Frank Lake's Maternal-Fetal Distress Syndrome:
- An Analysis -

By Stephen M. Maret, Ph.D.
Professor of Psychology
Caldwell University


CHAPTER 5

Conclusions

B. Critique of the M-FDS as a Theological Paradigm
1. Lake's Methodology

b. Integration of Psychology and Theology

2. Lake's Theodicy

Perhaps the true confluence of Lake's attempted integration of the physiological and psychological with the theological can best be seen in his theodicy. His absolute belief in the reality of "harsh" fetal affliction in both the physical and psychological dimensions required an "exacting theological paradigm of reconciliation and reparation" and "a corresponding deepening of theodicy to cover it."272 This "requirement", according to Lake, is necessitated by the "innocence" of the fetus which is called to endure horrendous suffering although not culpable in any way whatsoever.
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272Lake, "Studies in Constricted Confusion." 71.


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Lake's theodicy is within the overall line273 of historical and theological formulations such as Augustine,274 Luther,275 P.T. Forsyth,276 Kosuke Koyama,277 Kazoh Kitamori,278 Jurgen Moltmann,279 and Alvin Plantinga.280 while differences and distinctions can certainly be found among these theological thinkers, the general strain of thought relates any "justification" of God for the pain and evil of creation directly to the cross. It is the cross and the concomitant280 pain of God" which answers and "resolves our human pain.281 The uniqueness of Lake's paradigm of theodicy is its application to the exigencies of pre-natal suffering, and as such, represents an extension of theological reflection into an arena of human existence previously ignored. But what of the dimension of the M-FDS which seeks to address fetal suffering theologically? It is important to note that underlying Lake's theodicy is the affirmation of God's attribute as Creator and thus, ultimate responsibility for His creation. Lake writes:

Nothing . . . of the horrors of the foetal-placental cosmos will have come as a surprise to God. Not did he wait till we found out about it before he did something to remedy it, indeed all that needed to be done. He accepted responsibility for setting up this sort of human creation, with all its possibilities of foetal contentment, satisfaction and joy, . . . and the possibility of the total absence of . . . care, plunging the foetus into . . . hell.282

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273John Hick distinguishes between two general types of theodicy. The first type, (and the one that both he and Schleiermacher are proponents of) he terms the "lrenaean" view. in essence, the lraenaean view denies the "Fall" as the source of original sin. The second type is the "Augustinian", which embraces the "Fall" as the source of original sin. (John Hick, Evil and the God of Love London: Macmillan, 1966] and John Hick, "An Irenaean Theodicy," in Encountering Evil, ed. Stephen T. Davis [Atlanta: John Knox, 1981)]

274"An lrenaean Theodicy," in Encountering Evil, ed Stephen T. Davis [Atlanta: John Knox, 1981]).

274Augustine, Expositions on the Rook of Psams, vol, 6.

275Luther, "The Heidelberg Disputation."

276Forsyth, "The Taste of Death and the Life of Grace," in God the Holy Father

277Kosuke Koyama, No Handle on the Cross An Asian Meditation on the Cruciified Mind (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1977); Kosuke Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theolooy (Maryknoll. New York: Orbis Books 1974).

278Kazoh Kitamori, Theology of the Pain of God (Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1958). In the "Preface to the Third Edition", Kitamori writes that Emil Brunner, in Japan for a visit, said to him that "Your theology is opening up a new line" (11). Brunner's visit to Japan which Kitamori refers to was preceded by a visit to India, the very visit that Lake counted so crucial in his own development of an anthropology based upon the Gospel of John.

279Moltmann, The Cruciified God The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology.

280Alvin Plantinga, God Freedom and Evil (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1974).

281Kitamori, Theology and the Pain of God, 20.

282Lake, "Mutual Caring," 79.


