The Great Debate, So-Called…

It wasn’t easy, but the devil knew what he wanted. He wanted the European people, the Christ-bearing people, to see existence through the eyes of a scientist. Where is God in the natural world? Where is the scientific evidence that skin pigmentation is anything but skin pigmentation? Who dares say that white skin connotes a distinct people with spiritual attributes different from people without white skins? Once the Europeans’ God became a propositional God, the European people became a propositional people. ~ CWNY

I once attended a pro-white event where Jared Taylor was one of the speakers. Taylor, as many of my readers know, represents the more intellectual and scientistic side of the racialist camp. Perhaps to his annoyance, the conference was hosted by a group that represented the last of the politically active segregationists from the old South. The master of ceremonies spoke with the “can-do” chipperness of a Baptist pastor. At a point during his motivated cadence, he said: “…and we’ll even get brother Taylor baptized before we’re done!”

I was sitting at the table next to Mr. Taylor and had a good look at his expression. A genuine hurt came over him and he replied to the room: “I *have* been baptized…” I can’t recall the specifics but I think he said he was baptized as an infant, perhaps as a Presbyterian. In any case, those old Southern “racists” saw him as a secular academic on scene to learn ’em on the finer points of genetics. Having met him many times and read a few of his books, I suspect Taylor holds to the old line that religious convictions are best not spoken of in public – a sentiment which goes well with the rank and file of his movement, most of whom have little regard for Christianity at all (speaking anecdotally).

Opposite to him in the recent great debate was E. Michael Jones, who’s been on the fringes of “alt-right” circles for awhile, but since the decline of the more vocal leaders post-Charlottesville, has moved closer to center stage. As an active Roman Catholic intellectual, he’s garnered support from the maligned “Trad-Cath” segment of the pro-white movement. He’s controversial, however, for emphasizing ethnicity and religion to the point of excluding race all together. Hence the debate topic: Is Race an Important Reality or a Fiction? (With Taylor taking the affirmative and Jones taking the negative).

Both men are wrong, of course. Both see existence through the eyes of a scientist. Their errors are odd in that Taylor, the ostensible materialist, is too universal, while Jones, the likely champion of spirit, is too enamored of the particulars.

I’ll begin with Taylor…

Many of the neo-pagans in white nationalist circles are hyper focused on genetics, building on the scientistic racialists of the 20th century (like Madison Grant). They’ve accepted the Devil’s Darwinian Lie and seek to be consistently “scientific” in their analysis. Liberals are wrong, on this view, because they don’t respect science enough! From my point of view, this is not a rebellion against liberalism at all. These neo-pagans are just in a doctrinal dispute about certain religious tenets of it. They want white people to have a place at the devil’s table. Richard Spencer – as a convenient avatar for this group – was like Martin Luther, pounding his racially self-conscious 95-Thesis on the door of some Liberal church, not to overturn Liberalism, but to reform it! And Taylor, baptized or not, is the champion of this contingent.

I’ve often asked these racial materialists if they’d consider an African, born to black parents, but, owing to pollution in the soil or some other oddity from the heart of the jungle, is born with similar genetics to Europeans, if he would be a white man. They all quibble with the illustration saying my thought experiment would be impossible. Yet, thought experiments need not be possible to show weakness in a position. It seems to me they’d have to say yes, that genetic oddity of a baby would be a white man, even though we all have a strong intuition he wouldn’t be anything of the sort. After all, there are disorders of the skin where some black men, over time, develop white skin. No one says they change their race because of it. Something deeper than mere genetics is needed.

But what of Jones, then?

In a half-cocked appeal to Aquinas’ metaphysics he wants to wax philosophical about “categories of the mind” and “categories of reality.” “Race” as Taylor defends it, is a mere “category of the mind” and thus, isn’t real and was only invented by evil capitalists to exploit the poor minorities.

