Conclusion: Against Biological Reductionism, Again
I’ll leave it to the reader to assess the helpfulness of this debate. I think, in large part, Linnaeus and I have been talking past each other. It feels like Linnaeus has been trying to squeeze a concession out of me that I’ve been willing to give our entire debate: lineage and heritage are real and true and part of God’s ordered world.
I have parents that a few other people have, and others do not. I share grandparents with some people and not with others, and so on. I don’t think I’ve every denied the reality of lineage or heritage. My argument has been that there is always more.
There is more when it comes to family, specifically because a father and mother introduce two lineages into one child. There is more implied in every word the Bible uses to describe groups of people (people, tribe, tongue, nation, etc.). There is a fundamental legal/verbal reality to our humanity, and I cannot see how the category of race is not intentionally introduced to diminish this characteristic. Perhaps not, but it still functions, always, in a reductionistic capacity, isolating lineage, heritage, genetics, etc. from the reality of the sinner created by God and redeemed by Christ.
Marriage is more than mating. Having children is more than breeding. Nations are more than herds. A man is more than his genetics.
That the Lord was pleased to bring forth the human family from Adam and Eve, and then from Noah, highlights this foundational Biblical truth. In Adam and Eve God’s image and likeness was given to man, as well as dominion over creation. Adam and Eve are given to one another, and those to became one. Through Adam and Eve the image of God was lost, and sin, death and corruption where introduced to the entire human family. The gift of life and the corruption of sin, these defining realities of each and every human life, are given to the entire family.
Here we once more point to our Lord Jesus Christ (mostly of Shem with a little Hamite mixed in) who took the place of all humanity, standing in for all the sons of Adam and Eve, enduring God’s wrath to sin for us life and salvation.
But this has been said before, I hope with sufficient clarity to make the point clear. May the reader forgive me for what was lacking.
It is true, by lineage and heritage we are all given unique and particular circumstances, nevertheless, the Scriptures give us more. By flesh we are all sons and daughters of Adam and Noah, children of wrath. By faith we are sons of Abraham. By baptism we are the children of God. Behold that love!
Thanks to Linnaeus, who not only kept this conversation going, but was also very patient with my late responses and delays.
As we conclude this debate, I want to once again thank Rev. Wolfmueller for his affable and collegial spirit in this exchange. It has been enjoyable.
In this debate, I have argued that race denotes degrees of consanguinity, as achieved through shared lineage according to the flesh.
In cross-examination, we saw that Wolfmueller also believes in the category of lineage according to the flesh. He believes that Japanese and Ghanaians—though sharing their ultimate origins in Adam and Noah—differ in their more proximate lineage, making them different people groups.
As “people group” is a euphemism for “race,” this means that Wolfmueller believes in race. It is a settled question, even if he won’t use that term.
If, then, we agree on the biological basis of race, where is our disagreement? Is it lexical?
Certainly, in the course of this debate objections have been raised by Wolfmueller (and commentators) about the semantic application of the term. “Race” as only applicable to Adam’s level of human taxonomy is the thesis that Wolfmueller is defending, after all.
However, this makes no more semantic sense than to say that “there is only one family, the family of Adam.” The lexical range for the two terms, “family” and “race” is effectively identical. A fact which Wolfmueller himself confirmed when he concluded his opening statement by saying, “…we confess that there is one human race, one human family…”
But, simultaneously, Wolfmueller would have to agree that his children, mother and father, and sisters and brothers, are his “family” in the most immediate sense.
His aunts and uncles, first and second cousins, and their offspring, are his “family” in an extended sense.
If he is in Denmark and meets someone with his surname, and both trace their bloodlines back to the same village eight generations ago, he’d exclaim that “we must be family!” But by this he would neither mean “human family” nor “immediate family,” but rather in an intermediate sense.
Wolfmueller is even fond of the phrase “Noah family reunion,” which he uses to denote the fact that we are a “family” with all men across the globe.
So, again, does a universal “human family” mean that there is no such thing as more proximate uses of the category denoted by the term “family”? Clearly not! Then neither is “race” bound only to refer to Adam and not also to other, more proximate groupings of shared lineage according to the flesh.
Of course, as I argued in my opening statement, in English we typically reserve the word “family” for more proximate relations, whereas the word “race” typically encompasses a broader swath of consanguinity, but that is largely conventional. Perhaps we should abandon both terms and go with the German “Geschlecht” instead?
But, setting the word aside, what is Wolfmueller’s real objection to this concept? What causes him to make his central claim, that “the way the Bible teaches us to speak of humanity excludes speaking in terms of races,” when this is so clearly false?
After all, the Bible uses racial designation of groups: Israelites, Moabites, Edomites.
It applies such designations to individuals: Ruth the Moabite, Uriah the Hittite, the Ethiopian eunuch.
It even records God’s command to wage war against entire cohorts of peoples, identified according to their races: Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites.
The reason is that Wolfmueller has fallen victim to the program described by Yuri Bezmenov:
What [Ideological Subversion] basically means is: To change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that—despite the abundance of information—no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interests of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country. It’s a great brainwashing process which goes very slow, and it’s divided into four basic stages, the first one being demoralization. …
[The people] are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their minds. Even if you expose them to authentic information, even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior. …[E]xposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who is demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures. Even if I take him by force…he will refuse to believe it…
The Christian West’s efforts to spread the Gospel to the four corners of the world made us many enemies, who now wage war against us by way of deception. One such program of deceit is to convince the European family that our extinction via dispossession and attrition is not worth noticing, much less resisting.
After all, it would be racist to insist that your family’s inheritance be reserved to, well, your family! Being against the dispossession of your kin is sinful partiality—you don’t love your alien neighbor enough, Nazi. Your nation belongs to the people of the world, now. Anyone who cares to claim a share of it gets one. After all, when a bunch of people who are not of your nation’s pedigree start saying that they’re members of your nation, well then they are—to say otherwise would be to deal in immutable categories, and that’s just not God’s way!
Enter Wolfmueller, here to play the court theologian and baptize the ideology seeded by the enemies of his people. And not out of any guile or malicious intent on his part, but because he has been beguiled, like most living members of the European race. We have been conditioned to believe that advocacy of any racial interest is licit—as long as it’s not White. The best way to prevent White collectivization? Say that there is no such collective—race does not exist! And so we are cowed into accepting our own extinction.
May we learn instead to be men of valor again, and defend our own heritage.
I greatly appreciate your inclusion of the opening statements and rebuttals of my Race Debate with Rev. Bryan Wolfmueller in the June 9, 2025 edition of Christian News (Volume 63, Number 23). I hope you will also publish the cross-examinations and the concluding statements—once they are up—in a future publication as well.
You also included two additional pieces with the Race Debate in this issue: your editorial, and Rev. Warren Graff’s response to my arguments. These were filled with assertions ranging from the questionable to the outright false and, because it amuses me to do so, I am going to comment on them, separately. Below is your editorial, with my remarks following.
Christian News Editorial
Rev. Wolfmueller is a respected and well-known pastor in the LCMS, but his debate opponent is anonymous, which is curious, if not cowardly. “The brethren” signals this is a Christian debate. But the actual arguments for some hyper-concept of race do not follow Scripture, nor are based on it. The opposite position, taken by Wolfmueller is scripturally based.
The affirmative position (that race is significant) fails to highlight the theological implications behind this stance. It takes a vague definition of “race” as a nebulous continuum though, and affirms it as a biological reality. As a general description, it does work somewhat—less so in our society.
