This essay first appeared in Patrick Henry College’s journal, The Inheritance (Spring 2026).

“And a man of God came near and said to the king of Israel, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Because the Syrians have said, ‘The Lord is a god of the hills but he is not a god of the valleys,’ therefore I will give all this great multitude into your hand, and you shall know that I am the Lord.”’”
-1 Kings 20:28

The valley setting of the engagement described in this verse is laden with typological meaning. It is the first of three valleys that characterize the narrative of redemption: the valley of decision, the valley of damnation, and the valley of delights. The valley of decision in this pericope typifies Christ as the recipient of the ultimate redemptive judgment, where He separates His people and His enemies into the valley of delights and the valley of damnation.

Commentators overlook the symbolism of the valley setting in this passage. Many rightly argue that God vindicates Himself in this context, but their statements are seldom more than mere paraphrases. Hermann Austel and Richard Patterson, for example, state that God guaranteed the defeat of the Syrians because they “considered his power to be limited to the mountains.”1 Similarly, commentator John Gill notes that the Syrians blasphemed Yahweh’s name.2 And Simon DeVries observes that while the Syrians correctly recognized that God granted the Israelites superiority in the hills, they failed to recognize the bounds of His power.3 These points are sound, as those who limit God’s sovereignty blaspheme His nature. Most importantly, God never lets such blasphemy go unpunished; indeed, the divine utterance “you shall know that I am the Lord” seals the invader’s downfall (1 Kings 20:28 ESV). In 2 Kings 18 and 19—a passage parallel to 1 Kings 20—the Assyrian king also blasphemes God. Responding to the king’s hubris, God exercises judgment: “‘He shall not come into this city,’ declares the Lord. ‘I will defend this city to save it, for my own sake and for the sake of my servant David’” (2 Kings 19:33–34). In 1 Kings 20, God shows Himself to be sovereign over geographical valleys. Indeed, God is sovereign over all places, but this pericope highlights the valley as a broader Scriptural symbol of sovereignty.

The chapter’s narrative context suggests that the valley of Aphek, which is the valley setting of the engagement described, is a valley of decision—a separation point between the people of God and their enemies. Notably, 1 Kings 20 contains two sections, each depicting a battle. The pericope is in the second section, where God delivers the small army of Israelites for the second time against the better-equipped but boastful Syrians. In verse 21, the first narrative of deliverance does not resolve but is immediately followed by a prophecy in verse 22 foretelling the Syrians’ return (1 Kings 20:21-22). Importantly, the first half of the chapter—which tells of the Israelites’ victory in the hills—contextualizes the chapter’s second half and the victory in the valleys that ensues. This double deliverance parallels two Biblical events: first, the Exodus; and second, the eschatological fall of Babylon.

To begin with, in Israel’s Exodus, Yahweh accomplished a double deliverance over Pharaoh in Egypt and at the Red Sea. He judged Pharaoh’s gods, and He subsequently judged Pharaoh and his army in Exodus 14.4 The Israelites’ victory in Egypt depicts victory in the hills, and their victory at the Red Sea represents victory in the valleys. The second Biblical event that parallels God’s double deliverance accomplished in 1 Kings 20 is Babylon’s eschatological fall. Pursuant to its fall, the apocalyptic beast from the abyss, which “was, and is not, and is about to rise from the bottomless pit and go to destruction” (Revelation 17:8), sets itself in opposition to God. Isaiah’s corresponding judgment against it suggests that the Babylonian figure is “fallen from heaven” (Isaiah 14:12). Importantly, God first expels Babylon from heaven (victory in the hills) before defeating her on earth (victory in the valleys). Across these different passages and circumstances, God condemns Pharaoh, Babylon, and Ben-Hadad before saving His people. Accordingly, the structure of the Syrian defeat in 1 Kings 20 includes the valley of Aphek in the broader theme of valleys of decision.

The valleys of damnation and delight proceed from the valley of decision. Together, these three valleys constitute the most significant divisions of valley imagery found in Scripture. Admittedly, parsing the geographical, historical, and symbolic significance of literal and figurative Old Testament valleys is challenging. Previous thematic discussions have been unsystematic, with potential for simplification within a biblical-theological interpretive framework. For example, theologian Richard Patterson ascribes literal and symbolic meanings to valleys, associating them with fertility, battle, punishment, hope, blessing, unfaithfulness, and beauty.5 Meanwhile, The Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible takes a geographical approach, dividing valleys into broader depressions (or splits) and deeper gorges.6 The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery aligns most closely with the approach used in this paper, arguing for four categories of fertility, battle, judgment, and renewed fertility.7 These categories are redundant. The themes of fertility, hope, blessing, and beauty unite in the valley of delights, while valleys of damnation encompass judgment and punishment. Together, decision, delights, and damnation encompass every significant valley in Scripture. Some examples of valleys of delights are the Valley of Beracah (literally “blessing”) in 2 Chronicles 20:26, the fertile Valley of Eschol (Numbers 13:23-24), and the Valley of Shittim that receives water from the temple of the Lord in Joel 3:18. Valleys of damnation include the Valley of Achor (Joshua 7:24-26), the Valley of Salt (2 Samuel 8:13), and the Valley of Hinnom or Slaughter in Jeremiah 7:32—which Jesus called “hell” (“Gehenna” in Greek) in Mark 9:47.8 Finally, the Valley of Aphek, the Valley of Rephaim (2 Samuel 5:18), and the Valley of Jezreel are valleys of decision.9 While these valleys do not fall into obvious geographical groups—indeed, some do not correspond to a geographical location—they are all linked thematically in Christ’s redemptive judgment. Christ’s redemptive judgment is the subject of the rest of this paper.

Pursuant to His perfect character, God preserves His covenants through valleys of decision. To this point, 1 Kings 20:28 occurs at a time when rising Baal worship—described in 1 Kings 16:23–2 Kings 13:25—threatened the Davidic covenant.10 During his reign, Ahab attempted to enshrine Baal as Israel’s god. Furthermore, Jehoshaphat jeopardized the Davidic line by making a marriage alliance with the house of Ahab (1 Kings 16:30–33, 2 Chronicles 18:1). To end the corruption among the rulers of both Israel and Judah, a man named Jehu assassinated Ahab’s son Joram, king of Israel; Ahab’s grandson Ahaziah, king of Judah; Ahab’s wife Jezebel; Ahab’s other descendants; and the prophets of Baal, as recorded in 2 Kings 9–10. Like 1 Kings 20:28, the end of the Baal arc highlights God’s judgment on blasphemers and challengers of His covenant. The most relevant parallel to 1 Kings 20, though, is Jehu’s eradication of Baal worship in a valley—the Valley of Jezreel. This marks Jezreel as a valley of decision. In the Valley of Aphek, Ahab fought the enemy of the covenant from without. In the Valley of Jezreel, however, Jehu fought the enemy of the covenant from within. Nevertheless, in both cases, God’s instruments were imperfect; Ahab failed to kill Ben-Hadad, and Jehu failed to eliminate the evil queen Athaliah (1 Kings 20:42; 2 Kings 11:1). While the kingdoms were delivered from external enemies and Baal worship, idolatry ran so deep that even Jehu “did not turn from the sins of Jeroboam, which he made Israel to sin” (2 Kings 10:31). No leader in the books of Kings successfully eradicated idolatry. As theologian Miles Van Pelt observes, “The story of Kings is, fundamentally, a story of broken covenant.”11 Because of this covenant-breaking, Israel needed a future king who would perfectly judge and purge idolatry from among them.

Valleys of decision are climactic separating points, and the separation between enemies and elect is critical to understanding the three valley themes in Scripture. The Red Sea embodies this distinction. Although Moses does not use the word “valley” to describe the Red Sea, several similarities justify this connection. Geographically, Scripture calls locations adjacent to seas valleys, such as the Valley of Aphek, which is east of Galilee.12 Furthermore, linguistically, Moses elsewhere equates the Valley of Siddim (ēmeq śidîm) with the Dead Sea (the Salt Sea, yām melaḥ) in Genesis 14:3. The root word yām is the same word used for the Red Sea (yām sûp̄) in Genesis 15. Finally, Exodus 14 describes “the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left” in verses 22 and 29. The strong valley language bookends the entire crossing, beginning with their descent into the sea and ending with their escape from the Egyptians (Exodus 14:22, 29-30). While the Egyptians were buried in the waves of the sea, the Israelites were liberated to continue their journey to the Promised Land, which Moses called “a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths, springing forth in valleys and hills” (Deuteronomy 8:7); notably, Isaiah calls it “the Valley of Vision” (Isaiah 22:1). In the Red Sea valley of decision, God cast His enemies into one valley to lead His people into another. The valley of decision is thus the dividing line between the valley of damnation and the valley of delights.

The theme of redemptive judgment knits the three valley images together with covenant preservation and separation. Redemptive judgment—a term which theologian James Hamilton calls “salvation through judgment”—is central to Scripture. For example, the Red Sea is one of many redemptive judgments: incidents where God judges His enemies to rescue His remnant. In his book God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment, Hamilton asserts that salvation and judgment are always inseparable.13 He uniquely argues that God’s glory in salvation through judgment is “the center of biblical theology.”14 Although that point is disputable, Yahweh proclaims Himself as a God “abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty” (Exodus 34:7). Hamilton grounds his ideas in this passage.15 Importantly, salvation proceeds from decision to delights; however, judgment proceeds from decision to damnation. All in all, God executes His nature as a saving judge in the symbolic locations of the three valleys.

In redemption, God’s people escape the valley of damnation and enter into the valley of delights; the patriarch Abraham’s story exemplifies this pattern. God called him out of Ur of the Chaldeans, which was a city in Mesopotamia, the land of Sumer, or Shinar. Shinar was a valley of damnation. In judgment, God dispersed the people, confused their language, and ended their aspirations for heavenly power (Genesis 11:7-9). In Genesis 13, through deference to Lot, Abraham once again avoided the Jordan Valley: Sodom and Gomorrah, a valley of damnation. Entering the land of Canaan, Abraham received another affirmation of his promise from God. The Promised Land, called the “valley of vision,” is a valley of delights. Abraham’s narrative thus exemplifies the redemptive movement of God’s people from valley to valley.

Although the valleys of damnation and delight are important, all Christians on earth are in the valley of decision; most important to them is how redemption occurs through this valley. Battles of judgment like the one described in 1 Kings 20 appear to indicate that men like Ahab secured God’s promises through their actions in the valley of decision. However, this has never been the case; God is always the ultimate cause of victory. God accomplished this in Abraham’s covenant, the same covenant into which the elect enter by faith (Genesis 15:6, Romans 4:13). Undoubtedly, God is the covenant guarantor. In the ancient covenant-cutting ceremony with Abraham in Genesis 15, He passed between the halves of a slaughtered calf—a type of valley of decision—to bear a curse upon Himself, should the covenant be broken (Genesis 15:17-18). In the covenant-cutting ceremony, God symbolically centered the two aspects of redemptive judgment in the valley of decision on Himself: He would bear the judgment to guarantee that Abraham received the covenant blessings.

Valleys of decision, as seen in the covenant-cutting and the Red Sea, are sacramental types of Christ. The covenant-cutting resembles the breaking of bread in communion in that it is a “participation in the body of Christ,” which means the enjoyment of the covenant promises that Christ secured (1 Corinthians 10:16). And Paul explicitly connects baptism to the Red Sea in 1 Corinthians 10:1-2. In Colossians 2:12, he further states, “having been buried with him in baptism…you were also raised with him through faith.” This is the imagery of passing through the valley of decision to secure covenant blessings. Finally, as the Apostle’s Creed says, Christ “descended into hell” and “ascended into heaven” (Ephesians 4:9-10). As His body was broken for us in the valley of decision, Christ descended into the lower parts of the earth—the valley of damnation—and ascended to prepare a blessed place—the valley of delights—for His people.

