The Great Wave Off Kanagawa (1831), Katsushika Hokusai, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York

Featured in Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, this woodblock print captures the peril of three fishing boats tossed by a rogue wave in Sagami Bay, twenty-five miles southwest of Tokyo. In the year this painting appeared, 1831, another great outdoor painter, John James Audubon, traveled from England to New York to begin his work on Birds in America; Meanwhile, over in Europe, the Impressionist artists, Monet and Renoir were still children, but they would one day be influenced by Hokusai’s work.
There is much beauty in nature, but aestheticians have identified an experience that goes beyond savoring a sunset, delighting in a blanketing snowfall, or taking in the fall colors of New England. They speak of “the sublime,” that which is intimidatingly splendid. It’s kin to a word occurring five times Psalm 24:7-10—‘glory,’ as in “the King of glory.” The Hebrew word for ‘glory’ is kabod, a cognate of kebed (“heavy”); it connotes substance and heft, the sort of awesome presence that terrified Isaiah in his chapter six. Painfully aware of his deplorable weakness, the prophet feared being “crushed” by the sovereign holiness of God.
The eighteenth-century British philosopher and statesman Edmund Burke, in speaking of the sublime, identified it as “astonishment,” that is the “state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror. In this case the mind is so entirely filled with its object, that it cannot entertain any other.” And, for illustration, he pointed to the ocean, which can be “an object of no small terror.” [1]
In his Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant supplied other examples of the sublime:

Bold, overhanging, and, as it were, threatening rocks, thunderclouds piled up the vault of heaven, borne along with flashes and peals, volcanoes in all their violence of destruction, hurricanes leaving desolation in their track, the boundless ocean rising with rebellious force, the high waterfall of some mighty river, and the like, make our power of resistance of trifling moment in comparison with their might.[2]

And so we’re pointed to the oceans, whose water covers around seventy per cent of the earth and whose dynamics are quite sublime, as Hokusai knew full well.
This painting hails from the Far East, in contrast with the other three, which are Western. I include it to underscore the gospel implications for lands unknown to (even unsuspected by) the Israelites in David’s day. Though Psalm 24 is Hebrew scripture delivered to God’s chosen people, its reach circles the globe. As Augustine observed of Psalm 24:1-2, “This is true, for the Lord, now glorified, is preached to all nations to bring them to faith, and the whole world thus becomes his church.” [3]
The Domes of the Yosemite (1867), Albert Bierstadt, The Athenaeum, St. Johnsbury, Vermont

Psalm 24:1-2 – 1The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. 2 For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.
Bierstadt, an eighteenth-century German-American painter was remarkable for his glorious landscapes, as were other Americans of the Hudson River School—Frederick Church, Asher Durand, George Inness, Thomas Cole, Thomas Moran, and Thomas Cole.  Whether working in the Hudson Valley, the Sierra Nevadas, Yellowstone, or the Andes, these men astonished their viewers with breathtaking portrayals of God’s handiwork. Bierstadt introduced many to the Rockies, helped spur the conservation movement, and has been featured on two of America’s commemorative stamps.
This painting portrays California’s Yosemite Valley, granted protection under Abraham Lincoln in 1864 and designated a National Park in 1890. Though romanticized, Bierstadt’s rendering is nonetheless indicative of the grandeur of this site, a reality well chronicled in a series of black and white photographs by Ansel Adams, whose work is featured in a Yosemite Village gallery.
Psalm 24:2 encompasses the granite domes that define the valley, for it says the Lord founded the earth “on the seas and established it on the waters.” Well, certainly, Genesis 1 says that the waters were gathered so that the dry land would appear on the third day of creation, but young-earth creationists point beyond this to Psalm 104, where we read, in verses 5-8:

Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be removed for ever.Thou coveredst it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains. At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away. They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them. Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth.

They read Noah’s Flood into this passage, for “turn not again [ever] to cover the earth” would not make sense if the psalmist were speaking only of the initial emergence of land. It would ignore the subsequent, universal immersion above the tallest mountains recounted in Genesis 7.
Beware of (and thank God for) Wadi Rum.
Worldview-wise, there are two big ways of seeing our surroundings. One is naturalistic/materialistic, regarding flora and fauna, hill and dale, you and me, as the product of chemical and physical laws at work on some sort of primordial stuff. On this model, it would take eons of dumb matter talking to itself (“dialectical materialism”), through hit or miss, to generate Handel’s Messiah. It’s hard to believe that folks would embrace such “seeing,” given its Rube Goldberg absurdity, but they soldier on, determined to keep God’s hands off the universe.
The other view regards the universe and all within as the handiwork of a multi-omni creator. Some have proffered various versions of the Anthropic Argument for God’s Existence, working from the wonderful correspondence of man’s needs to the Lord’s earthly provision, the way that the environment is marvelously attuned to our makeup, e.g., the right mix of the gases we breathe; the distance to the sun and tilt of the earth, giving us tolerable seasons. Of course, the Darwinists counter that it fits us since we fit it; if we didn’t, we’d be extinct. They venture a deflating analogy, that of the woman who marveled that God had caused great rivers—the Thames, Tiber, Seine, and Danube—to flow through the capitals of Europe.
This snappy dismissal of the wondrous correspondence between Creation and her creatures’ blessings does not bear up to scrutiny, and the aesthetic provisions of nature are particularly troublesome for the materialist. (Indeed, the problem cropped up early on, when eighteenth-century art critic John Ruskin pressed Charles Darwin to explain the glories of a peacock’s deployed fan.) Darwinian philosopher Denis Dutton gave it his best shot in The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution, when he played off a worldwide affinity for “blue landscapes” (with a stream winding its way through a verdant, populated valley).[4] He reasoned that this was the product of natural selection, in that creatures who migrated there more likely survived and procreated, and thus passed along their aesthetic wiring to progeny evolving through natural selection.
But this fails to explain our aesthetic appreciation for deadly settings, such as lightning storms, a cluster of icebergs, and desert regions, such as Wadi Rum in the south of Jordan, an extension of Israel’s Negev. In my experience, Wadi Rum is one of the most visually enchanting places on earth. Yet, the hot, red sands under a relentless sun can make even shoe-clad walking miserable, and the expanse of desolation, replete with shear granite outcroppings, would make one despair of survival if not for the air-conditioned tour bus standing nearby.
Filmmakers have used it in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Dune, and The Martian, whose star, Matt Damon, remarked, “I was in awe of that place . . . One of the most spectacular and beautiful places I have ever seen, and like nothing I’ve ever seen anywhere else on Earth.” [5]  But how could it be beautiful? What sort of survival-of-the-fittest story could one concoct to explain the development of an appetite for deadly landscapes?
I’m sure that Darwinians could come up with something. Actually, they have to do this, given their devotion to “methodological naturalism,” conveniently overlaying their metaphysical materialism.  (Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin wrote that, no matter how contrived the scientific theories might seem, they had to stick with purely material accounts, lest a disruptive “divine foot” find its way in the doorway.) [6] Besides, nothing is foolproof since fools are so ingenious. Perhaps they can argue that the terrain is so awful that it’s a good place to hide out and have kids since no one wants to bother you there. Well, “Whatever,” and “Knock yourself out.” But far better to say that the “fullness thereof” includes not just the nutritional, hospitable, and industrially harnessable, but also the aesthetical, thanks to God’s astonishing kindness to the world’s inhabitants, to “those who dwell therein.”

[1] Edmund Burke, “Of the Passion Caused by the Sublime,” A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Harvard Classics, Volume 24, Part 2 (New York, P. F. Collier and Son, 1909-1914), Part II, Section 1. Accessed January 5, 2020 at https://www.bartleby.com/24/2/201.html.
[2] Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment (New York: Hafner, 1968), 100-101.
[3] Augustine, Exposition of the Psalms 24:2, quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Old Testament VII, Psalms 1-50, edited by Craig A. Blaising and Carmen S. Hardin, Thomas C. Oden, general editor (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity, 2008), 185
[4] Denis Dutton, The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution (New York: Bloomsbury, 2009), 14­­–15.
[5] “Ridley Scott and Matt Damon on Going to Jordan to Recreate Mars.” Yahoo! Entertainment (September 29, 2015). https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/ridley-scott-and-matt-damon-on-going-to-jordan-to-230136329.html.
[6] See Richard Lewontin, “Billions and Billions of Demons,” a review of Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, New York Review of Books (January 9, 1997). This quote was discovered by Philip Johnson and given widespread attention in his book, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 81.

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The Eighth Commandment—“Thou shalt not steal”—sanctions property rights, but Psalm 24:1-2 declares that the Lord holds clear title to all there is, and that our ownership is both contingent upon his good pleasure and accountable to his principle of stewardship:
The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof;
The world, and they that dwell therein.
For he hath founded it upon the seas,
And established it upon the floods. [1]
Earth and World
 Verse one employs two Hebrew words to express the extent of God’s reign, the first, aretz (‘earth’), denotes material resources; the second, tebel (‘world’), connects the earth to human enterprise. The Septuagint tracks with this, using gefor ‘earth’ (hence, ‘geology’) and oikoumene for ‘world’ (connected with ‘ecumenical’). Thus, the span of God’s provision and sovereignty is beneficently universal.
Citing Ecclesiastes 1:4, Gregory of Nyssa observes that the earth ministers “to every generation, first one, then another, that is born on it.” [2] Matthew unpacks the extent of the earth’s “ministry,” saying,

The mines that are lodged in the bowels of it, even the richest, the fruits it produces, all the beasts of the forest and the cattle upon a thousand hills, our lands and houses, and all the improvements that are made of this earth by the skill and industry of man, are all his. . . . All the parts and regions of the earth are the Lord’s, all under his eye, all in his hand: so that wherever a child of God goes, he may comfort himself with this, that he does not go off his Father’s ground.[3]