I’ve worked hard to absolve myself of my past study of philosophy so I wont give in to the temptation to dive in here. All I’ll say is that if “categories of the mind”, as Jones lays them out, are not “real” then he ought to be consistent and not talk about individual persons either! He brings up Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, for example. Consistency would demand he consider these names, not as denoting actual people, but rather, as denoting mental categories that “we” (“we” here, indicating another mental category), use to describe a series of Hilary and Trump-like events that seem to have both temporal and conceptual (if not rational) relation to each-other!

As silly as this may sound to the average person, philosophers do ponder about the relationship between events and our perception of continually-existing objects through time, leading many to give up believing objects exist at all. These metaphysical “anti-realists” – more consistent in their philosophy than Jones – recognize that unless “mental categories” are real, in some sense, then we can’t even consistently talk about something as mundane as a table or a chair. We just have a series of chair-like temporal events that seem to be related in time which our minds aggregate together and call “chair”…

Why couldn’t Jones think that God, Himself, is the author of these “categories of the mind” and through creation, imposes them on the random, particular, objects of our experience? There. There’s my Kinism seeping back in – a Van Tillian analysis of racial categories…

I am *not* suggesting we ought to try philosophizing our way to respecting racial categories! Please don’t misunderstand me. All I’m suggesting here is that if we love Christ and we love our people, then we could easily wiggle around with these philosophers and find a way to intellectually justify (if such a ridiculous thing were ever required) what our hearts ought to have known all along.

~ Our little systems have their day
they have their day, then cease to be.
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And thou, oh Lord,
Art more than they. ~

Review: The Twilight of Our People?

Joe Putnam, the man who asked us to rethink our propositions, is back with a new tract, and this time, he’s pulling fewer punches. While he never presumes as much, I see his new book as nothing less than an introduction to the Kinist worldview, minus the stuffy Reformed dogmatics. And we’ve long needed a basic introduction to Kinism.

True, he only mentions the word once the entire book (in regard to the idea of “kin rule”). Nevertheless, he offers a polished look at the world from a perspective that’s universally accepted among Kinists, and unfortunately, is universally rejected by everyone else. The path to the Kingdom is truly narrow. Don’t expect to win friends and influence people with what Joe provides.

But, like all agrarian-minded white boys, we’ll side with Sawyer Brown:

“I’ll take the dirt road. It’s all I know. I’ve been walking it for years, it’s gone where I need to go. It ain’t easy. It ain’t supposed to be. So I’ll take my time. And life wont pass me by. ‘Cause it’s right there to fiiiiIIiiiiinnnd…on the dirt road…”

Turns out, flight from the countryside is one of the main problems with modern America according to Joe. We’ve lost our rootedness and few Americans retain the basic intuitions common to all agrarians. Especially relevant are the commonsense ideas of race, difference, and lack of equality – ideas readily apparent to anyone on a farm, but which seem beyond the grasp of moderns.

Joe may succeed here where some Kinists tend to fail. He openly recognizes the religious nature of the conflict. And religion is more than a few, mere, theological doctrines. I liken it to a bear attack:

Imagine you’re walking in the wilderness and a bear rushes in for the kill. You don’t stop to debate PETA intellectuals about the abstract ethics of killing animals in general (and bears in particular). Whatever the divine rules there, let them lay as they are, for the time being, we’re being attacked by a bear! I’ve often seen race mixing in the same light. While many Kinists love engaging in debates about meta-ethics and race-mixing in the abstract, we are, right in the good ol’ here and now, being severely attacked, through propaganda and a hundred other petty avenues. So whatever the morality of the hypothetical white man stuck on a desert island with the non-white, Christian, island girl…race mixing is being used to destroy our people right now. We’re being collectively raped and pillaged. And *that* is wrong, no matter how big Moses’ wife’s lips may have been…

Nevertheless, and despite my own cynicism, Joe answers the titular question of his book with a resounding “no”…this is not the end of our people. There is hope.