But why argue for something that fits a very customized definition? There must be a motive, but we are not shown the upside of this. And certainty (sic) not in theological terms. The use of the Old Testament Israel as a race, is not coherent, since religion—following the true God and His law—is inseparable from being part of the nation of Israel properly speaking. The real question is not answered: Why do these categories of natural order matter? Are they something valuable and divine in themselves (that we must respect), or a consequence of sin and division? There are not races in Christ, and the the Holy Spirit does not distinguish one from another in the Gospel. Linnaeus has not defined race clearly, but merely embraces the dubious concept without committing to hard facts that can be falsified.
This Linnaeus seems to get angry at the “Enlightenment ideology of Equality.” But isn’t the basic root of equality in God’s eyes Christian—that all are His image-bearers and restoration is in Christ? Sure, it can be taken too far in this world and outside of Christ, but what place does man-made “race” play in theology. There is no iron-clad definition of this term. The word “race,” despite being a loaded and variously-defined term, doesn’t matter to him, he says, but it is used none the less. The Gospel addresses all nations and all individuals, not collections of people.
They seem to be talking past one another, but there is obviously a real disagreement. There are peoples more and less closely related by human observation. There are observable characteristics more or less in common. But these are of the flesh—not the Spirit. Depending on the precise definition (and Linnaeus gives himself a mountain of room on this front) one can say there are races, and also that there are not fixed categories we can place each person one (sic). What do we say when we cannot categorize someone? Are we not all children of Adam and also of God in Christ? We, as sinners, are partial and make shallow judgments based on superficial things, even our own sinful assumptions.
So what is the point? Linnaues (sic) has an axe to grind—but what is it? In the end, he does not need Scripture to make his point (logic and this sinful world are enough it seems), and ultimately a pagan can make the same claims. While the debate is not that interesting, the conclusions one makes based on wrong assumptions, in light of our sin and and (sic) depravity, must limit the universality of the righteousness of Christ in the Holy Gospel. “Truly I understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:34-35).
Linnaeus’ Response
You opine that my anonymity is “curious, if not cowardly.” What I find curious is that you call yourself a “Lutheran”—a name derived from a man who operated under the pseudonym “Knight George” when to be identified as the Martin Luther would have threatened his life. Your implied designation of the Reformer as a coward is noted.
Next, you claim that my arguments regarding race do not follow Scripture, nor are they based upon it. Excepting yourself, I think it is plain to anyone reading that this is untrue. And yet, this is irrelevant. Scripture has more to say on the category of race than it does about the North American landmass, yet you would obviously reject a denial of your address based upon the sort of hyper-strict Biblicism your position requires. Your inconsistency is noted.
Next, you object that “The affirmative position (that race is significant) fails to highlight the theological implications behind this stance.” You are simply confused about the nature of the debate itself. The thesis is, “There is only one race, the race of Adam,” and I take the negative position, not the affirmative as you say. The debate is not over whether race is significant, but whether it exists, and in what way.
Next, you object that the definition of race that I employ amounts to a continuum. That you would do so is unsurprising, as race-denialists routinely fall into the Continuum Fallacy when they argue their views.
Next, you state that “The use of the Old Testament Israel as a race, is not coherent, since religion—following the true God and His law—is inseparable from being part of the nation of Israel properly speaking.” It is true that all Israelites were charged with allegiance to God, but it is also true that devotees of other races were still called by their own racial epithets (Ruth the Moabite, Uriah the Hittite), marking them as racially distinct from ethnic Israelites.
Next, you opine that I have not answered why these categories of natural order matter. This is a very bizarre line of thought. Adam did not question God when the Lord brought animals before him to name, and we his descendants have never stopped working to understand the natural order of creation, giving names to concepts and categories as we go. As I said above, this debate is about whether race exists, not about why the concept matters. The latter question is a subjective assessment and not at all suitable for a debate such as this, and in any case it would necessitate that the sides agree on the former, which Wolfmueller and I do not.
Next, you defend the idea of equality as a Christian one, but you admit that it can be taken too far. Well, it has been, with disastrous results for ourselves and our children. But that doesn’t matter because you live in the gated community of abstract theology, where the Second and Third Articles exist without the First, and nothing more than a single degree removed from the Doctrine of Justification has any value.
Next, you say that “The Gospel addresses all nations and all individuals, not collections of people.” Come again? “The Gospel addresses all nations…not collections of people.” Nations are collections of people. As so often happens for your generation of the most propagandized men in history, you become incoherent in thought and speech in your rush to reject created categories that clash with your Civil Rights conditioning.
Next, you acknowledge that “There are peoples more and less closely related by human observation. There are observable characteristics more or less in common.” It is good that you are able and willing to recognize these facts of creation—First Article facts. Except you then go on to state, “But these are of the flesh—not the Spirit.” Pure gnosticism. Your daily need to sustain your physical life with physical bread is of the flesh. Your children were produced of a fleshly union. Your fleshy fingers typed your very words on a corporeal (non-spiritual) keyboard. You, in your gated ghetto of abstract theology, depend upon fleshly categories each and every moment. I have in this debate propounded on fleshly categories because that is what is relevant to this debate, but you want to deny that capacity to me because it is not suitable to your high-minded spiritual palate. Your arbitrariness is noted.
Next, you return to your Continuum Fallacy; the Sorites Paradox claims another victim.
Next, you state, “In the end, he does not need Scripture to make his point (logic and this sinful world are enough it seems), and ultimately a pagan can make the same claims.” Of course, I’ve cited Scripture throughout my arguments, but you must continue to hold the line of strict Biblicism in order to claim that it is irrelevant. In any case, the fact that a pagan can see something true about God’s created order that you must deny in order to keep your incoherent ideology together should concern you. There is a Christian revival happening among millennial and younger men, many of whom are attending church for the first time (often with families in tow), because there are sectors of the Church now acknowledging plain natural truths that men like yourself tell them they cannot believe. Truths which Christians have always acknowledged before your generation was taught not to. To put a spin on John 3:12: “If we lie to men about earthly things, how will they believe if we tell them of heavenly things?
Last, you imply that my conclusions about race “must limit the universality of the righteousness of Christ in the Holy Gospel.” And yet you published my rebuttal to Wolfmueller in which I plainly stated agreement with him that “Christ accomplished his redeeming work on behalf of all [mankind].” Here is what I find most concerning about the way you lot approach this disagreement about the existence of the category of race. You all frame it as if the recognition of the existence of the Chinaman, the Bantu, the Lakota, and the Dane as distinct people groups, each with a distinct heritage and genetic composition, which we term “race,” is an attack on the Doctrine of Justification itself. You are the very churchly incarnation of the Law of the Instrument. You see something you don’t like, deem it a problem, and then flaunt your domain-dependency while you flourish Maslow’s hammer as if you were on a personal mission from Bo Giertz.
Sir, not everything that displeases you by poking at the malformed sections of your conscience is a Gospel issue. Race is real, and we don’t make Christians by denying it. In fact, we scandalize the men with eyes and brains who can smell a desperate lie a mile away.
We who acknowledge race and a duty to our people are increasing. You are decreasing. You can believe me while we sow, in time to save your own fields, or you can believe me when we harvest, when it is too late.
Cross examination round of the Race Debate between Rev. Bryan Wolfmueller and Linnaeus. This page will post Rev. Wolfmueller’s answers to Linnaeus’s cross examination questions.
Debate thesis: There is only one race, the race of Adam.
If the people of Japan disappeared and you filled their islands with people of Ghana, would the Japanese be gone, or just darker skinned?
Answer #1
Japanese certainly means more that “people living on the Island of Japan”. If, therefore, the people of Japan disappeared, then the Japanese would be gone.
Question #2
Would a man with Japanese parents still be Japanese if he lived in America, spoke only English, and practiced no Japanese culture? How so/not?
