The Royal Races Redeemed: A Belated Response to Brian Abshire’s “Royal Race of the Redeemed”

I was at first quite reticent to offer any reply to reverend Abshire’s essay, “The Royal Race of the Redeemed,”¹ as I have a good deal of fondness for the man, but I concluded at length that some lines of argumentation leveled therein simply could not go forever uncorrected.  And since he deigned to fire the opening salvo in public, any return volley, if it aim to mend the damage done, needs be public as well.  So I herein endeavor to clarify and, as respectfully as possible, clear up some misconceptions.

The reverend opens his essay with a bone-throw to cultural Marxism:

 [R]acism has no place in our church.

This in itself is a strange offering. The very term “racism” comes down to us as popularized by Leon Trotsky, who studied to manufacture a term with which to indict Christendom of our “sins” of patriotism, paternal and maternal honor, loyalty, inheritance, boundaries, property, identity, and hierarchy. Since none of these extant terms seemed good candidates in and of themselves for conveying his intended sense of odium for the entire spectrum of traditional Christian virtues, he minted one anew to encompass all, which might, with one fell swoop, cast all of these Christian virtues as evils.  Remarkably, it worked. And it has worked remarkably well.  So too has the neologism constructed to oppose patriarchy: “sexism.” These terms are now fully ingrafted into the American lexicon and ubiquitously invoked throughout all Christian lands as the foremost weapons against Christian civilization.  In the same measure that Christians have conceded to these indictments, adopting the Marxian culture-of-critique categories as their own, we have seen Christendom succumb to mutilation, debasement, and abject suicide.

Shirtsleeve sound bites prove to be quite effective marketing and bumper-sticker ethics for an infectious catechism.  As has been noted by many before this writer, Marxism uses language not for the purposes of any real communication, but, rather, as a weapon and a means of social control.  Whatever else may be said of Marxists, they certainly do know how to capture the language, and thereby, the minds also.

Anti-racism proves not only by its pedigree through Marxism to be of Jacobin origin – Marx acknowledged communism to be the extension of the French Revolution – but also by its telltale fruit. As Shakespeare said of equality, it is “an eternal wolf” which devours ever more until it turns even on them who presume to hold its leash.  I could here beleaguer the point by attempting to enumerate the ever-expanding panoply of incoherent and mutually exclusive definitions for racism, but why bother when its manifold usages tender only one real effect? Racism’s true and overarching definition is nothing less than this: any reluctance shown by, or suspected of, a White person to seek the benefit of other races over that of his own children, or his own race; or the inability to perceive the most appropriate and thorough means of doing so in any given situation according to the arbitrary and largely unforeseeable preferences of other races.

Basically, if you dare to be born of the European race and are not perceived as  sacrificing your time, treasure, country, and children for the benefit of other races, you are declared the lowest form of heretic against humanism – a racist. To whatever extent we feel compelled to exonerate ourselves of this fictitious sin – a concept so undreamt by the historic Church that we went nearly two millennia without a name for it – we would, by such a concession, disavow God’s holy law.

The reverend continues:

[T]he only really important distinction is whether or not men bend the knee to King Jesus.

Surely, the Church has always held the most important distinction between men to be their relationship to the Covenant. But that is a far cry from saying, as the reverend does here, that it is the “only” important distinction. And by his inclusion of the adjective “important,” we take him to mean that it is the only distinction with which Christians are allowed to concern themselves. If granted, this maxim anathematizes every iota of social, ecclesiastical, governmental, national, familial, and gender distinction and hierarchy. It immediately erases the entire social order of the Bible: fathers, mothers, children, elders, deacons, Romans, Galatians, Israelites – all of it – abolished.  It posits a ban on axiology and a war on creation itself.

Rest assured, we know this is not the reverend’s actual view. It is, however, the inescapable entailment of what he’s written.

Happy we are, then, to see him segue back into orthodoxy:

There is a tendency to assume that the expression of His image in our culture is the only expression. . . . [T]he same universal principle may be worked out differently, by different people, due to different circumstances. . . . [T]here is nothing inherently wrong with different people creating different cultures – to the contrary, cultural variation within the context of Christian orthodoxy is in fact a good thing.

This is the genuine Trinitarian social doctrine. This assumption of perspectival and cultural multiformity is the true conception of Christian diversity in unity – the only coherent unified field theory for even the most mundane interrelations of, and differentiation between, men and things. It is the only basis for the cosmology in which we find ourselves partakers because the cosmos reflects, in some profound way, the character of the God who is Himself, as a Trinity, simultaneously diverse and unified. Thus, and by naught else, are the one and the many harmonized.

Despite our relief at the reverend’s words here, they stand in ribald contradiction to his preceding commentary on “racism” and “the only important distinction.”  The notorious Alienists who showered him with accolades for the essay in question have redundantly and adamantly denied any plurality of Christian cultures, nations, and civilizations, insisting instead that all Christians, upon entrance into the Covenant, take on one monolithic and homogenized culture absent any and all internal distinctions. These men actually argue that the apprehension of differences is paganism and grounds for immediate excommunication, if not execution. Really. As absurd and anti-Trinitarian as their position is, it is indeed their position, and no one ought to succor them in this horrendous folly.

