What do Moses and all idolators have in common? Each is transformed into the likeness of what they devote attention to. As Moses descends Sinai after dwelling with YHWH, his face is shining, transformed into the likeness of the holy fire he gazed upon (Exod. 34:29–35; 2 Cor. 3). Idolaters are transformed into different likenesses: depraved beasts and conniving snakes (Rom. 1:23). They focus worshipfully upon something beneath them—man-made totems of silver and gold (Isa. 46:6–7)—and thereby become in some way subhuman, that is, conformed to the image of the creation rather than Creator. As the Psalmist says: “Those who make them [i.e., idols] become like them; so do all who trust in them” (Ps. 115:4–8). Renowned biblical theologian G. K. Beale rightly notes that “people resemble what they revere, either for ruin or restoration.”^[1] As God’s image, we “always reflect something, whether it be God’s character or some feature of the world.”^[2] Yet these observations about Moses and idolaters assume something: worship requires attention.

Through attention we isolate specific points in our total sensory field, directing our souls after what we attend to.^[3] Before sin, Adam’s attention and sense of God led to a righteous honor and adoration of him, opposite the ruination consequent to suppressing the truth (see Rom. 1:18–32). After sin, man’s attention is drawn to idols, transmuting him into the form of ungodliness and unrighteousness. By grace, the redeemed heart is reoriented to God through Christ, attention (and transformation) drawn heavenward.^[4]

Attention is overloaded in today’s digital age. We are saturated with information and inundated with competing proposals of “reality,” hastening our transformation into the likeness of what we attend to. Both ruination and restoration await—depending on what we attend to. With the internet, smartphones, AI, and a host of other technological feats, Paul’s warning to attention-givers is amplified: man is ever learning but never obtaining knowledge of the truth (2 Tim. 3:7). People are increasingly discipled by screens. In 2024, the Pew Research Center notes 98% of Americans ages 18–29 own a smartphone (97% for Americans ages 30–49, 91% 50–64, and 79% for 65+).^[5] More alarming, 46% of U.S. teens (13–17) use the internet “almost constantly.”^[6] As attention moves along a digital superhighway of “realities” (or gods), humanity is quickly conformed into many falsehoods—or, by God’s grace, into Christ’s image (Rom. 8:29).

To be conformed to Christ’s image, Christians must attend to his construal of reality. To do that, we must direct our attention to God’s truth rather than idols. But this is easier said than done in our digital age. In this article, I will sketch a brief and selective biblical theology of attention. I will detail how human attention is either directed toward God’s reality or the serpent’s reality within the biblical storyline. I will then discuss how modern technology amplifies these two stories, and how humanity’s mass tribute of attention to one or the other hastens both restoration and ruin, humanity moving further away and toward God (2 Tim. 3:7). I conclude with steps for Christians to steward attention wisely in order to be increasingly conformed into Christ’s image.

Attention in Innocence

Long before mainstream news outlets, a serpent near a tree told lies. Originally Adam and Eve lived in a garden overgrown with God’s truth. Everything was good (Gen. 1:31). Humanity’s reality—what to attend to—was clearly defined (Gen. 1:28). God gave one restriction: to not eat of the tree of knowledge. At this point, there was only one story available for mankind to attend to. Should the serpent have never entered, and should Adam and Eve have kept their attention upon God’s revealed will, this reality would have remained.

Attention in and After the Fall

But Eve attends to the serpent’s false story. Did God really say what he did? Lucifer twists God’s command given in Genesis 2:16–17 according to his falsehood (cf. John 8:44), and then goes further, proposing an actual false reality for Eve to attend to: “You shall not surely die” (Gen. 3:4). For the first time in the universe, a counterclaim to God’s truth is introduced to humanity. Eve pays attention to the serpent’s falsehood instead of God’s truth, and her actions follow this new focus. Adam does the same, and both become shamefully conformed to the creation rather than Creator. Instead of running to God, they fearfully hide behind creation, covering themselves in leaves (Gen. 3:8–10). Adam’s knowledge of himself is deformed. Instead of confessing his sin he shifts blame to Eve and to God (Gen. 3:12). As an idolater (one who misplaces attention and worship), Adam’s knowledge of God and self is twisted.

However, God draws humanity’s wayward attention to a promise. He divides history into two seeds: the serpent’s and the woman’s. Two stories—two realities—will overtake history. The dividing line between the seed (singular) of the woman and the seed (plural) of the serpent is this: which story will a human being pay attention to: God’s, or the serpent’s? God’s story centers on his promise: that through the enmity between the seeds, he will raise a serpent slayer—a singular seed, in whom all the promises rest (Gal. 3:16). Until the promise is consummated, both God’s truth and the serpent’s lies will compete for the eyes of the beholder. God’s truth will triumph (Gen. 3:15), but only those who attend to it—who believe in the promise—will share in that victory.

Attention in Genesis 4–11

The story of the two seeds unfolds in Genesis 4–11. Humanity at large—the seed of the serpent—devolves into fratricide and violence (Cain and Lamech in Genesis 4), death (the Genesis 5 refrain “and he died”), sexual perversion (Gen. 6:1–3), and unceasing evil (Gen. 6:5).

Simultaneously, God’s promise moves through Seth, passes down through many generations, and then rests on Noah (Gen. 4:25–26; 5:28; 6:8). God upholds his restoration story by making a covenant with Noah (Gen. 8:20–9:17). But the ruination story seduces Noah too, who becomes a drunkard, full of shameful nakedness like Adam (Gen. 9:18–29). Though Noah is conformed to death, he attended to God’s promised future city by faith (Heb. 11:7).

Humanity proliferates in Genesis 10, interconnected by one language. Humanity attends to the serpent’s lie (“you shall be like God,” Gen. 3:5) and chases it by building the Tower of Babel “in the heavens,” a construct of pride and inversion of God’s command to spread and multiply. As humanity fixates on glorifying themselves, God strikes them down, sundering their tongue and ability to sustain united attention (Gen. 11:1–9).

God continues to pen his restoration story between Babel and Christ, sketched through the covenants. Despite this, God’s people repeatedly fall into idolatry, ruined into the likeness of idols. God’s story of restoration and the serpent’s of ruin—told through the seeds—captures every mind in redemptive history. God holds his remnant’s attention by grace. But the Old Testament testifies to man’s inability to attend to God faithfully without grace. God sends his prophets to call his people’s gaze back to himself, but the people are hardened, with ears turned deaf, eyes blind, and hearts dull (Isa. 6:8–13).

Only in Christ, who pays attention fully to God’s story of restoration, is God’s truth finally unfolded, the serpent and his story crushed.

Attention in the New Covenant

The Psalmist threatens idolators that “those who make [idols] become like them; so do all who trust in them” (Ps. 115:8). But the reverse is also true! Those who pay attention to what God has done in Christ become like Christ (Rom. 8:29). In Christ, God’s story of restoration is fulfilled.