Yahweh is the God of the hills, but He is also the God of the valleys. In 1 Kings 20:28, the vast sacramental significance of valleys dwarfs their geographical significance. Valleys frame the arc of Scripture: during their earthly lives in the valley of decision, the people of God can trust that they are heading to the valley of delights because Christ has paid the penalty of the valley of damnation. Furthermore, participation in Christ through the sacraments reminds His people of His immanence throughout their mortal walk. With the Psalmist, they can affirm, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me” (Psalm 23:4).

About the Author

Elijah is majoring in Strategic Intelligence and Economic Business Analytics at Patrick Henry College (26’).

He is also a Research Team Member who made invaluable contributions to this semester’s edition of The Inheritance.

About the Publication

The Inheritance serves students, alumni, and faculty as they discern the word of God, cultivating humble and impactful conversations for a weary world.

The Inheritance is not innovative. From the Garden to the desert to the tomb, our Christian inheritance is an ancient heirloom, passed down through a tapestry of spiritual ancestry. It describes countless elements of our faith preserved through the ages, including our place in Heaven, God’s Word, and the Church. Christian tradition displays a rugged path in adoring the Sacred vision. Sweeter than honey, it appears like the scroll given to the prophet Ezekiel and the Apostle John. Through earnest writing, we honor this great inheritance by seeking to love God with all of our minds. Our search for knowledge is not sterile of synthetic, but intimate and familial. By means of humble writing, we cultivate the fruits of the Imago Dei—imagination and intellect—to the glory of God. The result is a journal dedicated to understanding our God through studying His word.

“For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.”

-Ezra 7:10

Share The Inheritance

Subscribe now

This essay first appeared in Patrick Henry College’s journal, The Inheritance (Spring 2026).

Among contemporary appropriations of Thomas Aquinas’ natural law theory in American legal thought, few have been as controversial as Adrian Vermeule. Aquinas’ theory posits that humanity can understand what is good and evil under God’s eternal law through reason.1 Building on this idea, many scholars have asked: What are the limits to the discovery of natural law through reason? Adrian Vermeule’s Common Good Constitutionalism attempts to answer this question by using Aquinas to argue that modern conservative judges in America should employ a more robust form of interpretation aimed at the common good, even where enacted texts are ambiguous or incomplete. This theory, however, incorrectly interprets Aquinas’ writings by blurring the hierarchy Aquinas establishes between lawmaking and judging, and by placing judges too near the center of authoritative political application. An analysis of Aquinas’ theory shows that he separates the roles of judges and lawmakers in a hierarchy, with the judge aiding, not overruling, legislative authority.

The argument of Common Good Constitutionalism rests on the ability of human beings to discover natural law through reason. Using Aquinas’ writings in his Summa Theologica, Vermeule argues that while conservative judges can mistakenly interpret the natural law, so can the legislature.2 He writes, “the law is the lawmaker’s reasoned ordination for the common good, which may be imperfectly expressed by the enacted text.”3 Therefore, rather than simply applying the legislator’s original intent to a particular scenario, judges should correct legislated positive law by proactively interpreting and extending its meaning to promote what Vermeule calls the “common good.”4 Critically, judges are only able to do this because of their innate ability to understand natural law and apply it through “rationally arbitrary decisions.”5 At face value, this seems to be supported by Aquinas’ thought, but a more thorough reading reveals a flawed chain of reasoning that manifests itself in three main arguments that contradict Aquinas’ writings.

Vermeule’s account errs at the point where it assigns judges a role in providing moral-political determinations and applications beyond enacted law. He explains Aquinas’ natural law theory by distinguishing between the concepts of lex (enacted positive law) and ius (the overall body of law generally).6 He appears to use ius and natural law synonymously, but the two are not identical. Ius names a broader juridical order that can include principles of legal justice and jurisprudence as well as enacted texts. Initially, the concept of ius seems to reflect Aquinas’ theory of natural law, but a closer reading reveals a question of scope and institutional authority. Vermeule writes, “Ius is the overall body of law generally, including and subsuming lex but transcending it, and containing general principles of jurisprudence and legal justice. Thus, lex is a source of ius but does not exhaust its content.”7 This argument asserts that lex or positive law contributes to the legal order but does not exhaust the content relevant to jurisprudence in the determination of justice. This implies an important institutional question: when lex and positive law are inadequate to the demands of jurisprudence in the pursuit of justice, who is authorized to supply what is missing, lawmakers through new or revised law, or judges through constructive legal interpretation? Vermeule’s distinct move is to answer: judges.

Such an interpretation of Aquinas’ teachings can distort Aquinas if it is converted into a standing judicial mandate to supply constructive interpretations that would normally properly belong to the legislature in the form of revising enacted law or enacting new law. Aquinas wrote, “Every human law has just so much of the nature of law, as it is derived from the law of nature. But if at any point it deflects from the law of nature, it is no longer a law but a perversion of law.”8 Thus, he did not view positive law as the generator or maker of natural law, but rather as a derivation and specification of natural law that is only valid insofar as it adheres to natural law. Later in the Summa, this leads Aquinas to write: “For the written law does indeed contain natural right, but it does not establish it, for the latter derives its force, not from the law but from nature.”9

Other interpreters of Aquinas have come to the same conclusion in the context of judicial review. Forte, for example, writes that “positive law does not establish natural rights, but merely ‘contains’ or effectuates them.”10 Westberg responds to misinterpretations of Aquinas’ philosophy by writing that positive law is a “[logical] derivation” from the natural law, which can address particulars but cannot affect the “first principles” of what Vermeule would call ius.11 This distinction is highly important because it keeps positive and natural law in their respective spheres of authority. Vermeule may seem to respect the importance of positive law, but in reality, he supplants it by way of constructive judicial interpretation. By elevating judicial constructivist interpretation over, above, and as an alternative to positive law as a mandate and feature of jurisprudence, Vermeule cripples the legislature’s primary role as enacting and revising law in the pursuit of the common good.

This error in interpretation has sweeping consequences throughout Common Good Constitutionalism, most importantly in Vermeule’s second conclusion that judges are empowered to expansively interpret positive law and apply those constructive interpretations according to their unique understanding of the natural law. Aquinas acknowledges that while the major generalities of the natural law are universally understood, “the more we descend to matters of detail, the more frequently we encounter defects.”12 Aquinas means that the general principles of natural law, while good and true, can be applied in good or evil ways depending on particular situations. As an example, he sets forth the principle that “goods entrusted to another should be restored to their owner.”13 Aquinas writes that this is generally desirable, but if “they are claimed for the purpose of fighting against one’s country,” the goods should not be returned.14 Therefore, Aquinas acknowledges that the application of natural law principles should be decided on a case-by-case basis through the use of reason. The natural role to provide such particularization, as Aquinas recognizes, is the judge.15 Thus, while Aquinas supports judicial application of law to particulars, he does not affirm judicial construction of a general political or constitutional order.

Vermuele takes this interpretation of Aquinas’ writings and extends it. He correctly refers to legislative and judicial branches as a “division of institutional roles” with one creating positive law and the other applying it to particulars.16 This is something, however, that a judge can do under an originalist or textualist framework by applying the law with their best understanding of the legislator’s original intent or by strictly relying on its text. Vermeule extends Aquinas’ teachings by arguing for what a critic of Vermeule’s work called “constructive interpretation.”17 Building on the claim that ius exceeds lex and that positive law may fall short of the requirements of justice, Vermeule argues that conservative judges should exercise their authority to decide what moral purpose positive law should be following and reinterpret legislation to promote the “common good.”18 In his article Beyond Originalism, Vermeule refers to the Constitution as a collection of “majestic generalities and ambiguities.”19 This is partly true, but Vermeule believes that legislation insufficiently interprets these generalities. Instead of looking to legislation as the source of expansion upon the Constitution, Vermeule “purports to offer an interpretation of the constitutional order rather than the Constitution” (thereby situating the operative order beyond the enacted law) and uses judges as the vehicle for expanding this constitutional order.20 In other words, Vermeule is advocating for a judicial framework that gives judges a constructive and directive role in the pursuit of the common good.

As detailed earlier, however, Aquinas treats the role and work of the legislature as distinct from the role and work of the judiciary. The legislature is tasked with debating and legislating the norms, policies, and statutes derived from natural law in the pursuit of the common good. This means that, contrary to Vermeule’s position, the legislature is the primary source of expansion and clarification of the political and constitutional order. This is shown by Aquinas when he writes, “many things for the benefit of human life have been added over and above the natural law, both by the Divine law and by human laws.”21 Augustine clarifies that this is done “by way of addition,” not subtraction from natural law principles. Two essential lessons are derived from this passage. First, consistent with Aquinas’ previously cited writings, positive law does not create or establish the natural law but rather is a determinate addition that specifies natural law principles.22 Second, the necessary interpretation of natural law principles within a general constitutional order should be left to positive human laws, not to the rationally arbitrary decisions of judges. These principles directly apply to the third link in Vermeule’s chain of reasoning, which grants judges an equivalent to legislative authority.

Following from the first two links in his chain of reasoning, Vermeule grants judges who discern natural law the authenticating authority that, under Aquinas, rightfully belongs to the lawmaker. Vermeule says that Aquinas looks to the value of epikeia, or the equity of the statute, when determining whether human law aligns with natural law.23 This is true, and Aquinas treats equity as a virtue that can justify departing from the letter of a statute in exceptional cases where strict application would defeat the law’s rational purpose.24 Vermeule, however, follows his previously outlined beliefs to their natural conclusion by arguing that judges should have the ability to broadly declare statutes inequitable outside of any legislative authority.25 Therefore, in addition to treating judges as a source of expansive moral, political, and constitutional determination, Vermeule gives them the authority that the legislature uses to create legitimate laws.

This view is at odds with the hierarchy that Aquinas creates between legislative authority and judges. Aquinas writes, “The will of the ruler has the force of law, in so far as it is in accordance with reason.”26 Under Aquinas’ framework of government, the “ruler” was society’s lawmaker.27 Therefore, Aquinas argues that the “force of law,” or in other words, the legitimate authority of law, rests with the legislature. Aquinas forecloses Vermeule’s extension of this legitimating will to judges by quoting the writings of Augustine in his Summa: “In these earthly laws, though men judge about them when they are making them, when once they are established and passed, the judges may judge no longer of them, but according to them.”28 This distinction creates a clear hierarchy with enacted positive law above the judiciary’s interpretations of natural law principles. The judge may not exercise their will to take the place of the lawmaker but rather must judge “according to” written statutes.29

This third critical misinterpretation of Aquinas’ writings shows that Vermeule is not supported by, but is rather at odds with, Thomistic natural law theory. He is nonetheless correct in using natural law to define the extent of judicial authority. Rather than authenticating the “rationally arbitrary” decisions of the judge, however, natural law principles should place reasonable limits on judicial authority.30 Based on Aquinas’ writings, this paper’s alternative position is that judges should apply statutes to particular cases with an emphasis on both the legislature’s intent in writing the law and the plain meaning of the law’s text. This gives deference to the legislature while still utilizing judicial reason to ensure that positive law is not being applied on a case-by-case basis in a manner that contradicts natural law principles. Forte reflects this view by writing, “a judge operating under the norms of natural law is more respectful of his limitations under positive law… a natural law judge knows precisely, as Alexander Hamilton noted, that he is empowered by ‘neither Force nor Will, but merely judgement’ in his functions.”31 An emphasis on law’s positivity and determinacy grounded in legislative authority, while bounded by natural law, fits Aquinas’ hierarchy more naturally than a program of ongoing judicial construction like Vermeule recommends.