Spurgeon speaks of its “fullness” in terms of “its harvests, its wealth, its life, or its worship; in all these senses the Most High God is Possessor of all.”[4] And Derek Kidner says the word “conjures up its wealth and fertility, seen here not as man’s for exploitation, but, prior to that, as God’s, for his satisfaction and glory . . .”[5]
“Ride, Jesus, Ride!”
Of course, materialists beg to differ (yea proudly insist upon differing). By their lights (or rather from their gloom), they deny the artistry, authority, and generosity of God in creation. They fail or refuse to grasp the obvious truth that God supplied graciously arable soil, fishable waters, and huntable woods; flax, wool, and cotton for weaving; timber and gypsum for building; metals for machinery; fossil fuels for heating and transportation; organic compounds for medicine and palliation—salicin from the willow, quinine from the cinchona, and codeine from the opium poppy. On and on the provision extends. And, of course, it extends to the human ingenuity required to marshal these resources for our benefit.
As poet Gerald Manley Hopkins observed, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” [6] and blessed in the sensible person who notes it. Back in the 1970s, I heard, in a Wheaton College chapel message by E. V. Hill, who described a parishioner who was ever so aware of God’s magnificent immanence. Hill told of his own boyhood congregation’s response when tornado warnings came their way down in Texas. The church had a big basement, and the flock would rush to gather there until the winds subsided. But one time, after counting noses, they discovered that “the Old Widder Jones” was missing, so some hearty volunteers jumped into a buckboard and raced to her house. When they got there, they found the home creaking in the wind with the windows wide open, the curtains blowing straight out on one side and straight in on the other. Flinging open the door, they spied her across the room, rocking furiously in her favorite chair, exclaiming, “Ride, Jesus, ride!”
I hasten to say I’m writing this the week after a horrific tornado leveled Mayfield, Kentucky, killing dozens there and elsewhere in its path. So I don’t want to suggest that Jesus initiated the ruination—and, as some might suggest, as an act of judgment on that community. (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar went down this road shamefully in Job.) But Mrs. Jones had it right when she recognized the sovereignty of God in all Creation, not just at the outset, but throughout its every age. And so should we. (Yes, I know about the Problem of Evil; I’ve taught whole courses on it; but here I appeal to the “Soul-Making Theodicy”—which argues that the rigors and perils of life after the Fall are perfectly ordered for God’s saving and sanctifying purposes.)
The Lord’s Aesthetic Purposes
We’ve noted the nutritional and industrial provisions of the earth, but we must also give the Lord’s artistry its due. In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard tells of a practice she had as a little girl, back when a penny meant a lot to her. She would hide one of these coins among exposed tree roots and other notches and then write in chalk on the sidewalk just up the way, “Surprise Ahead,” with arrows leading to the treasure. She then observed that those who would take time to humble themselves and slow down to search out the beautiful in nature would be rewarded, for “the world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand.” [7]
Well, as we know, the Lord has not only strewn pennies in the form of a “tremulous ripple thrill on the water” signaling the emergence of “a muskrat kit paddling from its den” (Dillard’s example), but also the golden coins, indeed ingots of precious aesthetic “metal,” appearing around the world. These manifestations have inspired poets and composers as well as painters and photographers. Thus we are witness to Henry Wadworth Longfellow’s A Day of Sunshine, Carl Sandburg’s Fog, Edgar Guest’s It’s September, and to countless celebrations of nature from the likes of Frost, Wordsworth, Keats, Kipling, Blake, Tennyson, Nash, and Burns. As for picturesque program music, we enjoy Claude Debussy’s orchestral piece La Mer, Ferde Grofés’ Grand Canyon Suite, Bedrich Smetana’s symphonic poem, The Moldau, and Antonio Vivaldi’s violin concertos, The Four Seasons.
As for paintings, let’s focus on a small sampling of four that suggest themselves upon a reading of Psalm 24.
Young Hare (1502), Albrecht Dürer, The Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria.
 Dürer was a contemporary of his fellow German, Martin Luther, and though the artist’s roots were Catholic, he showed sympathy for the Reformer’s cause. Though a great many of his works dealt with religious themes, including the oft-reproduced Praying Hands, he also had an eye for nature, as with this painting of a rabbit and also in his woodcut, The Rhinoceros, which he drew without having ever seen one, working only from a verbal description and another’s brief sketch.
When the words ‘earth,’ ‘world,’ and ‘fullness’ are deployed, we typically think of matters on the grand scale—the Great Plains, the Alps, the Everglades, the Gulf Stream, the Sahara, the Amazon Rainforest. But God has filled these great sectors with equally amazing, diminutive critters, such as this hare. And for those who would demean man as an insignificant creature on a small planet in an unfathomably vast universe, C. S. Lewis replies, “[T]he argument from size, is in my opinion, very feeble”; [8] size is irrelevant to honor, for a tiny, sapient man, who alone among sentient beings has the power to appreciate the “the great nebula in Andromeda,” is more wonderful than the stupendous astronomical displays he’s appreciating.[9]
The Harvesters (1565), Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York

 Bruegel was a leading artist of the Dutch-Flemish Renaissance. This particular painting was commissioned by a Belgian merchant, one of six works representing human activity in the progression of seasons, this one focused on late summer. (Another well-known piece in this cycle is The Hunters in the Snow.) Though Bruegel painted religious subjects, such as The Fall of Rebel Angels, The Blind Leading the Blind, and The Census at Bethlehem, he was best known for his “genre paintings” of peasants. I should add that this was a time of great religious tension in Europe, as Bruegel was born just eight years after Martin Luther penned his Ninety-Five Theses.
The Harvesters records and honors both man and nature—the golden sea of wheat, crisply delineated by scythes, instruments of human ingenuity with ergonomic handles and blades the deliverance of metallurgy; the fellowship and refreshment of lunchtime, including a loaf a bread, whose substance comes from such sheaves as stand all around; the mercies of shade and a nap; and a vista easy on the eyes.  It’s enough to send an artist looking for his brushes and easel.

[1] I use KJV here since the lyric quality of the iambic tetrameter in the first verse (which the RSV and ESV preserve) is lost in, for example, in such estimable translations as the NIV (“. . . with everything in it . . . and all who live in it”), the HCSB (“ . . . and its inhabitants”), and the NASB (“ . . . and those who live in it”). Of course, all of them report accurately that the Psalmist celebrated the comprehensive authorship and disposition of the cosmos and its occupants.
[2] Gregory of Nyssa, “Exposition of the Psalms 24:2,” quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Old Testament VII, Psalms 1-50, edited by Craig A. Blaising and Carmen S. Hardin, Thomas C. Oden, general editor (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity, 2008), 185
[3] Matthew Henry,  Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible, Vol. III—Job to Song of Solomon (New York: Fleming H. Revell,  1975 ) 319.
[4] C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of David, Volume I (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson,  1990), 374.
[5] Derek Kidner, Psalms 1-72: An Introduction & Commentary (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity, 1973), 113.
[6] Gerald Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur.” Accessed January 5, 2022 at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44395/gods-grandeur.
[7] Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 14-15.
[8] C. S. Lewis, “Dogma and the Universe,” God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 39.
[9] Lewis, “Dogma,” 41-42.