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Redemption is not a divine reaction or response to an unplanned deterioration of creation, to the "possibility of fetal hell", rather it precedes creation, and is part of the plan.283 We need not shrink back from attributing responsibility to God, because God has taken responsibility and answered" the question before it is even asked:

What indications do we have of any sensitive planning on God's part as Creator? What evidence is there that he had already taken steps to be able to meet those unfortunate victms, whom his Creation would sadistically crush, and not be totally ashamed of himself? Because we must admit he did let it go on, with its inevitable monstrous entail of heart-broken distress to the tiniest of his human creatures, embryos and foetuses, before they are twelve weeks on from their conception. The answer centres in that mysterious yet utterly firm assertion, that God's Son, the sharer of his eternal being and his agent in creation, is also the Lamb of God, slain before the foundation of the world. Redemption is therefore the prior and larger reality, containing creation.284

But this "answer" remains unknown to those who suffer the "catastrophic trespass"285 of profound primal pain. They must deny the truth, "murder the truth" and repress the reality of what has really occurred. And yet, the consequences of this "primal catastrophe" remain:

A state of infinite, unending, distress exists and is maintained in the primal consciousness of all those who are victims of the Matemal-Foetal Distress Syndrome. They can be no means account for it or understand its origins. Yet it is present in them as the first and total experience of their cosmos, keep up in every moment of each day, month, year, for a life-time.286

This "infinite, unending distress manifests itself in self-blame, self-accusation, and self-hate. Mother cannot be blamed; God cannot be blamed, therefore, the "badness" must be attributed to an inherent worthlessness within.287 Lake writes:

The failure of any human being to answer the urgent appeal for a presence gives rise to a deep inner horror of a "deus absconditus", a "god" who is dead, perhaps killed. The reproach re-echoes in the mind and still reverberates as a pervasive heart break. A basic question of theodicy is avoided only by the infant's attributing badness of the unbearable situation to some inexplicable but indelible badness in its own very being. This is the usual outcome. It is unthinkable that "the gods" are bad. Far better take the blame and leave their righteousness intact.288

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283"lt is not so that creation came first and went wrong, requiring redemption as an internal emergency measure." (ibid.)

284ibid.

285Lake, "Theology and Personality," 67.

286Lake, "Mutual Caring," 80.

287ibid.

288Lake, "The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain," 224-225.


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The concomitant sense of despair because this "badness" is perceived to be indelible provokes an unending, yet somehow deserved, rejection by "the world", including people and God:

This victim of the invasion of the adult world's evil, has been indelibly taught, by it's prenatal distress to distrust the world. It perpetuates that perception of the world and projects consistently the same expectation of painful meaning. It concludes, at the end of the first lesson, that as the world was hostile in its life and well-being at the beginning, so it is now, and ever shall be, world without end.289

It is to this very sufferer that God through Christ "answers" by his suffering and death on the cross. And it is here where Lake's emphasis of "innocent sufferer" is so emphasized. Lake writes that for the fetus who "suffers under the weight of the mother's affliction, in the world where she is dependent on the father's care, but where the sins of the fathers descend upon the children, generation feeding affliction into the next below it, until it is funnelled into the foetus in a catastrophic trespass",290 to speak of fetal culpability is absurd. In response to this "torture of the innocents",291 Lake states provocatively "We don't need redemption by Jesus Christ, [because] there's no sin problem here."292 Elsewhere he writes:

The old paradigm of the work of Christ for men was almost entirely centred on the problem of culpable sin. It had no word to speak clearly to those, who, while innocent victims, were the victims of parental and social evil.293

What Lake is addressing is what he sees as the historical over-emphasis upon the work of Christ on the Cross related to the problem of culpable sin to the detriment of the "other" great work of Christ on the Cross: his identification with sufferers.
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288Lake, "Theology and Personality," 67.

290Lake, "Theology and Personality," 67.

291ibid.

292Lake, "Perinatal Events and Origins of Religious Symbols. of Symptoms and Character Problems, The Possibility of Reliving Birth and its Effects," 26.

293Lake, "Report from the Research Department #2" 3.


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It is the proclamation of this neglected work of identification and "justification" which, according to Lake, must precede the proclamation of the atoning work for the "innocent sufferers" of the M-FDS:

Before we come to the proclamation of the identification with Christ with culpable sinners, to bring them to forgiveness and a new right relatedness to God as his children, we must, for all the afflicted, speak first of Christ's identification with the innocent who are submerged in this affliction through no fault of their own.294
Lake's emphasis upon this "innocent suffering" comes perilously close to denying the doctrine of original sin as interpreted in the Pauline,295 Augustinian, Reformation296 and Reformed tradition.297 In his emphasis upon the innocence of the fetus in relation to fetal suffering, Lake at times implies a complete lack of sin, including original sin. This is most clearly illustrated in "Mutual Caring." In a section titled "what would be the consequences of Jesus' 'Freedom from Sin'?" Lake cites Sebastian Moore's The Fire and the Rose are One who finds three such consequences. The first298 follows:
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294ibid.

