The Chalcedonian Definition of 451 has been the touchstone of orthodox Christology for the past millennium and a half. In this definition was found the resolution to the complex Christological debates of the fourth and fifth centuries. Here, Scripture’s teaching of the hypostatic union was codified for the church: the incarnate Christ is one divine person who subsists in two distinct yet united natures, divine and human. He is not two persons, as the Nestorians taught, but rather “one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son.” Nor does He subsist in only one nature, a divine-human hybrid, as the Monophysites taught, but rather is to be “acknowledged in two natures inconfusedly [and] unchangeably… the difference of the natures being in no way removed because of the union, but rather the properties of each nature being preserved.” One person, two natures. This is the doctrine of the hypostatic union, a cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith.

But as brilliant as the Chalcedonian definition was, it did not answer every question that was to arise in the succeeding decades. In the late sixth and early seventh centuries, a debate arose over whether Christ had one will or two. Sure, He had two natures, one divine and one human. But did that mean He had two wills, one divine and one human? Or, since He was one divine person, did He have just one divine will?

The Monothelite Controversy

This debate has been dubbed “the Monothelite controversy.” Those who taught that Christ had only one divine will were called Monothelites (monos, “one,” thelēma, “will”), and those who taught that He had two wills—one divine and one human—were called Dyothelites (duo, “two,” thelēma, “will”).

The disagreement basically boiled down to whether the faculty of will is a property of a person or a nature. If the faculty of will were a property of a person and not a nature, we would expect Christ, who is one person, to have only one will. But if the faculty of will were a property of a nature and not a person, we would expect Christ, who has two natures, to have two wills. So which is it? Does will belong with person or nature? Does the incarnate Christ have one will or two?

The debate was hashed out in earnest in the events leading up to the Third Council of Constantinople in 680 and 681, when 164 bishops convened to decide the matter. The Monothelite cause was taken up by Macarius I of Antioch, but the majority of the bishops agreed with the writings of Maximus the Confessor of Constantinople (ca. 580–662), a learned monk who argued vociferously for a Dyothelite Christology. The Sixth Ecumenical Council concluded that Christ had to have both a divine will and a human will. Monothelitism was condemned as a heresy leading to Monophysitism, Macarius was deposed, and Dyothelitism was codified as orthodox Christology.

Only a Human Will?

But what was the case against Monothelitism? Well, in the first place, if the incarnate Christ had only one will, which will did He have, and which did He lack? On the one hand, you could argue that part of becoming truly human required the Son to have a human will, and if He could only have one will, then it must have been the divine will that He lacked.

But this raises a number of problems. If Christ, being one person, has only one will, then will must be a property of person rather than nature. This would mean that, from eternity, the Son, being a divine person, had a divine will—up until the incarnation, that is. For when the Word became flesh and took on a human will, He would have had to shed the divine will that He possessed from all eternity. This would be to predicate genuine change in the Second Person of the Trinity, undermining divine immutability. He would have transmuted from (a) a divine person with a divine will to (b) a human person with a human will.

But of course Christ did not become a human person (anhypostasis), as even the Monothelites stipulated. He was a divine person who assumed a human nature into personal union with His divine nature. For this reason, it has not been argued that Christ’s one will was human.

Only a Divine Will?

Well, if the incarnate Christ had only one will, and it wasn’t a human will, it must have been a divine will. This is what the Monothelites argued. The eternal Son was a divine person, and thus had a divine will from all eternity. When He assumed a human nature in the incarnation, He remained a single divine person and thus retained a single divine will. But because (they argued) will is a property of person and not nature, the incarnate Christ did not have a human will.

But does the Bible support that claim? There are at least four reasons to answer in the negative. Monothelite Christology is fatal to Chalcedonian orthodoxy, fatal to the doctrine of the Trinity, fatal to the humanity of Christ, and fatal to the Gospel itself.

Fatal to Chalcedonian Orthodoxy

The first problem with Monothelitism is that it is fatal to Chalcedonian orthodoxy, which is a biblically faithful synthesis of scriptural teaching concerning the person of Christ.