So we are glad indeed to find reverend Abshire openly opposing them at this junction, at least.

Here, though he speaks true, he does so with such ambiguity that both sides, Alienist as well as Kinist, must agree:

[O]ne of the greatest threats to godly dominion is human tyranny. . . . [M]any Christians want to create their own laws, rules and rituals and force others to believe and do the same. They have beliefs, prejudices, or preferences that they then use the Scriptures to rationalize, justify, or excuse. In other words, their beliefs are not derived from a sound, exegetical study of the Scriptures, but rather the Scriptures are “cherry picked” to support their already, pre-existing beliefs.

This is incontestable. But it also begs the question entirely, because both sides identify with it as bolstering their own position against the other.  In the midst of the controversy at hand, speaking yea and nay at once, it frankly smacks of political stumping.

Next, the reverend invokes yet another Marxist neologism:

There is a well documented phenomenon called “xenophobia” which means “hatred” or “fear” of strangers. . . . Bible believing Christians need look no further than Original Sin for an explanation.

Though the term xenophobia originated in the late 1800s as meaning “agoraphobia,” it is believed to have been incrementally redefined to mean “fear or hatred of strangers” in the pages of New York and London newspapers (which were, by all accounts, epicenters of communism at the time) in the midst of the communist revolution somewhere between the years of 1900 and 1909.  As is well known, whenever the Marxists determined someone to be a threat to the system, they didn’t debate them, but simply declared them insane:  thus they systematically marginalized the White Russians, the Volga Deutsche, the WASP establishment in England and America, and Christendom at large.  Like so-called “homophobia,” which presumes to pathologize the Christian view of gender, xenophobia pathologized all Christian reckoning of belonging, identity, and boundaries, positing the ersatz, and thoroughly humanist, ethic of psychoanalysis in its place.  Like racism, the “sin” of xenophobia was a charge so undreamt by the historic Church that we went nearly two millennia without any word for it in any Christian tongue. So the idea that Bible-believing Christians should now absorb this term, created by twentieth-century antichrists, as a legitimate concept, even connecting it to original sin, is a queer notion indeed.  Accepting the reverend’s position on this would be a resolution to engage in the very thing against which he has cautioned – creating our own laws, rules, and rituals (a la cultural Marxism) and expecting others to abide by the same.

Though there are admonishments aplenty against doubting or faithless sorts of fear, as well as against the unjust treatment of foreigners, one will search the Scriptures in vain for any law (or even incidental pronouncement) condemning the “fear of foreigners,” except in the context of spurring God’s people on to courage in war or related matters of resistance to foreign aggressions.  Truth be told, there are numerous texts which condemn both the multiplication and ascendence of foreigners in the land.  We ask: was David sinning by praying for God to rescue him from the hand of foreigners (Ps. 144:11)?  Or was Isaiah in sin when he overtly condemned any who are “pleased with the children of foreigners” (Isa. 2:6)?  The prophet Zephaniah condemned even those who wear “foreign apparel” (Zeph. 1:8)!  Shall we charge the prophets, speaking under the authority of Holy Spirit, with this supposed sin of “xenophobia”?  Their pronouncements certainly fit the definition; anyone today who dared to confess, in any context, displeasure with the children of foreigners would most certainly stand accused of the supposed “sin.”  By its absolute juxtaposition to Scripture, we must conclude the practice of xenophobia is no sin at all.

Less than sin, we find it to be a high Christian virtue.  All sane Christian parents regard a certain “fear” of strangers as a solemn duty laid upon them by the Almighty Himself.  Otherwise, we would have no reservations about leaving little Johnny and Suzy overnight with a man whom we have never met before.  And the xenophobia to which one is compelled regarding third-world immigration differs not in kind, but only in degree, from the stranger-babysitter scenario.  Xenophobia is, generally defined, nothing less than biblical wisdom.

Moreover, we read in the Westminster Catechism, question sixty-nine, that engagement in or consent to anything which tends to threaten life constitutes an overt violation of the sixth commandment.  Thus by its safeguarding of life, what we, since the time of the communist revolution, have been shamed through psychoanalysis for – xenophobia – is patently necessary if we hope to uphold the sixth commandment.  Anyone who lacks all xenophobic conviction actually stands in direct violation of God’s law.  That is the Westminster position.  It is the Christian position.

