“Here’s the problem: the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” - Oh, how I enjoyed this. I don’t have the patience to take up these arguments, but I’m glad you do, Sean. Man, the internet is a wild, wild place.
Well said. Of course, if the gospel of Jesus Christ also includes his teaching, then in addition to covenant/adoption as refutation of this wicked theology of kinism are Jesus' specific injunctions that we are to love our enemy. Even the pagans greet only their brothers.
Which is why White Nationalists will have to rule over America because Christians have become so liberalized they aren't able to defend their people and instead sabotage them for the outsider coming to loot and destroy.
I agree 100%. Nobody should waste their time with Joel Webbon. He’s a rotten fruit, racist, divisive, unchristian, and uneducated. However, you need to correct a typo in your first paragraph (ethno-nationalism).
Ah yes, but there is a natural law covenant of ethnicity.
On a serious note, it was a good article. I knew I didn't like kinist politics, but the analogy of family to ethnicity made a certain kind of sense, and I couldn't figure out what exactly the problem with it was.
You say it well. One of the things about ethno-nationalism that makes it so potent is that it mixes envy with pride, and covers the whole thing with pious-sounding words.
The principle of adoption does not negate kinism. This is due to the simple fact that the adopted child is still genetically similar to the parents to a certain degree. We are genetically similar to all living beings but to some we are more than to others. Now even though the adopted child is genetically further from the parents than biological children, by signing the agreement, the parents are choosing to love the adopted child as their own. The key note here is as one's own, because a parent will love their children as their own because they are their own, their own blood. And it is here that blood is the reference of love that a person uses in loving others. In order to love all life, one must first love their family, ethnicity, race, mankind, and then all of God's creation. Any other order of love is the sin of pride on the part of the individual who chooses to impose their own blueprint of creation above the one that God has ordained: the genome. Without this genome which provides the body as a vessel for the soul, the individual ceases to exist, hence why it is such an essential part of the person's identity, second only to one's sanctified soul in Jesus Christ. I'm surprised that you, an educated Christian, wasn't able to dissect the very overt racial elements in the Hebrew Old Testament in terms of lineage, nationhood, judgment of nations, and ethnic purity of the Israelites. The genome is of high importance to God, and yes your warning is true in not putting it as an idol before God, but one shouldn't dispense lies trying to obfuscate the truth for what is very clearly an important and imminent matter in today's world.
I enjoyed reading this and just realized that one part of my enjoyment of it was the Calvin vibes it gives me. I've been reading the institutes as my evening devotional and the number of times he calls the positions he is rebuking stupid is great. There's definitely a place for being gentle and respectful, and there are also times where unapologetic, flat out rebuke are necessary. This is one of those times and I'm glad you didn't mince words.
And here I was believing that blood nations were a fractal image of the heavenly divine blood national which we drink every Sunday. I guess God really does hate blood and soil that he makes it the basis of the image of salvation
You have strong feelings on this issue, but let me try and offer some pushback.
I am not an ethnonationalist (and neither is Stephen Wolfe), but there are a number of arguments in this article that muddle the issue. I believe ethnicity overlaps with nationhood in important ways, but it is possible for ethnic minority immigrants to assimilate over many generations (cf. Thomas, ST, I-II, Q. 105, A. 3). Nationhood, as Wolfe explains, is a phenomenological reality: Given my experience, to what people do I belong? To belong to a people, one must have a stake in the country over many generations. I owe stronger ties of obligation to my compatriots, which is at least partly because we are members of a common national project with shared ends in view.
To be sure, covenantal commitments are important. This is what makes sense of adoption and, therefore, the possibility of assimilation. But adoption is only one feature of our moral life. We should not make adoption central to our normative paradigm. To adopt a son, after all, is to treat him "as if" he was a biological son. Without a background understanding of natural communities, adoption is unintelligible. In the philosophical literature, "associative obligations" are used to refer to the obligations we owe to members of the same communities as us, whether chosen or unchosen. There are many things that ground our associative relationships. Covenantal commitment is one, but so are natural affections.
