At Any Cost

(There were some audio issues with this episode.)

Transcripts for all episodes can be found here.

Transcripts for all episodes can be found here.

This transcript:

1. Was machine generated.
2. Has not been checked for errors.
3. May not be entirely accurate.

It would seem that some controversy has arisen with regard to the mode of Christ's presence in the supper.

Now, those who are engaging in this controversy, and in this case, I mean stoking it, starting the controversy where there is none, are doing so in bad faith.

On top of doing it in bad faith, they are doing it foolishly twice over, once because it is foolish to engage in such a controversy in the way they are, and twice because they do not understand the terms they are employing, because they do not have access to the original language of the Book of Concord to see what those terms actually are, or the original language of the philosophical and theological terms being employed.

Now, of course, you do not have to know the languages to employ the terms, but it would behoove you to actually know what the terms mean, which is very clearly not the case here.

At any rate, the quote that comes up is not actually in Article 7, but in Article 8 of the epitome of the formula of Concord.

It is paragraph 17, so here it is.

The German...

Actually, I will just read the entire paragraph.

Therefore it is also easy for him and for anyone who likes to share his true body and blood in the Holy Supper, not according to the nature or property of human nature, but according to the nature and property of divine rights, says Dr. Luther, from our Christian child's faith, which is neither earthly nor Copernican, but is true and essential, as the words of his will say, that is, is, is my body, and so on.

Now, the part of that that is relevant for this issue here is the bit that says, nicht irdisch.

Irdisch is the term that is being mistranslated as physical.

Irdisch, auf Deutsch, does not mean physical.

It means earthly, mundane, terrestrial.

Now, that is a polemic against the Reformed.

That is what's actually happening in this paragraph.

There's a polemic against the polemic the Reformed often leverage against Lutherans, which is their accusation that we are cannibals, of course.

Now, that term, irdisch, as I said, does not mean physical.

If we wanted physical, that would be köpelisch, or leiblich, since you've got the word leib there in the quote from Luther.

The other term that comes up is the Latin term localitur.

That is one of the terms over which we fought with the Reformed, and still do to this day, although often the fights now are not in Latin.

Localitur also does not mean physical.

It means local, or locally.

When we say that we do not hold to a localitur understanding of Christ's presence in the supper, what we are saying is that we reject the accusation of the Reformed that we are cannibals, because their accusation is blasphemous.

They are calling Christ a liar, they are insulting the sacrament, and it should terrify them to speak those words, to even think those words.

Now, what the actual Lutheran position is, is this.

Christ is physically, substantially, sacramentally present in, with, and under the bread and the wine in the supper.

And he is so because he promises to be so.

That is the Lutheran position.

To say that Lutherans do not hold that Christ is physically present is a lie.

At the absolute best, it is a reckless misunderstanding of the meaning of the terms being used in the Book of Concord, in our dogmaticians, in our theologians.

It is to deliberately, quite frankly, because there is a point at which recklessness, negligence, rises to such a level that it is, in fact, intentional, it is, in fact, deliberate.

And that is the case here, because it is trivial to look up what the word Yiddish means, or what the word localiter means.

Just drop them into any of the various places online where you can translate from one language to another, and it will spit out the accurate meaning of these terms for you.

And that has clearly not been done by certain individuals who are engaging in this controversy.

So again, this is the Lutheran position.

Christ is physically, substantially, sacramentally present in, with, and under the bread and the wine, in the supper, as he promises.

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This transcript:

1. Was machine generated.
2. Has not been checked for errors.
3. May not be entirely accurate.

This recording constitutes a section of my class on Genesis.

I began teaching the class before COVID caused any number of problems, of which we are all well aware.

At any rate, this recording is meant to be both standalone as an exegesis of a section of Genesis 12, and as an accompaniment to an episode of the Stone Choir podcast, one that will be released, incidentally, the same day as this recording.

It will be in the show notes for that episode.

The topic of that episode is dispensationalism, which is why this particular section of Genesis is relevant.

The section of Genesis that I will be exegeting in this recording is the beginning of Genesis 12, and I will start by reading that section.

It's just one paragraph.

Now, the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country, and your kindred, and your father's house, to the land that I will show you.

And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse.

And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

For this recording, I will be focusing on verses 2 and 3, and so not the first verse about Abram leaving his country and his kindred, and going to a land that God would give to him or to his descendants more accurately.

Although this does not come through particularly well in English, there are seven blessings or promises here.

The first, God will make him a great nation.

The second, God will bless him.

The third, God will make for him a great name.

The fourth, he will be a blessing to others.

The fifth, he will bless those, that is, God will bless those who bless him.

The sixth, God will curse those who dishonor him.

The seventh, all nations will be blessed in him.

Now, this is an expansive set of promises, and we should spend some time unpacking them.

So we will go in order.

First, great nation.

Of this promise, Luther contends that not only is it gospel, and so it is, but that it is also a most outstanding passage and one of the most important in all Holy Scripture.

I would recommend you highlight or underline it unless you refuse to write in your Bible, which I do with most of mine.

Again from Luther.

First of all, you should consider that what the Lord promises Abraham here is altogether impossible, unbelievable, and untrue if you follow reason, because it cannot be seen.

If the Lord has something like this in mind for Abraham, why does he not let him remain in his land and with his kindred, where Abraham undoubtedly had some influence or reputation?

Is the way to success easier among strange people, where one does not even have a place to set one's foot, than at home, where one's fields, friends, neighbors, and relatives are, where one's household has been well established?

Therefore the power of the Holy Spirit was great and extraordinary in Abraham, because he was able to apprehend with his heart these impossible, unbelievable, and incomprehensible things, as though they were real and already present.

