An excerpt from a letter written by C.S. Lewis in 1930 found on page 912 of his Collected Letters:

As to the business about being ‘rooted’ or ‘at home everywhere,’ I wonder are they really the opposite, or are they the same thing? I mean, don’t you enjoy the Alps more precisely because you began by first learning to love in an intimate and homely way our own hills and woods [in Ireland]? While the mere globe-trotter starting not from a home feeling but from guide books feels equally at home everywhere only in the sense that he is really at home nowhere? It is just like the difference between vague general philanthropy (which is all balls) and learning first to love your own friends and neighbors which makes you more, not less, able to love the next stranger who comes along. If a man loveth not his brother whom he hath seen–etc. In other words doesn’t one get to the universal (either in people or in inanimate nature) through the individual–not by going off into a mere generalised mash.

Particularism, localism, and kinism; without these things we are but generalized, atomized individuals stripped of our humanity.

Written by well known Scottish folk musician Dougie MacLean, Homeland is a song ridiculing the foreigners who have emigrated into his Scotland.  The arrogant colonists sell their expensive city houses and move out into the Scottish countryside where they love all the quaint superficials of the culture while fundamentally misunderstanding the core values and looking down on the people who created what they enjoy.   As a Southerner American, I have a deep understanding of and empathy with this song.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard or seen Yankees and liberal Westerners in the South go on and on about how they love the slower pace of life, Southern hospitality, sweet tea, and so on while with the next breath they mock the Christian and hierarchical values which produced them and insult the “dumb, racist, backward hicks and rednecks” whom it belongs to.  Yes, we can tell that that’s a fake Southerner accent, it makes you sound stupid, and it’s insulting.  We don’t need you to “fix” us or “improve” us. If bluegrass music, the Confederate flag, and conservative values are so bad, then why don’t you go back to where you came from?

The lyrics and a cover of the song are posted below, and you can see that he pulls no punches.  The foreigners complain about the weather and the local music, they don’t understand the history of the place and people, and they attempt to emulate some of the customs but get them all wrong.  MacLean scornfully mocks the arrogance of the “great improvers” whose efforts are purely destructive and points out the shallowness of their “deep concern” for suffering halfway around the world while ignoring it in their own community.  The last verse ends with the great nationalist line that, although these foreigners may have purchased the land, it will never truly belong to them.

You’re a stranger to these hills and you’ve come up
here to end your days
And you love our running rivers and you love our
quaint little Highland ways

You sold your house in the city – you put it on the
market and you did so good
Now you’ve bought a little piece of something
that you don’t understand and you’ve
misunderstood

Chorus:

But I’ll tell you about the land that you play on
What you’ve gained is our ultimate loss
I’ll tell you about the soil you decay on
I’ll hold it up to you like the Fiery Cross

You love the view from your window and you’d go out
more but it always rains
You don’t think much of the music or the tears in the
old man’s sad refrains

You’ve bought yourself miles of tartan and you wear it
round your middle and you wear it on your head
You stand there a proud believer in a vision of the truth
that’s long gone dead

Chorus

Once these glens were full of people and the songs
and stories of their fathers of old
And there was peace and plenty and a horn of
whiskey when the weather grew cold

Then along came the great improvers and they
cleaned it up like only imperials could
They lined them up for transportation to the land of the
brave and the free and the good

Chorus

Look to the south I tell you that the black man has it
cruel and hard
But you don’t have to look any further that the rumble
of stones in our own backyard

And Oh sad the day and all that’s left are a fading few
Yes Sir you may have paid good money for it but no it’ll
never belong to you

Chorus

Many liberal scholars claim that one of the major achievements of the Reformation and the Aufklarung (Enlightenment) was the establishment of religious freedom in the Western world, bringing to an end the dark ages and initiating a new era of “free thinking.”¹ While it is certainly true that the Enlightenment and its modernist principles did most strongly advocate for complete religious tolerance and freedom, the Reformation only helped establish this principle coincidentally, as it was never a goal of the Reformers. This fact can clearly be seen in the theonomic way Geneva was governed in the sixteenth century by its Calvinistic government, who refused to tolerate unbiblical heresies.² As Joseph Farinaccio points out, James Madison, also known as the “Father of the US Constitution” and a defender of “religious liberty,” clearly intended that the First Amendment of the Constitution prohibit the federal government from endorsing one denomination over another and from having the authority to define “Christianity.” Madison essentially believed in denominational pluralism, not religious pluralism, as it is understood and promoted by liberals today. Farinaccio writes:

The true meaning of the First Amendment cannot be understood apart from its historical context. Since the Federal Constitution’s amendments applied to the Federal government the states were sovereign to decide religious matters as they applied to their own populations. [This] meant that the Federal prohibition against an establishment of religion extended to Congress, since this is the Federal legislative body that would have the power to create a national state-supported church. Most of the state-sponsored churches that existed within individual states were not disestablished until well into the nineteenth century. States were responsible to handle such matters on their own initiative because the Federal Constitution did not have any authority to disestablish churches within individual states.³

It is quite evident that neither the Reformers nor their spiritual descendants (including the Founding Fathers) believed in the doctrine of religious tolerance and the consequent legislation of absolute religious liberty as the cultural Marxists of our day. No, the Western governments formed out of the Reformation always presupposed Christianity as the sole religion of the people of the land. Rousas John Rushdoony also writes:

Every social order rests on a creed, on a concept of life and law, and represents a religion in action. Culture is religion externalized, and as Henry Van Til observed, a people’s religion comes to expression in its culture, and Christians can be satisfied with nothing less than a Christian organization of society. . . . The basic faith of a society means growth in terms of that faith, but any tampering with its basic structure is revolutionary activity. . . . The life of a society is its creed; a dying creed faces desertion or subversion readily. Every creed, however healthy, is also under continual attack; the culture which neglects to defend and further its creedal base is exposing its heart to the enemy’s knife. Because of its indifference to its creedal basis in Biblical Christianity, western civilization is today facing death and is in a life and death struggle with humanism.⁴

In a Christian nation which has been sanctified by the Holy Spirit, the implementation of religious freedom would indeed be “indifference to its creedal basis,” which eventually but inevitably would lead to the death of that nation.

According to Scripture, a godly civil government is obliged to protect a mono-religious Christian society. Many prescriptive and descriptive passages concerning godly civil rulers make this clear,⁵ and to treat all these examples would fall beyond the scope of this article. I would, however, like to refer to one specific passage which is also treated in part one of this series, namely Psalm 101, due to its absolute and simple clarity concerning the matter at hand. By speaking of his “house” (v. 2), David shows that the psalm has applicability to his civil rule, even if he is most immediately referring to his own private household. Consider, for example, how Scripture speaks of the “house of David” (1 Sam. 20:16; 2 Sam. 3:1), the “house of Judah” (2 Sam. 2:4), and the “house of Israel” (2 Sam. 1:12). With this in mind, David’s intolerance towards unbelievers is made clear in verse 5, where he significantly and unambiguously exclaims that he will destroy them, followed by his undertaking not to tolerate their existence in his country (v. 7), and therefore to rid his land of the godless (v. 8). This passage could not have been any more clearly opposed to the modern idea of religious freedom. Psalm 101, therefore, makes it clear that the civil authorities of Christian nations have a duty to “defend and further its creedal basis” by disallowing all non-Christian religions to be freely practiced in its society.

