Just got done reading through a section of 10th century Emperor Constantine VII’s book De Administrando Imperio and according to him, there were three cardinal sins a Byzantine Emperor could commit in regards to foreign peoples.
1) Misappropriation of the Patriarch’s vestments and jewels, such as giving them away as war cessations or using them to impress foreigners.
2) Giving away the secret of Greek Fire or allowing it to be manufactured in any city which was not Christian.
3) Marrying or having your son or daughter marry a foreigner, particularly the northern pagans or eastern Muslims.
For each point, Constantine VII talks about an Emperor who violated these laws and how they came to a bad end with soiled legacies. What’s really interesting is that he explicitly connects #3 with #1. Constantine VII claims that Leo IV married a Khazar, while secular sources say that his father married a Khazar and so Leo IV was half Khazar. Either way, the Khazar influence led Leo IV to seize one of the Patriarch’s jewels from the Hagia Sophia without permission and set it upon his forehead as crown at which point he was struck down with an illness which eventually killed him. Constantine VII makes the application clear; foreign mixture leads to religious sin. Note that in either case the Khazar princess was said to have been baptized, but this changed nothing. Constantine VII considered this “a sufficient warning to restrain anyone who is minded to emulate his evil deeds.”
This is the same section of his book where Constantine VII says,
“For each nation has different customs and divergent laws and institutions, and should consolidate those things that are proper to it, and should form and develop out of the same nation the associations for the fusion of its life. For just as each animal mates with its own tribe, so it is right that each nation should marry and cohabit not with those of other race and tongue but of the same tribe and speech. For hence arise naturally harmony of thought and intercourse among one another and friendly converse and living together; but alien customs and divergent laws are likely on the contrary to engender enmities and quarrels and hatreds and broils, which tend to beget not friendship and association but spite and division.”
-Constantine VII
“He tells them the charge his master had given him, to fetch a wife for his son from among his kindred, with the reason of it, v.37,38. The highest degrees of divine affection must not divest us of natural affection.”
~Matthew Henry
Commentary on Gen.24:29-53
“Numbers 2:2 — Those of a tribe were to pitch together, every man by his own standard.
Note, It is the will of God that mutual love and affection, converse and communion, should be kept up among relations. Those that are of kin to each other should, as much as they can, be acquainted with each other; and the bonds of nature should be improved for the strengthening of the bonds of Christian communion. 3. Every one must know his place and keep in it; they were not allowed to fix where they pleased, nor to remove when they pleased, but God quarters them, with a charge to abide in their quarters. Note, It is God that appoints us the bounds of our habitation, and to him we must refer ourselves. He shall choose our inheritance for us (Ps. xlvii. 4), and in his choice we must acquiesce, and not love to flit, nor be as the bird that wanders from her nest. 4. Every tribe had its standard, flag, or ensign, and it should seem every family had some particular ensign of their father’s house, which was carried as with us the colours of each troop or company in a regiment are. These were of use for the distinction of tribes and families, and the gathering and keeping of them together, in allusion to which the preaching of the gospel is said to lift up an ensign, to which the Gentiles shall seek, and by which they shall pitch, Isa. xi. 10, 12. Note, God is the God of order, and not of confusion.
Matthew Henry Commentary
Numbers Chapter 2:1-2
2. Every tribe had a captain, a prince, or commander-in-chief, whom God himself nominated, the same that had been appointed to number them, ch. i. 5. Our being all the children of one Adam is so far from justifying the levellers, and taking away the distinction of place and honour, that even among the children of the same Abraham, the same Jacob, the same Judah, God himself appointed that one should be captain of all the rest. There are powers ordained of God, and those to whom honour and fear are due and must be paid.”