Vermeule’s supporters may respond to this paper by reasserting his argument that both the legislature and the judiciary are subject to faulty judgment, and therefore, statutes can be erroneous. The recourse to mistakes in natural law interpretation, however, should be from the legislature, not judicial activism. An approach that emphasizes law’s positivity consolidates legal authority in legislators who are “ordained for the common good” through what Gregg points out is an electoral process based on the approval of the people rather than unelected judges who are not directly accountable to any constituents.32 33 While Aquinas did not anticipate the system of constitutional republicanism that America uses today, Pojanowski and Walsh note, in reference to Aquinas, that “the moral need for law’s positivity is, in many ways, what defines the classical tradition of legal theory.”34 Therefore, Aquinas’ framework for natural law jurisprudence can be applied to the American system of government with an emphasis on determinacy and legislative primacy, thus avoiding the overreach of judicial power that results from Vermeule’s distortion of the classical legal tradition. If legislated statutes violate natural law principles, the legislature should use the authority it gains from its appointment by the people to correct that violation. No judge or panel of judges should be authorized to interpret natural law on behalf of society, and doing so would be contrary to the common good.

In conclusion, Adrian Vermeule’s Common Good Constitutionalism correctly looks to Aquinas’ theory of natural law when attempting to define the extent of judicial authority, but it incorrectly interprets Thomistic thought to expand this authority rather than limiting it. Vermeule’s distinction between lex and ius is best read as the claim that positive law contributes to, but does not exhaust, the content relevant to jurisprudence in the pursuit of legal justice. The Thomistic objection is not that lex “creates” natural law, but that Vermeule operationalizes what lies beyond the text as a standing judicial authority to expand the political, moral, and “constitutional order” through constructive interpretation. Aquinas instead treats the ordinary work of adding determinate content “over and above the natural law” as a function of divine and human lawmaking, with judges applying enacted law to particulars and using equity in exceptional cases to preserve the law’s rational purpose. Finally, Vermeule follows these institutional commitments to their natural conclusion that judges should be empowered with an authoritative will to determine equitability that can rival and override legislative authority to do the same. This conflicts with the hierarchical structure that Aquinas creates with the legislature legitimating statutes and judges merely applying them on a case-by-case basis. Therefore, a natural law account of judicial authority that emphasizes law’s positivity and determinacy and that places judges in service to legislation, rather than independent of it, is preferable under Aquinas’ framework. Common good constitutionalism is a worthy goal, but Adrian Vermeule pursues it by stretching Aquinas’ legal hierarchy well past its breaking point and granting the judge sovereignty beyond the constraints of reason.

About the Author

Caleb is a junior studying International Politics and Policy at Patrick Henry College (27'). He also holds an Associates Degree in Paralegal Studies from Liberty University (23').

About the Publication

The Inheritance serves students, alumni, and faculty as they discern the word of God, cultivating humble and impactful conversations for a weary world.

The Inheritance is not innovative. From the Garden to the desert to the tomb, our Christian inheritance is an ancient heirloom, passed down through a tapestry of spiritual ancestry. It describes countless elements of our faith preserved through the ages, including our place in Heaven, God’s Word, and the Church. Christian tradition displays a rugged path in adoring the Sacred vision. Sweeter than honey, it appears like the scroll given to the prophet Ezekiel and the Apostle John. Through earnest writing, we honor this great inheritance by seeking to love God with all of our minds. Our search for knowledge is not sterile of synthetic, but intimate and familial. By means of humble writing, we cultivate the fruits of the Imago Dei—imagination and intellect—to the glory of God. The result is a journal dedicated to understanding our God through studying His word.

“For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.”

-Ezra 7:10

Share The Inheritance

Subscribe now

This essay first appeared in Patrick Henry College’s journal, The Inheritance (Spring 2026).

Present concerning trends in American society have some wondering whether the seeds of moral dissolution were sown long ago in the very ideas that animated the American founding. John Locke, often referred to as “America’s Philosopher,” is a particular target of criticism. Several of the most influential cultural critics of the past half-century have identified Locke as the principal subverter of natural teleology, that central plank in the Christian moral tradition.

To say that humans have a natural telos is to say that we can, just by paying careful attention to ourselves, discover that we are objectively and by nature oriented toward a highest good. And because our lives and beings are objectively directed toward this supreme good, we are living—whether we acknowledge it or not—within in a moral order that defines us and ought to guide our lives.

If Locke indeed rejected natural teleology—and built a political philosophy based on this rejection that shaped the American founding—then the amorality of today, as dramatic as it is, might just be natural outworking of serious moral rot that has been at the core of our political culture since its inception. But Locke, just like Aquinas and Augustine, built his ethics and his politics around a vision of humanity as restless until we rest in God, the one by whom and for whom we were made.

The liberal tradition—in Locke’s time often referred to as republicanism—is fundamentally about setting limits on the legitimate authority of those wielding political power. And, from the Huguenot tract Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (1579) to Locke’s friend Algernon Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government (1698), the rationale for such limitations was traced to the Biblical concern for proper use of authority exemplified by 1 Samuel 8 and Matthew 20:25.

However, since the twentieth century, many have joined John Rawls in thinking that the best method for limiting political authority is to studiously maintain neutrality when it comes to big metaphysical questions about God, man, and the purpose of life. And this focus on neutrality has been read back into the founders of liberalism. Thus the liberal tradition in general, in the minds of many, has become associated with neutrality, and so also with secularism, agnosticism, and even the French laïcité that bars religion from public influence. Locke’s writings have frequently been identified as a point of origin for this development.

But that understanding of Locke and the liberal tradition is mistaken. Reading Locke properly shows him not to be a forerunner of Rawlsian neutrality but rather an articulator of a liberalism of metaphysical substance, a liberalism that limits political authority not from agnosticism about or hostility toward metaphysical commitments but rather because the proper metaphysical commitments—about God, man, and the purpose of life—demand political authority be limited.

In his book Return of the Strong Gods, Rusty Reno tells a story of speaking at a conference marking the fiftieth anniversary of James Burnhams’ Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism, organized several years ago by the William F. Buckley Program at Yale University. Reno recalls his disappointment that the conference speakers did not capture Burnhams’ language of “absolute duty” or of an “exalted vision of the meaning of history” but instead limited their comments to “the contours typical of twenty-first century American conservatism—the need for lower taxes, the perils of socialized medicine, and the damage inflicted by political correctness.” Reno writes that he was struck by the irony of the event: Suicide of the West bemoaned the “existential weakness of postwar American liberals,” but Burnhams’ “twenty-first century admirers gathered at Yale” never joined him in seeking “metaphysical substance.”1

If we recognize that Locke built his ethics and his politics around natural teleology, then we will see that the metaphysical substance Burnham longed for is present right at the outset of the liberal tradition in Locke himself.

That Locke articulated a liberalism based on weighty moral duty and the exalted meaning of history is good news for those concerned about the present direction of America. It is one data point suggesting that the rot does not reach all the way to the root. Revolution is neither advised nor necessary; the liberal tradition that shaped American politics has health yet and can serve as the basis for much needed reform.

The reason Locke is thought to have destroyed natural teleology has to do with his scientific view of nature. Notably, the highly influential 20^th century philosopher Charles Taylor argued in Sources of the Self that Locke emptied nature of moral meaning and in doing so steered the modern world away from respect for mimesis toward an overemphasis on poiesis.2 What Taylor meant is that Locke led us to stop expecting, as Aristotle and Aquinas both did, to find a moral order to pattern our lives after (doing so he called mimesis) and to instead begin to create meanings and identities for ourselves based on nothing at all other than our own desires and our power to pursue them (doing so he called poiesis). The similarly influential Pierre Manent claimed in his book The City of Man that the same rejection of objective moral order is at the heart of modern problems and, like Taylor, blamed Locke.3

The most recent iteration of this criticism of Locke comes from the so-called “postliberals,” among them D. C. Schindler, who in his book Freedom From Reality argues that Locke’s approach to nature renders impossible the kind of reason “the classical tradition” cherished, a reason “by which man transcends himself into the real,” coming to “intimacy with the being of things” and finding “a genuinely objective measure, such as the truth of reality.”4 Relying on Schindler’s book, Michael Hanby’s popular article “The Birth of the Liberal Order and the Death of God” argues the moral collapse we see around us today is the inevitable result of the American founding and Locke’s influence on it.5

What this line of argument about Locke misses—and what the Locke scholars who have attempted to answer it have struggled to capture—is that Locke’s scientific view of nature led him to think human beings have rather serious challenges understanding our material cause, but we do not face similar challenges in attempting to grasp our final cause.

Our material cause is our actual physical and metaphysical makeup—body, mind, soul, spirit, atoms, quarks, etc. Locke thought, quite reasonably, that people do not in general arrive very easily at clear understandings of such things. Locke wanted to recognize the complexity of understanding our material cause not only to make room for the scientific observation of nature but also to separate investigation of our material cause from comprehension of our final cause, something he took to be much more straightforward.

Our final cause is our telos, the purpose of our existence. If our material cause is about what we’re made of, our telos is about what we’re made for—and Locke thought us to be quite good at understanding what we’re made for. He thought that we’re made for relationships and that the human mind is highly proficient at thinking about relationships. To give a simple example of what Locke had in mind, Locke explains in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding that the common person might struggle to explain exactly what a human being is but would have no similar difficulties explaining what a father, or brother, or friend is.6

The most important relationship for all of us, Locke was convinced, is our relationship to our Final End and Highest Good himself, God. Locke held in his Essay that we can be sure God exists; something must have always existed, as the cosmological argument demonstrates (otherwise where would anything have ever come from?), and that thing that has always existed must have intelligence, since minds alone originate action. Mindless matter only receives and passes on motion, so the prime mover must be intelligent and purposeful, needing nothing and therefore creating in order to communicate good to the creature. And if we consider our dependence on such an “eternal, omnipotent, perfectly wise and good” creator, Locke claimed, we will readily recognize “our Duty and Rules of Action”: to “honor, fear, and obey God.”7 And, as Locke elaborated in a note in his journal titled “Ethica A,” obeying God necessarily means meeting our neighbors with such “acts of love and charity” as would lead God’s creation to flourish in harmony.8

Thus Locke viewed nature from a scientific perspective but at the same time and without contradiction insisted in the Essay that “morality is the proper science and business of mankind in general, who are both concerned and fitted to search out their Summum Bonum,” or highest good.9

The highest good for humanity was, for Locke, just what Augustine said it was in City of God: “the harmonious enjoyment of God.”10 As Locke put it in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, God “scattered up and down several degrees of Pleasure and Pain” so that we would find “imperfection, dissatisfaction, and want of complete happiness in all the Enjoyments” the created world can afford us and might thereby be led to seek that complete happiness “in the enjoyment of him, with whom there is fullness of joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore” (Psalm 16:11).11 The only end that finally satisfies the wandering human heart is God; in his presence alone, Locke wrote in a journal entry entitled “Pleasure, Pain, the Passions,” is to be found real “happiness, such as the blessed enjoy and such as we are capable of.”12

It is this way of thinking about man—oriented to his final end, living toward the moment when he will face his Judge, restless until in the presence of the substantial Good—that guided Locke in articulating the political vision that has led so many to proclaim him the father of liberalism.