But the reverend intimates that people may go to extreme lengths in order to rationalize their sin, such as resorting even to the Bible for justification of their xenophobia, thus proving just how pathological such persons really are, and how sinfully deranged xenophobia truly is.  Do you get that?  If you have a problem with your country being overrun with hostile foreign races, or even teach your children not to walk off with strangers, and you dare to find justification for that position in Scripture, it just proves that you’ve hardened your heart against God. By the reverend’s expressed standard, even deferring to the law and the prophets on the question of foreign children is ruled incontrovertible proof of guilt!  No defense is then allowed.  No exculpatory evidence is permitted, only confession and repentance.  Welcome to the star chamber of cultural Marxism.  But this invocation of xenophobia on the reverend’s part, then, is not only a Marxist propaganda tool meant to smear those holding to the theonomic and traditional Christian view, but, as the reverend alludes, a principle above Scripture itself.  George Orwell would have called it classic “crime-stop” programming.  Rather than giving the matter its day in court, the reverend opts to stir up stray tendencies in a person toward false guilt.  This is not an argument.  It’s psychological manipulation.

In his closest approach to a biblical argument, he sets about trying to somehow tie xenophobia – really nothing more than boundaries and identity, presupposed as good in every stroke of the Decalogue – to the apostasy of ancient Israel:

The Bible then can never correct such people; in effect while affirming their love for God and His Word, they have stopped their ears to both – a not unfamiliar situation; this is what ancient Israel die [sic] time, and time again with disastrous consequences.

First, we must object to the reverend’s insinuation that xenophobia was somehow the cause of Israel’s judgement.  The Scripture speaks nowhere of this, and we must reject such strange doctrines being smuggled in based upon arguments from silence.  But while we are considering the matter, we ask, what exactly were those disastrous consequences of Israel’s disobedience in Scripture?  We find that the Scripture redundantly testifies that invasion, subjugation, national displacement, and genocide courtesy of foreign peoples were foremost among those judgments.  So, it seems to me, what he’s saying is that if we harbor xenophobia in our hearts, especially upon biblical grounds, then we invite the worst culmination of all of our xenophobic anxieties.  Maintaining a border is thus the cause of foreign aggression.  Without borders invasions are impossible, don’t you see?  This ever has been the exact argument of international socialism – that borders are the root cause of war.

Yet, contradicting himself again, we find him turning about to acknowledge that the curses of the covenant have distinctly ethnic dimensions:

Now, how does all of the above have to do with race and culture? Well, we are seeing right now a massive change in American society due to the widespread rejection of God. Immorality, fornication, and perversity are now widely accepted, even encouraged. Our national government is becoming more and more tyrannical, our economic system is in collapse and with rising crime, we have to incarcerate the largest percentage of our population of any industrialized nation in the world. The cultural values derived from English Puritan and Scottish Presbyterianism that built our nation are now openly ridiculed and rejected. Meanwhile, unrestricted immigration continues to flood our country with peoples from pagan, idolatrous or sub-Biblical cultures . . . transforming what it means to be an American.

While some Christians seem oblivious to the problems others are rightly concerned with the kind of society that is being built. . . . [O]ur children and grand-children, are going to have to live in the increasing[ly] hostile, tyrannical and economically bankrupt society these religions are building.

While America had a long history of fudging on the real deserts of crimes such as fornication and marital infidelity, the growing trend of immorality, fornication, and perversity of which the reverend speaks sprang forward, in greatest measure, from the mid- to late-twentieth century. This great sea change, it must be remembered, was punctuated by the revolutionary rulings of 1966 in the Unitarian Universalist, Roman Catholic, and Presbyterian Churches. Full aware that they were overturning two millennia of Christian doctrine, the Presbyterian Church did not even feign a biblical argument, but resolved nonetheless, that the Church suddenly found “no theological grounds for condemning or prohibiting marriage between consenting adults merely because of racial origin.” Thus the biblical criteria were traded for the libertine concept of mere “consent.”  Plainly, this is a standard foreign to Scripture.  Biblically, marriages were arranged either from a young age or by means of a bridegroom’s contract with the bride’s father, all according to the various national insularity codes and the creation ordinance of “kind after kind.” To prove this was known as the default position of the Church, I offer here excerpts from G.T. Gillespie’s overture against the modernism, communism, and treason of interracial marriage and integration, which was delivered before the 1954 Presbyterian Synod in Mississippi:

The first act of segregation performed by God was the placing of a mark upon Cain which distinguished his descendants from those of his brother, Seth (Gen.4:11-26). The promiscuous intermarriage of Seth’s descendants (the Sons of God) with Cain’s descendants (the daughters of men) resulted in the complete breakdown of family life and such widespread immorality and wickedness as to provoke the Lord to destroy the earth with a flood (Gen.6:1-7). . . .

[T]he intermarriage of dissimilar groups, whether the differences be moral, cultural, or physical, is not conducive to the preservation of wholesome family life or to morality, and therefore is contrary to the purpose and will of God [Acts 17:27]. . . .

After the flood the three sons of Noah — Shem, Ham, and Japheth — became the progenitors of three distinct racial groups, which were to repeople and overspread the earth . . . distinct racial characteristics which seem to have become fixed in prehistoric times. . . .

