Farewel happy Fields, where Joy for ever dwells:

Hail horrours, hail infernal world,

and thou profoundest Hell receive thy new Possessor.

Milton places those words in the mouth of the fallen archangel, lying on the burning lake with his legions around him, “thunder-struck and astonished,” the light of heaven fading on him even as the darkness closes in. It is one of the most stunning moments in English prose. Milton had studied the subject deeply and put into words what the rest of us could not. These were not always monsters. They were, as he says elsewhere, “the flower of Heaven,” the brightest of God’s creatures, beautiful beyond description, standing nearest the throne, the first to behold the glory of God.¹

And then they fell.

In the full weight of that word. A catastrophic, irreversible plunge from the highest dignity, into an estate from which there is no recovery, no repentance, no Mediator to undo what was done. Whatever else we say about the fall of the angels, we need to feel the staggering distance between what they were and what they are now.

———

We have already established, earlier in this series, what the angels are. They are the first creatures, made on the first day, before the sun and stars existed, “Let there be light.” They are the host of heaven, ordered and ranked, created by the will of God before He ever spoke of man. They are senior to us in every way a creature can be senior to another: created first, possessed of greater knowledge, greater power, a nature unencumbered by three-dimensional space and time, standing in direct apprehension of the glory of God. Whatever majesty we ascribe to the unfallen angels who remain, we must understand that the ones who fell once had that same majesty. Satan did not begin as a monster. He began as one of the most glorious beings God ever made.

The underlying question remains. What could move a creature of that intelligence and majesty, standing in the very presence of an all-wise and all-good God, to rebel against Him?

Augustine’s answer is pride. Superbia. The will, capable of standing, choosing instead to exalt itself, to love itself rather than God, to prefer its own glory to the glory of the One who made them. This is correct as far as it goes, and it is without question the root explanation. But pride has an occasion. A creature does not simply decide, for no reason, to hate his Maker. Something was shown to him, something was commanded of him, some purpose of God was disclosed, and in that disclosure, pride found its provocation, and broke into open rebellion.2

Many have been told that Satan wanted absolute supremacy. That he became jealous of his Maker and wanted to take His place. This is a stretch. It imports into the event a heavenly competition between two nearly equal powers, which is neither good theology nor good exegesis. Satan knew perfectly well that he was a mere speck before the Triune God. However glorious he was, even he hid his face before that glory. Augustine diagnoses it differently. He proposes that it was Satan’s ambition to become like God, a refusal to remain a creature. That is a more defensible reading, and better than the popular one.

Increase Mather offers a possibility that deserves serious attention. He passes over it rather quickly, but the weight of it is considerable. He suggests that the occasion of the fall was the disclosure to the angels of God’s purpose for man: specifically, that they would be ministering spirits to this small, flesh-bound creature, and that this creature, by every heavenly standard the weaker, would be made after the very image of God Himself. The purpose of all creation, heaven and earth together, belonged to this little race. The angels, senior, glorious, mighty and wonderful, the first creation by every measure, were shown that the inferior race, made of dust, formed last, lower than themselves in every created respect, would be the race the eternal Son would join to His own Person. And the angelic host, for all its dignity, would be appointed to serve them. “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14).3

What they were not shown was the full mystery. Paul tells us that “none of the princes of this world knew” the hidden wisdom of God, for “had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). The demonic powers did not understand what the cross would accomplish. They saw the Son take flesh. They did not see what that flesh, dead and raised, would mean for the race they despised and for themselves. They moved Judas. They moved Pilate. They moved the crowd. And in doing so, they walked straight into their own trap. The revelation that provoked their pride was real. The mystery that sealed their doom was hidden from them. Until it was too late.4

For a creature already capable of pride, that revelation is unbearable. Servanthood to an inferior race, chosen by God, is the precise wound that pride cannot handle. Mather’s thoughts on the fall are most helpful here.

———

Lest we make more of this than we should, Scripture does not recount the fall of the angels. It simply affirms it. Jude tells us they “kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation” (Jude 6). Peter tells us God cast them down and delivered them into chains of darkness (2 Peter 2:4). Many other passages drop secondary hints about their condition. But the event itself, the exact reason of the temptation, the timing relative to the six days, none of this is given to us directly, nor does the silence bear any eternal weight. Mather is reasoning. He is doing what good theologians do with the data Scripture gives: following the implications of what is revealed into territory Scripture leaves blank, while being honest that this is exactly what he is doing. So am I, I suppose. But we have such a low grade understanding regarding these things that a bit of corrective thought might be helpful.5

Now follow the implication for a moment, because if Mather is right, it explains things that are otherwise difficult to account for.

It explains, for instance, the particular character of the enmity. The demonic hatred of mankind is personal, sustained, and aimed with peculiar intensity at the very things that mark humanity as the object of God’s special purpose. The serpent does not simply try to kill Adam and Eve outright. He is far too intelligent for that. He attacks the image of God in them, which results in the death of body and soul. If Mather’s thought is correct, the fall of the angels and the ruin of mankind are connected at the root. The angels’ rebellion was provoked, at least in part, by God’s intention for man.

It explains why we are never told the angels who fell are offered redemption. Hebrews is explicit, and startling once it lands: Christ “took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham” (Hebrews 2:16). There was no plan of redemption for the angels who sinned, because the entire economy of redemption was, from before the foundation of the world, fitted to mankind only. We have a Mediator who shares our nature. They have none who shares theirs. We were given a reprieve purchased at infinite cost. They were given nothing. No provision was made for their kind of creature. They sinned once, and the judgment fell at once and finally.6

It explains what Satan and his host hate most about us. We bear the image of God and carry His own breath (Genesis 2:7). God never breathed into angels. That distinction cuts deeply. Angels were first. They are more beautiful, more powerful, more brilliant, exceeding mankind in every natural way. But they do not carry His breath. We do. Our souls do. And if Mather’s idea holds, the fallen angels understood, from the very moment of their rebellion, that this lesser creature, this race of red dust, was being given something they themselves were never given: the image of the very God they were rejecting (Genesis 1:26–27). The separation of light from darkness on the first day may well mark the very moment the lines were drawn in heaven.7

It explains, perhaps most movingly, the peculiar grief that must have attended the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.

When Satan stood before the incarnate Son, he was testing the creature part of Him. But he was also standing face to face with his Creator, and with the very purpose he had once rebelled against. The kingdoms he offered Christ were offered in full knowledge that this was the race he had refused to serve, the flesh he had despised, when he first heard of it in heaven. Every word out of his mouth stunk of the bitterness of a being who had surrendered everything, glory, blessedness, habitation, estate, rather than bow before the One he was now looking at in flesh he despised.

Let me offer you a thought on what that bitterness was made of. Satan was not created bitter. Created in the light of God, he was made for felicity, oriented by nature toward the good. What the fall did was corrupt it. And this is the thing that popular treatments of Satan almost always miss: the opposite of love is not hate. It is pride. Hate is the fruit of pride. Pride is love rotting inward, the will curving back upon itself, refusing to move outward toward God and toward the other. What comes out the other side of that inward rot is a hot, ancient, purposeful bile that we call hatred. Luther saw this. He described the condition of fallen man as the soul turned in upon itself (incurvatus in se), and what he said of man is likely true of the angels. The same energy made for worship, when turned inward by pride, sours. It curdles. It becomes the most concentrated toxin the universe has ever known.8

Satan is a creature in whom love has been rotting for millennia, and getting worse. Every assault the demonic host has ever made upon the human race, elect or reprobate, flows from that source: pride that became hatred, hatred that has had all of history to deepen, in a creature who knows, with the full clarity of an angelic mind, exactly what he lost and exactly why he lost it.

———

This brings us to a question that troubles many sincere believers, and we will pass through it directly.

Genesis 6 tells us that “the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.” Many readers, ancient and modern, have taken “the sons of God” to mean fallen angels conjoining with human women and producing the Nephilim, a race of giants, before the Flood. The reading has real antiquity behind it, present in some Second Temple Jewish literature and early patristic sources. It is not invented out of nothing.9

But it cannot be right. Wilhelmus à Brakel states the reason with characteristic clarity in his treatment of angels in The Christian’s Reasonable Service. Angels cannot reproduce. That simple. They have no bodies. No biological apparatus. They were not endowed with the capacity for procreation, because they are spirits. Christ himself says as much when the Sadducees question him about the resurrection: in the resurrection, the redeemed “neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven” (Matthew 22:30). The point of that comparison only works if angels, as a matter of their fixed nature, do not marry and do not generate offspring. Whatever the sons of God in Genesis 6 were, dynastic rulers exalting themselves to divine status, or as I believe, the godly line of Seth intermarrying with the corrupted line of Cain, they were not angels fathering giant men with human women.10

There is a deeper reason to reject it, and it follows directly from everything Mather’s thought has shown us. If the angels fell once, decisively, in a single rebellion on day one, there is no room in that account for a second fall. A second rebellion centuries later, brought on by an entirely different temptation, lust for human women rather than contempt for God’s purposes, would mean the angels fell twice, for two unrelated reasons, at two different points in history. That is not what Jude or Peter describe. Both speak of a single, completed apostasy, angels who “kept not their first estate,” already “reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day” (Jude 6). The fall was total and final at its first occurrence. The Nephilim of Genesis 6 remain a difficult text. But they are not evidence of angels behaving as men, and whatever explanation they require, it is not one that demands a second angelic fall.11

———

What remains, after all of this, is a picture far more sobering than the cartoon devil of fork-tail and red horn fame.

The demonic host arrayed against us is the wreckage of the most glorious creatures God ever made. They were offered no reprieve. They bear no image of God. They carry His breath in no sense whatsoever. And to crown their misery, they watched the Word become flesh, not as an angel, but as the seed of Abraham, and they have hated that above all else. They have exchanged everlasting glory for everlasting darkness, and they know, every day, without the mercy of forgetting, exactly what they lost.

No wonder Peter tells us to be sober and vigilant. Our adversary, once the flower of heaven, walks about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). He does not hunt us out of mindless instinct. He hunts the race that took the place he would not stoop to occupy.12

———

Now, what should all of this do in the child of God?

It should produce a sober and settled realism. The world is not what the news says it is, a stage for political theater or economic forces doing battle for supremacy. It is a contested place, yes, but a contest older than Eden. The demonic host that moves against you is older, smarter, far more powerful, and personally invested in your ruin. It hates you with a hatred that has been curdling since before you were born.

It should also produce a piercing gratitude. You have what they do not. You bear the image of God. You carry His breath. You have a Mediator who shares your nature, who took not the nature of angels but the seed of Abraham, and who went to a cross the principalities did not understand until it was too late. They sinned once and heard the door close forever. You have sinned ten thousand times, and the door is still open, because the Son became what you are so that you might become what He is. If that does not break something in you, nothing will.13

It should produce vigilance without obsession. Peter does not tell us to study the devil. He tells us to be sober and watchful, and then points us straight back to God: “the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you” (1 Peter 5:10). The answer to a roaring lion is not to spend your life analyzing his roar. It is to know who holds the chain around his neck.14

And it should produce wonder at the mercy of God. That He looked upon this frail, dust-born, breath-sustained race, this junior creature that the angels thought beneath them, and set His love upon it from before the foundation of the world. That the fall of the highest creatures He ever made did not alter His purpose for the lowest. That out of the wreckage of that first catastrophe before history, God was already moving toward a cross. The angels who fell despise grace. You are its recipient. Do not treat that lightly. Do not treat that casually. It cost more than we can possibly imagine.

———

Next: The Elect Angels — Their Vocation and Their Joy

Notes

Welcome back.

The division of light and darkness on the first day seems to prefigure a basic division that runs through all of creation and scripture. Light representing all things good, the elect angels, those who remained steadfast in their worship of God, who have kept their first estate by the power of God. Light also representing those who have been redeemed from destruction, and taken from darkness into His most marvelous light. Darkness representing fallen angels, those who did not keep their first estate, turned from God, were lifted up in pride, who chose themselves instead of their Creator.14 Chiefly among them stands Satan, the prince of “the rulers of the darkness of this world” (Eph. 6:12). Darkness also representing those reprobate sons and daughters of Adam, who loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil (John 3:19). The decree of which, belongs to the eternal counsel of God; but the historical fall belongs to the fallen. Light was separated from darkness. It is not lost on me that this distinction between darkness and light is present from the opening moment. It seems to be written into the very element of natural and spiritual things.

The visible creation is good. The sun, the stars, the earth, the seas, all came from the hand of God and bore His own verdict: “it was good.” Yet the first distinction in creation was light from darkness. Before land was parted from sea, before the starry lights were set in their courses, God divided all light from darkness. That division becomes, in time, a prophetic emblem of another division within the invisible creation. The angels were made good, yet mutable. From the first moment of their creaturely beginning, they stood upheld by God, capable of continuing in holy obedience, yet capable also of falling by proud rebellion. Many kept their first estate. Others left their own habitation and became spiritual and intellectual depravity. Thanks be to God, their fall did not corrupt the whole race as Adam’s fall corrupted ours. Heaven, therefore, was struck, but not wounded. The elect angels at this very moment, still shine in radiant obedience before the throne. They are presently ascending and descending to earth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation. The fallen angels rage beneath judgment, bending all their malice against God, His Christ, His church, and His providence. One day, eternity itself will display this separation forever: light forever with God in Christ, and darkness under wrath; the holy angels serving the redeemed, and demons shut up at last in utter darkness Who, along with the reprobate are cast “into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:41).

To say that the angels were created as light, on the first day, is at least a reasonable venture. I think it says something quite clear about the structure of reality. The invisible world precedes the visible. The spiritual world encompasses the physical world, all within God’s created order. We live in a world which was likely shaped in the presence of Angels, for purposes that will involve them deeply. Scientists ask, “Are we alone in the universe?” No. We are fellow creatures in a universe populated by untold millions upon millions of intelligent creatures, vastly superior to us in power and knowledge, created before us, and witnesses of the purposes of God.

To say we understand this is pure foolishness. To try to understand this is soul medicine. Perhaps if I thought on this more, I would glorify God more.

What if to understand our own place in this world better, we would first understand something of the place the angels keep? (unfallen and fallen). I clearly see now that we are ‘the juniors’ of creation week. We are the later creature, made in the image of God, yes, but also made a little lower than the angels15. How will we ever judge the angels!? (1 Cor. 6:3). I can only believe that by faith. We entered into a world already inhabited by beautiful spiritual beings who had known and loved God before Adam walked with God in the cool of the day. Perhaps if we can recover this understanding, if we can see the world as it actually is, populated right now by angels, ordered according to the wisdom of God, structured from the beginning around the division between light and darkness. Perhaps then we will begin to understand what it means to live as children of God in a universe that is far larger, far more populated, and far deeper than the naturalistic world we have learned in school. I’ve wept over the beauty of a river at sunset. Now I’ve wept over creation’s first day. There is more beauty to see in God than we could possibly fathom, if we would but meditate on his Word.

On this reading, part of the light that God spoke into existence on the first day was likely personal: rational, holy, majestic, beautiful, powerful, responsible creatures, who would stand in his presence and behold his glory. So, no, we are not alone in this universe.

Now, what should this do in the child of God? I fear that for many, this is all just interesting trivia. If that is all I’ve done is awaken your curiosity, then I have miserably failed in my attempt.

It should produce reverence. God is unfathomably deep. He is holy, holy, holy. We live before the LORD in a creation far larger than our telescopes. The universe is not empty space filled with matter and dark matter. It is the workmanship of the living God. It is full of life. If angels stood at the beginning, if they watched the heavens stretched out and the earth complete, if they in fact rejoiced when God laid the foundations of the world (as Job says), then creation is far more majestic than we have been led to believe. Only the child of God can see any of these things. And even then, it is just a beginning.

It should also produce a greater degree of humility. We are not the first creature, or the strongest, or the smartest, or the most beautiful, or the most ancient. We are dust with breath. We are latecomers (as it were) into a world already filled with the praise of God. But this shouldn’t degrade us either, because the same Scripture that says we are made a little lower than the angels also says that we are crowned with glory and honor (Psalm 8:5; cf. Hebrews 2:7,9). And more unfathomable still, the Triune God showed fallen angels no mercy. No, the Son did not take on the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham (Heb. 2:16). The angels are older, stronger, and brighter; yet Christ became the Son of man, died for men, rose for men, and is gathering a bride into fellowship with him.