Such must have been the case, especially since he was already approaching old age, for he was seventy-five years old, but Sarah was ten years younger, and barren at that.

The second blessing, I will bless you.

We would do well to interpret this promise as applying both to Abraham and to his offspring.

But who were the offspring of Abraham?

From Romans 9, But it is not as though the word of God has failed, for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham, because they are his offspring, but through Isaac shall your offspring be named.

This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise who are counted as offspring.

To some degree, this promise was fulfilled to Abraham personally, for he was truly blessed spiritually and physically.

To another degree, this promise was fulfilled to Old Testament Israel, as they, in accordance with the first blessing, became a great nation.

And, to the fullest degree, this was fulfilled in Christ, the greatest blessing of all, and a blessing in which Abraham participated through faith.

The third blessing, I will make your name great.

Need we even review this promise, this blessing, at any real length?

It is now 2023.

God made this promise to Abraham in the second millennium BC, to the best of our calculations.

Can you quickly name three people who lived 700 years ago?

Perhaps a medieval history major would have an answer for me, but the point should be clear.

Abraham lived more than five times 700 years ago, and yet here we are learning of him.

I do not suppose that history will remember most of us 4,000 years from now.

Luther, perhaps, but Abraham will still have 3,500 years on him.

And Christ himself spoke of Abraham.

The fourth promise, you will be a blessing.

Our fourth blessing is not merely a blessing, but also an interpretive lens for the preceding three blessings, and for the following three.

It is a perfect centerpiece in God's perfect sevenfold blessing of Abraham.

Here we see why God blesses Abraham.

Certainly God blesses Abraham because it is his good pleasure to do so.

But he does so also with an aim and end, a goal in mind.

So that, I will make you a great nation, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless you, so that you will be a blessing.

I will make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

You will be a blessing, so that, him who blesses you, I will bless.

You will be a blessing, so that, him who dishonors you, I will curse.

You will be a blessing, so that, in you all nations will be blessed.

Promises five and six.

I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who dishonor you.

We must carefully note here that God's promises are not idle.

Today the church seems small and shrinking, despised, held in contempt by the world.

But here we have the word of God.

He will bless those who bless us, and curse those who dishonor us.

Well over a thousand years of European Christendom speak to God's steadfast love and faithfulness in his promise to bless.

And the drowned army of Pharaoh speaks to the fate of those who persecute the church.

We know that persecution will come.

From second Timothy.

Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

But we also know that Christ is and will be with us, even until the end of the age.

This life may at times seem beyond even the vestiges of hope.

But we know that the victory has already been won.

From Revelation one.

Behold he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him.

And all the tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.

Even so, Amen.

Promise seven.

In you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

Thus far the promises have been more or less material or temporal in nature.

However, the seventh and final blessing is clearly spiritual.

In nature and casts a spiritual meaning upon the first four promises as well.

What we have here at the end of verse three is a recapitulation of the promise of Genesis 3 15.

For how will the families of man be blessed except through the sun, on account of the blessed seed who crushes the serpent's head?

As Luther comments, But now there follows that promise which should be written in golden letters and should be extolled in the languages of all people.

For it offers eternal treasures, for it cannot be understood in a material sense, namely, that it would be confined to this people only as the previous blessings perhaps were.

But if, as the words clearly indicate, this promise is to be extended to all nations or families of the earth, who else shall we say has dispensed this blessing among all nations except the son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ?

Luther actually goes further and reasons out the nature of the promise and Christ's work from these verses.

And in doing so he is well supported.

For clearly only a true man, who was and is more than mere man, could proceed from Abraham, and yet bless all humanity, including Abraham.

If I were tasked with pulling from scripture ten sections to summarize what and why we believe, this would be the second or the third.

Even if there is some danger in using a third of one's allowance before leaving the first of sixty-six books, these promises are properly understood as applying to the church, and what a beautiful set they form.

We begin with the promise to form from Abraham a great nation, and we end with a clarification of what kind of nation this will be.

Note carefully the language, and the ESV does in fact capture this.

And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse.

And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

Abraham will be a great nation, but all the families of the world will be blessed in him.

Scripture does not usually speak of families in this context, for the usual term is nation, which is to say ethnos, or in the plural, ethne, instead of pesai ai phule.

Phule being the term for families here.

Why then do we have families in this verse?

Two reasons.

Nations would not work here, for Abraham's seed, Christ, does not bring blessing to all nations, at least not in the sense here in view, because what he actually does is create a new nation, the Church, the true Israel.

Now, this is not to say that Christ's work destroys national identities.

Soteriology does not destroy ontology.

However, it is to say that only the nation that is the Church is truly and completely blessed.

That nation is pulled from all members of all actual nations, which is to say the sense of nation used to mean blood, used synonymously with ethnicity, the sort of nation that is directly heritable.

And so, in that sense, all nations are, of course, blessed in Christ, but it is only the Church, in which all members of the Church are individually themselves blessed in Christ.

And second, we are being told from whom Christ will craft his new nation, from all the families of the earth.

The scope of this blessing is universal, even if some will, tragically, reject it.

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This transcript:

1. Was machine generated.
2. Has not been checked for errors.
3. May not be entirely accurate.

As I record this, it is a little after 3 o'clock here.

Now I am decidedly a night owl, but that is not actually the reason that I am awake tonight.

I am awake tonight because I had to go down to the barn to deal with a pest.

But before I get to that pest, the reason that I was checking my camera, which I have a camera in the chicken coop for, well, obvious reasons.

But the reason that I was checking it specifically tonight is that last night a raccoon managed to get into the coop and killed one of my chickens.

And so of course I took some countermeasures and improved some things and buttoned things up a little more tightly.

But I also decided to stay up and watch the camera a bit just in case the raccoon attempted to make another entrance.