A glance at a few central topics shows that Locke was concerned about setting limits on the legitimate reach of political power not because of hesitancy about metaphysical commitments but precisely because he thought we should organize our societies in ways properly respectful of the primacy of our relationship to God and its duties.

A basic principle shows up in Locke’s comments on the Ten Commandments. Locke writes in his First Treatise of Government that no “Law of the Magistrate” can “give a Child liberty” to not honor father and mother, because this demand to honor is “an Eternal Law annex’d purely to the relation of Parents and Children, and so contains nothing of the Magistrates[sic] Power in it, nor is subjected to it.”13 The principle is that God’s eternal law—a law integrally related to the human nature God created, as Locke insists in Reasonableness of Christianity—gives us some duties that lie above and outside the magistrate’s jurisdiction.

Locke applies that principle about jurisdiction to religious toleration. The primacy of our relationship to God, secured by the actual future encounter we will each have with our judge, stands outside the political ruler’s jurisdiction. God himself will hold us accountable for our obedience to his commands. Thus, Locke writes in his Letter Concerning Toleration, “If my efforts are misdirected” with regard to “the future life,” then “no ruler can make good the damage, lessen the evil, or repair my loss in whole or in part.”14 For this reason, Locke responds to Jonas Proast in defense of his Letter by saying that even if force were useful in promoting true religion (Locke thinks it is not), it would not follow that it would be lawful to use of force for that purpose, because “the magistrate has no commission or authority to do so.”15

Locke’s way of thinking about “the jurisdiction” of the “civil governor, which the ruler, and the individual governor, which is the conscience,” as his puts it in the Letter, was adopted by the Catholic Church in Dignitatis Humanae, which proclaims that man “man perceives and acknowledges the imperatives of the divine law through the mediation of the conscience,” and therefore “no merely human power can command or prohibit” either the internal acts “whereby man sets the course of his life directly toward God” or, given the social nature of man, the external expressions of those internal acts, provided just public order is preserved.16

The same jurisdictional approach guides Locke’s defense of limited government generally, including his justification of rebellion against tyrants. In his Second Treatise of Government, Locke wrote that because we are the “property of the “infinitely wise Maker… sent into the World by his order and about his business,” we are “bound to preserve [ourselves], and not to quit [our] Station[s] willfully.”17 And if we are to preserve ourselves for service to God in preparation to stand judgment before him, we cannot allow ourselves to fall under the sway of a tyrannical ruler that could “destroy [us] when he had a fancy to it.”18 Securing ourselves against tyranny, Locke thought, will sometimes require that we follow Jephtha’s example from the book of Judges, rebelling against the pretensions of merely human power and appealing to the primacy of our responsibility to God.19

In sum, Locke articulated to us a liberalism based on metaphysical commitments, a far cry from the Rawlsian political liberalism that influenced the past half-century. Where Locke built a political vision centered on respect for man’s final end, Rawls claimed in his book Political Liberalism that we have to “distinguish between a public basis of justification generally acceptable to citizens on fundamental political questions and many nonpublic bases of justification belonging to the many comprehensive doctrines.”20 The irony is that in seeking a “public basis of justification,” Rawls means to exclude as “nonpublic” exactly the kinds of metaphysical arguments by which Locke originally articulated a liberal political vision. It therefore makes little sense to view Rawls as the standard-bearer for the liberal tradition as a whole.

Rawls sought a liberalism without metaphysics. The influence of that way of thinking is exactly what Burnham lamented in Suicide of the West. If some of us today see the need to go deeper than “the contours typical of twenty-first century American conservatism—the need for lower taxes, the perils of socialized medicine, and the damage inflicted by political correctness”—we should recognize that the most viable avenue for doing so may involve not the rejection of liberalism but its retrieval.

About the Author

Dr. Graedon Zorzi holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and Religious Studies from Yale University (20’), a M.Phil. in Political Science and Religious Studies from Yale University (17’), a M.A. in Political Science and Religious Studies from Yale University (17’), a M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (10’), and a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Tufts University (07’).

Dr. Zorzi currently teaches at Patrick Henry College as an assistant professor of theology and philosophy, where he was the first recipient of the Hungar Family Endowed Chair of Theology, PHC’s first endowed chair.

About the Publication

The Inheritance serves students, alumni, and faculty as they discern the word of God, cultivating humble and impactful conversations for a weary world.

The Inheritance is not innovative. From the Garden to the desert to the tomb, out Christian inheritance is an ancient heirloom, passed down through a tapestry of spiritual ancestry. It describes countless elements of our faith preserved through the ages, including our place in Heaven, God’s Word, and the Church. Christian tradition displays a rugged path in adoring the Sacred vision. Sweeter than honey, it appears like the scroll given to the prophet Ezekiel and the Apostle John. Through earnest writing, we honor this great inheritance by seeking to love God with all of our minds. Our search for knowledge is not sterile of synthetic, but intimate and familial. By means of humble writing, we cultivate the fruits of the Imago Dei—imagination and intellect—to the glory of God. The result is a journal dedicated to understanding our God through studying His word.

“For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.”

-Ezra 7:10

Share The Inheritance

Subscribe now

This essay first appeared in Patrick Henry College’s journal, The Inheritance (Spring 2026).

^“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” -Matthew 25:34-36

God covenants with man repeatedly throughout Scripture. Perhaps the weightiest of God’s promises to mankind is His pledge to render unto every man according to his works. Old Testament prophets often spoke of the “day of the Lord,” when every nation will stand before God for judgment. On that day, some will be rewarded, while others will suffer God’s wrath. In the New Testament, we find similar descriptions of the day of judgment. One notable instance is the “parable” of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25.1 When Jesus describes the judgment of the nations in this narrative, He articulates an important detail not found in any other description of Judgement Day: the standard by which men shall be judged. According to Matthew 25:34-36, God will use two standards of righteousness in the last judgment—a standard of positive righteousness for the saved and a standard of negative righteousness for the unsaved.

Matthew 25:34-36 belongs to what is commonly called “The Parable of the Sheep and Goats,” but Jesus’ language in this passage indicates that He is giving a non-parabolic description of the day of judgment. This is most evident when Jesus describes Himself as the “Son of Man” who “comes in His glory” at the beginning of the narrative in verse 31. Notably, the title “Son of Man” originates not with Jesus but with the prophet Daniel in the Old Testament. In Daniel 7:13-14, the prophet receives a vision of “one like a Son of Man” who appears before the “Ancient of Days” and receives authority over an everlasting dominion and kingdom. Importantly, the Daniel 7:13-14 vision follows a separate vision described in Daniel 7:1-12 in which the Ancient of Days defeats the four beasts who exalted themselves against Him. He subsequently condemns the beasts in His court of judgment to be burned with fire (Daniel 7:9-12). The proximity of these two Daniel 7 visions closely associates the Son of Man’s appearance with a final judgment on the enemies of God.

Hence, when Jesus describes Himself as the “Son of Man,” He uses a title loaded with implications of authority, revealing to all that He holds the authority to judge.2 Because Daniel’s prophecies associate the Son of Man’s appearance with a final, literal judgment, the Matthew 25 narrative should be understood not as a parable but as an accurate description of Judgment Day and the standards of righteousness God will use to judge the nations.

To fully understand the standards of judgment at play in the Matthew 25 context, we must distinguish between two types of righteousness described in the Bible—negative righteousness and positive righteousness. Although God’s character is the single basis of moral order in the universe, there are varying degrees to which men can reflect that righteousness in their own actions. Two commandments exemplify these varying degrees of obedience: the commandment “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” and the commandment “You shall teach… [God’s commandments] diligently to your children” (Exodus 20:8; Deuteronomy 6:7). To obey the first commandment, one must–in all circumstances–perpetually keep the Sabbath holy. To fail to honor the Sabbath even once is to fall short of this standard. To be counted righteous by this metric, one must not fail to do it; this constitutes a negative way of looking at righteousness. Conversely, the commandment to teach God’s words to one’s children invokes a positive view of righteousness since it is a standard that can be counted as fulfilled as long as one obeys it. A father would not have to perpetually lecture his children on the Torah every hour of the day to fulfill this commandment. Indeed, he would have done his duty by putting in enough time and effort to ensure that his children knew God’s commandments. According to this standard, a person is judged based on whether he obeyed the commandment rather than on how many times he failed to obey. This distinction between negative and positive righteousness is key to understanding the standards of judgment used in Matthew 25:34-36.

In Matthew 25:34-36 and the surrounding context, the King uses a positive standard of righteousness to judge the sheep, but He uses a negative standard of righteousness for the goats. This distinction is not readily apparent in the narrative since the King enumerates the same list of charitable deeds when pronouncing judgment upon both the sheep and the goats. The only distinguishing factor is that the goats failed to perform these charitable deeds. This subtle nuance reveals that the King applies the apparently uniform standard in two different ways. On the one hand, the sheep please God simply by choosing to help “the least of these” (positive righteousness), not by never failing to do so (negative righteousness). On the other hand, the King invokes a negative standard of righteousness when He condemns the goats for failing to help the “least of these.”3 Certainly, the same could be said for the sheep, who could not have possibly helped every single hungry, thirsty, naked, sick, strange, or imprisoned person in society. While God commends the sheep for the good works they did do, He invokes the goats’ lack of action and renders condemnation, thus indicating that two different standards of righteousness are at play.

Lest the reader conclude that God is an unjust judge, it is important to note that God does not use these standards to determine who are the sheep and who are the goats. Rather, He uses them to determine what kind of punishment or reward each will receive. This distinction is evident in the order of events in Christ’s narrative. When the Son of Man arrives in His glory, His first order of business is to “separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats” (Matt. 25:32). Surprisingly, Christ only gives these few words to detail how the King distinguishes the sheep from the goats.

It is tempting to look for this distinguishing metric in the King’s words from verses 34-46, but this would be a mistake for two reasons. First, as has been shown already, the King invokes two different standards of righteousness in these verses. If God did indeed distinguish the goats from the sheep using these standards, He would appear to be unjust. However, the Scriptures make it quite clear that Yahweh is a perfectly just God (Isaiah 30:18; 61:8; Deut. 32:4). Secondly, the King’s language in verses 34–36 and 41–43 of Matthew 25 indicates that He is pronouncing reward and punishment upon those already deemed innocent and guilty. Instead of explaining why some are innocent and why others are guilty, He invites the sheep to “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” but condemns the goats to “depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt. 25:34, 41). To use an analogy from the American legal system, there is no reason to suppose that a judge, in determining a criminal’s sentence, considers the same factors that the jury considered in rendering a verdict of “guilty.” A double standard is unjust only if it is used to distinguish the guilty from the innocent, but in Matthew 25, God undoubtedly does not use a double standard.

If men do not gain their standing as sheep and goats during the judgment, how and when do they attain these positions? With the King’s words to the sheep in verse 34, Christ hints at the answer to this question: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” This language echoes Paul’s language in his epistle to the Ephesians where he writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him” (Ephesians 1:3-4). The sheep are blessed because they are saved by grace through faith—not because of any works they have done, but because of God’s great love toward them (Eph. 2:8-9; 1 John 4:10). They have been joined to Christ in faith, and Christ’s righteousness is imputed to them, while those who reject Christ remain sinful and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). In God’s sight, the sheep have already fulfilled the basic requirements of His righteousness through Christ, and the good works they perform appear as a pleasing aroma in the sight of the King (2 Corinthians 5:21; Jn. 14:21).