It should defiantly produce more alertness. If this division between light and darkness on day one is accurate, then Earth’s ground is not neutral. I am constantly guilty of looking at this world through natural eyes. But Satan is busy. He is behind the machine of this world, pulling whatever lever he can for evil. Our fellow creatures are not innocent bystanders. They are participants, as was I. “Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). There are intelligences in the unseen world that hate God, hate Christ, hate the church, and hate the image of God in mankind. They hate us because they see in us the imprint of their own Creator. Therefore, “Be vigilant,” Peter says, “because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet. 5:8).

It should also produce comfort in ordinary providence. Let’s stop thinking of holy angels as spiritual butlers. They are ministers. They are “sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation” (Heb. 1:4). They serve at the command of God. They do not draw attention to themselves. They certainly do not mediate Christ. They are part of the Father’s care for His children, servants of the Captain of the LORD of Hosts, for whose glory they were created. Created as instruments of that providence by which God keeps His people in all their ways (Ps. 91:11,12). How often have we been kept, redirected, restrained, or delivered, and never knew what angels Christ had sent?

Finally, it should produce courage. The true believer does not walk alone in this world. He walks beneath the keeping of Christ, with the ministry of heavenly angels surrounding his precious purchased possessions. The fallen angels are real (as we will see), malicious, and mighty, but they are defeated creatures. The holy elect angels, unfallen (thus stronger), serve the Lord who has all power in heaven and in earth.

We can at least say that the light of creation still teaches us hope. God divided the light from the darkness, and He does so in every heart broken by the law and healed by the gospel. Do not lose heart, child of God. Darkness does not inherit this world. The children of light do. “For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light” (Ephesians 5:8). All events, times, and places belong to Jesus; and in the end, both holy angels and redeemed sinners will dwell together where “the glory of God” lightens the city, and “the Lamb is the light thereof” (Revelation 21:23).

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14 For “elect angels,” see 1 Timothy 5:21. For fallen angels, see 2 Peter 2:4 and Jude 6. The contrast is biblical, but the timing of the angelic fall should not be dogmatic.

15 Psalm 8:5, quoted in Hebrews 2:7.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day (Genesis 1:1-3).

There is something strange about that passage. Something more seems to be going on.

Stay with me here. God creates the heavens and the earth. Darkness is upon the face of the deep. Then God creates light and separates it from darkness. But wait, just four verses later, on day four, he creates the sun and the stars, the actual orbs that produce light in our physical world? How can there be light on the first day when there is no sun, moon, or stars?¹

Our forebears knew this problem, and took it seriously. Their answer to this conundrum was to look deeper into what Scripture calls “light.” For instance, Augustine suggested that “light” in this passage, at least in one framing of it, means something in addition to photons. Our own physical light (if we can call it that) is not made of traditional matter. It is actually tiny packages of pure photonic energy.² Light in scripture means many more things than photons. Augustine suggests that this was the moment of the creation of the angels. Brakel agrees, and adds that this was also the creation moment of the third heaven, and all the hosts of it.³ Which brings us to another interesting tidbit in Genesis 2:1.

When all six days draw to a close, it says, "Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them" (Genesis 2:1). The word "host" catches the eye. The Hebrew word is tsaba, which is actually a military word (Numbers 1:3; Numbers 31:14; 1 Samuel 17:45; Isaiah 40:2; Job 7:1; 1 Kings 22:19; 2 Chronicles 18:18; Psalm 103:21; Psalm 148:2; Nehemiah 9:6). It is the word for an ordered army under leadership. It is the word that stands behind the great divine title repeated throughout the Old Testament, the LORD of hosts, YHWH Tsebaoth. A quick read of this verse make us think it’s a tallying up the contents of the universe. Actually, it is announcing that by the close of the sixth day, a host has been made, ordered, and brought to completion. In heaven as well as on earth. The earth's host will become the sun and stars. The heavens' host, from the first day, is the complete angelic army. The Sabbath rest that follows is the rest of a sovereign who has set his whole kingdom in order, visible and invisible together, and found it all very good.

But is there any actual traction in the Word of God for associating angels with light? Well, for one, in Matthew 28:2-3, the angel at the tomb: “his countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow.” Luke’s adds that they appeared in “shining garments” (Luke 24:4). Let’s not forget the angel who appeared to the shepherds was surrounded by “the glory of the Lord” shining round about them (Luke 2:9). Daniel 10 actually gives us one of the most vivid examples. Daniel’s angel has a body that was “like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire” (Daniel 10:6). Revelation uses similar language more than once. The angel in Revelation 10:1 is “clothed with a cloud” with “a rainbow upon his head,” his face “as it were the sun.” The angel in Revelation 18:1 comes down from heaven, and “the earth was lightened with his glory.” There appears to be scriptural reason to at least consider whether angels were created on day one of creation week.⁴ In other words, the angels, likely created on the first day, represent a whole spiritual realm that precedes the physical. They could also be called light because they are the first intelligent beings, created to behold and then reflect the Light that is God himself, for “God is light.”⁵

It is an interpretation, I know. Augustine and Brakel are careful not to dogmatize, so I must follow suit. But you have to admit, it has Scriptural weight (not to mention theological coherence).

Because, the principle that governs this gives us an outline of order in creation. God does everything orderly. Always (1 Cor. 14:33). He creates according to wisdom, beauty, authority, and function. For instance, we know that the intellectual precedes the sensual. The spiritual precedes the physical. So it make sense that the heavenly precedes the earthly. Since God is indeed sovereign and wise, his creative acts follow an order that reflects his nature.⁶

This means that the angelic creation, being purely spiritual and intellectual, comes before man. Yet they are still creatures, not little or demigods. They have neither eternity of themselves nor life in themselves. They are made things, called into being by the Word, the eternal Son. Yet they appear to be the first things he made. He is the Captain of them (Josh. 5:14, 15). Just like us, they possess personality, intellect and will. They have agency. They each have a name, a place, a history. They stand in direct relation to God before any physical universe existed.⁷

I have already mentioned our beloved à Brakel, who took up this question with strength. He also suggests that angels were created on day one, and that they are creatures of a higher order than man, but a lower order than God. They are not made up of any material. You can’t touch an angel. They have no physical bodies.⁸

The Apostle Paul, writing in Colossians 1:16, establishes the principle: “By him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him.” This is not to suggest that Paul is giving chronology; his point is Christ’s absolute creatorship over every aspect of created beings, heavenly and earthly, visible and invisible. The angels, and whatever those thrones and dominions and principalities are, belong to the invisible creation that is made by Christ, upheld by Christ, and ordered for Christ.⁹

This has consequences for how we understand where we fit into it.

If the angels were created on day one, with light, then they existed before the world was fully formed. They also witnessed the next five days of creation. They saw God the Son speak the universe into being. We can imagine the angels standing in heaven, watching as the Triune God unfolds the days one after the other, each more glorious than the next. And then they watch in wonder as God, on day six, creates a little beautiful creature called man. And in own image no less?! After His own likeness. It is perfectly reasonable that they beheld the mystery of the creation of this creature. Made after God’s own image, made of both spirit and matter, soul and body, immortal essence inside mutable flesh.¹⁰

And then something happens that Scripture tells us the angels themselves did not fully grasp. The God who created both angel and man, becomes, not an angel, but a man. Think of it! The Word through whom all things were created, both visible and invisible, took on our flesh forever. They would be astonished that He becomes subject to the very laws he created, including hunger and pain and death. The angels beheld the incarnation, and the Scriptures say they desire to look into these things (1 Peter 1:12). It is more than amazing that even the first creatures, who stood closest to God, leaned forward to understand God becoming flesh.¹¹

If this is all true, then it means that the angels are our seniors in creation.¹² The world was made in their presence. Adam, then Eve were created in their sight. And then in the fullness of time, the God they worshiped in heaven, took on human flesh and came to earth. This was the goal toward which the entire created order moved from the first millisecond of light on the first day.¹³

(This is longer than I had anticipated. I will try to be briefer in the next post)

End of Part One.

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1 Slight clarification: Genesis 1:2 says darkness was “upon the face of the deep.” Darkness here is the condition over which God speaks His creation. This is not the creation of darkness, but the absence of light.

2 Augustine is deliberately cautious: “Where Scripture speaks of the world’s creation, it is not plainly said whether or when the angels were created,” yet he argues that if the angels are mentioned in Genesis 1, they are implicitly mentioned either under “heaven” or under “light.” See Augustine, City of God, XI.9.

3 Wilhelmus à Brakel states that “it is most probable” the angels, as the heavenly host, were created on the first day with the third heaven, while also saying that the exact day cannot be stated with certainty. See Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, vol. 1, chap. 9, “Angels and Devils.”

4 The angelic brightness texts are cumulative and I find them most interesting, but they do not by themselves prove that the light of Genesis 1:3 is angelic. They work best as supporting resonance from Genesis 1 and Job 38.

5 1 John 1:5. This statement should be read analogically. Angels are not divine light by nature. They are creatures illumined by God, who alone is light essentially. Augustine’s language is useful here: angels become light by participation in the unchangeable Light, not by possession of deity.

6 Historic Christian doctrine affirms the goodness of matter and the body, even while acknowledging an order of being among creatures.

7 Scripture clearly teaches that angels are creatures and that they existed before the foundation of the earth was laid, as Job 38:4-7 indicates. It does not explicitly narrate the moment of their creation in Genesis 1.

8 À Brakel defines an angel as “an incorporeal, personal being which God has created and gifted with an extraordinary intellect, will, and power.”

9 The KJV phrase “visible and invisible”does not say “invisible before visible.” Paul’s main concern in Colossians 1:16 is not chronology but Christology. His preeminence over every order of creaturely power.

10 Job 38:4-7 is the strongest biblical support: when the Lord laid the foundations of the earth, “the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy.” The language strongly suggests angelic witness and praise at creation.

11 1 Peter 1:12 says that the angels desire to look into the things now reported through the gospel. “Did not fully see coming” should be understood phenomenologically, not as though God’s revealed promises were absent or as though the holy angels were ignorant in a crude sense. The point is that redemption in Christ is a mystery into which even angels long to gaze.

12 This point is offered cautiously. Much of it is inferential. I do not wish to press beyond the measure of Scripture. Yet there is considerable confusion about angels in our day drawn from general ignorance, novels, films, podcasts, social media feeds,, and the overall atmosphere of western culture. This is an attempt to bring the subject back under the light of Scripture, so that our thoughts might be shaped less by ignorance, imagination and assumption, and more by the Words of God.

13 See John 1:1-14, Colossians 1:15-20, and Hebrews 2:5-18.

I used to read Frank Peretti.

All of it. This Present Darkness, Piercing the Darkness, The Visitation, the whole world he built, where angels and demons clashed over souls in the air above small-town America, and the oblivious humans below, praying or failing to pray, held the balance of power in their hands. I was in my early and late teens, deep in charismatic Christianity, and Peretti felt like he was unlocking a secret door. I also listened to Bob Larson on the radio (so embarrassing!), with his theatrical voice cataloguing demonic activity with the confidence of a man who clearly had the devil’s number. He was afraid of no devil! I was fascinated by the supernatural, genuinely so, and the fascination was not entirely wrong. But mostly. There is a real world behind the visible one. Scripture says so.

But the framework I was given to understand the supernatural was a jumbled mess. It was mostly subjective sensationalism, salted and peppered with isolated scripture texts. The invisible world was mainly interesting insofar as it could be felt, or seen, or manipulated directly by us! Regular life was boring. And who does not like to be involved in secret earth-changing things? To be ‘an insider’ in the outcome of a cosmic battle? Spiritual warfare was dramatic. Demons spoke to people. Angels manifested. Everything was alive and present and electric. But the problem was that almost none of it was biblical.

Once I left for college, things began to change. Slowly at first, then faster and faster. To save time, let me just say that I believe the Lord saved me. He opened my heart, and then my spiritual eyes to my sinful heart, and the depravity of my fallen mind, and the powerful beauty of Jesus’ atonement. Eventually, my new bride and I left the mainstream charismania, and became Reformed in our Christian convictions.

The beauty of the Reformed tradition was that it gave me the footing I desperately needed: the sovereignty of God, sinfulness of man in Adam, the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, the closed canon, the covenant of grace, and especially the blessedness of the ordinary means of grace. This meant that all experiential and sensational elements of the Christian life were subjected to the Word of God, and rightly so. The charismatic circus lost its hold on both my wife and me. We are deeply grateful to God for that to this day, thirty years later.

Yet what I did not take into account, for decades, was what I had unwittingly discarded along with evangelical-charismaticism.

Ephesians 6:12 remained. I read it often. I preached from it occasionally. But somewhere in the settling of my Reformed convictions, this whole idea had been imperceptibly relocated. The text, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” had practically become a description of phenomena that strictly belonged to the Old and New Testaments and apostolic age. The canon was closed. The extraordinary gifts had ceased. All direct and dramatic encounters with the supernatural were behind us now that the Church had been given all things pertaining to life and godliness in the Scriptures.¹ And in that entirely correct set of convictions, I had without meaning to, put the subject of angels behind us. Angels were real, obviously, but detached from us in practice since we have the Word of God and the indwelling Holy Spirit. My world became, functionally, Sadduceeical (Mather’s idea). I lived in a two-storied house in which the upper floor was all but empty.

I did not know this about myself until I read Increase Mather.² It’s rather troubling, and at the same time encouraging, that in the later stages of my Christian walk, I am learning something new in my own experience.

The Angelographia, published in Boston in 1696 (I read the North Hampton Press reprint: The Ministry of Angels), is a collection of sermons on the nature and ministry of holy spirits, with an appended discourse on angelical apparitions.³ Mather was a careful, learned, thoroughly Reformed Puritan divine, president of Harvard, and a man deeply suspicious of fanaticism in all its forms. He was, in fact, a principal reason the Salem witch-trial panic began to come to its senses.⁴ Mather would be a prime candidate to relegate the subject of the supernatural to the confines of the apostolic and post-apostolic age or crypto-romanism. Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History has descriptions of supernatural events that occurred in the early church that leave the naturalistic modern Reformed Christian scratching his head!⁵

But Mather’s opening words stopped me: “Angels, both the good and evil ones, have a greater influence on this world than men are generally aware of.”⁶ I realized at that moment, meditating on that thought, that if it was true, I was probably guilty of it.

The Reformed tradition has never been shy about angels. Calvin treats them carefully in the Institutes, steering between scholastic rationalistic dismissal, and what Scripture says about them.⁷ Wilhelmus à Brakel devotes a nice section of The Christian’s Reasonable Service to the angelic host and writes with pastoral warmth about their ministry to the heirs of salvation.⁸ The Westminster Standards state clearly that God executes his providence through angels.⁹ The new (old) tradition I had come to love always had a solid doctrine of the celestial realm. Why did I never see it? I had received the tradition and somehow missed that part. It’s not a major subject. It’s not a salvation issue whatsoever. But living at a time that stands far closer to Antioch in Acts than Geneva¹⁰, it seems quite relevant in a world that seems to be teaming with evil.

Augustine prepared the way.

Reading the City of God is a true education in how large the world actually is. The Bishop of Hippo sees the whole of history as a drama played out between two cities, the foundations of which began before Adam and Eve. As we will see, the fall of the angels precedes the fall of man. The elect angels who maintained their first estate, and the reprobate angels who fell by their own will, these two companies represent the first and most fundamental division in all of creation. The church militant on earth is caught up in an ancient conflict, vaster than any man-made dynasty, empire, or political history, and moving toward a consummation in which angels and saints together will inhabit the City of God forever. That is the frame within which Augustine reads everything.¹¹

Luther is much the same. His world was dense with spiritual presence, and his sense of the demonic was personal. He had a doctrine for it. He preached about it. He fought it from within, and without.¹² But I digress.

I came to see that I had exchanged the evangelico-charismatic abuse for something cleaner and truer. But in cleaning house, I had also thrown out the furniture that belonged there.

This series of meditations is an attempt at recovery.