Matthew Henry
Numbers 2:3-34
I Cor 13:5 V. Charity is careful not to pass the bounds of decency; ouk aschemonei—it behaveth not unseemly; it does nothing indecorous, nothing that in the common account of men is base or vile. It does nothing out of place or time; but behaves towards all men as becomes their rank and ours, with reverence and respect to superiors, with kindness and condescension to inferiors, with courtesy and good-will towards all men. It is not for breaking order, confounding ranks bringing all men on a level; but for keeping up the distinction God has made between men, and acting decently in its own station, and minding its own business, without taking upon it to mend, or censure, or despise, the conduct of others. Charity will do nothing that misbecomes it.
Matthew Henry
The (Abolitionist Egalitarian) argument, fully and legitimately carried out, would condemn every arrangement of society, which did not secure to all its members an absolute equality of position; it is the very spirit of socialism and communism.
“The parties in this conflict are not merely Abolitionists and Slaveholders; they are Atheists, Socialists, Communists, Red Republicans, Jacobins on the one side, and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battle ground, Christianity and Atheism the combatants, and the progress of humanity the stake….”
Commenting on these Quotes and on Thornwell in general, Historian Eugene Genovesie wrote,
“Moving from Church to state—significantly, in a sermon on “The Christian Doctrine of Slavery”—he denounced the political radicalism of the age and upheld “representative, republican government against the despotism of the masses on the one hand, and the supremacy of a single will on the other.” In this sermon, as in others, Thornwell assailed the Abolitionists for waging wars not merely on slavery as a peculiar form of property, not merely on Southern rights as the bastion of the Constitution, but on the very principle of social order. Implicitly, sometimes explicitly, the Abolitionists were attacking all class distinctions and legitimate authority. Indeed, they were attacking Christianity itself since the Bible commanded social stratification and subordination in the wake of the Fall. Thornwell charged that the Abolitionist argument “fully and legitimately carried out, would condemn every arrangement of society, which did not secure to its members an absolute equality of position; it is the very spirit of socialism and communism.” And in one of his fiercest polemical outbursts, he added, “The parties in this conflict are not merely Abolitionists and Slaveholders; they are Atheists, Socialists, Communists, Red Republicans, Jacobins on the one side, and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battle ground, Christianity and Atheism the combatants, and the progress of humanity the stake.”
“Some forms of homosexuality today are of a similar nature, in that they are not just homosexuality but a philosophic expression. One must have understanding for the real homophile’s problem. But much modern homosexuality is an expression of the current denial of antithesis. It has led in this case to an obliteration of the distinction between man and woman. So the male and the female as complementary partners are finished. This is a form of homosexuality which is a part of the movement below the line of despair. In much of modern thinking all antithesis and all the order of God’s creation is to be fought against — including the male-female distinctions. The pressure toward unisex is largely rooted here”
Francis Schaeffer,
The God Who is There (1968).
[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.”
-Systematic Theology, Volume 2, Chapter 1, Section 3 (1872–73)
“The Church Catholic is one in Christ, but it is not necessarily one visible, all-absorbing organization upon the earth. There is no schism where there is no breach of charity. Churches may be perfectly at one in every principle of faith and order, and yet geographically distinct, and mutually independent. As the unity of the human race is not disturbed by its division into countries and nations, so the unity of the spiritual seed of Christ is neither broken nor impaired by separation and division into various Church constitutions. Accordingly, in the Protestant countries, Church organizations have followed national lines.”
-Rev. Thornwell, address to the PCCSA GA 1861
“We now reply to the question, Can we know the sense of the prophetic law of Noah with absolute certainty ? We answer most unequivocally, Yes. How, then, is it to be known ? By the perfect conformity of the fulfilment of the law to its legitimate interpretation. Has such fulfilment 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 … “
(Rev. Samuel Davies, Dominion or, the Unity and Trinity of the Human Race, p.18)
“I should very much like to know where in the whole of the New Testament the author finds this violent, unnatural, and immoral proposition. Christ did not have the same kind of regard for one person as for another. We are specifically told that there were certain persons whom He especially loved. It is most improbable that He thought of other nations as He thought of His own. The sight of His national city moved Him to tears, and the highest compliment he paid was, ‘Behold an Israelite indeed.’ The author has simply confused two entirely different things. Christ commanded us to have love for all men, but even if we had equal love for all men, to speak of having the same love for all men is merely bewildering nonsense. If we love a man at all, the impression he produces on us must be vitally different to the impression produced by another man whom we love. To speak of having the same kind of regard for both is about as sensible as asking a man whether he prefers chrysanthemums or billiards. Christ did not love humanity; He never said He loved humanity; He loved men. Neither He nor anyone else can love humanity; it is like loving a gigantic centipede. And the reason Tolstoians can even endure to think of an equally distributed affection is that their love of humanity is a logical love, a love into which they are coerced by their own theories, a love which would be an insult to a tom-cat.”