It is no surprise, then, that the King chooses to reward the sheep for the charitable deeds enumerated in Matthew 25:34-36, for these deeds epitomize the selfless love that naturally overflows from the heart of faith (James 2:14-17; 1 Jn. 4:8). Meanwhile, the goats still fall short of the basic requirements of the law and must be judged for the things they have failed to do (Leviticus 18:5; Jas. 2:10). It is because of Christ’s effective work on the cross that God chooses to use a positive standard of righteousness when rewarding the sheep and a negative standard of righteousness when punishing the goats.

It is important to note that this understanding of Matthew 25:34-36 runs directly contrary to the interpretation that Jesus teaches a works-based salvation.4 Materially, the narrative does not portray acts of charity as the means of salvation. Charitable acts are only the basis for the reward and punishment of the sheep and goats, as previously noted. From the beginning of his gospel, Matthew makes it clear that men must rely on Christ alone for salvation, not their good works. Before Christ was born, His life’s mission was proclaimed by the angel Gabriel: “He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Christ brings about this salvation in the chapters following the narrative of the Sheep and the Goats by laying down His life on the cross as an atonement for the sins of mankind (Matt. 26:45-64; 1 Jn. 4:10). His sacrifice would be wholly meaningless if it were possible for men to make themselves worthy of the kingdom of God by feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, or visiting the sick. Moreover, the Apostle Paul’s letters make it abundantly clear that man can do nothing to cleanse himself from the stain of sin, for man cannot merit salvation through any works (Rom. 3:9-20). To interpret Matthew 25:34-36 as teaching that man can achieve salvation by good works is to contradict the truth of the gospel. This contradiction is artificially manufactured and utterly misleading because the charity-based standards of righteousness articulated in this pericope are standards for the dealing out of reward and punishment, not of salvation.

Some have sought to reconcile Matthew 25:34-36 with a Sola Fide understanding of salvation by positing that while the sheep are those who have faith in Christ, God will use their good works to determine who possesses saving faith.5 This position teaches that if one has good works, he or she necessarily has the faith and salvation that come from God’s grace. However, this understanding of Matthew 25:34-46 is incomplete because it does not account for the unsaved who also perform good works. Although good works are a hallmark of a true believer, it is possible for unbelievers to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and clothe the naked. For example, the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints spends forty million dollars on “humanitarian and welfare efforts” every year, according to LDS Daily.6 However, the LDS church preaches a gospel contrary to the true gospel found in Scripture. Consequently, the LDS gospel falls short of providing the righteousness necessary to attain the favor of God on judgment day. Nevertheless, this assumption would be valid if Matthew 25:34-36 were understood as teaching that on Judgement Day, the sheep will be distinguished from the goats solely based on their acts of charity. Undoubtedly, this interpretation entirely misses the distinction that Christ makes between the positive righteousness of the sheep and the negative righteousness of the goats. He separates these groups based on whether those judged have been forgiven through His atoning work on the cross.

Although this teaching may be difficult for some to accept, Matthew 25:34–36 makes it clear that the Son of Man will judge humanity according to two distinct standards of righteousness, depending upon whether individuals have already been saved from the wrath of God through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. Only the sheep can hope to receive a reward for their good works, for they know that God looks upon them as clothed in Christ’s righteousness. Conversely, the goats can only expect condemnation for failing to live up to God’s standards of righteousness; their sin outweighs any and all of their good works. The law must be fulfilled before men’s good works can be counted for anything in God’s sight—and a sinful man can only live up to God’s standard of righteousness by receiving the imputed righteousness of the King Himself.

About the Author

Abigail Lee is a senior majoring in Environmental Science and Stewardship and Classical Liberal Arts at Patrick Henry College (26’).

About the Publication

The Inheritance serves students, alumni, and faculty as they discern the word of God, cultivating humble and impactful conversations for a weary world.

The Inheritance is not innovative. From the Garden to the desert to the tomb, our Christian inheritance is an ancient heirloom, passed down through a tapestry of spiritual ancestry. It describes countless elements of our faith preserved through the ages, including our place in Heaven, God’s Word, and the Church. Christian tradition displays a rugged path in adoring the Sacred vision. Sweeter than honey, it appears like the scroll given to the prophet Ezekiel and the Apostle John. Through earnest writing, we honor this great inheritance by seeking to love God with all of our minds. Our search for knowledge is not sterile of synthetic, but intimate and familial. By means of humble writing, we cultivate the fruits of the Imago Dei—imagination and intellect—to the glory of God. The result is a journal dedicated to understanding our God through studying His word.

“For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.”

-Ezra 7:10

Share The Inheritance

Subscribe now

This essay first appeared in Patrick Henry College’s journal, The Inheritance (Spring 2026).

“We shall continue to have a worsening ecological crisis until we reject the Christian axiom that nature has no reason for existence save to serve man.”1 Such was the grim prognosis delivered by medieval history professor Lynn Townsend White, Jr. in the March 1967 issue of the journal Science. For its unassuming length, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis” has had an outsized impact and surprising durability in the six decades since, carving itself a permanent niche in the academic canon.2 Here, I will attempt to synthesize a coherent response to two of White’s strongest assertions and present a viable Christian alternative. I contend that the most pressing errors in White’s thesis are due to his misrepresentation of orthodox Christian doctrine on the relationships between God, humanity, and the natural world. Specifically, White mistakes Christian “dominion” for license, and he mistakes Christianity’s rejection of animism for the evacuation of meaning from the world.3

In “Historical Roots,” White places a “huge burden of guilt” on Christianity under the pretense that its anthropology permits unchecked human exploitation of creation. White’s reading of Christianity contends that “no item in the physical creation had any purpose save to serve man’s purposes,” and “it is God’s will that man exploit nature for his proper ends.”4 His account describes a sharp dualism between man and nature; despite being made from dust, man is—like God—distinct from creation and elevated over and unaccountable to it, even “contemptuous of it,” to use White’s own words.5 Thus, Christianity allows and even encourages man to take advantage of his lofty position. Christianity, according to White, holds that Adam was given divine permission to make use of the physical world however he saw fit.

Bolstering this ecological “manifest destiny,” the disenchantment of the world through the defeat of paganism has, according to White, banished any last inhibitions that might have given pause to the ecological abuses witnessed in the modern era. The spirits of paganism formerly located within natural objects—nymphs, sprites, faeries, wights, etc.—have since vanished from human consciousness or been reduced to superstition. This disenchantment confirms man’s spiritual “monopoly” over nature as the created order and encourages a “mood of indifference” towards the world.6 The prospector need no longer worry about appeasing a mountain-spirit’s home whose depths he wishes to plunder. The farmer building a dike need not worry about pacifying the river-spirit, nor the logger about compensating the forest fairies. Thus, White concludes, Christianity strips the natural world of any value other than what man can derive from it for his uses.7

In the end, White delivers his prescription for the Christian West: it must “rethink” and “refeel” its identity and assumptions if it is to survive its self-made catastrophe.8 He does not want to see Christianity abandoned, but instead argues it is Christianity—albeit a contrived and modified version—that must help the world escape its confusion and misapprehension. White is inspired by how Asian spiritualities conceive of the man-nature relationship, but is doubtful of their viability in the West. As a result, he urges Christianity to integrate a brand of panpsychism that he attributes to Saint Francis of Assisi.9 By restoring spirit to the things of the world, man is deposed from his singular position over creation, no longer the only souled being in the cosmic order. He is demoted from creation’s master to its brother, setting up a “democracy of all God’s creatures.”10 White concludes that without a profound shift such as this within Christianity, the world’s ecological crisis will only continue and worsen.11

However, Christians cannot accept this argument of White’s—or any similar argument, for that matter—as it undermines the doctrinal integrity of the faith.12 While Lynn White was a practicing Presbyterian and his father was a professor of Christian ethics, his own view of religion can be characterized as constructivist.13 He regards the axioms of his own faith as malleable and situational, able to morph with culture. Notably, he does not propose a critical reexamination of Christian source material but instead urges an integration of Christian categories with decidedly non-Christian principles. Thus, to construct a meaningful critique of White’s argument, we must revisit—not revise—historic Christian teaching on the three fundamental relationships at the heart of Creation: God and nature, God and man, and man and nature.

Nature depends on its Maker; God created it of His own accord ex nihilo, and that alone ascribes it goodness. Saint Augustine of Hippo frequently contemplated the nature of good, asserting that “each single created thing is good, and taken as a whole they are very good,” echoing God’s own words about creation in the Bible’s inaugural chapter (Genesis 1:25, 31 ESV).14 Yet he also acknowledges that each thing is not equally good; there exist higher and lower beings in the created order, over which God is supreme.15 American theologian Francis Schaeffer expounds on this creational “chain of being” with God—the only infinite and independent being—at its highest point; everything else is created, finite, and dependent on Him.16 All created things, then, including man, are “equal in their origin” and thus equally far from God because of the infinite distance between His nature and theirs.17 This does not mean all things are of the same rank, only that they share a beginning. Beings that more closely resemble God are higher on this chain; man, with his reason and desire, is more similar to God than a tree, which possesses only life and existence. And yet, existence is alone sufficient to bestow value. This is the crucial correction to White: Christianity does not need to “ensoul” matter in order to restrain exploitation because it locates worth in things themselves. Everything on the chain, everything in nature, is valuable simply because it was made by and is dependent on its supremely good Creator.

And yet the whole metanarrative of Scripture—not only creation, but also redemption and restoration—affirms the goodness of the created order, despite its present fallenness. Like mankind, nature is now alienated from its Creator because, although made good, it was not made immutably so.18 Crucially, however, the doctrinal reality of the Incarnation and Ascension teach that—even in its current state—the material world is not “low,” because Christ Himself was enfleshed, was raised from the dead, and now has a resurrection body that truly is somewhere in the invisible realm.19 Furthermore, the anticipatory state ushered in by Christ’s Ascension doubly confirms the value Scripture assigns to creation. The future resurrection will usher in a great healing from the effects of the Fall, not only for man but for all of creation.20 In Romans 8, Paul writes of an eager expectation and hope for this imminent redemption.21 Creation will not be annihilated at the end of days, but sin will be. As theologian Richard Gaffin puts it, “the present creation will be renovated, not another created ex nihilo.” The curse does not imply that nature was made to be expendable; viewing it as such distorts and “seriously undervalues…the full scope of redemption (Romans 8:21 ESV).” Even greater still, this restoration from the disintegrating effects of sin will not only happen someday in the future but has begun already. While Christians look forward to the perfection and completion of the task on the final day, Christ’s great work inaugurated a time of substantial healing now in “every area where there are divisions because of the Fall.”22 Orthodox Christianity, then, insists on the value of creation, not only as originally intended before the curse of the Fall, but also in the here and now because it is being redeemed by Him until its perfection in the end of days.