295"Therefore, just as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned -- for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.

But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Agaln, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgement followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:12-19)

296For instance, Calvin interprets Adam and Eve's sin as subsequently "infecting" the whole human race. This "depravity" is inherited: "All of us," calvin wrote, "who have descended from impure seed, are born infected with the contagion of sin. In fact, before we saw the light of this life we were soiled and spotted in god's sight." (John Calvin, Institutes vol. 1, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. and indexed F.L. Battles [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960, xv:8).

297Berkhof relates that after Adam sinned as a result of "a perfectly voluntary act" that the matter did not end there: "That sin carried permanent pollution with it, and a pollution which, because of the solidarity of the human race, would affect not only Adam but all his descendants as well. As a result of the fall the father of the race could only pass on a depraved human nature to his offspring. From that unholy source sin flows on as a an impure stream to all generations of men, polluting everyone and everything with which it comes in contact." (L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1939], 221).

298Lake relates the second and third as well: "Second, this liberated self would be open, in an inconceivably fuller way, to other selves as persons. Free of self-worth at its very roots, he would contract no guilty or snarled-up relationships. Nobody would feel rejected, or pigeon-holed, or stereotyped: for these are all forms of guilty-projection, expressing our basic uneasiness with each other.

Third, this liberated self . . . would come to see in his new life no other meaning than the inauguration of this new. sin-free, guilt-free fellowship of men and women. (Lake, "Mutual caring' 15, quoting Sebastian Moore, The Fire and the Rose are One).



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This freedom is present at the deepest level, where a person confronts ultimate mystery. there would be a total, unimpeded intimacy with God. There would be no guilt in the relationship, no holding back and rendering the other fearsome and threatening. The self would flourish in its ultimate companionship with the infinite in a total, grateful and joyful acceptance of one's beIng from the mystery [emphasis Lake's], on which in consequence one casts no "shadow". There is a consciousness of oneself as beloved of the mystery and of the mystery as unshadowed love and beauty [emphasis Lake's]. The sense of "I am not alone" would be overpowering. there would be an almost inconceivable flourishing of the human person.299

Lake comments upon this consequence of being "sin-free", presumably also original sin-free, in the following manner:

Foetal life at twelve weeks is only minimally aware of persons beyond the mother, . . . But all that Moore sets out in his first section [quoted above] I have heard many times, when the maternal-foetal tenderness flow has been moving exceedingly well.300

If by this Lake is implying that the blastocystic phase or any other phase of fetal life is one of "consciousness of oneself as beloved of the mystery" because of its sin-free quality, then he has denied the traditional doctrine of original sin. Lake does use language similar to that above301 over and over again to refer to the blastocystic stage, which, he says, is often
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299ibid., 14-15.

300ibid., 15.

301"For so long as it is normal and necessary for the blastocyst to remain free-floating and unattached, throughout that period of four days or so, it is perfectly content to be what it is then meant to be, a perfect sphere, needing no attachment or duality. It is quite content, even blissful, at being perfectly -- so it seems -­ self-subsistant. It encompasses male and female. It is apparently androgynous. It feels outside time and is therefore in no hurry about anything. It is in no hassle with anybody about right or wrong. In fact this stage of perfect sphericality is experienced as a state of monistic blessedness. It appears, on thorough phenomenological analysis, to be the prototype of all natural mystical experiences of oneness, of groundedness in being itself, in a state of dissolving into God, in the enjoyment of being, awareness and bliss. Some . . . have recognized this as that infinitely desirable experience of 'God' in the ground of being." (Lake, With Respect, 65).