This particular raccoon seems to come around at about 2 o'clock, so I assume the raccoon is not going to show up tonight.

Did not show up earlier.

However, when I checked the camera, there was a skunk in the chicken coop.

And so I went down there to deal with that skunk.

Now it's most likely one of the, I believe there are two, or were, would be more accurate now, two skunks in my garden and I had no problem with them living there.

I've even given them food and some water.

However, at least one of them has decided that he wants to spend some time looking for things to eat in the chicken coop.

And of course that's not ideal because he could eat eggs or he could harass or even harm the chickens.

And so, not so long story short, I went down there and killed that skunk.

The reason that I did that, of course, is to protect the chickens.

And that is the topic that I want to discuss in this episode.

And that topic is stewardship.

What is the scope of man's stewardship of creation?

What does it mean to be a steward?

And so I would like to start off with two examples.

One, I really gave already, taking care of one's pets.

In this case, chickens are more livestock than pets, but nonetheless it's the same sort of concept.

When you acquire a pet or an animal of any kind, you have duties that come along with that.

You have to feed the animal, you have to water the animal, provide a warm place to sleep when it is cold, provide somewhere to get out of the heat when it is hot, etc.

We know what these requirements are, what these duties are that one undertakes in acquiring a pet or some other animal.

And then the other example is indeed stewardship, even though many people don't necessarily think of it as such, at least not immediately.

And that would be the plant life on your property, when you garden, when you do your landscaping.

You are engaging in stewardship of creation.

You are choosing between things.

You are selecting the plants you want, you are removing the plants you do not.

And that of course is really the distinction between a weed and a plant.

A weed is something we do not want, a plant is something that we do.

We may be more specific with regard to plants, calling them a crop or landscaping, whatever it may be.

But that is still stewardship.

And so we have these two clear types of stewardship.

And of course, if you think of the Genesis narrative, man is placed in creation as God's representative, as it were.

That is part of what it means to be the image of God.

Now I'm not getting into that deeply in this episode because that's not the central topic, but man is steward of creation.

In the scriptural narrative, there is actually no limitation placed on that stewardship.

Now some will argue that stewardship extends to everything except to other men.

But of course we know that is not the case.

For instance, if you owned slaves, you would have stewardship of those slaves.

You would have duties with regard to those slaves.

But perhaps a better example, because this one exists in almost everyone's life, children.

You are steward of your children.

Now to a different and lesser degree, you are also steward of the children in your family, even if they are not directly your children.

So for instance, your nieces and nephews or your grandsons and granddaughters, you still have duties with regard to those children.

You are still a steward in a sense with regard to those children.

And so really you can see that this scales directly up all the way to man.

So it scales up from the dirt all the way up to man, who is of course of the earth, of the dirt, of the dust.

But God gave man stewardship of all of creation.

You can try to find a restriction on that stewardship in scripture, and you will not find it because it is not there.

Insofar as restrictions on man's stewardship of creation are concerned, the only ones that actually exist are the general restrictions on man's behavior.

And so that would be the Ten Commandments.

You are not permitted to murder in pursuit of your duties as a steward.

You would be violating your duties as a steward, in fact.

But man does have stewardship of the soil, of the plants, of the animals, of his fellow man.

And we see that on a grander scale, perhaps, in the kingdom of the left hand, because those who are in positions of authority, the leaders of a nation, they have stewardship over those men God has placed under them.

And of course that is simply a larger scale of the fundamental unit of stewardship when it comes to man.

That fundamental unit of stewardship would be the family.

The father is steward of his household.

He is steward of his wife.

He is steward of his children.

He is steward of his pets, his land, etc.

That stewardship is not limited with regard to being of just the plants or of just the animals.

Again, it includes the people in his household.

Man is steward of creation, and creation most certainly includes man.

But what does it mean to be a steward?

I already mentioned that being a steward comes with certain duties.

And just to be clear, when I am speaking of what we owe, as it were, to animals, I am not speaking of animal rights, so-called.

Animals do not have rights.

Man has duties with regard to the animals entrusted to his care.

So calling them rights is looking at it in the wrong way.

It's not that the animals make demands upon man.

It is that God has placed demands on man with regard to the things God has entrusted to man's care, in this case, animals.

But stewardship fundamentally is a fiduciary relationship.

Now for those who are perhaps not familiar with that term, a fiduciary relationship is fundamentally a relationship of trust.

And it is a relationship of trust in which one party acts on behalf of and in the interest of another party.

And so you have the trustee, the one acting in the interest of the beneficiary, being the other party.

That fundamentally is what stewardship is.

Now you may be wondering, well, if man is the trustee, who is the beneficiary?

And the answer to that, of course, is future generations, fundamentally.

Yes, other living men as well, but fundamentally, future generations are those for whom we hold everything in trust.

And that is a key point.

Everything we hold, everything we have, everything of which we are stewards, ultimately, we hold in trust.

It was given us by God to take care of it and to pass it on to future generations.

And so we are not entitled, for instance, to destroy the principle as it were.

A good example would be the natural environment.

We are not free to simply pollute it however much we wish.

That would be a violation of our stewardship.

That would be inappropriate.

That would be sin, in fact.

Similarly, if we fail to care for the natural world, because that is part of our duty as a steward, but if we fail to exercise that duty of care, then we are guilty at least of sloth.

And again, we are guilty of sin.

We are failing to uphold our duties as stewards.

And we see this readily when it comes to the natural world.

We have so many invasive species running amok, and we're doing an insufficient amount to address that problem.

As part of our stewardship, we should be doing something about it.

The same with regard to animals.

However, it also holds for humans.

When we have a garden, we have plants that we want.

We have plants that we do not want.

And so if you're growing lettuce, you don't want weeds in your lettuce bed.