[And] the Lord’s confusion of tongues which wrecked the Tower of Babel project [was] another phase of His segregationist campaign. [It] was an act of special Divine Providence to frustrate the mistaken efforts of godless men to assure the permanent integration of the peoples of the earth. . . .

Jesus did not specifically denounce the racial distinctions existing at the time He lived, nor did He set plans on foot to abolish them and to bring about amalgamation of the Jews and the Samaritans, or of any other races. . . .

He [St. Paul] identified this unity of all believers in Christ, regardless of their racial differences, as a spiritual relationship, rather than a social or physical relationship. . . .

That Paul had in mind the absolute uniformity of believers in external relations and the wiping out of all distinctions of race, nationality, social status, sex or cultural heritage, is disproven by the fact that Paul never ceased to identify himself as a member of the Israelite [Shemite] race.²

Gillespie was compelled to denounce the strange new communist doctrine invading the Church because, as the Senate hearings on anti-American activity would shortly uncover, all of the Christian seminaries and mainline denominations had fallen under the control of the Marxists in their “long march through the institutions.”  They had been retailoring and distorting Christian doctrine according to the dictates of cultural Marxism, which, foremost, demanded racial integration.  But, even as of that late date of 1954, a mega-majority of two thirds of the Presbyterian churchmen present were found in Gillespie’s favor, endorsing his statement as the official position of the historic Church.  It had become well-known even at that time, as R. J. Podles documents in his indispensable work, The Church Impotent, that the elders, both teaching and ruling, had come in recent years generally to be the most liberal elements in their respective congregations.  Statistical analysis consistently shows that for every year one spends in seminary, his orthodoxy declines rather than increases.  It is a fact: the fully subverted American seminary system is where you send budding ministers to purge them of orthodoxy.  And as the anti-American activities hearings proved, it is no accident.

Following the 1966 joint resolution of the denominational governments by mere months, the Supreme Court issued the landmark civil rights ruling in the case of Loving v. Virginia (1967), overturning two centuries of federal, four centuries of state, six centuries of  colonial, and nineteen centuries of European anti-miscegenation law. Though trial judge Leon M. Bazile gave as an obiter dictum the argument tendered by St. Paul at Mars Hill – that God had separated the races by placing them on separate continents, and that for their good – the civil rights lawyers took the field, citing as their rationale the Jacobin principle of “equality,” the illegal, never ratified, and anti-constitutional fourteenth amendment, and, just as the denominational governments had univocally invoked the previous year, “consent.” Of course, this outcome was seen as necessary from the antichrist viewpoint due to the fact that even if the denominational governments resolved in favor of miscegeny, the mega-majority of Christian churches at the time remained resolute – race-mixed couplings did not fit the biblical definition of marriage. So it is that the federal government enforced the revolutionary ruling of the subverted denominational governments.  It was this coordinated one-two punch which forcibly altered the definition of marriage.

The consequences of this collusion of church and state against Christendom have now made manifest all of the most dire prognostications of the old churchmen.  The philosophic rationale imposed by the Marxist co-opted denominational governments – the egalitarian virtue of “consent,” and the general equalitarianism which it presupposes – have since evolved into the same inescapable conclusions so clearly foreseen by our fathers: on the exact same bases that miscegenation was sanctioned, and upon the same arguments, sodomite marriage is, manifestly, a foregone conclusion. Every legal precedent which led to interracial marriage also logically sanctions sodomite marriage, as well as every other abomination which the black swamp of man’s depravity can concoct.  Integration, as a seminal denunciation of God’s Law, proves to be our Pandora’s box, the gateway to national erasure: “the vengeance of the covenant” (Lev. 26:25).

In light of these historical facts, it is maddening to see the reverend’s attempt to diminish what used to be the mainstream Christian order by portraying any still abiding therein as confused or frightened by the modern era, and consequently driven to what are, by new age standards, outlandish conclusions:

Some Christians, not many, but some, have begun to explore what was previously unthinkable – that maybe the problem is race. . . . Their response . . . is to advocate some sort of race based distinction. Yes, I know – if you have not been exposed to this line of thinking it can seem shocking. But if you look at what is happening to this country . . . what is occurring right before our eyes . . . even the unthinkable can appear as not so unreasonable.

First, we traditional Christians do not believe the problem is race.  That’s what Alienists want us to say so they may pillory us as denying the supremacy of Christ.  No, we Kinists are most ardent Christo-Supremacists.  Race is not the issue, but it most certainly is the foremost manifestation of the issue today.  The issue, of course, is the self-same Babelite humanism which has incited the nations to rage against the Holy One from the most remote times.  It is the denial of theonomy in favor of autonomy.  It is rebellion against God’s rule.  Sin is the issue.  Miscegenation and egalitarianism are merely the foremost expression of that issue in our day.  They are expressions of rebellion, as well as curses of chastisement for our rebellion.

