Andy Sandlin says; “Christianity Erases Racial Identity.” Don’t be like Andy

“Racial identity is incompatible w/ the Christian Gospel. The Gospel was created partly to overcome racial identity. The Gospel was created to forge religious identity.”

Andy Sandlin

1.) Sentence #1 explains thus why Jesus had to be descended from David.

2.) Is Jesus, who is now at the Right hand of the Father, no longer to be referred to as “The Lion of the Tribe of JUDAH?”

3.) The Gospel was created in order so that the Ethiopian could no longer be used hypothetically as one who could not change his skin?

4.) How can it possibly be the case that given this view that Christianity is not pure on Gnosticism? Seems the Manicheans were correct after all.

5.) More of the modern Gospel that teaches that grace destroys nature. Once you love yourself some Jeebus you no longer are “Red or Yellow, Black or White, because after all you’re all the same in God’s sight.”

6.) Since the Gospel was forged to create religious identity clearly we can also do away with biological gender identity since it must be the case that if the Gospel was created to overcome racial identity it must also be the case whereupon the Gospel was created to over come gender identity.

Honestly, I am left absolutely gob-smacked that this man could have his own wife listening to him, never mind having scads of people hang on his every word.

And he, as well as those who share this opinion, are not that uncommon among those reputed to be pillars in the Church.

Dr. Andrew Sandlin’s Warning About the Second Coming of Lincolnian Nationalism

“I think the problem with Christian nationalism in its most prominent iterations is that it’s essentially the positing of an ethno-state bound together by kinship, presided over largely by concentrated political order with a formal Christian profession. That’s certainly not the same thing as Joe mentions as biblical nationhood, and it’s certainly not Christian culture. I think we need to understand that, proximately, the greatest enemy in Western culture is statism, and we don’t need a revived Christianized statism (which is oxymoronic) to replace that.

I think we need to Christianize culture in all areas of life. I’ll say finally, I think one problem is that because Christians have been so culturally derelict for the last 150 years—they have lost in culture, lost in politics, lost everywhere—now in a mad panic, say, we must capture politics in order to impose a Christian vision. I don’t think that they understand that the left did not first win politics, the left won culture over last 100 or 150 years. And we will not win the culture back simply by gaining political victories, though getting good Christians in political office is certainly desirable. So, this is basically a cultural battle. Christian nationalism sees it as a political battle and that is a dangerous miscalculation.”

Andy Sandlin

1.) Sandlin speaks of “CN in its most prominent iterations.” I want to know the names of those individual CN out there who believe that CN is what Sandlin is saying they believe CN is. I demand this because I seriously doubt very many of the major CN thinkers and advocates out there define CN has primarily political. Sandlin here has given us a genuine example of the red herring fallacy.

I will speak only for myself that this has never been my vision of Christian Nationalism and that in point of fact any Christian Nationalism that would be “presided over largely by concentrated political order,” could not be in any way taken as a serious establishment of Christian Nationalism.

It seems the Boomers like Sandlin have this fixated image in their head that all us Christian Nationalists desire the second coming of the Abraham Lincoln’s Nationalizing of America. It is just asinine that any Christian would have to say to Andy, “No, Andy, I do not desire the second coming of  Lincoln’s Nationalism. How could you be so stupid to think I would want that?”

2.) Having said that, what is the problem with “the positing of an ethno-state bound together by kinship, presided over largely by concentrated political order with a formal Christian profession.” as long as that non-concentrated political order is a reflection of a Christian culture. Sandlin knows that no Christian worth is salt is going to advocate for a concentrated (read centralized) Christian political order. In point of fact a concentrated political order would not be Christian Nationalism because such an arrangement is not particularly Christian. However, a non-concentrated political order — a political order that is diffused and decentralized — could indeed be Christian and I would be shocked to learn the movers and shakers out there supporting CN would say anything other.

Oh sure… there are some crackpots around who wet their pants over visions of some kind of version of Lincoln’s Marxists.

3.) It is completely bogus on Sandlin’s part to suggest that CN believe that it is a political battle vis-a-vis understanding that it is also a cultural battle. However, though politics is indeed downstream of culture, it is also at the same time part and parcel of culture so it cannot be ignored in the way that Andy as, in the past, suggested.

4.) Really, in my estimation, the thing that really blisters Andy’s chaps is the perfectly Biblical idea of CN “positing of an ethno-state bound together by kinship.” However, Andy is just going to have to get over this. As we have noted ad nauseum here nations are merely family writ large. Nations by their very definition have a ethnic core that cannot be negotiated w/o losing the whole concept of “nation.” Christian Nationalists merely desire that their blood informed nations (just as their blood informed family units) be defined and animated by Christian categories. There is nothing startling/shocking in this idea of Nationalism.