Furthermore, the Belgic Confession also states in its article concerning the civil government: “being called in this manner to contribute to the advancement of a society that is pleasing to God, the civil rulers have the task, subject to God’s law, of removing every obstacle to the preaching of the gospel and to every aspect of divine worship.” This duty of the civil government, as explained in the confession, can be found in Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, where he explains the role of civil authorities: “For he is God’s minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil” (13:4). Of course, good and evil cannot be known apart from God’s law, and therefore what the apostle is literally saying here is that civil authorities have the duty to implement God’s law in society. This includes the first table of the law, which explicitly prohibits the practice of religious freedom in the first and second commandments (Ex. 20:3-5).

Our experience of reality also shows us that even in the most liberal Western democracies of our time, freedom of religion exists only in theory. Freedom in itself is a religiously indexed term, and true freedom can in reality only exist where the law of God is upheld, because any society that fails to uphold God’s law is a society enslaved to sin. The suppression of certain speech is also practically inescapable, and to have full-blown freedom of speech is practical atheism. Recently, for example, homosexual British pop-star Will Young called for the arrest of Christian pastors who preach against homosexuality:⁶ he is the fruit of the idolization of tolerance by the government of a once-Christian nation. In the name of “religious tolerance,” orthodox Christianity is now gradually becoming a culprit in the very society that was built on its foundation over thousands of years.

Christians are often very inconsistent in their desire for a community free of idolatry. For example, satanism is acknowledged by the Christian community to be outright demon-worship, and any Christian would be alarmed if satanists were tolerated in his community. Yet, in reality, satanism is no more idolatry (or demon-worship) than Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, or any other pagan religion. These abominations cannot be tolerated in a country or society that earnestly seeks the glory of God, for they will necessarily destroy it. A cursory look at the contemporary moral state of many of the once-Christian nations of Western Europe, who all opened their borders to many Islamic immigrants from the third-world, proves this.

The practical implications of this principle may, of course, vary according to different circumstances; but in my honest opinion, the best way forward from here would be for theonomists to secede into self-governing ethno-nationalist Christian states. It is important to keep a society homogeneous in order to apply the principle of religious intolerance, because only then can we rely God’s covenantal promises. He executes His promises ordinarily via lineage, and therefore we should trust in Him to regenerate the descendants of believing ancestors. Only by the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit executed in God’s covenant can a people persevere through generations (Ex. 20:6). Also, only in homogeneous, tribal societies can completely apostate children of believing parents receive just capital punishment, executed by their kinsmen-rulers (Deut. 21:18-21).

Finally, no unbeliever should ever be granted citizenship or receive a permanent residence status as an equal with the members of the existing homogeneous Christian society. Of course, members of all religions should always be treated with dignity and justice by Christ’s people (Matt. 7:12), but this does not necessitate tolerance of abominations under a Christian government.

Being by nature weak and sinful, we mere people would find it very difficult to overcome our natural inclination towards humanist philanthropy; but if we repent of our sins and walk humbly before our almighty God, the love for God’s law will overcome our tolerance for Christ-hating religions. We will be strengthened to take dominion of His creation and be instrumental in Christ’s victory over all His enemies.

Dear Pastor,

I find your criticism of gays to be mean, homophobic, and cruel. You fundamentalist Christians are so inconsistent in as much as you don’t take your own bible seriously. You tell those of us who are gay that God finds sodomy to be an abomination and yet you seem not to care about the other things in Scripture that God finds to be an abomination. Shrimp, crab, lobster, clams, mussels, all these are supposed abominations before the Lord, just as gays are a supposed abomination. Why stop at protesting gay marriage?

Bring all of God’s law unto the heathens and the sodomites. We call upon all Christians to join the crusade against Long John Silver’s and Red Lobster. (LOL). Yup, even Popeye’s shall be cleansed (LOL). We must stop the unbelievers from destroying the sanctity of our restaurants. (LOL)

I’m not going to analyze the bible for you I believe what I believe. I do not listen to what a man has to tell me on Sunday. I also do not believe everything in the bible.

Habib,

Already this objection raised by sodomites is becoming a worn out old canard. I’ve heard it raised as a “insightful and devastating protest” on talk shows. I’ve seen it put into scripts for television and movie dramas. I think among the sodomite crowd it is beginning to be seen as some kind of silver bullet that instantly kills the werewolf that is Christianity.

But you’ll excuse this werewolf if he just laughs at your silver bullet fired.

It is easy for those without knowledge on the Scriptures to knee-jerk when it comes to the issue of how the Scriptures are read. We don’t read the Scriptures without hermeneutical pre-understandings that help us to see how God’s revelation as a whole is to be understood Habib.

However, among those with a little background in the reading of Scripture we understand that there are distinctions that have to be made for them when we present God’s word on different subjects. One of those distinctions is that whatever God says remains in force for man unless in later revelation God alters what He said earlier on a matter.

The classic example of this is the Sacrificial system you find in the Old Testament. This is a system that God required by His Old Testament revelation. However, with the coming of Jesus Christ, who was the sacrifice about whom the Sacrificial system was proclaiming, the sacrificial system is no longer practiced by Christians. Jesus Christ was God’s fulfillment of all sacrificial offerings therefore Christians no longer offer bloody sacrifices of animals, even though you find the requirement for it in the Old Testament.

Another example of God altering earlier revelation is regarding foods consumed. Now, you will be interested in knowing that some Christians do still follow the OT dietary Law believing that the law regarding foods that you cited is still in force.

Leviticus 11:9-12 says:

9 These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat.
10 And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:
11 They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination.
12 Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.

Deuteronomy 14:9-10 says:
9 These ye shall eat of all that are in the waters: all that have fins and scales shall ye eat:
10 And whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye may not eat; it is unclean unto you.

So, for these Christians your criticism that Christians are inconsistent in their application of God’s Word is completely absurd.

However, your criticism remains absurd for those Christians who do eat what is forbidden in those Scriptures you cited because they can turn to Acts 10 and find that what God once called “Unclean,” has been lifted so that He now, in the New Covenant calls it clean. So, just as Christians no longer preform sacrifice because God’s requirement for sacrifice has been met, so Christians eat shellfish because God lifted His prohibition against it in later revelation.

However, what God has not lifted is His abomination of Sodomy. In point of fact, in the New Testament, God says again what He says in the Old Testament that Sodomy is an abomination, thus reinforcing those passages that were cited earlier to you. Here are the New Testament passages that agree with the Old Testament passages,

I Corinthians 6:9-10 — Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor [a]effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

Romans 1:26 For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is [r]unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing [s]indecent acts and receiving in [t]their own persons the due penalty of their error.