“Unthinkable”?  If the meaningfulness of race is so unthinkable a concept, why was miscegenation outlawed throughout Christendom up until the Jacobin and Marxist revolutions?  Why did Christians in ostensible unanimity historically agree that honoring racial differentiation and the bounds of peoplehood was a Christian duty?  And why did virtually every Christian, from St. Augustine to Francis Nigel Lee, explicitly teach that on the basis of Scripture, race is and always will be a significant issue? Many things may be said of the traditional Kinist position, but no one can get away with calling it “unthinkable,” for everyone, up until very recent times, thought it.

After having described it as “unthinkable,” the reverend turns about again, in direct contradiction of his previous comments, to acknowledge the meaningfulness of race:

After all, how many times do your children have to be assaulted, intimidated or violated in public schools by “minorities” before you start thinking that race might be a factor?  How many communities must be destroyed, jobs lost, or taxes inflated to raise minority children (or spent to build ever more prisons to house “minority” criminals) before the racial scapegoat begins to sound credible?

All of which is to say that he very much recognizes and acknowledges that race is an important and inescapable factor in any definitive survey of societal decline in America.  Acknowledging, as he does, that non-Whites, even if Christians, are the overwhelming source of violence, rape, murder, and societal chaos in our land, as well as in Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Rhodesia, and South Africa, is – I assure you – considered just as racist as the manifesto of any self-described Kinist.  The reverend is, if coyly, conceding to the Kinist argument at this point.

Yet, he still attempts to distance himself from Kinism by suggesting that the acknowledgment of such facts – the very facts he himself acknowledges – would somehow be an act of “scapegoating,” and, therefore, presumably immoral.  But if it is, he has indicted himself of the charge.  I can’t figure it out.

He continues seesawing back and forth – denying, affirming, and denying again:

The basic thesis is that the issue is never race – but always religion. . . . People are what they are because of their underlying beliefs about God and the culture that is built around them.

This is obviously and patently untrue.  And again, I dare say that the reverend knows it.  As noted above, he himself sees race as an issue in many circumstances.  The notion that people are what they are only due to their beliefs, if accepted, would mean that your newborn baby has no real relation or connection to you, because your beliefs differ so from the child’s at that point.  My children are not my children, nor my parents my parents, on account of any of our beliefs, but on account of our physical relation.  If one truly embraces the reverend’s argument at this point, he is no covenantalist, no Calvinist, and possibly not even a Christian – because the reverend is, perhaps in aims of striking a conciliatory cord, positing gnosticism.  Belief (knowledge/spirit) is not the sole component of man’s constitution, for man is also a physical being.  God commands us to “despise not the domestics of [our] seed,” (Isa. 58:7) to love our children as our own, even if they are unbelievers, to honor even our non-Christian parents, and so on.  Though men are saved by faith alone, the Smith family are not Smiths by faith only, and the Christian faith commands they maintain a certain allegiance to their blood, or as St. Paul so well phrased it, their “kinsmen according to the flesh” (Rom.9:3).

As for “the culture which is built around them,” though we agree with Henry Van Til’s maxim that “culture is religion externalized,” it is a somewhat abbreviated definition.  It is more completely understood as “religion poured over a people.”  And we know that the reverend actually agrees with this, as we recall his having waxed Trinitarian above: “There is a tendency to assume that the expression of His image in our culture is the only expression. . . . [T]he same universal principle may be worked out differently, by different people, due to different circumstances. . . . [T]here is nothing inherently wrong with different people creating different cultures – to the contrary, cultural variation within the context of Christian orthodoxy is in fact a good thing.”

Clearly, the aesthetic standards of Dutch Christians will vary widely from the standards of Christian Nubians.  The primness, cleanness, and compulsive minimalism of Dutch homes, their aptitude for realism in art, and the clear, rich melodies and deep Germanic intonations of their music stand in bold relief compared with the Nubian’s cluttered ostentation, crude artistic symbolisms, and unique rhythmic aptitudes. The Christian cultures these two groups produce will necessarily be quite different.  And the fact that this obvious reality needs to be defended today well illustrates the impact of the Marxian zeitgeist upon the churches. Neo-Christians have declared an all-out war on creation, and anyone who speaks in defense of God’s ordering of reality is, to them, a heretic.  But their emergent conception of Christianity is, as we’ve said, a thing undreamt by the historic Church.

The reverend goes on:

Our social disintegration that rightly deserves a Christian response is not a result of  the massive influx of black, brown or yellow people . . . but because the gospel of Jesus Christ has not yet sufficiently changed people’s lives – neither theirs, nor “ours.” The cultures these people come from either have not received the gospel, or worked out its implications consistently in family, work, recreation, charity, etc. However, the United States would not have decayed into a socialist monstrosity unless Christians had lost sight of a full-orbed gospel.