The subject deserves careful handling because for every mile of road, there are two miles of ditches. On one side is the ditch I came from: angels and demons as a species of special spiritual experiences, virtually detached from Scripture, feeding the appetite for the supernatural. Mather saw the same danger and wrote his Disquisition Concerning Angelical Apparitions as a warning against it. The Bible itself is severe on the point. An angel who preaches another gospel is accursed (Galatians 1:8). John fell at an angel’s feet in worship and was rebuked for it (Revelation 22:8,9).¹³ The ditch is very real.

The other ditch is an atrophied practical theology of angels. I had settled into this without knowing it. A Christianity in which the invisible world is real, and given the nod on paper, but generally ignored. The spiritual warfare of Ephesians 6 and the ministering spirits of Hebrews 1:14 were doctrinal categories with no practical weight for the Christian life.¹⁴ That ditch is less steep. It certainly feels more respectable, more rational. But a theology that formally confesses something, and practically forgets it, has lost something meaningful.

What I am after in this series is the angelic world as Scripture actually describes it. A world in which the providence of God is carried out by intelligent, manifestly holy, personal, powerful beings whose assignment is the welfare of the heirs of salvation. A world in which the fall of Satan and the ruin of the demonic host is the darkness against which the mercy of God in Christ toward sinners blazes. A world in which “are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” (Hebrews 1:14)¹⁵ is a living question with a living answer. It touches the way the believer understands his own life history, his own sufferings, his own safe keeping (because I would have gone lost long ago), and yes, his own death.

I am a Reformed minister. I subscribe to the Three Forms of Unity. I believe in the ordinary means of grace and the closed canon and the cessation of the apostolic gifts.¹⁶ That’s my house, the household of faith. None of that is at stake here. What is at stake is whether or not the historic faith I confess (and perhaps you as well) includes what Scripture describes. I want it to. I think I had simply stopped inhabiting the upstairs of that house.

These articles are an attempt to move back in.

——

Next: The Nature of Angels: Created, Personal, Spirits

1 The allusion is to 2 Pet. 1:3. Sufficiency of Scripture regulates faith and practice; it does not cancel providence.

2 Increase Mather (1639-1723), New England Puritan and Harvard president, published Angelographia in Boston in 1696.

3 Mather’s Disquisition Concerning Angelical Apparitions is useful here because it joins belief in angels to warnings against credulity.

4 Mather was a significant moderating voice, especially through Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits (1693), rather than the sole cause of Salem’s reversal.

5 Eusebius is a historical witness, not an authority equal to Scripture.

6 Increase Mather, Angelographia, or A Discourse Concerning the Nature and Power of the Holy Angels (Boston, 1696), opening sermon.

7 Calvin’s main treatment is Institutes I.xiv.3-12 on holy angels and I.xiv.13-19 on devils: careful, anti-speculative, and pastorally serious.

8 See Wilhelmus à Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, vol. 1, on angels as creatures, servants, and ministering spirits.

9 WLC Q. 19 says God employs angels in administrations of His power, mercy, and justice. WCF 5.3 also confesses God’s use of means in providence.

10 This is a cultural comparison, not a historical equivalence: missionary context in Acts, ordered Reformed commonwealth in Geneva.

11 See Augustine, City of God, books XI-XIV, on angels, the two cities, pride, love, and the division of rational creatures.

12 Luther’s demonology belongs to his pastoral theology of temptation, accusation, conscience, prayer, and the Word.

13 Gal. 1:8 and Rev. 22:8-9 fence the subject: angels serve Christ; they do not mediate another gospel or receive worship.

14 This is a diagnostic claim: formal supernaturalism can become pastorally weightless if it never helps shape Christian perception.

15 Heb. 1:14 is the constructive center: angelic ministry stands under the supremacy of the Son in Hebrews 1.

16 Cessationism rejects continuing revelatory gifts and apostolic signs as ordinary church possessions; it does not reject angels, demons, providence, or spiritual conflict. We also believe that the Holy Spirit is most free, and can and does perform miracles today as He pleases.

The resurrected body will be the real you if you are a true believer. It’s the same body God made, raised by His almighty power, transformed completely. Nothing is lost to the grave, fire, sea, decay, animals, or dust. Mortality will be swallowed up by immortality (2 Cor. 5:4; 1 Cor. 15:53-54). Corruption by incorruption (15:42, 53). Weakness by power (15:43). Dishonor by glory (15:43). You will rise in the prime of perfect maturity, probably around 30. There will be no babies or children in heaven. No senior center either. Each person will be full of strength, perfect in proportion, and true in beauty. Every defect will be gone: pimples, moles, hair loss, disease, pain, belly fat, deformity, missing parts, extra parts, crookedness, disproportion, the need for food, or rest from exhaustion. The whole person stands complete. The body becomes spiritual. It is perfectly subject to the spirit, and the spirit perfectly subject to God (1 Cor. 15:44). You will rise absolutely recognizable as yourself, yet perfectly conformed to the glorious body of the risen Christ (Phil. 3:21). [Read The City of God by Augustine, Book XXII for deeper insight]

Therefore, your glorified body will not have tattoos. Tattoos are ink we painfully drive into our skin for apparent cosmetic purposes. Even if the message is just “MOM” with a heart and arrow through it. It’s not part of the body’s original substance. God restores and transforms your true body and removes whatever is not fit for glory. The resurrection keeps your personal identity, but not your earthly alterations.

Believers should not get tattoos because the body is a gift. It was made by God, redeemed by Christ, and is currently indwelt by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19). God will raise that same true body, and no body modifications will remain. If God will remove what does not belong, then the Christian has no business putting it there in the first place. The rule is simple: do not purposely mark the body in ways that glory will remove. They are of the flesh, therefore, fleshly. Your body has a higher calling. “You were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies” (1 Cor. 6:20).

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Knees that double, bones that shake

Every breath a brittle thread

Every prayer half-said

To Thee my cries, to Thee my groans

To Thee my sighs, these broken tones

They climb a sky that will not bend

Is there an end?

My throat, my soul are hoarse from calling

Dry as dust in desert air

My heart a field long left in famine

Left to crack beneath this care

Yet I call

Yet I call

From the hollow and the hunger

From the fear of going lost

Yet I call

Yet I call

If my only prayer is falling

Let my falling find the Cross

My heart is withered, scorched and thin

Like trampled soil that bears no green

As if Thy hand had turned away

Refused the rain

My thoughts turn ‘round and ‘round again

Circles carved in restless sand

I’m spinning in this silent room

LORD, are You moved?

My tongue is tied in twisted questions

Faith and doubt in tangled lines

Still Thy name keeps breaking

through them

Like a dawn I cannot find

Yet I call

Yet I call

From the hollow and the hunger

From the fear of being lost

Yet I call

Yet I call

If my only prayer is falling

Let my falling find the Cross

LORD, I fall

I fall, I fall

Like a stone through deep unknowing

Like the rain through wounded ground

LORD, I fall

Still I call

I fall, I fall

Like a stone through deep unknowing

Like the rain through wounded ground

Lord, I fall

Still I call

If I never see the reason

Be my reason here and now

Yet I call

Yet I call

From the hollow and the hunger

From the fear of being lost

Yet I call

Yet I call

If my only prayer is falling

Let my falling find the Cross

Words by J. Lewis

(music by OpenMusic)

That’s a deep question many believers have asked.

The short answer is this. Scripture doesn’t call us to spend much time tracing the source of a sinful thought so much as judging its nature, and responding accordingly. The Word of God gives us some light to speak carefully about the difference. So here it is in shorthand.

First, Scripture teaches that sinful thoughts arise from our fallen human nature. James says, “Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed” (James 1:14). The heart, even in the regenerate, still contains remaining corruption (Romans 7). Old sinful habits, memories, desires, and reflexes of the flesh surface without warning. The suddenness of a thought does not prove it is satanic, though it may be. The heart is a deep, dark labyrinth. Indwelling sin lurks in the shadows of the light, waiting for the right moment to attempt control.

Scripture also teaches that Satan actually does tempt, suggest, and provoke (Matthew 4:1–3; Luke 22:31; John 13:2). But he is not omniscient. He is not omnipresent. We need to understand that. He is called the tempter, yet he can’t possibly tempt every tempted person. Most are largely left alone because they are already his (John 8:44). Unless, of course, he is enlisting them in his war. Redeemed sinners on the other hand, will at times, face personal attacks from Satan’s daemons. His tactics are well known.

He casts fiery darts (Eph.6:16). He draws the heart away (James 1:14; 2 Cor. 11:3). He sifts as wheat (Luke 22:31). He accuses the brethren (Rev. 12:10; Zech.3:1). He disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14) He seeks advantage through ignorance (2 Cor. 2:11). He snatches away the Word (Matt. 13:19). As the second greatest anthropologist in history, he has done his homework. He knows our weaknesses. So yes, the devil/s often works by way of thoughts that are foreign to new life, intrusive, blasphemous, even violent in their suggestion, especially when they happen during prayer or moments of spiritual seriousness. Yet the devil can’t sin for you. Your flesh is the dry tinder. Your lust is the gas. The devil presents the spark. There would be no fire if there were nothing to burn. He doesn’t create new material. He works with existing flesh.

So how do I know if sinful thoughts are from me, or from the devil?

The most important thing isn’t where the thought came from, but how you respond to it. When a thought enters, there is an incredibly brief moment where we either consent or resist. Is it welcomed, invited in, entertained? Is it embraced like an old lost friend? Then why does origin matter? It doesn’t. To be honest, if hell’s minions never visited me again, I would have all the tinder and gas I need to destroy myself. But on the other hand, a wicked thought that is resisted, fought against and wrestled into the light of the Son, is resisting sin. Regardless where it came from. Luther’s old line is so memorable, You cannot stop birds from flying over your head, but you can stop them from building a nest in your hair.

I would also add that your conscience gives an important clue. When a sinful thought arises, does your soul recoil? That response itself is telling. The unregenerate may grieve the effects and consequences of sin, but only the child of God grieve sin as sin. Especially in the face of so loving a Savior. Even then the believer may be horrified by thoughts he never chose and never wanted. That horror is the proof of grace (Romans 7:22,23).

Beware of over-scrupulosity. What I mean is don’t become trapped in constant inward looking, asking unbearably deep questions to yourself. This usually leads to paralysis of soul and unrelenting despair. Think of the man in the iron cage in Pilgrim’s Progress. Scripture does not teach an inward spiral. It calls us to watch, pray (as we heard last Lord’s Day), resist, flee, and fix our eyes on Christ. Whether the thought came from outside or inside makes no lasting difference. The remedy is the same. Humbled by sin, we are called to “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). How do we resist? Through confessed need. Through faith. Through fresh dependence on the Spirit of Christ.

2 Corinthians 10:4, 5 
“For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”

Finally, I hope you will remember this. Christ “was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Temptation itself is not sin. Understand that clearly. When sin presents itself, it is not the first thought that matters most, it’s the second. Many of the most distressing thoughts believers experience are exactly the ones they hate and love the most according to Paul (Romans 7:15-24). “On second thought” should be our reply to temptation.

And one last thing, if the devil can’t win you to sin by temptation, he will accuse you for being tempted in the first place, turning warfare itself into false guilt. It is a merciless tactic.

So ask fewer questions about origin, and more questions about response.

Did I consent to this thought?

Did I welcome it?

Did I fight it?

Did I bring it to Christ?

And when the cry is as short and sweet as, “Help, Lord!” you may rest assured that grace was already working.

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If I had to name one, and only one, it would be a deep, personal sense that God is real, holy, and near, and that we all live life before His face.

The rising generation doesn’t suffer from a lack of information. They are over-saturated with words, images, arguments, and explanations. What they lack is depth, gravity. Very little in their world presses on the soul with permanence. Everything is selectable, editable, scrollable, reversible. Identity itself is treated as something you can try on or take off. In that atmosphere, God becomes easily sidelined, abstracted, recognized, but not reckoned with in the soul.

They need to know, in the marrow, that the living God addresses them in the Covenant of Grace. That He sees. That He speaks. That He commands. That He invites. That He forgives. That He will judge the world in righteousness. Without that, the bible becomes trivia, doctrine becomes a burden, worship becomes atmosphere, and morality becomes pliable.

This is why biblical, reverent worship matters so much. Why preaching must carry scriptural authority, without pretended-performance. It’s why fathers and mothers walking humbly with God in the home, preaches more loudly than a thousand youth programs. Why the ordinary means of grace, regularly administered and attended, are more precious than religious baubles and bubbles, (to quote Thomas Brooks). Most importantly, the rising generation learns what is real, by what their parents today, treat as real. And they are watching us.

When a child grows up in a church where sin is called sin, where grace is offered without cheapness, and where the Word of God is spoken with fear and tenderness, something is pressed into his deepest and most pliable parts. He may wander. He may resist for a season. Yet he does not easily escape the sense that there is a God with whom he has to do. I find this most true, about the time they get married and have children.

In short, the rising generation does not most need relevance, or invention, or protection from the hard edges of the faith. What they need is the fear of the Lord, and believe the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ in an awakened, personal way. Everything else that will last through to the rising generation, will grow from that soil.

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If you have a question, you can email me. If I think the question is practical and helpful, I will post it here.

We live in an age that never stops changing. But should that spirit of change find its way into Christ’s Church? Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 2:15, “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle.” He said this because even in the earliest days there were those who wished to alter the order and customs of the Church. It has been so ever since. The duty of Christ’s Church is to keep those scriptural traditions handed down through the ages and not to yield them, however unfashionable they may appear.

One place where change has crept in is the Lord’s Supper. Over time, both the sacrament and the way we administer it have shifted. In many Reformed congregations, the people no longer come forward to a table. Instead, the bread and wine (or grape juice) are passed from pew to pew. From this practice of remaining seated came another change: the single communion cup was replaced by many small, individual cups, a distinctly American innovation. Only a few generations ago, such a thing was unheard of in our churches. Yet now, more and more congregations are setting aside the common cup for these individual ones.

Some may ask, “Does it really matter? Would the Lord concern Himself with something so small as the number of cups?” The answer of this brief study is clear: yes, it does matter to Him.

The Common Cup in Scripture

The first place we must look for understanding is the night of the Lord’s own institution. The Evangelist Luke records: “And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves.” (Luke 22:17). In that upper room, the Redeemer placed one cup into the hands of His disciples, not twelve, not several, but one. He blessed it, gave thanks, and commanded them to divide it (one content) among themselves. The act was both deliberate and instructive.

The Lord’s Supper was not an new creation, but the holy superseding fulfillment of the Passover feast. Mark and Paul both tell us that Christ instituted the Supper “after supper” (Mark 14:18; 1 Cor. 11:25). The Passover itself had long been marked by a shared cup; the rabbis speak of four ritual cups taken at different stages of the meal, but always in common. Our Lord took that familiar symbol and invested it with eternal meaning. He transformed the old covenant cup of hope into the new covenant cup of redemption. The form remained, one cup, shared among many, but the reality it pointed to was greater by far.

Thus, when the disciples received the cup from Christ’s hand, they did not each take a portion for themselves. They received what He gave, passed it to one another, and all drank of it. The unity of the vessel mirrored the unity of their salvation.

This is important to notice. It is a pattern repeated throughout the entire New Testament witness. In every passage where the Supper is mentioned, the Spirit speaks of the cup, always in the singular.

“And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it.” (Matt. 26:27)
“And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them: and they all drank of it.” (Mark 14:23)
“Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.” (Luke 22:20)
“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?” (1 Cor. 10:16)
“After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.” (1 Cor. 11:25)

The same grammatical pattern holds without exception. The inspired writers use the definite article and the singular noun, to poterion, “the cup.” Nowhere in the New Testament do we read ta poteria, “the cups.” The Spirit’s precision is apparent. Scripture’s vocabulary is theology in miniature, and the unbroken use of the singular points us to divine intent: one Savior, one covenant, one blood shed for the remission of sins, and one cup representing that covenant in His Church.

This unity of expression carries a doctrinal weight. The Supper is a sacrament of communion, not of individuality. Its visible signs are meant to correspond to the invisible grace they signify. To multiply the cups is, even unintentionally, to obscure what Christ has made clear. The details of divine institution are never secondary. What God appoints, we do not alter; what Christ commands, we do not improve.