G.K.Chesterton, Varied Types
“I am not quite satisfied with the casuistry by which the productions of one person are thus passed upon the world for the productions of another. I allow that not only knowledge, but powers and qualities of mind may be communicated; but the actual effect of individual exertion never can be transferred, with truth, to any other than its own original cause. One person’s child may be made the child of another person by adoption, as among the Romans, or by the ancient Jewish mode of a wife having children borne to her upon her knees, by her handmaid. But these were children in a different sense from that of nature. It was clearly understood that they were not of the blood of their nominal parents. So in literary children, an authour may give the profits and fame of his composition to another man, but cannot make that other the real authour. A Highland gentleman, a younger branch of a family, once consulted me if he could not validly purchase the Chieftainship of his family, from the Chief who was willing to sell it. I told him it was impossible for him to acquire, by purchase, a right to be a different person from what he really was; for that the right of Chieftainship attached to the blood of primo-geniture, and, therefore, was incapable of being transferred. I added, that though Esau sold his birth-right, or the advantages belonging to it, he still remained the first-born of his parents; and that whatever agreement a Chief might make with any of the clan, the Herald’s Office could not admit of the metamorphosis, or with any decency attest that the younger was the elder; but I did not convince the worthy gentleman.”
-James Boswell, Scottish lawyer and author (1740 – 1795) — Life of Samuel Johnson
“All are not created on equal terms … This God has testified, not only in the case of single individuals; He has also given a specimen of it in the whole posterity of Abraham, to make it plain that the future condition of each nation was entirely at His disposal.”
(Calvin, Institutes …,bk.iii, pp.206-205 Beveridge translation)
“… one thing is perfectly plain—whether or not liberals are Christians, it is at any rate perfectly clear that liberalism is not Christianity. And that being the case, it is highly undesirable that liberalism and Christianity should continue to be propagated within the bounds of the same organization. A separation between the two parties in the Church is the crying need of the hour… The modern liberal doctrine is that all men everywhere, no matter what their race or creed, are brothers.”
(J.Gresham Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, p.133)
“And thus my final lecture is rapidly drawing to its end. But before I close, I feel nevertheless that one question continues to press for an answer, which accordingly I shall not refuse to face, the question namely, at what I am aiming in the end: at the abandonment of the doctrine of election … Our generation turns a deaf ear to Election [God’s order], but grows madly enthusiastic over Selection [encompassing everything from evolution to democracy, liberalism, imagination, and license] … The problem concerns the fundamental question: Whence are the differences? Why is not all alike? Whence is it that one thing exists in one state, another in another? There is no life without differentiation without inequality. The perception of difference, the very source of our human consciousness, the causative principles of all that exists, and grows and develops, in short, the mainspring of all life and thought … Whence are those differences? Whence is the dissimilarity , the heterogeneity of existence, of genesis, and consciousness? To put it concretely, if you were a plant, would you rather be a rose than a mushroom; if insect, butterfly rather than spider; if bird, eagle rather than owl; if a higher vertebrate, a lion rather than a hyena; and again, being a man, richer than poorer, talented rather than dull-minded, of Aryan race rather than Hottentot or Kaffir? Between all these there is differentiation, wide differentiation. Everywhere then differences, differences between one thing and the other; and that too, such differences involve in almost every instance, preference … This is the one supreme question in the vegetable and animal kingdom, among men, in all social life and it is by means of the theory of Selection that our present age attempts to solve this problem of problems …