In the Summa (I-II, Q. 27, A. 3), Thomas explains that likeness begets affection. It is, in this sense, an extension of self-love. Why ought we to love ourselves? Because I am committed to my own ends as a person. It would be irrational to renounce my own ends. Why ought we love members of the same household? Because I am committed to certain shared ends which further the life of the family. In addition to sharing certain ends, we also share information useful in achieving these ends. The same can be said for all our concentric communities. To illustrate this, Thomas even uses the example of one white man showing affection to another white man! Ethnicity factors into this, as even St Paul had special concern for his "kinsmen in the flesh" (Rom. 9:3). This is intuitive: We are a homophilic and homogamous species.
One worry with reducing all our associative obligations to covenantal commitments is that it lapses into a form of voluntaristic liberalism. But many of our associative obligations are unchosen! To account for the obligations that unmarried mothers owe to their children, you suggest that sex is a "quasi-covenant." If quasi-covenants are meant to resemble tacit consent, what about rape? Mothers clearly owe obligations to their children, even if they are a product of rape. You also point to the inseparable operations of the Trinity, but even then, we remember that the Divine Persons are one not merely in virtue of covenant but in virtue of sharing a common essence. We reject social Trinitarianism precisely because it ruptures the bond of the Trinity. There is an intimate union of Father, Son, and Spirit that goes beyond an agreement in will.
Ignoring this is perilous. There is a negative correlation between ethnic diversity and trust, as Putnam (2007) shows. Communities flourish when members are participants of a shared life, which is grounded upon likeness. This does not entail ethnonationalism, but we must be attentive to the fact that mass immigration lowers the pressure on newcomers to assimilate. Whereas the adopted child identifies entirely with the adoptive parents, many immigrants with dual loyalties are now granted citizenship. This is intolerable and injurious to the common good.
The great English poet Rudyard Kipling remains instructive:
Yes, Kinism is stupid, un-Christian, it is absolutely unbiblical. However, the West is not obligated to allow every nation, tongue, and tribe into their countries. To do so would be cultural suicide, just take a look at Britain. Great Britain becoming a nation of foreigners—muslim foreigners. And with a native British birth rate of 1.45, it does not take a PhD in population dynamics to figure out the consequences of such actions. I believe cultural considerations should be considered. I’m originally from Minnesota. It wasn’t a good idea to drop 60,000 to 70,000 Somalis into Minnesota’s backyard. It was a really bad idea.
The good Samaritan immediately undermine the idea that our neighbours are our kin. Both of the men who passed the injured man on the road were Jews. The story goes on to reveal that our neighbours are whoever does good to us regardless of where they’re from.
This is silly. If what you said was true then there would be no reason why parents of children born out of wedlock would have an obligation to their children. The covenantal obligations and the familial obligations are similar, they are connected but they are distinct.
Adoption is an ingrafting into a preexisting familial reality, but there would still be a family even if the concept of adoption did not exist. Adoption is an extension of begetting but you would make begetting a subset of adoption. This is weak and confused.
In some senses that is true, though I maintain that the two remain distinct, otherwise we would not find wives and concubines distinguished in the OT. For instance Hagar is never referred to as married to Abraham or in covenant with him. She and Ishmael are cast out for the sake of keeping covenant. But even if we accept your point as given it gives no support that I can see to the OP.
I don’t know about Webbon, but you’re off base in regards to Wolfe. But, in truth, what you’re getting at in this essay isn’t clear. Do you disconnect the idea of Covenant (invisible spiritual reality) to the visible manifestation of the covenant—like marriage?
“Here’s the problem: the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” - Oh, how I enjoyed this. I don’t have the patience to take up these arguments, but I’m glad you do, Sean. Man, the internet is a wild, wild place.
Well said. Of course, if the gospel of Jesus Christ also includes his teaching, then in addition to covenant/adoption as refutation of this wicked theology of kinism are Jesus' specific injunctions that we are to love our enemy. Even the pagans greet only their brothers.