While humanity belongs to creation with respect to its origin, we also possess a special relationship with God by virtue of our being made in the imago Dei. While man is separated from God by the same infinite gap between God and His creation, we occupy an exalted place in the created order insofar as we bear His image and likeness. As Schaeffer describes it, “On the side of God’s infinity everything else is finite and equally separated from God; but on the side of His personality God has created man in His own image.”23 Relationality is a key facet of the imago Dei, and man’s ultimate relationship is upward to His personal Maker.24 Yet he also has a downward relationship with nature, being himself a created thing. Thus, when the Christian looks out at nature, he looks at something that is very much like himself while simultaneously rejecting the pagan idea that there is no distinction between himself and what he is seeing.25 He can hold both of these to be true simultaneously. In his book Orthodoxy, Christian apologist and philosopher G.K. Chesterton describes such tensions in Christianity as “stereoscopic.” They enable the believer to see the world in fiery, colorful two-dimensionality, exactly opposite the undifferentiated, flat amalgam that describes pagan cosmology.26 In “pan-everything-ism,” as Schaeffer calls it, nature is not really elevated to the place of man, but man is brought low, flattened, and level with it.27 The Christian cannot accept this. Orthodox theology, then, must secure man’s dignity and his distinctiveness from the creation without permitting him to turn his back upon it.

Man was placed in the garden as a priest, to be its servant and steward; he is not the Sovereign Lord over creation. That place belongs to God alone.28 The second chapter of Genesis recapitulates and focuses the account in the first chapter, providing a higher resolution view of the sixth day when God creates and commissions man as the pinnacle of His created order. As a function of the imago Dei, God bestows on man the tripartite role of king, prophet, and priest; it is this final role we are especially interested in. In Genesis 2:15, God places man in the garden “to work it [āḇaḏ] and keep it [šāmar].”29 The first of these two terms can be translated as cultivate, serve, or even be a slave to.30 It is no accident that man was born into a luscious garden. As a priest serving in God’s cosmic temple, he was to model his task off the divine act of creation by completing the transformation of the globe—populating it with more images, building cities and civilizations, and, most relevant here, cultivating and expanding the garden.31 Once earth had become “one gigantic garden of Eden,” humanity would lead all of creation in the worship of God, and His presence would “descend and fully dwell with mankind.”32 This is the meaning of āḇaḏ — man as priest laboring to prepare a welcome for the Lord into His completed cosmic temple.

Man, however, is not only to work the ground but may also use its produce for food. As Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck points out, it is only after man’s priestly vocation is laid out that God permits him to also eat of any tree in the garden; though necessary, his own subsistence must not obscure the ultimate task of extending the temple (Genesis 1:29 ESV).33 The world was created for ends not reducible to human appetite. The very next verse clarifies that this permission has bounds and requires discernment—most immediately because Adam is forbidden from eating of one particular tree.34 Man is expected to engage his moral capacity when judging how to interact with the world. He is permitted to employ those things that are beneath him for food and building supplies, but in doing so, he “is not using his own possessions” and thus cannot treat them however he pleases (Gen. 2:16-17). This is where White argues wrongly; he conflates the ancillary purpose of creation—sustenance for humanity—with its ultimate end, giving man too much license over it. But man’s commission is to safeguard Eden from corruption, including from those abuses he might indiscriminately inflict on it himself.35 This is the meaning of šāmar, the second of the two terms in Genesis 2:15, which can be translated as guard or watch over; man is protector and judge, acting rightly and staying vigilant against invasion.36 Part of acting rightly, then, is that man behaves not only morally towards his fellow creature, but also does so appropriately and with integrity—recognizing that God made and sustains each thing the way that it is.37 Man must not ask the tree to behave like a man, but like a tree. When he needs firewood, he is not cutting down a person, but a tree. He must not project human reactions and emotions onto it, but must instead respect it simply because God made it as a tree.38 In Deuteronomy, God instructs Israel to do just this—to treat each thing according to its kind: men as men, fruit trees for food, and barren trees for lumber (Deuteronomy 20:19-20). This kind of discernment must be consciously exercised; such an attitude does not come to one automatically, but that is because man is not an automaton; “God is treating us like man and expects us to act like man.”39 A correct theology, then, must exhort man to take up his mantle as priest, as the worker and keeper of the cosmic temple, teaching him to act rightly and appropriately toward the various kinds of things he finds in the creation.

The great task of man was not invalidated by the fall, though he abdicated his mandate in disobedience. Multiplying image bearers has turned to adultery and fornication, subduing the created order has turned to enslaving one’s fellow man, and filling the earth with civilization has turned to exploiting and defacing its beauty (Genesis 1:28).40 Yet Christ’s perfect work has inaugurated an age where restoration and redemption are already possible. The Christian ought not seek liberation from this world but instead the liberation of this world. If he seeks merely his own freedom, he will care little for what happens to the things God has made and has entrusted him with. White spoke the truth when he said, “What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to the things around them.”41 Christianity offers the greatest defense and apologetic for the dignity of the natural world and the utmost importance of man’s place in it. Man’s actions here and now have eternal consequences; though this world is not his home—he is presently a pilgrim and colonist in it—it one day will be when it is “finally and fully renewed (Hebrews 13:14).”42 43 Thus, the Christian should be the greatest caretaker of the Earth; he has far more reason for doing so than either the utilitarian or the pagan. Sadly, the Church has been particularly bad at carrying out its task, “not because Christianity does not have the answer, but because we have not acted on the answer…because we haven’t acted on the value that we know, or should know, [a thing] has as a creature of God.”44 Schaeffer points out that hippies and Buddhists understand something very real about modern man’s impoverished sensitivity to the natural world; though the Christian must decline to partake in their pantheistic solutions, “They are right in fighting the plastic culture, and the Church should have been fighting it, too, a long, long time ago, before the hippies ever came onto the scene.”45 The work is difficult to be sure, but it is the work we are called to do. I contend that we shall continue to have a worsening ecological crisis until we embrace and act on the Christian axiom that man was given the task of filling the earth, not only with more of himself, but through the cultivation and expansion of the garden until the sacred order of Eden has covered the globe.

About the Author

Matt is a senior studying Economics and Business Analytics and Environmental Science and Stewardship at Patrick Henry College (26').

He has blessed The Inheritance by designing the publication's seal.

About the Publication

The Inheritance serves students, alumni, and faculty as they discern the word of God, cultivating humble and impactful conversations for a weary world.

The Inheritance is not innovative. From the Garden to the desert to the tomb, our Christian inheritance is an ancient heirloom, passed down through a tapestry of spiritual ancestry. It describes countless elements of our faith preserved through the ages, including our place in Heaven, God’s Word, and the Church. Christian tradition displays a rugged path in adoring the Sacred vision. Sweeter than honey, it appears like the scroll given to the prophet Ezekiel and the Apostle John. Through earnest writing, we honor this great inheritance by seeking to love God with all of our minds. Our search for knowledge is not sterile of synthetic, but intimate and familial. By means of humble writing, we cultivate the fruits of the Imago Dei—imagination and intellect—to the glory of God. The result is a journal dedicated to understanding our God through studying His word.

“For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.”

-Ezra 7:10

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This essay first appeared in Patrick Henry College’s journal, The Inheritance (Spring 2026).

In Wendell Berry’s novel Remembering, Kentucky farmer Andy Catlett leaves his Kentucky farm for an agricultural conference. The pictures Berry uses to describe this are bleak. Andy’s arm is torn off by industrial machinery that finds no difference between his arm and a plant. The dismemberment of Andy’s arm is symbolic of what Berry sees as a modern predicament—the dismemberment of the person from his community. Likewise, the agricultural conference away from home is sterile and unhuman. It is removed from place, and in being so, destroys the good nature of agriculture. Disconnection from the earth and from place are shown to be unhuman. However, Andy returns home, a sign of remembrance. The redemptive arc of the story is that what was dismembered is remembered through community rooted in place.

In a contrasting picture, Jesus Christ begins his ministry by returning home. He is not remembered. He is rejected. Jesus’ well-known retort to his rejection at Nazareth is that “a prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household (Mark 6:4 ESV).” Jesus’ retort separates his ministry from his hometown. The justification for the gospel that Jesus preaches is not based in a realm of values rooted in his home community. Seemingly, Jesus’ prophetic duty is at odds with Berry’s vision for humans.

Jesus’ retort cannot be read as a rebuke of the ethics of community, just as any of His other comments against Jewish customs cannot be seen as retorts on the Jewish ethic. The statement instead must be understood as serving a typological purpose, pointing to the final redemption of humanity at the cross. Jesus’ comment, then, is a description of His role as the last prophet, not a prescriptive justification for any person who claims to be a “prophet” or who challenges the norms of a culture or community. This will be explained in three sections: the existing ethic of community, Jesus’ rejection by the standard of this ethic, and finally, how Jesus as the last prophet redeems this ethic. Jesus’ statement about His rejection establishes Him as the fulfillment of the Old Testament office of prophet–He was necessarily rejected from his community for the sake of forming a true, lasting community.

Community as a Good

In his book How to Be a Conservative, Roger Scruton develops a political philosophy out of a concept he calls oikophilia, literally, “love of home.” Scruton explains that human beings are inherently “animated…not only [by] the home but the people contained in it, and the surrounding settlements that endow that home with lasting contours and an enduring smile.”1 The notion of oikophilia contrasts with a modern way of thinking which, while not denying community as a net good for the human, redefines community as a “timeless, placeless vision.”2 Scruton’s principle indicates an important facet of human nature: that humans are neither timeless nor placeless. Scruton’s concept of love-of-home must be thought of in terms of limits. In Scruton’s thought, and additionally in the thinking of Berry and Patrick Deneen, community matters because it ties a person to time and place, i.e., limits.

Before proceeding to an exploration of what exactly limits mean in this context, it must be noted that Scruton, Berry, and Deneen are not suggesting that the question of community is an existential choice. People do not cease to be human by choosing to leave a community; rather, community provides for the essential formation of character. Deneen notes that humans “set out for new pastures,” acknowledging that there is a fundamental difference between someone who has been raised and shaped by the limits of community and the false anthropology of liberalism, which suggests humans are disconnected and solitary at birth.3 In other words, community does not make humans human. Rather, it is the inherent fact that humans are limited, contingent beings. Since limitation is part of the essential nature of humanity, humans have the choice either to tie themselves to the established, time-tested limits or to be thrown about by unstable, fleeting limits. This is well illustrated in Berry’s novel Remembering. When Catlett loses his arm to the machine, the question is not whether Catlett has a choice to be limited in community or unlimited through modern industrialism. Catlett, by essence, is limited, and thus the attempt to transcend limits through industrial machinery pulls him into a state of bondage, not freedom. Contra liberalism, the stewardship of limits is the path to freedom. Scruton, Berry, and Deneen all suggest that community provides a crucial reminder of the fact of human limits.

Community and limits are tied together because community necessarily involves place.4 Berry comments that a community, by virtue of having a common interest, has customs and a sense of goodness that it strives toward as a unified organism. Community inherently involves standards, thus it can “enforce decency without litigation.”5 Yet a distinction must be drawn before presuming that communities will always enforce decency—pluralism cannot constitute community. “Places differ from one another and…people will differ somewhat according to the characters of their places.”6 Denying the importance of geographical location in community-making is to deny the fundamental human limit of place. There can be no common interest—and thus no “decency without litigation”—in a placeless community. In short, place makes the limits of community good limits.