The command itself could hardly be plainer: “Take this, and divide it among yourselves.” (Luke 22:17). The demonstrative pronoun this directs our attention to the one container Christ held. The action He requires (divide it among yourselves) reveals both the manner and the meaning of the act. They were to partake of the same vessel and share together what came from His hand. Again, in Matthew 26:27, the Lord presses the same point: “Drink ye all of it.” The emphasis rests upon the singular it, one cup, one Christ, one covenant.

This uniformity of form and meaning carries through the apostolic teaching. When Paul writes to the Corinthians, he identifies the cup as the “communion of the blood of Christ” (1 Cor. 10:16). The term koinōnia means participation, fellowship, or shared life. The cup, then, is a reminder of Christ’s atonement, but it is also the visible symbol of shared redemption, the outward act that portrays inward union. To substitute a tray of individual cups for the single vessel is to turn the corporate fellowship of believers into a series of private gestures. It makes visible independence where Christ intended visible unity.

Some may argue that such distinctions are trivial, that what matters is the heart, not the form. But the Word of God does not treat His ordinances lightly. The Lord’s institutions are not human symbols; they are divine means of grace, and their form carries His message. To alter the sign is to obscure the thing signified. The church is not permitted to reimagine the symbols of grace according to convenience or preference.

Paul’s warning to the Colossians remains relevant: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” (Col. 2:8). The spirit of the age will always offer reasons to modify God’s order (whether for health, for expedience, or for comfort), but those reasons spring from the “rudiments of the world.” The Reformed conscience must answer differently. Our rule is the Word, not the wisdom of men.

The Old Testament principle still governs the New Testament church: “What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.” (Deut. 12:32). The Lord’s Supper is not ours to edit. Christ Himself, the Host and Head of the table, appointed one cup to be blessed, shared, and received by faith. To keep that form is not traditionalism, it is obedience.

In the simplicity of that single cup lies the testimony of unity: one blood, one salvation, one body, one Lord. It preaches to our eyes, nose, and lips the same gospel that the Word preaches to our ears, that all who drink by faith are joined to Him and to one another. That is why the church must hold fast the pattern given, guarding the form of sound words and the form of sound signs.

One in Christ

The common cup also symbolizes the unity that all believers share in Christ. Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 12:12: “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.” Likewise, Galatians 3:28 declares, “…for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

The shared cup proclaims this unity. Its meaning is diminished when replaced by individual cups, which emphasize the individual over the body. By its very symbolism, it shifts the focus from communion to independence, a spirit more akin to Baptist individualism than to Reformed catholicity. The Apostle writes again in 1 Corinthians 10:16, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” The term communion (Greek koinōnia) means joint fellowship or shared participation.

Thus, the common cup visibly testifies to our oneness in Christ and the wholeness of His body.

The Common Cup in History

Scripture warns, “Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set” (Proverbs 22:28). Our fathers have spoken clearly on this matter.

If we are the generation that removes their landmarks, we risk leading our children into greater departures. History tells us that it is the natural progression of each generation to take a step to the left of their parents. The first generation that takes liberty often gives birth to one that takes license. We must therefore tread carefully, lest we be remembered as those who uprooted the ancient boundary of the common cup.

The Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 28, Question 75, reads:

Q. 75. How art thou admonished and assured in the Lord’s Supper, that thou art a partaker of that one sacrifice of Christ, accomplished on the cross, and of all his benefits?
A. Thus: That Christ has commanded me and all believers to eat of this broken bread, and to drink of this cup, in remembrance of Him, adding these promises: first, that His body was offered and broken on the cross for me, and His blood shed for me, as certainly as I see with my eyes the bread of the Lord broken for me, and the cup communicated to me… (Heidelberg Catechism, Lord’s Day 28, Q&A 75, The Three Forms of Unity, 1563).

The Catechism assumes one cup, the cup, shared among communicants. Its very language reflects the practice of the Reformed churches of the sixteenth century.

Zacharias Ursinus, the principal author and commentator on the Catechism, explains:

“The rites which Christ has instituted are, that the Lord’s bread be broken, distributed, and received, and the Lord’s cup be given to all the communicants, in remembrance of His death.”
(Ursinus, Zacharias. Of the Lord’s Supper, and the True Doctrine and Pure Administration Thereof; With a Refutation of Both Transubstantiation and Consubstantiation. Translated by G.W. Williard, Columbus, Ohio: Scott & Bascom, 1852, p. 376.)

Our Form for the Administration of the Lord’s Supper further confirms this:

“The cup of blessing which we bless is the communion of the blood of Christ.”

Note the singular form: the cup. Only one container is blessed. To alter this to these cups would not only distort the biblical form (1 Corinthians 10:16), but also force the minister to bless dozens of separate vessels, a practice alien to Reformed liturgy and foreign to the institution of Christ. In congregations where wine is pre-poured before the service by the deacons or custodians, those cups are not blessed at all, since only the one vessels lifted and consecrated in prayer receives the blessing. To avoid this inconsistency, one would need to invent new liturgical formulas, precisely the kind of “man-made inventions” our Reformed fathers rejected.

Finally, our Church Order, Article 62, provides:

“Every Church shall administer the Lord’s Supper in such a manner as it shall judge most conducive to edification; provided, however, that the outward ceremonies as prescribed in God’s Word be not changed, and all superstition be avoided.” (Church Order of the Reformed Churches, Article 62.)

If, as we have shown, the use of a single vessels accords with Scripture and the testimony of our fathers, then fidelity to both the Word of God and our Church Order compels us to retain it. To multiply the cups is not a mere matter of convenience; it alters the symbolism established by Christ Himself.

The common cup, then, remains a confession, not only of our communion with the Savior, but of our communion with one another in His body.

The Dutch Reformed Fathers

In 1618–1619, the Synod of Dordrecht, one of the greatest assemblies of the Reformed Church, commissioned a group of ministers to compose an extensive commentary on the whole of Scripture. These Annotations upon the Holy Bible (published in 1637) became a monumental achievement of the Dutch Reformation, combining careful exegesis with profound pastoral theology. On Matthew 26:27, these annotations record:

“And took the cup, and having given thanks, gave (it) to them; and they all drank of the same [cup]: [Namely, as Christ had commanded them, Matthew. 26.27].” (The Dutch Annotations upon the Whole Bible, Dordrecht, 1637, on Matthew 26:27.)

Here, the phrase “they all drank of the same” leaves no room for ambiguity. The fathers of Dort understood that Christ gave one cup to His disciples, not many. The unity of the act, its shared participation,was as essential to its meaning as the wine itself.

Among those who continued and deepened the theology of Dordt was Wilhelmus à Brakel (1635–1711), one of the most beloved Dutch divines of the Nadere Reformatie (Dutch Second Reformation). Writing in his Redelijke Godsdienst (The Christian’s Reasonable Service), à Brakel captures both the theological and experiential beauty of the common cup:

“Even if the world, as their enemy, hates, despises, persecutes, and oppresses them, there is yet no reason for concern; they can readily miss its love, for they have better company and they refresh themselves in a sweet manner in the exercise of mutual love. They confess this unity in the Lord’s Supper by eating of the same bread and by drinking of the same cup. ‘For we being many are one bread, and one body: for we are all partakers of that one bread’ (1 Cor. 10:17).”
(à Brakel, Wilhelmus. The Christian’s Reasonable Service. Translated by Bartel Elshout, Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1992–1995, vol. 2, p. 577.)

For à Brakel, the act of sharing one cup is a confession of love within the communion of saints. The Supper is not a private experience of piety but a visible expression of corporate grace. To separate believers into individuals at that table, is to obscure that shared participation of one body and one blood.

Another eminent theologian of that era, Herman Witsius (1636–1708), author of The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man, expressed the same conviction. He observes the careful language of Scripture itself:

“The third action of the guests is, to drink the consecrated wine out of the cup. It is remarkable, that our Lord said concerning the cup, not only ‘Take this, and divide it among yourselves,’ Luke 22:17, but likewise added a mark of universality, ‘Drink ye all of it,’ Matt. 26:27. And we are told how they complied with this command, Mark 14:24, ‘And they all drank of it.’”
(Witsius, Herman. The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man. Phillipsburg, PA: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1990 [1693], vol. 2, pp. 455–456.)

Witsius’ emphasis lies not only on the drinking but on the universality—drink ye all of it. His observation that “they all drank of it” underscores the singularity of the vessel, the same cup that Christ Himself blessed. The grammar of the Gospel record itself bears witness to a shared participation, not a divided one. The act of dividing the wine into many cups reverses the very picture Christ painted: one Savior, one covenant, one communion.

It would be easy to multiply testimonies. The history of the Reformed Church, indeed, of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church, presents a continuous witness to the practice of the common cup. From the Early Church Fathers (Justin Martyr, Cyprian, Augustine) through the Magisterial Reformers (Luther, Calvin, Bucer), and into the Puritans, Dutch Second Reformation, and Westminster Divines, the unity of the cup remained unbroken. Only in recent times has this “ancient landmark” been displaced by convenience, custom, and fundamentalist Baptist influences.

To abandon the common vessel is to obscure a symbol Christ Himself established and our fathers faithfully preserved. The danger is not only historical amnesia, but theological erosion. For when the visible unity of the body is fractured in sign, it is soon forgotten in substance.

“Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set” (Proverbs 22:28). To hold the cup together is to hold the faith together.

Objections Answered

It cannot be denied that the introduction of individual cups arose for two main reasons. The first is theological: the spirit of individualism that marks our age, the “me-centered” religion of private faith and personal preference. The second is practical: the concern for sanitation and public health (Note: This was originally written in Alberta in 2009, pre-pandemic. It has undergone 2 revisions).

The first objection, rooted in the modern preference of self, has already been answered. In the Lord’s Supper, unity must always take precedence over individuality. The Table of Christ is both a mirror for self-reflection and a communion in one body and one blood.

The second objection, sanitation, deserves careful and sympathetic attention.

“The Yuck Factor”

Many sincere Christians hesitate to use the common cup because of what might be called “the yuck factor.” The thought of drinking from the same vessel as others, they fear, poses a heightened risk of contagion. This objection is not new; it is simply modernized with medical vocabulary. Yet, the question must be asked: does a perceived health concern nullify the divine command?

We believe not. The following considerations show why.

1. Two Thousand Years of Safe Use
   The common cup has been used since the night of the first Supper. Across centuries, cultures, and continents, believers have shared it without record of epidemic or plague caused by the sacrament. Are the dangers of disease more pressing today than in the days of Christ, when sanitation was far less advanced? Surely not. The Lord instituted the cup in full knowledge of human frailty and still commanded its use. To alter His command under the pretense of greater wisdom is to claim we know better than He.

2. Other Points of Contact Are Far Less Sanitary
   Every worship service involves far greater exposure to germs than the Lord’s Table. The handshake at the door, the pew, The Psalter, the doorknob, or the bathroom sink, all are touched by many hands. Even the trays and the bread, handled repeatedly, carry greater potential for transmission than the silver rim of a single cup. If fear of illness is the measure, one ought to avoid the entire gathering rather than the blessed vessel of communion.

3. The Nature of the Elements Themselves
   Communion wine, often fortified to twelve percent or higher, has antibacterial properties that inhibit the spread of disease. Furthermore, noble metals, particularly silver, possess natural antimicrobial qualities recognized even in modern science. The cup of blessing is not only symbolically sanctified but physically resistant to contamination.

4. Historical Testimony
   Countless ministers over the centuries have borne witness that no communicant under their care was ever made ill by the common cup. Such testimony, repeated through generations, is no small matter. The absence of harm across two millennia speaks with quiet trust to the providence of God in the preservation of His ordinance.

For these reasons, the fear of illness cannot overrule the command or the symbolism of the common cup. To invoke the “yuck factor” as grounds for changing Christ’s institution is to forget that the Supper is a holy ordinance, not a matter of convenience or hygiene. It is worth recalling the Lord’s rebuke to Peter when he resisted what seemed unclean: “And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common” (Acts 10:15).

Are we wiser than our fathers? Are we wiser than God?

The Pragmatic Objection

Another objection arises from practicality. Some ask, “If one cup is commanded, why do some congregations use two?”

Here, Article 62 of the Church Order provides helpful guidance:

“Every Church shall administer the Lord’s Supper in such a manner as it shall judge most conducive to edification; provided, however, that the outward ceremonies as prescribed in God’s Word be not changed, and all superstition be avoided…” (Church Order of the Reformed Churches, Art. 62).

When larger congregations use two cups, one for each side of the table, it maintains the symbol with accommodation of space and time. The emphasis remains the same: one shared content among many participents, signifying one body and one faith. The duplication of the vessel for practical necessity does not fracture the unity it represents.

What does destroy the symbol is the distribution of a tray of individual cups to each communicant. This practice removes the visible expression of shared participation and replaces it with the symbol of personal identity. The result is not a table of fellowship but a row of private devotees.

The difference, then, lies not in number but in nature. Two cups at one table still proclaim one communion as they are poured from a common vessel. One hundred individual cups proclaim none.

In light of Scripture, the testimony of our fathers, and the unbroken witness of Church history, the objections raised against the common cup argue too little, and concede too much.

The “cup of blessing which we bless” (1 Corinthians 10:16) remains both the sign and seal of our unity in Christ. To divide the cup is to divide the sign; and to divide the sign is to blur the truth it was meant to proclaim.

A Plea to Return to the Common Cup

Unless the Lord Himself sends a reformation upon His Church, each generation will drift further from the previous. History bears solemn witness to this truth. The natural man does not move toward obedience, but away from it. Compromise begins as convenience and ends as corruption. What one generation tolerates, the next will embrace.

Some shrug it off as an unimportant matter, hardly worth defending. Yet if it truly were of no consequence, why alter it? Why introduce division into the Church of Christ over something so insignificant? The very act of change betrays that it does, in fact, matters. If it were a light thing, the old path would have been left untouched.

We readily confess that salvation does not hinge upon the number of cups used at the Table. Yet obedience does. The question is of faithfulness. What has the Lord commanded, and what has His Church received from the beginning? To tamper with Christ’s ordinances under the guise of progress is not reform, but decline.

The Holy Supper is a holy mystery, a means of grace to all who partake in faith. There, the believer communes with the crucified and risen Christ, feeding on Him by faith, tasting His promise in the bread and cup. Should we not, then, seek to walk in tender obedience to His revealed will, even in the smallest detail of His institution?

There is no Scriptural warrant for individual cups, none. There is, however, abundant testimony in Scripture, in the Confessions, and in Church history for the common cup. To alter what Christ Himself blessed and gave to His disciples is to let the hand of modernity touch the holy.

Let the Church maintain. Let her lay aside the inventions of convenience and retain the sign of unity given by her Lord. For as the Apostle says, “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16).

Works Cited

• The Holy Bible: King James Version. Cambridge University Press, 1769.

• The Heidelberg Catechism. 1563. In The Three Forms of Unity. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011.

• The Dutch Annotations upon the Whole Bible. Dordrecht: Synod of Dort, 1637.

• à Brakel, Wilhelmus. The Christian’s Reasonable Service. Translated by Bartel Elshout, Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1992–1995.

• Ursinus, Zacharias. Of the Lord’s Supper, and the True Doctrine and Pure Administration Thereof; With a Refutation of Both Transubstantiation and Consubstantiation. Translated by G. W. Williard, Scott & Bascom, 1852.

• Witsius, Herman. The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man. Phillipsburg, PA: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1990.

• Church Order of the Reformed Churches. Grand Rapids: Free Reformed Publications, 2018.

• Lewis, Jerrold. The Common Cup: A Command. Revised ed., 2009.

Appendix: A Pastoral Provision

Dec, 2025

During the height of the COVID pandemic, New Jersey became one of the nation’s epicenters of sickness and death. Our consistory felt the weight of two duties that seemed to press against each other. On the one hand, we were unwilling to suspend the administration of the Lord’s Supper, “This do in remembrance of Me” (Luke 22:19), (1 Corinthians 11:26). On the other hand, we could not lightly dismiss potential transmission, nor ignore the fear of the weaker brother, whom Scripture commands us to bear with tender regard (Romans 14:1; 1 Thessalonians 5:14).