Which is why White Nationalists will have to rule over America because Christians have become so liberalized they aren't able to defend their people and instead sabotage them for the outsider coming to loot and destroy.
I agree 100%. Nobody should waste their time with Joel Webbon. He’s a rotten fruit, racist, divisive, unchristian, and uneducated. However, you need to correct a typo in your first paragraph (ethno-nationalism).
Ah yes, but there is a natural law covenant of ethnicity.
On a serious note, it was a good article. I knew I didn't like kinist politics, but the analogy of family to ethnicity made a certain kind of sense, and I couldn't figure out what exactly the problem with it was.
You say it well. One of the things about ethno-nationalism that makes it so potent is that it mixes envy with pride, and covers the whole thing with pious-sounding words.
The principle of adoption does not negate kinism. This is due to the simple fact that the adopted child is still genetically similar to the parents to a certain degree. We are genetically similar to all living beings but to some we are more than to others. Now even though the adopted child is genetically further from the parents than biological children, by signing the agreement, the parents are choosing to love the adopted child as their own. The key note here is as one's own, because a parent will love their children as their own because they are their own, their own blood. And it is here that blood is the reference of love that a person uses in loving others. In order to love all life, one must first love their family, ethnicity, race, mankind, and then all of God's creation. Any other order of love is the sin of pride on the part of the individual who chooses to impose their own blueprint of creation above the one that God has ordained: the genome. Without this genome which provides the body as a vessel for the soul, the individual ceases to exist, hence why it is such an essential part of the person's identity, second only to one's sanctified soul in Jesus Christ. I'm surprised that you, an educated Christian, wasn't able to dissect the very overt racial elements in the Hebrew Old Testament in terms of lineage, nationhood, judgment of nations, and ethnic purity of the Israelites. The genome is of high importance to God, and yes your warning is true in not putting it as an idol before God, but one shouldn't dispense lies trying to obfuscate the truth for what is very clearly an important and imminent matter in today's world.
Not just will, but should. That’s why parents with biological and adopted children should love their biological children more than their adopted ones.
Not just will, but should. That’s why parents with biological and adopted children should love their biological children more than their adopted ones.
I enjoyed reading this and just realized that one part of my enjoyment of it was the Calvin vibes it gives me. I've been reading the institutes as my evening devotional and the number of times he calls the positions he is rebuking stupid is great. There's definitely a place for being gentle and respectful, and there are also times where unapologetic, flat out rebuke are necessary. This is one of those times and I'm glad you didn't mince words.
And here I was believing that blood nations were a fractal image of the heavenly divine blood national which we drink every Sunday. I guess God really does hate blood and soil that he makes it the basis of the image of salvation
My argument is not that God hates blood and soil. Try again.
You have strong feelings on this issue, but let me try and offer some pushback.
I am not an ethnonationalist (and neither is Stephen Wolfe), but there are a number of arguments in this article that muddle the issue. I believe ethnicity overlaps with nationhood in important ways, but it is possible for ethnic minority immigrants to assimilate over many generations (cf. Thomas, ST, I-II, Q. 105, A. 3). Nationhood, as Wolfe explains, is a phenomenological reality: Given my experience, to what people do I belong? To belong to a people, one must have a stake in the country over many generations. I owe stronger ties of obligation to my compatriots, which is at least partly because we are members of a common national project with shared ends in view.
To be sure, covenantal commitments are important. This is what makes sense of adoption and, therefore, the possibility of assimilation. But adoption is only one feature of our moral life. We should not make adoption central to our normative paradigm. To adopt a son, after all, is to treat him "as if" he was a biological son. Without a background understanding of natural communities, adoption is unintelligible. In the philosophical literature, "associative obligations" are used to refer to the obligations we owe to members of the same communities as us, whether chosen or unchosen. There are many things that ground our associative relationships. Covenantal commitment is one, but so are natural affections.