The good limits that community provides involve customs, thought patterns, and a way of life that remains, to an extent, unchallenged. Scruton articulates this well by showing that community entails an obligation; it is not a purely instrumental good. Like any good, it is a gift from God and realized through the shaping constraints of nature within a particular place.7 Those who are born into a particular place, then, do not make community, they receive it. When something is received, it carries with it a series of obligations. These obligations are not demands in a coercive sense but rather the requirements necessary to live rightly in light of what has been received. Community contains a certain character that produces obligations to live by. Certain institutions, customs, and holidays must be maintained from generation to generation. The common interests that define good limits must be kept at the forefront of minds as living needs and cares, not dead fragments of heritage. Naturally, as Scruton, Berry, and Deneen all acknowledge, community will undergo change from time to time, but change is not necessarily discontinuity. As British conservative Edmund Burke postulated, there is a “germ” of belonging that defines the underlying foundation of the organically developing community.8 Since the “germ” must remain alive, there will be a culture of blessing and shame towards those who either keep or neglect the obligations of the community.9 In this respect, the underlying substance of community remains unchallenged; those who, from time to time, do challenge such substance will not succeed in overthrowing an order larger than themselves.

Acknowledging community as the foundation of human living reinforces another fundamental truth: no human can be the sole beholder of truth. In his Gifford lectures, Scruton explains that all humans “face the world in a posture of accountability. We are called upon to justify our conduct, to be truthful in revealing our states of mind and our goals, and to be aware of the community that stands as though on a balcony above our projects, expecting us to play our part.”10 Community is not an epistemology in itself, nor can it by its own merit produce truth. It nevertheless serves an important epistemological role. Scruton’s observation that “we are called upon to justify our conduct,” including “our states of mind,” means that reason is not an individualistic pursuit. Reason involves dialogue, and dialogue involves living with other people.11 Such dialogue is marked by what Scruton calls the “I-You” relationship, namely, a relationship between two living, ensouled individuals, meaning that any claim of truth or pursuit of reason must first encounter the filter of accountability.12 There are, then, no new ideas. All ideas are developed out of a sense of obligation, interest, and customs that are themselves rooted in place.

For Scruton, this principle of an unchallenged germ is not an abstract one, but one that works itself out concretely in the realm of aesthetics. Scruton remarks, “We shape our surroundings as a home by farming, by building, by arranging the world. Aesthetic values govern every form of settlement.”13 He further draws this point out by remarking on the creation story in Genesis, “A garden is a cultivated place, a place transformed by aesthetic choices, a place that bears the mark of human labour [sic] and human desires.”14 Scruton’s remarks serve to reify Burke’s principle of the unchallenged germ of community. The underlying idea of anything remains functionally unchallenged as it is met by the judgments of shame and blessing that community provides. This works itself out in the concrete particulars of any community, from architecture and fine arts to customs, rites, and holidays. As mentioned above, this does not mean society will never change. Rather, change is to be expected from any healthy community. Changes in customs, thinking, and way of life, however, are not subject to any individual will, but the organic living development of people in community together. As Berry notes, there is no truly private life; all of life is found within the shared good that defines community.15

Is there ever a point when the germ of community must be challenged? This task, I suggest, is realized in the office of the prophet. It is this question that the next section deals with.

The Prophet Against Community

In all three of the synoptic gospels, Jesus Christ is rejected in his hometown (Matt 13:53-58, Mark 6:1-6, Luke 4:16-30). All three accounts follow Jesus as He goes to Nazareth and teaches in the synagogue, only to be met with disapproval and rejection. Jesus, seemingly unfazed, responds, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household,” and leaves (Mark 6:4). Prima facie, Jesus’ rejection seems to be akin to Scruton’s claim that all humans face a realm of judgment upon entering the world. As noted above, ideas must pass through the filter of community and be judged through reason marked by dialogue. The message that Jesus brings is nevertheless proclaimed as true in the Christian Scriptures despite being rejected by the realm of judgment in the community that was Jesus’ own. In leaving Nazareth, Jesus seems to transcend limits and neglect place. Seemingly, Jesus’ claim that he has the authority to proclaim his message does not align with Scruton’s, Deneen’s, and Berry’s principle. However, before this objection is raised, it should be noted that Jesus is fulfilling a specific office of prophet, to such an extent that He is a kind of last prophet. The shape of the office of the prophet and how Jesus fulfills this must first be examined.

The Biblical prophet challenges community-imposed limits when those limits have fallen into a state of error and disconnected the community from its divine source. A prophet (προφήτης—literally “one who speaks forth) is someone who speaks out to call people to repentance (μετάνοια—literally “change of mind”). Charles Hodge notes that there is a Biblical distinction between the office of prophet and that of teacher. Hodge draws this distinction in terms of inspiration: the teacher draws upon a corpus or canon of thought while the prophet speaks inspired by God, a literal “organ” of God.16 The prophet’s epistemology rests upon an inherent, direct connection to God; it is through this direct connection that he and others know what he speaks is true. The prophet’s epistemological relation to a community, then, is not through the mediating limits that Scruton, Berry, and Deneen suggest for normative discourse. There are two ways in which Jesus’ rejection at Nazareth places the prophet in conflict with the community-imposed limits that Scruton, Berry, and Dennen speak to: Jesus’ rejection first raises a problem of place and second a problem of honor. Yet the rejection of Jesus, both displacing and dishonoring, simultaneously identifies Him with the Old Testament prophets and confirms His role as the realization and fulfillment of the office of prophet. The question thus raised is how Scruton’s, Berry’s, and Deneen’s principle of limits interact with Hodge’s epistemology of the prophet.

Jesus’ rejection in His hometown is marked by Him leaving a specific place that He was initially rooted in. Before the rejection, the members of Jesus’ synagogue community noted a separation between a sort of common idea or common sense and the words Jesus taught. Mark’s text records the people saying, “Where (πόθεν) did he get this,” to such an extent that they did not recognize either His wisdom or His miracles (Mk. 6:2, translation and emphasis my own). All three synoptic gospels then remark that the people took offense at Jesus’ words and expelled Him from His own hometown. Luke’s account remarks that the very geography of the town was used in the rejection. The town was built along a cliff, which the townspeople attempted to throw Jesus from, and yet he “passed through” the crowd and “departed” (Lk. 4:30). Because common judgment of the hometown and place are inherently linked, Jesus must be understood as leaving His hometown as a place. Jesus’ ministry not only continued in places different from where He began, but He could no longer call his starting place his own.

The synoptics are further unified in remarking that Jesus’ rejection involved Him being shamed. While Luke’s account simply remarks that Jesus was not welcome, Matthew and Mark include stronger language, remarking that a “prophet is not dishonored (ἄτιμος)” unless he is in his hometown (Matthew 13:57, Mark 6:4 ). Scruton’s principle that community stands above, serving to “justify our conduct,” is, in a sense, illustrated here. Jesus’ home community presumes that it has the power to pronounce blessing or shame upon conduct, action, principles, and thoughts. As Luke’s account notes, when Jesus justifies His conduct, He speaks of two parallel ideas. While He first suggests that the expected justification will be the performance of a grand miracle, He instead connects Himself to the Old Testament prophet Elijah, who ministered for years when no miracles were done (Lk. 4:23-27). In other words, Jesus’ response is not one anticipated by the people, but rather a claim that He—like Elijah—is a rejected one.

The inclusion of this story in the synoptics demonstrates that Jesus–by virtue of being both displaced and dishonored–is a prophet of the gospel. Theologian Robert Cara, for instance, notes that in the historic iteration of the office of prophet, there is a parallel realization of rejection and suffering. According to Cara, Jesus’ rejection was both “according to God’s will and matches what the Old Testament taught” and also “connects [to the] healing and preaching motifs through the Old Testament prophets Elijah and Elisha.”17 While the office of prophet is in essence one who speaks forth as–using Hodge’s language–an “organ” of God, the secondary property or consequence of this role is simultaneously rejection and suffering. Perhaps most importantly, Jesus’ reception of both displacement and dishonor inevitably lead to a place of complete rejection. While the synoptic account of His rejection at Nazareth ends with Jesus teaching in other villages, the conclusion of Jesus’ ministry was a final dishonoring in his crucifixion. Moreover, His crucifixion attempted to remove someone from the world through death while also dismembering any remaining, placed legacy. Jesus’ whole identity as a suffering servant meant that He was both displaced and dishonored.

Jesus’ rejection at Nazareth displays His role as the final prophet, the realization and fulfillment of the Old Testament prophetic office and ministry. In other words, all Old Testament prophets served as types for Jesus’ rejection at Nazareth, an event itself that serves as a type for the dishonoring and displacement of all Christians under the headship of Jesus Christ that occurs at the cross. The fact that in Luke’s account, Jesus reads a scroll of the prophet is significant. This speaks to what Cara calls the “suffering/rejected prophet motif,” which he argues is fulfilled in Jesus.18 Whether those angered in the synagogue realized it or not, they were confirming Jesus’ words—“today this writing is fulfilled”—with their anger (Lk. 4:21). In other words, the rejection at Nazareth was not a one-off statement or witty quip on human tendencies. It was a commentary on both the fact that Jesus was the fulfillment of the prophetic office and also the reality that He was destined to take on the shame and suffering of all humanity.

The Prophet For Community

Berry’s vision for humans, the earth, and community is not explicitly Christian, but Berry’s ethic of care for the earth and place simultaneously mirrors much of the Bible’s message and challenges much of the modern Christian ethos. The work of Berry, which most closely resembles a theology, is his essay “Christianity and the Survival of Creation,” originally a lecture delivered at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.19 In the essay, Berry provides a critique of Christianity with the purpose of reforming Christian thinking. He takes issue with the desecration of nature by Western industrialism and argues that Christians have stood by complicitly.20 In contrast, he argues that the Bible mandates otherwise. Berry acknowledges his own debt to the Christian tradition and argues that it is inescapable, as that is what he was born into.21 Cultivating the Christian tradition well, however, means it must be reformed to reject the desecration of nature and return to its original message of healing the land. Since God made creation, it must be good; there is no “dualism” between God and His earth.22 Nor are humans separated from the earth. God did not fill a body with a soul; rather, God embodied the “dust of the ground” with personhood.23 Humans are rooted both spiritually and physically in the earth and thus cannot be thought of as separate from either nature or place. Berry argues that “the Bible leaves no doubt at all about the sanctity of the act of world-making.”24 Christians must pursue the “holiness of life,” which extends beyond the church building to the whole of God’s creation.25

Berry’s thesis in the essay is one of Christian duty, but the question must be asked: Can a sinner fulfill a holy duty? It is this question that must be answered to resolve the question of the prophet. The prophet, as described above, is one who calls the sinner to repentance. The call of repentance, however, is not one of renewed ethical conduct. The apostle Paul urges that the purpose of law is one of a “schoolmaster” to drive God’s people to the realization and fulfillment of holiness in Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:24).26 Berry acknowledges that creation has been corrupted by sin but maintains that God still finds it worthy of redemption.27 While this is a true enough observation, Berry’s ensuing conclusion is to task humans with an ethical imperative. He does not see this realized in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Berry’s ethic falls short because he does not see the realization and fulfillment of an ethical demand in an eschatological consummation, contrary to Paul’s comment regarding the “schoolmaster.”

Berry’s thesis does not account for this facet of theology because he does not seem to understand the overarching historical narrative of Christianity. Christianity is, first and foremost, a historically oriented religion. It follows a historical narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation; the Incarnation itself speaks to this fact. Jesus Christ, as the incarnate Son of God, was the historical fulfillment of the ethical demands of the law (Rom. 3:24-31). The lack of a historical orientation around the ethical imperatives of Christianity misses the redemption of all creation in the person and work of Jesus Christ. If an ethical task is given, and a person does not have historical-oriented theology directing him to the fulfillment of law in the person and work of Jesus, the only source of fulfillment will be in the individual person acting on his own behalf.