This too is, if you think about it for an instant longer than it takes to read, a textbook example of self-contradiction.  One cannot say that our social disintegration has nothing to do with X, then in the next sentence describe X distinctly as a seminal force of social disintegration.  Well, you can, but it completely nullifies your argument. If we acknowledge that these black, brown, and yellow people come from degenerate cultures and that our facilitating their influx is the result of socialism which stems from our regress from the full-orbed gospel, then it is nothing short of criminal insanity, after having assessed the matter so, to say that their influx in no way bears upon our social disintegration, or that we wouldn’t curb that process if the full-orbed gospel were again embraced. There is simply no way to hold both positions at once.

It is not, after all, morals which are invading our land, raping our wives and daughters, and killing our fathers and sons, but rather equatorial races, who in most cases, by the way, adamantly regard themselves to be Christians!

The reverend then goes scattershot with some textual references, some rightly interpreted, others not:

He says that God divided men at Babel into different linguistic/cultural groups (Gen. 11:1, 8-9). But this is clearly incorrect, as the text says that God divided them, Japhethites, Shemites, and Hammites, “according to their families, in their tribes, in their nations.” Language was merely the means to that very “racist” end.

He interprets Gen.3:16, 4:16, and 12:1 as proof that “the dividing line between men was never race but religion,” but this is obviously false as well. Though the religious distinction is quite significant, it is far from the only one, or one which overrules the others in every sphere. No, the Scripture delineates many legitimate dividing lines between men other than religion, such as family, tribe, and nation (Gen. 9, 10, & 11), or as the footnote on Gen.10:1-32 in the Reformation Study Bible states it: “The tripartite arrangement of the Table of Nations reflects the threefold division of humanity.” The Scripture unequivocally delineates family as a legitimate divide between men, aside from the subject of religion (1 Cor. 7:12-13; Col. 3:20, etc.), in addition to tribe (Lev. 21:14; Num. 27:1-11; 33:54; 36:6-12), nation (Jer. 30:8; Eccl.6:1-2; Neh.9:2), race (Prov.14:34; Isa. 18:2; 65:2), and even taxonomical distinctions like skin color (Jer. 13:23). Do we dare presume to denounce as fictitious, or meaningless, all of these categories that the Scripture everywhere takes for granted as real and meaningful? Only at our peril.

He inexplicably plunges headlong into the Alienist ditch of portraying Gal.3:28, Rom.10:12, and Jas. 2:4 as abolishing all social distinction. But he and I have strolled that avenue before. He actually sees that the egalitarian take on Gal.3:28, if granted, immediately justifies the ordination of women, sodomite marriage, and incest, among other things. And he denounces it, root and branch, for heresy!  Doubly strange it is, therefore, to find him nonetheless endorsing it.

We find him begging the question when he invokes the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19), as if one could deny the separate existence of distinct “nations” and simultaneously disciple them as nations. But, again, this rings quite hollow from the man, because I have personally heard him preach on this same passage, and he then took the inverse position on the matter as he does in the essay in question.  When preaching from the passage, he argued (like a thorough Kinist) that discipleship of the nations, teaching them all that God hath commanded, meant that God’s kingdom was comprised of various distinct Christian peoples, rather than the NWO vision of a monolithic universal nation, devoid of variation and distinction.

He doubles down on the folly by again citing Gal. 3:28, Rom. 14:10, 19, and Phil. 2:1 as proof that all social distinctions are abolished in the Kingdom of God: “any doctrine or practice that makes unlawful distinctions between Christians based on race, ethnicity or national origin is a violation of the Lord’s most basic commandment to be as one and love one another and hence, a disciplinable offense.”

Are we really to understand him to be saying that the honest perception of a Mexican national being Mexican, and not American, is a “disciplinable offense”?  Distinguishing a Negro family from a White family is grounds for discipline?  Seriously? If so, the pastor has himself violated his own principle by even citing the books of Galatians and Romans as proof.  How dare we recognize such distinctions in the Church!

No, if someone wants elucidation on Gal. 3:28, he need only turn to Acts 15, wherein Peter states that God made “no distinction” between the Israelites and the Gentiles, “giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He did to us . . . purifying their hearts by faith (v. 8-9) . . . we shall be saved in the same manner as they” (v. 11). The takeaway is that there is “no distinction” between us with regard to fallenness, nor the means which God has provided for our salvation.  But the Jerusalem Council yet persisted in speaking of Christian Israelites as “us” and the Christian Gentiles as “them.”  Were they in, reverend Abshire’s words, “violating the Lord’s most basic commandment”?  Of course not.  The commandment which the reverend invokes exists only in the minds of Alienists.

But, it seems he saved the worst for last:

The Bible insists that there are no ontological distinctions between believers (Gal.3:23-29), there cannot be an inherent moral objection to marriage between Christians of different ethnic backgrounds.