However, Andy has sipped from the grog that is the spirit of the age and, like Doug Wilson and so many other evangelicals who have bellied up to the bar of the zeitgeist, he and they just can’t hold his or their liquor.

Michael Hoffman Exposes Doug Wilson’s Inane Take on Israel

I don’t often make a link the center of something I post here but this is an exception.

People here, are not surprised to read me saying again that I have significant problems with Doug Wilson. I have often said that I wish I could buy Doug for what he is worth and turn around and sell him for what he thinks he is worth. The problem isn’t what Doug knows. He knows a good deal for which he should be extolled. The problem is what Doug thinks he knows but just isn’t so.

Many people take Doug as a cornucopia of encyclopedic wisdom. Those people who make Doug their “go-to guy” are themselves exercising all the wisdom of a duck flying in to land next to a decoy. There are those who will merely see envy in my observations regarding Doug. All I can say to that is that it isn’t true. Were Doug orthodox I would be doing cartwheels and being his chief cheerleader. I would urge people to move to Moscow. I would slay all those who rise up against him. But… people will say what they will all because I point our Doug’s errors and lamentable inconsistencies.

Here is a huge error of Doug’s pointed  out by someone else who has done the legwork.

https://michaelhoffman.substack.com/p/churchianitys-support-for-israeli

The errors in Wilson’s thinking that are pointed out here are just embarrassing and if it was anyone else besides Wilson it would go a long way towards ruining their credibility across the board. However, Doug has gained that “Teflon” ability and so his groupies will just shrug off the truths that Michael Hoffman reveals.

Read Hoffman’s piece and let me know what you think in the comments.

Dr. Mike Horton Bearing False Witness Against Thornwell & Dabney

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/white-horse-inn/id356920632?i=1000635315098

12:20-14:40 “Machen was flawed” regarding his racial views. “Dabney and Thornwell, the two main Southern theologians, they argued throughout their systemic theologies, their anthropology incorporated racism. Africans are inherently less human. And there were a lot of pro-slavery people who didn’t articulate those theological views, but they did. Leading Southern Presbyterian theologians. Machen never argued that. And moreover Machen showed that even though he didn’t make theological arguments for it, that he thought socially it was wrong. My thing is Dabney and Thornwell have nothing to say to the broader church today… Once you weave those kinds of godless doctrines into theology, it bleeds into soteriology, ecclesiology, eschatology. I think we just have to say the theological systems of Dabney and Thornwell should be considered moribund in our tradition. Different from Machen. So why not Christianity and Liberalism too? Because Christianity and Liberalism, nor any of Machen’s writings, sought to make theological arguments. He was frankly sociologically racist. But he didn’t undergird it with theological heresy. That’s why I would say there’s a different between somebody like Dabney and Thornwell and somebody like Machen.”

Mike Horton
White Horse Inn

Now, I’ve read a good deal of Dabney. Far less of Thornwell, but still more than your average clergy critter. There may be places where Dabney and Thornwell say what Horton insists that they said but I for one would like to have those quotes cited instead of just having to believe Horton, who has shown himself in the past to be more than able to get matter wrong. So, I concede it is possible that Dabney and Thornwell said things that communicated that “African are inherently less human,” but if they did I want the proof of that. I want the quotes. So, Mike, lets see the quotes that prove your statement because absent those quotes you need to shut your pie-hole.

I want the proof of that because I have quotes from Dabney and Thornwell that prove they most certainly did not believe that. For example;

“The Negro is one blood with ourselves — that he has sinned as we have, and that he has has an equal interest with us in the great Redemption. Science, falsely so called, may attempt to exclude him from the brotherhood of humanity…. but the instinctive impulses of our nature combined with the plainest declaration of the Word of God, lead us to recognize in his form and lineaments — his moral, religious, and intellectual nature — the same humanity in which we glory as the image of God. We are not ashamed to call him our brother.”

Dr. James Henley Thornwell
Sermon — Rights and Duties of Masters

Does that sound like Thornwell is saying that the African is inherently less human than whites? I mean the man explicitly says that “the Negro is one blood with ourselves.”  The quote, taken as a whole, completely testifies that Horton is bearing false witness against a Father in the faith. Now, maybe Horton has some quotes wherein Thornwell contradicts himself here. If so, let Horton reproduce those quotes. Only be doing so can Horton be cleared of bearing false witness. Without said quotes demonstrating Horton’s allegation Horton needs to either publicly repent or failing that, be brought up on charges.

Now as to Dabney we read from his pen,

“… While we believe that “God made of one blood all nations of men to dwell under the whole heavens,” we know that the African has become, according to a well-known law of natural history, by the manifold influences of the ages, a different, fixed species of the race, separated from the white man by traits bodily, mental and moral, almost as rigid and permanent as those of genus. Hence the offspring of an amalgamation must be a hybrid race… incapable of the career of civilization and glory as an independent race. And this apparently is the destiny which our conquerors have in view. If indeed they can mix the blood of the heroes of Manassas with this vile stream from the fens of Africa, then they will never again have occasion to tremble before the righteous resistance of Virginia freemen; but will have a race supple and vile enough to fill that position of political subjection, which they desire to fix on the South?

