Scary Kinism Defined & Examples Given — Pt. I

In this series planned for six entries, I am going to take something written by Mr. Mickey Henry on defining and giving examples of Kinism in action and provide some extra commentary.

• Kinism recognizes that a basic harmony exists between the mind and the body, the spirit, and the flesh. 

  This is merely the Kinist recognizing that men have a modified unichotomous nature where though we can make distinctions between body and soul and the spirit and the flesh that the divorcing of mind from body and spirit from flesh is an unnatural occurrence. Men are at one and the same time an embodied soul and a soulful body. This means that kinists believe that racial and ethnic distinctions that are found in corporeal bodies mean distinctions in incorporeal souls. Because there is a basic harmony that exists between the mind and the body, the spirit, and the flesh, Kinists believe that that harmony of interests should be recognized and provided for in the social order. Quite clearly, while all men are ontologically equal, equal before God’s law, and equal in having a sinful nature, not all men are the same as seen in the differences that God has ordained for us in our corporeal existences.

• That conversion often happens, but that the ordinary means by which the Church militant extends itself is through covenantal succession from Christian parents to
  covenant children. 

  Kinists have the family at the center of their thinking. We believe in God’s covenantal faithfulness and that God is normatively pleased to call us to Himself in our generations.  Kinists believe that it is the family and not the individual that is the primary building block for social order. This puts kinists at severe odds with all those who hold to the enlightenment project that championed what is called the social contract theory, based as it is on the sovereign individual.

• That men are not born blank slates but inherit physical and mental characteristics, predilections, weaknesses, and strengths from their biological parents. That neither nature nor nurture is deterministic of behavior, but that both are highly influential. 

  The modern tendency is to absolutize nurture so as to believe that man is merely the sum of his experiences undergone in his environment. Kinists do not believe this understanding and believe instead that nature (genetics) has a role to play as well. Kinists are neither Skinnerians who believe if we could control a man’s environment we could make a man in the fashion we desired nor are Kinists genetic absolutists believing that man is merely the sum of his genes and no more. Kinists do not believe that if we could control all the genetic information we could make a man in the fashion we desired.  Kinists, instead believe that by God’s sovereign appointment nurture and nature perform a dance in every human being so that in the end it is God alone who are making the people He desires.

  Kinists also assert that as well as nurture and nature that what a man thinketh in His heart (believes) is formative for what kind of a man that a man will be. As such we see a supernatural element in what constitutes man that not even the combination of nurture and nature can fully explain.

• That race is Biblically defined as common patrilineal descent. That, in consequence, race is the sum total of all the attributes a man inherits from his ancestors that he holds in common with his relatives, both near and distant.

  The word race comes from the Latin “radix” and “radius” having the same original. According to Webster’s 1828 Dictionary the word “race” in this sense means;

  1. The lineage of a family, or continued series of descendants from a parent who is called the stock. A race is the series of descendants indefinitely.

  Clearly, substantially different physical and mental characteristics, predilections, weaknesses, and strengths as coming from different original biological parents yield different races.

  Abraham Kuyper was getting at this point when he wrote;

  “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 to the sober fact of this reality. It is evident to him. He observes it everywhere.”……

  Abraham Kuyper:
  Common Grace (1902–1905)

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him. View all posts by jetbrane