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experienced as "a unitive and quite transcendent bliss"302 or "a glorious ground for mystical experience of unattached 'being, awareness and joy."'303

However, elsewhere Lake seems to affirm, at least tentatively, that the "innocence" of the fetal sufferer is not absolute, but relative. He states that the earlier one goes back for the "sources of trouble", the more "the responsibility for introducing evil must fall, not on the very young themselves, but on the older, adult members of the species."304 He continues:

Responsibility and culpability, to which the gospel as at present preached addresses itself, so that the conviction of sin may take hold, are minimal in these relatively innocent, because helpless, sufferers.305
Lake seems to infer that "the biblical doctrine of the solidarity of the race and the family" is understood as the effects and consequences of the sin of the previous generations which are experienced by the fetal sufferer. In the same article cited above, Lake writes:

The sins of the fathers and the mothers do descend upon innocent children. This can affect them for life. . . . All this is to say that some suffering in later life takes its origin, not in the culpable sin of the sufferer, but from his involvement, while in a state of total dependency, in the sin of others.306

Because Lake nowhere explicitly denies the doctrine of original sin, it is difficult to determine with certainly that he does. Certainly he comes close. Numerous times in his writings he speaks of "innocent" suffering, and speaks of it in relation to and as an analogy with the "innocent" suffering of Christ on the Cross. Quoting Simone Weil and then commenting, Lake writes:

If the tree of life, and not simply the divine seed, is already formed in a man's soul at the time when extreme affliction strikes him, then he is nailed to the same cross as Christ.
[I would take the "divine seed" to be the experience of blastocystic bliss and the "tree of life" to be the establishment of the umbilical circulation. It is certainly true that affliction experienced at this stage, in total innocence, partakes of the suffering of the Lamb of God].307

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302Lake, Tight Corners in Pastorl Counselling, 15.

303Lake, 'The Internal Consistency of the Maternal-Foetal Distress Syndrome," 3.

304Lake, "The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain," 228.

305ibid., 228-229.

306ibid., 231.

307Lake, Tight Corners in Pastoral Counselling, 29-30.


284

What Lake is referring to is his "theology of correlation" by which the experience of the "innocent" prenatally afflicted is juxtaposed with the innocent suffering of Christ on the Cross. Lake sees a symmetry and congruity that is "marvelous':

The more we put the metaphors of salvation and the images of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ under the microscope . . . , requiring that it should speak with manifest relevance, gripping applicability and transforming power, at this hitherto unimagined depth bf pre-verbal, pre-propositional panic, the more we discover the Father's marvelous provision and the perfect correlation of the Son's costly and total obedience.308

It is not only the "innocence" that corresponds, but the very experiences of the afflicted fetus and the afflicted Savior are also similar. There is the rejection of the Parent, the aloneness of the suffering, "the sweat of blood at Gethsemane . . .,the spitting and the flogging, the crown of thorns that disfigures his face with caked blood, the cross-beam that crushed his shoulders till he fell under the weight, in the nails that were hammered through the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, and the spear that pierced his side. All these have profound and vivid relevance to those who are reliving foetal distress at the mother's distress."309

But more than the surface similarities, what is so profound about the cross for Lake is not only the fact the sinners are saved, but that sufferers are identified with in the total and absolute sense. Lake cites Isaiah 63,310 where the "object of the crushing affliction and the direction of the wrath seem, at times to be interchangeable with the subject." God pours out his wrath upon God. God forsakes God. God has "judged" God.311
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308Lake, "Theology and Personality. 67.

309ibid.

310Lake writes regarding this passage: "The sixty-third chapter of lsaiah's prophecy announces the coming Deliverer, who says of himself 'It is I, announcing vindication. mighty to save'. (Is. 63:1) He became their Savior. In all their affliction he was afflicted and he, by his presence, saved them.' (63:9) The intervening verses, delineating how he intervened, are about the wine-press of the wrath of God, about garments spattered with life-blood. The task of treading out the grapes has to be done. . . . The deliverer crushes the oppressors and is himself crushed." (Lake, "Studies in Constricted Confusion," T3).

311Lake writes that "the essential point to make, in respect of clinical pastoral counseling of the afflicted victims of this constricted and confused creation, Is that judgement has begun. Judgement has begun in the very household of God." (ibid.)


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This "theology of correlation", as one critic has stated, while "very poetic", never really goes beyond analogy.312 Certainly there is much in the suffering of Christ, both in his life and death, to commend itself analogically to human suffering.313 But to build into the very definition of theodicy a necessary identification of God with specifically fetal sufferers is to limit theodicy. Lake's tunnel-vision regarding first trimester fetal suffering and his consequent emphasis upon fetal affliction, has the result of ignoring or dismissing the pain and suffering of the remainder of life as secondary and almost incidental.