Wait, it does? Where, exactly? Clearly not in the Galatians passage he cites, because, as has been screamed from the rooftops by conservatives for the last half-century, taking that passage as an abolition of ontological distinction proves far too much.  Its declaration of equality between Judeans and Greeks seamlessly decrees the same for males and females, with the presumed intent of pertaining, in principle, to all believers.  If taken to abolish social distinctions (rather than as a soteriological statement), the reverend’s espoused view not only puts women in the pulpit, but sodomites as well.  If all believers are the same, there’s no such thing as sodomites anymore, because gender is then but another “unlawful distinction” between ontological equals.  In fact, if there were “no ontological difference between believers,” pedophilia and incest would be perfectly acceptable, so long as it were between believers; and any who demurred from the public approval of such things would stand condemned.  In a word: heinous.

The notion that Christians are ontologically identical, and that their unqualified unity unreservedly permits marriage between any and all, is a proclamation of outright war on the pastoral letters of the New Testament as well as the books of the Law. It anathematizes the entirety of the Christian social order. As goes race and nation, so goes gender and station. Fathers, mothers, children, slaves, masters, Hebrews, Romans, Galatians – the entire warp and woof of the Scripture stands or falls upon the interpretation of that passage. The pastor’s thesis of all believers occupying an identical ontological-social category can only be granted through the embrace of pure antinomianism – the renunciation of God’s Law.

Throwing this ontological canard around has worse consequences still: if the drawing of distinction between ontological equals is unlawful, it entails a denial of the doctrine of the economic Trinity.  After all, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all equally and ontologically God, would, according to the reverend’s new ontological maxim, leave no distinctions allowed between the Persons of the Godhead. To truly claim consistency, the reverend would have to abandon Trinitarianism in favor of monism.

Clearly, the ontological equality of the Godhead does not in any way prohibit distinction between the Persons of the Three in One.  On the contrary, we find, as students of the Word, that we are actually commanded to draw such distinctions.  The alternative is abject heresy.

Our churchmen now entertain the most obscene gnosticism, antinomianism, and flirtations with monism, all in aims of satisfying the extortive demands of cultural Marxism.  Mercy, this stuff would make Marcion blush.

However, perhaps perceiving that he has gone too far, the reverend again does an about-face to ameliorate the impact of his previous words:

However, since Biblical marriage demands that the “two become one flesh” there may be pragmatic reasons why such marriages might be unwise; i.e., the more different the individuals are in culture, education, interests and values, the more difficult it might be for them to achieve the unity demanded by God in Christian marriage.

Again, we see the reverend waxing Kinist.  By this point we are flabbergasted. It is a near total concession to the Kinist position.  How might the man who wrote that stanza not see that he has, by his own words, indicted himself of “disciplinable offenses”?  How can that possibly be?  As far as I can tell, where Kinists have argued that God’s Law and His express design for society takes into its scope a wide array of “pragmatic” concerns (equal-yoking of language, age, culture, race, etc.), Reverend Abshire insinuates that it constitutes “unlawful distinction,” and yet he himself here argues that the array of pragmatic concerns is perfectly allowed so long as we insist on its being predicated upon “wisdom” rather than God’s Law.

Thereby, the reverend has inserted a wedge of antagonism between Sophia (wisdom) and the Logos (Word).  But this is impossible.  Wisdom, otherwise known as the light of nature, natural revelation, or reason, may disclose different implications, or lead to fresh applications of God’s special revelation-law, but it can never be at odds with it.  Saying, as the reverend seems to, that the Scripture is opposed to Kinism, but godly wisdom simultaneously recommends Kinism, is to posit dualism inside the mind of God.  This, too, would be a radical departure from orthodoxy.  Godly wisdom cannot disagree with God’s Word.  And the reverend must, too, acknowledge that for a Christian to do that which he knows to be unwise is patent sin, else we describe folly as virtue.  This is why we see the perennial command in Scripture for us to pursue, obtain, and cherish wisdom.  Rightly stated, wisdom is the renewing of your mind, and the thinking of God’s thoughts after Him.

But, extending him the most consideration we can, it is possible that he meant to reference adiaphora (liberty of conscience) rather than wisdom.  Though this is not at all what he has written, we should consider it as a possible avenue of retreat and the most likely means of amelioration open to him. Although, even if he intended to construe it as a matter of adiaphora, we cannot see how that would evade indictment for, in his words, drawing “unlawful distinctions” based upon national, ethnic, or racial origin.  If such distinctions were truly unlawful, then simply deferring to your own tastes and appetites under the cover of Christian liberty would not exonerate you in the least.  If drawing distinctions between “ontological equals” were unlawful, it would be unlawful irrespective of whether one drew those distinctions by reference to Scripture, wisdom, or preference.  Unlawful is unlawful.

If the reverend wishes to build a case for some libertarian theory of adiaphora or take up the Klinean radical two-kingdom theory, he will have to scuttle this novel theory of “ontological equals” because the two concepts are at loggerheads.  Just as Burke noted in the wake of the French Revolution, liberty, equality, and fraternity are, rather than harmonious and reinforcing, actually antagonistic of one another.   While there is no sin in preferring one ice cream flavor over another (and this most certainly would be within the realm of adiaphora), to say that all ice cream is “ontologically equal” and that drawing any distinction between equals is a sin, would immediately undermine any claim of Christian liberty in the matter.