You may want some other plants that you co-planted with the lettuce to keep away pests, or maybe it's clover to help with nitrogen fixation.

Whatever it happens to be.

But there are going to be things you do want, and things you do not want.

And if you are being a good steward of your lettuce patch, then you are going to protect the things that should be there, and remove the things that should not be there.

That is exactly what I did with regard to that skunk and my chickens.

The chickens are supposed to be in the coop at night.

The skunk is not.

And so the skunk did receive two warnings previously, and third strike you're out as it were.

We recognize this stewardship when it comes to plants, even if initially some will not recognize it as stewardship.

That term will not pop into their minds.

But when it is explained, it is readily understood that what you are doing when you garden, landscape, etc., you are engaging in stewardship of the natural world.

The same is true when you are raising livestock, training your pet, whatever it happens to be.

When you are dealing with animals in a proper way, you are a steward of those natural resources, really, if we want to use the more expansive sense of that term.

But the part where modern thinkers, and in particular modern Christians, fall flat is failing to recognize that man also has duties with regard to the stewardship of man himself, of mankind.

Now we do recognize some of these, of course, because we recognize that at least as Christians, certainly, you must train up your child in the faith.

You must instruct your child in the basics of the faith and in more complicated matters as he is capable.

If your children are old enough to have done so, and you have not had them memorize the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, and quite frankly, they should know some other things as well, but at least those core bits, if they do not know those, you have failed thus far in your duty as a steward of your children in this case.

Now that is the duty of the father, the father of the household.

Of course he has other duties as well, because he has duties to train his wife properly, and if you have household servants, you also have a duty with regard to them.

That's less of a thing today, although still present in some places, particularly some cultures outside the Western context.

Although one could argue that employees fall into that role in some cases, but that is made significantly more complicated by existing law.

We'll leave that aside.

That's a topic for another day.

But I think the more interesting question and the more interesting thought, the more interesting sub-part of this topic, as it were, is what should man be doing as a steward of his fellow man on the grander scale, as it were, in the political realm, really, is what I mean, in the kingdom of the left hand.

And the answer to that is, we should certainly be doing something, and not what we're currently doing, because what we are currently doing is harmful, most certainly.

A proper government, a proper sovereign, a proper prince, in this case, I mean prince in the generic sense of political ruler, not necessarily exactly a prince, but one who is fulfilling that role properly is going to seek to preserve the quality of the national stock that was entrusted to his care by God.

Because of course scripture is clear, rulers are given their power by God.

They derive that power from God.

If they abuse that power, of course, then they no longer hold it rightly, and that again is a topic for another day.

But we do not see modern leaders, at least in the western context, there are some few exceptions in some parts of the world, but we do not see modern leaders doing what they are supposed to do with regard to the nations entrusted to their care.

If you destroy the nation that God has entrusted to your care, then you are not acting as a rightful sovereign, you are not acting as a good steward.

In fact, you are acting malevolently, you are acting maliciously, you are acting sinfully, and you of course, if you are that prince, that leader, you will answer to God for what you failed to do, and also for what you did that you should not have done.

And so that really is the central point that I wanted to raise with this episode, that the stewardship of creation that was entrusted to man by God does not have restrictions with regard to its scope.

Scripture does not speak of those restrictions, except again insofar as there are things that are impermissible, so you may not murder, you may not commit adultery, various things that are very clearly delineated in scripture as part of the moral law.

You may not transgress that in pursuit of your stewardship, and in fact, if you are transgressing that, again, you would not be pursuing your stewardship.

But we fail to recognize that in the modern context, and many Christians would argue vehemently against it, because if you tell someone, if you tell a Christian, well, we have stewardship over the plants, he will say, of course.

If you say we have stewardship over the animals, he will say, of course.

If you say we have stewardship over our fellow man, he will not say, of course.

Now he may very well agree, and I would certainly hope that he would agree, that man has stewardship with regard to his own children, but you are going to have trouble arguing with most modern men that man, that a leader, that a prince, has stewardship over the people entrusted to his care, and that that stewardship is akin to the sort of stewardship that man has over the plants and the animals, because the stewardship, again, is of all of creation, and man is part of creation.

This is something that we cannot simply neglect, because if we simply neglect it, then we are faithless stewards.

Now of course, probably no one listening to this has been entrusted with the sort of power of which I am now speaking.

However, as Christians, most certainly, it is incumbent on us not to speak falsely about what God has said in Scripture, or about the role of man in creation, and so I would contend that we have to, in order to fulfill that, speak truthfully about the scope of man's stewardship, and that includes the dirt, the plants, the animals, and the people, because man's stewardship of creation is of creation, not just some small part of creation, not of this little corner over here, or this bit here, or these things accepted.

That is not what God said.

That is not the nature of man.

Man named all of the animals.

That was an exercise of dominion.

Well, man also named his wife.

Now if you are married, you most likely did not name your wife, but that is because her father rightly named her, because that is an exercise of dominion by the father.

Of course, you name your own children, because again, that is an exercise of dominion.

The scope of stewardship includes mankind.

That is the fundamental point that I wish to make with this episode, and I think that it is abundantly clear that that is the case.

I do not see any way that one could argue that man is not included in the scope of man's stewardship of creation, because it seems like that would be a failure to recognize the set.

And by that I mean that if man is given stewardship of creation, and man is part of creation, then man is necessarily also given stewardship of man.

That just follows.

And so in order to argue that man does not have stewardship of man, you have to reject one of those two points, because the conclusion necessarily follows from those premises if you agree with them, if they are true.

You can disagree with them if they are true.

It still flows necessarily.

And so I would ask anyone who says that man does not have stewardship of man, which one of those he rejects?

Does he reject that man was given stewardship of creation, or does he reject that man is part of creation?