…and that’s something we all need to hear right about now…

Dr. Bahnsen’s Economic Argument Against Alienism

Most all modern Reformed theories of state and society are (unbeknownst to the Evangelicals) premised on neo-Marxist presuppositions.  While their emotional motivations are grounded in the civil-rights era, these anti-tribalists premise their intellectual objections to tribalism and ethnic-based social orders on a desire to implement a state-sponsored, fiat order, where men arbitrarily associate with each other, not in terms of Godly family units, but rather, in terms of allegiance to propositions (like laws, constitutions, and ideologies).  In his critique of Marxist theories of man, Dr. Bahnsen gets into an interesting discussion with Dr. Kickasola and in the course of their discussion, criticizes this anti-Christian position.  Starting at 26 min. in to lecture 23 of his “Philosophy of Christianity” series:

———————————

Kickasola:  Why is communism, especially Chinese communism, so anti-family?  Why do they divide the children from parents and so forth?  Because there’s nothing inherent in communism that would demand that.  In fact, communism would accentuate the family?  Then I realized: if the biggest sin is private property in the sense of domain (which comes from the Clan), we, daddy, mommy, kids, inherently own something … then if I can get rid of the family, then private property would vanish.

Bahnsen:  You’re exactly right.  Private property and the family go hand in hand in Marx.  The only way to break the hold of the family, and therefore private property, is to have the state do the education and raising of the children.

Kickasola:  But I don’t know if the Marxist considers the family intrensically evil.  It’s private property that seems to be evil.  So they say the family has to go.  In other words, they see the dispensing of the family as an act of mercy …

Bahnsen:  Well, I don’t know how many Marxists you’ve talked to.  It may be true that the ones you’ve run into have not felt that way, but Marxist philosophy says family is inherently evil.  The family essentially breaks up society into units that consider themselves owners of particular property and inheritances as you’ve mentioned it.   The idea that the parents own the children and can control the children apart from the state, is essentially the claim that the state doesn’t have the ultimate power that it must have in terms of Marxist dialectic of history, so that eventually there’ll be no state at all.

We all have to become one large family, to put it another way.  As long as we perpetuate individual families we’ll never have this “communal” society that we’re looking for.

Kickasola:  So precisely, the sin is not ownership, but rather private property?

Bahnsen:  Oh yes.  Oh yeah.  The ultimate sin is private property.

My Response to the Marinov and his Article on Family

The Marinov’s article:  http://americanvision.org/5555/relationship-vs-purpose-how-the-church-destroys-the-christian-family/

My humble reply:

Mr. Marinov, you overlook the most significant diagnosis of your friend’s condition, preferring to treat his minor scratches instead of the arrow sticking out of his heart!

It’s hard for me to imagine a sermon on the family that doesn’t mention “purpose,” at least in passing.  It wouldn’t make sense if it didn’t.  The very words “brother” “mother” and “father” imply a purpose.  “Purpose” is an unavoidable theme, even if not always explicit.  Maybe you’re overplaying your friend’s position to make your point?

But, in doing so, you’ve managed to upset poets and passionate wordsmiths of all sort!

Is it really true that “men obsessed with relationships and emotions” are not really masculine?  Not according to Shakespeare who, speaking through Hamlet, asks: “…for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil?”  Hamlet’s “purpose” drove him to suicide.  It was his passion and his feelings that saved him from it.  Was Hamlet not masculine?

No.  The abandonment of familial-strongholds in contemporary Christendom cannot be laid at the feet of passionate missionaries, poets or domineering women (who want church services to reflect their feminine tastes.)

The reason the family is disappearing — the reason there is an arrow through the heart of your missionary friend — is because people like you, Mr. Marinov, have contracted a serious disease from the Satanists who orchestrated ideological revolutions like the so-called “Enlightenment” and Renaissance — movements which culminated in a horrible spectacle: the French Revolution (where “family” was systematically deconstructed by the likes of Rousseau.)

You’re both afflicted with an egalitarian cancer and in your case, it castrates your ideal family after the first generation.

That’s right folks, Mr. Marinov will condemn emotional allegiance to (and shared “purpose” with) extended kin as a disgusting and vile heresy, unfit for Christendom.  He’s personally condemned me to Hell for holding the very views this article (if followed consistently) promotes!  (How he expects a single-tier family to “…fill the Earth and subdue it,” he never says.)

Drinking the confused theological elixir (that results from syncretist attempts to merge Politically-Correct Modernism with Christian Theism) always results in the slow death of the family.

But despite rabid egalitarian dogmatists (like you, Mr. Marinov) there are those of us antique-Europeans who haven’t forgotten our roots and who are still loyal to our God and our kith and our kin.  And like Hamlet, we will not slip quietly out of the world to avoid the enormous task ahead.  Instead, we’ll grab up our swords and cry:

“..From this time forth, our thoughts be bloody or be nothing worth!”

Francis Nigel Lee — A Christian Racial-Nationalist

Honest individuals will note that life is hard these days for a Kinist.

We’re not allowed to speak our minds in public and our family reunions are rife with suspicion and dramatic confrontations with liberal family-members.  It’s not enough that we have to face the usual questions, “why don’t you make as much money as your cousin?”  “Why aren’t you married?” etc.  We also have to endure their (un)righteous indignation and in many tragic cases, their cold-shoulders.  Even worse, some of us have to stave off attempts at evangelization by zealous judeo-xtians who are trapped deep’n’wide in a Satanic cultural hegemony (down in their hearts) where egalitarian peace flows like a river.  We have to go swimming with them or we’ll end up in Hell!  (I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  if Hell is the England of Dickens and Austen, then consign me to the seventh-level of it!)

So we Kinists eagerly accept any gift the Lord gives us, including a thorough appreciation of the great scholars and theologians of the past who survived modernism’s transforming effect on Christendom and came out swinging.

Dr. Francis Nigel Lee is one of those.  Raised in South Africa, he was uniquely situated to see the harsh realities of cultural Marxism and racial-egalitarianism.

You can read up on Lee for yourself — I’ll simply say that he’s like a South African version of R.J. Rushdoony.

Lee, however, is more self-consciously nationalistic in his rhetoric than Rushdoony.  (At least, I’ve never heard Rushdoony state things as definitively as Lee on these issues.)

Waylander’s Keep has done great work in putting together clips from both Rushdoony and Lee, so please check out his site for more.

The following will be an excerpt from one of Lee’s sermons called “The Purpose of Man” and begins at 18:00 in:

“Notice then, that once marriage has produced the family and the various families go out into the world from one another and ultimately they produce the kin.  The kin — the clan.  The Clan the nation.  The Nation the world.   In the end, we have the whole of humanity descended from Adam and Eve and living over the whole world.   The whole human race, then, is one family in spite of differences.

Here again we see a reflection of the trinity.   One God but a diversity of persons within the one God.   A Father a Son and a Spirit.  This is reflected in the diversity of the entire human race throughout the world and even within each one of our families.  Our children are not the same as one another.  They have differences and yet, they all have a basic humanity.

Now let’s deal with nationalization by which I mean the formation and development of nationality.   Now filling or replenishing the Earth, as men left their fathers and mothers and trekked further and further with their wives into the world, this ultimately would have resulted in the development of different nations.   We’re told in Acts 17, for example, God made out of one blood all of the nations of man for to dwell over the face of the whole Earth.

And it seems to me that nations would have come into being, even if man had not fallen into sin.  But, after man fell into sin, naturally national differences are much more intensified then they would have been.  I think there would have been some race-consciousness if man had not fallen, but there would have been no racial hatred between people, or racial friction or national friction or linguistic friction (such as in Canada between English and French speaking people.)  They would have had the different languages, but they would have gotten along with one another.

At this point in the sermon (19:54), Lee goes into an argument countering the Liberals and their egalitarian, anti-nationalist interpretation of the Pentecost narrative.   Lee makes this argument in at least two different sermons and so, I’ll exclude this part from my post today and take a more extensive look at his argument in a future blog.

At 21:16, Lee Concludes:

Now sanctified nationalities exist both in the church militant here on Earth, here and now, and I believe they will still exist on the new Earth to come.  The very last page of the Bible tells us this.   The nations of those that are saved shall walk in the light of the Heavenly Jerusalem.  And the kings of the Earth shall bring the glory and the honor and cultural treasures of the nations into the Heavenly city.

Therefore, it seems to me, we Christians should work for both a Christian national order as well as work for a Christian international order.  But we should not work for an un-national or anti-national order.   Some people use the word “international” loosely as if it meant anti-national or un-national, it doesn’t.  To be really “international” you presuppose that there’s something worth preserving in your nation and that there’s something good in the other man’s nation that you want to learn about, and then you work together.

Again, the principle of the trinity.  Each person, or in this case, each nation, reinforcing one another and needing the other without sacrifice of the personality, on the one hand, or of the national treasures of the nation concerned, on the other.

Joel McDurmon on Immigration

With the hot topic of immigration buzzing around office break-rooms, barbershops, and meeting places the country over…I’ve had ample opportunity to study self-contradictory sentiments.*

On the one hand white folk want to halt the flood o’ mud…and on the other, they want to be small government “conservatives.”  Yet the former outweighs the latter in strides, and so we see the routine and public defense of statism.**

It’s refreshing, then, to hear someone in a more “main-stream” organization discuss the matter from sound, Biblical principles!

American Vision’s Joel McDurmon has recently completed a three part video series where he discusses immigration in light of the Bible. We (as individuals who are self-conscious of our racial identity) realize that this sort of discussion will necessarily lead directly to troubled waters! Who wants to put their reputation, career, friendships or family on the line by taking (what is considered now’a’days to be,) an ultra-unpopular stand on matters of immigration, nationhood, and Biblical law?

Not many like that out there.

That’s why I had a heavy heart as I clicked the play button on the first of Mr. McDurmon’s videos. I suspected a selling-out of kith and kin…ambiguous definitions of nationhood, and a proper bashing of antique European ideals…all supported by some pop-egalitarian re-working of what is, otherwise, very clear Biblical testimony.***

But, my suspicions proved wrong! In fact, much of what Mr. McDurmon said highlighted for me a way forward against ideals of propositional nations, miscegenation, and immigration from a Biblical foundation! While true, he avoids controversial discussions of “nationhood” and race, he nevertheless makes some important observations without selling out a Biblical view of family.

The theme of McDurmon’s discussion is that the state has too much authority in controlling immigration, and that immigration itself (according to the Bible) is to be governed by individual property owners. I encourage everyone to watch all three videos (linked to below) but this theme is especially clarified in the third clip where he sums everything up.

He concludes with this statement…which may hint at a kinist position?:

“…That’s the problem, is these social welfare programs! That’s the problem, is the state playing God and provider! That’s the problem with illegal immigration! If we got rid of that, and the state reverted back to simply protecting private property, we would have a whole different scenario. We would have a freer scenario. And of course, there would be issues of mass migrations, maybe? I don’t know…over time. But if we had a different view of private property ourselves and legacy and children, that really wouldn’t be an issue. But…that’s a whole different discussion. So. What makes illegal immigration illegal? Well, it’s because the state is in an improper role. The state is too big and too powerful and has taken over the situation.”

In the modern mind, the state defines (by fiat declaration) what is or is not a nation…and thus, it is the state’s job to determine immigration policy. It is also, apparently, the job of the state to define (by fiat declaration) what is or is not a family…both positions are blasphemous.

I was greatly encouraged by Mr. McDurmon’s discussion…and I hope others can appreciate them as well.