Answer #2
Sure, such a man would have a Japanese lineage and heritage, but he would much less “of Japan” or “Japanese” than, say, his parents, our his cousins living in Japan.
I appreciate Linneaus pushing me to definitions and distinctions, and I appreciate the readers patience as I wander towards them. I’m pushing back, as stated earlier, on the biological reductionism of “races”. Linneaus seems to be pushing back on the modern idea of the nation-state.
In a recent essay delivered at the Rocky Mountain District Convention, Warren Graff pointed to, perhaps, a third was of understanding ethnos via a quotation from Herodotus (~450BC):
“[We] Athenians will not betray the Greeks, since we are of the same blood and same language and in fellowship of the sanctuaries of the gods and the sacrifices, and we share customs.” (Herodotus, “The Histories,” 8.144.2. τὸ Ἑλληνικὸν ἐὸν ὁμόαιμον καὶ ὁμόγλωσσον, καὶ θεῶν ἱδρύματά τε κοινὰ καὶ θυσίαι ἤθεά τε ὁμότροπα, τῶν προδότας γενέσθαι Ἀθηναίους οὐκ ἂν εἴη καλῶς.)
Graff continues, “Our generation is, of course, post-Westphalia (1648), where definition was given to modern nation-states. When we hear nation, we necessarily think in terms of this modern nation state, where citizenship is determined by defined territories and centralized governments. But we have already noted that Herodotus, 450 years before our Lord’s Incarnation, spoke of defining one’s Greekness by sharing the same language and having fellowship of the sanctuaries of the gods and the sacrifices and customs. In other words, you are the ethnicity of Greek and of Athenian because you worship and sacrifice to the gods of Greece and Athens.” (Warren Graff, unpublished essay)
To apply this definition to our English-speaking neighbor with Japanese parents, it seem like he would be much more “of America” than “of Japan”, that is, an American.
Question #3
Let’s take the same scenario as before, but change America for Ghana and English for Dangme. Would you be able to visually tell this man apart from the native Ghanaians, and on what basis?
Answer #3
Yes. See above.
Question #4
If, as you’ve acknowledged, changing continents, languages, and cultures does not alter a man’s lineage according to the flesh, does conversion to Christ alter a man’s lineage according to the flesh?
Answer #4
No.
Lineage and heritage are true things. I think we’ve agreed on this.
Cross examination round of the Race Debate between Rev. Bryan Wolfmueller and Linnaeus. This page will post Linnaeus’s answers to Rev. Wolfmueller’s cross examination questions.
Debate thesis: There is only one race, the race of Adam.
Ethiopian’s head and female head, with a kalos inscription. Attic janiform red-figure aryballos, ca. 520–510 BC. From Greece.
Question #1
Linnaeus states, “In fact, technically and according to the broadest use of the word, there are as many races as there are fathers, for each is the origin of the race of those who come from him.” I wonder—and perhaps Linnaeus could articulate this in the next portion of the debate—when the split occurs. If the father determines the race, then Shem and Ham would, in fact, be the same race: Noahite. Only Shem’s children would be Shemites. I’m wondering if Linnaeus could help me understand my own family: if my four children are four different races, or if only my grandchildren will be different races from one another.
Answer #1
Your children are of the Bryan race. Your grandchildren are also of the Bryan race. However, only G’s children are of the G race; M’s children are not of the G race. As I noted in my opening statement, the use of the word race at this scale can become tedious, even confusing, due to the need to constantly clarify against equivocation.
At this scale we would typically prefer the term “families”. Your children are part of one another’s family. Grandchildren from G will be the same family as their siblings, but not the same family as M’s offspring. We may say that they are part of the same “extended family”, or we might move over to the term “clan” at this point. A few generations down and we would be speaking of your descendants instead as a Bryan “tribe” consisting of many clans and, under that, families.
This is all to speak nominally. Biologically, there will continue to be a widening divergence between the different children’s lines over each generation in which one or more of their descendants do not marry into the family of one of your other children, preserving (rather than diluting) their genetic inheritance from you.
Question #2
“If the people of Japan disappeared and you filled their islands with people of Ghana, would the Japanese be gone, or just darker skinned?” –Linnaeus
My question for Linneaus: could you flush out how this question fits with your thesis?
Answer #2
I contend, as I have argued, that men can be grouped according to their degree of shared common descent—from most recent (father/mother) to most distant (Adam/Eve). Observation, now augmented by genetic analysis, tells us that such groupings share characteristics in proportion to the recentness (as well as the overlapped-ness) of their shared ancestry. At the scale of an entire nation of near-consanguineous people, we call such a grouping a “race”.
My first question, then, was to expose whether or not you also believe in groupings at such a scale, not according to national boundaries, but according to what is intrinsic to the people.
My second question is more pointed, and has the same goal. I contend that you operate daily according to the category of race as I’ve defined it, but for ideological reasons you have to contort and deny it in order to preserve the Civil Rights neo-Confessional ordo.
Question #3
Linnaeus,
Could you give me your thoughts on this Luther quotation from On the Jews and Their Lies, and it’s application to the debate?
Why should so much ado be made of this? After all, if birth counts before God, I can claim to be just as noble as any Jew, yes, just as noble as Abraham himself, as David, as all the holy prophets and apostles. Nor will I owe them any thanks if they consider me just as noble as themselves before God by reason of my birth. And if God refuses to acknowledge my nobility and birth as the equal to that of Isaac, Abraham, David, and all the saints, I maintain that he is doing me an injustice and that he is not a fair judge. For I will not give it up and neither Abraham, David, prophets, apostles nor even an angel in heaven, shall deny me the right to boast that Noah, so far as physical birth or flesh and blood is concerned, is my true, natural ancestor, and that his wife (whoever she may have been) is my true, natural ancestress; for we are all descended, since the Deluge, from that one Noah. We did not descend from Cain, for his family perished forever in the flood together with many of the cousins, brothers-in-law, and friends of Noah.
In this work, Luther contests the notion that the Jews are God’s people by virtue of their birth. Instead, Luther upholds faith in Christ as the only means by which one joins the ranks of God’s people. This renders boasts of blood before God, particularly as pertains to salvation, inert.
And yet, Luther does this while assuming the category of race—as groupings according to shared descent—which I articulated in my opening statement. In the quote provided, Luther acknowledges that his physical birth, his flesh and blood, came according to the line of Noah, and not the line of Cain. In fact, where this translation speaks of the “family” of Cain, Luther uses the German “Geschlecht.”
Langenscheidt, the premier German linguistics publisher, uses the following words to translate geschlecht:
Race, kind, genus, stock, lineage, descent, ancestry, generation, dynasty. In other words, it maps precisely onto the definition of race I have been arguing for.
According to you, there is only one Geschlecht, the Adam Geschlecht. According to Luther, there is also a Cain Geschlecht, to which he does not belong, and a Noah Geschlecht, to which he does belong.
Here again, you are forced to deny basic groupings and categories of created order to maintain your position. This doctrine you have invented or adopted has the sole aim of preventing Christians from working with concepts that are assumed within scripture and by our fathers in the faith. You should be concerned about reductionism, and look in the mirror.
Question #4
If a man’s mother is a descendant from Ham, and his father is a descendant of Shem, what race is he? How does this truth that every child is the result of two different hereditary lines factor into your consideration of race?
Answer #4
Your primary thesis in this debate, which is quite correct, is that both parents’ hereditary lines are from Adam. You also argue, using the phrase “Noah family reunion,” that both parents’ hereditary lines are from Noah. The fact that you are now calling it a “truth” that every child is the result of two different hereditary lines is to acquiesce to my point: that people groups have diverged from one another in the intervening generations, creating different hereditary lines. That is, you agree with what I posited in my opening statement: all men are consanguineous, but some men are more consanguineous [with one another] than others.