Now the blade of grass is not conscious of this, and the spider goes on entrapping the fly, the tiger killing the stag, and in those cases the weaker being does not account to itself for its misery. But we men are clearly consious of these differences, and by us therefore the question cannot be evaded, whether the theory of Selection be a solution calculated to reconcile the weaker, the less richly endowed creature, with its existence. It will be acknowledged that in itself this theory can but incite to a more furious struggle, with a lasciate ogni speranza, voi che’ntrate for the weaker being. Against the ordinance of faith that the weaker shall succumb to the stronger, according to the system of election, no struggle can avail …
For this is precisely the high significance of the doctrine of Election that, in this dogma, as long as three centuries ago, Calvinism dared to face this same all-dominating problem, solving it, however, not in the sense of a blind selection stirring in unconscious cells, but honoring the sovereign choice of Him Who created all things visible and invisible. The determination of our own persons, whether one is to be born as girl or boy, rich or poor, dull or clever, white or colored, or even as Abel or Cain, is the most tremendous predestination conceivable in heaven or on earth; and still we see it taking place before our eyes every day, and we ourselves are subject to it in our entire personality; our existence, our very nature, our position in life being entirely dependent on it. This all embracing predestination … all-dominating election. Election in creation, election in providence, and so election also to eternal life; election in the realm of grace as well as in the realm of nature … all Christians hold election as we do, in honor, both in creation and in providence; and that Calvinism deviates from the other Christian confessions in this respect only, that, seeking unity and placing the glory God above all things, it dares to extend the mystery of Election to spiritual life, and to the hope for all life to come?”
(A.Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, pp.117-119)
“It cannot be denied that there is a great difference in men in this respect. Some are morose, irritable, and unsocial in their dispositions, others are directly the reverse … They may be born with these distinctive traits of character, and such traits beyond doubt are in numerous cases innate and often hereditary … It is admitted that nations as well as tribes and families, have their distinctive characteristics, and that these characteristics are not only physical and mental, but also social and moral. Some tribes are treacherous and cruel. Some are mild and confiding. Some are addicted to gain, others to war. Some are sensual, some intellectual. We instinctively judge of each according to its character; we like or dislike, approve or disapprove, without asking ourselves any questions as to the origin of these distinguishing characteristics. And if we do raise that question, although we are forced to answer it by admitting that these dispositions are innate and hereditary, and that they are not self-acquired by the individual whose character they constitute, we nevertheless, and none the less, approve or condemn them according to their nature. This is instinctive and necessary, and therefore the correct, judgment of the mind …
The Irish people have always been remarkable for their fidelity; the English for honesty; the Germans for truthfulness. These national traits, as revealed in individuals, are not the effect of self-discipline. They are innate, hereditary dispositions, as obviously as the physical, mental, or emotional peculiarities by which one people is distinguished from another. And yet by the common judgment of men this fact in no degree detracts from the moral character of these dispositions.”
(Charles Hodge, Syst.Theo.Vol.2, pp.112-113)
” [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)
“Brethren according to the Flesh.”
Romans 9:3
Paul had two classes of brethren; those who were with him the children of God in Christ; these he calls brethren in the Lord, Philip, i. 14, holy brethren, &c. The others were those who belonged to the family of Abraham. These he calls brethren after the flesh, that is, in virtue of natural descent from the same parent. Philemon he addresses as his brother, both in the flesh and in the Lord. The Bible recognizes the validity and rightness of all the constitutional principles and impulses of our nature. It therefore approves of parental and filial affection, and, as is plain from this and other passages, of peculiar love for the people of our own race and country.
Charles Hodge
Commentary Romans 9
“Whether the slaves of this country may be safely admitted to the enjoyments of personal liberty, is a matter of dispute; but that they count not, consistently with the public welfare, be entrusted with the exercise of political power, is on all hands admitted.”