After beholding God’s redemptive purpose in Romans 9–11, the apostle Paul exhorts us in 12:1–2 to present our bodies to God, not conforming ourselves to the world’s pattern, but being transformed by the renewing of our minds. In other words, in our sin we conform to the world by attending to it rather than God. But we renew our minds by thinking upon what is revealed to us in Christ, steadfastly testing what God has for us in Christ.

In Ephesians 4:17–24 Paul commands us to remove the old self which conducted itself in a sinful way of life that was corrupted with sinful desires. Instead, Christians are to renew the spirit of their minds and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God, in true righteousness and holiness (Eph. 4:22–24). Paul further enjoins believers in Colossians 3:1–11 to seek what is above with Christ, seated with God (Col. 3:1). We must set our minds on God and Christ above, not on sinful earthly things (Col. 3:2). We do this because we’ve died and raised with Christ and abide in God with him (Col. 3:3). Renewing the spirit of our minds and setting them on heavenly things changes the focus of our gaze. The sin that we once paid attention to in our idolatry is replaced with a better object: the glorious triune God. And when Christ comes, we will be with him in glory if we’ve made this attention-required pursuit of God’s city our aim. We kill sin as we attend to the fact that God’s wrath approaches to judge wickedness, which we once conformed ourselves to. We exchange this for the new self, renewed in knowledge congruent with the image of God revealed in Christ (Col. 3:4–11).

But Christians can only do this because the Spirit liberates new covenant members to boldly gaze upon Christ (2 Cor. 3:12–18). Under the Old Covenant, Moses’s face was veiled such that unregenerate Israelites would not see the outcome of what was passing away. But through the Spirit, the veil on Christ’s face has been removed!^[7] By the Spirit, we are empowered to attend to Christ, thereby being transformed incrementally into his image. Our attention upon Christ under the new covenant pays us this glorious dividend.

7. “For the law is in itself bright, but it is only when Christ appears to us in it that we enjoy its splendor.” John Calvin, Commentary on Second Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2003), 183.

A Tale of Two Seeds in the Twenty-first Century

The stories of God’s restoration in Christ and the serpent’s ruination of the unrighteous continue to unfold. Society approaches “the very end” of the last days shown in the New Testament. We know from 2 Timothy 3 that during this time people will conform themselves to wickedness, slander, heartlessness, over-indulgence, and brutality. Brimming with lies, they revere hedonism rather than God (2 Tim. 3:1–6).

These days are especially marked with ever-increasing knowledge without knowing the truth, the tombstone at the end of this litany of sins (2 Tim. 3:7). People will be increasingly attentive to false, idolatrous realities which never purchase actual saving truth.

The false reality authored by the serpent in Eden will be amplified beyond measure. In Eden, Eve beheld only two proposed realities: God’s and the serpent’s. Today, one look at your phone to investigate current events (i.e. reality) gives countless different proposals. In Eden, only God, Eve, the serpent, and Adam discussed “reality.” Today, conversation about reality is overgrown with a bewildering array of dissonant voices, each beholden to a different idol—and only a few beholden to God himself.

Society approaches another Tower of Babel. Man’s tongue was sundered there, when God slowed mankind’s conspiracy for establishing unified and monolithic sin. Today, technological progress makes conspiracy against God universal again. Overlay upon this the devolution present in Romans 1:18–32, and one finds each sinful blight present in society today point-for-point. Man everywhere learns but seldom obtains true knowledge. He reveres all manner of vanities, transmuting himself into the likeness of gods he worships with finger strokes.

But by God’s gracious choice, redeemed man is ever learning and increasingly subduing the earth as commanded with this same technology (Gen. 1:28). By God’s power and the Spirit’s invincible work, redeemed man is learning more and is coming to a knowledge of the truth. By grace, God keeps his elect’s attention from Baal (Rom. 11:4).

Thus, in today’s digital age the serpent’s original lie—“Did God actually say?” (Gen. 3:1)—is amplified, his seed discipled through a cacophony of voices. But, God’s truth remains, his purpose unfailing. Mankind may be transformed into the likeness of any number of deformed half-truths, but we in Christ are remade after his image.

How Then Should We Pay Attention?

How then do we attend to God’s truth in an age overgrown with information? How are we to take the serpent’s lies captive when they are legion? Practically, to attend to God’s truth and capture the vanity of the serpent and his seed’s lies, we must take the following steps:

1. We ought recognize that only a comprehensive Christian doctrine will prevail in a world glutted with objects to pay attention to. We must have a theology that recognizes God’s sovereignty in salvation, total human inability, and the necessity of Christ’s atonement and the Spirit’s empowerment to capture the attention of wandering hearts. This is the all-encompassing worldview that will meet—and slay—the next Leviathan.

2. We must recognize that God must first grant the Spirit’s illumination in conversion for anyone to truly pay attention to God’s reality. Thus, any transformation into Christ’s image is secured by God. The stories unfolding by the two seeds—and the ruination or restoration tied to which is beheld—is therefore directed by God’s sovereign plan. This knowledge provides the Christian immovable comfort considering the proliferation of lies (and deformation of humanity) in our present day.

3. We ought recognize that the enemy’s information campaign has an all-embracing unity even in its intentional diversity. That is to say, every voice that presents an alternative reality that opposes God’s word is on the same spiritual team. The voice that says there are many gods and the voice that says there is no god both sing together in that same serpentine choir that is opposed to God and his truth.

4. We must submit every square inch of life to Scripture. Any other source of information may propose itself as reality, but actual reality will always be defined by Scripture. This means that when any entity—the media, “the science,” conspiracy theorists, politicians, those on the fringe, experts, or even a family member—contradicts God’s word, we trust God instead of man.

5. We must observe that capturing every square inch of life by Scripture’s truth requires constant reliance on the Spirit’s illumination, required for understanding Scripture. This moves us to a humble dependence upon God in prayer and a rigorous attentiveness to God’s word in order that we might rightly understand it.

6. Beyond paying attention to God’s special revelation found in his word, Christians ought pay attention to God’s truth in his natural revelation—the created world around us full of sunsets, storms, seasons, people, and places. A picture of the woods is not the same as the woods. The actual world bears witness to reality better than a thousand divergent testimonies. Putting down your phone to look at the sky, talk with a friend, or throw a frisbee are superior truths to any imitations online.^[8]

8. Natural revelation—without Scripture and the Spirit—no longer results in natural theology as it did for Adam. Scripture as our spectacles and the Spirit’s inward testimony are necessary.

7. Christians should avoid habits that incline their attention to the enemy’s information campaign, which is amplified by technology. While further discussion is needed on social media algorithms, these are inarguably designed to create positive feedback loops that capture our attention and draw us further in. A small enemy foothold—a single YouTube short, an Instagram reel, or a TikTok video—can quickly turn into “doomscrolling” which fixes our attention and bends our hearts and affections to its doom-filled narrative. Christians should both repent of, and proactively protect themselves against, the enemy’s technological disinformation campaign.