This factors because race is a derivative of consanguinity. It’s simply true that you are more related to those whose pedigree overlaps with yours the most completely, the most recently, and less related to those whose pedigree overlaps yours more distantly. Hence, you are more related to a brother than a first cousin, and more related to a first cousin than a second cousin, and so forth. And that’s without getting to the existence of double-cousins, as when your cousin’s father and your father are brothers, and your cousin’s mother and your mother are sisters, layering in even more consanguinity (again, overlapping pedigrees more completely, and more recently).
Turning to the scenario presented, this pedigree overlap does not happen until you get back to Noah’s generation, due to Pedigree Collapse. The child’s parents are certainly consanguineous, but distantly so. The child is mixed race.
Question #5
How many races are there? And what are they?
Answer #5
I have a rhetorical question in return. How many colors are there?
Seven—red, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple, and violet—is a valid answer. But it is not the only valid answer. Travel to your local hardware store and ask them how many colors of paint they carry.
The problem of where to draw the lines of delineation is called the Sorites paradox. A rejection of the existence of distinctions between points along a spectrum is called the Continuum Fallacy. I recommend looking these up.
We all understand that some categories, like color, fall within such a spectrum. It is easy to tell blue and red apart, but who can identify the precise location on the gradient where orange becomes yellow? Yet the existence of the spectrum does not disprove the category of color, nor does it render the distinction between blue and red less obvious.
In the same way, “how many races” depends upon where you choose to draw the lines of distinction—and there are many options. But place a Chinese man in a group of Western Europeans and no one would fail the “one of these things is not like the others” test.
Truly, the category of race helps us account for this phenomenon.
Indeed, I could also ask you, “how many families are there?” In your opening statement you said there is one family, the human family. Does this mean that there is no Wolfmueller family? Reality admits variance in counting according to how we map these distinctions.
First, I’d like to again thank Linnaeus for suggesting this debate, and for articulating his position regarding the different races of humanity. This is my response to his argument, which may be found here. (You can also find my original argument here and Linnaeus’ response here.)
To define race, Linnaeus invites us to consider the human family tree. “Race” refers to any given generational cross-section. If you go back to the beginning, when there is only Adam, there is only one race. One generation later we have two: Cain and Seth (not knowing if Abel had children). The next generation might bring about seven races, and then 40, and then 358, and so on and so forth, until you get to every leaf of the family tree.
Through the flood, the Lord trims all the branches but one, bringing us back to one race: Noah’s. The next generation we have three: Ham, Shem, and Japheth, and then, I suppose, the next generation introduces another multiplication of races, and so forth and so on.
Linnaeus states, “In fact, technically and according to the broadest use of the word, there are as many races as there are fathers, for each is the origin of the race of those who come from him.”1 This definition has little utility. We need bigger groups, so Linnaeus prefers the cross-sectioning of humanity somewhere between Manasseh and Adam, or, to use his language, “between tribe and species.”
I think, for the most part, my original argument stands, namely, that the Bible does not teach us to think thus of humanity. In fact, I think Linnaeus’ argument helps to illustrate my argument. The problem of thinking of people like animals is, well, that you are thinking of people like animals.
The Bible does acknowledge that there are inherited characteristics, but it refuses to use such a reductionistic term to describe people groups. The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree. Fine. But we must remember that every acorn falls from two trees. One branch must link up with another to get to the next generation.
Linnaeus makes the historical argument that husband and wife would have needed to live close to one another, and that they would have been from the same general family tree. “[A] man’s access to genes has historically (before industrialized forms of travel) been restricted to the pool of people born within several miles of himself.”
Strangely, Isaac is offered as the Biblical example. Let us remember that Abraham had to send his servant into another land to find Isaac a wife from his family. If Isaac married a neighbor, he would’ve been marrying a Canaanite. Or consider Abraham. I’d like to remind the reader that Abraham, before industrialized travel, migrated all over the place, and that Sarah, his wife and a Shemite, was almost married to two different Hammites (Pharaoh in Genesis 12:10–20, and Abimelech in Genesis 20:1–18). Abraham had Ishmael from Hagar, an Egyptian (Genesis 16:1).
Linnaeus states that “The sons of Rachel and Leah would have displayed what we would consider an uncanny resemblance to Terah, because they were far more genetically ‘of him’ than modern great-great-grandchildren are of their great-great-grandfathers.” We can also remember that one of those sons married an Egyptian wife, and the two sons of Joseph, Ephraim and Manasseh, were half Hamite. Linnaeus here admits that these crossover marriages were happening—Esau, for example, marrying two Canaanite wives, forming the new race of Edomite (which, I suppose, is half Shem and half Ham)—but Esau “did not take to wife daughters of Magog, for that clan had ventured north, and were beyond his reach.”
First, I don’t know this to be true, namely, that none of those of Terah married those of Magog. Second, the strange move that must be made from this assumed super-sedentary historical reconstruction is that this inbreeding (Linnaeus’ term) is God’s will. Linnaeus states: “[W]hat is really at issue here is the underlying biological realities that flow from how God made His creatures to differentiate in the course of our multiplication.”
Third, there is a difficult logical problem when you read biological history as an expression of God’s will: history changes. If, for example, it was God’s will to keep all the different branches of the family tree apart from one another, then it must now be God’s will that they all live together, at least in a country like the United States. How can Linnaeus not see industrialized travel as God’s will to mix us all up?
Linnaeus, helpfully, puts our attention on a verse that is very helpful to determine God’s view of all this: Deuteronomy 23:7b–8, “You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were an alien in his land. 8 The children of the third generation born to them may enter the assembly of the LORD.” Egyptians, we will remember, are of Ham.
Linnaeus notes “the Egyptians, like the Israelites, had practiced generation after generation of, and there’s no other way to say this: Inbreeding. They shared a gene pool in common with one another that was not common to other groups, hence they were recognizable as Egyptians on sight.” Really? Joseph’s brothers were not able to recognize their own brother after his years in exile.
“Despite the fact that the Israelites had lived in their land for 400 years, the two populations had not intermarried to any appreciable degree.” Really? Remember that at least 1/12 of Israel, Joseph, was married to an Egyptian.
“The Israelites were no more made Egyptians by living on Egyptian soil than Egyptians were made Israelites by living in Israel—else the above command would be incoherent.” Really? I would ask Linnaeus to read the original text. The grandchildren of the Egyptian living in Israel are granted access to the assembly. Whatever this means, it at least means that the Israelites are no longer to consider the grandchildren of Egyptians to be foreigners and strangers, but are to be welcomed into the political and spiritual life of Israel. They are to be citizens of the nation; they are no longer to be treated as Egyptian.
Linnaeus would have us think that the grandchildren of an Egyptian will always be Egyptian, but the Scriptures teach us a different way of understanding humanity: to look at the grandchildren of the Egyptian as belonging to Israel. In this way, the Bible refuses to reduce us to our gene pool, but honors each person as something more wonderful than that.
I wonder—and perhaps Linnaeus could articulate this in the next portion of the debate—when the split occurs. If the father determines the race, then Shem and Ham would, in fact, be the same race: Noahite. Only Shem’s children would be Shemites. I’m wondering if Linnaeus could help me understand my own family: if my four children are four different races, or if only my grandchildren will be different races from one another. ↩︎
Thanks again to Reverend Wolfmueller for the continuance of this debate.
Before I respond to Wolfmueller’s thesis, let me lay out the victory conditions for both sides.
I must show that within God’s creation there is a real category of consanguinity entailing different degrees of relatedness.
Wolfmueller must show that there is no such category, or that there are no such degrees.