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A Christian world view is bubbling over with resources to satisfy the aesthetic and dramatic needs of every human person.  It is more capable of doing this than any other view of the world. I am not asserting that only Christians can write good literature, tell a good story, make beautiful art, or write beautiful music. Such certainly is not the case. I am saying that the Christian view of the world—“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof”– provides such a comprehensive and inescapable view of reality that any literature or other art form that reflects that view of reality has the intrinsic possibility of satisfying the emotional and aesthetic requirements of the human spirit. I lay no claim to possessing absolute insight into this area.  Rather, I am an amateur and run the risk of manifesting more aggressiveness than good sense in this assertion. Nevertheless, one need not be a great novelist or musician to discern that artistic expression is a vital area of human need. In addition, a bit of serious thought may really impress the thinker that the Christian faith embraces a multitude of possibilities for serious artistic inspiration.
Out of a staggering number of possibilities for productive interaction, elementary literary theory will provide the framework for our testing of the aesthetic power of the Christian faith. My intent is to illustrate that literary theory finds within the Christian faith a solid foundation for its assertions. One could also contend, though I will not seek to demonstrate this, that the Christian Faith provides the richest, most comprehensive background as well as the most fertile soil for the actual content of literature and other artistic expressions among the world views open to us.
This glance at literary theory obviously is not exhaustive, but only suggestive and tentative. One of the most fundamental concepts in literary theory is the idea of plot. Harry Shaw, in his Dictionary of Literary Terms has defined plot as “A plan or scheme to accomplish a purpose.” He says, “In literature, plot refers to the arrangement of events to achieve an intended effect.” He then describes a plot as “a series of carefully devised and interrelated actions that progresses through a struggle of opposing forces” (that is conflict) and conclude with a climax and a denouement. Shaw also points out the difference between plot and story. He employs the distinction of E. M. Forster. A story is a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence while a plot is a narrative of events in which the emphasis falls on causality. Forster illustrates: “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot.
This definition of plot with its differentiation between story and plot focuses our attention upon causality.  The idea of cause and effect is a fundamental characteristic of plot.  In plot we do not see one event haphazardly following upon another event without any ultimate connection between the two things.  If that phenomenon persists in a book, we soon lay it aside or place it on the coffee table which contains books that no one reads anyway.  A plot must build and increase in intensity and complexity by introducing different sets of causes which have logical, though sometimes strange, effects.  This same literary critic, Harry Shaw describes cause and effect in this way:
Much of what one reads is the result of cause-and -effect relations.  When we read an answer to the question “Why did this happen?”  We are dealing in causes.  When we read the question “What will this do?”  The answers involved deal with effects.  A cause, therefore, is that which produces an effect, the person, idea, or force from which something results.
After giving examples of topic sentences in paragraphs which lead to cause and effect discussions within the paragraph Shaw concludes:
All life — and consequently all good literature — is concerned with why something begins to exist and why it exists the way it does.  A cause is the reason.  An effect is the result of the operation of a cause.  Cause and effect are necessarily related: Shakespeare’s Macbeth killed Duncan because of ambition and greed; the effect of the murder is the substance of a tragedy that leads to Macbeth’s total ruin.  Such a statement about Macbeth indicates that the total cause of any event is complex and involves an intricate joining of preceding forces and events; the total effects of any given cause extend beyond immediate results.
Therefore, in a good story an author will develop his plot by introducing a multiplicity of factors which we could define as causes, he will make clear to us the resultant effects of these causes, and will bring them all together finally in a coherent conclusion, every cause and every effect having its proper and well-defined relationship to the final solution of the story.  The author who cannot accomplish this in a credible fashion has failed to produce a good work of literature.
I would propose that the reason our minds demand that sort of organization to a plot is that God has created the world to work that way, and his making humans in his image has established n the mind the necessity for all things finally to resolve into a worthy purpose. The Bible begins with the cause of all the stories when it asserts “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the earth.”  When Scripture affirms in Ephesians 1:11 that God works all things after the counsel of his own will, and in Romans 8:28, “We know that all things work together for the good to them that love God and are the called according to his purpose,” then we indeed do know that all things have their designated place.
Such confidence results from the Christian doctrine of Providence.  In itself it is an assertion that eventually all causes and all effects will resolve themselves into the purpose of God, the author of this story. No loose ends will remain dangling, no factors will have been brought in that do not play their own part in the development of the plot.
I am not saying that God has accommodated himself to our view of what plot should be; I am saying that we have inescapably produced an understanding of plot based upon the way the world is and our minds are only satisfied when the story is told as it really should be, that is, in accord with the way God made the world.
According to Shaw, a plot includes a “a series of carefully devised and interrelated actions.”  An author must be careful to devise his actions carefully and interrelate them properly because he must bring them to a proper resolution.  The Bible represents all the events of the world as reflecting the relationship and interaction of man the creature with God the Creator.  Everything contributes to our understanding of the complexity of man’s involvement with sin and the ingenuity of his depravity but ultimately relates to the simple concept that man is in rebellion against the God who owns him. As this theme develops in complexity and force, a counter but complementary theme of redemption is introduced. It finds simultaneous development along with man’s depravity. It becomes so intricate that we see God’s redemptive purpose developing in the midst of man’s deceptive wickedness and even using it to bring the redemptive theme to a successful consummation. The story of Joseph’s being sold into Egyptian bondage by the evil intent of his brothers compels a complex interaction of emotion, outrage, understanding, and sympathy at the human level. Parallel to that, moreover, is the recognition that this very action on the part of his brothers was the plan of God for saving his chosen family from starvation. Through that preservation, the messianic nation is formed. We also see the interrelationship of these apparently disparate parts in Peter’s affirmation at Pentecost “This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men” (Acts 2:23).  How much greater illustration do we need of the eventual resolution of two seemingly irreconcilable themes.
Scripture consistently presents the world story as developing a “series of carefully devised and interrelated actions.”  Reality works that way, because God, though infinite and ultimately incomprehensible in his intelligence and wisdom, is consistent and purposive. The human mind cannot rest satisfied with a fallacious picture of reality; we therefore require carefully devised and interrelated actions in any story, or plot, but especially in the story.
The second element of this definition of plot insists that this series “progresses through a struggle of opposing forces.” A plot cannot progress without conflict of some kind.  It may be severe internal strife on the part of a tragic hero. It may be the good guys vs. the bad guys, or the clever and sinister insinuation of a fiend trying to spoil the goodness and innocence of a heroine, or the opposing force may simply be the ridiculous and incongruous developments of a situation comedy. No matter what the story, some degree of conflict is necessary for resolution. That description exists because it is impossible for us to conceive of a tale of interest or of real accomplishment without conflict of some sort being involved.
For example, the following story would hold very little interest for the listeners (though indeed it may be extremely significant for the teller). “Yesterday I went to the post office and mailed my letters and went back home and drank a cup of coffee.  I also read the paper and really had a nice day.” Now it is wonderful to have a day like that, but not too wonderful to tell about it. Consider this option: “While on the way to the post office yesterday I had a flat tire.  When I stepped out of the car, I was abducted by two escapees from the State mental asylum who thought that I was an airplane. They were convinced that they could make a quick trip to beautiful downtown Shawnee, Oklahoma, if they could only find the proper runway from which to take off. I could not convince them that I wasn’t an airplane and so only escaped the trip to Shawnee by convincing them that I had already been flying all day and my arms were too tired for another trip. Eventually they were taken into custody by a couple of officers from the asylum who refused to believe that I too was not a resident of the asylum since I had spoken so convincingly about having flown all day. When they discovered their mistake, they were so chagrined that they fixed my flat tire and treated me to a cup of coffee. By this time the post office was closed and I had to wait until the next day to mail my letters. This upset my wife who was sending a special birthday card to her sister. That evening she had to call and explain why the card would not be on time. In the conversation, she was reminded that the birthday was not till next week, and was relieved that she had not been so early with the card as to muffle its joyful impact. She forgave me and was happy I had had such an unusual day.”
This is hardly an engaging literary style but the story is worth telling and the element of conflict provides a greater degree of interest than the lack thereof.  One who has read Tolkiens’ Lord of the Rings, or Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia or his Space trilogy or, Cormack McCarthy’s Blood Meridian can readily see how numerous are the possibilities for developing conflict as a necessary, literary device.  The element of conflict is a continuing reality in the Scripture from the subtle but vicious temptation of Eve by the Serpent until the twentieth chapter of Revelation when “the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Revelation 20:10).  The walk of the Christian is represented as a walk of conflict in which he wears the whole armor of God, for his warfare is against principalities and powers in heavenly places.
So, on the one hand, the biblical record grandly illustrates this literary principle; but even more important, it is the truth at the back of this biblical conflict that has given rise to our understanding that a plot progresses through a struggle of opposing forces.  We feel it in our bones and see it all around us, because that is the way things are.
The next element of plot is climax.  The climax is that point in the play, in which it becomes clear that the central motive will or will not be successful. It becomes clear which force is going to emerge victorious in the conflict.  One characteristic of many modern plays and movies is the significant absence of climax and denouement. This may not be a weakness in itself but is merely a confession on the playwright’s part that he does not know which side of the conflict should win and much less how the victory would finally be resolved into a satisfying conclusion. We see such a phenomenon in the movie of some years back called Kramer vs. Kramer. It ends the only way it could end; but the audience has some degree of frustration because both parents had compelling characteristics that won their sympathy and both had significant weaknesses. However, the very fact of frustration with that sort of ending is evidence that one’s mind does not stop there but recognizes the need for absolute judgment somewhere that will make clear what really should have happened.
The same thing would be true of the trial of Jesus if it were left at the stage of his condemnation. “When He was reviled, he reviled not in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but he trusted to him who judges justly.” That is true not only in the case of the trial of Jesus, but it is an aesthetic requirement of our minds. When climax fails to materialize in the story, our minds even unwittingly commit that judgment to the one who judges justly.
This tendency, in fact makes us restless until we can find answers to the unresolved questions that plague us. The question that we all have asked, “Did Scarlet get Rhett back or did she really not deserve to have him” gave rise to an attempt to resolve that aggravating uncertainty.
There are hundreds of examples, however, in which the climax is set forth very forcefully in the story, and the author who is successful in it and makes all the readers or onlookers feel that it justified, has the matchless gift of creation. Climax in the biblical account and in the real story of the world comes in the cross. When Jesus cried in a loud voice, “It is finished” the climax to all of history had come. In the cross the conflict between Jew and Gentile was over, God and man were reconciled, death was turned backwards, and all the demonic powers arrayed against God were put to flight. This is the victory that must occur or the world is senseless; this is the victory that must occur or every high hope and aspiration of our most noble moments is crushed to the ground and all is vanity. That unspeakable conflict entailed in the highest of all God’s creatures rebelling against the holy, righteous, and just creator and involving another of God’s high creations, man, in the rebellion came to its climax in the cross. That part of literary theory which demands climax within the plot finds its most irrefutable rationale in God’s action in the cross.
The final element of the plot is denouement. This word refers to the solution or the final untangling of the intricacies of a plot. What are the implications of a victory that is won.  The made-for-TV lawyer Perry Mason did this by explaining how he discerned who was the real culprit and tying all the bits of evidence together for the astounded viewer.  In Tolkien it is done by describing the righteous rule of the rightful king of middle earth, the cleansing of the shire, and the fading away of yesterday’s heroes with the sense that their purpose had been well fulfilled. Lewis sees all history culminating in the land of Narnia, and a train wreck, perhaps interpreted as tragic by those in England was not tragic at all but merely the door to Narnia, and more than Narnia, Aslan’s own country.  Denouement comes in the Bible story as Christ is resurrected to defeat death and its causes and returns in glory and splendor, and he will display such matchless beauty and such awesome power that every knee shall bow of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the Glory of God the Father. Again, the final issue of this is described for us in the book of the Revelation.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life bearing twelve crops of fruits, yielding its fruit each month.  And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.  No longer will there be any curse.  The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.  They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night.  They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light.  And they will reign for ever and ever.  – Rev. 20:1-5

This conclusion gives literary satisfaction and objective justification to the thesis of our text: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.” Holiness and righteousness will inhabit the final resolution which will be brought about because “the Lord of hosts, … the King of glory” has come in. This is the model for and the foundation of all denoument. Nothing but such an infinitely excellent conclusion to all things can satisfy the mind. It is that story-ending than which a greater can not be thought. It is the truth.