I think scripture is very clear on this.

I think the answer is that very clearly, man is part of creation, man was given stewardship of creation.

And as a more practical matter, perhaps a more practical argument, a tree is known by its fruits.

And I would say that we are living at the tail end of a number of decades of society generally believing that man does not have stewardship of his fellow man, in the sense that I mean in this episode, in the sense that I am using it.

And I highly doubt that anyone would be able to mount a serious, compelling argument, moral argument, that what we have today as a result of that sort of belief, of that sort of mindset, of that change in the way we govern, that change in the way that we run our societies, I do not think that anyone could seriously argue that the outcome has been good, that the results have been beneficial, that we are better off than those who lived in prior eras when man exercised a more vigorous and a more active stewardship of his fellow man.

And this is also a fundamental issue.

This is one of those matters that if it is not addressed, then it really does not matter what else we fix, what else we get right, because all of it will fall apart if this issue is not addressed.

Because it does not matter how grand the institution, how impressive the edifice, how great the structure you build is, if you entrust it to those who are incapable of maintaining it.

The same holds for civilizations.

If a nation does not maintain the quality of its national stock, if the people are not properly stewarded, ultimately the result will be catastrophe, because the result will be complete collapse.

Those things that were constructed in a bygone era by a more capable people and have now been entrusted in our era, in this present era, or perhaps in some future era, to a less capable people, those things will not stand the test of time, because those less capable people will not be able to maintain them.

And so my fundamental contention, and my conclusion as it were, is that a faithful prince, a faithful ruler must steward the human resources that have been entrusted to his care, the national resources in the fullest sense of nation and national that have been entrusted to his care, in the same sort of way as one would care for his garden or for his livestock.

Yes, with the restrictions already mentioned with regard to the moral law, there are certain things that a leader may not do with regard to people, with regard to men, that you are permitted to do with regard to your livestock or your plants.

However, simply because some of the methods are permissible in one place and not in another does not mean that the nature of the stewardship is different.

Not different in kind, perhaps different in degree, insofar as the means are concerned.

The same sort of ends, however, are being pursued top to bottom with regard to stewardship, because again, it is preservation and enhancement, if possible, of that principle.

That is the duty, the core duty of the fiduciary, of the trustee, with regard to the beneficiaries.

In this case, in the case of the prince, in the case of the ruler, what has been entrusted to his care, the principle, is the national stock, the people over whom he rules at God's good pleasure.

And if he fails to maintain that, then he will have nothing to pass on to future generations, which is to say, to the beneficiaries.

A good gardener plants good plants in his garden and removes noxious weeds.

A good farmer takes care that his crops and his livestock are fit, healthy, and strong, and that those attributes are passed on to future generations, and that unwelcome, harmful, or unwanted attributes are not passed on to future generations.

A prince, a ruler of the people, is fundamentally in that same sort of role.

The gardener cares for plants, the farmer cares for crops and livestock, the ruler cares for his people, and caring for his people means acting as a steward in the same sort of way as the gardener cares for his plants and the farmer cares for his crops and his livestock.

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Interracial marriage is tantamount to murder.

This transcript:

1. Was machine generated.
2. Has not been checked for errors.
3. May not be entirely accurate.

Recently, I've started taking a break from Twitter on Sundays, really starting sometime on Saturday, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening.

At any rate, this past week, Saturday, I posted a tweet before taking my sabbatical, as it were, and that tweet blew up.

It got a lot of views, and I want to explain specifically what it is I mean by that tweet and why it is correct, why it is in line with right Christian doctrine.

And for reference, the tweet, verbatim, interracial marriage is tantamount to murder.

Now, it is important to note several things, and so I'm going to go through really four major points in this particular episode.

To start off, we need to distinguish per se and per quod.

Now I've distinguished this before elsewhere in, for example, the Stone Choir episode in which I distinguished per se from per quod, but just to go over it again briefly, something that is per se X is X intrinsically.

Something that is per quod X is X due to other circumstances, due to other facts.

And so it is important, it is vitally important to note at the outset that interracial marriage is not per se sinful.

And so of course that means that it is not per se tantamount to murder.

The issue is per quod.

The issue is that given external circumstances, given the surrounding facts, it is in fact sinful.

It is, as I said in my tweet, tantamount to murder.

The children that are produced from an interracial union are in fact not related to their own parents.

Now it is important to distinguish two senses in which we mean related here, because obviously I am using one and if I were using the other, it would not be true.

Yes, if two people of a different races have a child, that child is descended from them and therefore is related to them in the sense of being descended from them.

But biologically, genetically, according to the DNA of that child, that child is so far distant from his parents that in fact the parents are more closely related to any random member of their own race, of their own nation, than to their own child.

And I'll get into near the end of this episode why that is important, some of the consequences of that and what to do about those consequences.

But in addition to the fact that the child is effectively not related to his own parents, which carries a lot of problems with it, there are also health consequences.

Many times those who are born of particularly distant genetic stock, so parents who are less closely related, this is not going to be something that applies to say a German and a Dutchman or a Dutch woman and a German or a German and a Russian even, which is to say people descended from Japheth, Europeans, whites, that's within one of the overarching ethnic groups being of course the Japhethites, the Hamites and the Shemites.

Now this is something more distant if you have a European and an African, there are going to be health consequences of that union.

The child is going to be less healthy.

The child is going to have more problems than if he did not have such disparate lineage.

And of course this creates problems for medical care because the child is going to require more medical care for one and it is going to be more difficult to render that medical care because we have routines, we have various things set up for those of particular lineage because yes, you do actually have to tailor medicine to the genetics, to the lineage, to the DNA really is what you're doing, the biology of the patient.

In some cases it depends on the type of treatment, but to some degree we have those regimens in place tailored to particular groups.

