Biblical basis in the sense of a command or the liberty to pursue our goals?
Let me put it this way, are there commands or necessary inferences from Scripture that would forbid ethnicity being selected as the basis for nationality or political unity? I have yet to see a strong case made for such strictures. If we grant this, then, following the principle of biblical liberty, the positive case need not be made. I see no scriptural mandate for the imperial or cosmopolitan model of polity.
Still, there is extremely strong support in the Bible for the exegetical conclusion that ethnicity is the God-ordained basis for nationality/political unity. We can begin with basic axioms: the word rendered “nations” in most if not all important English translations of the extant manuscripts comes from the Greek “ethnoi” and indicates a distinctive people group, related by birth and blood in extended kinship. There is broad and ancient lexical support for this rendering. Natality was universally understood in the ancient Levant as the primary basis for political organization -which even the imperial Romans recognized, with their concept of the gens. It is extremely difficult to find exclusively non-tribal forms of political organization, and Israel was no exception.
Israel was organized on a tribal basis, not as a propositional entity. We can go into detail, if warranted, regarding the definitions of stranger and mamzer. The latter taken to mean a forbidden coupling, extended to marriage with non-Hebrews, relative to which access to the covenant promises (as members of the congregation of the Lord) was strictly regulated -a conclusion which we see supported in Ezra-Nehemiah. Further, this regulation cannot be said to pertain to individual belief, as the very basis for the enforcement of the covenant exclusion was generational and hereditary. If this is the case, it cannot be countenanced as sin to organize modern nations based on the principles by which God’s nation was organized: extended blood relations, or tribalism.
Many exegetes and pastors attempt to circumvent this interpretation by giving an exclusively spiritual meaning to the definition/composition of Israel, but this purely spiritual rendering is not well supported, in our opinion, given the necessary inferences from all the scripture that come to bear on the question of the identity of Israel, which must be considered at least partially hereditary. It is my opinion that the grafting of the “gentile” nations (there’s that word again!) into Israel was facilitated by a forensic adjudication, just as forensic adjudication is an aspect of reformed soteriology.
Israel identity did not “become” spiritual through some later modification to the covenant, nor did it ever cease to be a physical, biological identity. Israel was always both, simultaneously. And the adjudication I speak of is one that declares the gentile natality to be physically a part of Israel -giving an even deeper meaning to the capacity of God to make Israelites from stones. There was never any absence or diminution of the bio-genetic aspect of the covenant. If there were, then Matthew’s genealogy of Christ would make no sense to a Hebrew, as it is obviously a rhetorical device to demonstrate Christ’s status as a true Israelite. Instead, there was a physico-spiritual unity of covenant, access to which was by adoption in both the physical sense and the spiritual sense.
The purpose of the critiques of hereditary salvation in the NT are not to abrogate any and all understanding of the covenant as physical, but to ground the physical and spiritual together, ending the Hebrew’s reliance on mere descent to secure his status within the Congregation of the Lord. This is the very purpose of St. Paul’s use of the genetic “grafting” analogy to describe our grafting into Christ, as well as our grafting into Israel, whom alone Christ came to save. In my opinion, it is only in this unity of covenant that the promises to Abraham can be fully understood. When Christ declared the Temple sacrifice to be null, He was not abrogating the existence of a physical Israel, and even less race or ethnicity in general, He was abrogating the validity of the cultic/ceremonial practice of Israel (which was a shadow of the fuller cultic practice to come -namely, baptism and communion), and the purely hereditary idea of Israel identity. I’m convinced that there are genuine exegetic and hermeneutic issues with a purely spiritual Israel.
Using such a principle, it is easier to interpret Christ’s referring to Samaritans as “dogs” and Israelites as “children,” which is illogical if the covenant is purely spiritual, as the Samaritan woman was demonstrating greater faith than many Hebrews. I think that the physico-spiritual unity of covenant makes better sense of this, and similar passages.
The foregoing is supplemented by the following arguments:
-The creation-basis argument, by which the creation is to be propagated “kind after kind.”
-The argument from the prohibition against unequal yoking. Rushdoony in his “Politics of Guilt and Pity” is very instructive on this particular point, arguing that interracial (and some would argue inter-ethnic) marriage is corrosive of the very unity that marriage was ordained to foster.
-Then there is the argument from biblical liberty, as I have previously mentioned.
Taken together, these present a formidable case against the conception that interracial marriage must be permitted by societies that are regulated according to biblical law, or that the kinship-relation is forbidden as a political organizing principle. Thus, they may be used as law principles for the maintenance of public order. The scandal of black on white violent crime rates warrant such measures, if they are permitted. There are other, less direct social data to bring to bear on the question of whether what Rushdoony calls “uncongenial” elements should be forcibly joined, by law.
The project itself is not one of equality before the law, nor is this an issue for theonomists. It goes without saying that equality before the law is a well-established biblical mandate. Rather what arises is a question as to the appropriateness of government mandated social engineering. The separate is never equal ruling of the Warren court is patently illogical, and can be show to be so. Separate is never equal only by virtue of minorities having some “property” in white society that must be juridically enforced. Thus, we must call it what it is: legalized expropriation of resources by redistribution based on group identity. Those for whom race is a “social construct” with no basis in biology (patently and scientifically absurd), must find a different basis than the existence of a chimerical attribute on which to redistribute resources. Thus we see the essential absurdity of any and all race-based redistribution or favoritism -if “equality” is our stated goal. But it isn’t the real goal. Indeed inequality is the real goal.
The logic of separate is never equal should, by rights, eliminate the legal basis for affirmative action, since it is based in part on a distinction of separation, but logical consistency of statutory law is not a necessity of statutory law, whose chief objective is plain to the understanding.
There are other important reasons, but those alone will suffice.
We’ll be publishing the paper to which Laurel made reference in the upcoming issue of the Kinist Review, where a powerful case for ethnonationalism is made by Ehud. In fact, a good portion of the issue is focused on this question of “the one and the many” and the orthodox doctrine of nations.
It’s late, and I have to leave the agrarianism support to another time.