Recall that the crux of this debate is whether the faculty of will is a property of person or nature. If will belongs to person, and Christ is one person, then Christ can have only one will. If will belongs to nature, and Christ has two natures, then Christ must have two wills. Interestingly, Chalcedon weighs in on this question, and in so doing it commends Dyothelitism.

The Definition says that Christ assumed a human nature in order to be “perfect in manhood,” “truly man,” and “consubstantial [i.e., of the same nature] with us according to the manhood.” Then, it defines the human nature Christ assumed by saying He was “of a rational soul and body.” According to Chalcedon, a human nature is a rational soul and body.

But it is virtually universally acknowledged that the will is a faculty of the human soul, alongside the intellect. A rational soul is equipped with (a) a mind that interprets and understands the world and (b) a will that makes choices informed by that understanding. This means that Christ’s human soul is that by which He thinks, understands, and makes choices. The faculty of the will is located in the rational soul, which Chalcedon says was part of that human nature that the Son assumed to be consubstantial with us.

In other words, Chalcedon locates the will in the soul, and it locates the soul in the nature, not the person.[1] Since will is a property of nature, and Christ subsists in two natures, Chalcedon constrains us to a Dyothelite Christology. In Chalcedonian terms, Monothelitism is inherently monophysitic, because one will implies one nature.[2]

Fatal to the Trinity

Second, Monothelitism is fatal to the doctrine of the Trinity. In the first place, it runs afoul of an essential maxim that was universally accepted in early orthodox Trinitarianism: the doctrine of inseparable operations.

Versions of the phrase opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt (“the external works of the Trinity are undivided/indivisible”), along with its Greek counterpart, appear throughout the writings of such pro-Nicene fathers as Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine. It means that the acts of the Triune God cannot be divided up among the three persons, but that each divine person performs each divine act.[3] Just as God’s nature is indivisible, so also His acts are indivisible.

This reasoning assumes that a person’s nature is the principle by which he acts. Whatever works a person performs, he does so by virtue of the nature in which he subsists. So, Christ sleeps by virtue of His human nature (Matt 8:24; cf. Ps 121:4), but calms the storm by virtue of His divine nature (Matt 8:26; cf. Job 38:8). In other words, the doctrine of inseparable operations is rooted in the notion that a person’s acts—which would include acts of his will—are a function of his nature.

In this way, pro-Nicene trinitarianism locates the will in nature rather than person, consistent with Dyothelitism. But if, as the Monothelites contend, will were a property of person rather than nature, then the external acts of the Trinity could be divided among the three persons, conceived as three separate centers of consciousness with three separate wills. When worked out consistently, the metaphysics of Monothelitism undermines a fundamental staple of orthodox trinitarianism.

If Jesus cannot make the human choice to withstand temptation and choose obedience to His Father, He is not truly human.

Further, Monothelitism strikes at trinitarian unity in another way. In Matthew 26:39, Jesus famously prays that the cup of the Father’s wrath might pass from Him. “Yet,” He says, “not as I will, but as You will.” Though this statement is fraught with mystery, pro-Chalcedonian Christology teaches that this was an instance in which Jesus submitted His human will (which righteously recoiled from an uninhibited sprint into the wrath of God) to the divine will. According to His holy humanity, there is some righteous backwardness that the Son feels when contemplating the punishment of the cross. But such hesitation is quickly remedied by submitting His human will to the divine will (the will shared by Father, Son, and Spirit).

But according to Monothelitism, Jesus had no human will. He must therefore be speaking of subjecting His distinct divine will to the Father’s distinct divine will. Even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that these are distinct faculties of willing (by treating will as a property of personhood), could it be even theoretically possible for there to be a distinction in what the divine Son wants and what the divine Father wants? How can it be possible for two divine persons to will contrary to one another? On a Monothelite reading of Matthew 26:39, it seems impossible to avoid positing a fatal disruption between the person of the Father and the person of the Son.

Fatal to the Humanity of Christ

A third problem with Monothelitism is that it is fatal to the genuine humanity of Christ. If Christ didn’t assume a human will in His incarnation, it seems difficult to argue convincingly that Christ was and is truly human. To put it simply, genuine humans make human choices by virtue of their human wills! To be bereft of a human faculty of willing is to be deprived of the capacity to make genuinely human choices. Without that capacity, it would seem that our Savior would be decidedly unlike us in a most significant way.

