Conception

When a sperm and ovum unite, usually as the result of a loving embrace, they become “one flesh” literally as a unique conceptus “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14 KJV; see Psalm 139:13-16; Eccles. 11:5). New reproductive technologies now allow conception to occur outside the confines of the human temple, creating ethical dilemmas and evoking the need to restore reverence to our idea of conception and dignity to personhood.

Evolving Ideas of Heredity and Origins

Biblically and anthropologically there is a rich tapestry of philosophies that dovetail with evolving science. When Genesis describes the creation of Adam, the material of his body is completely and utterly earthy (Psalm 90:3; Psalm 103:14). This contrasts with other creation myths, where humankind is extrapolated from blood or tears spilled from the gods. In the Bible, the first man is the result of clay formed by the hands of God and invested with spirit and life through the transforming breath of the potter. In life man works this soil in intimate relatedness, returning to it in death (Eccles. 12:7). There is speculation and some evidence that humble clay crystals may have served as the original catalysts for the formation of the hereditary molecule of life, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), in the first simplest life forms.

DNA has the unique ability to replicate itself, dividing and preserving a blueprint from one cell division to the next that maintains the form and function of the cell and communally the organism. During replication the DNA spiral staircase cleaves equally, like a zipper parting. Components of the complementary ladder rungs reassemble based on strict exclusive pairing in a lock-and-key fashion analogous to male and female union in marriage (Genesis 2:24). It is this monogamy that preserves the sequence and meaning of the code, ensuring the correct translation into the intended gene product and faithful replication from one generation to the next (Psalm 100:5).

That moment of divine spark in which matter is brought to life is in no way demystified by progress in the understanding of origins. Science serves to enhance, not diminish, the wonder of God’s signature in matter, be it the whorled pattern of a fossil shell, Bach’s mathematical harmonies or a dandelion seed aloft in the breeze. Seeds are mentioned in Genesis 1:11 inextricably associated with the first living entities; plants created some three and a half billion years ago are wondrously capable of capturing the sun’s energy for food, so providing nourishment and oxygen for animal life to follow. Genesis and evolution are integrated in describing the sequence of created life.

Biblically, semen and seed are used interchangeably and intersexually. Note the allusion to the female seed made in Leviticus 12:2, “to sow a seed,” and in Hebrews 11:11, “Sarah received power to have [literally] a seminal emission.”

Historically views were often opposing. The traditional notion that the mother was not the begetter but only the nurse of the newly sown embryo conflicted with observable patterns of heredity whereby children resembled both parents. In Job 10:10 we are given the image of human creation as the pouring out of milk that curdles into cheese: the development of a firm embryonic body from milky semen. From the sixth century b.c. women were known to possess ovaries, although they were referred to as testes. Pre-Socratic philosophers defended the view that female semen is also necessary for procreation, hence menstrual blood was regarded as the female contribution to embryogenesis.

There was also great debate concerning theories accounting for the sex of the child or the dominant resemblance to mother or father. Novel proposals having to do with which partner’s semen was most abundant or emitted first at the time of coitus, or the influence of temperatures and the position of the seeds in the uterus, testified to the creativity and curiosity of the human mind. The ancient principle that the seed of either parent can be “overpowered” is preserved in modern understanding of sex determination and gene dominance over recessiveness.

The ovum and sperm each contain half of the genetic material necessary for human life. The male has two varieties of the sex-determining chromosome, designated X and Y. Thus there are two forms of sperm existing in the semen with regard to this one characteristic. Ovum, however, contain exclusively an X chromosome; the mother has a pair of X chromosomes from which to donate, one originating from each of her parents. It is the type of sperm, then, that engenders the sex of the conceptus. Either the Y “maleness” chromosome overpowers the X, resulting in a male offspring, or the presence of another X chromosome from the sperm complements the X that is already in the ovum to produce a female offspring. In Genesis the creation of Eve from the rib of Adam has been metaphorically linked to the taking of the X chromosome to create out of man “flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone.”

Scientifically, the division of labor for directing characteristics as diverse as eye color, predispositions for disease, personality and even addictions is a complex interaction of multiple genes. The conceptus carries half the genetic material of each parent, but any possible ratio of grandparents’ DNA may be represented. The diversity that sexual reproduction offers, analogous to reshuffling a deck of cards, serves as fuel for gradual changes that occur in species over time, imparting incentive and wisdom to adapt generationally to changing conditions.

As the thread of life, the DNA molecule not only epitomizes the biologic link between form and function but suggests metaphors for contemplation. An impossibly simple molecule in the form of a spiraling staircase, DNA contains the language to flesh out such diverse creatures as the towering cedar tree spanning a millennium and the transient intricate mouse, attesting to the universality of a spiritual language that knows no bounds of race or religion. If DNA is the self-propagating molecule of life, then love is the expanding universal message of the spirit. Simple in concept, but indomitably extensive, it forms a genetic fingerprint that identifies paternity or even culpability for crime. From only one cell, a strand of unwound DNA would stretch to the moon and contains the equivalent of three billion bytes in a computer program.

The double helix of DNA spirals cyclically (or seasonally) but directionally counterclockwise in defiance of time’s entropic and decaying forces. Life, with its increasing order and complexity, is a back eddy against the natural flow to disintegration and chaos. The Creator’s nudgings are acknowledged even in the scientific community as “creative explosions” that occurred “against all odds” in the evolutionary saga. God’s sovereign hand has prompted us toward mindfulness of Creator and is beneath us despite threat of extinction and genetic deterioration (Deut. 33:27). The consequences of mutations (errors in replication of the DNA molecule as a result of radiation or toxins) is usually disease and only very rarely an improvement. Life as we know it is precariously balanced on the knife edge between order and chaos, a grand compromise between structure and surprise. “Too much order makes change and adaptability impossible; too much chaos and there can be no continuity” (Kaufman, in Nash, Time 95, p. 46). With increasingly specific knowledge about our genes and how they manifest themselves in sickness and in health, the wonder of our innate complexities magnifies as we attempt to discern “God’s creative thoughts after him” (Isaac Newton).

