In Rev. Rich Lusk (RL) we learn that some people are more clever than they are intelligent.
RL writes,
There is certainly a connection between love of father (= patriarchy) and love of fatherland (= patritiotism). Kinists have that right. But the central driving force in history is the church, not any particular kin group.
BLM responds,
Of course Kinists have right the connection between patriarchy and patriotism. Kinists have an annoying habit of being right.
Once again, Lusk embraces the Christian faith as an abstraction, as if it can exist apart from and independent of particular ethnic groups/races. It is true that conceptually Christianity is a set of doctrines and confessional commitments. However, it is also true that the Christian faith in order to have hands and feet has to be incarnated into people groups. The Church that RL appeals to is a Church as it exists in a time and place as inhabited by a particular people. As such RL once again gives us a false dichotomy (do they sell false dichotomies in the CREC by the ton?) when he says that the central driving force in history is the church, not any particular kin group. The central driving force in world history for the last 1000 years (at least) has been the Church has it has been, by God’s grace alone, inhabited to the White European Christian. Now, to say this anymore is not considered in good taste and it definitely is now thought to be a hate fact but, as they say, it is what it is. It is the White European Christian Church who brought the Christian faith to pagandom. It is the White European Christian Church who claimed pagan lands for Christ. It is the White European Christian Church who gave us Christian Western civilization. It is the White European Christian Church that gave us the printing press, gave us the age of exploration, gave us the Reformation, gave us these United States as a Reformed nation, gave us the possibility of science in the best sense of that word, gave us Martel, Sobieski, Calvin, Knox, Cromwell, Viret, Beza, Rutherford, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Aquinas, Hus, Luther, Wycliffe, Warfield, the Hodges, Machen, Vos, Turretin, Lavellette, Whitfield, Lloyd-Jones, Clark, Van Til, Bahnsen, Sproul, Singer, Kuyper, Chalmers, Dabney, Thornwell, Girardeau, Palmer, Van Prinesterer, Bavinck, These are all men of the Church who are also at the same time men who were White European Christians. So, we see again that all because the central driving force of history is the Church that does not mean that no particular kin group, completely as in God’s providence, hasn’t also been a central driving force in history. Like so many of the Chieftains in the CREC Rev. Lusk specializes in false dichotomies.
RL writes,
Or to put it another way, water is thicker than blood. Spiritual kinship will always trump genetic kinship.
BLM responds,
Another false dichotomy. It is true that the water of Baptism is thick but keep in mind that God hath also said;
But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children,
And again,
The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”
Of course blood alone does not save just as water alone does not save. However the thick water of Baptism is, in God’s grace and providence, runs in blood generations. Is water therefore really thicker than blood?
RL writes,
The Christian’s primary culture will always be the culture of the kingdom of God. “My people” are first and foremost those who are in God’s family, those who are in the covenant of grace, those with whom I will spend all eternity. This does not make personal identity an abstraction and it does not destroy localized connections. But it does situate my personal identity as a white, male American (or whatever) within the larger story of the kingdom of God, which is destined to overtake and transform all the kingdoms of the world (Rev. 11:15).
BLM responds,
That is not what St. Paul says in Romans 9:3. Paul can still speak of the unconverted Hebrew people as “His Kin” whom he loves with an especial passion. As such we have to qualify carefully on this matter of “My People.” Is the Iranian Christian in Christ that I don’t know really more “my people” than my Father who is a pagan? In some sense “yes,” and in some sense “no.” Careful distinctions have to be made here Rich.
And despite Rev. Lusk’s protestations to the contrary his argumentation does make personal identity a Gnostic abstraction and it does destroy localized connections. Lusk wants to have it both ways. He wants to hint that he is a little bit kinist while being whole hog Alienist. Sorry Rich … it is not possible to be a little bit Country and a little bit Rock -n- Roll.
In the last sentence Lusk tips his hand in how he views the Kingdom of God. Lusk views the Kingdom of God like we would expect an Alienist to view the Kingdom of God. He views it as an amalgamated multicult Kingdom where all the peoples are jammed together without kin or national distinction. This is not what we find in Revelation 21 where
24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it.
Notice it is the nations as nations that are walking by its light and it is the Kings are Kings over their respective nations who will bring the splendor of their distinct nations into the new Jerusalem. Further on in Revelation we learn that the “leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations.” Once again it is nations as nations … peoples as peoples who are considered as gathered in the New Jerusalem. Scripture does not teach that we will enter into a multicult heaven but rather we will enter into the New Jerusalem as part of our Christian National and Church community. The Church we can conclude therefore is comprised as a confederation of nations having a one and many unity. The Oneness as found in our joint confession of the great and magnificent Lord Jesus Christ. The diversity found in the retaining of our assigned distinctive creational reality. We will no more lose our ethnicity in the Kingdom of God then we will lose our gender.
The Kingdom of God will indeed transform the Kingdoms of this world but He will transform them from pagan to Christian. He will not be transforming them by way of deleting from them their ethnic identity.
This quote of Dr. Vos points in the direction I have laid out above;
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
Also, listen to Calvin Seminary Professor Martin Wyngaarden from the 1960’s on Isaiah 19 thus suggesting that it is you Rev. Lusk who is in error;
“Now the predicates of the covenant are applied in Isa. 19 to the Gentiles of the future, — “Egypt my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance,” Egypt, the people of “Jehovah of hosts,” (Isa. 19:25) is therefore also expected to live up to the covenant obligations, implied for Jehovah’s people. And Assyria comes under similar obligations and privileges. These nations are representative of the great Gentile world, to which the covenant privileges will therefore be extended.”
Martin J. Wyngaarden, The Future of the Kingdom in Prophecy and Fulfillment: A Study of the Scope of “Spiritualization” in Scripture (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2011), p. 94.
“More than a dozen excellent commentaries could be mentioned that all interpret Israel as thus inclusive of Jew and Gentile, in this verse, — the Gentile adherents thus being merged with the covenant people of Israel, THOUGH EACH REMAINS NATIONALLY DISTINCT.”
“For, though Israel is frequently called Jehovah’s People, the work of his hands, his inheritance, yet these three epithets severally are applied not only to Israel, but also to Assyria and to Egypt: “Blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance.” 19:25.
Thus the highest description of Jehovah’s covenant people is applied to Egypt, — “my people,” — showing that the Gentiles will share the covenant blessings, not less than Israel. YET the several nationalities are here kept distinct, even when Gentiles share, in the covenant blessing, on a level of equality with Israel. Egypt, Assyria and Israel are not nationally merged. And the same principles, that nationalities are not obliterated, by membership in the covenant, applies, of course, also in the New Testament dispensation.”
Wyngaarden, pp. 101-102.