Specifically, the absence of a distinct human will seems clearly to run afoul of the notion that Jesus endured genuine temptation (e.g., Matt 4:1–11). James 1:13 teaches that God by definition cannot be tempted, and so Jesus could not have been tempted by virtue of anything of His divinity. At the same time, the nature of temptation is a proposal to the will that it should consent to sin. Jesus connects temptation to the will when He counsels His sleeping disciples to pray that they may not enter into temptation, for though their spirit is willing their flesh is weak (Matt 26:41). Temptation is a proposal to the will, and one succumbs to temptation by choosing sin rather than obedience.

Now, if Jesus could not be tempted by virtue of His deity (Jas 1:13), He could only be tempted by virtue of His humanity. But if temptation is a proposal to the will that it should choose sin, then Jesus must have had a human will to which temptation proposed sin. Only in this way could He be our sympathetic high priest “who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15).[4]

If Jesus cannot make the human choice to withstand temptation and choose obedience to His Father, He is not truly human. And since temptation is a proposal to the will to choose disobedience, He had to have had a human will. The alternative is fatal to His genuine humanity. To be truly human, Jesus must have a human will.

Fatal to the Gospel

And that is intimately related to the fourth problem with Monothelitism: it is fatal to the Gospel itself, for if Christ was not Himself truly human, He could not be the Mediator between God and men. Apart from Christ’s genuine humanity, the sons of Adam are left to cry with Job, “He is not a man as I am that I may answer Him, that we may go to court together. There is no umpire between us, who may lay his hand upon us both” (Job 9:32–33).

Maximus the Confessor famously argued this point by appealing to another well-known trinitarian maxim from the fourth century, this one from the pen of Gregory of Nazianzus (329–390). In defending the full humanity of Christ against the Apollinarians, who claimed that Christ assumed only a human body but not a human soul, Gregory famously argued, “That which is not assumed is not healed.”

That is to say, Christ is our Savior by His substitutionary saving work. He saves us first of all by taking on a full and true human nature (Phil 2:7), so that He is genuinely “consubstantial with us according to the manhood,” able to stand in man’s place as a genuine man, representing us in every way (1 Tim 2:5). If there were an aspect of humanity that Christ failed to assume to Himself, then that aspect could not be healed by His substitutionary saving work. If Christ was to heal the human will (along with the rest of human nature), he had to have assumed a human will in His incarnation.

Besides, the whole point of the incarnation was that our penalty had to be paid by a true man. Without a human will, Jesus lacks something that is constitutive of our nature, and is thus disqualified from standing in our place.

Still further, our Savior must not only satisfy the penal demands of the law by dying on behalf of sinners. He must also satisfy the positive demands of the law by obeying on behalf of sinners (Matt 3:15; 5:20; Gal 4:4–6). Jesus is the Last Adam (Rom 5:14; 1 Cor 15:45), come to succeed precisely where the first Adam had failed (1 Cor 15:21–22; cf. Luke 4:1–13). His obedience to the law of God would be the substance of the righteousness credited to those who believe (Rom 5:18–19; cf. 4:3–6; 2 Cor 5:21).

But that obedience had to be the obedience of a genuine man. If Christ, the Last Adam, cannot choose—as a man—to walk in obedience to God’s law, precisely in the way the first Adam failed, then He cannotstand in our place as our Substitute and accomplish our justification as our federal head.[5] And He cannot make that choice as a man without a human will. Wellum is right when he says, “It is only by affirming that Christ has a human will that we can do justice to the obedience of the Son as a man which is so foundational to Christ’s work for us.”[6]

A Biblical Doctrine

It’s often said or implied that such a doctrine, while historically well-attested and theologically necessary, lacks textual foundation. But that is not so. Scripture speaks of Jesus’ human will when it speaks of Him willing (θέλω) to do things that are not proper to deity, like moving from one location to another (John 1:43), drinking or not (Matt 27:34), or obeying (Mark 14:12; Phil 2:8). Scripture speaks of Jesus’ divine will, for example, in Matthew 23:37, when He says He often wanted to gather the children of Jerusalem throughout her history of killing her prophets and stoning God’s messengers. He identifies Himself as the patient God who desired (θέλω), long before His incarnation, to deliver His people.