Conception Evokes Consummate Wonder

Consider the sperm, an enveloped package of DNA that has a means to propel itself through the female reproductive tract. Its limited energy resources give it a decidedly finite time frame of several days to complete the task of navigation and penetration. The sheer number of sperm provided (five hundred million) demonstrates the magnitude of the undertaking and the competitive strain that ensures the best is rewarded with success.

If maleness has been associated sometimes pejoratively with that which is “set apart,” we need to reaffirm these qualities that are the father’s conception gift—metaphorically, as he provides a sheathing, an overcoat around the soul. This envelope comprises heroism, liveliness, impulse, intensity, incentive and a warrior’s imperative for self-sacrifice whether defending the higher ethic or protecting his loved ones. For the adopting father they become, through modeling, a birth gift in parallel to that of a genetic father.

In contrast, the ovum is the nutritive home initially for the woman’s genetic material, “frozen” in time from her own intrauterine life. Sensing the monthly hormonal prompting, it will ripen and be released. Having internal rhythms synchronized with a lunar calendar gives women a sense of constancy and connectedness to the natural world (see Menstruation). Once penetration by that first sperm has occurred, there is a miraculous change in the outer coating of the ovum. Instantaneously it changes its structure, preventing another sperm from entering even before the two nuclei have fused—a paradigm of betrothal and monogamy. Hence, the exact amount of genetic material necessary to make up a new human individual is present and preserved from the moment of conception as the two halves become a whole.

The parental genetic material has cleaved and unified, finding in its complementarity a wondrously unique potentiality: “male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).The image of God is a composite of male and female. The female attributes of God were downplayed out of necessity, considering that Judeo-Christianity arose against the backdrop of fertility goddess worship that curiously resembles New Age spirituality with its mother-earth worship. It is interesting to explore symbolically the spherical ovum, roughly the size of the dot of an i, a hospitable planet for the sperm’s delving, a refuge for the conceptus and the initial provider of nutrients to flesh out the designs held in the DNA. As the already fertilized ovum is propelled by hairlike cilia through the fallopian tube, it becomes a spherical clump of dividing and differentiating cells that plunges into the fertile soil of the womb. Putting down placental roots that absorb nutrients from maternal blood, the conceptus sends chemical messengers to lull the mother’s immune system to accept its intrusion and signal the presence of the pregnancy, now detectable by lab tests. Even after birth the nutritive and protective memory of the egg is visited in the domed hut or cathedral, the spherical breast (see Breast-feeding) and later the bowl.

God’s provision and comfort is like that of a mother who hears the cries of her children and responds to their needs. We are reassured in Isaiah 63:9 that “shekinah” (the Hebraic female “presence of God”) empathizes with us in our distress. “As a mother comforts her child, so will I [God] comfort you” (Isaiah 66:13), mirroring our first experiences of tangible love as persons.

The Soul of Personhood

Although the exact definition of when personhood begins eludes us, the scientific knowledge we have confirms our deepest conjectures that soul, spirit and body are integrated in some wondrous way from the moment of conception of a genetically distinct individual, even prior to implantation, even prior to acquiring full consciousness and rationality. T. W. Hilgers is correct when he asserts that “once conception has occurred an individual human life has come into existence and is a progressive, ongoing continuum until death ensues” (quoted in Hui, p. 6).

Soul—that dimension of personhood that makes us God-conscious and expressive—and body (or physicality) are so interdependent that one cannot think of a person having a body without a soul or a soul without a body. Contrary to Greek philosophy, which created a schism between spirit and matter, the Judeo-Christian view is that we are fully integrated as ensouled bodies or embodied souls. Understood in this way, conception is not merely the formation of physical shells for persons but is the cocreation with God of a person.

The element of development and “unending becoming” is a distinctive quality of human experience throughout life. When children begin to grapple with the notions of death and spirit, they find the concept of eternity as simple and understandable as the circles they draw in the sand—a universal symbol of infinity, no beginning and no end. Pointing to a wedding picture of their parents, children are very unsatisfied by a finite answer to the question of where they were when the picture was taken: “You weren’t in Mommy’s tummy yet.”

“But where was I?” they press on, satisfied only by the reassurance that “you were still with God” until conceived.

We are more than DNA living on in our offspring. What is this pearl that persists beyond flesh’s fragility, the élan, the part of us that smiles and sings, worships and loves? God has “set eternity in our hearts” (Eccles. 3:11, author’s trans.). In contemplating the infinite, there is the distinct possibility that spirit was in the form of sheer energy somewhere with God and after being transformed into matter and nudged into consciousness will some day (with all due respect to the theory of relativity) find itself again with the ultimate source of all energy, love and matter.

In contrast to these truths “revealed . . . to little children” and “hidden . . . from the wise and learned” (Matthew 11:25), consider technology’s fruition in controlling the origins of persons.

» See also: New Reproductive Technology

Resources and References

P. Teilhard de Chardin, The Appearance of Man (New York: Harper, 1965); Edwin C. Hui, Questions of Right and Wrong (Vancouver: Regent College, 1994); M. J. Nash, “How Did Life Begin?” Time, October 11, 1993, 42-48; M. J. Nash, “When Life Exploded,” Time, December 4, 1995, 38-46; L. Nilsson, A Child Is Born (New York: Dell, 1993); P. van der Horst, “Did Sarah Have a Seminal Emission?” Bible Review, February 1992, 35-39; H. W. Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1974).

—Carol Anderson