Obviously God has not altered His stance on the abomination that is sodomy.

Now, I understand that it is unlikely that this explanation will probably make little difference to your continued embrace of Sodomy but I wanted you to see that there is no contradiction in the Christian position on this matter. Christians can consistently refer to Scripture regarding the vileness of sodomy without being inconsistent because they don’t hold shellfish to be vile as well.

Now, would you like to talk about this more over a dinner on Red Lobster? I love crab-meet and I would love to explain you how it is you can give up your sodomite lifestyle and embrace life abundant.

These were the five most popular articles during the past month.  This is based upon the amount of unique visitors each page received.

Articles:

1)  American Indians are a Social Construct

A video mocking the idea of multiculturalism in the favor of race realism.

2)  Alienism and Marxism in Complete Agreement

Quotes from Marxist organizations show that Alienism and Marxism are in complete agreement on the issue of race.

3)  Slavery: Its Morality, History, and Implications for Race Relations in America, Part 1

David begins a four part series discussing the institution of slavery from a Biblical perspective, part 1 of 4.

4)  Reflections On The Belhar Confession, Part 4

Pastor Bret continues the series of articles discussing how the Belhar Confession which is being pushed for adoption in many Reformed denominations speaks more of Cultural Marxism and Liberation Theology then it does of Jesus Christ and Biblical Christianity, Part 4.

5)  The Folly of Biblicism, Part 3: The Consequences of Spurning Nature

Nil continues his series on Biblicism by examining the consequences of spurning nature, part 3 of 4.

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The Orania Movement describes itself as an “an independent Afrikaner community striving toward Afrikaner self-determination within a federal South Africa.”¹ It currently consists of a town with its surrounding rural areas of 20,000 acres of land, privately owned by the town’s approximately 900 residents, and located on the bank of the Orange River in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. The residents of the town also own more than 6,000 acres of land along the western coastline of South Africa, as the idea behind the Orania project has always been to set up an Afrikaner state that would span from the current town right through to the west coast of South Africa. However, it all started quite small twenty-one years ago. In 1991, professor Carel Boshoff, the son-in-law of the former nationalist Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, led a party of eleven people to buy a ghost town of 1,100 acres, with the purpose of setting up a white homeland in the Northern Cape.² They bought the piece of land for around $200,000 at the time. Orania is currently worth approximately $60,000,000. Over the past ten years, the average value of property in Orania has increased by 500%,³ and since 2010, the budget of this municipality has increased 60%. Frans De Klerk, the chief executive of the town council, comments that this “clearly indicates that Orania is now moving away from a dispensation where the [town] budget was solely focused on maintenance to a dispensation of decisive growth.”⁴

An example of the wise administration of the town council in recent times is that, after managing an agricultural water scheme for only a year, they have managed to cut irrigation levies to an annual adjustment of only 7%, despite a national increase of 25.5% in electricity costs.⁵ This is in part due to the town’s effective use of solar energy, an obligatory regulation for water heating in town. Apart from taxes, Orania generates income from outside donors who support the project. It also generated nearly $50,000 in interest during 2011 merely by maintaining its own monetary unit, the ora, which remains at a constant 1:1 exchange rate with the South African rand. The Orania Savings and Credit Union (South Africa’s only private community bank) exchanges ora for rand to the town’s citizens and then invests the rand to generate interest while Oranians continue to run their economy on ora. Orania produces jewelry to export to the whole of South Africa, also sending pecan nuts to China and vegetables to Great Britain.⁶ The town’s local approach to economic development seems to be paying off in many ways, and while other towns in the Karoo are characterized by a dying infrastructure, Orania seems to be going from strength to strength as investors are satisfied. One young businessman, who has lived in Orania for two years, told me that joining the Orania Movement was the best investment of his life.

Driving through Orania, I was quite impressed by a few things. Upon entering the town, one of the first sights one comes across is the Verwoerd Museum. The museum is set up in the house where the wife of former prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd — the mastermind behind the successful implementation of the apartheid policy — stayed for the last few years of her life. On the highest hill in the town is a memorial for the Irish soldiers who fought with the Boers in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), in addition to the busts of former nationalist Prime Ministers of South Africa, Hertzog, Malan, Strijdom, and Verwoerd. The town has two private schools with high academic standards and a thoroughly Calvinistic education. The largest school has 210 students and has experienced rapid growth over the past few years.⁷

Every neighbourhood in the town also represents a unique architectural style, and newcomers can choose their style of preference by virtue of the location where they buy or build their home. Die Oewer is a very modern holiday resort on the bank of the Orange River with its own spa and four-star hotel, attracting a significant number of tourists throughout the year. Orania has also recently started a retirement village with a care unit. It has a few small shops, a gas station, a couple of bars, and a large supermarket, providing all the essential daily industries to the town’s people. The town also maintains its own radio station, public swimming pool, and rugby field. During my visit, I bought a couple of CDs with voice recordings of the speeches of Hendrik Verwoerd at the town’s impressive gift shop.

Opportunities for further expansion and growth are plentiful. A number of projects are currently being launched in order to attract more residents to the town. There is no unemployment in Orania. Poor, unemployed newcomers are provided with free housing for a month to give them time to find a job, in order to avoid attracting poor dependents to the town. Luckily, job opportunities are not a rarity in Orania, because in principle the town residents are prohibited from making use of black labour. All labourers and residents of the town are white Afrikaners, making it a safe, crime-free, friendly, homogeneous community. The feeling of solidarity among all its residents is something that is not to be seen among white people anywhere else in South Africa. As Afrikaner guests in the town, we were also treated with a familiarity not found in modern multiracial communities.

The most immediate infrastructural shortcoming of the town remains its medical services. The town has a care unit and a clinic, providing the most basic services, but there are no hospitals or permanent doctors. The nearest doctors and hospital are in a neighbouring town twenty-five miles away, and currently, the two doctors from that town visit Orania weekly to provide Oranians with healthcare. Orania’s city council is, however, aware of this shortcoming and is working toward establishing essential healthcare services to the town in the near future.

Despite all the positives and the immense progress that is being made by Orania, there are some rather negative aspects of the project that deserve mention and seriously need to be addressed. First and foremost, I became aware of a significant religious problem in the town when I had a brief discussion with one of the youthful members of the Boshoff family about the cause and struggles of the Boers in the new South Africa. I noticed a rather compromised attitude in him, and he was rather surprised when I reacted by telling him that, while I agree that we must be open to differing methodologies when it comes to our struggle for independence, we must always seek the glory of God in our struggle and humble ourselves before Him. Make no mistake: Orania is a deeply religious community, much more than most most places in South Africa, and a lot of things are done right in that regard. Yet, the deeper you look, the more evident it becomes that their religious expressions are merely routine, not genuine. From my brief experience there, as well as the literature I received from leaders in the community during my brief visit, there seem to be very little signs of abasement before Christ by the community’s leaders as the Lord of all, and theonomy still seems to be a rather alien concept. This is somewhat of a letdown, especially considering that Dr. Carel Boshoff, the founder of the project, was a man deeply rooted in his Calvinist worldview. Further evidence of this letdown is the fact that the town, with four traditional Reformed churches, now also has a Pentecostal church — with the motto “Where the Holy Spirit is still welcomed” written on the signpost. This blasphemous statement cannot be tolerated in any God-fearing community.