Charles Hodge, “Slavery”, p. 297
“If the fact that the master and slave belong to different races, precludes the possibility of their living together on equal terms, the inference is, not that the one has a right to oppress the other, but that they should separate. Whether this should be done by dividing the land between them and giving rise to distinct communities, or by the removal of the inferior class on just and wise conditions, it is not for us to say. We have undertaken only to express an opinion as to the manner in which the bible directs those, who look to it for guidance, to treat this difficult subject, and not to trace out a plan to provide for ulterior results. It is for this reason, we have said nothing of African colonization, though we regard it as one of the noblest enterprises of modern benevolence.”~~Charles Hodge, “Slavery”, p. 305
“Under the old dispensation it (slavery) was expressly permitted by divine command, and under the New Testament is nowhere forbidden.”~~Charles Hodge, “Slavery”, p. 298
“This is a law of our being….Members of the same nation have a feeling for each other which they have not for foreigners. Member of the same tribe or class in a community are bound together by a still closer tie.”
Charles Hodge
“The Unity of the Church”, p. 24
“It cannot be denied that there is a great difference in men in this respect. Some are morose, irritable, and unsocial in their dispositions, others are directly the reverse … They may be born with these distinctive traits of character, and such traits beyond doubt are in numerous cases innate and often hereditary … It is admitted that nations as well as tribes and families, have their distinctive characteristics, and that these characteristics are not only physical and mental, but also social and moral. Some tribes are treacherous and cruel. Some are mild and confiding. Some are addicted to gain, others to war. Some are sensual, some intellectual. We instinctively judge of each according to its character; we like or dislike, approve or disapprove, without asking ourselves any questions as to the origin of these distinguishing characteristics. And if we do raise that question, although we are forced to answer it by admitting that these dispositions are innate and hereditary, and that they are not self-acquired by the individual whose character they constitute, we nevertheless, and none the less, approve or condemn them according to their nature. This is instinctive and necessary, and therefore the correct, judgment of the mind …
The Irish people have always been remarkable for their fidelity; the English for honesty; the Germans for truthfulness. These national traits, as revealed in individuals, are not the effect of self-discipline. They are innate, hereditary dispositions, as obviously as the physical, mental, or emotional peculiarities by which one people is distinguished from another. And yet by the common judgment of men this fact in no degree detracts from the moral character of these dispositions.”
Charles Hodge (1797-1878)
Systematic Theology, Volume 2, Chapter 5, Section 6 (1872–73)
[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)
It is moreover a historical fact universally admitted, that character, within certain limits is transmissible from parents to children. Every nation, separate tribe, and even every extended family of men, has its physical, mental, social, and moral peculiarities which are propagated from generation to generation. No process of discipline of culture can transmute a Tartar into a Englishman, or an Irishman into a Frenchman. The Bourbons, the Hapsburgs, and other historical families, have retained and transmitted their peculiarities for ages. We may be unable to explain thus, but we cannot deny it. No one is born an absolute man, with nothing but generic humanity belonging to him. Everyone is born a man a man in a definite state, with all those characteristics physical, mental, and moral, which make up his individuality. There is nothing therefore in the doctrine of hereditary depravity out of analogy within providential facts.
Charles Hodge
Systematic Theology
“[Some] shall be born, live, and die, … male or female, white or black, wise or foolish. God is no less sovereign in the distribution of His favors … Some He gives riches, to others honor,… Others are born to dishonor … and live lives of wretchedness. Some are placed in Christian lands where they receive all the benefits of the gospel; others live and die in the darkness of heathenism. Some are brought through faith unto salvation; others are left to perish in unbelief. And to a very large extent these external things, which are not the result of individual choice, decide the person’s life course and eternal destiny.”
