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Iron Ink

Pastor Bret

July 19th 2010

This post title is “Ethnicity, Culture & Belief”

While I am not a Kinist, (in point of fact I’ve been severely insulted by them in the past for my rejection of their doctrines) I do believe that Kinism has put its finger on a significant problem (i.e. – the death of the West & the death of the faith, culture and people who made the West the West) and that problem must be addressed with precision and nuance. It will do no good to just dismiss Kinist arguments by ad-hominem. I will go on the record as saying I do not believe that all Kinists are racists (whatever that word means) and I do not believe Kinism automatically means heresy in every person who takes to themselves that descriptive title. The issues that Kinism raise are tougher nuts to crack then many people believe.

Here are a few starting points. These are not written in stone but just represent a bit of brain storming on my part.

1.) Salvation is by grace alone and people from every tribe tongue and nation will be represented in the New Jerusalem.

2.) Christianity, as a faith and belief system is the only faith and belief system that can build beautiful civilization.

3.) It is possible for varying ethnic groups / races to be Christian and yet have significantly different civilizations. It is not necessary for all Christian civilizations to look the same.

4.) It is a reasonable postulate that the differences that might exist between different Christian civilizations might be accounted for by the God ordained differences between varying peoples.

5.) Just as family lines have particular traits which include both strengths and weaknesses so people groups likewise will have particular traits that are characteristic of those people groups. (i.e. – Irish temper [speaking from experience] … Scottish pugnaciousness [again speaking from experience], Dutch frugality, Italian passion, German precision, etc.) Those traits will reveal themselves in the varying Christian civilizations that those people build.

6.) It is possible for a individual who belongs to one people group to denounce his or her people group and bond with a people group that is not his or her own. This accounts for why many blacks will be referred to as “Uncle Toms” by their own people.

7.) People groups are not to be understood solely as a genetic grouping. People groups also include belief systems. It is the interplay of nurture, nature, and belief that makes people groups, people groups. This is why the subject is so complex and difficult … you just can’t extract any of those three from the other two without involving oneself in significant error.

8.) Just as most family members prefer their family to all other families, so most people groups instinctively and rightly prefer their people group to all other people groups. Even the Apostle Paul reveals this (Romans 9:2f).

9.) While the tribe that Christians should most identify with is the Christian Tribe there can still be diversity of people groupings within this tribe so that a Mongolian Christian, while identifying primarily with the Christian tribe, would, within that tribe, identify most significantly with his or her Mongolian Christian tribe. Trinitarian Christians should have no problem with this since to deny this would be to deny the trinity in favor of a Unitarian God. Think “The One and The Many” here folks.

10.) A civilization composed of various people groups can only work if those various people groups are christian and are committed to a harmony of interests. When set civilizations seek to incorporate various pagan people groups under the umbrella of one civilization chaos is insured since the sin induced conflict of interests will have each people group seeking to be advantaged at the expense of the other people groups.

11.) This does not mean, however that civilizations which are composed of one people group that is pagan will be harmonious. Where pagan people groups compose one civilization it is my conviction that those pagan people groups, not having some other alien people group to despise, will look for some sub-grouping within their own group to be the red-headed step child that will be taken advantage of.

12.) People groups that are pagan will manifests their pagan-ness in their own unique ways. Ugly civilization that comes from pagan Tibetans will be a different ugly civilization that comes from pagan white Europeans.

13.) The only cure for all pagan people groups is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. However, when the Gospel of Jesus Christ covers the world as the water covers the sea it still will not be the case that all cultures and civilizations will be the same or that all the colors will bleed into one.

14.) The death of the West has many factors … the chief of which is unbelief. Further, the primary race and ethnicity that is responsible for the death of the West are the descendants of White Europeans. The white man has torn down his own house by his abandoning of the Christian faith. However, having admitted that doesn’t explain the “how” in which that has happened or the accelerating factors of the last 40 years. In order to understand the “how” and the accelerating factors I believe that we have to look in some of the directions that kinism points us toward.

I’d say that that is a fair enough, though very generalized summary. It’s not entirely accurate. We have some major new articles coming out in the newest number of the Kinist review that will go a long way toward more thoroughly articulating some of the nuances of the position.

Bret McAtee is a good guy. If he can accept all the above, then there is little essential difference between him and us. I don’t know who he’s listening to, but our position is very well documented. What Kinism is should be gotten from this site, Spirit, Water, Blood, Cambria Will Not Yield, and a few other sites, and there is massive consistency between them in outlook. It is not an immature or poorly developed view, such that there is not much latitude to validly claim that one cannot differentiate between the authentic doctrine and crackpots/pretenders who have infiltrated the movement and have attempted to bring Kinism into disrepute by claiming for it positions it has never maintained, such as a race-based soteriology. Kinism and Christian Identity are like night and day.

“Salvation is by grace alone and people from every tribe tongue and nation will be represented in the New Jerusalem.”

But what does this MEAN? You state these terms, but never define them.