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The Crucial Question
“Who is God?”—Ask such a question of any group, and you will likely receive a range of responses. A few respondents might reject the validity of the question and simply deny the existence of God. Most, though, will likely offer religiously-tinged answers. “God is all-knowing,” they might say. He is “all-powerful, all-loving.” A few more “all” expressions might then give way to the use of “omni,” like “omnipresent” or even the somewhat cumbersome “omnibenevolent.” Finally, the “alls” and the “omnis” may crescendo into an assertion of God’s perfection. What often gets lost in the course of the ensuing conversation is that stacking up thesephilosophical adjectives misses the point of the question.
Consider possible responses to “Who is the President of the United States?” Should someone answer with the words “important” and “well-dressed,” it is doubtful that the respondent actually knows much about the American presidency. In addition, despite the fact that these words accurately characterize whomever may hold that office in a general sense, it is safe to assume that the person who speaks this way and the sitting President are not mutually acquainted. Similarly, philosophical answers to the question “Who is God?” not only initially cast doubt upon whether the respondent knows of God, but also in the end upon whether the respondent actually knows God at all.
So, back to the question: “Who is God?”—or, as the psalmist puts it: “Who is this King of glory?”
The Creator-King
1 The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein, 2 for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.
Creation theology includes a number of “givens” that many in atheistically- and scientifically-minded Western cultures find nearly impossible to accept. Among these “givens” is the unmediated, direct action of God in the creation of the world. Contrastingly, in Scripture God’s direct agency in creation is never in any doubt. God created on a grand scale; his “let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens . . .” speech act (Gen 1:14–16) ignited untold trillions of fusion reactions so that stars would blaze their heat and light throughout the universe. God also created on an intensely intimate scale; he fashioned the first man from dust and the first woman from that man (Gen 2:7 and 22). These acts are “givens” behind poetic allusion to the creation of land and sea in verse 2.
All the above having been said, it is important not to miss that the “givenness” of God’s creation appears after the “for” at the beginning of verse 2. This “for” means that the logic of Ps 24:1–2 is: because verse 2 is true, verse 1 is the necessary result. In other words, the fact that God is Creator (verse 2) entails that God rules over all (verse 1—His title as “King” appears later); the Creator is creation’s rightful ruler.
Even so, English word order might lead the reader to think that “the earth” is the focal point of the verse, and therefore that “the earth” is the psalmist’s major concern. Not so. Instead, the original language places the Lord in focus. The beginning half of verse 1 is an assertion that it is the Lord who owns the earth “and the fullness thereof.” The latter half then explains what this “fullness” (“that which fills it”) is: “those who dwell therein.” Therefore, since it is the Lord who rules the earth and those who dwell therein, whatever powers those “dwellers” may exercise, they are not the rulers of the earth. If any doubt on this point were to remain, verse 2 then falls like a hammer blow. Not only does verse 2 employ the “for” logic mentioned above, but it also emphasizes “he” in the original language beyond the capacity of an English translation to reflect. The cumulative effect is something like “It is the Lord who rules the earth, not those who dwell therein, because he created it!” Sandwiching humanity between two successive focused mentions of the Lord, the psalmist puts “those who dwell” in the world firmly in their place.
The One Who Seeks God
3 Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?
In light of the absolute sovereignty of the Lord laid out in verses 1 and 2, verse 3 asks two questions for which the reader already knows the likely answers. That is to say, no one would dare to do these things! No one would climb the hill upon which the Lord’s Temple would stand, and then brazenly enter into its sacred precincts uninvited. How could a mere creature of dust stand before the Lord in his holy place? Yet verse 4 jolts the unsuspecting reader by claiming that there is, in fact, such a person:
4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully.
“Clean hands” refers to righteous behavior (see Job 17:9) and is surely opposite to the idea of having blood on one’s hands (see Isa 59:3, Ezek 23:37): a biblical metaphor that has fittingly come over into English to expose obvious guilt. “Pure heart” then alludes to righteous motives (see Prov 20:9). Jesus’s pointed assertion of adultery taking place within one’s heart (Matt 5:27–28) underscores that a person can technically have “clean hands” and yet lack a “pure heart.” Indeed, these hand and heart standards in this first half of verse 4 are rather difficult to attain.
The second half of verse 4 drills deeper into the soil of what constitutes “clean hands” and a “pure heart.” The amplifying illustration of one with “clean hands” appears second; this person “does not swear deceitfully.” Entering into agreements (the purpose of swearing) with no intention of keeping one’s promises displays a character completely opposite that of the Lord, who never breaks his covenants with his people (see Judg 2:1). Such a “dirty-handed” person could never ascend the Lord’s hill and stand in his presence. After all, even before starting the ascent, this promise breaker has no intention to follow through on any vows made to the Lord.
Next, verse 4 describes what the opposite of a “pure heart” looks like; it is a person who “lifts up his soul to what is false.” Every other time the Psalms mention the lifting of the soul, the action has to do with worship of the Lord (see Ps 25:1, 86:4, 143:8). Accordingly, as in Jer 18:15, committing “false” worship acts can entail a false object of worship: any or all of the world’s imposter false gods. That said, humans can also try to worship the Lord in a false manner. The prohibition against taking the name of the Lord “in vain” in the Ten Commandments uses the same term for “what is false” as in Ps 24:4.
We see that in just a few words, Ps 24:4 lauds a person of righteous behavior and righteous motives. Breaking promises and either worshiping other gods or presuming to worship the Lord wrongly would conflict so much with this person’s character that these displays of contempt toward God would be unthinkable. So, of course, such a righteous person would be welcome in the presence of the Creator-King.
The Problem
There’s just one problem. Such a person does not exist. As the weary words of Eccl 7:20 intone, “Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.” Anyone who would read Ps 24:4 and glibly think, “Clean hands: check! Pure heart: that’s me! I never break my promises. I worship all the time, and I worship in ways that please the Lord alone. OK, time to climb the Lord’s hill and enter his presence!”—such a person would not survive that journey. As the Lord told Moses, “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” (Exod 33:20).
So is the psalmist a sadistic dasher of hopes, setting standards that sound reasonable but that no one can actually meet? Not really. There is in fact a kind of person who may stand in the holy place of almighty God, as the psalmist claims. However, this is not someone who can by his own efforts claim cleanliness of hands, purity of heart, or any other degree of worthiness in order to be there. Verses 5 and 6 explain.
The One Who Can Enter God’s Presence
5 He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation.
6 This is the generation of those who seek him, seeking your face: Jacob. Selah. (translation of verse 6 adjusted to reflect the original Hebrew; see the kjv)
As verse 5 reveals, righteousness of deed (hands) and intention (heart) in verse 4 does not originally derive from within the person, but from “the God of his salvation.” That is to say, the person’s “salvation” must take place first. Hence the Lord becomes for him “the God of his salvation.” The Lord then provides blessing and the righteousness that characterizes those he delivers. This granted righteousness cleans the hands and purifies the heart. When the delivered worshiper enters the Lord’s presence after ascending the Lord’s hill, it is the Lord’s own righteousness that allows entry.
Who is this “saved” person? In its original Hebrew, verse 6 speaks clearly, despite lack of clarity among many Bible translations. Many modern English Bible versions depart from the original language text with a rendering like the esv: “Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob.” This is probably because the first half of the verse describes those who “seek him,” while the second half refers to those who literally “seek your face”: a sudden pronoun shift from third to second person, with both expressions seemingly referring to God. Inserting “God” before Jacob, as does the ancient Greek translation of Psalm 24, closes verse 6 by referring to the “God of Jacob” rather than Jacob himself.
This third-to-second person pronoun change should not drive interpreters to abandon the original Hebrew text as it stands, however. The Psalms are filled with artful word manipulation techniques such as pronoun shifts because the psalms are poetry. Indeed, most readers hardly notice the pronoun switch within the previous psalm, the “Good Shepherd” psalm, at Ps 23:3b–4a:
3b He leads me in paths of righteousness
      for his name’s sake.
4a Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil,
      for you are with me;
Over the course of Psalm 23, references to God begin in the third person, shift to second, and return to third: the same pattern evident in Psalm 24. So returning to Ps 24:6, retaining the Hebrew text leads to Jacob himself as the focal point, as in the translation above: “This is the generation of those who seek him, seeking your face: Jacob.”
Jacob—the trickster who manipulated Esau to surrender his firstborn rights. Jacob—the liar who deceived his father to usurp Esau’s place for a patriarchal blessing. Verse 6 highlights his name here? Jacob seeks God’s face? Even considering the sweep of Jacob’s story in Genesis, surely he has a checkered record under the heading of “seeking God’s face.” Furthermore, he presumed to wrestle with God, and in a manner of speaking wrestled with God all his life. So how can Jacob end up as the paradigmatic name for one with “clean hands and a pure heart?” How can Jacob be the model for one who enters God’s presence on his holy hill?
The apostle Paul explains. He reminds the Roman Christians of what the Lord had said to Jacob and Esau’s mother before they were born: “The older shall serve the younger.” (Gen 25:23) According to Paul, “though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad,” this was so that “God’s purpose of election might continue.” (Rom 9:11)
The story of election indeed continued inexorably through Jacob to his descendants. The Lord had previously entered into covenant relationship with Jacob’s grandfather Abraham, whom the Lord declared to be righteous because of his faith (Gen 15:6). Jacob’s father Isaac was next in line to receive God’s covenant promises (Gen 17:19, 21). Then Exod 2:23–24 records that when Jacob’s descendants were groaning under the yoke of Egyptian slavery four centuries after his death, “God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.”
To underline this point about Jacob’s election, we should remember that reference to Jacob in Ps 24:6 encompasses Israel, the entire covenant people. Yet Israel’s story throughout the Old Testament contains few episodes that reflect “clean hands” and a “pure heart.” After all, quite soon after experiencing dramatic deliverance from slavery in Egypt, they engaged in rank idolatry at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Prayers recorded in the late books of the Old Testament, such as in Daniel 9 and Nehemiah 9, confess that disobedience and rebellion were the norm in Israel’s history, and turning to God in repentance and faith was the exception. As was the case with Jacob/Israel himself, the only hope of the people of Israel was to fall upon the mercy and faithfulness of God, receiving forgiveness and experiencing restoration in covenant relationship.
As a final step before leaving this investigation of who has the “clean hands” and “pure heart” to approach God, we should remember the human author of Psalm 24. According to the superscription, it is David. David—the man after God’s own heart, and yes, David—the adulterer and murderer. There is no way of knowing at what point in his life David composed Psalm 24, whether it was before or after his great sin with Bathsheba. Yet in a sense it matters little. Before the end of his life, David well understood that no one does good or seeks after God (Ps 14:2–3 and 53:2–3), and it goes without saying that “no one” includes himself. Yet in Ps 24:6 he could write that God’s chosen people, also presumably including himself, seek God’s face.
Jacob, the people of Israel, David—these thoroughly compromised people of God seek his face. How? God draws his people to himself: electing them, saving them, imputing his righteousness to them, blessing them, and allowing them to come into his presence. Once God’s people are in his presence, what then?
The Lord of Hosts, the King of Glory
7 Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.
8 Who is this King of glory? The Lord, strong and mighty, the Lord, mighty in battle!
9 Lift up your heads, O gates! And lift them up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in.
10 Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory! Selah.
Whereas verses 1 through 6 envision a journey of God’s people into God’s presence, the remainder of the psalm is about the response of God’s people when he comes to them. Anyone who has witnessed a performance of Handel’s Messiah cannot help but hear its musical setting of verses 7 through 10 as they read. Though Handel repurposes this passage to refer to the Messiah’s victorious return to heaven following his resurrection, the spirit of these verses in the context of Psalm 24 is similarly ebullient. We readers notice that God’s forgiven, covenant people are utterly joyful at the prospect of the Lord entering their city gates. Here theLord is definitely a warrior, but he is not coming to conquer; he is coming home. One can easily imagine the loud voice in Rev 21:3 calling out at this moment, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” The King of glory shall indeed come in.
The Response of God’s People
“Who is this King of glory?” Psalm 24 both poses and answers this question. It cedes no ground to the human impulse to define God and our relationship with him as we please. Psalm 24 demands a response.
The King of glory is the Lord; he is Yahweh. That is to say, the Creator and ruler of the world and all of its people is none other than Yahweh, the God of Israel. Ascribing rule of the world to any other god—a philosophical construct of a god-being, a polytheistic “one god among many,” or even some other allegedly “Abrahamic” monotheistic god—is to honor a mere pretender and to defame creation’s rightful king.
Yahweh the Creator-King is sovereign, and he requires clean hands and pure hearts. On one hand he does not coddle rebels against his reign, accepting them “just as they are” with dirty hands and impure hearts. On the other hand, he also doesn’t cajole them to try harder to be holy, as if endlessly attempting to clean one’s own hands and to purify one’s own heart could result in inching just a bit further up his holy hill.
No. For his own glory, the Creator-King chooses to redeem his creation by creating a new people for himself. He elects them, saves them, imputes his own righteousness to them, blesses them, and lets them come to him.
That’s not all. Mirroring the final act in the grand narrative of all of Scripture, Psalm 24 then shifts scenes. When the Creator-King has accomplished his purposes in redemption, he comes to dwell with his redeemed people, who receive him as their King of glory.
There are many important implications and applications of the concept of the absolute sovereignty of God. Yet there is an implication and an application that stand prior to them all. This implication is that like all creation you, the reader, stand under God’s sovereignty. The concomitant application is that you must turn to God from the futility of your self-directed rogue life, filled with false worship that soils your hands and poisons your heart. Psalm 24 poses its crucial question to you, and your response is a matter of life and death: “Who is this King of glory?”