The term “race” itself is largely incidental; the sweet-smelling rose doesn’t care what you call it.
As of the opening statements, I have fulfilled my victory condition, and Wolfmueller has not. This is the state of play.
On to the content of Wolfmueller’s thesis. I must deal here with a number of non-sequiturs and category errors that inform his incorrect views on this matter.
Universality
Wolfmueller opens by making much of the universal aspects of humanity. As he notes, I do agree with him that:
God made all mankind through Adam
All sinned in Adam
Christ accomplished his redeeming work on behalf of all
All will ultimately be raised bodily
However, universality in some things does not override particularity in others. None of the foregoing universalities change the fact that Wolfmueller and I do not share a father, or that the African and I don’t share a common ancestor more recent than, approximately, Noah. Wolfmueller believes it a danger to consider humanity according to non-universal categories, for fear of setting the universals aside. However, he himself does this every day in honoring his own father more than my father, or some abstract universal concept of fatherhood.
The fact that he only insists on this principle when it comes to race is evidence enough that his position is an ideological commitment, not a rational one.
Boasting
Next, arguments over boasting in one’s ancestors are beyond the scope of this debate, which is strictly on the existence and nature of race, not any concerns about what we might subsequently do with that reality. This is a fallacious argumentum ad consequentiam, and I will not address Wolfmueller’s comments on it here, other than to observe that he routinely assumes the validity of race as a category of the natural world, only to argue that we must reject it because he fears what men may do with this truth. He uses the word “danger” as regards acknowledging race seven times in his statement. This, again, is the mark of a rejection of an inescapable truth on purely ideological grounds.
Immutability
Wolfmueller’s third section advances the argument that Scripture does not recognize a category for any “grouping of humanity” that is immutable. He reasons from this that we, too, should not deal in race, an immutable category, because he fears to do so is “dangerously reductionistic.” If he were consistent, he could not consider his children according to the immutable grouping category of “Bryan’s children,” but rather only as part of the universal undifferentiated mass of humanity.
Contra Wolfmueller’s protestations, some of the very examples he gives of people changing their “grouping” by fiat are themselves instances which simultaneously demonstrate Scripture’s willingness to continue to employ the immutable category of race, even after said change!
Ruth was called “the Moabite” by Boaz. The fact that he did not call her “the Israelite” on account of her change of allegiance to Israel proves that he did this according to her racial designation. The mixed multitude was “mixed” because it contained different races, including Egyptians (as discussed in my opening statement). If Egyptians become Israelites just by beating town with them, then the multitude was not “mixed” at all! Despite his loyalty to Israel, Uriah was still called by the epithet “the Hittite,” denoting his race.
To be certain, there is a legal and spiritual category for being joined to a group that was not formerly (or, “naturally”) your group. This is called adoption.
Hans Fiene, a European man, adopted an African girl; she legally belongs to him and is called by his name. When that girl goes to the doctor she will be asked for her family health history, but they won’t mean Hans’. If she ever needs a bone marrow or organ donor, no Fiene will be of any use. They are legally a family, but her physical racial heritage has not changed.
In the same way, we are adopted by God into a new people, but our physical race does not change. You see an analogy to this in that women are adopted by God as sons (Ephesians 1:5, Galatians 4:5-7); however, this is a legal reality, not a physical transmutation.
Again, that God takes men irrespective of race, class, or sex and joins them to Himself and one another in sacramental unity (Galatians 3:28) does not thereby abolish these categories.
Summary
Wolfmueller expresses his through-line thusly:
“The way the Bible teaches us to speak of humanity excludes speaking in terms of races.”
I disagree, and assert the following counter-thesis:
The Bible speaks about race so casually and without fanfare—because its authors assumed that their hearers were capable of grasping self-evident truths about the natural, created world—that it is too subtle for Wolfmueller to apprehend, trapped as he is in a modernistic “color-blind” zeitgeist.
I provided Scriptural examples of this in my opening statement, and added more above. I could add still more, such as the instance where Paul had to correct a Roman who had gotten his race wrong (Acts 21). No doubt all these Levantines looked the same to the poor man.
Or each and every use of “-ite,” denoting a member of a race founded by a man named in whatever precedes that suffix.
Conclusion
In light of the above, it is clear that Wolfmueller is willing to suspend the normal rules of logic and exegesis to claim that race is an invalid, anti-Gospel category. This betrays a pre-commitment, not to truth, but to the Enlightenment ideology of Equality, which is in danger of collapse.
At the outset, I would like to thank my opponent, Rev. Bryan Wolfmueller, for being willing to engage on this critically important topic. As we are both aware, the subject of race continues to be a flashpoint for all manner of discussion and dissension among the brethren, and this is waxing, not waning. In light of this recognition, we have agreed to bring our opposite views on this matter into collision in this written debate, in order that the truth may be made manifest, and that understanding—if not agreement—be sought, if not obtained.
The thesis of this debate is phrased as follows: There is only one race, the race of Adam. My opponent affirms this statement without qualification. My task in this debate is to show why Christians should not affirm this statement, as it is misleading and, ultimately, quite incorrect.
My thesis is simple: Race as a category is an extension of the category of family, and exists with it on a continuum with intermediates like clan and tribe. It is a derivative of the concept of consanguinity. Consanguinity denotes (1) proximate shared common descent, and (2) shared observable traits as reflective of shared genetic inheritance resulting from proximate shared common descent.
But before expanding upon these points, let me first step back in order to give the fullest view of the facts possible. Although I am taking the opposition position on our debate question, I will start off with some affirmations. This will have the effect of framing my arguments in the proper light, and demonstrating agreement with Wolfmueller in the areas where it exists, in order to throw our differences into higher relief.
Biblical Affirmations
I believe in a literal Adam and Eve, from whom all mankind (Adamkind, if you will) are descended.
Noah was a real man, whose immediate family (wife, sons, sons’ wives) were the only descendants of Adam and Eve to survive the global deluge that destroyed all land-dwelling animal life save what was present on the ark.
All men since this global flood are descended from Noah through these three sons and their wives.
Again, for emphasis: These wives were also descended from Adam and Eve; whether patrilineally through Seth or through a brother such as Cain, God only knows.
Man’s Promulgation
The children of these patriarchs increased in number, and those that had not already begun to spread abroad were ultimately dispersed from the plains of Shinar according to their new tongues. We have reason to believe that God did not put husband and wife and young children at odds with one another in the confusion of their languages, and thus that the new tongues were applied along natural family lines.
To go further: Josephus indicated that the people groups separated from one another according to patrilineal descent from Japheth, Shem, and Ham. Various of the sons and grandsons of these patriarchs set up colonies comprised of their respective clans, wherever it was that they chose as their portion to settle. From there these clans followed God’s command to be fruitful and multiply and begat successive generations, generally by taking wives from among their own clan (I will return to this). In time, such clans through multiplication became entire nations occupying the territory their forbears had chosen to inhabit.
This was not without churn, as over the ages one nation may take another nation’s habitation through conquest, erasing them from the face of the earth, or mixing with them to create a new nation, derivative of both, thus joining their inherited destinies.
In sum, it was in the foregoing fashion that God “has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,” per Paul as recorded in Acts 17.
On this point I know Wolfmueller and I have complete and total agreement: That God took one man (Adam), and through his descendants created the differentiated people groups of the world.
And the English language provides for us another word, for which “people group” has become modernity’s euphemism: Race.
The Taxonomy of Man
Thus we return to the question, is there only one race, the race of Adam?
If “races” is truly the right term for these differentiated people groups of the world, then no, for while there is only one mankind, there are many kinds of men. Let me elucidate.