The town’s current mayor, Carel Boshoff IV, is also rightfully considered too liberal by many traditionalist Oranians. Boshoff openly disagrees with his father’s vision for the town, and he once stated: “My father’s vision did not really work out. . . . We live in a post-nationalist age. Today’s Afrikaner is a modern, atomised individualist. . . . Here, because we are succeeding, every day we face a bigger picture and we have to be open to that.” Furthermore, when asked if an Afrikaans-speaking coloured person could join Orania, an Oranian tour guide replied to a reporter for the Sunday Times merely that they would “look at it on its merits.”⁸ But these are just concessions to unbelieving egalitarianism. First of all, Boshoff’s assertion that Oranians must be open to the tendencies of a “post-nationalist age” is both unbiblical and unfaithful to the ideal of freedom-loving Afrikaners. He might be correct in his observation, but to compromise an ideal to conform to the zeitgeist is unacceptable. Furthermore, the appropriate reply to the reporter’s question would be that the very formulation of the question is an insult to the Afrikaner’s identity and heritage, clearly presupposing that it is immoral for white people to govern and live among themselves. Sure, one coloured person in a community of a thousand would probably not destroy the community — but where does one draw the line? If one Afrikaans-speaking coloured would be allowed, why not a thousand? Why not ten thousand? And, if an Afrikaans-speaking coloured is allowed, why not a Mandarin-speaking Chinese? By no standard are Christians somehow allowed to discriminate on linguistic and not racial considerations. The only answer to such a question should be that we have a moral obligation to protect our race and white nations, and a compromise to multiracialism would eventually lead to exactly the opposite.

A final worrying factor is the acceptance of egalitarianism among Oranians. Oranians rightly recognize that one of the main reasons for the eventual loss of our freedom in 1994 was the use of black labour – to the extent that blacks largely outnumbered whites in their own country and eventually simply voted them out of power. Oranians guard against this by forcing wealthier citizens to only use white labourers. However, they still maintain that all its citizens are equal and that Orania should be run on democratic principles. If this philosophy is applied, and no class differences within the community are acknowledged, it could greatly hinder the forward progress of the project. Thankfully, egalitarianism here, just like everywhere else in the real world, remains only theoretical.

In conclusion: there are a lot of good and inspiring things happening in this well-intended project, but also several philosophical errors by the leadership, greatly dimming my enthusiasm for the project. I will, however, after my pleasant visit, constantly keep my Oranian kinsmen in my prayers, hoping that we as a people might someday put all the potential of this fascinating project to good use in the Boer people’s continual struggle for full self-determination.

“We are a Christian nation and we are Europeans. We don’t need Asians, Muslim fanatics in our country, simple as that,” says Ilias Panagiotaros, Golden Dawn spokesman, as he explains party policy: “Seal our borders with mines, full protection from army in the borders, high penalties and fines for Greeks who rent houses to illegal immigrants, high penalties and fines for Greeks who have illegal immigrants in their jobs.”¹ . . .

“That is why the whole system is fighting us,” said Anyfantis  [a Golden Dawn candidate]. “Because they are afraid that when we get into Parliament, the Greek people will understand that we are neither a gang, nor Nazis, nor children of Hitler. . . . We are just Greek patriots, we love our country. We are prepared even to sacrifice ourselves for our beliefs, for the country, for its people.”²

The Greek government was forced to call early elections due to massive unrest and discontent over their handling of the financial crisis and EU bailouts.  Those elections took place yesterday.  In the last parliamentary elections in 2009, the two mainstream Greek parties, which have been trading the Greek government back and forth for four decades, the center-right New Democracy (ND) and center-left Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK), scored a combined 77% of the vote and formed a governing coalition together.³  Fueled by both huge deficit spending and massive social programs, the prospect of a Greek government default and bankruptcy under crushing debt looked imminent in April 2010.⁴  Due to the serious financial shockwaves this would have sent through the entire Eurozone, the IMF, funded primarily by France and Germany, agreed to bail out Greece if the Greek government agreed to impose severe austerity measures.  But this proved insufficient, and in July 2011 a second bailout package was necessary to keep the Greek government afloat, accompanied by even stricter instructions from the EU concerning further austerity measures.⁵  These austerity measures were (understandably) greatly unpopular, both from those who did not like seeing these welfare programs cut, and also from those who legitimately viewed the EU’s dictating internal Greek policies as a clear and dangerous invasion of Greek sovereignty.  Given the riots, strikes, and general unrest over these austerity measures and the need for a possible third bailout looming, the ruling coalition was forced to call elections this year instead of in 2013, when they were next scheduled to take place.

Opinion polls running up to the election showed that both ND and PASOK, along with their kosher nationalist partner, the Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS), had taken major hits in popularity.  In their place, public support was fragmented across a number of smaller anti-austerity parties.  These parties included the left-wing Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), the Democratic Left (DIMAR), Ecologist Greens (Greens), and the Communist Party (KKE), in addition to the right-wing and anti-austerity Independent Greeks (ANEL), which splintered from the ND over their pro-bailout stance, and the hardline nationalists, Golden Dawn (XA).⁶

While members of the ND and PASOK were often too afraid to campaign in the streets due to the very real possibility of being physically attacked by angry voters, the anti-austerity parties were able to freely campaign.⁷  The nationalist party Golden Dawn made particularly good use of this ability, going into some of the areas hardest hit by illegal immigration to campaign on their platform of border security, deportation, and Greek independence and sovereignty.⁸  This campaigning even included gathering up donations of clothing, food, and other supplies to give out to the Greek poor.⁹  Political opinion polls are illegal in Greece two weeks before any election, but the last polls, taken on April 20, showed the Golden Dawn polling at 4.5% to 6.5%, well above the 3% threshold needed to gain parliament seats and even further above their 0.29% vote share in the 2009 elections.¹⁰¹¹  This is doubly impressive due to the local and international media’s full-court press against Golden Dawn, using the same old “evil, white supremacist, neo-Nazi” slander that they throw at any European nationalist party or organization.  They even went out of their way to interview members of the immigrant community in Greece to ask how “scared” they were about the Golden Dawn, completely ignoring the crime, disease, welfare drain, and unemployment caused by the hundreds of thousands of Albanians, Pakistanis, Kurds, Afghans, Iraqis, and Somalis in a country with a total population under eleven million people.¹²¹³  The media never grows tried of describing the Golden Dawn’s symbol as “Swastika-like” when, in fact, it is the ancient, millennia-old Greek meander (or Greek key) symbol.¹⁴