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This edition of the Founders Journal gives attention to Psalm 24. In his inspired reflections on the Mosaic account of creation, David begins with the beautiful, but definitely counter-cultural assertion, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein..” The omnipotent sovereignty of the Lord in verses 1 and 2 as manifested in his orderly and purposeful arrangement of all things presses forward to the perfect holiness of the Lord in verses 3-6. He dwells in “his holy place.” Those verses call for “those who dwell therein” (1) to approach him only with perfect holiness and righteousness. This righteousness comes to them in the gracious blessing of salvation (5). Pointing to Jacob (6) reminds us that God’s covenant rules the approach to God. Verses 7-10 describe a scene of the glorious splendor of living in the presence of the Lord “strong and mighty” who defeated all his foes in the great battle for salvation. His ascent to heaven, bringing a host of captives in his train, allowing sinners to revel in his glorious presence, culminates in his placing all things under his feet.
Scott Callaham gives an exposition of the Psalm with the skill of an experienced linguist and biblical exegete and with the sensitivity and passion of one truly adores the Lord of glory. Dr. Callaham lectured in Hebrew and Old Testament for the International Chinese Theological Seminary and has served as lead editor of World Mission: Theology, Strategy, and Current Issues. He is author of Biblical Aramaic for Biblical Interpreters in both English and Chinese. He also curates Daily Dose of Aramaic.
Dr. Mark Coppenger, retired professor of philosophy at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a former professor at Wheaton has given us an excellent study of how God’s lordship in creation lays the groundwork for aesthetics. Mark is an effective writer and author, an engaging teacher, has served in numerous positions of service among Southern Baptists at the national and state levels and also been pastor of churches. Since the triune God is Creator and Sustainer and Owner of the earth, it is impossible that every aspect of it not reflect some element of his glory. The existence of everything is dependent on him and his power, intelligence, beauty, purpose, and glory. The study of aesthetics is the investigation of principles underlying our perception of beauty. This could be applied to art, music, poetry, physics, chemistry, or the mere pleasure of standing in awe of natural things. Mark has given a narrative of how aesthetics has its foundation in the realty that “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” He has shown the confluence of nature and art in how the beauty, symmetry, and power of the one inspires the other. His article itself is an engagement with aesthetics of language.
I have written an article on drama as an expression of God’s ownership of the world. His revelation in Scripture in the unfolding of the eternally conceived covenant of redemption worked out in connected stages in history determines the elements of story. I seek to show how all good stories that grip the heart, challenge the intellect, and convict the moral consciousness find their patterns in the flow of the biblical story.
A review article of The Mystery of the Trinity by Vern Poythress is a fitting inclusion in this Founders Journal. His argument that the Trinity is “ontologically basic” perfectly fits the Psalmist’s affirmation that “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.“ Fallenness has corrupted the mind and thus the process of reasoning making  special revelation necessary for any proper understanding of general revelation. For knowledge, therefore, of God and his world, the Bible is “epistemologically basic.” His argument on this issue is clearly and powerfully relevant to sorting out differences within the Evangelical/Reformed community over the subject of natural revelation vis a vis natural theology. And so, where does David’s revealed observation, “The earth is the Lord’s” lead us in that discussion?
Several critical passages of Scripture dealing with how God’s created order necessarily declares his glory, his eternal power and godhead, his beauty and excellence, and his knowability also affirm the blinding effects of human sin. Consequently, for knowledge uncluttered by innate rebellion, creatures have an absolute dependence on special revelation; because knowledge of God is not only a matter of cognition and mental perception but purity of affections, these scriptures emphasize the necessity of holiness and righteousness and consequently redemption.
Psalm 8 early establishes the reality that only those who come to him as children and babes truly see the majesty of his name; this is set in the context of foes and avenging enemies and the eventual rightful dominance of God’s redeemed image-bearers. Psalm 19, after showing the irrepressible universality of God’s revelation through nature, shows its ineffectuality without divinely revealed law leading to conviction of sin, love of holiness, consistent awareness of a deceitful heart, and constant dependence on the revealed word. Psalm 24, our text, shows that the knowledge of God embedded in his creation will become effectual only to those who find holiness and righteousness in salvation and that that comes in the triumphant work of Christ.
Acts 17 unfolds layers of revelation in the created order and in providence and God’s intention that humanity should search for him and find him through induction uncorrupted by moral prejudice. Instead, fallen humanity makes idols of created things arising from fallen imaginations rather than enlightened consciences. Consequently, man cannot know God, though he is not very far from any of us, apart from repentance based on the finished redemptive transaction accomplished by Jesus Christ.
Romans 1 begins with a stern statement that among the things revealed from heaven in this world is divine wrath because the aboriginal moral instinct of man is suppression of the truth. The clarity and power of divine revelation through the “things that are made” leave humanity without excuse. The intrinsic knowledge of God along with the extrinsic compelling evidence of God’s holy power is so mangled by human sin that it leads only to blatant idolatry and ongoing moral perversion.
The most sophisticated societies in philosophy and political organization have failed to produce anything in their religion that comes close to the God of the Bible. Both empirical science and human rationality have failed and cannot even be prolegomena to a true knowledge of God.
What our senses have failed to understand—what eye has not seen and ear has not heard–, and what our philosophy has miserably fallen short in perceiving—what has not entered into the heart of man–, these things God has revealed to us by his Spirit for the Spirt searches all things; yes even the depths of God.
But when grace opens the mind and the heart and one finds the wisdom of God in the face of Jesus Christ, the earth and all that is in it is transformed. Everything becomes a witness to God’s power, his infinite excellence, his love, his mercy, his grace. And all that, as lovely as it is and as increasing as it is in delightful testimony pales in brilliance and glory beside the infinite wonder of redemption through the Son of God.
The editor and the contributors pray that this edition of the FJ will prompt renewed delight in seeing the joyful and exuberant power of God through the things that are made. Right thinking guided by revealed truth can unfold from general revelation abundant data for delight and marvel. The consideration that such a knowledge in all its expansive possibilities is immeasurably below the knowledge of God in the one who “made foolish the wisdom of the world” by the cross of Christ should enhance the delight we sense in the “hope of eternal life.” All things should lead us to a posture of wonder, love and praise.

