Equally created, not created as equals

Linnaeus again.

In response to my review of Rev. Warren Graff’s resolution on race, Rev. Delwyn Xavier Campbell Sr. writes:

I’ll make this simple for you. Do you think that any race, ethnicity, tribe, or tongue is created by God as intrinsically superior to others? If you don’t, we have no problem. If you do, on what basis is this superiority, since we all are sons of Adam, AND all are descendants of Noah? Also, if you think that this is the case, do you think that it was part of the original creation, and will, therefore, be part of the New Creation, or do you think that it is the result of the fall, and will not be with us in the resurrection?

To answer, we have to tease out what is meant by “intrinsically superior.” It is not entirely clear to me what “intrinsically” encompasses, but perhaps it would be most useful to take the question to the level of the individual and reason upwards from there.

Is the man with Down’s Syndrome, the child of rape whose father is on death row for murder, whose harlot mother tried and failed to abort him, “inferior” to anyone else?

According to our universal common descent from Adam: No, he is not.

According to our universal creation by God: No.

According to Christ’s offer of forgiveness to all men through his death and resurrection: No.

Are these what are meant by “intrinsically”? I’m not sure but, if so, there’s your answer.

At the same time, this man is certainly inferior to many other men in terms of his station and abilities. Doubtless his demeanor and affect is also superior to many other men.

In short, the answer to the question of superiority/inferiority of a man has to be: It depends upon what metric we’re scoring with.

The same holds true of the races, for while we have one Creator, and one First Father, we are not all the same—neither individually, nor in the aggregate of our respective racial groupings. Rev. Warren Graff put it well in his 2025 LCMS Rocky Mountain District convention essay:

[W]e can easily see that there are differences in lineages. There are differences in families. Your family may have blue eyes; my family may have brown eyes. Your family may have the gift of music, my family may be stronger in metal work, another in sports. You may have the genes to be short and strong; my genes may tend to give height.
…
[L]ooking at different peoples around the world, should it bother us at all that we see that people on one continent seem to be better at thinking in, say math, and other peoples seem to be known for beautiful art; that some have darker skin, others lighter, some average a taller height, others shorter? Should that bother us that our Lord gives gifts through lineages, but all these lineages are equally of Adam and Eve?

To answer the rhetorical: No, it should not bother us in the least!

And of the inequalities we see, yes, many of these will persist in the Resurrection of the Body. While I consider it likely that issues of a degenerative nature will be repaired in the Resurrection (down to broken genes, one assumes), it does not then follow that all will have the same height, nor be all the same in any number of other attributes. 

In sum, we are all of us equally created by God, but He did not create all of us as equals.