According to Lake, the innocent suffering of the fetus seems to create a need for God to justify himself. Lake affirms in "Mutual Caring" that while "God is not directly the victimizer" for human suffering, particularly the innocent affliction of the first-trimester fetus, he is, nevertheless responsible. Referring to this distinction, Lake writes:

In one sense we can take God "off the hook". But in another sense, . . . he, not sins of the fathers for generations impinging on a pregnant mother, would be held to blame. . . . The Cross is God's acceptance of the whole attribution of blame for the searing effects of maternal distress on foetal persons which leads to all the life-long manifestations of the afflicted person.314

Although Lake makes this distinction between God as victimizer and God as responsible, it is for all practical purposes meaningless in the context of some of Lake's statements. Lake seems to obligate God to send Christ to the Cross if He is not to be utterly ashamed of himself. He cites Christ's question on the road to Emmaus: "O fools and slow of heart, ought [Lake's emphasis] not Christ to have suffered these things, and entered into his glory?" Lake answers: "Yes; he ought."315 This, to Lake, speaks of the "oughtness", indeed, the requirement of God to justify himself for his Creation.

Lake uses some very strong language to convey this justification of God. Two examples follow:
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312J.N. Isbister, "Response to 'The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain," Theological Renewal 71 (Oct/Nov 1977): 16.

313Hebrews 2:14-18.

314Lake, "Mutual Caring," 83-84.

315Lake, "The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain", 236. The NIV states "Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter into glory?" (Luke 24:26).


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Christ's passion and death is God the Father's apology [emphasis mine] to them for the appalling evils they have suffered. God was and is in Christ, reconciling them, by his loving presence alongside them in equivalent innocence and marvelously appropriate suffering, matching the evil world in which their innocence was set.316
If the Cross of Christ says anything to the afflicted, who suffered first, and fatally for their trust, in the first trimester of life in the womb, about the forgiveness of their sins it is that he Is God, begging their forgiveness [emphasis Lake's] for the hurts caused by the sins of the fathers, funnelled into them by the distress of the mothers.317
This type of imagery transforms the Cross from an event illustrative of God's love, grace and mercy into an event where God becomes "tolerable."318 The Cross becomes primarily a justification of God and only secondarily a justification of humankind.

Thus, Lake over-emphasizes what he sees as the neglected work of the Cross to the detriment of what he sees as the previously over-emphasized work of the cross. while he never denies the salvific, atoning, justifying work of Christ on the Cross, the primary emphasis for him is the work of identification in which God is "now vindicated, acquitted, exonerated and justified"319

This theme of Christ as the innocent, just man, as the Lamb taken from the flock to have the sins of others laid on his head, sharing the lot of all the innocent, this is the deepest and earliest level of meaning in the suffering of the Son of God.320

It is, for Lake, the "deepest and earliest" work of the Cross because, for the afflicted, it precedes the "other work" of the Cross:

Where this aspect of Chrisrs mediatorial work is allowed to take place, in establishing justice of a new and costly kind by his presence alongside the sufferer, indeed penetrating every tortured cell of the sufferer with the once and for all time agonized cells of his own divine-human body, the work of theodicy is over. Then the more familiar work of justIfying grace takes over. . . . All along he has also been a sinner [emphasis Lake's]. He is now free to turn and acknowledge this sinfulness, indeed he is liberated in order to turn from confrontation of the other to self-confrontation.321

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316Lake, "Theology and Personality" 67.

317Lake, Tight Corners in Pastoral Counselling, 175.

318"The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain," 235.

319Lake, "Studies in Constricted Confusion," T4.

320Lake, Tight Corners In Pastoral Counselling 175.

321Lake, "The Work of Christ in the Healing of Primal Pain," 238.


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Lake summarizes his theodicy:321

God sent forth his Son, as the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, in order that the final authority should be seen to be sensitive to the criticism that it is a victimizing world into which historical man and his offspring are introduced at conception. It is God himself who, in setting forth His Son to be the world's Redeemer, Restorer, Reconciler and Justifier, justifies. . . . The cry of pain torn from the heart of the afflicted. God himself restates the justice of the anguished complaint of the Psalmist, 'My God, why have you forsaken me; why are you so far from helping me?' That very complaint becomes Christ's own, within the household of God.322

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322Lake, "Studies in Constructed Confusion" T3.


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