If someone is effectively sui generis because that person is a mishmash, a mixture of multiple different groups, we don't have those in place.

It's going to be more difficult to treat that person.

Additionally, there are going to be things where you cannot treat that person.

So organ donation, tissue donation, if you try to get a bone marrow donation and you are half black and half white, good luck.

You probably will not be able to find a compatible donor and that is a serious consequence.

That is something parents should take into account because they are putting that on the child.

Parents are supposed to care for their children, not burden them unnecessarily and this is most certainly an unnecessary burden.

Additionally for the child, outside of the biological issues, you have the cultural issues.

This child is not going to belong to any one particular culture because the child is going to be torn between at least two.

It's going to be the father's culture versus the mother's culture and this is something those parents have put on that child.

This is a problem for the child.

That is a consideration because again, parents are supposed to care for their children and in the same vein, the divorce statistics for interracial marriage are significantly worse than those for intraracial marriage, which is to say if you marry someone outside your own race, you are much more likely to get divorced.

Again, this is going to severely impact the child.

We know the consequences for children if they are the product of a failed marriage, if their parents divorce.

Now add on top the other problems that biracial, multiracial children have and you have given this child a significantly harder time in life.

For what reason?

Why did you do this to the child?

But of course that is simply the beginning of this problem.

Let's look at it in the modern context and then we'll look at it in the biblical context second, because of course that is one of the things I am accused of doing is twisting scripture or ignoring scripture and so we'll address those questions.

But in the modern context, we'll deal with that first.

The goal of interracial marriages in the modern context is the destruction of nations.

This is very explicit.

Those who are advocating for interracial relationships, multiracial, biracial, whatever it happens to be children.

The explicit goal is the destruction of the distinct nations.

In particular, the goal of course is the destruction of whites of the white race.

And the reason for this is because historically Christendom has been synonymous with Europe.

Whites have been the bulwark of Christendom in the world for millennia.

And Satan knows this and he hates us and so he wants to erase us.

And this is one way that he can do it, a very effective way, because an interracial marriage destroys the lineage of both parents insofar as that child is concerned.

Now of course, if for instance you have a father from group A and a mother from group B and the child marries into group B and then the child's children marry into group B, eventually you wind up genetically basically back in group B just because of the way the genetic recombination and such works.

However, that only works so long as you have a large enough pool of group B where something like that can be absorbed and effectively bred out over time.

If you have enough people who are crossing that racial boundary with their marriages in a short span of time, you destroy one or both groups involved.

Just depends on the relative size of the groups basically.

In addition to this overtly evil goal, which many admit this is in fact their goal, this is what they want to accomplish with interracial marriage, many of those who are engaged in interracial marriages admit they are doing it for wicked reasons.

It may be a fetish.

It may be they hate their own people.

Of course, that is sin.

That is particularly egregious sin, just according to the plain words of scripture.

It's also something that is of course pushed by our culture and our media.

And as I have often said, as we've often said on Stone Choir as well, look at the origin of an idea or a thing.

Who is pushing it?

Why is it being pushed?

If the person or group pushing it is evil, you can rest fairly assured that the thing itself is also evil.

It is aimed at evil ends because ultimately, of course, it comes from Satan.

And in this case, those pushing it are evil.

Those who are pushing interracial marriage are by and large, atheists, Marxists, communists.

This was a big push from the USSR in order to drive tension and destroy the nation.

It is carried over into the modern context, of course, and it's still Marxists who are pushing it.

Just a different flavor of Marxist, less the Soviet variety, more the Frankfurt.

And as I mentioned, interracial marriage destroys one's race.

It is in fact a repudiation of one's ancestors, of one's parents.

And so of course it is a violation of the fourth commandment because the fourth commandment does not extend just to the immediate generation before you.

It's not just your parents, because of course this can be explained a number of ways.

The simplest one for most people to grasp is going to be this.

You have a duty to your parents under the fourth commandment that is explicit, that is obvious.

Thou shalt honor thy father and thy mother.

And of course there's the blessing with it, which plays into this as well, that it may as go well with you and you may live long in the land or thou mayest live long in the land if we want to use the older English.

But of course you have to look at it generationally.

Your parents have a duty to their parents.

Their parents have a duty to their parents.

And so part of honoring your parents is recognizing their duty to honor their parents and therefore honoring your grandparents, partly through your parents, but also directly, particularly if they're still alive, but also all of those ancestors all the way back.

And part of how you do that is continuing the line they have preserved over a course of millennia, not terminating it for some selfish reason, which it virtually always is in these cases.

We could also mention crime statistics, but I've mentioned that elsewhere, gone over it fairly extensively.

I'll link to it in the show notes instead of going over it here.

And so of course, mentioning the fourth commandment leads us right into the biblical context.

And this is the one that many have attempted to say that I'm somehow violating with my arguments that I am ignoring the biblical context or twisting it, what have you.

And so let's look at some cases.

We will look at five cases.

We'll start with Moses.

There are those who argue that Moses was in an interracial marriage because he married Zipporah, the daughter of the priest of Midian.

What these people fail to mention, and in some cases it may be simply because they're cherry picking or they're looking for something on the internet, they probably Googled it and don't know anything about scripture.

Well, the Midianites are descended from Abraham via Keterah.

And so the Midianites are cousins of the Israelites, of the Hebrews.

This was a cousin marriage.

This is not an interracial marriage.

Now there is one other attempted argument in the case of Moses.

And they will say that when there was the rebellion with Miriam and Aaron, that they said that Moses had married a Cushite and therefore that was the reason, this is what the opponents attempt to argue, therefore that was the reason they were condemning Moses.

Now if you actually read that text, that's not the reason they're condemning Moses.