Salvation is by grace alone, and yet, YHWH God clearly calls one people, one ‘ethnos’ (the very Greek word in the LXX and the N.T.) to salvation.
What does ‘His People’ mean in Matt. 1:21, if what YOU mean is ‘all men, everywhere, of every melanin count, and epicanthic fold.

What of the tribes ‘devoted to destruction’ in the O.T? THEY did not fall under the ‘all hominids, everywhere’ mindset that is more unitarian universalist, than conciliar Christian.
What of the Hottentots, and those ‘races’ that perished in the N.T. era, that never had the ‘Gospel’ preached to them?
Clearly, an ‘all men’ and ‘every tribe’ meme needs to be DELINEATED for it to even MEAN something…..

I clearly see One race, One ‘Folk’ as it were, as comprising the ‘twelve tribes scattered abroad who are the Church according to St. Peter’s and St. James’ Epistles.
That, of course, goes against the (unstated) universalism of the above statement.

But we MUST be clear on our terms, or be laughed at…..
Which is not what I am trying to do, BTW.

I am merely ASKING the question, that needs to be asked.

Clearly, as one vessel can be made for honor and one for dishonor, and the clay has no claim against the potter, we have to allow that there may be entire classes of vessels that are made for dishonor. I think what McAtee is referring to is the notion of equal theoretical participation in the plan of salvation, and not the literal presence of a representative of every tribe and nation. Clearly there were “tribes” that were destroyed for disobedience (marked for dishonor) that predated the Noahic covenant, and they will not be represented, as none were saved from among them.

How far this logic may be taken is a matter for debate. With that said, I see little evidence that salvation is based on ethnic-racial group inclusion unless we consider that in each and every case where “nations” (plural) and (Gentiles) is mentioned vis-a-vis salvation, it is in reference to the 12 Tribes. This, I think, does violence to the text at several important points. John 3:16 seems fairly “theoretically” universal to me. I do not have an GR NT in front of me, and I do not know what the word translated “world” and “whosoever” were in the various Greek textual versions that have come down to us. However, Acts 10 is far clearer, in that is distinguishes between those who were of the circumcision and those who were not equally receiving the Holy Spirit 10:44-48. Mono-racial soteriology makes nonsense of that passage. Yet, there is something “special” and “important” about belonging to physical Israel, as Paul repeatedly makes clear.

The “spiritualized” (gnostic) view of covenant also cannot be the correct interpretation. I have developed a view that covenant is both physical and forensic. Just as one must be adjudicated righteous, one also must be adjudicated “Israel” in the sense of physical participation in Israel. This to me makes sense of the genetic “grafting” analogy used by St. Paul in reference to our participation in Christ. Clearly Matthew’s genealogy is presented to convince Israelites that Christ is “pure.” The OT type of the “kinsman redeemer” must be viewed as an antetupos of Christ.  It is from this idea of multi-racial soteriology, combined with the seriousness and solemnity with which belonging to Israel is treated, and all the words spent on establishing Christ’s identity as, and mission to Israel, that I developed the dual covenant hypothesis (which may very well not be original).

Obviously, Matt. 2:20 and 2:21, in referring to a geographical territory belonging to “Israel,” must be speaking of a specific, genetic human population, and cannot be thought to be speaking of all nations. This is one of the literally hundreds of references to Israel as a human population that appear not only in the OT, but also in the NT. Clearly, ‘Israel’ continues to be a specific “people” in the NT, nor has their ethnic identity been in any sense abrogated. But are they, and they alone, also spiritual Israel, in the sense in which Paul distinguishes between true Israel and the Israel that is by “descent” in Romans 9:6?

I’m beginning to think that if we do not have this dual covenant, it makes nonsense of the limited scope of Christ’s salvational mission in Matt. 10:6 when seen from the perspective of Acts 10. A genetic population must be referred to in some sense in Matt 10:6, since Christ qualifies Israel with the term “house,” indicating a “family” and a line of descent. This resonates with Paul’s discussion of the importance/meaning of “descent.” There is too much evidence that Israel never ceased to be considered a physical people who were God’s people. Where we get into difficulty is that, yes, Christ was sent to the “House of Israel.” But it was the Lord’s perfect plan that the stone that Israel rejected become the Chief Cornerstone. But for whom? For those who had just rejected him? Not exclusively it seems; only a remnant will be save of Israel. Or rather to a new set of peoples who would accept Him as Savior?

Romans 10 and 11 seems to constantly distinguish between Israel and the Gentiles. The question arises repeatedly, has God entirely rejected Israel (the people -how could He reject “believers” if believers are Israel)? The answer coming, no, He has not. But that there must be a partial “hardening” of Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles is come. I have read in Identity literature where the term Gentiles is supposedly a reference to the various “nations” that comprise Israel, but this seems to strain the sense in many places.

The identity of Israel (who is Israel and who may count themselves among them) is the most important question in the Bible from a human standpoint. All soteriology hangs on it. There can be no debate on this point.