The simple fact is this: Race is a category of taxonomy, above individual, family, clan, and tribe, approximately—though not inevitably—synonymous with nation, and below species or “kind”.
Taxonomy, from the Greek taxis (order) and nomos (law), is simply the practice of grouping things according to a hierarchy of relatedness, anywhere from very closely to distantly. When it comes to living things, this can take the form of grouping creatures by morphological likeness, or by family tree. And, because morphology (i.e., form/appearance) is due to heritable traits coded for by the genes passed on in the act of reproduction, usually both at the same time.
“Race,” then, is one of several nesting terms used to taxonomically classify men according to shared inheritance, in narrowing concentric circles all the way down to the level of individual.
Lest anyone think otherwise, such taxonomical grouping is eminently Biblical, as we see in the public selection of Saul for kingship over Israel.
Then Samuel brought all the tribes of Israel near, and the tribe of Benjamin was taken by lot. He brought the tribe of Benjamin near by its clans, and the clan of the Matrites was taken by lot; and Saul the son of Kish was taken by lot. (1st Samuel 10:20-21 ESV)
We see then the narrowing concentric circles come to focus upon Saul, from his nation (Israel), to his tribe (Benjamin), to his clan (Matri), to his family (Kish), and then finally to Saul himself. If we take what the rest of Scripture has to say in addition to these two verses, Saul’s taxonomical structure could even be extended outward past nation, acknowledging that Saul was a Hebrew, a Shemite, and ultimately from Adam.
Scripture itself gives us the taxonomic model to follow.
Let’s take our Lord Jesus, according to His humanity, as another example in the Biblical taxonomic structure, from more related to less related.
Individual: Jesus Family: Joseph Clan: David Tribe: Judah Nation/Race1: Israel Race2: Hebrew Race3: Shemite Species (Kind): Adam/Mankind
As you can see from the thrice repeated use of race, this term does have a range of applications. Broader senses and narrower senses, all of which are correct, and not contradictory or mutually exclusive. In fact, technically and according to the broadest use of the word, there are as many races as there are fathers, for each is the origin of the race of those who come from him. However, for the sake of utility, most usage has historically been preferentially applied to those degrees between tribe and species.
The old saw that “there is no White race, only Anglo/Saxon/Germanic/Celtic races” deceives by taking advantage of equivocation regarding the level of magnification employed by the term. There are of course Anglo/Saxon/Germanic/Celtic races, which are sub-races to the broader White race, just as the Israelite and Edomite races were sub-races of the Hebrew race.
It is likewise technically accurate to call mankind “the race of Adam”. Mankind, Adamkind, is the ultimate race, if you will, under which all others are subsumed. We might do well to call the race of Adam “the terminal race”, insofar as there are no others at its level, nor above it.
However, in referring to the “race of mankind” we again run into the difficulty of utility in several ways. In the first place, “mankind” communicates the truth of universal descent of man from our common ancestor perfectly well, and renders the use of “race” at this level of taxonomy superfluous and even redundant. In the second place, this use—while again technically accurate—is itself turned into a lie through the sleight-of-hand of equivocation. That is, through the demand that, because Adam is the sole universal progenitor of the human race, the category of race must have no other referents but him.
We would do just as well to say that because God is the Father of mankind, the term father must have no other, more proximate referents.
Or we can make an analogy to the taxonomical term “family”, which also displays a range of meaning: that all men are part of the family of Adam does not void the categories of immediate family or extended family.
And this is precisely the dispute which has occasioned this debate. “There is only one race, the race of Adam” is a statement which must be denied on purely lexical grounds, right from the outset. To state my thesis again: That there is only one terminal race does not mean that there is only one race.
But I would delude myself to believe that this debate can be settled merely on the basis of such logomachy, as if my opponent’s true objection was only to the combination of letters upon the labels affixed to a family tree. I believe we could still readily agree to the foregoing, and perhaps Wolfmueller will acknowledge as much in his response.
Rather than simple terminology, what is really at issue here is the underlying biological realities that flow from how God made His creatures to differentiate in the course of our multiplication. That is, most people, and I suspect Wolfmueller is here representative of most people, prefer to reject the nature and scale of heritability in order to avoid certain downstream implications (particularly in terms of how we think of people, and how we treat people).
Those downstream implications are beyond the scope of this debate, but the genetic components themselves must be addressed in order to get at the core of the disagreement between us.
The Biological Reality of Race
At the outset of this section, I must address the inevitable charge of equivocation. The critic will say that, whereas up until now I have applied “race” merely to denote familial relation—as one might use “great-grandfather” or “second cousin twice-removed”, I am now changing its point of reference to apply to cohorts with high degrees of genetic overlap. This is because the critic sees two distinct concepts and demands a strict separation between the two—one that nature itself does not observe.
To be sure, if creating children was done by some central global agency, whereby men and women submitted their gametes to be paired by lot, then we could envision a situation in which genes were distributed more-or-less randomly across the face of the earth, with no discernible patterns or groupings. But that is not at all how God has designed human reproduction. Rather, producing offspring requires sexual union—and for those not in-the-know, that union requires nothing if not, ah, close proximity.
Indeed, a man and a woman must occupy essentially the same space in order for this act to occur, which necessarily rules out the vast majority of the world as breeding partners for any given person. Because of this, a man’s access to genes has historically (before industrialized forms of travel) been restricted to the pool of people born within several miles of himself. Denizens of Europe were not traveling to Africa for wives, nor the converse.
Returning to the above retelling of the spread of mankind across the earth, it would have been the case that as linguistically unique small clans settled various areas, they would have married within their own ranks. In the first place because of their relative isolation from other early clans, and in the second place because of the language barriers that initially forced them apart from other clans. This restricted mating pool would have had the effect of standardizing the genetics of the group, where essentially every child would have been related to their great or great-great grandfather on both their father’s and their mother’s sides. This created a situation where said children received an inheritance of their patriarch’s (and his matriarch wife’s) genes from both father and mother.
For evidence of this see Isaac, who received a portion of his grandfather Terah’s genes from both Abraham and Abraham’s half-sister Sarah. This had the effect of making Isaac the genetic equivalent of a 3/4 brother to Abraham, and the same to Sarah. He then took to wife his first-cousin once removed (on both sides!) Rebekah, the great-granddaughter of Terah. Hence, Jacob and Esau were the great-grandsons of Terah on their father’s side (although they genetically received the inheritance of grandsons, as Isaac passed on the genetic inheritance equivalent to a full son of Terah), and great-great-grandsons on their mother’s side, respectively. And we may speak further of how Jacob took to wife Rachel and Leah, his first-cousins on his mother’s side, and his second-cousins once-removed on his father’s side! The sons of Rachel and Leah would have displayed what we would consider an uncanny resemblance to Terah, because they were far more genetically “of him” than modern great-great-grandchildren are of their great-great-grandfathers. Their resemblance to one another would have been uncanny as well.
As this example shows, the repeated genetic overlap in these situations was immense. During these early days, such close intermarriage served to greatly amplify the degree of relatedness of those within a given community, while simultaneously widening the genetic gap between the members of that community and non-members outside it. Certainly, sometimes intermarriage would have happened with neighboring communities, as was done by Jacob’s brother Esau when he took to wife two Canaanites and broke off to found the race of the Edomites. But Esau did not take to wife daughters of Magog, for that clan had ventured North, and were beyond his reach. Thus, without the proximity required for intermarriage, over subsequent generations the gap between the Edomites and the sons of Magog continued to grow further, and further, and further, even as the genetic overlap between any two random Edomites was growing closer due to the same layered intermarriage effect.
As you can see, the matter of a label on the family tree has tremendous implications for the genetic, biological “closeness” of the populations which resulted from these various colonies which went forth after the flood. Not to mention their relative distance with regard to other populations. It is entirely because of this phenomenon that the following command from the Lord to Israel could make any sense at all.