With 100% of the vote counted, the results of yesterday’s elections are as follows:¹⁵
Party  Vote %   Vote Total    Seats Earned
ND     18.85%     1,192,054    58 + 50 = 108
SYRIZA    16.78%     1,061,265    52
PASOK     13.18%     833,529        41
ANEL     10.60%     670,596        33
KKE     8.48%     536,072        26
XA     6.97%     440,894        21
DIMAR    6.11%     386,116        19
GREENS    2.93%     185,366     0
LAOS    2.90%     183,466     0

Interactive Greek election map

The two mainstream parties, ND and PASOK, plummeted from 77% of the vote in ’09 down to just 32% yesterday, earning 149 seats, just short of the 151 needed to form a governing coalition.  As a side note: ND earned 58 seats from their votes and another 50 seats reserved for whichever party comes in first to aid them in creating a governing coalition.  The anti-austerity left, SYRIZA, KKE, and DIMAR, captured 31% of the vote and 97 seats.  The anti-austerity right, ANEL and XA, captured 17.5% of the vote and 54 seats.  The Greens and LAOS failed to get the 3% of the vote requisite to qualify for parliament seats.

ND, as the party with the most votes, has three days to attempt to form a governing coalition.¹⁶  It has already admitted failure to do this after approaching and being rejected by SYRIZA.¹⁷  Next, SYRIZA and then PASOK will get their chances to form a governing coalition, and should they both fail as well, new elections will be scheduled for next month.¹⁸  This is likely what will take place, based on the current division of seats amongst parties and the ideological and austerity divide.

The first article of good news in this is the fact that the anti-austerity parties’ solid majority of the vote is a major blow to the foundation of the unelected tyrants of the EUSSR.  A failure in Greece, especially after so much money has been invested in it, would threaten the entire European financial system and be bad news for Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, all of whom are in nearly as bad a shape as Greece.

The second piece of good news is, obviously, the great success of the nationalist Golden Dawn, capturing almost 7% of the vote.  This should underline for us the value of getting out on the streets and campaigning, as well as the effects of doing things which actually and physically help our people, like providing security, food, and clothing.  However, we should once again be reminded that the true divide is not between right-wing and left-wing, but between nationalists and Marxists — whether they be more progressive Marxists (leftists) or less progressive Marxists (kosher conservatives).  Throughout the campaign and coverage of the election results, the media talked about how voters were supporting “radical parties on both the left and right,” but would then spend the rest of the article beating up on the Golden Dawn with not a peep about the Greek Communist Party, who always polled higher.  The media then went ballistic when the Golden Dawn gained 21 seats, acting like it was the end of the world, all the while not batting an eyelash at the communists’ 26 seats. This is a clear indication that the media did not really care about the radicalization in Greek politics or the crimes committed by ideologies in the past century, since they gave the radical Left a complete pass and ignored the ideology which killed a hundred million more people than Nazism did.  The media’s attack was based solely on their cultural Marxist, anti-European campaign of genocide and their commitment to attempt to crush anyone who threatens to get in their way.  To further illustrate that even kosher “right-wing conservatives” are in fact cultural Marxists and on board with this program, the leader of ND announced that he would be willing to coalition with anyone except Golden Dawn.¹⁹  Now, the leadership of Golden Dawn rightly considers the ND to be traitors and would not coalition with them in the first place, but it is extremely telling that a so-called right-wing party would rather coalition with communists over nationalists.  We need to keep this in mind as we fight for the future of our people.

This is a great clip of the Golden Dawn’s leader giving his victory speech after the election. He takes the opportunity to throw his success right in the face of the media which had spent months slandering him and his party.

A week ago I had the opportunity to go hear Ron Paul speak in Houston, TX.   In what seems to be standard operating procedure, the event was blacked out by the local media, and I only found out about it a few days before the event from a friend asking me if I was planning on attending.  Admission was free and open to the public, but if you RSVP’d and printed out a ticket, you could get in thirty minutes early at 6:00 instead of 6:30.  I did this and then drove into Houston, arriving at the University of Houston a few minutes before six o’clock.  The line was already hundreds of people long and wrapped almost a third of the way around the large basketball stadium serving as an auditorium for the event.  I had to walk for several minutes just to get to the back of the line, but I did not really mind, as it gave me the opportunity to get a look at the demographics of the attendees.  While standing in line, I overheard a female student at the university saying that not even the school newspaper had mentioned the event, and that she had only learned that day about Paul’s coming to campus.

I got a pretty good seat and spent the time until 7:00 (when Paul was scheduled to begin speaking) by striking up some conversations with several people my age (mid- to late twenties) sitting near me.  The story was pretty much the same for everyone: they were fairly politically apathetic until they learned about Ron Paul, they had grown sick of politicians making campaign promises and then doing the opposite when elected, they were tired of being told the country was doing just fine when we are obviously in deep trouble, and they had faith in Ron Paul as a fundamentally good and honest man, even if they did not completely agree with all his views.

I estimated that there were over 3,000 people in attendance.  After the event, I looked up the stadium’s seating capacity, which turned out to be just under 9,000.  Since we filled about 75% of the half of the stadium we were occupying, this figure seems accurate. Ron Paul’s son, Ronnie Paul, introduced the Paul clan that was in attendance (about a third of the whole family), which was followed by the singing of “America the Beautiful.”  Next, the leader of the University of Houston chapter of Youth for Ron Paul arose and introduced himself.  He confessed that he had voted for Barack Obama in 2008, based on Obama’s promises to end the wars and protect civil liberties.  He declared that he would not be making that mistake again, which was why he supported Ron Paul as the only candidate who would truly end the wars, protect our liberty, balance the budget, and restore the federal government to its proper role.  After this, Ron Paul entered and the crowd went wild; nothing could be heard for a solid two or three minutes except for clapping, cheers, and chants of “Ron Paul!”, “Freedom!”, and “President Paul!”

Ron Paul speaking at the event. Yeah, the camera on my phone isn't that good at long distances.

Unfortunately, Ron Paul is not the most eloquent of speakers.  He often stutters slightly and then changes what he was going to say.  However, since he speaks the truth, most people do not mind; he can be contrasted with Gingrich or Romney, where Paul’s importance is in the message and rather than the delivery.   Paul’s speech was pretty standard fare if you have listened to many of his YouTube clips or Republican debates: we ought to protect our civil liberties from the growing federal police state, end the unnecessary and unconstitutional wars by bringing our troops home, massively cut the federal budget in order to balance it and begin a policy of fiscal sanity, and reduce the federal government down to its intended size, transferring power back to the states and the people.  Ron Paul was roundly cheered on all points.