Now they may have brought that up, but the real problem there is that they were rejecting Moses who was the chosen of God to lead the people of Israel, and therefore in rejecting Moses they were in fact rejecting God.

They were rebelling against God because the rebellion is always against God.

Against you, you only have I sinned.

That's the issue.

The issue was not Moses.

And also Cushite in this context probably just means foreign woman from the region of Cush.

Cush is to the south, so is Midian.

Probably the same woman, even if it was not the same woman.

The issue was still the rebellion against God, the usurpation, which is incidentally why you see Miriam is cursed more heavily than Aaron, because for a woman to attempt to usurp that sort of headship, that sort of leadership, is of course worse than for a man to do so.

And Aaron was in fact a leader of the people as well, just not in the same position as Moses.

And so scripture doesn't actually say anything about this marriage.

We don't have an explicit approval or condemnation.

And so it goes beyond the text if either side really wants to draw anything out of this.

The next person we'll address is Rahab.

Now there's a fundamental problem here, a foundational issue when we are addressing Rahab.

And that is that we don't know if we're dealing with one person or two.

When you translate or transliterate, as the case may be, a name from one language to another, it is often the case that there will be multiple spellings, particularly across different authors.

And here we have two different names.

We have Rahab and Rahab, and that is R-A-A-B or R-A-X-A-B, just to transliterate the Greek characters as it were.

Now we have with the Chi, with the X in Matthew, Rahab, but in the Septuagint Old Testament, and in Hebrew and James, we have Rahab.

Is this the same woman?

Well we don't know.

Scripture does not tell us.

There's nowhere else we are told if this Rahab, as the name is transliterated into English, is two different women or one woman.

And so Matthew, of course, is giving us the lineage of Christ.

If Rahab is Rahab, then we have a Canaanite in the lineage of Christ.

But we have no reason to conclude this.

If Scripture told us that, fine, we can use this argument for whatever purpose, as long as it's in line with the text says.

The text does not say that this is the same woman.

And so neither side can draw any argument from this because it goes beyond the text.

Now those who are on the other side are actually relying on Midrashim.

They're relying on Jewish sources that supposedly exegete this text or carry forward some oral tradition.

That's not Scripture.

That's not binding.

Christians should not resort to it.

And so Rahab does not give an argument for either side.

The next individual in Scripture we will address is Ruth.

This is a similar issue to earlier with Moses and Zipporah.

Ruth was a Moabite.

Well, the Moabites were descended from Lot.

Lot was the nephew of Abraham.

Again, cousins.

This is not an interracial marriage.

This is a cousin marriage.

And again, it just pays to actually know Scripture, to know the lineage of these people.

You cannot make a sound argument.

You cannot make a proper argument if you don't actually know what Scripture says about these individuals.

And so again, Ruth is a cousin.

Moving on, Joseph.

This is one where perhaps we have an interracial marriage.

Joseph married Asenath, the daughter of the priest of On. She may have been a Hamite.

If she was an Egyptian, then she was a Hamite because Egypt is a son of Ham.

The Egyptians are sons of Ham.

Egypt is called in Scripture, the land of Ham.

However, we are not given a lineage of Asenath.

The Egyptians were conquered at least a couple of times in history, perhaps more than that.

By Shemitic peoples.

One in fact was the Hyksos, and that may have played into why the Pharaoh, who was leader of Egypt at the time of the Exodus, hated the Israelites, feared the Israelites.

Because he may have thought that if the Hyksos or some other group of Shemitic origin came in, that the Hebrews, also being Shemitic, would have aligned with them, would have allied with them and fought against the Egyptians.

But of course, some of the leadership, some of the upper echelons of Egyptian society would have been Shemite descended because of these invasions.

The similar things happened in various parts of the world over time.

For instance, we know the Normans came in and conquered parts of Britain, and then you have the Anglo-Saxons, and you have these various groups that conquer other groups and take over the upper echelons of society and intermix over time.

Now in the case, of course, the European case I gave, these are very closely related cousins.

In this case, they're a little more distant because you're dealing with Shemites versus Hamites.

However, again, we don't know the lineage of Asenath.

And so if either side makes an argument from this, it is an argument based on assumption, not based on what is explicitly in the text of scripture.

Even if, let's say, let's say that Asenath was indeed a Hamite.

So this is Joseph a Shemite marrying Asenath a Hamite.

So this is a proper interracial marriage, an actual one in scripture, if we make this assumption.

Does scripture say that this was a wise union?

No.

Does scripture say this was an unwise union?

Again, no.

Scripture does not pass any judgment on it.

Scripture simply relays what happened in this case.

And so if we want to draw out and say that this was approved of by God, this was blessed in some way, we can say that he did indeed go on to found part of a nation, as it were, not a nation unto itself, but a tribe, two tribes, Manasseh and Ephraim.

And so we can say that God did bless him.

However, that God blessed him for this does not mean that this particular union was in and of itself wise.

We could look, of course, to David.

Was what he did with Bathsheba wise?

No, I think we can all agree that stealing another man's wife and murdering him is not something we should call wise.

Did God still give him children from Bathsheba?

Yes.

Solomon in particular, who would sit on his throne, who would be in the line of the Messiah.

Not everything that is recorded in scripture is necessarily something that is wise, something that is praiseworthy.

Some things are left to human wisdom, and we have to be able to make those calls based on the information available to us.

This is, of course, obvious because the most clear cut case, let's call it.

If a woman becomes pregnant as a result of rape, we have to contend with the fact that children are a blessing from God.

But this child is very clearly the product of an evil act.

Can we conclude that because God's blessing of children, God's blessing of a child in this case resulted that the act itself is approved of or blessed by God?

The answer, of course, is no.