You shall not abhor an Egyptian, because you were an alien in his land. The children of the third generation born to them may enter the assembly of the Lord. (Deuteronomy 23:7b-8 NKJV)
How were the Israelites supposed to identify these Egyptians they were ordered to exclude from the assembly? Well, the Egyptians, like the Israelites, had practiced generation after generation of, and there’s no other way to say this: Inbreeding. They shared a gene pool in common with one another that was not common to other groups, hence they were recognizable as Egyptians on sight. As their DNA expressed itself in their bone structure, their fat distribution, their skin texture, etc., they simply looked like Egyptians.
And despite the fact that the Israelites had lived in their land for 400 years, the two populations had not intermarried to any appreciable degree. They were still two different peoples from two different branches of Noah’s descent, and they bore the evidence visibly. The Israelites were no more made Egyptians by living on Egyptian soil than Egyptians were made Israelites by living in Israel—else the above command would be incoherent. Rather, each designation is entirely racial.
To further show that this concept is in no wise alien to Scripture, we can look to other places in which Scripture gives examples of traits belonging within the gene pools of certain lineages.
There is the propensity for large stature found in some of the races of Canaan, which the Israelite spies discovered to their dismay.
Consider also the tribe of Benjamin, which boasted 700 elite left-handed men, as well as the left-handed judge, Ehud. The ironically named “son of my right hand” certainly carried a propensity for left-handedness as a group.
Or consider Jeremiah 13:23: “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots?”, a rhetorical device which assumes the immutability of an Ethiopian’s skin color, a racial trait so universal to the people that it is their defining characteristic—all the way down to their name itself!
Even Paul, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, opined, “One of them, a prophet of their own, said, ‘Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.’” (Titus 1:12 NKJV)
So to say, Scripture is very well-acquainted, not just with race, but with racial stereotypes as well.
Conclusion
We have now seen that race is a taxonomical designation applied at the nexus of common descent and heritability. Race, put simplest, denotes shared blood—consanguinity. We know that we are all one blood with all mankind through our shared father Adam, as well as Noah. Yet not all were fathered by Ashkenaz, Eber, or Cush, and thus we do not all share their genetic inheritance.
All, to put a positive spin on a negative phrase, are consanguineous, but some are more consanguineous than others. This fact gives rise to taxonomical grouping by race.
These are indisputable categories of the natural order, and the Word of God assumes knowledge of and agreement with this fact. Any attempt at refutation of this will necessarily employ equivocation and special pleading, most likely through (eisegetical) appeal to Galatians 3:28. However, the Gospel does not destroy lineage according to the flesh, nor natural differences between races of men—nor between man and woman, it may also be observed with thanks.
First, thanks to Linneaus for suggesting this debate on Twitter.
Second, I’d like to beg for the patience of the reader. I’m not at all trained in formal debate (a fact that will be quickly observed), but I hope that this public conversation will bring clarity from God’s word on some of the recent controversies.
May God grant it for Christ’s sake.
The thesis under debate is as follows:
There is only one race, the race of Adam.
I affirm. Linnaeus will deny. This is my opening argument.
I’ll attempt to support the argument with a further thesis: The way the Bible teaches us to speak of humanity excludes speaking in terms of races.
1. “All men”
Adam and Eve, All Created
On the sixth day of creation the Lord God created Adam and Eve.
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
The details of this creation are expanded in Genesis 2:21-23.
Adam and Eve are given the mandate to be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. From this first marriage and mandate come all of humanity. Every human being is a descendant of Adam and Eve.
The Bible not only asserts the reality of a single human race, but draws out the theological implications. There are things that are true of all people and each person because of our common ancestry in Adam. Consider the following passages.
All Sinned.
“Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned,” (Romans 5:12). As we sing in the hymn, “All mankind fell in Adam’s fall, one common sin infects us all.”[1] Our sinful condition is inherited, passed down from one generation to the next. The origin of this original sin is Adam.
All Are Redeemed by Christ
The universal effect of the fall is paralleled with the universal rescue accomplished by Jesus.
“Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous,” (Romans 5:18-19).
Just as Adam’s sin brought a universal corruption to humanity, the saving work of Jesus brings universal salvation. The free gift of salvation, justification, and the forgiveness of sins is accomplish for humanity, for all people and each person.[2]
All Will Be Raised
Finally, Paul calls Jesus the “Last Adam” (see 1 Corinthians 15:45) in his sermon on the resurrection, and asserts: “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive,” (1 Corinthians 15:22). Every person ever born will be raised from the dead on the last day, and gathered together before the judgment seat.
To make the point of the “all” in the resurrection, Paul parallels Christ with Adam.
Each and All
I don’t think these assertions will be debated. I think Linneaus and I will agree on all that is stated so far. Here is why it is important: the Scriptures teach us to consider and confess the universal condition of humanity, of the one human race.
We can say four things about every person we encounter:
This person is created by God.
This person is a fallen sinner.
This person is redeemed by Christ.
This person will be raised on the last day.
These truths are the most important things about all and each of us, and, astonishingly, many people don’t know this about themselves. If you are a Christian, you know more about the reality of who your unbelieving neighbor is that they know about themselves.
Here’s the point: the Bible teaches us that the most important things about humanity are universal, and we are to think, act, and pray in accord to this unity. One of the dangers of considering humanity according to various categories, and especially racial categories, is that the universal condition of humanity is set aside.
2. Noah
The human race has its single origin in Adam and Eve, and, further, in the time of Noah, humanity was once again reduced to one family. The world-wide flood destroyed every living creature that was not protected in the ark. Every human being is a descendant of Noah and his wife.[3]
While the Scripture do not make any application to our common ancestry in Noah, Luther does. In his controversial track On the Jews and their Lies, Luther is responding to arguments against the Christian confession published by some Rabbis in Wittenberg. One of the arguments presented is that the Jewish people are superior to the Gentiles because of their lineage, their blood-line through Abraham (see Luke 3:8 and John 8:33). Luther responds to this boasting:
Why should so much ado be made of this? After all, if birth counts before God, I can claim to be just as noble as any Jew, yes, just as noble as Abraham himself, as David, as all the holy prophets and apostles. Nor will I owe them any thanks if they consider me just as noble as themselves before God by reason of my birth. And if God refuses to acknowledge my nobility and birth as the equal to that of Isaac, Abraham, David, and all the saints, I maintain that he is doing me an injustice and that he is not a fair judge. For I will not give it up and neither Abraham, David, prophets, apostles nor even an angel in heaven, shall deny me the right to boast that Noah, so far as physical birth or flesh and blood is concerned, is my true, natural ancestor, and that his wife (whoever she may have been) is my true, natural ancestress; for we are all descended, since the Deluge, from that one Noah. We did not descend from Cain, for his family perished forever in the flood together with many of the cousins, brothers-in-law, and friends of Noah. (LW 47:147)
Luther continues to argue that any boasting about lineage, blood, and race should end with Psalm 51:
But let us move on. David lumps us all together nicely and convincingly when he declares in Psalm 51 [:5]: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Now go, whether you are Jew or Gentile, born of Adam or Abraham, of Enoch or David, and boast before God of your fine nobility, of your exalted lineage, your ancient ancestry! Here you learn that we all are conceived and born in sin, by father and mother, and no human being is excluded. (LW 47:148)
Luther sets the universal truths regarding humanity against any boasting of blood, lineage, or family.