All of this is very good, and I wholeheartedly agreed with most of it.  The main problems with his speech arose, as they usually do, from his libertarianism’s fanatical individualism and rejection of any group identity or interests as illegitimate.  To paraphrase, Paul basically stated that “freedom” meant freedom for everyone, even people who were going to use that freedom in ways we did not like, and that in a free society, we had to accept that that was going to happen as the essence of tolerance.  But this is, of course, completely unworkable.  For example, you cannot have a town where half of the people believe that abortion is a fundamental right, the other half believes that abortion is infanticide, and they just “tolerate” each other’s “freedom” in peace.  Whether or not the there is an abortion clinic in the town is an unavoidable fight which one or the other side is going to lose and be furious about; there is no room on either side for compromise or “tolerance.”  There never can be, and to hold such a position is at best naive.

Now, I am certainly not advocating totalitarianism.  There are many many things which should be left up to the individual’s freedom of choice: what to wear, what to eat, whether or not to drink alcohol, how to allocate income, the rules for one’s children at home, what leisure activities to pursue, where to live, and on and on.  However, there are also activities which greatly affect the community as a whole.  These are addressed in the Biblical civil law and the principles derived from them, specifying the types of things in which the state has not only a right but a duty to intervene.  This list includes rape, murder, infanticide, public homosexuality, border protection, fraud, theft, arson, blasphemy, idolatry, and the like.  There is no room for “tolerance” in these areas, and to suggest otherwise is fundamentally unchristian and unsupported by Scripture.

This is why Ron Paul’s coalition is only workable on a national level and has primarily only negative power.  Much of Ron Paul’s platform is the reduction of the sphere of the federal government and the return of jurisdiction to the states, that is, the negative (destructive) power to demolish the bloated, monstrous, unconstitutional federal establishment.  However, once this is accomplished, Paul’s coalition has little or no positive (constructive) power to deal with these issues on the state level, because the people in Paul’s coalition often have diametrically opposed views on these issues.   While the majority of the crowd consisted of conservative-looking, young white people (perhaps sixteen to thirty-five years old), there was also significant representation by Muslims, homosexuals, hippies, Mexicans, Asians, and OWS types.  Does anyone really believe that these diverse groups could come to a consensus on anything at a state level?  Take homosexual unions for an example: the vast majority of these groups would agree that homosexual unions should not be something in which the federal government should be involved.  Yet once it becomes a state issue, the liberals will want homosexual unions officially recognized, the conservatives will want homosexual unions outlawed, and the libertarians will want marriage completely left up to individuals — and there goes Ron Paul’s coalition.

I am not necessarily saying that this is a bad thing; in fact, I view this as positive in many ways.  Conservatives lost the ability to win battles on a national level a long time ago, but as we have recently seen with the Arizona immigration bill and the constant proposing and passing of pro-life and anti-homosexual union bills by states, we can still win at the state level in the majority of the country if the ninth and tenth amendments were taken seriously.  And would it not be infinitely better for abortion to be outlawed in thirty or thirty-five or forty states than legal in all fifty?  This is why I and many others continue to support Ron Paul, not because we see Ron Paul as some great savior, or because he is perfect, or because his coalition is ideal as an end in itself, but because the coalition is a means to an end — the resurrection of states’ rights, godly state and local government, and the destruction of the tyrannical federal government.

The modern Church has, both consciously and unconsciously, embraced and applied the deconstructionist “living document” literary theory for the purpose of redefining traditional Christian doctrines and values to conform to their actual antithesis. As farfetched as this might seem at first glance, this fact was recently made very clear to me. A former friend of mine commented on a picture posted on Facebook concerning the Boer genocide by blacks in South Africa, saying, “The answer is not white people, but Jesus.” The first question that comes to mind is what he exactly means by “Jesus.” Of course, it is true that we must always put our faith and trust in Christ for deliverance and glorify Him in all our thoughts and actions, but if one were to merely stand by and observe the murder of an innocent victim, only to comment: “the answer is Jesus”, it would not honour Christ, but dishonour Him. Furthermore, what makes this specific comment particularly worrying is that Christ’s providence brought white people to Africa to better the state of the continent in many respects and spread the gospel here – and the attack on Christ’s elect is surely an attack on the true Christ Himself, though apparently my former friend’s “Jesus” stands apathetic towards this.

Another introductory example I would like to reference, where the Church has discarded orthodoxy in favour of heresy by redefining a term, is concerning the doctrine of predestination. The Bible and all orthodox Calvinists taught the doctrine in terms of God’s election of His children in Christ and rejection of the reprobate outside of Christ (Rom. 9:6-23). The Swiss anti-Nazi theologian, Karl Barth, whose neo-orthodox ecclesiology has been previously discussed here, also reinterpreted and redefined “predestination” to mean, by implication, the exact opposite of what this biblical doctrine teaches. He taught that God predestined Christ, and in Christ all men are predestined, to the extent that he eventually allowed for the possibility of universalism¹, effectively denying Christianity. Similarly, many other doctrines and definitions have been used (and abused) by the modern Church to convey a meaning foreign to the biblical intent. In this article, I will proceed to give a biblical exposition of another doctrine the modern Church has redefined to suit its cultural Marxist agenda: the doctrine of tolerance. This doctrine has popularly come to mean that Christians should make friends with unbelievers and not judge, but tolerate them and their actions. They must be treated as equals and with the same love with which a Christian treats a brother in Christ. One must tolerate sinners and sinful behaviour to the extent that the distinction between good and evil becomes blurred and consequently the only thriving worldview is a nihilistic one, since that is the only worldview that does not distinguish between moral and immoral or between orthodox and heretical.

In order to understand the true doctrine of Christian tolerance, one has to take a look at what the Bible says regarding this concept. Many Scriptural references to the concept of tolerance are in regard to a disposition of God towards men (Matt. 17:17; Acts 13:18; Rom. 2:4; 3:25; 9:22; Hebr. 12:3) and thus fall outside of the subject treated here. Tolerance, as a disposition of the believer, however, is in Scripture first mentioned by King David in Ps. 101:5, where the monarch of Israel clearly states that he will not tolerate him who “secretly slanders” or has “a haughty look” or a “proud heart” in his kingdom; only the “faithful of the land” may walk with him. Here, some form of tolerance towards sinners is clearly shown to be sinful, something which ought not to be pursued by Christians.

In the apostle Paul’s epistles to the Church in Corinth, the idea of tolerance is a theme that comes up frequently. In 1 Cor. 4:12, Paul exclaims how he and his co-workers tolerate (ἀνεχόμεθα) all the sufferings that comes with being missionaries in the ancient Roman Empire for Christ’s sake. Again, in 9:12, he states that he and his co-workers tolerate (στέγομεν²) all things, so as not to be a hindrance to the furthering of the gospel. This is followed by a promise from the Spirit through Paul that God would not allow His children to be tempted above what they are able to endure or tolerate (ὑπενεγκεῖν). The final reference in the first letter to the congregation in Corinth is in chapter 13 on love, where Paul famously states in verse 7 that love “endures all things.” When one reads this reference to the endurance or tolerance of things that accompanies true love within the context of the entire book, it becomes quite evident that such tolerance has nothing whatsoever to do with the contemporary postmodern idea of tolerating unbiblical worldviews or behaviour contrary to God’s law, as the modern Church desires us to believe. Instead, it strictly refers to enduring sufferings that necessarily occur in the lives of the faithful as they live out their calling according to God’s will, in a world that is full of the church-persecuting enemies of God. Tolerance, in the sense most modern Christians apply it, is granted by the author to be closer to the sense in which Paul uses it in 2 Corinthians 11:1, but here he does apply it sarcastically. This is also evident in verse 19, on which Matthew Henry comments: “These words may be ironical, and then the meaning is this: ’Notwithstanding all your wisdom, you willingly suffer yourselves to be brought into bondage under the Jewish yoke, or suffer others to tyrannize over you; nay, to devour you, or make a prey of you, and take of you hire for their own advantage, and to exalt themselves above you, and lord it over you; nay, even to smite you on the face, or impose upon you to your very faces, upbraiding you while they reproach me, as if you had been very weak in showing regard to me’”³.