R. L. Dabney
A Defense of Virginia & the South

Again, Horton may have quotes from Dabney from his systematic theology wherein Dabney contradicts himself. Note here that Dabney writes that;

1.) The African belongs to the nations that God made of one blood to dwell upon the earth. This contradicts Horton’s claim that Dabney believed that “African were inherently less human.”

2.) When Dabney speaks of the African as a “different fixed species of the race,” he is again affirming that Africans are human. Different does not mean “inherently less human.”

3.) Anybody who knows the history of tribal Africa blinks not a whit at the description of “vile stream from the fens of Africa.” One could easily imagine Cortez describing the “vile stream from the fens of the Aztecs,” or Moses describing the “vile stream from the fens of Canaan.”

4.) As much as the R2K Gnostic Mike Horton might find the Dabney quote he nowhere here says that Africans are inherently less human. Indeed, he admits they are human by noting the one blood concept. He merely recognizes there are vast differences between the African race and the white man.

So again, Dr. Horton, or anybody who would like to defend Horton, please do us a favor and provide the Thornwell and Dabney quotes that proves that they thought the African was inherently less human.

One more thing here before I sign off. This statement by Horton is breathtaking in its absolute idiocy;

“Because Christianity and Liberalism, nor any of Machen’s writings, sought to make theological arguments.”

I’m pretty confident that Machen would be surprised to learn that in none of his writings was he seeking to make theological arguments. This statement is nothing but dumbassery on Horton’s part.

In conclusion, I hope I live long enough to see the day when the theological system of Horton will be taken as completely moribund and when in Seminaries Horton is held up as a negative example of doing theology much the way that Charles Grandison Finney is mocked today as a theologian in Reformed seminaries.


McAtee Contra Selbrede & Chalcedon on Denial of Ethnicity & Natural Affections

Over here;

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/a-stone-cut-without-hands?fbclid=IwAR0mIY-rRLYzRT2Hl6cEQAmTYC74zSDg1iPn0llvysUSbcE5r_SJje4D0ek

Dr. Martin Selbrede has a go at Dr. Stephen Wolfe.

I have always liked Dr. Selbreded though I have never met him. I have read his material. I have viewed some of his teaching online. He has always struck me as a kind and gentle man who is not interested in polemics. Further, generally speaking, the man is smart as a whip.

I cannot loudly enough sing the high praises of the first section of Dr. Selbrede work linked above where he dismantles Wolfe’s Natural Law paradigm. I wish such analysis was required reading for all those being tempted by Wolfe’s brash attempt to return the Church — and indeed all of us — to the nonsense that is Natural Law theory.

However, when Selbrede starts writing about race/ethnic issues Selbrede becomes every bit as awful as he was good previously on the Natural Law material. It really was quite disappointing to be cheering heartily reading Selbrede’s take down on Natural Law theory only to be booing every bit as intensely as Selbrede turns to racial/ethnic issues.

Below I examine the more egregiously mistaken elements of Dr. Selbrede’s writing on race/ethnicity.

Martin Selbrede writes:

That proposed deconstruction (of modern liberalism that Wolfe calls for) is a tall order. It must defang Psalm 87, which casts a multitude of nations as all born in Zion. It must explain what Japheth is doing in Shem’s tents in Gen. 9:27, account for the flowing together of nations in Isaiah 2 and the gathering of the peoples to Shiloh in Gen. 49:10. The parable of the Good Samaritan answers the question, Who is my neighbor?

Bret deconstructs Dr. Selbrede’s attempted deconstruction of Wolfe’s call to deconstruct modern liberalism;

1.) Psalm 87 is no barrier to race realism or the recognition that core ethnicities comprise cultures/social orders. Yes, Psalm 87 casts a multitude of nations as all born in Zion but that does not mean that each nation born in Zion is no longer its own nation. Here is one commentary on Psalm 87;

Verses 4-6. – The Almighty is introduced as making a revelation to the psalmist. He will cause the Gentiles to flock into his Church, even those who have been hitherto the most bitter enemies of Israel (ver. 4), and will place these strangers on a par with such as have belonged to his Church from their birth (vers. 4, 5, 6), admitting them to every blessing and every privilege. The Church, thus augmented, shall be taken under his own protection, and “established,” or placed on a sure footing, forever. Compare our Lord’s promise to St. Peter,” On this rock will I build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). (Pulpit Commentary)

The fact that it will be said that Israel’s previous enemy nations will one  day be spoken of as “being born in Zion” only means that God will win those nations to Himself. It does not mean that they will cease being nations and will be swallowed up whole into a John Lennon song where we are to “Imagine there are no countries.”