If Christ was to heal the human will, he had to have assumed a human will in His incarnation.

Another example of Christ’s divine will is seen in John 5:21, where Jesus grounds His equality with the Father (5:18) in their inseparable operations (5:19). In verse 21, He says that one of those divine works which He shares with the Father is giving spiritual life—a prerogative of deity—“to whom He wills.”

It is true, as has been shown, that if you deny Dyothelitism, you cannot consistently maintain a Chalcedonian Christology or Nicene Trinitarianism, you undermine the genuine humanity of Christ by suggesting He lacks a human will, and thus you undermine the Gospel which is founded upon representative substitution. But it is also true that Dyothelitism is a biblical doctrine.

Conclusion

Therefore, what at first may seem like an arcane dispute about meaningless doctrinal minutia is revealed to be fundamental to the humanity of our Mediator and thus the ground of all our hope. The Third Council of Constantinople concluded the same and condemned Monothelitism, establishing Dyothelitism as the orthodox teaching of the church. The faculty of will is a property of nature, not person. And since the one man, Christ Jesus, subsists in both divine and human natures, He has two wills: divine and human. It was by virtue of His human will that He made human choices—choices to resist temptation, to obey God’s law in the place of sinners, and to bear the curse of God’s law in the place of those same sinners.

Notably, Dyothelitism also relates quite closely to a contemporary controversy in the evangelical church: the EFS/ERAS debate. Since (a) the Godhead is three persons subsisting in one divine nature, and since (b) will is a property of nature and not person, therefore, (c) there are not three faculties of will in God by virtue of the three persons, but one faculty of will in God by virtue of the one divine nature.

Consubstantial with one another, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit exercise volitions by virtue of the identical faculty of willing. Since the single divine will cannot be “subjected” or “subordinated” to itself, there can be no eternal functional subordination or eternal relations of authority and submission within the Trinity.

[1] Interestingly, Wellum notes, “In the Patristic era, the word-flesh Christologies of Arius, Apollinarius, et al., also identified ‘person’ with ‘soul,’ ‘will,’ ‘mind,’ which orthodoxy rejected” (God the Son Incarnate, 338n101). If Chalcedon located will in the nature, while Arius and Apollinarius located will in the person, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that locating the will in the person is heretical.

[2] Besides this, I’d argue that most Christians implicitly know that will is a property of nature and not person. When we engage in the debate over the bondage and freedom of the will and man’s depravity, we explain the reality that, apart from regenerating grace, though man’s will is free to make choices, it is not free not to choose rightly. Man is not an automaton unable to choose between alternatives, but he is depraved, unable to choose righteousness. He has a will, but his will is bound to act in accordance with his nature.

[3] For example, the Father creates (1 Cor 8:6), the Son creates (Col 1:16), and the Spirit creates (Gen 1:2; Ps 33:6), but there is only one act of creating and thus only one cosmos created.

[4] Note, this is not to suggest either (a) that Jesus was peccable (He was not, John 5:19), or (b) that Jesus was tempted internally (He was only tempted externally, John 14:30; cf. Matt 4:1–11; Jas 1:14).

[5] Wellum, God the Son Incarnate, 348.

[6] Ibid., 346–47, emphasis original.

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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Few things are more important than knowing and understanding God’s holiness. Proverbs 9:10 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” If we want to have any wisdom at all or if we want to begin to make any progress in understanding God, ourselves, and the world, then we must seek to know the Holy One.

After understanding the meaning of God’s holiness as best we can with our humanity, we are left with a significant question for consideration: how does the holiness of God impact His relationship with us as sinners?

The Bible spends a great deal of time unpacking the meaning of God’s holiness and establishing the reality that we are sinners. Unlike the general view of the world about the goodness of people, the Bible’s description of mortal beings is not merely that we are sinful people, but that we are totally depraved. Apart from Christ, every person is dead in and in love with sin, rebellious against God, detestable, and deceived – not only about God – but about their own heart. This truth about sinners only makes sense when we arrive at the correct understanding about the absolute holiness of God.

If we want to have any wisdom at all or if we want to begin to make any progress in understanding God, ourselves, and the world, then we must seek to know the Holy One.