Since the office of the prophet is one of repentance, and thus one looking towards the redemptive event (Christ’s death and resurrection), the theology of the prophet can tend towards neglect of place.28 Prophets roamed for a reason. Jesus Christ’s statement about the prophet and His hometown, however, is counterevidence to this one-sided error. As demonstrated in the preceding section, the synoptics’ story about the rejection at Nazareth is a commentary on place; it comments on Jesus’ own displacement. The question remains whether Berry’s Biblically-based ethic of place is reconcilable with Jesus’ own displacement, considering Christ’s perfection cannot violate any moral obligation. Simultaneously, Jesus is perfectly God and yet also “acquainted with grief” in a human way (Isaiah 53:3). Simultaneously, Jesus is made incarnate to perfectly fulfill human nature (which must involve emplacement) and yet is rejected by his own place.

In his book Where Mortals Dwell, Craig Bartholomew suggests that the whole story of the Christian Scriptures is one of place. The redemptive arc from creation to fall to restoration “has the structure of implacement-displacement-(re)implacement [sic].”29 For Bartholomew, the event of re-emplacement is the completion of a redemptive arc of the current, inherent human condition. Bartholomew argues that Jesus’ comment at Nazareth “alerts us to his sense of a new emplacement, namely as that of a prophet of the kingdom.”30 This kingdom is not an invisible, abstracted reign. In a very real sense, it is a place. “The third beatitude is most interesting: ‘Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.’ This placial reward clearly contradicts the notion that the kingdom of God always refers to the reign of Israel’s God and never to his realm.”31 Bartholomew goes on to clarify that the earth must refer to the tangible ground and place of the physical earth.32 Such a thesis about the historical reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection and the nature of the inaugurated kingdom shows that place and history cannot be separated.

The restoration of place is tied directly to the inauguration of the Messianic kingdom. It is a promise that the physical earth is not simply replaced but, much like the body of a redeemed person, it will be glorified. When Paul says that “the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now,” he comments on the fact that all of nature is touched by the fall, all of nature will be redeemed, and that now, the time of Jesus’ advent, is when all nature is redeemed (Rom. 8:22). This creation-wide redemption does not void place inherent in the local community.33 Rather, the kingdom will be realized through the local community of the church, instead of through political force or the use of coercive power.34 In the local church, both Jesus’ redemptive work and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit are manifested in a sense that is both rooted in community of persons and place.

The inauguration of such a kingdom, however, must rest upon the advent of the person and work of Jesus. In other words, “the structure of implacement-displacement-(re)implacement” is not wrought by some invisible force of God, but rather through the incarnation of Jesus Christ. This is emphasized in the gospel of Matthew, the only one of the four gospels to reference the “church” explicitly.35 Reggie Kidd argues that, drawing upon this theme, the latter part of Matthew “marks Jesus’s preparation for the cross and for the creation of the church. Appropriately, the narrative portion begins with the rejection of Jesus at Nazareth and the death of John the Baptist at the hand of Herod the tetrarch.”36 This was in order “to reshape God’s people by making faith the boundary marker between ‘clean’ and ‘unclean.’” Kidd’s comment on the rejection at Nazareth displays a twofold purpose in the narrative.

First, while the local church is a kind of continuation of the Jewish synagogue, the inauguration of the New Covenant marks a challenge to the substantive outworking of rites, customs, and modes of thinking of Jewish tradition. This can, for instance, be seen in circumcision’s fulfillment in the rite of baptism, or the Passover’s fulfillment in the Eucharist. While the essence of placed community is maintained, the synagogue as a local community failed to see that true “re-implacement” would only be brought about by the redemption of place in the coming of the Messiah. The rejection of Jesus, then, is not a placed community exercising judgment; it is rather the articulation of a community attempting to displace itself.

Second, and more importantly, the nature of the Incarnation is such that Jesus himself is displaced for the purposes of being re-emplaced. The Apostle Paul remarks that “the one not knowing sin was made sin for us” (2 Corinthians 5:21). This is a fulfillment of the Messiah being “acquainted with grief,” as Isaiah comments (Is. 53:5). The reason that the Son of God took on human flesh was for the purposes of incarnating the human condition in its fallen state and thus, by his own righteousness, redeeming it. Just as Jesus died according to sin for the purpose of being raised in holiness, Jesus was displaced for the purpose of being re-emplaced. Just as Jesus’ righteousness is imputed, Jesus’ redeemed emplacement is imputed in a completed way through the Church. The mystery of Jesus Christ is that He is simultaneously the suffering servant and the glorified Lord. This is beautifully demonstrated in the rejection at Nazareth. Kidd notes that the rejection of Jesus is one of the “powerful signs of the hiddenness of the kingdom of heaven.”37 It is hidden in that Jesus is rejected from His hometown, but realized in that Jesus is the source of true re-emplacement to community and place. The way that a sinner fulfills the ethical duty towards community is not by works but rather through grace. Just as in Luther’s law-gospel categories, law is fulfilled in the gospel of Christ, the law of place is fulfilled in Jesus Christ’s gospel of place.38

Conclusion

The restoration of community rooted in place is one of the promises that God offers to Israel throughout the Old Testament that He finally and fully redeems in Jesus Christ. Along with Bartholomew, Scruton also notes that the Jewish ethic is inherently rooted in care for their land. Scruton argues that Israel was “conscious of the uniqueness of their territory, of the need to respect it and to sanctify it. They regarded the Promised Land not as a thing to consume and discard but as an inheritance, to be cared for and passed on.”39 While this care did include aspects of intentionality in good agriculture and architecture, “a true city begins from an act of consecration, and it is the temple, God’s dwelling, which is the model for all other buildings. It is from the temple that we can learn how to build.”40 If this need for the consecration of community is understood, it can be seen why community in place can only be realized in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

When Jesus took on flesh in the Incarnation, He dwelt with humanity. Nevertheless, Jesus’ home was always in Heaven. When He took on human flesh, He took on human nature. But if Scruton, Berry, and Deneen are correct, human nature necessarily involves emplacement on the physical earth. This dual emplacement of Jesus, according to his dual nature, is displayed well in his baptism. Jesus is baptized to “fulfill all righteousness,” and when the baptism is completed, Jesus’s association with earth is commended by the Father (Mt. 3:15-17). Jesus must be rejected according to his human nature, including a rejection at Nazareth. At the same time, He is able to minister as the final prophet in full authority because of His divine emplacement in heaven. In the Incarnation, God consecrated humanity through His active presence. Since humans are not abstract, independent entities free of personal connection, but rather rooted essentially in community in place, the consecration of humanity that occurred through the Incarnation redeemed humanity in community. The Incarnation is a redemption of place. By His suffering in His rejection, Jesus Christ redeemed the social bonds that define human life and livelihood.

About the Author

Isaac Torcellini has a B.A. in Political Philosophy and a minor in music from Patrick Henry College (25').

About the Publication

The Inheritance serves students, alumni, and faculty as they discern the word of God, cultivating humble and impactful conversations for a weary world.

The Inheritance is not innovative. From the Garden to the desert to the tomb, our Christian inheritance is an ancient heirloom, passed down through a tapestry of spiritual ancestry. It describes countless elements of our faith preserved through the ages, including our place in Heaven, God’s Word, and the Church. Christian tradition displays a rugged path in adoring the Sacred vision. Sweeter than honey, it appears like the scroll given to the prophet Ezekiel and the Apostle John. Through earnest writing, we honor this great inheritance by seeking to love God with all of our minds. Our search for knowledge is not sterile of synthetic, but intimate and familial. By means of humble writing, we cultivate the fruits of the Imago Dei—imagination and intellect—to the glory of God. The result is a journal dedicated to understanding our God through studying His word.

“For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.”

-Ezra 7:10

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This essay first appeared in Patrick Henry College’s journal, The Inheritance (Spring 2026).

Dear Christian,

Patrick Henry College is a Christian institution. Every course taught here, every paper written, every debate argued is done in the shadow of the confession that Jesus Christ is Lord. So why a theology journal, and why now?

Assuming theology is not the same as doing theology. A Christian school can, if it is not careful, let the word “Christian” do all the work while the hard discipline of thinking carefully about God is forgotten. C.S. Lewis argues that a real cosmology, a complete picture of what the world is, what we are, and what anything means, does not float free of theology. Theology is the queen of the sciences, the foundation upon which all other disciplines find their purpose. There is something dazzling about theology: the act of seeking out the concealed things of God. As Proverbs 25:2 says, “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.” There is something fundamentally human about seeking our Divine Beloved. The Inheritance is an organized, public means of searching together.

The Inheritance is a name that ought to remind us of the great inheritance handed down to us through Christ, the Apostles, the Fathers, and the Reformers. Our inherited tradition is sweeter than honey. This journal is a call to PHC students, alumni, and faculty to reason together humbly, argue honestly, and be formed by our inheritance.

The theme for our maiden issue, Nature and Nature’s God, serves as the throughline for all our brilliant articles. Each essay provides a Christian response to the Enlightenment metaphysics of the Modern world. While our Founders may have adopted deistic language when they wrote of “Nature and Nature’s God,” this publication baptizes that philosophy to present an alternative. Man is placed in nature, not alienated. God is present in the world, not abstracted from it. And perhaps, as Dr. Zorzi argues, even John Locke’s Enlightenment metaphysics were intended for a higher moral order.

As you read, pay attention to the single question running beneath all six essays: whose world really is this, and what does it mean to live faithfully in it? Look specifically for themes of Christ’s reign over Nature, the redemptive significance found in place, and our role in the reverent redemption of the Earth God has given us. Pay careful attention to the two bookends: Dr. Zorzi’s opening engagement with metaphysics and reason, and Caleb Helsing’s closing essay, which draws that thread out to its full length, earning its place as the final word of this volume. After each essay, you will find carefully selected hymns. Theology is meant to be sung. I encourage you to read, sing, and meditate after each article.

None of this would exist without Dr. Graedon Zorzi. He serves as the endowed Theology Chair and has served as faculty supervisor of The Inheritance from the beginning. It was in his classes that my understanding of the LORD, of Scripture, and of the study of God was genuinely deepened. The journal began as an offhand comment to him. He did not let it stay offhand. This journal bears his fingerprints throughout.

Thank you to our board for your steadiness, to the content, grammar, and research teams for your careful work, and to the layout team for struggling through the beautiful mess of publication with me. Special thanks to Matthew Reynolds, who designed our seal, and to Carina Fariano and Caroline Cox, whose hand-drawn artwork brought these pages to life.

Read well, argue honestly, and sing joyfully.

Mark Roose
Editor-in-Chief, The Inheritance

About the Author

Mark is a sophomore studying Economics and Business Analytics at Patrick Henry College (28').

About the Publication

The Inheritance serves students, alumni, and faculty as they discern the word of God, cultivating humble and impactful conversations for a weary world.

The Inheritance is not innovative. From the Garden to the desert to the tomb, our Christian inheritance is an ancient heirloom, passed down through a tapestry of spiritual ancestry. It describes countless elements of our faith preserved through the ages, including our place in Heaven, God’s Word, and the Church. Christian tradition displays a rugged path in adoring the Sacred vision. Sweeter than honey, it appears like the scroll given to the prophet Ezekiel and the Apostle John. Through earnest writing, we honor this great inheritance by seeking to love God with all of our minds. Our search for knowledge is not sterile of synthetic, but intimate and familial. By means of humble writing, we cultivate the fruits of the Imago Dei—imagination and intellect—to the glory of God. The result is a journal dedicated to understanding our God through studying His word.

“For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.”

-Ezra 7:10

Share The Inheritance

Subscribe now