8. To attend to God’s truth and tear down idols, Christians must know their “first principles.” Many leading the tech revolution hold anti-Christian worldviews, and they consider humans as merely an evolved conglomeration of facts, rather than God’s unique image. Advances in technology or AI seeking to redefine “what is real” or “what is human” are founded on false presuppositions. For example, if one fears AI will replace humans, we must ask: in whose world? God’s? In God’s world, humans are irreplaceable. AI will never be human, because being human means being made in God’s image, in covenant with him and accountable to him. We must approach technology and information—as any other area—with expressly Christian assumptions. No neutral ground exists.

9. Finally, the church needs more Daniels who dwell in the king’s house and orient it towards God’s story (true reality). As no square inch is beyond God’s authoritative claim, digital spaces are God’s. They are ripe for capture. We need those who will enter those spaces and, amidst the whirlwind, hold fast to reality’s only centering lodestone, Scripture, paying no attention to idols. God’s word is the light in every dark valley, technological ones no different.

Conclusion

Christians are uniquely commissioned by God with proclaiming his reconciliation story, told in Christ’s person and work. This ministry should steel our hearts as we engage the enemy’s misinformation campaign (2 Cor. 4:1). Even though God’s story is veiled to those perishing—blinded by this world’s god and his false story—we who attend to Christ proclaim his glory, holding fast to the fact that God alone cuts through darkness and chaos, shining in the glorious face of his Son (2 Cor. 4:3–6; Gen. 1:3).

Christian, today you have this treasure of Christ within you, a surpassing power and glorious fire by which to burn through lies and warm you in every dark, cold place (2 Cor. 4:7–11). Today’s affliction—unfolding around us in a tirade of lies—is momentary and light, and is in fact one of God’s means for preparing us for an incomparable glory as we look through this affliction and perceive God’s purpose shining through, by which we are renewed (2 Cor. 4:16–18). So hold fast to God’s truth, knowing that the serpent’s lie will continue to unfold, and that in this process, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under our feet (Rom. 16:20).

In January, Stephen Wellum detailed Scripture’s witness of what the image of God is. In this article, I will investigate when Scripture presents God as assigning a creature his image. Specifically, I will argue the image of God is present at the moment of conception. Proving this is not simple. There is no facile proof text such as: “the image of God is present in a sperm-fertilized egg.”

On one hand, Scripture presents texts detailing “what” the image of God—or its likeness^[1]—is (Gen. 1:26–27; Gen. 5:1; Gen. 9:6; 1 Cor. 11:7, Jas. 3:7-9). Included here is how for Christians, this image—though fallen—is being restored (1 Cor. 15:47–49; 2 Cor. 3:17–18; Eph. 4:22–24; Col. 3:9–11). Christ himself is the original image, into whose form his followers are being conformed (Rom. 8:29; 2 Cor. 4:4; Heb 1:3). Scripture also describes what life is like in the womb. God knits the human together in utero (Ps. 139:13), God reverses the plight of childlessness through conception (Gen. 25:21; 29:31-32; Luke 1:24-25), and children can even “struggle” in the womb (Gen. 25:23). Further, a phase of the Ordo Salutis—regeneration—is shown to transpire in an embodied soul in the womb (Luke 1:15, 41). This is not an exhaustive list, but shows the variety Scripture uses to describe life from the earliest stages of existence in utero.

1. Image (ṣelem) and likeness (demût) are words that share a similar meaning with different emphases. See Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom Through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, 2^nd ed. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2018), 235.

However, exegetes contest each of these verses. Vindicating the idea that these qualities in their varied forms constitute “life,” and that we should link these descriptions with the image of God is challenging. Further, much of the language describing those in the womb can also be used to describe non-humans. John the Baptizer leaped in the womb for joy (skirtaō, Luke 1:41), but so do calves (Mal. 3:20 LXX). So that kind of language does not necessarily prove the image of God is present at the moment of conception.

Considering this, I propose a different course. If we can find a text showing a physical characteristic that exists in the womb, and if this physical characteristic is tied explicitly to the image of God, it would follow that wherever this characteristic is present, then so too the image of God is present. As it stands, I believe Genesis 9:4–6 presents just such a case.

To get there, I will first define the image of God. Then, I will examine Genesis 9:4–6 as our text which ties the “life” of humans to their “blood” and simultaneously undergirds this link with the imago Dei. Following this, I will appeal to medical evidence for when “blood” is first present in the human creature in utero. I will then proceed to detail the relationship between “flesh,” “life,” and “blood” as given in Genesis 9:4–6 and in Scripture broadly, where the bridge between God’s image and the conceived baby will be located, a bridge I will invite readers to cross with me to defend and celebrate the sanctity of God’s image in the womb.

Image Defined

Many have set themselves to answering the question: “what is the image of God?” Should we answer that it is substantive, present in our rational and moral faculties, but less so in our bodies? Or is God’s image located in our ability to relate to the “other,” be it God or neighbor? Or should we answer it is our function existing in our God ordained dominion over earth, spoken to man directly after he was created (Gen. 1:28)?

The answer is: “yes,” and “but.”

“Yes,” each of these have truth to them. “But,” as Wellum notes, we should avoid “privileging one aspect of us at the expense of other aspects” and also avoid imposing theological categories onto Scripture without first allowing Scripture to speak for itself.^[2] Wellum is correct to note that “image” signifies “what” we are (humans viewed holistically in rule over the world as God’s “vice-regents”), but that image isn’t reduced to merely a list of properties (substantive view), nor our function as “vice-regents,” but includes God’s relational dealings “with creation on the basis of how he deals with humans, which first begins with the covenant headship of Adam.”^[3]

This is helpful for two reasons. First, it does justice to the variety of biblical data, not domesticating divergent areas of Scripture into a preconceived theological mold. Second, Wellum’s formulation as a theological category is sensitive enough to deploy in a search for the image of God across the canon’s varied presentation of it. Scripture doesn’t at every mention of the image of God speak to this image’s substance, function, and relations in the same decibel. There is variety in the biblical presentation. Wellum’s theological formulation is helpful because it accounts for any portion of Scripture that speaks to the image of God, accounting for Scripture’s varied witness but positing a unified theological concept.

I will hold this holistic, tripartite view of the imago Dei as a biblical-theological preunderstanding as I survey the next point: that human life and human blood are sacred, and that God associates these with the image of God.