And so we have to be careful what sort of conclusions we are drawing from the information from the facts relayed by scripture.

And so even if this is a case of an actual interracial marriage, we are not told by scripture if this is something that is blessed or cursed, if this is something that is praiseworthy or blameworthy.

And even if we go ahead and assume that it is praiseworthy, this was a good thing, it does not mean that it's a general rule.

Again, there are matters that are left to human wisdom.

And so let's look at really basically the only very clear case of mixed lineage that we have explicitly mixed lineage clearly taught by scripture.

And that, of course, is Timothy.

And per Acts 16, Timothy was born of a Jewish or Judean woman and a Greek father.

Now, of course, we could make the argument that technically it does just say Judean and Greek and Greek can just mean foreign and Judean can mean living in Judea.

But I think it is a fair assumption in this case to go with the interpretation in this case that Timothy's mother was indeed an Israelite woman and his father was indeed a Greek in the sense of ethnically, racially Greek man.

And so again, does scripture praise this union?

No.

Does scripture curse this union?

No.

We're back to my initial comments.

Per se, not sinful.

The issue is, per quote, the issue is the surrounding circumstances.

And in our modern context, interracial marriages are basically always sin.

They are a problem for the reasons mentioned.

And I'll get into the consequences now for my last point.

We've finished the section on the biblical context, as it were.

And so let's discuss the actual consequences of interracial marriages.

I already discussed the issue, some of the issues regarding children, the medical consequences, the lack of a real culture, the lack of belonging.

But it really is worse than that, because one of the things that we have to do, according to scripture, according to the fourth commandment, is honor our father and mother.

And again, that that extends beyond just one's immediate biological mother and father.

You are part of a larger culture.

You are part of a nation.

And part of honoring your father and mother is honoring that nation of which you are part.

How do you do that if you are not really part of any one nation?

If your parents are from two separate nations, or worse, if your grandparents are from three or four separate nations, how do you honor your nation properly?

You don't have a nation in a very real sense.

And this is the problem that individuals who enter into an interracial marriage create for their own children, because that child will have to choose to which nation he truly belongs.

Now, of course, the ordinary course of things is that a woman leaves her family and becomes part of the family of her husband.

And so the child would choose his father's nation.

But that is not how it always plays out in the modern context.

And so this is a burden placed by selfish parents onto their children.

And the child has to choose.

This is the reality of it.

This is the recommendation, because this is the best thing the child can do.

The child has to choose the nation to which he will belong.

And that is a terrible burden to put on a child, because for anyone who is born to parents of the same nation, you don't have to choose your nation because it's your nation.

If both of your parents are German, you're German.

If both of your parents are French, you're French.

You aren't having to contend with this additional confusion and burden that your parents in their selfishness and their short-sightedness have placed on you.

But that, of course, is what society wants to do to these children, because society wants to create individuals who are rootless, individuals who do not have any connection to their ancestors, to a greater nation, to anything beyond themselves, because society wants these little atomized individuals who can be shuffled around a board and used as interchangeable cogs in the great machine that we call capitalism in the market.

That is what modern society wants.

It also wants it because individuals who have no greater connection to a larger group will forever be atomized.

They will never be able to organize in pursuit of their own good, of the good of their own group because they don't have that group.

And so those who are in power cannot be challenged by atomized individuals.

They can be challenged by groups who have a shared identity and are willing and able to work towards shared goals.

The best sort of individual that our modern overlords, let us call them, can have is someone of mixed lineage who is also of alternative sexuality, because that person is totally atomized.

That person does not have the natural connections of family, the natural connections of race, the natural connections of nationality, none of it.

That is not part of a greater whole.

That is an individual in the most terrible sense of the term.

And so those who produce children in an interracial marriage are putting this sort of burden onto their children.

And that's sinful.

That is not something that Christians should be doing.

That transgresses the wisdom that God has given us to act properly in this life.

Just because we can do something does not mean that we should do that thing.

Just because something is not per se sinful does not mean that it is not sinful in context.

And so parents who are doing this, individuals who are engaging in this, should not be praised for what they're doing, because out of their own selfish, sinful desires, they are placing zero emphasis, zero care, zero weight on what will happen to their children in the future, what this will do to their children, what this will do to their society.

Because of course, this is one of the things that erodes the bonds in society between and among people.

Parents are bound together in part by their common genetics and by their common history, the common culture, language, all of these various things.

That breaks down when an individual no longer has a connection to these things.

And so again, just to emphasize, one of the biggest problems with this is not actually the sin of the parents.

Yes, it is the sin of the parents that leads to the curse on the children, but it is that curse on the children that should be our greater interest.

Why would we as a society permit children to be burdened with this absolutely, totally unnecessary additional confusion, this lack of belonging, this isolation, this alienation, this atomization, the disconnect from everyone and everything around them?

There's no reason to pursue this.

There is every reason to avoid it.

And so that is the reason that I made the tweet, because it is indeed tantamount to murder.

Because what you are doing is killing your own nation and you are attempting to destroy your children.

They are going to struggle with this.

They may overcome it, but it will be a great deal of effort on their part and they will never fully overcome it.

They cannot fully overcome it because you have burdened them with something that is permanent in this life.

And so that is the thing that those of us who point out these issues want to avoid.

We do not want these children who are burdened in this way.

Life is hard enough for many people and much of the time.

Adding additional complication, additional burdens, additional weight is not what Christians should be seeking to do.

It is not what any good person should be seeking to do.

And so, yes, it is right teaching to tell people to avoid these unwise unions, which do indeed rise to the level of sinful because of context.

And so in summary, interracial marriages are not sinful per se.

However, in the modern context, they are virtually always sinful per quod.

And so it is right teaching for Christians to say that these unwise unions should be avoided.

It's that simple.

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