The Kinist Review

It is becoming undeniable, through the tireless research of Kinists in the area of the orthodox doctrine of nations, that the scions of the Reformed Faith, a group encompassing all its significant pre-modern exponents, viewed nationality as rooted in natality, and as both the natural and scriptural basis of human polity. One such exponent, Abraham Kuyper, who was a major influence on the Theonomic developments within orthodox Calvinism leading up to Rushdoony, is below quoted in a passage bearing remarkable similarity to Kinist writings on the subject. His subsequent excursions from this solid ground form the basis of a deviation that reflects the gradual loss of Calvinist orthodoxy in the area of the doctrine of nations and the basis of polity. As our research progresses its effect will inexorably be the pressing upon modernist and post-modernist Calvinism (denying the reality of race, and the beneficial effect of racial unity and exclusion, God-ordained role in the redemptive-historical drama) of a stark dilemma: abandon the doctrinal/theological heritage that they claim as their possession, and declare themselves progenitors of a rootless and autonomous dogma of secular socio-political faith, or embrace the doctrine of nations that Kinism is, gradually, proving is the immemorial doctrine of the Christian church.

The quote below is taken from Kuyper’s Lectures on Calvinism -Six Stone Lectures: Calvinism in History (pps. 29-30 [65-66 in the PDF pagination]):

In China it can be asserted with equal right that Confucianism has produced a form of its own for life in a given circle and with the Mongolian race that form of life rests upon a theory of its own. But what has China done for humanity in general, and for the steady development of our race? Even so far as the waters of its life were clear, they formed nothing but an isolated lake. Almost the same remark applies to the high development which was once the boast of India and to the state of things in Mexico and Peru in the days of Montezuma and the Incas. In all these regions the people attained a high degree of development, but stopped there and, remaining isolated, in no way proved a benefit to humanity at large. This applies more strongly still to the life of the colored races on the coast and in the interior of Africa; a far lower form of existence reminding us not even of a lake but rather of pools and marshes. There is but one worldstream, broad and fresh, which from the beginning bore the promise of the future ; this stream had its rise in Middle-Asia and the Levant, and has steadily continued its course from East to West. From Western Europe it has passed on to your Eastern States and from thence to California. The sources of this stream of development are found in Babylon and in the valley of the Nile. From thence it flowed on to Greece. From Greece it passed on to the Roman Empire. From the Romanic nations it continued its way to the North-western parts of Europe, and so from Holland and England it reached at length your continent. At present that stream is at a standstill. Its Western course through China and Japan is impeded, meanwhile no one can tell what forces for the future may yet lie slumbering in the Slavic races which have thus far failed of progress. But while this secret of the future is still veiled in mystery, the course of this world-stream from East to West can be denied by none; and therefore I am justified in saying: that Paganism, Islamism and Romanism are the three successive formations which this development had reached, when its further direction passed over into the hands of Calvinism; and that Calvinism in turn is now denied this leading influence by Modernism, the daughter of the French Revolution.

And further… from pps. 30-31 [68-69 in PDF pagination]:

From the high-lands of Asia our human race came down in groups, and these in turn have been divided into races and nations; and in entire conformity to the prophetic blessing of Noah the children of Shem and of Japheth have been the sole bearers of the development of the race. No impulse for any higher life has ever gone forth from the third group.

Thus far, the historic doctrine is established, that national existence is properly based in natality, and that polity is established on this ground. This is the ancient and venerable doctrine. But here, Kuyper, like many immediate pre-moderns, goes astray, and, following the siren of eugenics, asserts that inter-mixture of blood is the harbinger of progress, and not of decline. Kuyper’s objection, then, is not to tribal, or racial, intermingling, but, like a true eugenics advocate, Kuyper only approves of the right blood to inter-mingle. The logical conclusion of the doctrine is one that lies unstated in Kuyper’s exposition, but is undoubtedly the inevitable conclusion. While he clings to the notion that this inter-mixture of blood brings in the beneficent characteristics of foreign types, he neglects to factor this principle in the the very decline (via modernism’s caricature of Calvinsm) that he decries. We then, after establishing the historic doctrine, enter realms of the specious with the importation of modern follies:

(Page 31 [68])

Thus on the one hand there are groups which have dominated exclusively their own inherent forces and on the other hand groups which by commingling have crossed their traits with those of other tribes, so having attained a higher perfection. It is noteworthy that the process of human development steadily proceeds with those groups whose historic characteristic is not isolation but the commingling of blood. On the whole the Mongolian race has held itself apart, and in its isolation has bestowed no benefits upon
our race at large. Behind the Himalayas a similar life secluded itself, and hence failed to impart any permanent impulse to the outside world. Even in Europe we find that with the Scandinavians and Slavs there was hardly any intermingling of blood, and, consequently having failed to develop a richer type, they have taken little part in the general development of human life.

This, of course, is nonsense, given the evidence we have of advanced navigation, metallurgical arts, mythology, and other signs of high civilization from the Scandinavian “race”. Kuyper here seems to conflate the imperial/progressive/gnostic impulse with the “advance of humanity,” and in doing so confuses materiality for spiritual and cultural development, knowledge for being. The relative isolation of the Mongolian, and the infusion of its developments into classical Chinese culture through the dominance of its elites, while failing to “advance humanity,” nevertheless attained a very high level -a level in comparison to which the modern Western malaise would appear to be a decline, on the basis of its refinements in the arts, in political character, in nobility. Further, Kuyper’s views fail to take into consideration contemporary (to him) advances in historical analysis, made by scholars such as Tenney Frank, that mark the decline of Greek and Roman culture to their respective imperial periods, during which the importation of foreign stock as domestic slaves, and inter-mixture with them, immediately preceded the historical symptoms of cultural decline and eventual dissolution. 

The sole egress from this dichotomy is the frank denial of decline, at which point the doctrine of advancement through commingled blood is shown to be hollow, and dependent on a false view of human “progress” that is equally flawed. In this Rushdoony departed from the view of his intellectual mentor, and departed from a novel “orthodoxy” that had secreted within it several of the presuppositions of the dogmas it would deny: namely those of the French Revolution, and the boon wrought by the unqualified “brotherhood” of man. Kuyper’s goal in these lectures is to free Calvinism of the guilt for, and the taint of, the French Revolution and its ideals. In doing so, he uses intellectual materials tainted by this very disorder, and undermines his case in a way that Van Prinsterer, before him, had not done.