Lifeblood and the Imago Dei: Building a Bridge from Life and Blood to Image

Now that we have reviewed what the image of God is, we turn to when it is conferred on a human being. To do this, we must expose the connection between the varied biblical and theological descriptions of life in utero and the image of God. Scripture gives a diverse presentation of life inside womb, but it rarely mentions the image (or likeness) of God in these texts. These descriptors (whether it be John the Baptist “leaping” in the womb in Luke 1:41, or Jacob and Esau “struggling” in the womb in Genesis 25:22) don’t show an explicit connection to the concept of the image of God. The phrase “image of God” or “likeness” is in fact almost never mentioned when Scripture describes conception, life in the womb, or birth/fathering, with the one exception of Genesis 5:3. Nonetheless, there is a bridge that shows the irrevocable bond between the image of God and human life in all the diversity Scripture presents it in, including in utero.

This bridge is Genesis 9:4–6.

God recasts his original prohibitory command, “you shall not eat,” in Genesis 9:4, developing the original command God gave to Adam, where God blessed Adam and gave him provision (Gen. 2:8–9, 16) but commanded him to “not eat” in Genesis 2:17. Genesis 9:4 is where the conversation of “flesh,” “life,” and “blood” kicks off. Though the prohibition originally starts in how mankind is to relate to animals, the basis for this prohibition is rooted in the worth of man due to his image bearing status (Gen. 9:6). Eating animal flesh with its lifeblood is not wrong in itself, but wrong because the animal lifeblood stands as a symbol for man’s lifeblood, the worth of which is funded by the imago Dei.

Genesis 9:4: ^“But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.”

God prohibits eating “flesh” with its “life” (nepeš, breath, life),^[4] which is its “blood” (dām, blood, bloodshed, bloodguilt, murder).^[5] The ESV adds “that is” between nepeš (life) and dām (blood). In Hebrew, the two are placed side-by-side appositionally, where the latter word or concept clarifies and specifies the former, both pointing to a singular reality. Leviticus 17:11 has “life of the flesh is in the blood^” where nepeš equates with dām more loosely due to the preposition b (in) governing the noun dām. In Deuteronomy 12:23 we have a stronger equating of one thing with another: “Only be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life, and you shall not eat the life with the flesh.” That is, dām (blood) is (=) nepeš (life).

On balance, we should not over-interpret our text in Genesis 9:4 to the effect of it saying life=blood. On the other hand, it does appear that the appositional placement of “blood” after “life” with nothing in between is epexegetical, so that dām (blood) explains the preceding noun nepeš (life). The apposition of dām defines “the preceding substantive [nepeš] . . . in order to prevent any possible misunderstanding.”^[6] Or as John Calvin notes, “[S]ince there is no copulative conjunction between the two words, blood and life, I do not doubt that Moses, speaking of life, added the word blood exegetically, as if he would say, that flesh is in some sense devoured with its life, when it is eaten imbued with its own blood.”^[7]

An analogy might be helpful. If we think of the sun shining on us in the day, the sensation of heat is tied to the sun’s light. Wherever the sun is, there is also heat (in varying degrees). The Sun and its heat are so intricately linked that it is challenging to conceive of a situation where there could be sunlight but absolutely no heat from this same sun. The relationship between life and blood is similar. They are not ontologically one reality, but each of their individual realities is so wrapped up with the reality of the other that it is challenging to separate the two.

As the text moves ahead, in Genesis 9:5 the prohibition broadens. The lifeblood (nepeš–dām) of man inappropriately spilled requires something: a reckoning (dāraš) that God requires. This reckoning (dāraš) means a life taken creates a void that God demands an accounting for; an exacting. This exacting hangs over the one who takes the life. If we imagine there are two people, and one steals from the other, a debt emerges. Value—as backed by the image of God, and behind this, God himself—is taken from the one and due to be repaid by the other. “Hebrew dāraš in this construction indicates an exacting or calculation and is found in the sense of vengeance.” This accounting in fact places God as the “plaintiff” and the lifeblood stealer as the “culprit.” It is God who demands an accounting, “killing a person who is made in the ‘image of God’ is a blow against God himself.”^[8]

8. Matthews, Genesis, 403.

Our text proceeds to Genesis 9:6, where arises a concept in Scripture often termed lex talionis (Latin for “law of retaliation,” e.g. “an eye for an eye”). God bases his prohibition against taking human life on the impregnable rock of the value he places on humans at creation. This value is criminally disregarded when a human (or animal) spills the (life)blood of another human because it tramples underfoot God’s image. Lex talionis “ensures that the punishment is commensurate with the weight of the crime.”^[9]

9. Matthews, Genesis, 403f.

Genesis 9:6 exhibits a poetic construction in the form of a chiasm. The ESV renders this appropriately:

 Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image. (emphasis added)

Structurally, we have,

A–Sheds
B–Blood
C–Man
C₁–Man
B₂–Blood
A₃–Shed

10. Matthews, Genesis, 404; Wenham, Genesis 1–15, 193, “The tight chiastic formulation (shed, blood, man, man, blood, shed) repeating each word of the first clause in reverse order in the second emphasizes the strict correspondence of punishment to offence[.]” Note “whoever” in English in 9:6a is supplied where in Hebrew it is absent. The offending person is given in huʾ (a personal pronoun) in 9:6b (by man his blood shall be shed…).”

This mirroring of words—a chiasm—exhibits a tightly knit connection between crime and punishment.^[10] Centering the chiasm—bringing a sense of primacy—is the murdered human (C). The centrality of man in this construction stresses the importance of mankind’s blood. It is essential, with incomparable value in creation. The central counterpart, mutually interpreting Genesis 9:6a, is the accounting demanded which also comes by a human (C₁, Gen. 9:6b). C₁ is not the offending party, but another person repaying the debt of taken (life)blood by taking the (life)blood of the offender.^[11] Whoever takes a brother’s life, in the words of Calvin, “draws down upon himself the blood and life of his brother.”^[12] As Gentry and Wellum note, speaking of murder generally, “God requires retributive justice. That is, the penalty for taking a life is paying a life. Thus God holds the community responsible; he demands an accounting from society.”^[13]

Murder—the shedding of an image bearer’s blood—is a sinfully intimate affair, true. Nevertheless, God’s question to Cain, “What have you done?” remains open before us, the blood of the unborn—our brother—crying out from the ground all around. It demands an answer, one which society itself must give (Gen. 4:10).

The reason such an exact equation of “blood for blood” must be equalized is given in 9:6c: because God made man in his image. No higher ground exists for the sanctity of life than God’s decree that it should be so. God’s image is so valuable because God himself is infinitely worthy and deemed it proper to make for himself an audience of facsimiles (people), into which he would pour his glory and from which this God-vested refulgence would shine back. Mankind, having nothing of its own, is invested with the worth of God that God finds mete to grant, God looking “upon his own gifts in them . . . thereby excited to love and to care for them.” God’s sanction to protect his image means that injury to a human with life and blood in them is an affront to God. This God-invested worth makes sacred the blood and life of God’s image bearers.^[14]

14. Calvin, Genesis, 295f.

This generates a question: when is “blood” in the above sense found in the womb? For when the blood is present in the Genesis 9:6 sense, there exists also the image of God, proving that abortion is sin.

