Rev. Steve Hemmeke of the CREC continues,
Now, do we favor them (the Stranger and the Alien) to the impoverishment of our own estate and family or nation? Of course not. American immigration policy is insanely impoverishing us. But Kinism seems to go too far the other way, calling for separation. Ruth should have been sent back to Moab: “let her own kind take care of her.” I believe they would say this, regardless of her assumed spiritual conversion. Even as believers across cultures (it appears to me they assert), we ought to keep distinct tribes and cultures to flourish best.
Bret responds,
1.) Notice that Rev. Steve says that Kinism seems to go to far and that quite without establishing a definition of Kinism. Maybe Kinists do go to far but we will never know without a definition of Kinism that Kinists would agree as being representative of their position.
2.) Here again we find Rev. Steve saying two opposite things at the same time. On one hand we should not favor the stranger and the alien to the impoverishment of our own estate, family, or nation, on the other hand we should favor the stranger and the alien because to not favor them would be the “sin” of calling for separation. Someone tell Rev. Steve that one cannot at one and the same time not favor the stranger and alien by separating from them because of not desiring to bring down our own house (along with them) while favoring the stranger and alien by not separating from them.
3.) Yes, kinists do believe — for the benefit of all distinct peoples, regardless of their race — that races and cultures that are distinct should remain distinct. At one time this belief was common place.
This was my father’s belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf–
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children’s teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine.
Now, lest some kind of wild accusation be cast here, that Kinists are after “racial purity” let it be said that Kinists understand that no culture is ever going to be unmixed to some degree. For example, America was over 85% white for time immemorial. White persons constituted 88.6 percent of the total population in 1960 and 89.3 percent in 1950. Very few people were going around saying that we had to get rid of the other 11%. Does Rev. Steve think that our Fathers and Grandfathers were sinful for this type of planned separation?
4.) Yes, Kinists do believe that different peoples remain different even if those different peoples are all Christian. This is not to say that any of the differences are superior or inferior. It is just to say that conversion and regeneration don’t wash out the natural differences that exist among peoples — differences that God purposely created us as having. But again, this belief is not somehow new to Christians. Allow me to let Theologian Dr. Francis Nigel Lee speak on this issue. These kind of quotes can be easily multiplied;
“I don’t believe [racial integration] is what the Bible teaches. Even though we may have transgressed the boundaries of nationhood and of peoplehood, it seems to me that God did create man of one blood in order that he may dwell as different nations throughout the world. But after the fall, when sinful man cosmopolitanly – meaning by that, with a desire to obliterate separate nationhood, with a desire to build a sort of United Nations organization under the Tower of Babel…attempted to resist developing peoplehood…[God confused the tongues of men]…because men had said, ‘Let us build a city and a tower which will stretch up to heaven lest we be scattered’… Pentecost sanctified the legitimacy of separate nationality rather than saying this is something we should outgrow… In fact, even in the new earth to come, after the Second Coming of Christ, we are told that the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the kings of the earth shall bring the glory and the honor—the cultural treasures—of the nations into it… But nowhere in Scripture are any indications to be found that such peoples should ever be amalgamated into one huge nation.
“In another fourteen years, the future looks bleak for White Christians everywhere. In 1900, Europe possessed two-thirds of the world’s Christians. By 2025, that number will fall below 20% — with most Christians living in the Third World of Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Then, nearly 75% of the world’s Catholics will be Non-Western Mestizos or Black Africans. Right now, Nigeria has the world’s largest Catholic Theological School. India has more Christians than most Western nations. And Jesus is more and more being portrayed with a dark skin. By 2050, more than 80% of Catholics in the U.S. will be of Non-Western origins. Only a fraction of Anglicans will be English. Lutherans, Presbyterians and other mainstream denominations will find their chief centres of growth in Africa, Asia and Latin America — often syncretistically absorbing large quantities of Pre-Christian Paganism as revived Voo-dooism and increasing ancestor-worship. This “Christianity” rapidly degenerates into an immigrationistic, prolific and socialistic jungle-religion.”
Dr. F.N. Lee circa 2011
Christian-Afrikaners pg. 87
Rev. Steve of the CREC writes,
Another way to come at this problem is to examine Acts 17:26:
“He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings.”
The Kinist emphasizes the second half of this, to the detriment of the first, assuming it means that the times and boundaries of nations are more static and set in stone than the verse intends. The point was more to assert God’s sovereignty over proud Greece, not to give Greece pride in its distinct civilization.
Bret responds,
Steve asserts but does not offer any proof that the Kinist emphasizes the second half of Acts 17:26. Kinists vigorously affirm that God indeed hath made from one blood every nation on the earth. Rev. Steve also asserts without offering proof that the point was what he says it is, or that Kinists believe that Acts 17:26 believe that it was given to give Greece pride in its distinct civilization. Rev. Steve also asserts without providing proof that times and boundaries aren’t to be static and that God no longer desires particular peoples to be particular peoples. Rev. Steve is blowing exegetical smoke.
Rev. Steve writes,
The first half of the verse is an indirect rebuke of the pervasive racial superiority found in Greece and Rome. “Hey, the African, and the ‘barbarian’ in Gaul is one blood with you, by God’s design.”