In searching for a faithful path forward, we were guided by Scripture and by the Church Order that governs us. The original Church Order of Dort (1619), Article 62, gives helpful guidance:

“The Lord’s Supper shall be administered only where there is supervision of elders in an orderly manner according to the ecclesiastical form. And in such a manner as the consistory shall judge most conducive to edification.”

Further, it adds clarity to the boundaries:

“...provided, however, that the outward ceremonies as prescribed in God’s Word be not changed and all superstition be avoided.”

Together, these affirm two truths:

1. The manner of administration is entrusted to the prudence and judgment of the consistory.

2. The elements themselves may not be altered.

With these boundaries in place, the path became clear. Here I will describe our first pandemic communion. Around the Communion table, we placed simple Passover Seder or Kiddush cups (Brooklyn), uniform, unadorned, reverent.

At the center of the table stood a single common vessel, the wine consecrated with thanksgiving, following the apostolic pattern: “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16).

The act of blessing rested upon the singular vessel (wine carafe), filled with the one element, representing the one blood of the one Savior. From this vessel I walked around the table, pouring a small measure into each communicant’s cup. In doing so, the congregation retained both sides of the biblical pattern: the singularity of the consecrated cup (Matthew 26:27–28), and the distributive command, “Drink ye all of it.”

At the close of each sitting, the communicants placed their cup into a cloth-covered basket at either end of the table.

While the present members rose from the table, and returned to their pews, the deacons quietly replenished each seat with a fresh cup for the second table sitting. It was smooth and unassuming as a visual. Both tables drank from the same consecrated wine, thus maintaining the unity of the element while making provision for the weaker brother (Romans 15:1–2).

We believe this arrangement preserved the integrity of the sacrament. It allowed us to maintain the elemental pattern revealed in Scripture (one bread and one wine blessed and given to the many, 1 Corinthians 10:17), while exercising the pastoral discretion entrusted to the consistory. It also honored the heart of the apostolic command: edification (1 Corinthians 14:26), unity (Ephesians 4:3), and love (John 13:34–35).

To this point we have kept this practice in place since 2020. We have had several wonderful Lord’s Suppers together with no complaint, signaling that this provision satisfies the hearts of all our communicants which, like every congregation, has a variety of opinion. It enabled us to continue in obedience without burdening consciences, without altering the elements, and without losing the signified communion of saints.

If you want to see how this is done, visit this link. The table first appears at the 1 hour and 33-minute mark.

The Spirit Has Already Spoken

When God desires His church to sing, He does not leave it to human initiative. The 150 Psalms were not compiled by accident. They were inspired, collected, and preserved by the Holy Spirit with a view toward the praise of the Church of God. The Psalms are, uniquely, songs. Not Scripture set to music, but Scripture as praise. They speak to God as much as they speak about Him. They form the prayer book, songbook, and devotional life of the covenant people across all ages (the Jewish Church, the Early Church, Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Church, The Reformation/Second Reformation Church, The Secession Churches, and us today in the FRCNA).

Contrast the genre of the Psalms with Paul's epistles, the visions of Daniel, or the narratives of Exodus. These are inspired, infallible, and rich in doctrine, but they were never songs. Nowhere in Scripture are we instructed to versify and sing Paul's letters. No command tells us to render Isaiah into meter and melody for the congregation. To treat all Scripture as equally singable is to erase the clear distinction and intent the Holy Spirit Himself has drawn.

The Psalms are the only portion of Scripture given explicitly by the Spirit to sing. They are songs by design, by nature, not by adaptation. When the Holy Spirit intended His people to sing in public corporate worship, He gave them 150 songs, and said, so to speak 'Here, sing these to US.” To suggest otherwise is to declare the Spirit's provision insufficient.

A Violation of the Regulative Principle

The Reformed and Presbyterian churches have long confessed the Regulative Principle of Worship (RPW): that only what God commands in public worship is permitted. This is in contrast to other Protestant traditions that assume freedom where God is silent. We assume the opposite: unless God explicitly commands it, it must not be brought into His corporate worship.

Since Moses, this RPW principle had guarded the holiness of God’s worship. Just ask Aaron. It reminds us that when we come before the Triune God collectively, we are not there to express ourselves, but to respond to His revelation to us. It was this very principle that led the Reformers and Seceders to return to the Psalms alone as the songbook of the church. Calvin, Knox, and De Cock understood that singing what the Holy Spirit took time to write for us is the highest expression of worship. Only what God has commanded is an act of worshipful submission. To add what He has not commanded, however well-meant, is pure presumption.

The Psalms are sufficient. They contain the full range of human experience under grace: repentance, forgiveness, joy, grief, confession, praise, justice, mercy, covenant, and Christ. The entire redemptive work of God is sung, always more deeply than in our most doctrinally rich hymns. They are sung Christology. They are Spirit-breathed doxology. To look outside of them is not only unnecessary, but also unfaithful.

A Path Already Taken

This is not the first time the Reformed church has faced such recommendations. The Reformed Church in America (RCA) and the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) once sang only Psalms. A reading of their histories proves that their fidelity was not lightly held. Both the RCA and CRC in their inception (or immigration) was rooted in the Synod of Dort, in the Secession of 1834 (which also reformed the Song Book to Psalms only). At the founding of the CRC (USA) in 1857, one of its chief reasons for leaving the RCA was a protest against 800 unauthorized hymns.

But slowly, under pressure of cultural accommodation and aesthetic preference, they yielded.

Let's go back.

In 1789, the RCA added hymns to its Psalter. By 1869, its hymnal contained over a thousand hymns and the Psalms were nearly lost. In the CRC, the Psalter of 1912 marked a recovery of psalm-singing, but only for about half a generation. In 1934, hymns were added. In 1959, more still. By 1987, the "Psalter Hymnal" included 491 hymns, and in 2013, Lift Up Your Hearts presented a veritable buffet of global songs, contemporary choruses, and a scattering of Psalms.

This is the path we are being asked to walk.

Let us be clear: those who walked it before us never intended to forsake the Psalms. Each addition was presented to each synod as modest, controlled, safe. But the Psalms were displaced, not preserved. Once one small principle is surrendered, the outcome becomes inevitable.

The PCA, OPC, and CRC all bear the same scars. What begins with supplemental verses ends with doctrinal drift. The Psalms give way to man's desire. If we add one, why not nineteen? If nineteen, why not one hundred? Then theology follows. As Abraham Kuyper warned, "In the struggle between hymn and psalm, all nominal members favored the hymns; the truly pious were drawn to the psalms." De Cock is much stronger in his language, "Hymns were never introduced into the church, except to cause degeneration and contempt for the welfare of the church." "Where, therefore, were the hymns, or other whorish songs ever used in the days of the apostles in the congregations of the Lord?" In case you are wondering where he said this, it's in his pamphlet, "The So-Called Evangelical Hymns the Darling of the Enraptured and Misled Multitude in the Synodical Reformed Church and even by some of God's children from blindness, because they are drunk with the wine of her fornication, further tested, weighed and found wanting, Yes, in conflict with all our Forms of Unity and the Word of God."3

Why We Must Not Follow

It is also important to examine some of the very songs now being proposed or defended as Recommendations. Many of these selections, such as As Moses Raised the Serpent Up (John 3), Comfort, Comfort Now My People (Isaiah 40), If I Speak in Foreign Tongues (1 Corinthians 13), In the Beginning (John 1), O My People Turn to Me (a paraphrase likely rooted in the prophets?), Seek Ye First (Matthew 6), The Beatitudes (Matthew 5), and The Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5), are taken from narratives, gospel instruction, or prophetic preaching. None of these genres are songs. They are not identified as such by the Spirit, nor are they framed in a poetic or musical form suitable for corporate praise.

Even the so-called Songs of Mary, Simeon, and Zechariah are misnamed. The Greek text of Luke explicitly states that Mary said (εἶπεν), not sang, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46); likewise, Simeon said (εἶπεν) his words upon seeing Christ (Luke 2:28–29). The same goes for the Angels of Christ's birth. No song there at all. These are records of speech, not prescriptions of song. There is no biblical warrant to treat these as anything to sing. Ask yourself, "What did Paul mean when he used the word hymn?" (Eph. 5; Col. 3) What did Jesus and the disciples sing on the night he was betrayed? καὶ ὑμνήσαντες ἐξῆλθον "and having sung [a hymn] they went out…" The verb ὑμνέω (hymneō) simply means to sing praise; it does not imply versified songs as we think of it today. What did the Hebrew church, and thus our Lord sing exclusively ? The term refers to Psalm-singing in both the Septuagint and Jewish usage of the time. So, to elevate man-made versifications to be sung in corporate worship is to treat as prescriptive what Scripture has presented as descriptive, which is a violation of the Regulative Principle.

In other words, each of these recommendations comes from a portion of Scripture that is undeniably inspired, but never intended by the Spirit for corporate singing. None bear the form, function, or Spirit-indicated use that the Psalms alone possess. To versify and sing them in worship is to treat all genres of Scripture as equal in liturgical function, which is a confusion of the Holy Spirit's design. The Psalms alone were given as Israel's, Christ's, and the Church's songbook.

It is also important to examine some of the very songs now being proposed or defended as "Scripture songs." Consider the following examples:

• Song of Hannah (1 Samuel 2) – a prophetic utterance tied to a historical narrative.

• Song of Moses and Miriam (Exodus 15) – a historical celebration following a redemptive event.

• Song of Mary (Luke 1), Song of Zachariah (Luke 1), Song of Simeon (Luke 2) – all narrative-embedded praise, recorded within redemptive history, not given as liturgical material.

• As Moses Raised the Serpent Up (John 3), The Beatitudes (Matthew 5), The Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5), If I Speak in Foreign Tongues (1 Corinthians 13) are didactic or instructional texts, not written in or for musical form.

• The Ten Commandments, The Lord's Prayer – moral and devotional instruction, not divine songs.

Some reasons are old. But others, perhaps, we have not yet seen clearly:

• The Psalms are already sufficient to instruct the church in doctrine, worship, and experience. We are not impoverished. (2 Peter 1:3)

• Other genres of Scripture were not intended for musical setting. The didactic epistles, histories, apocalyptic visions, and gospel narratives are not liturgical texts. To versify and sing them corporately is to treat all Scripture as functionally the same. This denies the Spirit's clear intent in giving a distinct songbook to His Church.

• When we sing uninspired words in God's worship, we teach without inspiration. In preaching, the minister is constrained by the text. In song, the people themselves proclaim theology at their discression. Should not that theology be God's?

• The church is shaped as much by what she sings as by what she hears. Versifications of Scripture set to music, however carefully selected, in the 21st Century, are often as formative as sermons. To introduce new songs is to introduce a new catechesis. What are we teaching our children? What boundary will they push, if we push this one?

• God gave His people a canon of praise. To add to it is to say His provision is incomplete. That is a weighty theological statement, one we dare not make.

• We are not wiser than De Cock, or Dort, or the Reformers. One hundred percent of Reformed history demonstrates that the addition of Scripture songs to the 150 Psalms is a historical regression. Unwittingly, our Dort fathers opened that door. Or rather did not close it tightly. Now we are being asking to walk through it.

• The Holy Spirit preserved the Psalms across dispensations. Christ sang them. The apostles sang them. The early church sang them. The Reformation/nader reformatie sang them, the Puritans, etc. We have no authority to lay beside them another set of so-called scriptural song.

Hold the Line!

If we are truly ready to make a change at Synod 2025, then let us reform ourselves. If Article 694 of the Church Order is to be revisited, and indeed, rewritten, let it not be to loosen its guardrails, but repair them, and complete the work of reformation. Let us then remove all remaining doxologies and Scripture songs not found in the Psalms. Let us remove from our worship of all that the Spirit has not commanded. Let us finally and fully align our practice with the original intent of Dort: to sing only the songs the Holy Spirit has written and placed right smack in the middle of His Word. Anything less is regression.

This committee's proposal and recommendations open a door. A door that the RCA, CRC, OPC, PCA, PCUSA, RCUS and a myriad of denominations that no longer exist have already walked through. It asks us to sing what the Spirit never commanded. It asks us to unlearn the lessons of Dort, of De Cock, of the Secession. It is, in theological terms, the beginning of decline.

We do not need new songs. We need to love The Psalter more deeply. The Psalms are not stale. They are life. They are not insufficient. They are inexhaustible. And they are the only songs God Himself has given His church to sing.

May Synod 2025 not only reject this proposal. Let it bear witness, with our forefathers, that the Psalms are enough.

So let us rethink our supposed “special place” in God’s eyes as a country. Israel was not just a nation—it was a nation-church. A people called, covenanted, wed to the LORD in an unrepeatable way. We are just another nation, beloved in our own eyes, but which happens to contain a church, a body of the elect, gathered by grace from every tongue and tribe. Whatever warnings we will come across in the Old Testament, directed at Israel, speaks to us as a church, both comprehensive and local… but not as a country.

Hosea’s Audience Was Not a Secular State

This distinction is critical in the age of swelling Christian nationalism. The temptation to blur the boundaries between church and nation, between God’s covenant people and political identity, is, at best, theologically confused.

Old Testament prophets did not cry out to a republic or a democracy. But to a people whose entire national structure was bound up in covenant. They had Sinai behind them. We do not. They had the Ark and the Tabernacle. We do not. They had prophets speaking by divine revelation. We have the completed Word. Their identity was shaped by redemptive history; ours is shaped by geography and constitution.

To read OT prophesies through the lens of American exceptionalism is to flatten the very meaning of covenant and twist the gospel’s trajectory.

America Has No Sinai

The United States of America, for all her providential mercies, has no burning bush, no Shekinah, no Davidic throne. Her Constitution is not the Law of God. Her shores were not crossed under divine mandate. God has preserved and restrained evil within her borders, but she is no more the “city on a hill” than Nineveh or Babylon once were. The Church is.

Whatever we may say about American history, it must be said in humility, not pride. God's patience with nations is never a mark of covenant, only of mercy.

But There Is a Remnant

Yet within this nation, God has placed a remnant. A church bought with blood. A people gathered by grace across many denominations and churches. They are not defined by flag, but by faith. Not by soil, but by Spirit.

The church, not the state, is the object of God's redemptive focus. The true heirs of Abraham are those united to Christ, not those who pledge allegiance to any earthly banner. And so, it is within the church, not the country, where Old Testament nation's prophesies find their present address.

Let It Strike Where It Should

Let the Old Testament prophesies speak. Let them cut. Let them expose every false trust and every idolatry of heart. But let them do so to the right people. Not in the halls of Congress, but in the sanctuary. Not to America writ large, but to the Church within her.

Let us not hold this prophecy like a cudgel over unbelieving culture. Let us receive it first as a scalpel for the Bride of Christ. The church must read, let's say, Hosea with trembling, not with a flag in hand, but with sackcloth.

The Gospel Is Bound to a Cross, Not a Flag

We should abandon the delusion that America is in any way a modern Israel. The gospel does not march behind or in front of the stars and stripes. It marches alongside a crucified and risen Christ.

Our hope is not in reclaiming a nation. It is in reviving a people, His people. The church.

The church alone is the covenant community. And the church alone will remain when the nations of this present age are long forgotten.

A Marxist Foil

Environmentalism, as it’s often packaged today, carries a whiff of Marxist DNA. Christians should smell it a mile off. It’s not really about the planet. It’s about raw, naked power. Marxism thrives on crisis. Class struggle morphs into climate struggle, with mankind cast as the oppressor and nature as the exploited proletariat. The solution? Central control. Guilt-driven by carrot and stick collectivism which never moves an inch toward our fabled utopian rest. Think Green New Deal or eco-socialism. Both are less about saving trees and more about toppling old systems, redistributing wealth, and erasing individual stewardship under one secular hive, where the Queen bee (Read ‘goverment’) pumps out drones to her feeding. Karl Marx’s fingerprints smudge our lens, as creation itself is prostituted out for revolutionary power.

