As Jesus claims repeatedly to be the way to salvation in John’s Gospel, he will also back up his right to make that claim, especially when the religious leaders question his authority, by appealing to his eternal origin from the Father. It is only because he is begotten by the Father from all eternity that he can then claim to be sent by the Father to become incarnate in history. His eternal relation to the Father constitutes his redemptive mission to the world, but not vice versa.

I must admit, we evangelicals have developed an allergy to things eternal, especially when it comes to our doctrine of the Trinity. To be brutally honest, we are prone to conflation. We approach the Bible assuming history is its only focus. Ironically, this approach is a failure to be biblical enough. Yes, Scripture’s storyline does take a narrative form, focused as it is on salvation history. But the biblical authors never stop there, nor is narrative an end in and of itself. Never do they shove the infinite, incomprehensible Trinity into our tiny box of history, limiting who God is to what God does, prioritizing function over being. Either in their presuppositions (consider the Psalms) or in their theological conclusions (purview Paul’s letters), they intend the reader to read theologically. More to the point, the biblical authors are not so focused on the historical facts of the life of Christ that they are unconcerned with his eternal, trinitarian origin prior to the incarnation. They are not so earthly minded that they are of no heavenly good.
We should not be either.
Consider the opening of John’s Gospel, for example. As I share in Simply Trinity: The Unmanipulated Father, Son, and Spirit (Baker, 2021), I often hear pastors advising churchgoers to give the Gospel of John to someone they are trying to evangelize. That’s for good reason, too: John’s Gospel lays out the gospel with lucid conviction, bringing the unbeliever face-to-face with the crucified and risen Christ and the many gifts he gives to all recipients of his grace. That’s why we love texts like John 3:16; we desire to tell the world about God’s Son so that they might receive eternal life.
But in our rush to talk about eternal life, we sometimes skip to the second half of John 3:16 and forget to talk about the eternal Son. As the first half of John 3:16 says, God “gave his only begotten Son” (KJV). Let those words marinate: God . . . gave . . . his . . . only begotten . . . Son. When we rush to the benefits the Son brings and skip over the identity the Son has in eternity, we neglect not only the first half of John 3:16 but the first two chapters of John’s Gospel—chapters, need I remind you, that precede John 3.
God in Himself
Did you know, for instance, that John begins his Gospel not with the eternal life we receive but with the life the triune God enjoyed in eternity? Go back to the opening of John 1 and what do you read? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God” (1:1–2). Before we get to the good news about Jesus and the eternal life he brings, let’s take a step back and consider, as John does, where this Jesus originates from in the first place. This will be hard, but let’s put off what God has done in creation and focus first on who God is apart from creation. Why would we do that? Here’s why: unless you understand who God is apart from you, you will never understand the importance of what God has done for you, at least not in full. I realize how counterintuitive that sounds, holding off on the history of redemption—your history—to talk about things eternal. Abstract and esoteric perhaps. But John is convinced that in doing so you will have a better grasp of who this Word is and why he became flesh and dwelt among us. Furthermore, a long line of church fathers also believe that John’s approach avoids a dirty swamp of heresies, many of which threaten to conflate who God is in and of himself (ad intra) with how God’s acts externally (ad extra) toward his creation.
Read More

The eugenics movement, as Chesterton predicted, became a wretched story of the negation of democratic ideals to serve a utopian vision. “Hence the tyranny has taken but a single stride to reach the secret and sacred places of personal freedom,” he wrote, “where no sane man ever dreamed of seeing it.” Wittingly or not, the eugenic dream unleashed a cataract of deeply rooted fears and hatreds — sanctified this time by a secular priesthood, the scientific community.

In the 1920s, when he was still an agnostic, C. S. Lewis noted in his diary his latest reading: “Began G. K. Chesterton’s Eugenics and Other Evils.”
A controversial English Catholic writer, Chesterton published his book in 1922, when the popularity of eugenics was at flood tide. Respectable opinion on both sides of the Atlantic embraced the concept: a scientific approach to selective breeding to reduce, and eventually eliminate, the category of people considered mentally and morally deficient. From U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes to Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, eugenics policies — including involuntary sterilization — were hailed as a “progressive” and “compassionate” solution to mounting social problems.
A hundred years ago, Chesterton discerned something altogether different: “terrorism by tenth-rate professors.” For a time, he stood nearly alone in his prophetic assault on the eugenics movement and the pseudo-scientific theory by which it was defended.
“People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late,” Chesterton warned. “I know that it numbers many disciples whose intentions are entirely innocent and humane; and who would be sincerely astonished at my describing it as I do. But that is only because evil always wins through the strength of its dupes.”
Chesterton declared his aim openly, without qualification or compromise: The ideology of eugenics must be destroyed if human freedom is to be preserved. The eugenic idea, he wrote, “is a thing no more to be bargained about than poisoning.” In the end, it would require the discoveries at the death camps at Auschwitz and Dachau for most of the world to finally reject the horrific logic of eugenics. Yet Chesterton was one of the first to see it coming: when the machinery of the state would invoke the authority of science to deprive individuals — both the “unfit” and the unborn — of their fundamental human rights.
It is hard to overstate the degree to which eugenics captured the imagination of the medical and scientific communities in the early 20th century. Anthropologist Francis Galton, who coined the term — from the Greek for “good birth” — argued that scientific techniques for breeding healthier animals should be applied to human beings. Those considered to be “degenerates,” “imbeciles,” or “feebleminded” would be targeted. Anticipating public opposition, Galton told scientific gatherings that eugenics “must be introduced into the national conscience like a new religion.” Premier scientific organizations, such as the American Museum of Natural History, and institutions such as Harvard and Princeton, preached the eugenics gospel: They held conferences, published papers, provided research funding, and advocated for sterilization laws.
To many thinkers in the West, the catastrophe of the First World War, in addition to the problems of poverty, crime, and social breakdown, suggested a sickness in the racial stock. Book titles help tell the story: Social Decay and Degeneration; The Need for Eugenic Reform; Racial Decay; Sterilization of the Unfit; and The Twilight of the White Races. The American Eugenics Society, founded in 1922 — the same year Chesterton published Eugenics and Other Evils — was supported by Nobel Prize–winning scientists whose stated objective was to sterilize a tenth of the U.S. population.
Read More
Related Posts:

Our culture calls many things “hate speech”, but Scripture clearly defines it as any speech which denigrates people’s nature as God’s image-bearers and any speech—or silence—that promotes sinful and destructive behavior.  In order to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must pray for them, acknowledge their personhood, and lovingly seek their good by confronting sin when necessary.  The world will call us hateful for this, but this is what Scripture calls love—and that’s all that matters.

You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
-Leviticus 19:17-18, ESV

In our day many apply the term “hate speech” quite liberally.  The Left often uses it for any view that makes them feel uncomfortable.  Balking at this, the Right often responds by denying the entire concept of “hate speech”.  But Scripture must define our terms, so we cannot call everything “hate speech” like the Left, but we also cannot deny its existence like the Right.  This post will examine how Scripture defines hate speech.
Denigrating God’s Image
While we may debate what constitutes hate speech, it is clear from Scripture that hateful speech is sinful—and that God takes it very seriously.  The tongue is a restless evil full of deadly poison (James 3:8), so we are foolish to underestimate its destructive power: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit” (Proverbs 18:21).  We will be either justified or condemned by our words (Matthew 12:37).  Thus, Scripture is clear how we must speak: “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear….Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving” (Ephesians 4:29, 5:4) and “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Colossians 4:6).  Therefore, we are sinning whenever our words are corrupting or foolish; not helpful for building others up, gracious, beneficial, or fitting to the occasion.  But sinful speech is not necessarily hateful speech.  Jesus links speech to hate in the Sermon on the Mount:

You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
-Matthew 5:21-22, ESV

Here, “you fool” was a serious insult that went beyond mere foolishness to denote worthlessness.[1]  While Scripture sometimes calls people worthless, we dare not use such language since we do not know the eternal state of people’s souls.  Such language denigrates people by referring to them as something lower than people made in God’s image.  It is the most common manifestation of the anger of man that does not produce the righteousness of God (James 1:20): “Terms of abuse are not a heightened form of anger; they are its most obvious and common expression”.[2]  That is why Jesus equates such speech with murder:

Jesus establishes a new divine law when He…proclaims in threefold repetition that the term of abuse which is regarded as harmless though spoken in ill-humour is an offence worthy of death….This paradox of unparalleled sharpness is designed to bring home to the hearers the terrible seriousness of sins of the tongue in God’s eyes and hence to save them from having on their consciences the everyday ill feelings towards their brothers which might appear innocuous but in fact poison relationships.
-Joachim Jeremias, “Ῥακά,” ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans: 1964: 975–976.

Therefore, hate speech according to Scripture would be any speech that does not recognize another person as a person created in the image of God.  Obviously, things like racial slurs fit into that category, but so do misogynistic or misandristic terms that view women and men respectively as inferior. Since our culture despises marriage, some culturally acceptable terms for spouses would be hate speech according to Scripture, such as a husband referring to his wife as his “ball and chain”.  Our culture’s disdain for children also means that several terms for them are actually hate speech, like “rug rats”.  For the same reason, I refrain from saying “unborn” or “preborn” in favor of “children in the womb” to avoid diminishing their humanity.
Biblically, hate speech also includes viewing a person’s identity as part of a certain demographic or lifestyle as more important than his or her personhood.  The primary and most important identity of any person is as a person—a man or woman made in the image of God.  Second is identity in relation to God.  We are all sinners by nature and either separated from God because of our sin or reconciled to God by being in union with Jesus Christ through faith.  Then—and only then—come other factors, starting with our unchangeable identity as male or female.  We err when we allow any other factor of our identity to supersede this hierarchy.  Any factor can supplant this identity in our minds, but this erroneous prioritization is especially prevalent in the alphabet abomination where sexual orientation is the locus of identity.  They are not gays, lesbians, homosexuals, or anything else but people who practice homosexuality (1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:10).  While our sin nature is an important part of our identity, we must not make our particular sins to be so central to our identity that they supplant our humanity or relationship with God.  All of these are hate speech by the biblical definition.
It is equally important to note what is not hate speech according to Scripture.  While any term that emphasizes demographics or particular sin over personhood and relationship with God is hate speech, that does not mean that all strong or less-than-complimentary language is hate speech.  Scripture is full of sharp word that our culture would consider hateful.  Proverbs and Ecclesiastes frequently refer to people as fools, and God Himself often mocks the folly of sinful people.  For example, we have previously seen how God calls the complacent women of Samaria “cows” (Amos 4:1).   Jesus continues this practice by calling the religious leaders blind guides, blind fools, and sons of vipers (Matthew 23).
Read More
Related Posts: