Recently, I posted a piece
that sought to make the point that it wasn’t white people who typically thought they were superior though it certainly was the case that there were races who were in pursuit of policy and in an attitudinal disposition that revealed that they acted the way people would act towards whites as if they themselves really believed that white folk were superior. I even went out of my way at the end of the piece to explicitly say that I did not believe that white folks were universally superior but rather that I believed that superiorities and inferiorities ran through all different races and peoples.
Yet despite my clarity, a member of the Kalergi Clergy showed up to go out of his way to virtue signal and denounce me as racist. In this case, it was a “conservative” though it is hard to tell apart any more the conservative clergy from the mainline clergy.
In this case, it was one Rev. Doug Barnes who couldn’t resist telling the world how WOKE he was at my expense.
Now, if you compare my piece linked above to what the Church father throughout history have said you’ll notice that I was really being quite tepid. I cited these four below for Rev. Barnes and asked him given his accusation that I was “racist” if he would want to go on record as accusing the men below of being “racist.” Chirping crickets was Doug’s response. Keep in mind that the testimony of the four men below has been the norm throughout Church history as demonstrated by the anthology published by Achord & Dow, “Who is my Neighbor; An Anthology in Natural Relations.”
” [The] differences between the Caucasian, Mongolian, and Negro races, which is known to have been as distinctly marked two or three thousand years before Christ as it is now. . . . [T]hese varieties of race are not the effect of the blind operation of physical causes, but by those cause as intelligently guided by God for the accomplishment of some wise purpose. . . . God fashions the different races of men in their peculiarities to suit them to the regions which they inhabit.”
Charles Hodge (1797-1878)
Systematic Theology, Volume 2, Chapter 1, Section 3 (1872–73)
“We now reply to the question, Can we know the sense of the prophetic law of Noah [Gen. 9:24-27; 10:1-32] with absolute certainty ? We answer most unequivocally, Yes. How, then, is it to be known? By the perfect conformity of the fulfillment of the law to its legitimate interpretation. Has such fulfillment occurred? Most unquestionably. “Where is it seen? In all quarters of the globe since the flood, but most sublimely in America. It is obvious in a universal and permanent trinity of races; in their political inequality of condition; in the Christianization of all the Japhetic nations, and of no others; in the occupation of the Shemitic wilderness of America by Japheth; and in the service of Plain to Japheth in the Southern States, in the islands, and in South America … (p.18) A perfect coincidence of events with any legitimate interpretation of prophecy is infallibly a fulfillment; and such fulfillment inevitably coincides with the Divine meaning of the text — God being his own interpreter. Fulfillment is to prophetic law what usage is to statute law. Usage specifies the meaning of statutes by a uniform manner of applying them; and fulfillment is but the usage of the Almighty.”
Rev. Samuel Davies (Colonial Puritan)
Dominion or, the Unity and Trinity of the Human Race, p.20
“The Javanese are a different race than us; they live in a different region; they stand on a wholly different level of development; they are created differently in their inner life; they have a wholly different past behind them; and they have grown up in wholly different ideas. To expect of them that they should find the fitting expression of their faith in our Confession and in our Catechism is therefore absurd.
Now, this is not something special for the Javanese but stems from a general rule. The men are not all alike among whom the Church occurs. They differ according to origin, race, country, region, history, construction, mood, and soul, and they do not always remain the same, but undergo various stages of development. Now the Gospel will not objectively remain outside their reach but subjectively be appropriated by them, and the fruit thereof will come to confession and expression, the result may not be the same for all nations and times. The objective truth remains the same, but the matter in appropriation, application and confession must be different, as the color of the light varies according to the glass in which it is collected. He who has traveled and came into contact with Christians in different parts of the world of distinct races, countries and traditions cannot be blind for the sober fact of this reality. It is evident to him. He observes it everywhere.”……
Abraham Kuyper:
Common Grace (1902–1905)
“Nationalism, within proper limits, has the divine sanction; an imperialism that would, in the interest of one people, obliterate all lines of distinction is everywhere condemned as contrary to the divine will. Later prophecy raises its voice against the attempt at world-power, and that not only, as is sometimes assumed, because it threatens Israel, but for the far more principal reason, that the whole idea is pagan and immoral.”
Gerhardus Vos
Biblical Theology
I really have become accustomed to the violation of the 9th commandment that finds ministers like Rev. Barnes dragging my name through mud and slime. I have had to memorize Scripture to inure me from the slander and libel that is now commonly associated with my name.
Mt. 5:11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. 12 Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
Isaiah 51:7 Listen to Me, you who know what is right, you people with My law in your hearts: Do not fear the scorn of men; do not be broken by their insults.
I also have come to the point where I have more pity in my heart towards ministers like Rev. Doug Barnes than I do anger. I mean, how angry can you be towards someone who is unfamiliar with Franz Boas and his impact on 2oth century thinking? How angry can one get who isn’t familiar with how Leon Trotsky was the one who popularized the usage of the word “racist” with the express purpose of overturning the Christian worldview? How angry can one be when one doesn’t realize that it has always been the Marxists who promised that they would homogenize all the peoples by the means of blenderizing them all in a giant Babel blender?
“The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into small states and end all national isolation; not only to bring the nations closer together but to merge them….”
Vladimir Lenin
The Rights of Nations to Self Determination — pg. 76
The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be ~~compelled to mingle~~ with each other as a result of this association and ~~thereby to dissolve themselves~~, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.”
Engels,
“Principles of Communism” (1847)
“Even the natural differences within species, like racial differences…, can and must be done away with historically.”
Study of the National Implications in the Work of Karl Marx, Columbia University Press, New York, 1941, pp. 11 & 15-19:
But Doug, having been to Christian Seminary isn’t familiar with any of this and so pity is my proper response to the man’s vacuity. He can’t help it he’s ignorant. He’s never been trained otherwise. What does drive me batty though is that no matter how many quotes I produce it doesn’t matter to these people. Nothing phases them. Nothing gives them pause in their confidence. Nothing punctures their sanctified piety.
This is demonstrated by Rev. Barnes interaction with me.
“Or — radical thought here, Bret — you could recognize the biblical truth that we all were brought forth of one set of parents, making us inherently to be one race. “Race” is a social construct. “Culture” — which depends not at all upon skin color or physical ancestry — is the more biblical and faithful distinctive principle.”
Rev. Doug Barnes
Now, Doug never asked me if I denied the unity of mankind as one species all born of Adam. He just assumed that I did not believe that we are all Adam’s seed — one race. However, as anybody who has been around this subject knows all because we are one race doesn’t mean that there aren’t distinction of races in the one human race. Up until 1950 or so all men believed that different races existed as the quotes above from both the Christians and Communists confirm. The Pharmacological world believes in different races as seen by the fact that they develop medicines geared for people with maladies unique to their race. (Sickle cell anemia anybody?) Forensic science can look at bodily remains and tell you not only the sex but also the race of the deceased. If we were all one race … if race was only a social construct would that be possible? And what about the reality of race as it pertains to bone marrow transplants?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/30/family-3-year-old-leukemia-plead-bone-marrow-transplant-donor/1293400001/?fbclid=IwAR0y790P4Xq9520rpXTX7YtqBqVMSWpeszurBh2H97cR9daJMN2N93BM8A8
The statement that “race is a social construct” is beyond ignorant. It falls in the swamplands of lobotomization. It’s just not true, and that no matter how much Rev. Doug Barnes, Rev. Doug Wilson, Rev. James White, or Rev. Voddie Baucham keep with their gaslighting project in insisting that it is.
As to Barnes insisting that culture has nothing to do with genetics … well, again that is just ignorance on stilts. I am more than happy to concede that culture is not only genes but to say that our genetics have absolutely nothing to do with culture is nothing else but Gnostic. Keep in mind that culture is defined as the outward manifestation of a peoples’ inward beliefs. There can be no belief unless there is a racially cohesive people group together holding those beliefs. The idea that white people are really black people with white skin or vice-versus is just horse hockey. Race is not a social construct. Race is not merely about melanin levels. Race is a real reality and the recognition of it in no way makes one a racist any more than the belief that bald people have no hair makes one a baldist.
But Rev. Barnes isn’t done yet with his pearls of wisdom. (Hey Doug, I’m still waiting for all those theologian quotes that say that Davies, Vos, Kuyper, and Hodge were wrong about race.)
Doug continued digging,
Go ahead, Enos Powell. Fact is, culture is a real distinction, giving rise to distinct worldviews. Race … isn’t. It’s simply a reality that folks who live together tend to enculturate one another.
Rev. Doug Barnes
1.) I never denied that culture is a real distinction. I merely believe that cultures are typically homogenous and their racial homogeneity contributes to the kind of culture that is built. However, I suppose that the culture of the Tower of Babel would fit what you seem to be advocating.
2.) Cultures do not give rise to worldviews. Worldview as combined with genetics (and in Christian culture grace) gives rise to culture and cultures.
3.) How is all that enculturating going on here in the states Doug with all our different races and religions?
Typical of Reformed evangelical nonsense piety Doug had to add that “in my heart, I knew he was right.” (Insert rolling eyes icon.)
Doug wrote,
Rev. Doug Barnes
I stand in the tradition of 2000 years of Christian theology with no one yet demonstrating to me the quotes of the Church fathers who contradict the hundreds and hundreds of quotes I have from the Church fathers supporting my position on race and I’m the one with sin infecting the pulpit with drivel? Dealing with this kind of jejune hubris is like dealing with the 20-year-old retard who is telling you what an idiot you are for not believing in Santa Claus.
Doug finishes by telling how he was once infected himself with the grievous sin of “racism.”
I should add: I speak as one who was delivered from the wickedness of racism. The Western Pennsylvania of my youth was the most racist place I’ve ever yet experienced, by far. I trumpeted the “races are distinct, and ought to remain distinct” horse manure. It was wicked. I’m thankful that God led me to repentance.
Rev. Doug Barnes
Well, it’s good to know that Doug agrees with the Marxists quoted above.
“It has become fashionable in recent times to talk of the leveling of nations, and of various peoples disappearing into the melting pot of contemporary civilization. I disagree with this, but that is another matter; all that should be said here is that the disappearance of whole nations would impoverish us no less than if all people were to become identical, with the same character and the same face. Nations are the wealth of humanity, its generalized personalities. The least among them has its own special colors, and harbors within itself a special aspect of God’s design.”
Alexander Solzhenitsyn
I’ll stick with the Church Fathers and Solzhenitsyn as over against Doug and his Marxist homies.
The sad thing about this post is that no one will seek to counter it. No one will tell me why the Marxists were right and the Church Fathers were wrong. No one will pause to re-think their knee-jerk reaction against me. Instead, this post, like so many others, will be just bb’s off the USS battleships Ignorance and Denunciation.
Very good article, Bret. Keep it up. There is no where else to go to get the wisdom that you have.
Larry
Thank you Rev. Ball.