(Boettner,The Ref. Doct. of Predestination, p.36)
“Though not the continent of origins, Europe is emphatically the continent of development. The Indo-European race — the people of progress — find their fullest expansion and activity, not in their original seat in Iran, but in Europe, whence they are spreading over all the quarters of the globe … Transplanted to Europe, [Christianity] gradually attained its full development, and became the foundation on which is reared the vast and noble edifice which is modern civilization …
Evidently, this continent [North America] was not designed to give birth and development to a new civilization; but to receive one ready-made, and to furnish the cultivated race of the Old World the scene most worthy of their activity. Its vast plains, overflowing with natural wealth, are turned towards Europe, and its largest rivers discharge into the Atlantic; while its lofty mountains , and less fertile lands, are removed far towards its western shores. Thus it seems to invite the Indo-European race, the people of progress, to new fields of action; to encourage their expansion throughout its entire territory, and their fusion into one nation.”
(Arnold Guyot, Physical Geography, 1873, as reproduced in Hall’s The Christian History of the Constitution, pp.3-4)
“Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities. Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist.”
John Stuart Mill
“Heaven hath provided this country, not indeed derelict, but only partially settled, and consequently open for reception of a new enlargement of Japheth. Europe was settled by Japheth; America is settling from Europe: and perhaps this second enlargement bids fair to surpass the first; for we are to consider all the European settlements of America collectively as springing from and transfused with the blood of Japheth … ”
(J.Wingate Thornton, The Pulpit of the American Revolution, as cited in Hall’s The Christian History of the American Constitution, p.382)
“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, Dominion or, the Unity and Trinity of the Human Race, p.20)
“Their theology was preset for racism, because it was under-girded by a strict biblical literalism that could easily be made to support White supremacy. The Puritans were heirs of the Calvinist tradition. A hundred years earlier John Calvin had developed Reformed theology (also called Calvinist theology) in Geneva, Switzerland. His theology was rooted in a literal interpretation of the bible, especially the Hebrew scriptures. Let us be clear here … his theology — especially developed by his successors — supported at least two historic teachings that could easily accommodate such claims. These two pillars were the doctrines of sin and predestination. Calvin (following Paul and Augustine) taught that sin is hereditary and taht every human being born after Adam and Eve is an absolutely depraved sinner who lacks the capacity of altering that state. Salvation to Calvin, then, was completely the work of an all-sovereign God … Concerning how evil afflicts some people more than others Calvin concluded, that this is God’s sovereign will. Calvin’s followers moved predestination (or divine election, as it also is called) to a chief organizing position. Therefore God predetermined who would be redeemed to eternal life and who would be condemned to eternal damnation.
Puritan theology was heir to these understandings of sin and predestination; it also espoused distinctive views of covenant and creation. Regarding the doctrine of covenant, the Puritans’ biblical literalism led them to argue for a federal or full covenant, modeled after the Mosaic covenant, by which they insisted that God had predestined them to be the new chosen people …
Regarding the doctrine of creation, their central thesis was that God had not created humanity equal. Human beings had been created hierarchically. This meant that there were levels of humanity ranging from the highest to the lowest. ‘God Almighty in His most holy and wise providence’, they delighted in proclaiming, ‘hath so disposed of the condition of mankind as in all times some must be rich, some poor; some high and eminent in power and dignity, others mean and in subjection.’ … Each of these theological ideas … divinely imputed superiority not only in religious status but also with respect to racial, gender, social, economic, and political status. This is precisely what happened.”
(Paul R. Griffin, SEEDS OF RACISM, pp.16-17)
“Apartheid was born out of the Reformed tradition; it is, in a very real sense, the brainchild of the Dutch Reformed churches. It is Reformed Christians who have split the church on the basis of race and color, and who now claim that racially divided churches are a true understanding of the nature of the Christian church.”
(Alllan Boesak, Black & Reformed, pp.85-86) This “Volkstheologie” Boesak has described patently as “… the negative aspects of Kuyperianism.” (ibid.p.87)
As Boettner says, “second causes [such as heredity] are fully recognized, — not as independent of God, but as having their proper place in His plan … as regards God’s providence we are to understand that He is intimately concerned with every detail in the affairs of men and in the course of nature.”