Bret responds,
True, but the first half of the verse doesn’t negate the 2nd half of the verse. No kinist denies that all men are of one blood. Kinists teach that all men everywhere are commanded to repent. Kinists believe that there will be people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, in their tribes, tongues and nations in the New Jerusalem. Kinists believe that inferiorities and superiorities both run through differing races and peoples. God made them all from one blood for His delight. God loves biblical diversity. However, diversity is no longer diversity if their is a sustained and ongoing disregard for the distinction of races and peoples.
Now, can we get the Alienist to admit that God has ordained the races and nations to be the races and nations that He ordained them to be?
Rev. Steve writes,
When the objection is raised that there is no Scripture commanding this, the usual response seems to be to agree, but also say that it is normal and according to nature.
Bret Responds,
1.) In Romans 9 St. Paul communicates his love for his own kinsmen. Does not that imply the normativity of the existence of particular people? When we consider that the command to honor our Fathers and Mothers was given in the context of a particular people group it is hard to imagine that one can define honor as contributing to “unmaking a people.”
2.) Rev. Steve is arguing like a Baptist here. (It is possible, I suppose that he is a Baptist.) Baptists argue “there is no Scripture commanding us to baptize infants.” and so they conclude that we must not Baptize infants. Steve can’t find a verse to his liking that commands what he is expecting therefore it can’t be Scriptural. And yet the whole tenor of Scripture has a Kinist sense. At least that is what Dr. Geerhardus Vos thought;
Romans 11:17, 19, with its “branches broken off” metaphor has frequently been viewed as proof of the relativity and changeability of election, and it is pointed out that at the end of vs. 23, the Gentile Christians are threatened with being cut off in case they do not continue in the kindness of God. But wrongly. Already this image of engrafting should have restrained such an explanation. This image is nowhere and never used of the implanting of an individual Christian, into the mystical body of Christ by regeneration. Rather, it signifies the reception of a racial line or national line into the dispensation of the covenant or their exclusion from it. This reception of course occurs by faith in the preached word, and to that extent, with this engrafting of a race or a nation, there is also connected the implanting of individuals into the body of Christ. The cutting off, of course, occurs by unbelief; not, however, by the unbelief of person who first believed, but solely by the remaining in unbelief of those who, by virtue of their belonging to the racial line, should have believed and were reckoned as believers. So, a rejection ( = multiple rejections) of an elect race is possible, without it being connected to a reprobation of elect believers. Certainly, however, the rejection of a race or nation involves at the same time the personal reprobation of a sequence of people. Nearly all the Israelites who are born and die between the rejection of Israel as a nation and the reception of Israel at the end times appear to belong to those reprobated. And the thread of Romans 11:22 (of being broken off) is not directed to the Gentile Christians as individual believers but to them considered racially.”
Geerhardus Vos
Dogmatic Theology Vol. 1 — 118
Rev. Steve writes,
But in the examples above, we see that conversion trumps nature.
Bret responds,
Conversion trumps nature? Can you get anything more blatantly Gnostic? To the contrary Reformed theology has always taught that “Grace restores nature.” That is to say that God’s grace moves to make nature to be what God originally intended. There is no conflict between what God’s first work of creation and God’s work of re-creation in men’s lives. The above sentence is awful.
Rev. Steve writes,
We ought to seek covenantal succession from one natural generation to the next. But there is also the Ethiopian eunuch. Cornelius the Roman. Luke, the Greek doctor. All are welcomed into the church. They don’t continue building their own separate ethnic cultures, while just playing church on Sundays. The church herself is a new polis – a city on a hill. We spend and are spent for her as a family, and even if our family rejects us for it.
Bret responds,
No Kinist ever argues that there are people who are not welcome into the Church. This is a red herring by Hemmeke. What the Kinist does argue is that Ethiopians, Romans, and Greeks are likely going to find worshipping with Ethiopians, Romans, and Greeks to be more fitting to whom God has made them. If there are no Ethiopian, Roman, or Greek Churches wherein to Worship and wherein they would be more comfortable then of course all men should be welcome in all of the House of God.
That what I’ve said above is true is witnessed by the presence of Korean Churches and Hmong Churches and any number of ethnic churches. There is nothing controversial in the least in any of this. Men, not unusually, prefer to worship with people like them and that is perfectly acceptable. I once had a friend (he’s since passed away) that fondly recalled worshipping in Frisian churches in America when he was a boy. There is no fault in that kinist impulse.
Rev. Steve writes,
Nurture can determine culture-building as much as nature. Uriah chose to fight FOR David and Israel, though a Hittite. Rahab believed and feared the God of Israel. God’s enemies become His friends by redemption. That’s the heart of the gospel.
Bret responds,
And of course no Kinist disagrees with that.
Rev. Steve writes,
And this gets very practical. Almost everyone today is of some mixed race. I’m German-Dutch, but most people have even more mixed of an ancestry. This is not a problem, but we should claim and work for some specific nation and heritage. Yet to work for a specific RACE, is not Scripturally warranted, or even allowed.
Bret responds,
This is an assertion that can not be proven. Love for one’s own people is directly taught in Romans 9:3.
3 For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my people, those of my own race,
So, not only is working for one’s own people Scripturally warranted but it is also clearly allowed and I would say even commanded.
Rev. Steve Hemmeke is yet another clear example of a muddle-headed clergy. I’m sure he is full of the best intentions but good intentions do zero good and positive harm when they are based on sound thinking.
Part III yet to come.