When Does a Conceived Human Develop Blood?

15. I use the scientific nomenclature even through these terms do not clearly express the humanity of the new entity. A “zygote” (sperm-fertilized egg) is the term for the human after conception until about four to seven days out. The zygote will divide many times, eventually splitting into the embryo and placenta, where uterine implantation occurs. “Embryo” is the term for human life in the womb spanning approximately weeks one to three. The fetal stage is week four until birth. See Pranav Kumar Prabhakar, Textbook of Clinical Embryology, (New York: Nova Medicine and Health, 2023).

The exact genesis of human blood between the points of conception (when a sperm fertilizes an egg) until about the fourth week is incredibly complex, technical, and subject to conjecture. Studies haven’t adequately elucidated how hematopoiesis (blood formation) initially arises in a human embryo.^[15] Blood cell development begins seven days after conception, when the zygote/embryo generates an early line of hematopoietic cells by signaling to a structure called the “yolk sac” which in turn generates cells called “primitive erythroid cells,” or cells which form red blood cells. Shortly after, a second line of cells (called definitive erythroid cells) “initiate the first wave of definitive hematopoiesis and produce cells of the definitive erythroid lineage.”^[16] Moreover, it has been estimated that an embryo has functional erythrocytes (red blood cells) and hemoglobin (oxygen carrying cells) by weeks two through three.^[17]

What this means is that within the first seven days after conception, the zygote/embryo has cells in hand with which to make red blood cells. These are cells which will soon form erythrocytes, or red blood cells, a primary component of blood, and which carries with it hemoglobin, which brings oxygen to our bodies. Further, what this also means is, that since the image of God is intimately connected to human blood (and thus is a life protected by God’s Gen. 9:6 sanction), and if a zygote/embryo at the two-to-three-week mark has human blood, there is simply not a biblical leg to stand on for Christians who appeal to science to get out of humans at this stage being image bearers.

But…what about the first two to three weeks? If an embryo doesn’t develop “blood” until 7–14 days post conception, does the sin against God’s image by shedding blood from Genesis 9:6 actually apply?^[18]

18. I’m not saying “blood” isn’t present in the embryo until 7–14 days. I’m saying it isn’t obvious to me what differentiates the various cell lines and precursors to “blood” and blood itself as Scripture understands “blood,” especially in Gen. 9:4–6 (more on this below).

To answer this, we must return to Genesis 9 to examine the relationship of flesh to life/blood.

The Flesh and Life/Blood Relationship

The relationship of flesh (bāśār), life (nepeš), and blood (dām) is important for elucidating the relationship between the organic portion of human life and the life-force behind this organic matter which both animates it with an individuality (partitioning it off from other inanimate matter) and proceeds to find itself formalized in human blood. It is also important because it allows Scripture to set the tone for our understanding of the physical and spiritual sides of our nature, and how to properly relate them to one another and the image of God.

“Flesh” in the sense used in Genesis 9:4 is inclusive of both humans and animals, which accords with the use of bāśār elsewhere (Gen 6:12–13, 17, 19; 7:16, 21; 8:17; Lev 17:14; Num 16:22). Though at times bāśār takes a view toward sinful humanity (Gen. 6:12–13), its reservation for living organisms accords better with its use in Genesis 9:4 (cf. Ps. 136:25; Job 12:10; 34:15).

Specifically, it is preeminently involved with the physical, “bāśār is deeply tied to the material and is never used in the sense of ‘appearance, figure’; bāśār is corpus, not figura.” It is contrastively paired with rûaḥ (spirit: Gen. 6:3; Num. 16:22; 27:16; Isa. 31:3; Joel 2:28-29), nepeš (life, breath, soul: Gen. 9:4; Deut. 12:23; Job 14:22), and lēb (heart: Ezek. 44:7, 9; Psa. 84:2).^[19] This is important when considering “flesh” in our passage (and the discussion of the sanctity of life from conception), because it allows us to retain bāśār’s view toward animal and human life, but it foregrounds the organic substrate that is intimately connected to “life” but not necessarily synonymous with “life’ or its ultimate precondition.

19. Ernst Jenni and Claus Westermann, Theological Lexicon of the Old Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1997), 284, emphasis original.

The semantic range of nepeš is as fertile as the objects it refers to. The noun alone appears 756 times in the Hebrew bible (the highest concentration in the Psalter). In general, it refers to a breathing substance or being, often equated with the Greek word psychḗ, or the inner being of a human.

Nepeš is regularly distinguished from the “flesh” (bāśār, e.g. Isa. 10:18), and body (e.g. Job 14:22: “He feels only the pain of his own body [bāśār], and he mourns only for himself [nepeš].” Nepeš departs at death and returns with life (Gen. 35:18; Jer. 15:9; Job 11:20; 31:39). In 1 Kings 17:21–22, we see Elijah pray for a boy who is dead, just a body—without nepeš—and God hears his prayers, nepeš returns to the boy, and he lives.^[20] Nepeš is at times used as a synecdoche—a figure of speech where a word describing part of something refers to the whole—such as in Leviticus 4:2 where it is used for the whole person.^[21] Surprisingly, nepeš can even refer to a corpse, as in Leviticus 21:11, where Moses gives the people an injunction from God that none are to go near a dead body (nepeš). Most notably, it is God’s sovereign hand that shapes the lifeless ground (ʾadāmâ) into a form and “breathes” into it (nāpaḥ). This nāpaḥ instantaneously animates the dust, which is then a living creature (nepeš, Gen. 2:7; cf. Ezek. 37:9).

What this means is that the breath of God applied to the organic material of a creature is fundamental to a creature’s ontological status as “living creature.” The given breath of God (nepeš)^[22] is the precondition for the organic material to formalize itself through all its physiological and anatomic processes, including blood formation. But if nepeš is preconditional, then this means it necessarily exists a priori to the physical elements (blood) which we usually recognize as equivalent to “physical life,” otherwise the physical elements (our blood and tissues) would be on the same fundamental level, nepeš and dām both being ultimately causative of life (rather than blood being a consequence of life [nepeš]). In 1 Kings 17:17–24, where the boy’s body was lifeless, his cellular and physiological processes (blood formation included) had ceased, as no breath was in him. It is only when God applies again nepeš that these physiological processes start anew, which we would call resurrection.

22. Nāpaḥ is God breathing, nepeš the result.

This idea of the a priori nature of nepeš to dām is also keeping with Moses’ syntactical construction of the two in Genesis 9:4, where nepeš is the anchor word to dām, the “appositive,” or the word of clarification. Each word in an apposition carries with it a different semantic notion, but also, the second element (appositive) is amended to the first in order to make specific what the two refer to together.^[23] This means that life is the fundamental principle, and blood is placed syntactically alongside it to both narrow and point to the specific referent, namely, living beings with God-given blood pulsing through them. This fact that life (nepeš) stands logically behind blood (dām) though shows that it is fundamentally prior, and not necessarily exhausted by blood in meaning (or reality), but merely formalized by it.