Scripture recoils at this. Genesis 1:28 doesn’t apologize for mankind’s existince. It commends it: “fill the earth and subdue it.” Biblical stewardship is not exploitative; it flourishes under God’s blessing. Environmentalism flips this, shaming mankind for his very presence, a stain to be removed by self extinction. Job 41:11 “…whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine” rejects pantheistic Earth-worship. Creation always points to the Creator, not itself (Psalm 19:1). When environmentalists spoil priceless paintings, glue themselves to roadways, or push depopulation (the opposite of Musk’s birth-rate panic), they ironically mirror Babel’s pride (if not its purpose), stacking brick upon brick, to unseat God’s order. Musk and environmentalism are two sides of the same coin. Christians should reject both foils, not because the Earth doesn’t matter, but because its gospel is false.

Conservation as God’s Mandate

I am a conservationist. There, I said it. I love this planet. I have stood in awe for hours, just studying, marveling at our Savior’s creative Genius. At times it’s so beautiful, my eyes mist. I Often think in those moments, “how could something so beautiful be fallen at all?” But it is. A new, or renewed earth (depending on your hermeneutic), is what God has promised. In the meantime, conservation is the Christian’s true north for planet Earth. Genesis 2:15 hands Adam the fork and the shovel: “dress it and keep it.” As we have noted, ‘Abad (serve) and shamar (guard) are both verbs. They’re active, humble, rooted in God’s design for our flourishing. Conservation does not seek to save Earth for its own sake. We steward it for Christ’s sake, who made heaven and earth. Joseph didn’t waste Egypt’s grain, he stored it (Genesis 41). The Proverbs 31 woman doesn’t squander her household, she builds it. Conservation tills the garden we’re given, not plant an idol we dream up.

Environmentalists treat this planet like a victim to appease, conservationists, a trust to cultivate. Environmentalism is clenched fisted. Conservation is open handed, planting, pruning, preserving. Leviticus 25:2-5 ties this to rest, the land gets its Sabbath too, not because it’s sacrosanct, but because God’s. And He rested on it. Surely in part, to enjoy what He had made. Conservation rejects waste (think overfishing, plastic filled oceans, slashed forests) but also rejects despair. Earth’s doom isn’t in our our timeline. Restoration is. So conservation is practical: clean rivers, fertile fields, air we can breathe, not for Gaia’s applause, but for the King’s ‘well done.’ For that, there is a lot of work to do.

Musk, Mars, and the Point

Elon’s Mars sprint dodges all this. Why not flee a weed-filled garden you won’t tend, for greener pastures in the great beyond? Some environmentalists might cheer his “save humanity” rhetoric, but it’s just Marxism in a spacesuit, rocketing past God’s green earth. Conservation grips the plow here. Christians don’t abandon Earth for a Red Planet reboot. Instead, we should roll up our sleeves and tend the garden beneath us. Marxism wants this system torn down, and environmentalism is the ecological arm of Marxism, just as the Olympics are the physed arm of the UN.

The Christian Stance

The Christian should reject environmentalism outright. We don’t believe in “Mother Earth.” We believe in Father God. We should reject environmentalism, not because Creation is disposable, but because its cure is poison. A Marxist sleight-of-hand swapping God for nature. Young and old, embrace conservation! Not so much as a trendy badge, but as a biblical charge. We’re not Earth’s saviors or its scourge. We are its stewards for the One who made it. Jesus says, “Occupy till I come” (Luke 19:13) Let's tend His soil, until He returns and makes all things new.

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A Man Who Sows, But Doesn’t Tend

Musk’s life will be one of the great biographies of history. It’s hard not to agree that we’re watching, in real time, an addition to the list of the most transformative men in history. Moses, Plato, Paul, Augustine, Muhammad, Columbus, Gutenberg, Newton, Marx, Einstein. Course changers, History shapers.1 For good or ill. And each one has a back story that molded them. Stories that are every bit as fascinating as the transformation they brought. Musk’s story is bigger than rockets.

He’s fathered at least 13 children—five with Justine Wilson, three with Grimes, three with Shivon Zilis, one with Ashley St. Clair in September 2024, and rumors of another brewing.2 His father, Errol, sired kids across broken lines. A messy legacy of scattering that we won’t unpack. Interestingly, Errol is now making appearances on South African blogs and independent media sites on X. They can’t go after his amazing mother (a true gem it seems), so perhaps the machine is attempting to soil Musk’s by spotlighting his father? I don’t know. Musk, to his credit, has escaped the orbit of his dad, by and large. They have nothing to do with each other. But Musk’s life is still fingerprinted by his dad’s DNA,—divorces, custody fights, a daughter who calls him absent, a mother pleading online for their son’s care. It’s messy for a whole host of reasons, again, that we won’t get into. The point is he builds vast and astounding empires; SpaceX, Tesla, et al., but his kids are raised by nannies. I take zero pleasure in relating this. This isn’t needlessly pointing fingers. It’s an observation of a pattern. Musk sows widely, tends thinly. Mars fits the paternal male mold. “Earth you’re out. Mars, my love!” A new field to seed, not a home to tend. If stewardship begins with what’s closest—family, soil, soul—then running to the Red Planet looks like leaving the plow behind.

Earth’s Still Untended

Look at Earth. Land covers 29% of it.3 The Sahara stretches 3.6 million square miles, Antarctica 5.4 million, the Outback a million more.4 Oceans blanket 71%, yet we’ve mapped less than 20% of their floors.5 These aren’t barren like Mars; they’re already habitable, bubbling over with untapped potential. The Sahara gets enough sunlight to power the world twice over with solar farms.6 Oceans could host towns and cities (think submerged habitats in the Gulf’s warm shallows). Musk’s tech-billions could coax life from these places, working with Earth’s ecology—water, sun, wind. Instead, he aspires to inseminate (terraform) a planet with no breathable air (0.6% oxygen vs. Earth’s 21%), no liquid water, and soil too toxic for crops.7 Mars demands we import life; Earth begs us to tend to life that’s already here. Which sounds more Genesis 2:15?

Escaping the Hard Work of Home Tending

Why Mars? Musk talks population collapse, Earth’s fragility—fair worries. He’s said birth rates are “the biggest danger civilization faces,” which explains his careless actions a bit.8 We don’t need more children strewn wide. We need sons and daughters raised in stable homes, by parents who tend with care, forging citizens foundational to society’s soul. Maybe he hears a clock we don’t, ticking toward extinction? Well, we look to the scriptures that tell us neither heaven nor earth will pass until all is fulfilled (Matt. 5:18). Stewardship doesn’t flee the thorns. It grips the plow and breaks the soil. Noah didn’t flee the flood—he tended the ark (Genesis 6-9). The servant with one talent didn’t seek new anything, and he was judged for burying what he had been given (Matthew 25:14-30). Musk’s restlessness recalls Cain, wandering east of Eden (Genesis 4:12), not Adam tending it. His childhood under Errol’s chaos birthed a need to outrun disorder, to build where others break. Mars is his Babel. A tower to the stars, fueled by rocket-grade kerosene and liquid oxygen. But tending means staying, weeding, repairing, waiting—like the farmer trusting God for rain (James 5:7).9

Tending as Worship, Staying as Faith

“The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof” (Psalm 24:1). For the Christian, tending is a kind of worship. Caring for our neighbor, planting a tree, cleaning a stream, raising a godly child, these are stewardships with real-Earth impact. Musk’s Mars dream—“extending human consciousness”—sounds visionary. It also sounds a lot like abandonment. It it sidesteps God’s gift. Psalm 115:16 draws the line: “The heavens, even the heavens are the Lord’s; the earth he hath given to the children of men.” Exploration can praise Him—probe Mars, mine comets, reach the great unknowns of the universe. But leave man where God created him. Christians need to be on their toes moving forward. Musk is trying to rewrite the script on us. The believer’s hope isn’t a new planet. It’s a renewed one (Revelation 21:1). We need to get busy. Christians should tend this garden until He comes, not chase a Martian dream. Christian, don’t abandon what you’re called to keep.

Earth’s climes: deserts, mountains, forests and seas whisper possibility. Mars screams “I’m leaving.” I think Christian stewardship chooses the whisper. We can’t leave a garden half-tended for a rock that can’t grow.

Footnotes

Utopia has always been the fool's errand. Musk says that Mars' governmental structure will get right, what human history has gotten wrong. He promises direct democracy, minimal government, laws with sunset clauses, and shared pan-human responsibility.

Elon's thoughts, pragmatically framed, are driven by what he sees as necessity. Earth may not survive mankind. So mankind needs to survive Earth. These words carry the unmistakable imprint of utopianism. It's subtle, no question. To his credit, Elon’s is not the naïve, idealistic utopianism of Star Trek, but certainly one that wears the garments of engineering, technology, and a certain kind of human inevitability. He doesn't speak of a perfect Martian society. He knows better. It's more of an insurance policy for humanity. A living, breathing, off-site backup of human civilization that would secure our species against natural catastrophe, or ourselves. Yet we still feel the old utopian impulse, albeit in a veneer of pragmatism. "We can do it better."

The promise is always the same: If only we could do it this new way, we might fix the ills and ailments of human history. We could create heaven on Mars without God.

Utopia is a beautiful lie.

Man has spent millennia breathlessly chasing it. Every attempt ends in ruin. Whether in the political experiments of totalitarianism, the scientific dreams of transhumanism, or the galactic aspirations of space colonization, the same delusion persists. If we can just remove the constraints of the past, we can fix what's broken in us. Yet, therein lies the fatal flaw, the one reality that corrupts every perfect plan—sin. It has broken us.

The first and only true utopia was Eden. It was not a work of man's hands but God's. It was a place where righteousness dwelt, untouched by death or decay. But even where perfection reigned, sin entered. Not by poverty. Not by ignorance. Not by oppression. But by curiosity. "Hath God said?", was the impetus of man's great demise.

So if utopia couldn't last in the garden of God, how could we imagine we can build one in a fallen universe? The first utopia was shattered by a single blow of defiance. Every attempt since has only multiplied our ruin. We forget that when Adam and Eve fell, all creation fell with them. Not just Adam, but the very created order itself. (Genesis 3:17-18) Above all corruptions, man's very heart was corrupted (Jeremiah 17:9), his mind and will enslaved to sin (Romans 3:10-12), and his heart darkened by pride (Ephesians 4:18). The world is no longer fit for a 'utopia,' and man is not fit to rule one.

Utopia is impossible. Not so much because of external obstacles (although they are many), but because of the inertia of corruption. Man does not fail to make a utopia because of a lack of knowledge, but because of the evil lodged within our core. His heart is incapable of standing in the presence of perfection, let alone sustaining it. This is why every utopian project, from Babel to Animal Farm, has collapsed under its own weight.

Let's take the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) for example. It was humanity's first utopian attempt. The people sought to build a city and a tower to reach the very heavens—even to God Himself, not out of love for Him, but out of ambition to take His place. Their goal was to escape the orbit of our Creator: to unite the world under one language, one purpose, one people against God. Sounds familiar.

God's response? He shattered their ubiquity. He confounded their language. He scattered man across the face of the earth. Why? Because any attempt at human perfection that ignores God is destined for failure. The pattern of history is set: man builds, God scatters. Man rises, God humbles.

Think of the French Revolution. It promised the end of tyranny and the birth of liberty. Instead, it birthed the guillotine, where men tried to force utopia on society, slaughtering all naysayers in the name of progress. Communism, another bold attempt, envisioned a world of equality, where wealth and power were distributed, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", as Marx put it. And how did that work out? Ask Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Transhumanism is the current iteration of Utopianism. Currently, we are all spellbound, trying to cross the boundary of humanity through technology, merging man with machine. Strangely, this is also Musk's doing. It is uncovering a myriad of ethical questions that yet need to be answered. But not here.

Then there is Mars colonization. Elon promises a fresh start. A world without the pollution, wars, or brokenness of Earth. A new history to be forged away from this failing Blue Marble. But the same sinful hands that corrupted it, will corrupt Mars. Mankind will take his fallen nature wherever he goes.

The Christian's hope is not in some man-made paradise. It is in the kingdom of the Son. We love science, exploration, and advancement, but not at the expense of hope. Our hope does not rest in trying to resurrect Eden from the dead. Christ alone is our hope. Only He will restore what's been lost. His kingdom alone will establish peace and righteousness. As Hebrews 11:10 says, we look "for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God."

Utopia will never come through the hands of men. It will come when Christ returns. The greatest lie of utopianism is that man, given the right conditions, can fix our brokenness. But history has already judged. No revolution, no system, no technology can rebirth the human heart.

There is a utopia coming—but it is not by the work of our hands. It will come only at the return of Jesus Christ, the true King, the only Redeemer, and the rightful Builder of the New Creation.

So let the world dream of its utopias. Let them build their Babels. But as for us, we will wait upon the Lord.

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#9 Mars: Exporting Sin

To reach a favored bend, where the trout rise and the water deepens, we cross a large untamed meadow bursting with color and life. Goldenrod sways alongside the soft purple haze of wild bergamot, while the delicate lace of Queen Anne’s lace weaves through the green. The aroma is intoxicating—Clover, Rose Hip, Black Knapweed, Bird's-foot Trefoil, warm grasses, and the sharp bite of crushed goldenrod. Bees hum busily, and Viceroy and Monarchs drift overhead, crisscrossing coordinates through the field.

It is here, amid the wildflowers and waving grasses, that we often encounter one of creation's strangest illusions—the Hummingbird Moth. Darting from bloom to bloom, hovering with impossible precision, it flits through the air in perfect mimicry of its feathered namesake. Modern biologists tell us it is "convergent evolution," where different species independently evolve similar traits or behaviors. But if mimicry exists to ward off predators, why did this little buddy take after a harmless, gentle, fragile bird? It makes no sense.

The Great Mimicry Mistake

We’re told by evolutionists that most creatures that evolve to resemble something else do so for a reason. A non-venomous snake that mimics a venomous one.

Or an insect that looks like a thorn.

But the Hummingbird Moth? This particular moth, instead of picking something fearsome—a giant hornet, a miniature hawk, or even a terrifyingly large misquote— it chose to mimic a hummingbird. Of all things.

Now, hummingbirds are beautiful, don’t get me wrong. I could watch them all day. They are astonishing little creatures. But they are not exactly terror-inducing. They are, if anything, among the most vulnerable birds in nature. They are frequently preyed upon by hawks, larger birds, frogs, and yes, even large insects.

So if the Hummingbird Moth is a product of mindless evolutionary processes, why would it “choose” a disguise that makes it look like a snack rather than a threat?

The answer is simple: it didn't. It couldn't. It is an insect. It cannot recognize what it resembles, anymore than it can select what to mimic. And it certainly cannot shape its own biology through genetic mutations over millions of years to finally craft the perfect disguise. It’s silly, if not comical.

If mimicry is truly an evolutionary process, it requires a series of fortuitous accidents—mutations if you will, that somehow lead a moth toward looking like something entirely different than it was. But there are several glaring problems:

Mimicry requires an observer. If a creature is to mimic something, it must either observe it or be observed in such a way that gives an advantage. A moth does not know what a hummingbird is. It has no way to compare itself to a bird. If mimicry developed by random mutation, why would we not see thousands of failed attempts at mimicry in nature? Instead, we see perfected mimicry with no in-between forms.

Mimicry requires foresight. Evolution, as it is taught, is a blind and unguided process. A mutation must provide a survival advantage at every stage to be preserved. But a moth that is halfway to looking like a hummingbird is just a moth. There is no advantage in vaguely resembling a bird unless the resemblance is so precise that it fools predators. How, then, could an unguided process slowly shape an insect into something resembling a bird, if all the intermediate stages conferred no survival benefit?

Mimicry requires immediate function. If mimicry was a gradual, the the purpose is defeated. For millions of years, the moth would have looked like nothing in particular. Evolutionists mistakenly claim that gradual adaptations are kept because they offer even small advantages. But what survival advantage is there in looking somewhat like a hummingbird? None.

The Evolutionary Problem of Bad Mimicry

If evolutionary mimicry is an accident of random mutation, then why are there no halfzie mimics in nature? Why don’t we see moths that look almost like birds but haven’t got the details right? If natural selection were true, this would be a logical conclusion. But what we see in all of creation is highly specific, precise engineering, suggesting purpose, not accident.