3. Divisions Among Us
Now we get to the point. While the universal truths regarding the human race are clearly attested in the Scriptures and confessed by all Christians, what about the various groupings and divisions of humanity that are also discussed in the Scriptures? We are all descendants of Noah, but some of us are from Shem, or Ham, or Japheth. The Scriptures have a “Table of Nations” (Genesis 10), and God Himself divided human languages at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11), further distinguishing some groups from others. Paul confirms this in Athens, reminding the people of their common origin he also asserts that the different nations are God’s work. “He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). John’s vision of the church in heaven rejoices in “a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb,” (Revelation 7:9). While all these different people are united in their worship of Christ, they are still recognized as distinct nations, tribes, people, and languages.
If the Bible acknowledges that people can be grouped and recognized in nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, what is the danger in grouping together people as various races? This is the critical question.
First, what do we mean by “races”? I’ll use this description from Linneaus, drawn from our email exchange, as a base.
Race as a category is an extension of the category of family, and exists with it on a continuum with intermediates like clan and tribe. It is a derivative of the concept of consanguinity, where it denotes 1) proximate common descent, and 2) shared observable traits as reflective of shared allele constellations [sometimes referred to a genetic cluster], as a result of 1.
We see families. We see families grouped together as clans. We see clans grouped together as tribes, tribes grouped together as races, right? This is confirmed by observable traits and genetics. What’s the problem?
I suggest that there are two major problems: the category of “races” differs from all the other groupings of humanity used in the Bible because race is immutable (it cannot be changed) and therefore dangerously reductionistic. These differences make “races” as a category unhelpful. I’ll try to demonstrate.
Immutability
We note, first, that race is an immutable category. It is impossible to change from one race to another. This stands in stark contrast to all the categories offered in the Bible of family, tribe, people, tongue, and nation.
I might be born into one family, but taken up into another via adoption. I might be born of one tribe, but join another tribe by marriage, i.e. Moses and Zipporah (Exodus 2:21), Ruth and Boaz (Ruth 1:16-17; 4:13-22), and Rahab and Salmon (Matthew 1:5). I might be born into one people, but leave that people and join another. (“Your people shall be my people,” Ruth 1:16, and the “mixed multitude in the Exodus, Exodus 12:38.) I might be born speaking in one tongue or language, but the Lord can grant other tongues according to His purpose (via miracle, as at Pentecost, or through much learning). I might be born of one nation or ethnos, but leave that nation and join myself to another (consider Uriah the Hittite, who joined himself to Israel).
The Biblical categories all have ways of moving from one to another. “Race” does not.
Two Biblical categories need to be considered carefully: ethnos (ἔθνος)and genos (γένος).
On Ethnos
Ethnos is used 160+ times in the New Testament, and is variously translated as “people,” “Gentile,” “nation,” “pagan” (ESV), or “heathen” (KJV). It is used to describe the different people groups that fill the world (God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth,” Acts 17:26), but it is chiefly used to distinguish the Jews from everyone else (i.e. Acts 15:7, Romans 11:11, Galatians 2:12, 3:8).
How does the Scripture teach us to consider the different ethnos?
Do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. (Matthew 3:9)
Now, therefore, you (Gentiles, see Ephesians 2:11) are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. (Ephesians 2:19)
For if you were cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and were grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, who are natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree? (Romans 11:24)
Not only does the category of ethnos not match up with the category of races, but the Biblical teaching about the ethnos warns us of the dangers of considering ourselves or other people simply according to their lineage, etc.
On Genos
The Biblical word that comes closest to the idea of races is genos.Used 20 times in the New Testament[4], it is translated with ten different words in the KJV, “kind,” “offspring,” “kindred,” “nation,” “stock,” “born,” “country,” “diversities,” “countrymen,” and “generation.” The ESV uses nine different words, including “race” in Acts 7:19 and 1 Peter 2:9. The English words “generation” and “Genesis” derive from this word, and it indicates source of origin, but with a much broader application than the modern category of race.
Consider Acts 4:36 where Luke introduces Barnabas:
And Joses, who was also named Barnabas by the apostles (which is translated Son of Encouragement), a Levite of the country (genos,γένει)of Cyprus… (Acts 4:36).
His Jewish tribe, Levi, is mentioned, but his genos is a place, the island of Cyprus. This text, at least, indicates that genos is a much broader word that “race.”
The ESV translates genos as race in 1 Peters 2:9-10.
But you are a chosen race (genos eklekton, γένος ἐκλεκτόν),
a royal priesthood (ethnos hagion, ἔθνος ἅγιον),
a holy nation,
a people for his own possession (laos eis peripoiasin, λαὸς εἰς περιποίησιν),
that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Peter’s beautiful point is that no matter our origin or generation, our nation and people, the Lord has claimed us as His own. We are not to think of ourselves according to the genos, ethnos, and “people” of our birth, but of the genos chosen by God, the ethnos made Holy by His sacrifice, the people He purchased and won with His own blood.
One might argue, “Sure, it is true that Christians are given this unique gift by God, but we are talking about first article truths, races in regards to our genetic kinships and lineage.” Consider again 1 Peter 2:9. According to this text, God, in conversion, gives His people a chosen genos. Ask yourself, “Does God, in conversion, put us into a new and different race?”
Reductionistic
Here we begin to see the real danger of thinking in terms of races. Categorizing an individual by the immutable characteristic of their race is dangerously reductionistic.
This is the most important point, and, I confess, I do not know how to make it well, so please bear with me.
The mutability of the Biblical categories points to a deeper reality. Every category the Bible uses for different groupings of people (family, tribe, people, nation, tongue, etc.) has a legal or verbal element to it.
Marriage, most importantly, is a legal covenant, and is the creation of the family.
Regarding children, there is the legal avenue of adoption, where a stranger comes into a family.
In tribes, the legal arrangement of marriage shapes and merges tribes.
Regarding people and nation, there is the legal matter of citizenship, which can be gained, lost, or transferred.
Language, is, definitionally, verbal, related to words.
None of these categories or descriptors is pure biology. “Race,” on the other hand, has no legal or verbal aspect to it. It is, by definition, pure genetics, biological, and materialistic.
It is not simply that these legal and verbal components of family, tribe, people, and nation, give a way of moving from one group to another (as discussed previously). There is something essential about the word in every aspect of humanity. This, I believe, is the specific danger of the category of races: there is no word, no legal or verbal element, no logos.
“Races” reduces a man to his gene pool, and in that reduction the essential place of the word is lost. This is not the way the Scriptures train us to speak, and, in fact, stands in antipathy to the way the Scriptures teach us to speak of the groups and classifications of humanity.[5]
Instead, we confess that there is one human race, one human family, from Adam and to Christ.
All Mankind Fell Through Adam’s Fall, Lazarus Spengler, 1524, (TLH 369:1). As far as I can tell, this is one of only two hymns quoted in the Book of Concord, and the only Reformation-era hymn referenced. See The Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration I.23. ↑
This saving work is apprehended by faith, and faith is worked in us by the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Gospel. While salvation is accomplished for all, some will refuse this saving work. Universal redemption does not mean universalism, but this theological point is beyond the scope of this argument. ↑
I mention this point because, as far as I can tell, my assertion that “Everywhere we go is a Noah family reunion” is what drew me into this debate. If I remember correctly, this assertion of the Noah Family Reunion was articulated not against racism, but against a critical reading of the Bible that denied the world-wide nature of Noah’s Flood. It was part of my assertion of a young earth reading of Genesis. But it turned out to be a convenient assertion against boasting in blood. ↑
This is where the category of “races” strikes at the heart of the Gospel. Justification is the declaration of God that the sinner is righteous because of the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus. It is a gracious legal act of God. Any attempts to reduce humanity from this essentially legal understanding of humanity is a move away from the gift of justification. I hope to flesh this point out through this debate.
