Sacred or Secular: The Pro-Life Case for Grounding Human Value in the Image of God

What makes a human being valuable?

It is the question beneath every argument about abortion-and one both sides too often rush past. In Sacred or Secular, Jacob Vazquez slows down to ask it directly, moving past surface-level talking points to the philosophical heart of the debate: not merely when human life begins, but why a human life should be counted as valuable at all.

With scientific, philosophical, and theological rigor, Vazquez weighs the leading answers to that question-pro-choice, secular pro-life, and Christian accounts of personhood-presenting each in its strongest form before testing what it can actually bear. He argues that our deepest convictions about human dignity strain under a purely naturalistic worldview, and that intrinsic human worth finds its firmest foundation in the Imago Dei: the truth that every person bears the image of God.

Sacred or Secular is written for the thoughtful reader on either side of the question-the Christian seeking a deeper grounding for the pro-life conviction, the student of ethics tracing the argument to its roots, and the skeptic willing to follow the logic wherever it leads. With a foreword by J.P. Moreland, it makes its case with care for every person these questions touch, born and unborn.

"Jacob Vazquez has done something rare: he has connected the abortion debate to the deeper philosophical questions that actually determine how we view human persons in the first place... It is an important contribution to one of the most significant moral debates of our time." -Dr. Timothy A. Stratton, President, FreeThinking Ministries

"Whether you are a pro-choice or pro-life advocate, you will find Jacob Vazquez's excellent book thought-provoking and worthwhile reading. He effectively dismantles pro-choice arguments and provides powerful arguments supporting a pro-life position..." -Dr. Richard Weikart, Emeritus professor of history, California State University, Stanislaus, and author of The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life