The final reference to the concept of tolerance in the Scripture that need to be addressed is Ephesians 4:1-3, a text which has often been abused to justify the Belhar Confession and the Marxist unity for which it calls. The text reads: “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” This passage has been wrongly interpreted by cultural Marxists, and even by many in the modern evangelical movement, to mean that Christian unity is something to be pursued at the expense of truth. But, as Rev. McAtee rightly identifies, unity for the sake of unity is not Christian unity. What this passage truly conveys is that we should live according to God’s law – our calling – and furthermore bear one another and thereby keep the unity. We do not establish unity by neglecting God-given distinctions; we preserve the unity by bearing and loving one another – which obviously (unless one is a neo-Platonist) includes loving and respecting someone’s physical makeup as a God-given part of his identity. (Such love might manifest itself in our advocacy for homogeneous churches.) More importantly, for our current exegetical emphasis, the tolerance and love mentioned here do not extend to unbelievers, or even to the acts of believers which are contrary to God’s law. Thus, Christian tolerance does not extend beyond the scope of that which is permissible according to God’s law – the true Church, therefore, knows no religious tolerance in the sense it is understood by mainline Christianity today.

Christians should be intolerant towards both sin itself and unbelievers in general (Ps. 101:5; 139:21-22; Jude 23) and identify and judge them with a righteous judgment (John 7:24), i.e. according to God’s Law-Word. Christian tolerance can apply only to fellow believers suffering from certain weaknesses and to suffering that occurs for the sake of Christ’s Kingdom. Any other religious tolerance is merely a tool for cultural Marxists in their mission to establish a neo-Babelist World Order opposed to the advancement of Christ’s kingdom.

In part two of this series, I will proceed to show how the false re-interpretation of the doctrine of Christian tolerance, as well as the original intent of the term “religious freedom,” have affected the civil sphere and led to religious pluralism, directly contrary to God-honouring, theonomic civil ethics.

Introduction

As we are constantly reminded almost daily by America’s media and major corporations, the recently-ended month formerly known as February is now universally recognized as “Black History Month.” Contemporary acknowledgement of “Black History Month” is twofold. The first is to celebrate black achievement; the second is to denounce “racism” and suggest that there is much more work to be done to achieve equality. Around this time every year, we are regaled with stories of the achievements of blacks and how their contributions are essential to the lifestyle that we know and enjoy here in America. Of course, these contributions and achievements tend to be exaggerated,¹ and so we are also treated to accounts of more abstract accomplishments of blacks during the so-called “civil rights movement.”

Most people remain aware that an achievement gap persists between whites and non-whites in America, and specifically between whites and blacks. Because most Americans have committed to the Enlightenment theory that “all men are created equal,” as expressed by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence,² we have to concoct an explanation to rationalize persistent inequality. The common, politically correct explanation is that everyone is equal regardless of racial differences, and any underachievement by blacks in terms of intelligence, crime, or socio-economic status should be attributed to “racist” attitudes of whites that hold blacks back from achieving their full natural potential.

Almost inevitably, discussions of “racism” in America inevitably end up denouncing the institution of slavery and attributing any and all black underachievement to the so-called “legacy of slavery.” This explanation is popular among ostensibly conservative Christians, as well as secular and liberal thinkers. Slavery is considered by the modern church to be the worst of evils and the most severe of sins. Many Christian denominations make constant apologies for slavery and constantly prostrate themselves to the politically correct memes of post-modern society. I aim to correct this error, providing a biblical understanding of slavery.

To be perfectly clear, this is not an carte blanche endorsement of slavery, as though it ought to make us proud. Slavery has been the cause of a great deal of suffering on the part of both blacks and whites in America and throughout the world. The second installment of this brief series will contain an overview of dispensationalism and the Golden Rule, and how these questions are relevant to the historical nature of the slavery debate. A third installment will provide a brief study on the New Testament epistles, and a fourth installment will provide some historic background into the nature of slavery in Western European history. In investigating the history of the slavery debate, we will see that the older trend of opinions among Christians was not nearly so committed to abolitionism as prevailing opinions are today. This installment will focus upon slavery as it is discussed in the Old Testament.

Relevant Old Testament Passages to the Discussion of Slavery

Henry Edward Cardinal Manning once famously remarked that “all differences of opinion are at bottom theological.”³ There are no issues that do not ultimately boil down to disagreements over religion and worldview. Slavery is no exception. The question of slavery and the ethical, moral, and social questions surrounding its existence and history must ultimately be answered from the conviction that one can derive only from God’s Law. As Christians, we must understand that morality is not based upon the transient opinions of people from age to age, but rather upon the word of the God who does not change (Mal. 3:6, James 1:17). The Apostle John tells us that “sin is a transgression of the law” (1 John 3:4) and that every Christian is bound to assent to this rule-governing morality. Failure to understand this problem will result in widespread lawlessness and the unjust condemnation of several false sins, such as “racism” (Is. 5:20, Mic. 7:3). If slavery as an institution is wrong and sinful, nay the greatest evil, then we should expect to see a clear and unambiguous condemnation of this in the Bible, in both the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. Let us begin by looking at some relevant Old Testament passages that concern the question of servitude.

The earliest mention of servitude in the Bible is made in Genesis, after the flood has taken place. Noah is spied drunk and naked by his son Ham, and he curses him and his son Canaan with servitude to the descendants of his cousins from Japheth and Shem. While it is apparent that the servitude for which Canaan’s descendants are destined by Noah is not necessarily a part of the natural order, this passage demonstrates that society does not need to be egalitarian and that servitude is not in and of itself immoral.

After this, we read of the 318 servants of Abraham (Gen. 14:14), some of whom were bought with money from foreigners (Gen. 17:12). It might be argued that the mere fact of Abraham’s ownership of servants is not sufficient proof of divine sanction. This is true, but we must also see that Abraham’s servant Hagar was told by the angel to return to her mistress in submission (Gen. 16:9), which Hagar obediently complied to do. This serves as further evidence as to the legitimacy of the institution of servitude. It is therefore incorrect to speak without qualification of the “sin of slavery,” as though the institution itself is intrinsically sinful.