23. McAffee, Matthew, and Hardy, H. H., II. Going Deeper with Biblical Hebrew: An Intermediate Study of the Grammar and Syntax of the Old Testament. Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2024. Accessed January 28, 2025. ProQuest Ebook Central. Created from sbts-ebooks on 2025-01-28 17:47:58.

This does not remove the importance of our physical nature to our status as image bearers. We must remember that salvation itself involves God’s plan to create for himself a physical reality that results in the praise of his glorious grace, which includes our glorified bodies (Rom. 8:18–25; 1 Cor. 15: 35–58; Eph. 1:6, 12, 14; 2 Pet. 3:13; Rev. 7:9–10). Further, salvation is predicated on Christ coming in the likeness of our flesh. Christ having a true human nature—including a body—is crucial for salvation. The Lord Jesus was tempted at all points as a man but overcame victoriously (Heb. 4:15). To do so, he had to assume all the characteristics of humanity—biology included—that we humans have. Or, in the words of Gregory Nazianzus, “For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.”^[24] What this means is that our salvation depends on Christ assuming what we are, including our corporality. But if our corporality is included, then so too is our existence where we started in utero—as zygotes, creatures distinct from their parents, though not yet equipped with the full suite of anatomic and physiologic functions that come with physical maturity. Christ needed to assume a human nature, and thus, a human nature—biologically and theologically—is one that begins at conception.^[25]

Further, the fact that “blood” in a scientific sense as previously noted isn’t a fixed substance within the window from conception to when the baby becomes an “embryo” or “fetus” doesn’t nullify that these first three weeks still fall under the image of God. First, it isn’t obvious to me why a narrow medical definition of blood should drive our understanding of blood as it pertains to Scripture. True, it may seem obvious that “blood is simply blood . . . the red stuff that comes from our bodies when cut . . . the red stuff that newly formed zygotes don’t technically have.” And yes, it is true that blood (dām) on first blush in the Old Testament does seem simply to refer to this red stuff that comes out of us when we are cut. But if we allow a medical idea of blood to be informed by the biblical principal of blood as it is originally used in Genesis 9:4–6 (and is picked up later in the Tabernacle and Temple service), it becomes clear that the biblical authors were less concerned with the exact physical properties of blood, and more concerned with blood as a symbol so closely associated with the vitality and life of the animal (or person) that the two at times appear indistinguishable (Lev. 3:17; 7:26–27; 17:10–14; 19:26; Deut. 12:16, 23; 15:23; 1 Sam. 14:32–34; Ezek. 33:25).

This opens the doors for what our understanding of blood can be, where the focus lies less on strained, incremental differences that science loves to focus on, and is more focused on the symbolic power and genuine connection of blood to life. If this connection of vitality as seated in a physical substance (blood) holds true and arises from the interpretive perspective of the biblical authors, then we can hardly claim that the biblical authors would have been concerned with scientific minutia, but were more consumed with the idea of a sovereign God creating all things ex nihilo, and at every conception doing nearly the same (Rom. 4:17).

Conclusion

My goal in this essay was to prove the biblical notion that the sanctity of life—as rooted in the image of God—is present at conception, which means that abortion is a grave sin, punishable by the “eye for eye” language originally given in Genesis 9:6. To do this, it was necessary to establish a notion of what the image of God means, and from there to build a “biblical and theological bridge” between the image of God and physical characteristics of humans in the womb. This was needed due to a lacuna I have sensed in this area, where the image of God is appealed to for defending the sanctity of life at conception despite a lack of easy proof texts showing this to be the case. I showed, however, that a bridge does exist between the image of God and human life and blood, and that nepeš as the fundamental principle behind life both subsumes the flesh and blood, and is identified with the same, but is not preconditioned by flesh and blood, and so “life” is readily shown to be at conception, as “life” (nepeš) is in fact the causative principle which generates the physical phenomenon of blood.

In all, the breath of God in his word stands a witness before us, just as it stands as a witness in the life of every human on this planet—the unborn included. It is already irrefutable that God associates his image with human blood, but more, he intimately associates it more importantly with the moment he assigns it to the human person in the womb, this assignment coming in the dark recesses of the womb, which serves as the life-force which gives rise to the whole human enterprise, their physiology included.

1. D.A. Carson, The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 136–137.

2. From Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “Theology and the Condition of Postmodernity: A Report on Knowledge (of God),” in The Cambridge Companion to Postmodern Theology, ed. Kevin J. Vanhoozer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 8. The fact that postmodernism rejects any form of metanarrative, thus establishing its own grand story of reality, is the deepest irony of it as a thought system.

Of these two, postmodernism is the larger threat today, as seen by the astonishing diversity of worldviews and lifestyles juxtaposed with the remarkable acceptance of transgenderism and bizarre sexual practices (throuples, anyone?). The breaking of norms and the denial of objective truth was the academy’s domain decades ago, but now it has filtered down into the pew. At the risk of oversimplification, professing Christians in the West have responded to postmodernism in at least three ways—represented in different ships splitting the pass between these sea monsters. Some have drifted toward the Charybdis of postmodernism (progressive “Christianity”), some have backtracked and sailed away from it (fundamentalists),^[3] and some exist somewhere in between (many evangelicals).^[4]

But there is another ship that has charted their own strange course through the twin peaks of modernity and postmodernity. These are the Charismatics, those who stake a priority on the presence of God and miraculous encounters with him. Postmodernity seeks to make everything subjective, and Charismatics fill the void of doubt generated by postmodernism through experiences with God. In a strange way, they seek to sail right into Charybdis with the hope that this monster that prioritizes experience will actually help them make it home.

3. Carson lists three common responses to postmodernism in the religious arena: 1. Radical religious pluralism, which holds that no single religion can claim superiority over another religion; 2. Inclusivism, which holds to a confession of the truth of Christianity, but nonetheless in the backdoor lets in any other faith tradition or worldview via what they reckon as God’s “partial revelation”, even including salvific knowledge; and 3. Exclusivism, which holds to the exclusivity of the Christian faith as it pertains to absolute truth. The pursuit of exclusivism of the Christian faith is the right way to go, but it must be done in a way that is more nuanced than fundamentalism is ready to offer, which in general appears to take its epistemological positions for granted. See Carson, The Gagging of God, 26–27. See also Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century (Reading: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company), 300.

4. Reformed theology of different stripes seems to be navigating the strait between mfodernism and postmodernism better, with its twin confessions of Sola Scriptura and Sola Gratia guiding the way. By this I mean the fact that the transcendent God alone has exhaustive knowledge, but that he does indeed in grace give us true knowledge in Scripture. The epistemological assumptions underlying much of Reformed theology are outside of the scope of this article, but needed mention as what to me seems a healthy response to the thoughts of our time, contra progressive Christianity and rigid fundamentalism.