In the case of the Hummingbird Moth, the evolutionary theory stumbles massively. Hummingbirds do not frighten predators; they attract them! Unlike creatures that mimic something dangerous to survive, the Hummingbird Moth has supposedly evolved to resemble a prey animal, a decision that, if natural selection were guiding the process, should have been eliminated from the gene pool rather than preserved.

Designed, Not Evolved

If we see an incredibly well-crafted replica of something, we assume a designer. No one finds a sculpted statue of a hawk and assumes that natural erosion happened to carve it that way. If an object is crafted with precision, it implies purpose and intelligence. Why then, when we see mimicry in nature, should we assume that it happened without intelligence? The Butterfly Moth does not prove evolutionary mimicry; it disproves it.

It is a perfect example of how creatures do not shape their own features over time, but rather, their forms, behaviors, and abilities are all part of God’s design. Evolution requires endless millions of years of minute changes with no direction. But in creation, they are already functioning with precision. The Hummingbird Moth’s resemblance to a hummingbird is not the work of time and chance, but of a Designer who created creatures with beauty, variety, and, sometimes, a little humor.

The Hummingbird Moth, in all its amusing mimicry, is not a success story for evolution—it is proof of the impossibility of the contrary. The next time someone points to mimicry as an example of natural selection, point them to the Hummingbird Moth, a fluttering reminder that design, not blind chance, governs creation.

P.S.

This would have been a far more intimidating choice. :-)

Since Eden, mankind has grasped for autonomy, looking for every and any reason to break free from the eye of God. Mars is just the latest iteration of mankind's rebellion—new technology, but the same sinful heart. Fallen man runs from God by nature, and Mars, lifeless as it is, might become another stage for our restless wanderings. But the Red Planet was not created for us; it was created for God's glory. How this works itself out in the end is God's prerogative. This much we do know: “The heaven, even the heavens, are the LORD’s: but the earth hath he given to the children of men” (Psalm 115:16). It appears that won’t stop us from attempting to impose ourselves upon it—to try and terraform the Red Planet and, in doing so, attempt to alter humanity’s trajectory itself. Yet, just like Eden, sin will poison the very ground we touch on Mars. What man fails to grasp is that our rebellion follows us wherever we go.

Like Cain, who wandered east of Eden to build a city and establish his name apart from God (Genesis 4:16-17), we now set our sights on Mars as a refuge from the consequences of our fall. We imagine that a new frontier will free us from the impact of Eden—its wars, depravities, and ecological disasters. But the radiation belt on the way to Mars will not wash away our sin. It will neither absolve us of our guilt nor free us from God's judgment. Mars will just become Act Two of the same sad tragedy. Sure, the sands of Mars may be untouched by human hands, but they will not remain untainted by the human heart.

When we speak of becoming a "multiplanetary species," we fail to admit the reality of who we are. Our fingerprints are soot-covered; everything we touch is bespeckled with corruption. We are not taking the best of humanity to Mars; we are exporting our sin. There is no escape from the curse. As the psalmist reminds us, “The wicked are estranged from the womb: they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies” (Psalm 58:3). Whether on Earth or Mars, this truth remains. We will exploit, hoard, deceive, and destroy. That’s fallen man. The same pride that built Babel will construct rockets to Mars, and the same greed that consumes Earth now will strip Mars of whatever it has to offer.

The tragedy of colonizing Mars is its utter futility. For all the billions spent, for all the technological marvels created, humanity will only succeed in multiplying its iniquity across the stars. Mars will not become a new Eden; it will become another footnote of human tragedy. The hope for humanity doesn't lie on the surface of the fourth rock from the sun, but in the Rock of Ages, Jesus Christ, this planet's Creator and Savior. For all its brokenness, Earth is still the staging ground of God’s redemption for mankind lost. To leave Earth in search of salvation elsewhere is to deny the very source of salvation itself.

The attempt to colonize Mars offers nothing more than a looking-glass—a reflection of humanity’s fallen heart. It will not save us; it will only expose us. True freedom, true hope, can’t be found in human autonomy. It’s found alone in the One who sets captives free. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). Welcome to the New World in Christ. He will properly legitimize all exploration—of both space and our own sinful hearts. Rather than colonizing Mars, Christians should focus on colonizing Heaven, magnifying the One who created us and who alone can redeem humanity: “He hath made us, and not we ourselves” (Psalm 100:3).

“All people that on Earth do dwell,
Sing to the LORD with cheerful voice.”

Without Him, we will corrupt every frontier we touch.

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When exploration leads to greater awe of God’s handiwork, it fulfills its highest purpose. It becomes, in a way, an act of worship. Yet, like all good gifts, discovery must remain tethered to God’s revealed will. Without this anchor, human ambition drifts beyond its God-ordained purpose, turning discovery into defiance and curiosity into rebellion.

Earth: Man’s Forever Home

From the beginning, God established the Earth as humanity’s dwelling. In Genesis 1:28, the dominion mandate commands us to fill the Earth, subdue it, and exercise stewardship over its creatures. The specificity of this charge is significant: God created man to thrive within a confinement uniquely designed for human flourishing.

Secular scientists tells us Earth is a random dot among billions of galaxies. But that is far from true. There is nothing random about it. Earth is finely tuned to sustain life. From the atmosphere’s precise composition (~78% nitrogen, ~21% oxygen, ~0.93% argon, ~0.04% carbon dioxide, and variable water vapor) to the magnetic field that shields us from cosmic radiation. Think of Earth's perfect distance from the Sun, within the goldilocks zone where water can exist as a liquid, where its rotation provides a balanced cycle of day and night, regulating temperature and supporting ecosystems. The Moon’s gravitational pull stabilizes Earth’s axial tilt, creating predictable seasons, while the planet’s crust allows for tectonic activity that recycles essential minerals. Every detail, from the abundance of water to the intricate design of plant photosynthesis producing oxygen, is furnishing. This is our home. Truly, the heavens and Earth declare the glory of God (Psalm 19:1). Psalm 115:16 declares, “The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord’s: but the earth hath he given to the children of men.” Earth is God’s gift, and man’s sacred trust. Leaving it should provoke deep reflection on both motive and purpose.

When future Christians consider playing a part in colonizing Mars, they need to ask: Are we abandoning this trust? Mars, for all its fascination, is inhospitable to human life by design.

What Drives Us Beyond the Earth?

As this series unfolds, a recurring theme will arise: What drives man to leave Earth? The desire to explore space is not inherently wrong. It reflects our God-given curiosity. But when exploration shifts from discovery to permanence, it reveals a deeper spiritual problem. Are we fulfilling God’s purposes, or trying to rewrite them?

The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) stands as a sobering reminder of misplaced human ambition. Nimrod’s generation sought to build a tower into heaven—not to glorify God but to replace Him and make a godlike name for themselves. For all their efforts, God came down, scattered their purposes, and confused their language. Mars colonization betrays a similar impulse, where technological achievement becomes an idol, and escape becomes a replacement for dependence on God.

God’s Providential Boundaries

While we may never fully colonize Mars, my own sense is that we will attempt it. But as the Apostle Paul reminded the Athenians, God has “determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation [home]” (Acts 17:26). These boundaries are established for our good and His glory. This Blue Marble, with all its fallen beauty and challenges, is humanity’s forever home until the consummation of all things. When the Son delivers the kingdom to the Father, He will make all things new (1 Corinthians 15:24-28).

Unlike past earthly frontiers, Mars is not designed for habitation. Its inhospitable conditions prove that it was not intended as a home. While studying the heavens and exploring other planets, mining them for their resources, etc., can be God-glorifying, establishing permanent human settlements on Mars defies the boundaries He has set. It has no furnishings; we have to import them.

Running Away from Home

Scripture quietly warns of the dangers of leaving home outside God’s will. Cain (the restless wanderer), Jacob (exile and hardship), Jonah (fleeing from God’s call), the Prodigal Son (rebellion and loss), Naomi’s family (seeking refuge in Moab), and Lot (enticed by Sodom’s economics) all demonstrate that stepping beyond God’s boundaries brings alienation, suffering, and loss. Their histories remind us to look at our motives before entering new frontiers, earthly or solar.

Space exploration must be framed within a theology of the future that prioritizes worship and stewardship over conquest and ambition. Christians must ask: Are we seeking to leave Earth? For what purpose? To what end?

Eschatological Hope: A New Heaven and a New Earth

Our ultimate hope is not in colonizing other planets but in Christ, the Creator and Redeemer of heaven and this earth. Revelation 21:1-5 points us to the day when He will renew creation, erasing sin’s brokenness and establishing perfection. Mars fascinates many of us, but it can never be a goal or replace the glory of the home God is preparing for His people. Part of that consummation and glory of it all will be a new earth. Remaining here to tend, increases our anticipation of that Day and excites us to treat the home He built for us with great tenderness.

For Christians, exploration is a noble endeavor when anchored in God’s purpose. Colonizing Mars oversteps that purpose. Earth remains man’s God-appointed home—a place of unparalleled beauty and opportunity for glorifying Him. We shouldn’t leave it…permanently.

Miss the Prologue?

Next up,

A Mind for the Ages, Yet Limited

Augustine was an extraordinary man—full stop, exclamation point! In my mind, he stands as the greatest thinker since the Apostle Paul, unmatched theologically and philosophically by any since. Yet Augustine, like all of us, was limited. He didn’t know what he didn’t know, which sometimes made him sound quite silly.

For instance, in City of God (Book XVI), Augustine operated within the geographical framework of his time, reflecting the Roman and biblical understanding of the world. He describes the whole Earth as consisting of Europe—primarily Germania, Greece, and Italy—alongside Africa, Asia Minor, and the Middle East. To him, this was the known world. He had no knowledge of the Americas, the British Isles (beyond vague references to Britannia), sub-Saharan Africa, or the vast reaches of Asia. The frozen North and South Poles? Forget it. Such ideas would have been pure fiction to him.

This leads to another of Augustine’s limitations: his view of the Earth's spatial composition. He considered the idea of a populated "underside" of the Earth utterly ridiculous. The concept of antipodes (pronounced an-TIP-uh-deez)—people living on the opposite side of the world—was, to him, nothing short of absurd. He dismissed the idea outright, declaring:

"But as to the fable that there are antipodes, that is to say, men on the opposite side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets to us, men who walk with their feet opposite ours, that is on no ground credible. And, indeed, it is not affirmed that this has been learned by historical knowledge, but by scientific conjecture, on the ground that the earth is suspended within the concavity of the sky, and that it has as much room on the one side of it as on the other: hence they say that the part which is beneath must also be inhabited."

Why was Augustine so opinionated? And how could such a brilliant man be so completely wrong? The answer lies in the resources available to him. He simply didn’t know what he didn’t know. And neither do we.

We Stand on the Event Horizon of a New Era

Consider someone born in 1900 and living until 2000. Their lifetime would have spanned several extraordinary eras of change. As a child, they would have witnessed the dawn of the household telephone, revolutionizing communication. By adulthood, the automobile had transitioned from a novel curiosity to an essential mode of transportation, reshaping cities and economies.

In their middle years, the radio brought news, music, and entertainment into homes, creating a shared cultural experience on an unprecedented scale. By mid-century, television completely changed how people consumed information and entertainment, sadly becoming the centerpiece of family life.

Toward the end of their life, they would have witnessed the dawn of the computer age. Machines that once occupied entire rooms had shrunk to personal desktops, and by 2000, the internet was becoming a global phenomenon, ushering in the Information Age.

Think about it: in a single lifetime, this person would have experienced the latter part of the First Industrial Age, the Second Industrial Revolution, and the entire Information Age. They would have seen more technological progress and medical advancement than all previous generations combined since creation's dawn. They lived through the greatest exponential acceleration of human advancement yet. What would that boy from 1900 have thought about his golden years in 2000? Impossible, that’s what. And what might someone born today think of our world one hundred years from now? A world they very well could see.

An Age Like No Other

Whether we like it or not, we’ve either arrived at—or are rapidly approaching—a shocking new age. We can deny it, critique it, or try to slow it down, but we can’t stop it. Look around. We’re living in the Age of Information, the Age of Artificial Intelligence, and what could be called the Age of Exploration 2.0. Except there’s no “new world” left to explore on Earth; all that remains is space—the final frontier.

But as man turns his gaze beyond the blue skies of Earth, I can’t help but wonder: are we reaching for something, or are we running from something? What drives us to dream of life among the stars? Is it altruistic hope? Partly. Is it abandonment of a mess? Sure. Do we think that a new home will bring about a better version of mankind? Yes. All these motivations are entangled. But is the deeper reason far darker than we think? Could it be that fallen man, in his deepest, innermost being, wants to escape this world’s Creator, Lawgiver, and God? Soon, he will have the technology to try.

The Age of Exploration 2.0 is here. It is the full intention of SpaceX to not only reach Mars but colonize it. Specifically, the plan is for uncrewed Starship missions to Mars by 2026, with the possibility of crewed missions following if the unmanned missions are successful.1 The goal?

“To make humanity a multi-planetary species to preserve and extend human consciousness beyond Earth.”

We may laugh at this now, but if the Lord tarries, our great-grandchildren may look back with puzzlement and marvel at “what we didn’t know.”

Is colonizing Mars a step beyond the boundaries God intended for Christians? If Mars is eventually colonized, should Christians be a part of it? Can we wrestle with this for our great-grandchildren? The Christian Church needs a theology of the future. Too many questions are coming their way, and we need to begin thinking these things through now. It’s a profound thing to wrestle with, as I’ve discovered—and the answer may surprise you.

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Each morning, we get up and step into the shoes of our calling. Yet the old nature couches at our door: Do more. Be better. Earn your worth. The battle feels relentless. The to-do list grows. The weight of unmet expectations presses heavy on us. We become prisoners of our own minds and striving, mistaking business for faithfulness, and and productivity for purpose.

But the gospel has a different theology of work. “Thus saith the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel; In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15). Yes, this is speaking first about salvation, but that does not mean that secondary truths are absent. They appear when the aperture of the text comes into focus. The strength of a believer is not in endless striving, but in quiet submission to the One who holds all things— in salvation and work. Our efforts, untethered from His glory, are lighter than vanity. Yet when offered as dedication to God, they become holy things, bearing the mark of eternity.

This doesn’t mean we abandon work, far from it. God Himself ordained work before the Fall, commanding Adam to keep the garden (Genesis 2:15). It later turned into labor, along with the curse. (Ex. 20:9,10) Work is not a curse. Labor is. Labor is when work is over-burdened by toil, anxiety, and frustration. The sweat of our brow reminds us daily that we are fallen creatures, sinful, broken. When we forget this, we turn our labor into idolatry, measuring our value by what we achieve rather than by who we are in Christ. Too many of us define ourselves by what we do, not who we are. What we do should facilitate who we are, not define us.

A theology of work is not about abandoning effort either. The believer despises sloth. It’s more about reframeing it. “It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep” (Psalm 127:2). The striving that consumes us does not always come from a good place. We labor as though the outcome defines us, forgetting that God alone builds the house.

What would it mean to rest in God in our callings truly? To work, not for approval but from the soul’s understanding that your labor in the Lord is never in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:58) And rest, able to enjoy life, for life’s sake. This kind of rest is not unproductive; it’s a form of faith. It is the quiet confidence of a heart settled before its Maker, knowing that He works all things together for His glory and our good.

When we can place things in their proper perspective, gratitude is the result. It transforms both our labor, and our leasure. Work becomes less laborious when we see it as worship. Rest becomes guiltless when we realize our limits and weaknesses, not to mention our temptations. Rest is a deeper recognition of God’s providence in giving us hands that can labor at all. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17). When we see life through this lens, the mundane becomes meaningful. The smallest task and little enjoyments done in the confidence of our Lord become a testimony of His grace.

Suppose you think of a farmer planting seeds in Spring’s morning light. He doesn’t strive, fearing the rain won’t come, nor does he rest idly, expecting the harvest without labor. He works in faith, trusting the Lord of the harvest to give the increase. So must we. But a good farmer also knows what rest is and loves it. Just go into any diner in the Midwest in winter at 6 in the morning. You will see what Imean.