This is the point which we must underscore most, because in the time since the reverend’s publishing of the article in question, his reference to “ontological equals” has become something of a meme in Alienist circles.  Every Alienist now drops this ostensibly meaningless term as if its invocation settled all dispute.  It has become a magic incantation on their lips, devoid of thought.  We find his dubious address has inexplicably set the tone of the debate in Reformed circles and further greased the slide of modern Reconstructionism into Jacobin superstition.

The reverend’s essay, which, to the best of my reckoning, is an attempt at placating the Alienists by mouthing the patented PC shibboleths of the new-age doctrine, defies Christian orthodoxy at many points.  He knows it.  And he knows that we know it.  By virtue of knowing the gentleman personally, I believe his feigning concord with Marxian social theory, only to turn about and deny the same within the same piece again and again, is his way of silencing his most influential accusers – hedging bets, so to speak. Many of my readers will, I believe, conclude that such an approach is treasonous to the truth, and others still will see it as shrewd. I will not weigh in on that account other than to say that I wholeheartedly oppose his approach.

We cannot placate, nor ought we to entertain such fantasies of satisfying the “eternal wolf” of equality. It must at length be put down amongst us as the ravening enemy of Christ that it is, else He remove our lampstand, and our children with us perish, under the vengeance of the Covenant.

While the Scripture does speak of the Church universal as a holy nation (Grk. ethne), it clearly does so in the sense that all believers are, spiritually speaking, sons of God, or, alternately described, sons of Abraham.  Obviously, our spiritual descent, while quite real, is only meaningful to the minds of men by reference to the apparatus of physical heredity and kinship.  Therefore, if we accepted the Alienist position – that ethne were merely a meaningless, arbitrary, or evil delusion of bigots – then the higher concept of spiritual descent would be stripped of its exclusive analogy, and would therefore be lost to us entirely.

What’s more, there is no latitude, ethically speaking, to even speculate upon the possibility that God’s chosen means of analogizing the economy between God and redeemed man (by reference to physical paternity and kinship) might be an evil symbol.  Really, they who dare do so are no longer speaking of the Christian God, who is wholly above reproach, but some contingent pagan shade constrained by circumstance to “necessary evils” even in the revelation of His own identity.  Does God anywhere define His perfect fidelity by analogy to harlotry?  Never.  Is His graciousness described as cruel?  Not once.  Is His justice defined in terms of lawlessness?  No.  Sinful symbols and concepts represent His antithesis, and cannot convey any aspect of His nature.  How much less, then, can the interrelation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in homousioun (“the same substance”) be analogized through carnal or corrupt symbols?  Seeing as how the very Godhead is communicated to us in like terms of familial relation, we count even the symbols as hallowed things.  But to say, as Alienists opt, that concern for physical kinship is carnal, is to accuse God Himself of sin.

The unassailability of God’s own character, then, hallows the concept of kinship, (rather than abolishing it, as the Alienists insist) and subsequently shapes even our colloquial usage of all related terms: “Church Fathers,” “sister churches,” the “Mother Kirk,” “fraternal orders,” or as Rev. Thornwell wrote of Presbyterians, a “dour race.”  Christendom has ever made metaphorical reference to kinship to communicate the concept of spiritual relation.  This means that any spiritual brotherhood in the Church is dependent upon the abiding legitimacy and goodness of physical brotherhood, and if the Church’s status as a holy race means anything, physical race must be a high virtue as well.  This is really quite obvious by way of the fact that the Scripture everywhere takes for granted that nations and peoples are legitimate descriptors of physical kinship, not any doctrinal concord.  If we deny this, we actually wind up both nullifying the power of the metaphor and reducing the Scripture, and the kingdom of God with it, to absurdity.

Unlike the reverend, we’ll not entertain flights of psychoanalytic fancy, but we have conclusively identified many outright heresies woven throughout his essay – antinomianism, gnosticism, monism – all pursuant of, and subservient to, cultural Marxism. Does he actually believe the things he’s written on these subjects? No.  But neither does that make it any better. We content ourselves, then, with the fact that God knows the innermost parts of a man, and shall, in due time, put all things to right.

I close this article with Psalm 67, quoted in full, which describes the millennial reign as the culmination of royal races, over against a solitary race, of the redeemed.  Such passages can be contextualized only within the Kinist frame of reference, thus proving that Alienists are on the wrong sides of theology, history, and reality.

God be merciful to us and bless us,
And cause His face to shine upon us,
That Your way may be known on earth,
Your salvation among all nations.

Let the peoples praise You, O God;
Let all the peoples praise You.
Oh, let the nations be glad and sing for joy!
For You shall judge the people righteously,
And govern the nations on earth.

Let the peoples praise You, O God;
Let all the peoples praise You.
Then the earth shall yield her increase;
God, our own God, shall bless us.
God shall bless us,
And all the ends of the earth shall fear Him.

Amen and amen.

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