Part 1 – Does the Bible Teach Open Borders?

Part 2 – Immigration and the Bible

Part 3 – Welfare, Border Control, and the Bible

*(It seems that immigration topics slip under, over, or around the boarders of high-society and take the place of well-meaning, native conversations. It’s often pointed out, for example, that the weather is now too good to be discussed by most people and so illegal immigration moves in to perform conversational jobs in its place!)

**(For an example of this hypocrisy, listen to Rush Limbaugh for five minutes. He will rail against big government, but then when he discusses the immigration issue, he rails for state-controlled measures. The state is Mr. Limbaugh’s final authority in this matter.)

***(Ok…to be honest, I didn’t REALLY expect this from Mr. McDurmon, but I didn’t see how he could say anything else and keep his job.)

Dr. Bahnsen Defends Miscegenation

I would like to preface this post by saying that I have a profound respect for Dr. Bahnsen.

God used him to pull me out of a mire of humanism and state-worship. He literally taught me the history of Western philosophy even though he passed away long before I had ever heard of him. I’m indebted to the man and his legacy in so many ways.

This is why I was appalled to hear him support (though indirectly) a political position so at-odds with Christianity.  Of all the lectures I’ve worked through, I’ve never heard him present so careless a case nor have I heard him so unprepared. He gets confused over at least two scripture references, his main definition is open to embarrassing ambiguity and he leaves a major premise un-argued for! Out of respect to Covenant Media, I cannot make the file available for download but it can be purchased at the Covenant Media website and is available in the lecture series titled: “General Ethical Issues” under the category of Bahnsen audio.

In this post I’d like to succinctly outline his case and highlight a flaw in his argument against race-based discrimination in a family unit.

Bahnsen begins by citing Acts 17:26 (though as expected, he never interacts with the latter half of the verse) and Romans 5:16 as evidence that all men are “one” in Christ. We are all under the same federal headship.

He then attempts to define the term “racism.” His statements are interesting, and help the listener identify his attitude towards the issues involved, and so I quote from the lecture:

The title of my little discussion this afternoon is “The morality (or perhaps immorality) of racism”. Now, nobody is going to deny the existence of race, as a matter of fact. RacISM, however, is not the declaration that there are different races, but that there should be different treatment of different races. Or maybe, one particular race should be given particularly good treatment or another particular race, particularly bad treatment. That is: That there is some discrimination in the way one reacts to a member of another race or even of his own race. That is racISM. Not the declaration that there are races, but that they should be treated in somehow different ways.

We want to ask ourselves about the moral question: what is the morality of racism? What is the morality? That is the categorical question. Then in the title, as it’s been indicated, I’m really going to be talking about the immorality of racism for the most part. That is, how in terms of the general question of the morality of racism, the judgment we must come to is that it is immoral. That is, that it is immoral to treat a member of another race in a way other than what you would treat a member of your own race. God looks on all humanity as a common humanity, and I’m going to argue therefore that any racism is immoral.

(I bolded the interesting observation that mere racial realism is not “racism” in Bahnsen’s view.  Today, however, most Presbyterians would accuse Dr. Bahnsen of being racist for daring suggest a racial realist view.  Much has changed, even in the last 20 years.)

Dr. Bahnsen later implies that the sin of racism is a violation of the 6th commandment and is, therefore, very serious. More needs to be said before we can claim that the above definition is a violation of the 6th commandment. His definition is very ambiguous. For instance: It would be absurd for a barber to use the same method on his black customers that he uses on his white customers. By the very nature of the case, the black and white customers must be “treated differently” by the barber…the two customers have different hair types and must be treated accordingly.  If we adhere to the above definition of racism, the barber would be guilty of breaking the 6th commandment!

He goes on to distinguish between inner attitudes of the heart and external factors.

In dealing with external “racism” he discusses four different spheres. Racism in the State. Racism in the Church. Racism in the Family. And Racism in the Private Sector.