There is a massive tension when God, who is holy, interacts with people who are not – and many people cannot grasp this concept.

First, we must understand that God’s holiness ensures wrath on sinners.

This is one reason why we don’t like to talk about God’s holiness – because it inevitably leads to the necessary conclusion that God’s wrath comes upon the wicked. There are many clear statements that bear this out, starting with Psalm 5:4-6. Here, the Psalmist gives us an unmistakable statement about God’s hatred of wickedness. God does not merely hate wickedness in some abstract sense, nor does He merely hate wicked things people do because they harm others. Rather, God hates all who do iniquity. God’s holiness means that God destroys all those who speak falsehood, which is just another way of saying ‘everyone who is a sinner.’ God abhors liars and violent people.

We have several examples of this playing out in Scripture. In Genesis 6, we observe a narrative of God in His holiness, looking at humanity, examining the heart, intentions, and deeds. When God looks at humanity from every angle, all He sees is continual evil. God’s response is total destruction of the world and an uncreation of creation. The wrath of God comes, not just on one person, family, or nation, but on the entire world. This response of God should not be shocking if we understand that God is holy, because when God’s holiness comes upon mankind’s sin, wrath is the outcome.

Thankfully, God’s holiness also ensures grace for sinners.

No one should be surprised that God’s holiness is the basis of His wrath toward sinners, and yet it is unexpected to learn that God’s holiness is also the foundation of His grace toward sinners. This fact is crucial because it gives legs to our faith; it gives certainty to our hearts; and it strengthens us when we discover that God’s grace is not arbitrary whimsical, mutable, or temporary. Because God is holy, He does not always bring wrath on sinners but shows mercy and grace.

There is no greater example of this reality than the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. As we see in Psalm 22 (words which Jesus uttered on the cross), what gave Jesus the courage, strength, and fortitude to go through the cross, enduring the holy wrath of God even though He was righteous and holy Himself – was that God was holy (v. 3). God’s holiness was Christ’s strength as He suffered and died for the sins of humanity.

Christ knew that God’s holy character provided the absolute confidence that God would be faithful to His covenant promises. God’s perfect holiness meant that Jesus’ death would not be in vain and that the promises of God to bring salvation to His people would be fulfilled. On the cross, the Messiah looked back at the fathers who trusted God and were delivered, and He knew God would deliver Him from death through the resurrection because God is holy. What an amazing reality to consider that God’s holiness not only ensures wrath upon sinners but grace for sinners.

God’s holiness was Christ’s strength as He suffered and died for the sins of humanity.

Finally, the consequence of God’s holiness depends on the offering the sinner brings.

Here’s the question: When individuals come before a holy God, what should they bring to make them acceptable to their Lord? Every sinner comes before God with an offering or some reason for God to accept him. Whether sinners incur God’s wrath or receive His grace depends on what they bring into His presence for their sins.

This is graphically and tragically played out for us in Leviticus 9-10. God explicitly commands the priests not to offer something on the altar that is strange, foreign, or outside the prescribed offerings – or there will be consequences. Nadab and Abihu ignored that command and were consumed; their sacrifice was rejected. As this passage instructs us, when people come into the presence of God, if they do not come with a sacrifice that atones for their sins, the holiness of God will consume them.

All the Old Testament sacrifices were a picture of the one, final, true sacrifice that God would provide for the sins of His people: the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It is only this sacrifice that God accepts to atone for the sins of sinners. If we are reading Leviticus 9-10 correctly, we will understand this very important truth: if people come to God with anything other than the blood of Jesus Christ to atone for their sins, they will be destroyed by His holiness in wrath.

A line from the old hymn “Rock of Ages” sums up this theme so well: “Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling.” We do not come to Christ with anything of value, worth, or merit. Rather, we come as sinners in need of a Savior and all our trust is in Christ.

It is vital we do not forget the holiness of God. His holiness is our anchor during the dark night of the soul. When Satan tempts, condemns, accuses, or tells us we are unworthy, doubtful, fearful, wicked, ungodly people, we recognize that, though our faith might sometimes be weak, our God is not. He is holy and will meet us with grace through Jesus Christ.