One of the most conclusive passages in the Bible showing that the institution of slavery is not sinful in and of itself is Genesis 17.  In this chapter, we have God making a covenant with Abraham.  Further, it is God who is dictating the terms of the covenant; Abraham does not even speak the entire chapter.  If Abraham were engaged in some deeply sinful activity–say, if Abraham were raping or killing or stealing–then all God had to do was to tell Abraham to cease and desist as part of the covenant.  But instead of condemning Abraham for owning hundreds of slaves, God sanctions the institution by including them in the covenant as slaves (Gen. 17:13-14, 27).

The master-servant relationship is further legitimized in the Ten Commandments. We read in the tenth commandment that we are forbidden to covet our neighbor’s “manservant” or his “maidservant” (Ex. 20:17, cf. Deut. 5:21). Commenting on the issue of humans’ being considered property, whether they are wives or servants, John Henry Hopkins states:

Here it is evident that the principle of property — “anything that is thy neighbor’s” — runs through the whole. I am quite aware, indeed, of the prejudice which many good people entertain against the idea of property in a human being, and shall consider it, in due time, amongst the objections. I am equally aware that the wives of our day may take umbrage at the law which places them in the same sentence with the slave, and even with the house and the cattle. But the truth is none the less certain.

The wife has a real property in her husband, because he is bound, for life, to cherish and maintain her. The character of property is doubtless modified by its design. But whatever, whether person or thing, the law appropriates to an individual, becomes of necessity his property.⁴

We find an extended discussion of slavery in Exodus 21. In these verses, we read about precepts regulating servitude. We read that Hebrew servants would serve for six years and then go free at Jubilee. If the servant did not desire freedom, he could have voluntarily decided to remain in the service of his master. We are told as well that female servants were not to be sold to foreign nations. If a female slave were married to her master’s son, then she was to be treated the same as any other wife would be treated. In this way, sexual slavery is strictly prohibited. We are also told that beating a servant in a way that does not cause permanent injury is not to be punished, because a slave or a servant is property. The assumption here is that someone would not want to damage his means of production by causing permanent damage to render a servant non-productive. If permanent injury would have occurred, presumably in a case in of uncontrolled rage, then the servant would have been permitted immediately go free. If the slave died as a result of injury, then the owner would have been punished under the legal principle of “an eye for an eye.” This firmly establishes that biblical slavery is not an institution in which human dignity is disregarded and in which people were reduced to chattel on the level of animals.

An aspect that is often coupled to the slavery debate is the sin of man-stealing, or what is commonly known today as kidnapping. This is prohibited by the precept in Deut. 24:7, which says: “If a man be found stealing any of his brethren of the children of Israel, and maketh merchandise of him, or selleth him; then that thief shall die; and thou shalt put evil away from among you.” This law shows how heinous God considers the act of man-stealing and selling into slavery. Other passages that address the question of slavery presuppose that slaves are serving to work off a debt or are willingly serving a master they love. This clearly condemns what was perpetrated by Joseph’s brothers against him in selling him to the Midianites, who in turn sold him to the court of Egypt (Gen. 37). Much of African slavery was based upon the habitual practice of man-stealing between the various African tribes. It can certainly be argued that it might have been wrong for Western merchants to encourage the sin of man-stealing among these tribes, but it is more likely that Western merchants simply made the already-existing practice more lucrative. It is unlikely that the enslavement of Africans would have been different without European participation. More on this issue will be discussed in the future, but for now it is worth pointing out that this precept does not directly condemn the ownership of foreign slaves. The difference between native-born slaves and foreigners is discussed in Leviticus 25.

Continuing in this vein, Leviticus 25 addresses perhaps one of the most controversial aspects of the slavery discussion. Many conservative Christian thinkers and theonomists acknowledge that the Bible allows for some form of slavery, and thus that the West in general and the American South in particular do not deserve the blame they receive for slavery. However, most of these thinkers usually stop short of endorsing blatantly politically correct ideas by suggesting that biblical slavery is never race-based. This is not an accurate understanding of the Bible, for this premise ignores what is taught in Leviticus 25. We read in Lev. 25:39-46, 55:

³⁹And if thy brother that dwelleth by thee be waxen poor, and be sold unto thee; thou shalt not compel him to serve as a bondservant:  ⁴⁰But as an hired servant, and as a sojourner, he shall be with thee, and shall serve thee unto the year of jubile.  ⁴¹And then shall he depart from thee, both he and his children with him, and shall return unto his own family, and unto the possession of his fathers shall he return.  ⁴²For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: they shall not be sold as bondmen.  ⁴³Thou shalt not rule over him with rigour; but shalt fear thy God.  ⁴⁴Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.  ⁴⁵Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.  ⁴⁶And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour.  ⁵⁵For unto me the children of Israel are servants; they are my servants whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.

This passage sheds light on another passage that concerns slavery. We read in Deut. 23:15-16: “Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee: he shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates where it liketh him best: thou shall not oppress him.” Hopkins comments,

This evidently must be referred to the case of a slave who had escaped from a foreign heathen master, and cannot, with any sound reason, be applied to the slaves of the Israelites themselves. For it is manifest that if it were so applied, it would nullify the other enactments of the divine Lawgiver, and it would have been an absurdity to tell the people that they should “buy bondmen and bondmaids of the heathen and the stranger, to be their possession and the inheritance of their children forever,” while, nevertheless, the slaves should be at liberty to run away and become freemen when they pleased. It is the well-known maxim, in the interpretation of all laws; that each sentence shall be so construed as to give a consistent meaning to the whole. And assuredly, if we are bound to follow this rule in the legislation of earth, we cannot be less bound to follow it in the legislation of the Almighty.⁵

Conclusion

God’s divine law remains the same throughout the Bible, because God himself does not change (Mal. 3:6, Jam. 1:17) and He is perfectly just (Deut. 32:4, Job 4:17, Is. 45:21, Acts 22:41, 1 Pet. 3:18, Rev. 15:3). God’s revelation in the Old Testament clearly allowed and regulated servitude that was similar to what was practiced in the West. It is a sign of our age’s lack of discernment that slavery has been considered “the greatest evil,” when the institution itself is sanctioned and regulated rather than prohibited in Scripture. America in the seventeenth through the middle of the nineteenth centuries was a nation that generally had a thorough knowledge and a deeply abiding respect for God’s revealed word. This accounts for many practices that were common throughout the West at this time, including the typical approach to the question of slavery.

The reason that so many opinions have changed throughout the West is because our worldview has changed from a Christian worldview to a secular humanist worldview. Since humanism is predicated upon absolute equality between all people, slavery in any form must be discarded, since it is necessarily unequal. Many people may believe that the old law allowed for slavery, but that the demands of the Gospel necessarily dispense with such an unequal institution. We shall see that this is far from the case, and that Christ and His apostles are in lockstep with God’s revelation in the Old Testament.