I’ve seen this firsthand. I grew up in a city that is a mecca for Charismatics due to the presence of Bethel, a mega-church known for its zealous pursuit of “experiencing God” and the miraculous. I’ve had a unique opportunity to evaluate this phenomenon and its disastrous implications. Certainly, I’m the first to confess the biblical principle that God’s ways are not ours, and that Scripture itself testifies to profound and strange encounters with God. Jacob’s limping hip and Paul’s Damascus-road horse can surely testify to this!

But are such experiences a normal and expected part of the Christian’s weekly rhythm? This is precisely what many Charismatics believe. The idea of expecting experiences of God in profound and miraculous ways (as seen in the lives of many people in the Bible) has erroneously become a first principle; a norm-setting rule that is divorced from Scripture as its authority. Whereas the Reformers confessed Sola Scriptura, many Charismatics functionally cry Experientia Supremus—“experience is supreme!”—thereby foisting it into a position no less magisterial than Scripture itself.

This is problematic, because an unrestrained pursuit of spectacular experiences of God is a foolhardy attempt at domesticating One who cannot be domesticated. Can a man force the transcendent, infinite, sovereign God into the brass lamp of human experience by means of exuberant worship, “name-it-and-claim-it” prayer, or just a little more faith? To attempt this straddles the line of idolatry.

In this article, I want to show the destructive implications and the faulty theology that arises from putting miraculous experience of God as one’s first principle. I hope to highlight the primacy of Scripture alone as our first principle and to propose a possible way forward for both Charismatics and evangelicals as they confront postmodernism.

Unbalanced Expectations for the Miraculous Creates Theological Pressure Points

Several years ago, I met someone struggling with a chronic physical illness. But worse than his illness was his belief that God was withholding healing due to some internal spiritual deficiency—a common Charismatic teaching that arises from the belief that God always wants to heal.^[5] The effects were damaging: each medical solution that failed to bring healing brought a worsening fear that this illness persisted due to some underlying spiritual condition. Instead of having a theology of suffering allowing for physical affliction to be a means of glorifying God and leading to greater conformity to Christ’s image (John 9:1–4; 2 Cor. 12:9), this stubborn illness was seen a chasm separating this Christian from the experience of God through miraculous healing. This wrong conviction came from his saturation in Bethel’s culture and teachings. Again, the first principle for much of Charismaticism is that signs, wonders, and miraculous experiences are always waiting for us on the other side of our faith-response.

5. Bill Johnson, the senior pastor of Bethel, has even said he can’t pray for healing with the preface of “if it’s your will” as it to him is a “prayer of unbelief” as God has already revealed it is his will to heal. See the interview entitled, “Bill Johnson: The Theology of Sickness and Healing: Rediscover Bethel.”

But what happens when a church is pregnant with expectation for the miraculous—and then the miraculous doesn’t transpire? The conclusion is that something must be amiss: some hindrance from man or the fallen angelic realm is keeping God from showing up. But Charismatics rarely if ever attribute a lack of healing to God’s benevolent will for an individual (as was the case with Paul’s thorn in the flesh in 2 Corinthians 12:7–10). Why? It’s the theological first principle at work again. Beyond this, the zealous expectation of the miraculous invites confirmation bias and can lead to spiritual counterfeits manufacturing a “miracle.”

This episode is not an isolated case. In another instance, a woman at Bethel had a vivid dream about Texas, and she interpreted this as the Lord telling her to uproot and move to that state. So she did—only to find that she couldn’t get a job, had no community, and that perhaps she had misinterpreted what God was saying. Instead of following the biblically commended ways of praying, fasting, and seeking wise counsel, this earnest young woman followed her perceived miraculous experience—the dream—and the whole ordeal turned into a nightmare.

These two scenarios are linked by the same faulty and fundamental presumption, namely, that perceived supernatural experiences with God hold sway over all else, even Scripture, as normative for the Christian life. And we see here how this error relates to the Charybdis of postmodernism. In seeking to overcome a faith-destabilizing postmodernism, Charismatics sought to sail directly into the belly of the monster itself. But apparently, you are what you gravitate towards. Postmodernism throws off objective norms in order to make subjective personal experience absolute, and Charismatics have followed suit.

In his book Fire from Heaven, Harvey Cox details the rapid growth of Pentecostalism over the last century alongside postmodernism. He enumerates what he sees as three forms of recovery that Pentecostalism articulates from the spiritual void created by postmodernity.^[6] Cox details the growth of Pentecostalism amid the spiritual emptiness created by postmodernism, noting how Pentecostalism’s speaking in tongues, the pursuit of the supernatural, and the idea of a hastening new age all scratch a deep itch that postmodernity created.^[7] The overlap with Charismaticism—a cousin of Pentecostalism—is easy to see.^[8] While Cox does not share many evangelical convictions, his analysis substantiates the idea that misplacing experience as a first principle is done so because of the doubt created by postmodernism. In this vacuum, sensationalism and experience fill the void.

6. Cox, Harvey, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-first Century (Reading: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company), 81.

7. Cox, Fire from Heaven, 81–82.

8. Amos Yong in The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 18–19.

As the West takes an increasingly postmodern turn away from objective truth and towards subjective personal experience, the Charismatic seems to mistakenly find relief from this burden of doubt in spiritual experience instead of the Lord’s word.^[9] But questions remain. Is spiritual experience a faithful guide home? And if not, what are the consequences of following its lead in the long run, and how do we fix our course?

Christian Experience: A Misplaced Magisterium

Stephen Wellum helpfully distinguishes the primacy of Scripture as norm-setting for the Christian, pointing out that Scripture alone has the ultimate or “magisterial” authority for the purpose of formulating Christian doctrine. He goes on to discuss the place of Church history/tradition as having a “ministerial” capacity—it serves as an aid in interpretation of Scripture (and thus, formulation of doctrine), but it never overrules Scripture.^[10]

9. Though Carl Trueman’s discussion in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self of the sexual revolution concerns a different downstream tributary (the radical change in sexual norms), the Charismatic who prioritizes experience over Scripture is a downstream effect flowing from a common head-water. Trueman identifies the radical shift in sexual ethics as due primarily to the “prioritization of the individual’s inner psychology—we might even say ‘feelings’ or ‘intuitions’—for our sense of who we are and what the purpose of our lives is.” Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020), 25. Though more specific is Trueman’s concern for the shifts in society’s opinions of what is normal sexually, there is similarity in that Charismatics seem to emphasize the internal principle of their experience and give this priority over the external principle of God’s revelation in Scripture. Their felt sense becomes the arbiter, and thus is an internal regulator, over the external authority of the Word.

