Category: Ethnic considerations

Ehud Would On The Calvinist Concept of Culture — And Commentary

“Gordon H. Clark in his signal work, ‘A Christian View of Men and Things,’ juxtaposes the two modern canons of historical interpretation against one another: Spengler’s theory of history at one extremity, and Toynbee’s at the other. And he upbraids both equally. Where Spengler followed Herodotus in the pagan cyclical theory of history, claiming no ultimate purpose or end, his metaphysical narrative yet depicts history as the march of peoples. Whereas, Toynbee’s linear view of history envisions all, after the Aristotelian perspective, primarily as the march of ideas. Both are in equal measure right and wrong, albeit in tension; they supplement each other well. And Francis Parker Yockey has resolved that tension equally well:

‘Race is the material of History, it is the treasure which a people brings to an idea.’

This was the view presupposed in every jot and tittle of Bishop James Ussher’s Annals of World History, as well as Augustine’s City of God: history is neither solely the march of peoples nor ideas, but both; because certain ideas only occur to and resonate with certain peoples in any appreciable numbers. As it pertains to the Gospel, we know certain groups have proven more receptive than others, and in varying degrees. Some groups seem to continue demonstrating Christian principle in their culture even when the inward substance of that culture has slipped away. Other groups, having long accepted Christianity in abstract, have never gone on to demonstrate it in their societies. And others still, such as the Pirahã people have proven thus far incapable of grasping the most rudimentary aspects of Christianity.”

Ehud Would
The Calvinist Concept of Culture: Kinism

Here we see teased out and expanded the simple idea that has been articulated often here on Iron Ink that culture is defined as theology externalized as that theology is poured over particular peoples. If culture was simply theology externalized, without any consideration of the people who embraced the theology the inevitable outcome is a kind of Gnosticism where the creational and material reality that God ordained for particular people completely disappears into the ether. On the other hand if culture was simply the expression of particular peoples without any consideration of the impact of what particular people’s believed in terms of ultimate considerations (epistemology, axiology, ontology, teleology, etc.) then the results would be a naked materialism. Also, in each view there would be an arc towards a Globalist and Universalist reality as both views (Gnostic and Materialistic) would expect the whole world to move towards the singular reality that they espouse. We have seen this in conversation with Christian Alienists who expect that there will be a New World Order that will be Christian but a type of Christianity where all colors bleed into one — all ethno-distinctions disappear into the great miasma of Christian oneness. This is hardly dissimilar from the heathen Babel vision where the goal is the same. The only difference being is that the label “Christian” is slapped on this Christian globalist view.

In the Christian understanding of culture and eschatology, the world is converted to Christ so that the result is a variegated panoply of different Christian cultures, with each Christian culture finding a harmony of interests because despite their distinctions in flavor and arrangement there exists a unity given the reality that they each embrace “One Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism.” This stands in contrast to the uniformity of people demanded by the Christian Babel views that insist that Christianity will turn Chinese, or Ndebele, or Shona, or Intuits, or Mongolians into the same exact people with the same exact culture expressing the same exact Christianity. That this vision is a myth of exaggerated proportions is seen in Revelation 21 where we read of the existence of particular nations streaming into the New Jerusalem as particular nations;

24 And the nations [n]of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor [o]into it…. Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea.    

And then in this grand vision of John the Revelator we are told that;

2 In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Even in the new Jerusalem when the great consummation has arrived nations and peoples do not disappear as distinct nations and peoples.

This reality is why Calvin Seminary Martin Wyngaarden could write in the 1960s;

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.

And again,


“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 nationality remains 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.”


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.”

Martin Wyngaarden

The Future of the Kingdom in Prophecy and Fulfillment: A Study of the Scope of “Spiritualization” in Scripture — pp. 101-102.

This is the great contest that we find ourselves currently in. The question resolves to whether the Church of Jesus Christ will pursue a Uniformitarian Christianity where all colors bleed into one and where grace destroys nature so that the creational distinctions that each people group (and perhaps eventually even each gender) were assigned by the Creator God are snuffed out so that the current version of Babel distinction-less Christianity can flourish. The alternative is the embrace of the Trinitarian idea of Christianity as applied to culture where the whole globe is won to Christ but won to Christ allowing for unity in diversity as among the varied Christian cultures that each and all embrace “One Lord, One Faith, and One Baptism,” and yet that without becoming uniformitarian clones of one another.

May God grant us His grace to avoid the gray, bleak, uniformitarian cultures that the Christianity of modern churchmen desires to produce.

John Chrysostom …. The Kinist

Recently, I had a couple situations where more than one family protested rather decidedly that my embracing of Kinism was wrong since

a.) Kinism was not a first order doctrine related to salvation and so shouldn’t be front and center.

b.) Kinism was going to be a hurdle for their other friends making it difficult for children to find marriage partners.

I thought I would turn to the words of St. Chrysostom in order to demonstrate that Kinism is a first order doctrine and is related to salvation.

Speaking of those accursed who turn from God Chrysostom writes:

“Did they not trample kinship under foot, did they not forget their children, did they not forget the very God who created them.”

John Chrysostom
Discourses Against Judaizing Christians
3.3.8

“For if a man deserts those who are united by ties of kindred and affinity how shall he be affectionate towards others?”

St. John Chrysostom
The Homilies of St. John Chrysostom: Archbishop of Constantinople
ON the Epistle of St. Paul the Apostle to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon (Parker 1843), pg. 115

“If any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house,” that is, those who are nearly related to him, “he is worse than an infidel.”
And so says Isaiah, the chief of the Prophets, “Thou shalt not overlook thy kinsmen of thy own seed.” (Isa. lviii. 7, Sept.)

For if a man deserts. those who are united by ties of kindred and affinity, how shall he be affectionate towards others? Will it not have the appearance of vainglory, when benefiting others he slights his own relations, and does not provide for them? And what will be said, if instructing others, he neglects his own, though he has greater facilities; and a higher obligation to benefit them? Will it not be said, These Christians are affectionate indeed, who neglect their own relatives?

(2) “He is worse than an infidel.”

Wherefore? Because the latter, if he benefits not aliens, does not neglect his near kindred. What is meant is this: The law of God and of nature is violated by him who provides not for his own family. But if he who provides not for them has denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel, where shall he be ranked who has injured his relatives? With whom shall he be placed? But how has he denied the faith? Even as it is said, “They profess that they know God, but in works they deny Him.” (Tit. i. 16.) What has God, in whom they believe, commanded? “Hide not thyself from thine own flesh.” (Isa. lviii. 7.) How does he then believe who thus denies God? Let those consider this, who to spare their wealth neglect their kindred. It was the design of God, in uniting us by the ties of kindred, to afford us many opportunities of doing good to one another. When therefore thou neglectest a duty which infidels perform, hast thou not denied the faith?”

Chrysostom
Homilies on 1st Timothy XIV

In terms of (b) above the only thing that might be said is that there will be a greater cost born by family members for a patriarch abandoning truth than will be born by family members if the patriarch stands by the truth.

Trinitarianism and Kinism

“There is a most profuse diversity and yet, in that diversity, there is also a superlative kind of unity. The foundation for both unity and diversity is in God…. Here is a unity that does not destroy but rather maintains diversity, and a diversity that does not come at the expense of unity, but rather unfolds it in its riches. In virtue of this unity the world can, metaphorically, be called an organism, in which all parts are connected with each other and influence each other reciprocally.”

Herman Bavinck 
Reformed Dogmatics — Vol. II: p. 435

Kinists are Kinists because we believe that on a creational level the reality of unity in diversity found in the fact of multiple races in the one human race reflects the Creator who is Himself unity in diversity. Likewise then, Kinists believe that Alienists who deny Kinism are, whether self-conscious of it or not, denying the trinitarian character of God in favor of a Unitarian monad theology. In point of fact Kinists insist that the denial of Kinism for social order is the consequence of social order Unitarianism. When the Kinist defends Kinism behind and below that defense is his conviction that God is both One and Many as well as the conviction that to deny that unity in diversity is to deny our undoubted catholic Christian faith.

Toby Sumpter On Superficial Divisions

“The multicultural globalist want to blend all culture into a bland humanism, but the blood-and-soil types end up insisting on superficial divisions. Covenant is the key to earthy and biblical unity and diversity, of what we might call a Protestant feudalism and Christendom.”

Toby “No Legs Yet Walking” Sumpter

I.) Nothing At All About Blood?

1.) “The Promise is to you and to your children….” Acts 2:39

2.) Gen. 12: 2 I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you; and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”

3.) God is known as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, (note the patrilineal descent) and not the God of Abraham,  Hiram, and Malik.

4.) Gen. 24:2 One day Abraham said to his oldest servant, the man in charge of his household, “Take an oath by putting your hand under my thigh. 3 Swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and earth, that you will not allow my son to marry one of these local Canaanite women. 4 Go instead to my homeland, to my relatives, and find a wife there for my son Isaac.”

Keep in mind that the wife that was later married by Jacob from these same relatives of Abraham  was beset with the same pagan mindset as was true of the local Canaanite women as seen in her running off with Laban’s household gods. We note that so that we see that it wasn’t as if the people of Abraham were God-fearers unlike the local Canaanites and their women-folk.

5.) Do keep in mind also that there is a reason for all those genealogies in Scripture that demonstrate that Jesus the Christ was the son of David, the son of Abraham.  (Matthew 1) In point of fact Jesus remains the Lion of the tribe of Judah at this very moment with DNA typable blood at the right hand of the Father.

6.) Ezra and Nehemiah and their decrying of mixed marriages and children anybody?

7.) “I was only sent to the lost sheep of Israel.” Jesus the Christ

Now before I am accused of suggesting that blood is the only consideration allow me to disavow that. I am only saying there that the covenant is not a Gnostic covenant. Grace, because of God’s ordination, typically runs in generational familial lines. Blood is not everything but neither is it nothing. Jesus enemies during his earthly ministry made descent an idol. Today the enemies of Biblical Christianity make descent to mean nothing as if grace does not, because of God’s free assignment, run in generational lines.

II.) Nothing At All About Soil?

So much for all those promises about “the promised land.” And what about our one day “inheriting the whole earth?”

So, it is not at all about blood and soil and yet Christ had to come from the tribe of Judah. It’s not at all about blood and soil yet Paul can say in Romans;

“the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.”

And Jesus will say to the Samaritan woman in John 4;

22You worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.

What is hilarious is that these same people like Old Toby will deny all categories of blood and soil while still insisting that those reputed to be blood Jews still have a glorious future ahead of them misinterpreting Romans 11. Still others want to say that the blood Jews are going to rebuild the temple on the glorious soil of Jerusalem.

Old Toby’s “thinking” (we’re feeling generous in calling it “thinking) gives us not only propositional nationhood but also propositional covenant theology. This is Gnostic covenantalism. The fact that it comes from putative Presbyterians demonstrates how far many of the Presbyterians have gone in grace destroying nature.

Again, my point in all this is to say “Old Toby is wrong.” Covenant has to do with blood and soil. My point is that while blood and soil are not everything neither are they nothing. For Pete’s sake that is proven by the 5th commandment. That is proven by the fact that the Holy Spirit can say;

“if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”

I Timothy 5:8

Finally, note this clergy member said that family ties are nothing but superficial divisions. Good gravy, if that isn’t the theme song of the Globalists among us I don’t know what is. I find it shocking that a Presbyterian — the folks who historically believed that the best method of Church growth was by having large families — is telling me that family ties are superficial divisions. It is shocking as hearing P-Diddy saying “sex should be saved for marriage.”

Family is not everything. We must give up family if necessary to follow Christ but family is so important that God uses the idea of “family” to define how the church members should inter-relate.

And yet for Old Toby it is a “superficial division” — kind of like being a Michigan or Michigan State fan.

 

Have We Gone Too Far With This Christian Nationalism / Kinism?

 

As the heat has been turning way up recently on the Christian Nationalism debate (people use all kinds of different phrases for that debate) lately, I have noticed more than a few people trying to find the middle of the road. These are the “split the middle” types seeking to insist that all sides on the debate are in error.

I offer two quotes as examples;

“The reason that there is so much heat (instead of light) being generated surrounding some aspects of Christian Nationalism is partly because of two ditches that need to be avoided:

One side seeks to ‘ethni-tize’ everything (or make it all about ‘clanship’ as David Schrock has said), ultimately mimicking some sub-biblical philosophy, and the OTHER side seeks to spiritualize everything – to untether natural relations – and disparage family, land, or any shared historical affinities.

Both are unbiblical and idiotic.”

Jim Brushtune
Reformed Baptist Pastor

“Kinism is a poisonous, unbiblical overreaction to the left’s social justice and CRT.”

Jay Antelo
Reformed Rican

First, we might note that this is a little evidence that the Overton window is shifting ever so slightly on the subject. As recent as just a year ago, people would not have suggested that there was some truth in Christian Nationalism insisting that the problem with CN is that it has gone to far. A year ago people were still, in the main, raining down anathemas on all ethno-nationalism type of arguments.However, one has to realize that this “middle of the road” nonsense is just not sane. Keep in mind that in the last 60 years or so we have lived through social revolutionary times and each decade as seen that Revolutionary activity push the culture increasingly to the left. Because this is so, any counter-revolutionary activity (such as Christian Nationalism) in any degree looks Revolutionary to the leftist Revolutionaries and the hoi polloi rank and file who have had their minds captured by the left.

This means that the least push for Christian Nationalism/Kinism/racial-realism or ethno-nationalism is going to be seen by the hoi polloi middle as something that is automatically extreme no matter how slight that push is. As such, the “middle of the roaders” who desire to say that we have to deal with two extremes are seeking to codify where the left’s revolutionary impulse has taken us over the last 60 years. To be sure, they may want to undo the most recent push of multiculturalism with the success of the trannie and sodomite leveling but they would never want to go back to the days when the US was a 88% white and largely Christian nation. Why, that would be to make everything about “clanship” or, alternately, that would be a poisonous unbiblical over-reaction. In the words of guys like Andrew Sandlin or Doug Wilson that would be akin to “Nazisim.”

And yet that is the world that for the first twenty years of my life that I lived in. Now, to insist that world was a good place and to be preferred as having greater stability as compared to and with what we have now is considered turning everything into clanship and practicing a poisonous unbiblical over-reaction.

Championing what we were in 1980 societally is not Nazism, no matter what Doug Wilson or Andrew Sandlin tell you. Those of us who desire a Biblical Christian Nationalism that honors the various white Anglo-Saxon Christian regional flavors that used to characterize these united States is not trying to ethnic-ize everything. Instead it is merely to want to honor our Fathers who combined a love of nation with a love of their own respected regions (regionalism).

So, beware the “split the middle” type arguments. The numbers of those arguing for the “Nazi” position are so minuscule there is no need to take them seriously. Oh, there is no doubt, that those Nazi minority types out there will be pointed too as “classical Christian Nationalism” but that is all done to poison the Christian Nationalism pool.

Those who are seeking to reason that people (Kinists, Christian Nationalists, ethno-nationalists, racial-realists) on all sides are wrong are themselves wrong.  The Christian Nationalists are not seeking to ethnic-ize everything and the Kinists are not a unbiblical poisonous reaction, though those on the moderate left and the far left want you to think so.