the best representation found in a singular place, and that analogy is male and female involved in the procreational process, i.e., sex.

Dr. Scalise

My Daughter Lydia, God, and Abortion: Theologically interpreting my wife’s pregnancy, part III

19 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by in Abortion, Expecting Parents, Pregnancy and Theology, Science

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I consider myself a father now although my daughter is still in my wife’s womb. There is good “scientific” reasons for this, like the size, shape, human features, muscular control of my daughter’s body by her mind (kicks, movement), but all this is so cold. The whole tendency to only scientifically look at things is so narrow a window. What about relationship, the wonder of new life, and communion in heart and soul in the father and the mother towards our daughter, and towards one another around this new life. Are these to be disdainfully dismissed because “science” is somehow the supreme way of viewing things even though what makes us feel most alive as humans is often not understanding things in a scientific analysis. Sliding down a waterpark ride is thrilling and makes me feel alive; doing the math to calculate what scientifically is happening when I slide down is a distant shadow of the experience. Love between two people is earth shaking; scientifically looking at love between two people as natural selection, reproduction, and the continuation of the species is not.

Lydia is a person with her own identity beyond either my wife or me. This is not manifest until Lydia is born, but what is readily needed for a person to be a person is being created there even if not separate from my wife’s body yet. Said differently, Lydia is distinct from my wife right now although not separate (like the Trinity, I’d remind you). God is knitting Lydia together in my wife’s womb; truly a marvel this is! Lydia will have both my features and Gloria’s, physically as well as character-wise.

Aside from the typical arguments against abortion made in public political discourse, I want to make a plea. Please consider people as persons, not as scientific objects. Please don’t confuse a baby-in-the-womb with a woman’s body; this baby is distinct even if not yet separate. Please embrace your own humanity, for heaven’s sake, enjoying all it is to be human by experiencing people as people, babies-in-the-womb as marvelous others, and not as “scientific masses of molecules, electricity, and energy.” Do you not know that you depersonalize yourself when you depersonalize others, whether adults or babies-in-the-womb?

I am a father, and if you’re an expecting man or woman, you are a mother or a father too. I am a man, you are a woman, and we are dignified in each act of “life-giving” we do, whether in terms of family, supporting others, or building them up. Life-elimination is poison to our own souls.

Dr. Scalise