It’s a shift, from striving to faith-filled work. Striving, at its core, seeks to control what belongs to God alone. Faithful labor, on the other hand, surrenders the outcome to He who enables us to work. As Paul wrote, “I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase” (1 Corinthians 3:6). The farmer plants. The tradesman builds. The teacher instructs. Yet, in all, God’s hand sustains.

This is the freedom of having a theology of work. Do you have one? To live faithfully in the place God has ordained, neither haunted by yesterday nor paralyzed by tomorrow. We are free to work diligently, knowing the results rest in His sovereign hand. And we are free to rest, too, trusting that the One who neither slumbers nor sleeps will provide for all our needs (Psalm 121:4).

If our lives are rivers flowing toward a never-ending eternity, then tributaries of worry and ambition will churn the water on our banks. But beneath lies a deeper, larger current of calm—the steadfast love of your Savior that never ceases (Lamentations 3:22). To live in that stillness would be a piece of heaven on earth, no? To know true peace, not as an escape from life but as an anchor to it.

The world tells us “What we do is who we are”. That is not how the bible describes us. To seek fulfillment in perishing things, the next achievement, the next stage of life, and the next accolade is to embrace that which will end in corruption. But God calls believers to glorify Him in the ordinary faithfulness of today. Whether you are caring for a child, filing papers, or hammering nails, each act can work with eternal purpose when done unto the Lord.

Let us reject self-focused striving. Let us embrace a theology of work and rest as acts of devotion, knowing that our labor is not in vain, nor our rest, when it is grounded in His glory. In Christ, we are not slaves to the noise of “more.” We are free to work, free to rest, free to live—to His glory and for our good.

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When considering the nature of human sinfulness and the soul, we find ourselves grappling with a concept that pushes human thought to its limits. The old debate between the creationist and traducianist views of the soul’s origin tries to solve how original sin is transmitted and how God interacts with His fallen creation. Is the soul created pure by God, and only tainted by its union with the body, as creationists suggest, or is it propagated along with the body, as traducianism teaches? In my reflections on these matters, I have found that traducianism presents a more consistent and satisfactory explanation of the transmission of sin. Here's why.

Creationism's Problem of Purity and Corruption

The creationist position maintains that God directly creates each soul at or near the moment of conception, infusing a pure and sinless soul into a body inherited from sinful parents. Plato, Aristotle, and Augustin taught that the soul is material, indivisible, and cannot be transmitted through natural human generation, but is divinely given. It nicely preserves the soul’s distinction as a special act of God's creation, but it also raises a significant theological dilemma: how can a pure soul, created by a holy God, become tainted by original sin through its union with a corrupt body?

The typical response is that original sin is transmitted through the body, which is itself affected by Adam's fall (Romans 5:12). The soul, though created pure, is corrupted upon its union with our fallen bodies. But this line of reasoning only raises new problems. If God is directly creating pure souls and placing them into sinful bodies, then He is intimately involved in the process of corrupting what He has just made pure. This raises a troubling question: is God, in some way, responsible for the corruption of the soul?

For creationists, the answer lies in maintaining the distinction between body and soul. But this approach begins to sound like a veiled form of Pelagianism, where the soul is not inherently sinful but becomes sinful through contact with an external environment (in this case, the body). If sin is truly "soulish" as well as material, this solution is unsatisfactory. The creationist explanation implies that the soul, though created pure, is corrupted by something outside of itself—leading us dangerously close to the Pelagian idea that sin is not inherent to the totality of our human nature.

One of the central weaknesses of the creationist view lies in the tension between the immaterial nature of the soul and its corruption through union with a fallen body. The creationist argument posits that the soul, which is immaterial, indivisible, and created directly by God, becomes tainted with original sin the moment it is united with a sinful body. However, this raises a significant philosophical problem: how can an immaterial soul, created pure by God, be corrupted by something material? If the soul is truly immaterial, it should not be subject to the same kinds of corruption that affect the physical body, since the nature of immaterial substances does not allow for contamination in the same way as the material world.

Yet, creationism assumes that the union of a pure soul with a fallen body results in the soul’s immediate corruption. This suggests a kind of transference of corruption from the body to the soul, which contradicts the very definition of the soul as immaterial, thus pure. (More on this later with my favorite theologian, Augustin of Hippo.) The creationist view then struggles to explain how a purely spiritual and divine act of creation—God’s making of the soul—can result in the soul’s defilement simply by its contact with a fallen body. In essence, it undermines the soul’s immateriality, which should, by its nature, resist the contamination that plagues the physical world. This flaw highlights a deep inconsistency within the creationist framework, leaving open the question of how an incorruptible soul becomes corrupted merely through its association with the body.

It is a solemn witness, written with the ink of Adam's rebellion and sealed by every generation since, that man in his entirety—both body and soul—has fallen from the estate of original righteousness. The original corruption of sin is not a cloak cast upon the body, leaving the soul untainted; but it is as a deep-rooted poison that infects the whole man. Will we then argue that the soul, being created pure by God in each birth, is only later marred by the contamination of the body’s corruption? Reasoning like this casts a long shadow over God's work. It prompts unanswered questions like: How could God infuse purity into what is already perverted by sin? Is He not holy, who cannot look upon iniquity (Habakkuk 1:13)? No, it is better to confess with trembling hearts that the sin of our first father has corrupted the very fountain of life itself, and that by natural generation both body and soul bear the grievous wound of original sin. Traducianism rightly asserts this, for both spirit and flesh are alike brought forth in sin, and only by the blood of the Second Adam are they redeemed (1 Corinthians 15:45).

God’s Creative Act and Original Sin

Another aspect of this problem concerns God’s direct creative activity. According to the creationist view, every time a human soul is created, it is a new and distinct act of God’s creative power. Yet, Scripture tells us that God ceased His creative work on the sixth day and rested from all His labors (Genesis 2:2). According to this position, every time a human soul is created, it is a new and distinct act of God’s creative power. However, Scripture clearly states that God ceased His creative work on the sixth day and rested from all His works (Genesis 2:2–3). This cessation was not partial; it was total—God rested from all His work. If God finished all His creative work by the end of the sixth day, how then are we to understand the ongoing creation of new souls after the fall?

Creationists argue that while God rested from the creation of physical things, He continues to create new souls. Where is the proof? This notion is problematic because it suggests that God is still performing acts of new creation, contradicting the clear teaching that He completed His work (very good). Exodus 20:11 affirms this, saying, "For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day." There is no room in this text for the idea of ongoing acts of creation.

This creates a theological dilemma: if God ceased creating, how can He be continuously forming new souls? To suggest that God is still creating new souls would imply that His work of creation is not truly finished, which runs contrary to the doctrine of divine rest after the sixth day. The creationist view then faces the difficulty of maintaining that God’s direct creative acts continue—implying ongoing creation—which directly contradicts the biblical teaching of God's completed work.

Furthermore, if God is continually creating pure souls and placing them into sinful bodies, His ongoing creative work is now intimately tied to the transmission of sin, raising profound theological concerns. It suggests that God, who is utterly holy and without sin, is placing newly created pure souls into corrupt bodies, implicating Him in the process of original sin. This only deepens the problem of how a pure and holy God can create something that immediately becomes tainted by sin.Creationists must then argue that while God finished His initial work of creation, He continues to create new souls as part of His providential care over the world.

Since neither side wishes to think lightly of the holiness of God, we must avoid the thought that, in trying to guard God's holiness, He, in creating the soul, would expose His purity to the contagion of sin. How could He, the thrice-holy One, breathe the "breath of life" (Genesis 2:7) into what is already defiled? It is not in the nature of God to participate in the corruption of His creatures, even as He providentially sustains the fallen world. Is it not more reasonable to hold that the whole man—soul and body—is begotten in sin, as the Psalmist declares in Psalm 51:5—“Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me”?

David’s use of the word "shapen" (or "brought forth," in some translations) refers to his very formation or development within the womb. To be "shapen" in "iniquity" suggests that sin is present from the first spark of life, at the very inception of human existence. Sin is not something that occurs later in embryonic development or only affects the soul once it arrives in the body. It is part of the very fabric of human nature. If the soul were created pure and only later corrupted by God's infusion or ensoulment, it suggests, unknowingly, that God Himself is on the very borderland of the transmission of sin. This cannot be. The stain of sin is not a physical force that clings only to the body and then later corrupts its new tenant; it permeates the very essence of our nature. In Adam, all died—not in part, but in whole (1 Corinthians 15:22), not as "corruption in waiting," but at our very moment of conception.

Preexisting Souls

Some creationists see this flaw in their argument. To remove this, they posit that all souls were created simultaneously, along with the rest of creation, during the six days in Genesis. These souls are then "waiting" to be embodied at the appropriate time. This preserves the ceasing of God's creative work on day six because it suggests that God is no longer actively creating new souls—He simply draws from the already-existing pool of souls when conception occurs.

This addresses the issue of God’s ongoing creative acts after He rested, since it claims that no new creation of souls takes place post-fall. It also attempts to avoid the contradiction that arises in the traditional creationist view, where God is seen as continuously creating souls after day six.

The problem with the preexistence view is no explicit biblical text that suggests souls were created in advance and kept in a "bank." Scripture consistently presents God as forming and knowing individuals at the moment of their creation or conception, such as in Psalm 139:13–16: "For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother's womb... My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret."

It also brings us perilously close to the danger of Dualism, leading toward Platonism, a philosophy where souls are thought to exist independently of bodies and are temporarily "housed" in physical form. This dualistic thinking contradicts the biblical view of human beings as whole persons—body and soul created to be unified (Genesis 2:7).

If all souls were created in advance, the question remains how they become affected by original sin. The idea of waiting in a preexistent state doesn't explain how these souls, created purely by God, would become tainted by sin upon union with the body unless one reverts to a legal understanding of imputation alone. Most of the early Church Fathers, including Augustin, rejected the idea of preexisting souls, viewing it as speculative and inconsistent with the biblical account of God's creative activity.

Most creationists typically avoid this notion of preexisting souls, holding instead that God creates each soul individually at conception. While the concept of preexisting souls addresses the issue of God's rest on the sixth day, it introduces more significant theological complications. The Bible does not support such an idea, nor does it even hint at it, and it remains a minority view within both historical and contemporary Christian thought.

The Case for Traducianism

In contrast, the traducianist position provides a clearer and more cohesive understanding of human sinfulness. Traducianism teaches that both body and soul are transmitted together through natural human generation. Here, the whole person—body and soul—is passed down from parent to child, including the corruption of original sin. The sin is not something that comes from external contact. It is an inherent part of our humanity from the moment of conception.

Traducianism avoids the theological pitfalls of creationism because it does not require God to create a new soul at each conception, nor does it place Him in a position where He is infusing purity into corruption. Instead, human beings inherit both body and soul from their parents, and along with them, the guilt and corruption of original sin. This maintains the integrity of the doctrine of original sin and preserves God's holiness in the process.

Furthermore, traducianism offers a more unified view of human nature. Body and soul are not separate entities that come together after the fact; they are part of the same whole. Human beings are not just bodies with souls or souls with bodies—we are a unit, created in the image of God but fallen and corrupted through Adam’s sin. This understanding of the metaphysics of human nature better accounts for the pervasive effects of original sin on both our physical and spiritual selves.

Does it not make more sense that the Lord has ordained our sinful souls, as well as our sinful bodies, (thus corrupted DNA) should descend from parents to children? In this, the isolation of the human family is revealed and guilty by nature, and practice as a whole. Not broken into segregated pieces. When God fashioned Adam, He breathed into him the breath of life, making him a living soul (Genesis 2:7). And by His sovereign decree, this same life of the soul now flows through natural generation, from parent to child, binding them in the bonds of shared nature, both in sin and in the hope of salvation. What a holy office, then, parenthood is, to be entrusted with the transmission of souls! Though the sin of Adam is passed down, yet in God’s salvation, even this serves His purpose, that the soul, though fallen, might be drawn to Christ. The very soul that is generated through natural means is yet the object of supernatural grace.

A Question of Consistency

When we examine the creationist view in light of these theological concerns, we are forced to ask whether it truly holds up under scrutiny. Can a pure soul, created directly by God, become corrupted by contact with a sinful body? If so, this seems to create more problems than it solves. The moment of God's infusion of the soul into the body becomes a direct encounter with sin—a difficult concept to reconcile with God's perfect holiness. If the soul is truly "pure" at creation, how can it be immediately tainted by the corruption of the body without implicating God as the direct conduit of that transmission?

By allowing for the propagation of both body and soul through natural means, traducianism offers a more consistent solution. Sin is not something that comes from external contamination but is an inherent part of our nature as fallen creatures. It is passed down from generation to generation, affecting both body and soul alike. And most importantly, it preserves the doctrine of original sin without placing God in a position where He must directly interact with corruption in the act of creating new souls.

In City of God, Augustin emphasizes that a woman who is sexually exploited does not lose her inner purity or her moral integrity, as the violation is an external act that does not corrupt her soul (City of God, Book 1, Chapter 16). He makes a clear distinction between the physical defilement of the body and the spiritual purity of the soul, arguing that the soul remains intact, unsullied by the sinful acts of others. Yet in the transmission of the soul, he and other creationists argue that the touch of the soul with the body transmits original sin!

This position is inconsistent with his creationist stance. If the soul, newly created by God, becomes immediately corrupted at conception due to its union with a fallen body, why is it not similarly protected from defilement, as in the case of physical violation? Augustin’s distinction between bodily defilement and the soul’s integrity seems to suggest that the soul should remain pure even when united with a corrupt body at conception. Yet, in the creationist view, the body’s corruption transfers to the soul at the moment of conception, introducing sin into the soul’s very essence. This inconsistency exposes a weakness in the creationist framework, as it fails to adequately reconcile the soul’s supposed purity in cases of physical defilement with its immediate corruption at the start of life.

This is apples to apples as both have to do with the soul’s contact with sin. Yet, why would an immaterial, newly created soul be susceptible to sin just by being united with a fallen body? If the soul is pure, its immediate corruption through the body introduces a tension between the soul's immaterial essence and its vulnerability to sin. According to the creationist, this immateriality should theoretically make it impervious to corruption from the material world. Yet, the creationist position posits that the soul becomes tainted when it is joined to a fallen body.

Federal Headship

While the creationist’s use of the doctrine of federal headship explains the legal imputation of Adam's sin to humanity, it does not sufficiently account for the deeper issue of the soul’s corruption by it. Imputation, by its nature, is concerned with guilt, not with the transformation of the soul’s essence. These are two different categories. Under federal headship, Adam’s sin is credited to us because he acted as the father of mankind. But this is a legal transaction, not an intrinsic change in the soul’s substance. Herein lies the dilemma for the creationist: if God creates each soul pure and only the guilt of Adam’s sin is imputed, why and how does the soul become sinful in nature upon union with the body? Traducianism resolves this tension by affirming that both the guilt and the corruption of sin are transmitted naturally through human generation, encompassing the whole person—body and soul. There is no need to rely on a legal fiction to explain the depth of human fallenness. Rather, it is the very propagation of our sinful nature, passed down from parent to child, that fully accounts for the total depravity of mankind.

Final Thoughts

Admirably, the creationist position seeks to preserve the purity of the soul and the holiness of God. Unfortunately, it ultimately raises more questions than it answers. Traducianism, on the other hand, offers a clearer, more consistent understanding of the transmission of sin and the nature of human beings. It maintains the integrity of original sin, keeps God’s creative activity untangled from sin’s corruption, and upholds the unity of body and soul in the transmission of our sinful nature. For these reasons, I find traducianism to be a more compelling and theologically sound view.

I admit readily that much of this is a great mystery. God has ordained that not only the body but our very souls, be transmitted through the union of man and woman. In this, we see the providential hand of the Almighty, who knits the immortal into the mortal, binding together the seen and the unseen in the womb of creation by natural propagation. And though the soul is born with the tincture of Adam’s sin, this inheritance of corruption does not detract from the dignity of the soul’s origin, nor from the glory of its Maker. For in this, the grace of Christ shines more brightly…that the soul, fallen by nature, might be lifted by grace, restored to God which first fashioned him. And so, in the propagation of souls, we see the unfolding of God’s salvation, that from the loins of sinful man, He should raise up a people holy unto Himself, born not only of the flesh, but of the Spirit (John 3:6).