(L. Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination,p.35)
“[S]till we both feel that the life in Old Europe is not something separate from life here; it is one and the same current of human existence that flows through both Continents. By virtue of our common origin, you may call us bone of your bone, — we feel that you are flesh of our flesh, and although you are outstripping us in the most discouraging way, you will never forget that the historic cradle of your wondrous youth stood in our old Europe, and was most gently rocked in the cradle of my once great Fatherland.”
(A.Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, p.7)
“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)
“As a church, we have always worked purposefully for the separation of the races. In this regard apartheid can rightfully be called a church policy.”
(Die Kerkbode, official mouthpeice of the Dutch Reformed Church, Sept.22,1948, via Boesak’s Black & Reformed pp.664-65)
“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.
Now it is through maintaining the national diversities, as these express themselves in the difference of language, and are in turn upheld by this difference, that God prevents realization of the attempted scheme… [In this] was a positive intent that concerned the natural life of humanity. Under the providence of God each race or nation has a positive purpose to serve, fulfillment of which depends on relative seclusion from others.”
-Geerhardus Vos,
Biblical Theology
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
“Just as all truth rests upon the truth that is from God, so the common foundation of all rights and duties lies in the sovereignty of God. When that sovereignty is denied or (what amounts to the same thing) banished to heaven because His kingdom is not of this world, what becomes then of the fountain of authority, of law, of every sacred and dutiful relation in state, society and family? What sanction remains for the distinctions of rank and station in life? What reason can there be that I obey another’s commands, that the one is needy, the other rich? All this is custom, routine, abuse, injustice, oppression. Eliminate God, and it can no longer be denied that all men are, in the revolutionary sense of the words, free and equal. State and society disintegrate, for there is a principle of dissolution at work that does not cease to operate until all further division is frustrated by that indivisible unit, that isolated human being, the individual—a term of the Revolution – naively expressive of its all-destructive character.”
– Guillaume Groen Van Prinsterer
Mentor of Abraham Kuyper
“And they shall bring the glory of the nations into it, into the new Jerusalem.” Revelations 21:26
Doctor Schilder comments on this
“The universality of this covenant requires that not one race or people be left out. Yet during the old Testament times there was one nation singled out of the many as the chosen people, such separation was but an ad-interim. We may look upon the covenant as then on march toward fulfillment, towards times when all nations from the uttermost parts of the earth would belong to the covenant.
Klaas Schilder
“Scripture, as I read it, does not require societies, or even churches, to be integrated racially. Jews and Gentiles were brought together by God’s grace into one body. They were expected to love one another and to accept one another as brothers inthe faith. But the Jewish Christians continued to maintain a distinct culture, and house churches were not required to include members of both groups.”
John Frame,
“Racism, Sexism, Marxism”
“It may be agreed right off that for those that can see only this world, whether claiming to be Christian or not, the passion for unity in and of the world must become a veritable obsession. It may be admitted that an overriding unity of creation is as necessary to human existence as food and air. As long as that final unity is consciously or subconsciously seen in the One who made all that is, then the separations, diversities, distinctions and differences which abound in creation become not an unendurable frustration, but a boundless vista of goodness and peace. But if all talk of God is only a facade of pietism, and if the only thing that matters really is this world, and the Christian hope of the world to come is better described in the famous Marxist sneer as ‘pie in the sky;’ if all the direction and purpose of life is found in this world, and if all that matters is improvement and ultimately even perfection of this world, then unity, too, must be achieved in terms of this world. Hence, integration—a plan for another step in the unifying process of the diverse parts of society. Integration is not an end in itself, but a supposed step toward the end of achieving heaven on earth. Integrationists, therefore, like all Utopians everywhere in all times are wildly determined to remove from their path all who would obstruct their progress toward ultimate unity and heaven on earth.”
T. Robert Ingram