He argues against racism (as he’s defined it) in each situation, except in the private sector, where he admits that, while immoral, it should still be legal because the state has no authority to provide sanctions against it in that context.

I would like to look closer at Bahnsen’s case that “racism” is immoral in the institution of the family.

He makes two arguments:

1. He does find a basis for families to discriminate among people in regards to whom their children marry…but race is not one of the Biblical factors. In both the Old and New Testaments, says Bahnsen, the only concern is one of religious affiliation. Race is never important.

2. Moses married a negress. (Bahnsen admits that “people who disagree with interracial marriage have labored long and hard to prove that Moses did NOT marry a negress, but they haven’t done a very good job. This is a major premise left undefended by Dr. Bahnsen.)

Moses, Dr. Bahnsen argues, is the OT type for Christ! And, here he is, involved in an interracial marriage! So, by implication, Dr. Bahnsen is saying that interracial marriage must be moral because Moses engaged in it. This is a weak case, because Moses was not a perfect man, and therefore more needs to be said before we accept any of his actions wholesale.

That aside, let’s grant Dr. Bahnsen the truth of 1, and the truth of 2.

Most commentators agree that Moses only married one wife, Zipporah, who was a Midianite (the daughter of Jethro, the pagan priest.) John Calvin, St. Augustine, Matthew Henry, and a plethora of others all agree with this. Zipporah was not a believer, and did not share Moses’ faith. This means, that Moses is in violation of Dr. Bahnsen’s first argument! He failed to discriminate against Zipporah on account of her unbelief! And, given the truth of the implied argument in 2 (that, since Moses did it, it must be ok), that must mean that 1 is false! A contradiction!

Dr. Bahnsen could always say that Zipporah converted to Moses’ faith before they married or Dr. Bahnsen could claim (along with Josephus and a minority of commentators) that Moses married an Ethiopian woman after he married Zipporah; however there is no Biblical evidence of either. A prima-facie reading of the text leads to an embarrassing contradiction in Dr. Bahnsen’s case.

(John Calvin argues that Zipporah had not fully converted since Moses failed to have his son circumcised before returning to Egypt. God shows up and almost kills Moses in the desert, but Zipporah relents and performs the circumcision…appeasing God’s wrath. And, later on in Numbers 12, we again see evidence that Moses’ wife is causing him to act outside his culture by leaving Miriam and Aaron out of the loop in choosing the 70 elders. Many commentators agree that the Numbers 12 passage has nothing at all to do with the race of Moses’ wife, but rather with her undue pagan influence over him.)

So, without looking at the absurdities that would arise from denying a family the right to discriminate based on physical characteristics…we can see that Dr. Bahnsen’s case itself is weak and may very well be self-contradictory.

Much more could be said about his entire presentation but it deserves a more learned critique than I have the time (at present) to provide.

Otto Scott on Family

Here is a two-part lecture on the family by Otto Scott.

Part 1: The Family in History

http://download34.mediafire.com/fxhh9jtzmm2g/jknzdjijmzz/FamilyAndHistory_OttoScott.mp3

Part 2: The Family Today

http://download882.mediafire.com/nzpthe47lurg/zyu5njidryj/FamilyToday_OttoScott.mp3

Otto Scott has some very un-PC things to say about the family. He attributes the fall of great empires to the concentration of people into cities and their subsequent atomization and the destruction of rural family living. He cites Spengler and Macaulay as sources and tries to narrow the focus of the term family to genetic units. He makes statements at the end of the first lecture that may seem anti-agrarian, but, overall, his emphasis on rural family life against a destructive urban atomized existence is very refreshing.

I transcribed a few of his opening remarks:

Macaulay, the great English Historian, used the word race when writing about families. He referred in his description of the first duke of Marlborough, to the Churchill race. Which incidentally, he didn’t think very much of for various, very good reasons.