10. Wellum, Stephen, God the Son Incarnate (Wheaton: Crossway, 2016), 93. Christian experience is not on the same level of authority as tradition/church history (especially on the level of the ecumenical creeds like Nicaea, Constantinople, Chalcedon, or the later confessional material). Rather, when experience is rooted in and in accordance with Scripture, experience serves to furnish our understanding of the Christian faith in a vital way and helps us comprehend what it truly means to be Christians abiding in Christ.

These are helpful categories in relation to Scripture and experience. Christian experience also functions ministerially under the magisterial, norm-setting rule of Scripture. That is, experience serves as an aid in helping us understand our faith, and in a very real sense it is the living out of that faith.

No Christian should deny that experiencing God is important for the Christian life. Many individuals in Scripture experienced God: Job, Isaiah, Paul, and John (Job 38–42; Isaiah 6; Acts 9; Revelation 1:9–20) each had powerful encounters with the Lord that served as ballast for their ministry and lives. But though these men had profound encounters with God, it is backwards and dangerous to pursue their miraculous experiences as the model for attaining communion with God.

Why? The first reason is because the biblical writers had their experience/revelation in order for them to inscripturate it and provide for us a clear picture of God. The supernatural experiences/revelation with God recorded in the Bible were not given in principle for us to emulate them on a one-to-one basis. Rather, God gave these gifts of experience/revelation to chosen men who wrote them down for the world to have as a sure and normative witness to God’s character, his acts, and how to have fellowship with him. We aren’t to use Scripture’s examples of how people received divine revelation as exact, replicable, cookie-cutter models for how we are to do the same to receive our own revelation (to do so invites false experience touted as genuine, and is the road to counterfeit). ^[11]

Scripture itself is the perfect record of God’s saving words and deeds. God’s revelatory words and deeds were written down for us that we might establish a relationship with him. His objective revelation stands for us so that we could have a true witness of God that moves us toward a loving and worshipful relationship (and experience!) with God. The order for us then is to come to God’s revelation in Scripture first, and then to allow it to guide us toward experiencing him in the means that God prescribes, rather than trying to order our relationship with God by our perceived experience of him first. Experiencing God is never logically prior to his gracious and clear revelation, which he gives in order to establish objective religion for subjective Christian experience to function upon.^[12]

In contrast, Charismatic circles appear to prefer a perceived miraculous experience with God over and above experiencing God through his revealed word. This faulty preference holds no promise for truly finding God, but rather invites the risk of seizing something different: doubting one’s spiritual health, fleshly sensationalism, or worse, genuine spiritual encounters that are not actually from God (2 Cor. 11:14). While Charismatics may reluctantly confess to Scripture’s authority and sufficiency, this rings hollow when God is pursued primarily through other means—namely, mystical and profound experiences.

11. This discussion has more nuance than space permits. While prayer for the overtly miraculous is enjoined in James 5:17–18, it suffices to say that the Christian shouldn’t understand every positive miraculous encounter between God and a person in Scripture as a valid example for how a Christian can and should pursue relationship with him.

12. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Ethics, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 1: 34.

Conclusion: Where Do we Sail from Here?

My aim in this article was to show how Charismatics have embraced a first principle of experience—in response to postmodernity—instead of having Scripture as their first principle. My prayer is that such an assessment would lead those involved in such theology and practice closer to Scripture—and thus, closer to God. In the final analysis, there are several things that evangelicals—including Charismatics—can do from here. First, we all must affirm Scripture as the Church’s only first principle (John 16:12–15). Whatever our affiliation, we ought have a Psalm 119 yearning for God’s revealed word beating in our hearts. We must cherish the Scripture that God himself has breathed out (2 Tim. 3:16).

Second, I would encourage both evangelicals and Charismatics to cultivate a greater theology of suffering. By this I mean that they should not seek to shortcut the road God has decreed as prerequisite for attaining the riches that wait at its end. Suffering before glory runs across the entire corpus of Scripture, and it figures prominently in the New Testament (this is in fact part of the main point of 1 Peter; see 1 Pet. 1:11; 2:21; 3:14, 18; 4:1, 13; 5:1, 9–10). Charismatics largely lack a category for suffering—including sickness—that God benevolently intends to grow Christlikeness (1 Pet. 2:21; Rom. 5:3–5; 8:28–29; 1 Pet. 4:1; Jas 1:2–4), to bring about conversion (Col. 1:24; 2 Cor 4:8–12), or to create a greater longing for the next life (Rom. 8:18f; 2 Cor 5:4; 1 Pet. 4:13). All of these realities are far more valuable than full physical health, and more, some are only mediated through suffering and pain. The crucible of Golgotha must precede the pleasure of the marriage supper of the Lamb—for Christ, and for every Charismatic or evangelical who follows him.

I give the final words of application to Carson’s The Gagging of God, where he helpfully sets priorities for Christians navigating the nebulous haze of spirituality (a shorthand for experiencing God). Carson rightly says that spirituality must always be considered (and pursued) in connection to the gospel. It must work outward from core (Scriptural) principles. Spirituality is no end of itself, but is only genuine if emerging from, and governed by, biblical and theological norms. Balancing this, we should rightly question sterile, systematic forms/expressions of Christianity that “demand faith, allegiance, and obedience, but do not engage the affections. . . . [or] foster an active sense of the presence of God.” However, this necessarily includes spiritual fruit: holiness, conformity to Christ, growth in understanding his Word, and so on. Further, Christians must reclaim the means of grace that is the Word, the very Word that Jesus prayed would sanctify us (John 17:17).^[13] We must remember that spirituality and experience are both theological constructs that must be brought before the tribunal of Scripture. Any spiritual practice or experience must be appraised for its legitimacy (or lack thereof) by Scripture, and constantly be subject to reformation by Scripture. We must foster this by submitting ourselves and our experiences to Scripture, so as to bring every thought—and every expression of our faith—captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5).^[14]

13. “The best of evangelical heritage has always emphasized . . . ‘the spirituality of the word.’” Carson, The Gagging of God, 569.

14. This summary is my distillation of Carson’s thoughts. See Carson, The Gagging of God, 566ff for his full discussion of setting priorities for Christian spirituality.

If Scripture is our guide, then there is no sea monster that can shipwreck us. And if God is for us, then he will ordain means in order to conform us more and more into the glorious image of Christ (Rom. 8:28–29). God in his sovereignty has not barricaded these monsters from filling our world’s ideological landscape. And since this is undoubtedly so, it only remains to be seen how we as Christians will respond. In times of peril like today, we must never forget this. But we must also hold fast to the ultimate weapon of our warfare, the mighty sword of God’s Spirit, the Word of God that he graciously breathed out for us. This weapon is sharp enough to divide asunder any dark passage flanked by Scylla and Charybdis or otherwise. We must trust in God, knowing that though the journey may be marked by suffering and sickness, his Word is able to bring us all—both evangelicals and Charismatics alike—safely home.