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Southern Baptists Need Leaders who Aren’t Embarrassed of the Book
We Baptists are people of the Book. But when it comes to matters of great concern in our cultural context, we too often are reticent to reference the Scriptures clearly. We have allowed our sensibilities to be shaped by the world rather than the Word. By failing to put on the full armor of God, we make ourselves weak, open to attack. It is time for Southern Baptists to nail our colors to the mast.
The Baptist Faith and Message 2000—our common statement of belief—says it well when it calls Scripture “the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried.” We are told in 2 Timothy 3:17 that Scripture makes the man of God “complete, equipped for every good work.” Scripture always has the final word and remains a sufficient basis for living out a faithful Christian life. Being anchored to the truths revealed in Scripture means that we can be stable and confident in moments of cultural convulsion like we are facing now.
That’s why it is so befuddling to see many Christians—even many Baptists—acting as if we didn’t have Scripture to stand upon. While we may be happy to speak boldly about parts of Scripture that synch up with modern sensibilities, we whisper about parts of Scripture that upset our modern sensibilities. I’ve come to the unfortunate conclusion that many Baptists are reticent to use Scripture because we are embarrassed of it.
Consider a few recent examples:
Critical Theory:  It’s Scripture, not secular theory, that teaches us the truth about human nature. All humans are made in the image of God, possessing intrinsic worth and dignity as well as individual moral agency (Gen.1:26-27). But we are all also fallen and sinful (Rom. 3:23). The most fundamental division among humanity, then, is not between classes or races, but between those who are who are in open rebellion to God, and those who have been reconciled to Him through Christ (Rom. 5:12, 1 Cor. 5:21). Critical Theory, and other pernicious postmodern ideologies, are inconsistent with these bedrock truths. Even worse, they destroy the unity that believers already have in Christ (Eph. 2:11-22). Sadly, recent years have shown that the SBC seems unwilling to clearly condemn these corrosive teachings, even as school districts and some Christian colleges around the country find the courage to do so. Despite my best efforts, Convention leadership has generally opposed revisiting the disastrous Resolution 9 on Critical Race Theory, passed in 2019. But given the destructive capability of all critical theories, we cannot afford to equivocate. We must continue to press the issue through resolutions and motions to ensure that CRT, intersectionality, queer theory, etc., are clearly rejected by the SBC. These unbiblical worldviews must have no home in our pulpits, in our seminaries, or on the mission field.
God’s Design for Men and Women: Scripture could not be clearer about God’s design for men and women within the Church. The BFM is similarly clear: “The office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.” And yet, we see some churches within our convention acting as functional egalitarians—all while still claiming to still hold to complementarianism. Rather than seeking to submit to God’s design in a comprehensive fashion, some church leaders seem more focused on how they can downplay scriptural teaching as much as possible without denying it outright. We need to push for greater clarity in the SBC regarding how the teachings of Scripture and the BFM must be practiced in the local church context.
LGBT Affirmation: We see similar trends in approaches to the LGBT related issues and the question of “same sex attraction” (SSA) in the church. Two successive SBC Presidents have preached the same sermon about how the Bible “whispers” about sexual sin when nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the Bible calls certain sexual sins “abominations” and makes clear that they are special proofs of God’s judgment on those who have rejected God (Rom. 1:18-32). We’ve seen misguided attempts to deny the fact that disordered desires are themselves sinful; all coming at a time when forces in our culture grow increasingly bold in their push for acceptance of sexual immorality of all kinds. This is not a time for flinching. Not when we see the likes of Disney pushing toxic transgender ideology on children, and even school teachers trying to influence them to make permanent, irreparable decisions. Our consciences must be formed by Scripture in these matters—both in how we speak to those in the world and those in the church. Love of our neighbors (and their children) requires that we speak out with a clear, loud, prophetic voice.
Abortion: Scripture is clear than the unborn baby is a human person. As such, we are grateful for the prospect that the unjust regime of Roe v. Wade is about to end. After its demise states will be tasked with implementing just legislation to protect the unborn, and the SBC will have a voice to help shape these new laws. Last summer, the SBC messengers spoke clearly by passing the strongest pro-life resolution in our history. In it we affirmed that biblical justice requires the equal protection of the unborn. That’s why it was so shocking to see, just last month, the ERLC put its name on a letter that helped to sink a bill in Louisiana that would have done just that. If we say that we believe an unborn baby is a human person deserving all the rights and protections of a born person, as we did as messengers in 2021, we cannot have rogue entities condemning laws that take that proposition seriously.
It’s Time for the SBC to be Culturally Uncompromising. I could go on. But those four examples are sufficient to show how the SBC, often at a leadership level, has a “biblical embarrassment” problem. We are embarrassed of the teachings of the Scripture. Brothers and sisters, it should not be this way. The word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword and will not return void. But if we muzzle ourselves out of a misplaced desire to placate the culture, how we can expect the Word to have that effect? The SBC doesn’t need the platform or entity leaders to act as PR professionals, trying to manage tough aspects of God’s word. Instead, we should all follow in the footsteps of the faithful pastors and members in the pews who aim to act in obedience as heralds of our King—boldly proclaiming His message to a dying world. And if elected as your next president, that’s exactly how I plan to lead.

Tom Ascol is the senior pastor of Grace Baptist Church and President of Founders Ministries and the Institute of Public Theology. He is a candidate for president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
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Great responsibilities fall on the President of the Southern Baptist Convention. Besides the wisdom needed to make fitting appointments to those positions over which he is granted prerogative by our constitution, other skills, personal traits of character, and biblically-informed vision will obviously be needed. We must pray for this president as Solomon prayed for himself, “Give your servant an understanding heart … to judge between good and evil” (1 Kings 3:9). My vote in this election for just such a time as this will be for Tom Ascol. This affirmation is not to be taken as reflecting negatively on other candidates but arises from an unexceptionable confidence in him. Without equivocation, for decades Dr. Ascol has manifested the character, experience, pastoral integrity, biblical and confessional theological insight and conviction, and knowledge of the cultural and philosophical challenges that face an evangelical denomination today. He has received two degrees (MDiv and PhD) from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has been my friend, conversation partner, and ministry example for more than four decades. During that time his personal character, witness to truth, and growth in grace have not receded nor wavered. J. B. Gambrell led Southern Baptists to adopt the Seventy-five Million campaign which initiated the Cooperative Program. E. Y. Mullins led Southern Baptists to adopt the 1925 Baptist Faith and Message, which challenged the decline into modernism that plagued other denominations. Herschel Hobbs led Southern Baptists through the Elliott Controversy and to adopt the 1963 Baptist Faith and Message. Adrian Rogers’s election to SBC presidency in 1979 began the Conservative Resurgence which arrested the precipitous decline of a growing percentage of Southern Baptist’s agency employees into biblical and theological relativism.  Southern Baptists presently are in the throes of a cultural and ethical crisis where clear perception, purposeful and meaningful engagement, an unintimidated honesty, and a determined vision for gospel preeminence is needed. With due respect to the spirituality, biblical convictions, and competence of the other candidates, I view Dr. Tom Ascol as prepared providentially for the presidency of the SBC in this critical time. With no hesitation, I am supporting his candidacy for SBC president.

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I have read Tom Ascol’s treatment of the discussion surrounding the supposed overthrow of Roe v. Wade and the implications that has for the future of abortion in the United States. His treatment is sensitive, fittingly nuanced, biblically sound, pastoral, legally aware, clear, and fraternal in areas of disagreement among pro-life Christians. He points out that one area of disagreement among those who are pro-life is the degree, if any, of culpability on the part of the mother. This article was prompted in a positive way by his. My desire is to focus on the theology of responsible motherhood in the critical months from conception to birth.
When an abortion occurs, is there culpability? Every Christian should say, “Yes.” Upon whom does this culpability fall? Certainly it falls on the one whose profession puts himself, or herself, in the position of terminating the person who has been conceived. With just as much certainty, a biblical theology would point to both parents as culpable, in varying degrees depending on circumstances. In particular, however, caring for life from the moment of conception falls on the woman whose body has been designed by God both to conceive, carry, nourish, bring to term and give birth to the person conceived. This article will argue that this is an absolute ethical responsibility derived from God’s purpose and mandate at creation, continued after the fall (even in difficulties), reinforced by the reality of the incarnation, analogically emphasized by the doctrine of the new birth, and planted in the heart as an ineradicable element of conscience and knowledge of God.
When God created mankind in the persons of Adam and Eve, he clearly stated that created humanity, arising from his power and purpose, was male and female (Genesis 1:27; 5:1, 2). Denial of these two genders in their respective roles is a denial of the wisdom and prerogative of God in creation, particularly his design for mankind.  Perversion of the very precise and purposeful order of creation is viewed throughout Scripture as sinful and an evidence of human perversity in rebellion against the knowledge of God and knowledge embedded within the conscience. This purposeful, God-established distinction, is obvious from the very phenomena of creation (Romans 1:20, 24-25, 26-27). Violations of the distinctions are described as exchanging “natural relations for those that are contrary to nature” (Romans 1:26). “Contrary to nature” means contrary to the designed purpose given at creation. In this sense, all actions contrary to nature, even as contrary to moral law, are sins. Redemption and justification forgive transgressions and cleanse from sinful corruption that include these kinds of perversions (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). If they were not sin and worthy of condemnation, then there would be no need of the grace of justification in light of them.
The first commandment that the man and woman received as a couple, after God made the woman from the very bone and flesh of the man, was “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Genesis 2:21-25 and 1:28). This places on the couple, and particularly on the woman the stewardship from God himself to populate the world with image-bearers through procreation. The woman has a particular stewardship to do all that she can to bring to completion the fruitfulness of her womb; a pregnant woman has a specific commission from God issued at creation that will be in force as long as the earth stands. A conceived child is not her property nor her prerogative but is a stewardship from the Creator. The involvement of her body does not give her sovereignty over the life of the child but presents her with a solemn responsibility for protection of that life. This responsibility descends on her from above derived from a command and creation ordinance from God. The claim that a woman has a right over her own body is, in this particular case, clearly false for her body was given by God, designed by him peculiarly for this purpose. Like the unnatural in sexual involvements, both the desire and the action of attack on life in the womb is unnatural, contrary to the created nature of the woman and the life concerned, and is thus unlawful, sinful, and any perpetrator is culpable.
A pregnant woman has a specific commission from God issued at creation that will be in force as long as the earth stands. A conceived child is not her property nor her prerogative but is a stewardship from the Creator.
After the fall, the first judgment issued was in the form of a prophecy of redemption. This prophecy involved the woman giving birth to one who would crush the serpent’s head. The gravity of such a pregnancy is intensified in that the one to be born in order to defeat the serpent is called “her seed” or “her offspring.” The woman will have a child that is not from the seed implanted by a human male. Its true humanity comes from her alone. Her seed and her body will give rise to what Isaiah prophesied, “A virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (7:14). This cryptic language from Genesis and extended by Isaiah was not fully understood (Well, it has never been fully understood!) until Mary heard the announcement, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you: and for that reason the holy being conceived in you will be called, Son of God” (Luke 1:35). The Angel then told Joseph, after he had discovered that Mary was indeed pregnant, “The one conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.” The woman’s body was created for the purpose of bringing into the world the Messiah, mysteriously God and man in one person so that Elizabeth could say, “And how has it happened to me that the mother of my Lord would come to me?” (Luke 1:43). She said this less than one month after conception—Mary was mother and the child was Lord. In this light Paul taught, “The woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through the childbearing—if they are continuing in faith and love and holiness with self-control” (1 Timothy 2:15). Though the pain of childbirth is a curse of the fall, it is in the context of that pain that salvation comes—the childbearing. Paul refers here to the specific childbearing mentioned in Genesis 3:15 as the seed that would undo the work of Satan immediately followed by the promise of pain in that, and in all, childbearing (3:16). Every childbearing is a reminder both of original sin and the promise of redemption. The termination of the childbearing nurses a sinful prejudice against purposeful creation, the justness of the curse, and the mystery of redemption. The woman was given the assignment of bringing into the world its, and her, Savior. The Savior covenanted to be “born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, in order that we might receive the placement as sons” (Galatians 4:4, 5). These realities connected with the bearing and birthing of children are primordially immutable absolutes, an attack upon which is a moral challenge to the covenantal integrity of the triune God.
The Baptist Faith and Message affirmation that “Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord” reflects the biblical teaching concerning conception. David testified that he was “shapen in iniquity” and “in sin” at the point of conception (Psalm 51:5), that is, corrupt morally through his connection with Adam. His being was of moral stature from conception. At the moment of the conception of the Christ, he was of moral stature, “the holy thing conceived,” (Luke 1:35) and was seen as a person, the Lord, (Luke 1:43). Also, through the marvel and mystery of the union of Christ’s two natures in one person, we know that from the moment that the Holy Spirit came on Mary, the human nature had personhood, for in that event the power of the Most High also overshadowed her. The Son of God eternally-generated by the Most High, by that dynamic of generation, became one in person with the seed of the woman impregnated by the operation of the Holy Spirit. Abortion is nothing less that the taking of human life. It is an unnatural and unlawful act of aggression against the wise purpose of God both for the child and for the woman’s body. Those who violate this purpose are culpable.
The analogy to new birth gives another level of clarity and sobriety of the unified responsibility for life from conception to birth. Jesus said, “You must be born again” and apart from the new birth one can neither see nor enter the kingdom of God (John 3:1-8). Birth is the natural consequence of begetting. “Enosh lived ninety years and begot Cainan” (Genesis 5:9). “Noah begot three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth” (Genesis 6:10). The male planted the seed—begot—for these children and the entire process from that time of conception to their birth is collapsed into a single event. Peter presented the new birth in this way when he wrote, “who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). In the analogy between the operation of human corruption and the operation of divine truth, James traces the effect of corruption from conception to birth: “Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death” (James 1:15). The merciful work of the Lord in the new birth is described in these terms. “Of his own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures” (James 1:18). The point is, that the movement from begottenness to birth is seen as a unit. The one naturally gives rise to the other and it is God’s intent, as seen in his own action of regeneration, that nothing interrupt that connection.
Abortion is an unnatural and unlawful act of aggression against the wise purpose of God both for the child and for the woman’s body.
These moral realities are written on the heart. Both by observation of form and anatomy and by divine mandate, Adam and Eve knew their assigned places from the first consciousness of creation (Genesis 1:26-28; 2:20-25). Sabbath and fitting sexuality, representative of both tables of the law, were present in the earliest conscious experience. This knowledge does not leave the conscience.  In spite of the most precipitous decline into perfect lawlessness and aggressively flagrant abuse of fitness according to God’s purpose, Paul can write, “who knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them” (Romans 1:32). When Paul wrote of a “conscience seared with a hot iron” (1 Timothy 4:2), he is not referring to the loss of consciousness of right and wrong but to an aggressive and callous preference for one’s personal views over the God-centered propositions of implied rightness in creation and stated in Scripture. The point here is that no person is without a witness to the preeminent value of conceived life and our responsibility to nurture and protect it. One cannot argue that some women simply do not know what they are doing when they seek an abortion.
The implications of this doctrine first relate to the church and then to society. We can hope for no progress in society without an unequivocal conviction on the part of the church concerning both life at conception and parental, particularly female, stewardship of that life. We cannot present a theology that diminishes human responsibility for honoring with obedience God’s creation purpose, redemptive necessity, the new birth, and the law written on the heart. Those involved in an abortion should understand that this is not a neutral act in which some parties are innocent—except rarely—but each is culpable for the taking of human life. If the church is not convinced of this, we never will function as leaven to stop the rampant hideousness of abortion.