Selbrede here seems to make the one and the many mistake, preferring to understand that ethnicity disappears once one is redeemed and placed in the Church. He makes the mistake, that is so common today, of not realizing that the Church is comprised not of a bunch of atomistic individuals but rather the Church is comprised of the nations in their nations. This is explicitly taught in Revelation 21 where we see the nations in their nations coming into the New Jerusalem.

Selbrede, presupposes classical liberalism in order to prove classical liberalism.

2.) First, we note that Japheth is in Shem’s tent (Gen. 9:7) as distinctly Japheth and not Shem.

Second, we note that Japheth is in Shem’s tent to have the blessings and to do the work that Shem forfeited when it was cut off for crucifying His Messiah.

Japheth, in Shem’s tent, does not prove, that the end consequence of Christ’s postmillennial triumph will be some kind of “Christian” multicultural Empire where all colors are bleeding into one.

3.) As to the flowing together of the Nations in Is. 2 and the gathering of the people to Shiloh in Gen. 49 the principle is the same as in #1 above. Yes the nations flow together to the mountain of the Lord but that does not necessitate that they do so as a polyglot reality. It merely means that the Lord Christ will win the nations in their nations to Himself. It does not mean that they lose their national identity. Because of passages like Isaiah 2 and Micah 4 and Gen. 49 I expect that people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, — each in their tribe tongues and nations — will be present at the marriage feast of the lamb. What I do not expect is that the nations will lose their national/ethnic identity all because they have been, by God’s grace alone, spiritually united to Christ.

Once upon a time, in New York city, one could visit various ethnic enclaves and yet remain in New York city. In the same way the new Heavens and the new Earth will not be populated by a coffee latte Christian people but will be a place where you can find the one and the many in technicolor and while remaining nationally/ethnically distinct there will be a harmony of interest because Christ is King over all and all have sworn oaths of fealty to their one great King, and because of that they will love one another with the love of Christ.

5.) Nobody denies that the good Samaritan teaches who is my neighbor. Further, it would only be relevant to this discussion if anybody was denying that Christians of varying ethnicities/races were not neighbors.

Dr. Martin Selbrede writes,

Ethnocentrists have pointed to Isaiah 19:18-25 as proof that nations remain discrete nations in the future. This is true, but it is only part of what the passage teaches. Yes, Egypt and Assyria are both intact, but verse 23 says “there shall be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians.” Both nations are fully converted at this point in the future, yet their border is remarkably porous.

Bret responds,

Why would we be surprised that each ethnicity/race as converted to Christ would have good international relations with their neighboring Christian nation? That fact does not change the reality that they remain the same distinct nation after conversion as they were before conversion.

Dr. Martin Wyngaarden makes my point for me here;

“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.

Dr. Martin Selbrede quoting Wolfe writes,

Dr. Wolfe says, “Try to imagine how you would view the world if you had no comprehension of the concept ‘human,’ no universalizing concept of man.”51 This is a high price to pay to arrive at ethnocentrism: imagine making “human” an empty, meaningless concept, i.e., First, dehumanize man.

Was it truly both natural and good to prefer one’s own52 and neglect the Grecian widows in Acts 6:1? This is the likely reason Dr. Wolfe drives a wedge splitting reality: a wall of separation to keep the Word of God confined to the church.

Bret responds,

Selbrede is imputing here to Wolfe some things I doubt Wolfe would say he is doing. Wolfe asks us to do a thought experiment in what Selbrede is quoting. No one (including Wolfe) believes that in order to arrive at ethnicity one must first de-humanize man. Selbrede is way over-interpreting here. Man is man and part of being man is having an ethnic identity that makes one prioritize one’s people. Jesus demonstrated this  ethnic reality and prioritization when He wept over Jerusalem and not over Rome or Nineveh. Jesus demonstrated this  ethnic reality and prioritization when He asked the Syrophoenician woman if the children’s bread should be given to the dogs. Jesus demonstrated this  ethnic reality and prioritization when He sent His disciples first to Judea and only then to Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth.

It is indeed natural and good to prefer one’s own.

As to the issue in Acts 6, we would ask Dr. Selbrede to note that the resolution to the problem there with Grecian widows was to appoint Grecian men to be Deacons. In such a way there were be no failure to provide for the Grecian widows. It looks to me to be a solution that favored natural affections.

However, I do end by agreeing with Selbrede that Wolfe’s Natural Law idea of creating “a wall of separation to keep the Word of God confined to the church,” is complete hooey. All of life is to be governed by God’s Word and the notion that we are to be ruled by a ill-defined subjective Natural Law in the common realm is completely contrary to Christianity. At that point Dr. Selbrede and I are in full agreement.