Dear Rachel Bentley Ramey ….
Clearly all humans are humans but that does not mean that within the one human race there does not exist distinctions among races and ethnicity. The Holy Spirit understood this as expressed in Roman 9:3
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…
Silly Holy Spirit. Didn’t he know that there is only one race… the human race?
RBR wrote,
Except…I actually do believe this. If a Christian man and a Christian woman are both at a proper stage of life *to marry*, there’s no biblical barrier to their marrying *each other*. And such has been commonly accepted throughout most of history; it’s far from a novel position.)
BLM responds,
55 y/o Christian women marrying 18 y/o Christian men does have a proper barrier. Marriage is about finding the right helpmeet — one who can join in the work of exercising Dominion for Jesus Christ — as a reflected image of one another (hence helpmeet). Plus, as 55 y/o Christian women would not be Biblical for a 18 y/o Christian man since they could not obey God’s requirement to “be fruitful and multiply.”
Marriage has as one purpose to support the community from which it arises. Inter-racial marriages normatively cannot do that. Indeed, the only community that inter-racial marriage supports is a multi-cultural cosmopolitan community. Now we can pretend that is not true that inter-racial marriages do not normatively support the community wherein it is located but we have only to lift our eyes to see how our social order is fracturing. One reason for that (not the only reason) is the proliferation of unequally yoked inter-racial marriages.
And I promise you… what you are suggesting is indeed novel when looking at world history. Marriages in stable communities throughout world history were the union of two people who shared the same religion, culture, race, language, and history. Denying that is just silly.
I do think there is a one and many reality about mankind. Man is one and yet there are clearly racial and ethnic distinctions. It is why God could say in Acts 17
26 From one man (Unity) he made all the nations (Distinctions among the Unity), that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.
So, we see here your argument about there being only one race (the human race) and therefore there are no races of men is not accurate. Indeed, it is only in the last 50 years or so wherein we have found arguments popular that “there there is only one race,” or, “race is a social construct.”
You’ll not be surprised to hear me say that it is you I find unable to think in proper categories. But, as that is not uncommon in the West you should not be too upset by that.
Your counter examples of Rahab, Zipporah, and Ruth do not work but I am not inclined to run through that all again in detail.
Here are some links/thoughts though
Concerning Rahab
Concerning Ruth
Ruth was not an ethnic Moabite, she was an Israelite. For over 200 years Ruben, Gad and half of Manasseh occupied all the territory north of the Arnon to MT Hermon. Part of that territory was once Moab’s but the Amorites under King Sihon took it. Moab tried to take it back and for about 18 years succeeded, at least in that area. Israel fought back and it’s during this time that Naomi’s sons died. Boaz, a righteous Jew, followed the Torah’s steps as Kinsmen Redeemer. As per the Deut. 23:3 prohibition, Boaz could not have redeemed Ruth had she been a true Moabite. Just as a Puerto Rican living in New York City is an American so Ruth living in the land of Moab was still Israelite. Boaz redeemed a fellow Israelite when he served as Naomi and Ruth’s Kinsmen Redeemer. Ruth was a Moabite Israelite, which like many had done in Israel, may have worshiped the local deities but after her husband died chose to repent returning to Judah’s territory with Naomi.
RBR wrote:
Inter-ethnic couples are presented with the added challenge of having to deal with bigots like you. Their divorce rate might be lower if you didn’t make yourself an extra enemy.
BLM
Right… so given those extra challenges that you recognize it is a lack of wisdom to press ahead with marriage in the teeth of all that. Clearly, you’re bigotry against me is acceptable so I’m not sure what the problem is with bigotry in general as long as one is bigoted towards the proper things. You are bigoted against Kinists — a bigotry which is errant. I am bigoted against marriages about to be unwisely contracted. I am bigoted against people entering into marriages unwisely.
In my defense though I’m also bigoted against marriages contracted between people coming form vastly different classes, vastly different cultures, and those who have a vastly different health status. Call me silly, but I think those entering into marriage should have as much in common as possible and I am bigoted against marriages about to be contracted that find the differences to be significant and doubtless abiding.
I’ll just note that your comment about melanin is irrelevant since since race is not merely a matter of melanin just as gender is not merely a matter of plumbing.
You are an Alienist. Alienism requires us to ignore all the implications and deductions that we find throughout scripture is favor of pursuing a cafe-latte world where all colors bleed into one.
The Alienists tried that once before.
It was called Babel.
Cheers,
“It was called Babel.”
And Babel bequeathed its legacy of imperial ethno-mixing to the transnational empires that followed in its footsteps. The Persian empire that succeeded it, for example, was abhorred by the Greeks partly because they knew about this aspect of despotic Oriental rule. In his last major dialogue, The Laws, Plato put it this way, that this kind of loss of racial identity would have been the lot of Hellas too, if the Greeks had not been able to repel the forces of Xerxes:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0166%3Abook%3D3%3Apage%3D692
“Many are the discreditable charges one would have to bring against Greece in relating the events of that war; indeed, it would be wrong to say that Greece defended herself, for had not the bondage that threatened her been warded off by the concerted policy of the Athenians [693a] and Lacedaemonians, practically all the Greek races would have been confused together by now, and barbarians confused with Greeks and Greeks with barbarians,—just as the races under the Persian empire today are either scattered abroad or jumbled together and live in a miserable plight.”