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The Supreme Court of the United States’ possible reversal of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion is reason for Christians and moral people everywhere to rejoice. Dobbs v. Jackson will go down in history as significant as Brown v. the Board of Education for overruling previous, unjust decisions by the Supreme Court. Much of the joy, however, has been drowned out by a vitriolic clash among pro-life Christians regarding how best to work for the abolition of abortion in our nation.
Many traditional “pro-life” leaders feel threatened by those who insist, in the language of the 2021 Southern Baptist resolution, on “abolishing abortion immediately without exception or compromise.” Denny Burk, who opposed that resolution, believes it to be “a repudiation of the pro-life movement” and claims that the messengers who overwhelmingly voted to adopt it were uninformed. Consequently, he is calling on Southern Baptists to attend the annual meeting in Anaheim next month to withstand any other attempts to encourage the SBC to reaffirm the views that were adopted in that 2021 resolution.
It seems to me that most of the people involved in this clash are genuinely committed to the abolition of abortion, though they may disagree on the best way to work for that. There are some elites within the pro-life establishment, however, who are taking positions that undermine our common goal. As we have seen in so many other areas of evangelical life the last several years, it is the elite class that is woefully out of step with the rank-and-file believers who are working hard to see the scourge of abortion brought to an immediate end in our nation.
Last week provided a perfect illustration what I am talking about. Those events highlight the divide that exists among sincere Christians who want to see the end of abortion in our country and also expose the pro-life elitists whose actions helped undermine what could have been a tremendous step to outlaw abortion in Louisiana.
For the first time in the history of the United States, a bill made it out of committee that had the prospect of making abortion illegal in the state of Louisiana (HB 813). Called the “Abolition of Abortion in Louisiana Act of 2022,” the bill contained language that should have caused all Christians to celebrate:
Section 2. Acknowledging the sanctity of innocent human life, created in the image of God, which should be equally protected from fertilization to natural death, the legislature hereby declares that the purpose of this Act is to:
(1) Fully recognize the human personhood of an unborn child at all stages of development prior to birth from the moment of fertilization.
(2) Ensure the right to life and equal protection of the laws to all unborn children from the moment of fertilization by protecting them by the same laws protecting other human beings.
(3) Recognize that the United States Constitution and the laws of the United States are the supreme law of the land.
Such language excites any Christian who genuinely wants to see the end of abortion, whether a self-identified “abolitionist” or not. The response from 76 pro-life groups, however, proved that such was not the case. Leaders from those groups, including the Southern Baptist Convention’s acting president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Brent Leatherwood, issued “An Open Letter to State Lawmakers from America’s Leading Pro-life Organizations.”
These leaders of the pro-life establishment express their complete opposition to a law that would treat any woman who procures an abortion as being culpable in any way. They build their argument on this stated premise:
The tragedy of abortion isn’t limited to the unborn child who loses her life. The mother who aborts her child is also Roe’s victim. She is the victim of a callous industry created to take lives; an industry that claims to provide for “women’s health,” but denies the reality that far too many American women suffered devastating physical and psychological damage following abortion.
According to that philosophy, all abortive women are victims. Because they suffer post-abortion trauma they cannot ever be held legally responsible for ending her preborn baby’s life. Strange logic that.
Shall we apply it to drunk driving, too? After all, professional marketers are paid around 6 billion dollars a year by the alcoholic beverage industry to convince people to drink booze. When a drunk driver kills a family of five, using the elitist-pro-life logic above, should we not hold the driver responsible because he also is a “victim of a callous industry”? After all, alcoholism is defined by the National Institutes of Health as “an impaired ability to stop or control alcohol”
To make sure that no one misunderstands the elitist-pro-life position Leatherwood, et al., continue:
Women are victims of abortion and require our compassion and support as well as ready access to counseling and social services in the days, weeks, months, and years following an abortion.
As national and state pro-life organizations, representing tens of millions of pro-life men, women, and children across the country, let us be clear: We state unequivocally that we do not support any measures seeking to criminalize or punish women and we stand firmly opposed to include [sic] such penalties in legislation. (emphasis in the original)
By that flawed logic, women who have abortions for any reason are never responsible in any way for the death of their babies. To hold them responsible, according to these elitist pro-life leaders, is incompatible with showing compassion and support.
In 2021 Southern Baptists adopted the most decisive anti-abortion resolution in the history of the convention. It builds on and extends the language of previous resolutions, affirming the sacredness of human life and calling for the immediate ending of abortion. Over 5,000 copies of the text of the resolution were printed and distributed to messengers before the vote. Denny Burk, who is one of the Southern Baptist theologians and ethicists who took exception to that strongest anti-abortion resolution Southern Baptists have ever adopted, provides a little better assessment of what a post-Roe Christian ethic should look like. But only a little. His arguments also lack the kind of clear, biblical thinking that is desperately needed as we move forward.
In an article entitled “Why Pro-Lifers Support Laws to Punish Abortionists but Not Mothers,” Burk tries to defend the “pro-life” position that both pro-abortionists and abolitionists see as clearly inconsistent. He writes:
Pro-lifers believe that it should be illegal to perform abortions. Thus we favor policies that punish those who perform abortions, not the mothers who allow them.
He divides his defense of this position into two dimensions: moral and legal. Morally, the reason that women who hire abortionists should never be punished is because “it is not always clear what level of culpability should be assigned to the mother.” He at least acknowledges that the woman has some “moral agency and culpability,” but because it is not always clear “to what degree she is implicated,” she should not be punished for her involvement in ending a human life.
His arguments about the legal dimension can be summed up in his opinion that, if the woman who hires an abortionist is held legally liable with the abortionist for ending a human life, it will be harder to convict the abortionist. I find his argument on this point (and those of Americans United for Life, whom he quotes) completely unconvincing. To provide one simple objection, if there’s no potential charge available, how can you make a plea bargain in exchange for testimony against the abortionist? But since these legal arguments are not germane to my concerns, I won’t engage them but simply encourage you to read them for yourself.
To summarize Dr. Burk’s moral argument, he believes that women who hire someone to abort their preborn babies are morally culpable in some degree, though it is difficult to know how much. Because of that difficulty, no woman should be held legally accountable in any sense for ending the life of their babies through abortion.
Rather than alleviate women who hire abortionists of all culpability, as the pro-life open letter does, Burk acknowledges that they have some responsibility. But because it is not easy to determine exactly how much or in exactly what way, they should not be prosecuted at all. Yet recognition of different levels of culpability in homicide cases has been a part of jurisprudence at least since Old Testament times. This is the rationale for cities of refuge, where those guilty of unintentional homicide could flee for protection from the manslayer (see Deuteronomy 19:1-13). Such cities, however, were no refuge for anyone who willfully or maliciously took life because that person was fully culpable for the homicide he or she committed.
Within American jurisprudence there are various classifications related to homicide laws (and some variance from state to state): murder, manslaughter, vehicular homicide, negligent homicide, conspiracy to commit murder, etc. The distinctions are due to the different degrees of culpability of the perpetrators. The court system has the responsibility of sorting that out, and there is very well-developed case law in the American system that helps to differentiate between varying levels of culpability. This analysis is commonplace—necessary any time the judicial system responds to the unjustified taking of a human life. The challenge that Burk identifies, varying levels of culpability, can be complex but it is not unique to the case of abortion. Legal systems are accustomed to dealing with this sort of complexity.
Does it not, then, make sense to allow the legal system to do its job regarding what charges to file and what sentence to impose for a homicide that occurs in an abortion, rather than using the fact that determining the degree of culpability is hard as an excuse to withhold any legal sanctions?
In light of these disagreements and the confusion they have spawned, here are my recommendations of some basic principles that all Christians should hold as we try to develop a common-sense ethic about abortion in a post-Roe nation.