Calling families little races is not, when you look at it, very far off the mark. One notices physical types and even talents recurring through the family for generations. Such observations may no longer be fashionable, but they are unmistakable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Babington_Macaulay,_1st_Baron_Macaulay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Marlborough

(For those concerned, I got the two Scott lectures free from SermonAudio and pushed them up to my media-fire account for easy download.  That way, anyone reading this blog wont have to surf through the massiver archive at Sermon Audio just to find these two lectures; you can conveniently download them from here!  I’ll keep these two lectures available for a few months, but if you’re reading this post months later, then you’ll have to get them from SermonAudio, or else email me and I’ll work out a way to get them to you.)

Robertson’s Case for Genealogical Unity

I’ve often heard it claimed that the Bible makes no reference to someone’s physical characteristics when determining anything important.

Usually this is an overly-general statement intending to generate a scholarly sounding rebuttal to real or imagined forms of “racism.”

When pointed out that the entire covenantal system is predicated on blood-relations among people-groups, the usual response is to deny, deny!  “The covenant was certainly not about physical ties,” they say…“but rather, it was about an intellectual assent to spiritual ideals!” Or else they’ll just say that it was a “spiritual” covenant, and leave their debate opponent wondering at the ambiguous phrase.

I was of the opinion that the genealogical administration of the covenant was so well-established in Christian literature that it needed only assertion as a quick reminder.  I didn’t suspect that I would have to argue for it!  To be fair to my sleeping brethren, perhaps we wouldn’t have to argue were the topic approached from a non-threatening direction?  It is the implication of genealogical unity that, when pointed out, causes the disturbance.

O. Palmer Robertson’s book “The Christ of the Covenants” presents a succinct and clear argument for the unity of the covenants, specifically their genealogical unity.  I’ll sum up his case here, and Christians can wrestle with God over the implications:

He begins by claiming that the genealogical unity is seen in the “seed-concept” found in (Gen 15:18; Exod. 20:5, 6; Deut. 7:9; and II Sam. 7:12)

There are two specific verses that highlight this unity in a dramatic way, says Robertson, and they are:  Deut. 5:2,3; and Deut. 29:14.

Deut 5:

In Deut. 5:2,3, Moses affirms that the covenant of Sinai was made with “those of us alive here today.”  The problem is, the people being addressed were not alive during the covenant at Sinai!  The text indicates that Moses is clearly implying that the promises at Sinai apply equally to the blood descendants.  To get a better sense of what is being said in these verses, Robertson offers this restatement: “…with us, the Christians of the twentieth century, all of us alive in Christ today, God made the covenant at Sinai.”

Deut. 29:

Moses assembled all of Israel onto the plains of Moab, including women and children (according to verse 11).  But, in verse 14, Moses says that he is addressing both “those who stand here with us today in the presence of the Lord our God and with those who are not with us here today.” Moses is extending the covenant promises to those not yet born!

There are many references in the Bible to a genealogical unity of the covenants, but Palmer chose the above two because of their dramatic and clear presentation of the concept.

In closing, it must be noted that Robertson is very quick to acknowledge that this in no way invalidates a “grafting” and “pruning” process.  While true, he admits, non-blood related peoples could be grafted into the covenant; the covenant itself is established through blood relation.  Unlike the exegesis of democrats, Robertson’s view of covenant relationship is not one of abstract intellectual assent but is based firmly in blood relations.

Robertson concludes:

While the “pruning” principle may threaten any who would be presumptuous, it does not intend to suggest that God’s grace works against the natural order of creation.  The grace of God in salvation is not against creation’s order; it is against sin.  The Christian must avoid being lured into a nature / grace dichotomy as he considers the working of God in salvation.  Redemption has the effect of restoring the order of creation, and the solidarity of the family is one of the greatest of creation’s ordinances. The genealogical character of redemption’s activity underscores the intention of God to work in accord rather than in discord with this creational ordering.

– pg. 40 (The emphasis is mine.)