Human life begins at conception/fertilization. On this I think all pro-lifers, abolitionists, and right-thinking Christians agree.
All killing of human life by another human is homicide.
There are varying degrees of culpability for homicide resulting in varying kinds of crimes. Some homicides are justified (self-defense) and some are first-degree murders. Others fall between that spectrum.
Both biblical and United States criminal law recognize #2 and #3.
LA HB813 sought to codify that a human life begins at conception/fertilization and is to be granted equal protection under the law from that point.
The Open Letter signed by ERLC acting President helped dissuade Louisiana legislators from passing the bill.
The Open Letter contradicted the 2021 SBC Resolution on abolishing abortion that the messengers adopted. I addressed this more fully in a thread on Twitter, but compare the language of the Open Letter quoted above to what SBC messengers approved in 2021:

RESOLVED, that the messengers of the SBC meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, June 15-16, 2021, do state unequivocally that abortion is murder, and we reject any position that allows for any exceptions to the legal protection of our preborn neighbors, compromises God’s holy standard of justice, or promotes any God-hating partiality (Psa 94:6; Isa 10:1-2; Prov 24:11; Psa 82:1-4), and…
RESOLVED, that we affirm that the murder of preborn children is a crime against humanity that must be punished equally under the law, and be it further
RESOLVED, that we humbly confess and lament any complicity in recognizing exceptions that legitimize or regulate abortion, and of any apathy, in not laboring with the power and influence we have to abolish abortion, and be it further
RESOLVED, that as Southern Baptists we will engage, with God’s help, in establishing equal justice and protection for the preborn according to the authority of God’s Word as well as local and federal law, and call upon pastors and leaders to use their God-given gifts of preaching, teaching, and leading with one unified, principled, prophetic voice to abolish abortion… (emphasis added)

The moral law of God functions both to restrain evil and instruct in what is good and right. In the Protestant-Reformed tradition these functions have been regarded as the second and third uses of the law, respectively. Civil law that prohibits hiring an abortionist and affixes penalties for doing so would, thereby, help teach everyone, including women who might contemplate seeking an abortion, that abortion is homicide.
It is right to legally prohibit abortion by granting equal protection under the law to preborn humans. It is at this point that the stark inconsistencies of the professional pro-life position become apparent. They want to affirm the full humanity of preborn babies but do not want to afford them equal protection under the law that is afforded to humans who survive the womb because either the woman who hires an abortionist is not culpable (i.e. Brent Leatherwood and the other Open Letter signers) or the degree of her culpability is too difficult to discern (i.e. Burk). Were a preborn child granted equal protection, then her homicide would be treated like that of any other homicide that had co-conspirators or accomplices requiring the court system to sort it out legally.
Such prohibition does not mean that all women seeking abortion, doctors performing them, and helpers facilitating them would be judged equally culpable or equally guilty. As in all homicide cases, each case should be adjudicated based on the facts and any mitigating circumstances (#3 above).
This would mean that no woman who arranges to have an abortion would be judged either automatically guilty or innocent of any particular crime simply because she is a woman or simply because she had an abortion.

These 11 principles can help frame the debate going forward for Christians who take the written Word of God seriously. All but one of them (#7, which is particularly of concern to Southern Baptists) deal with issues that all evangelicals should think through carefully.
We should all want to end the holocaust of abortion. But we should work to be precise in our language and measured in our judgments. Much confusion, I believe, has resulted from a lack of appropriate nuance in our communication at this point.
While abortion is always homicide, it is not necessarily murder on the part of everyone involved (though it sometimes is). When some who want to see abortion abolished hear “abortion is murder and should be criminalized,” they might think that those talking this way are advocating murder charges for every mother, father, and all others involved in such a killing. Emphatically, this is not my position.
We must not err on either side at this point. That is, we must not treat all post-abortive mothers as victims. But neither must we treat them all as murderers. Each case must be considered on its own merits. Those forced into having abortions by abusive boyfriends or pimps are victims. Those who choose to kill their preborn children of their own volition while #ShoutingTheirAbortions are murderers, and there are numerous scenarios in between. We must care for and proclaim the gospel to all these women as we call upon civil magistrates to provide preborn children the equal protection of the law and let the legal system do its job in determining the degree of culpability in each case.
That is why I refer to elective abortion as homicide, as opposed to murder. It should be legally prohibited and preborn children at risk of being killed should receive the equal protection of the law. I cannot imagine why any Christian who believes that abortion ends the life of one of God’s image-bearers would disagree with this.
It is important for Christians to get the nature of abortion right. If, like the open letter, we treat as victims all women who pay abortionists to kill their preborn babies, then we cut them off from the grace of God in Christ Jesus. The Lord Jesus is a real Savior for real sinners. If you convince someone that they are not responsible for their sin, then you eliminate their need of a Savior for that sin and effectively shut them up to a life of trying to deal with what they have done without the forgiveness that is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Are women who seek abortions victims? Of course, in the sense that every human being is a victim of sin and its consequences. Beyond that there is no doubt that some women are coerced and manipulated into abortion due to being trafficked or otherwise abused. As the Bible requires in making any judgment, all the relevant facts must be taken into account. But these realities do not mean that as a class all women who procure abortions are victims in some special sense, or on par with the babies that are intentionally killed by the procedure. We should be compassionate toward all women who seek an abortion and especially to those who have been lied to, intimidated, or in some other way manipulated into participating in that act of homicide. But I would defy Brent Leatherwood and the pro-life leaders who signed the open letter to convince the women who “shout their abortion” that they should see themselves that way. Better yet, I would encourage them to watch these testimonies of post-abortive women.
If a person is only a victim and has done nothing wrong, then she doesn’t need forgiveness. But those who are guilty of sin do. Jesus did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. Until abortionists and the women who pay for their services come to terms with their complicity in the ending of a human life that is made in the image of God, they will never seek forgiveness. Until reality is honestly assessed, genuine repentance will never be sincerely professed.
So my plea to those who think they are being compassionate to women by absolving them of any responsibility in the abortion they freely secure is to recognize that they are doing tremendous spiritual damage to the very people they desire to help. Such compassion is cruel.
There is a Savior for sinners, including those who are guilty of participating in the sin of abortion. Jesus Christ came into the world to live a righteous life and die a sacrificial death so that all who repent and look to Him in faith might be saved. His grace is enough to forgive both abortionists and those who employ them to end the life of their preborn child.
So while we work for justice to protect the lives of the preborn, let’s never forget to preach the gospel that saves even the foremost of sinners and encourage abortionists, those who employ them, pro-lifers, and abolitionists to trust the Lord Jesus Christ and find eternal life in Him.

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La Alianza is a collaboration of Hispanic Southern Baptist leaders throughout the United States. The following open letter came unsolicited and is posted here at their request.
La Alianza is a group of Hispanic leaders from different states that have been meeting for the last months with the purpose of supporting each other through the ministry of prayer, preaching, and the theological proclamation of the truths of the Word of God.
As pastors and messengers at the upcoming annual meeting in Anaheim California, we are pleased to announce our endorsement of Dr. Tom Ascol for President of the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Voddie Baucham for President of the SBC Pastor’s Conference, and Dr. Javier Chavez for SBC Recording-Secretary.
The men mentioned above are known for their leadership profile, their spirit of service, and their strong convictions to see a unified convention centered around the Gospel.
As Southern Baptists we are all about the Great Commission, our adherence to the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, and the unity of our convention across all languages and ethnicities.
Jaime LoayzaIglesia Gracia Internacional (MS)
Joel SalazarIglesia Biblica Ciudad de Gracia (AZ)
Omar Reynoso HenriquezMisión Bautista (NH)
Javier EsquivelIglesia Bautista Castillo Fuerte (MA)
Gilmer MauricioIglesia Bautista Restauracion Familiar (IA)
Marin LeyvaIglesia Woodlawn (WA)
Yonathan MorisGrace Community Church (TX)
Marino MartinezPrimera Iglesia Bautista Hispana Tallahassee (FL)
Carlos MaysonetIglesia Hispana Bautista Raham (FL)
Luis LeonIglesia Hispana Bautista Raham (FL)
Johnny RodriguezNorth Florida BC Hispanic (FL)
Josh ChavezAmistad Cristiana International (GA)
Rodrigo TexmayéIglesia Bautista Shalom (GA)
Raudel SantiagoIglesia Bautista Esperanza (GA)
Edgar MontañoIglesia Nueva Esperanza (GA)
Wilmer MarinComunidad Cristiana Internacional (GA)
Santos CastilloTabernaculo Bautista Emanuel (GA)
Hector NavarretePrimera Iglesia Bautista Hispana Rome (GA)
Jose VeraIglesia Biblica Reformada Rey de Gloria (GA)
Jose Luis EscobarIglesia Bautista Dulce Refugio (GA)
Marcos TelloIglesia Bautista Nueva Vida (GA)
Andres RodriguezHispanic Ministry Mt. Zion Baptist Church (GA)
Jaime CastañedaIglesia Bautista Luz y Vida (GA)
Ruben HernandezPrimera Iglesia Bautista Hispana de Jefferson (GA)
Martin RodriguezMinisterio Conexión (GA)

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