In the Summa (I-II, Q. 27, A. 3), Thomas explains that likeness begets affection. It is, in this sense, an extension of self-love. Why ought we to love ourselves? Because I am committed to my own ends as a person. It would be irrational to renounce my own ends. Why ought we love members of the same household? Because I am committed to certain shared ends which further the life of the family. In addition to sharing certain ends, we also share information useful in achieving these ends. The same can be said for all our concentric communities. To illustrate this, Thomas even uses the example of one white man showing affection to another white man! Ethnicity factors into this, as even St Paul had special concern for his "kinsmen in the flesh" (Rom. 9:3). This is intuitive: We are a homophilic and homogamous species.
One worry with reducing all our associative obligations to covenantal commitments is that it lapses into a form of voluntaristic liberalism. But many of our associative obligations are unchosen! To account for the obligations that unmarried mothers owe to their children, you suggest that sex is a "quasi-covenant." If quasi-covenants are meant to resemble tacit consent, what about rape? Mothers clearly owe obligations to their children, even if they are a product of rape. You also point to the inseparable operations of the Trinity, but even then, we remember that the Divine Persons are one not merely in virtue of covenant but in virtue of sharing a common essence. We reject social Trinitarianism precisely because it ruptures the bond of the Trinity. There is an intimate union of Father, Son, and Spirit that goes beyond an agreement in will.
Ignoring this is perilous. There is a negative correlation between ethnic diversity and trust, as Putnam (2007) shows. Communities flourish when members are participants of a shared life, which is grounded upon likeness. This does not entail ethnonationalism, but we must be attentive to the fact that mass immigration lowers the pressure on newcomers to assimilate. Whereas the adopted child identifies entirely with the adoptive parents, many immigrants with dual loyalties are now granted citizenship. This is intolerable and injurious to the common good.
The great English poet Rudyard Kipling remains instructive:
"The Stranger within my gate,
He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk—
I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
But not the soul behind."
And in the final stanza,
"This was my father's belief
And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf—
And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children's teeth are set on edge
By bitter bread and wine."
— The Stranger
Yes, Kinism is stupid, un-Christian, it is absolutely unbiblical. However, the West is not obligated to allow every nation, tongue, and tribe into their countries. To do so would be cultural suicide, just take a look at Britain. Great Britain becoming a nation of foreigners—muslim foreigners. And with a native British birth rate of 1.45, it does not take a PhD in population dynamics to figure out the consequences of such actions. I believe cultural considerations should be considered. I’m originally from Minnesota. It wasn’t a good idea to drop 60,000 to 70,000 Somalis into Minnesota’s backyard. It was a really bad idea.
Great rebuttal of a false doctrine.
I appreciate this essay.
Every time I try to challenge Wolfe though on ethno-nationalism, everyone starts hollering and saying that he is verifiably not an ethno-nationalist.
So some definitions are in order here, given that I have never read your content before.
Is kinism the same as ethno-nationalism and can you prove your assumption that Wolfe is an ethno-nationalist?
I’m going to bet these ethno-nationalists are not keen on adoption, either. It would follow.
The good Samaritan immediately undermine the idea that our neighbours are our kin. Both of the men who passed the injured man on the road were Jews. The story goes on to reveal that our neighbours are whoever does good to us regardless of where they’re from.
This is silly. If what you said was true then there would be no reason why parents of children born out of wedlock would have an obligation to their children. The covenantal obligations and the familial obligations are similar, they are connected but they are distinct.
Adoption is an ingrafting into a preexisting familial reality, but there would still be a family even if the concept of adoption did not exist. Adoption is an extension of begetting but you would make begetting a subset of adoption. This is weak and confused.
Except… biblically, if you produce children with a woman — no, if you have sex with her — you are married to her. The act of sex is the covenant.
In some senses that is true, though I maintain that the two remain distinct, otherwise we would not find wives and concubines distinguished in the OT. For instance Hagar is never referred to as married to Abraham or in covenant with him. She and Ishmael are cast out for the sake of keeping covenant. But even if we accept your point as given it gives no support that I can see to the OP.
I don’t know about Webbon, but you’re off base in regards to Wolfe. But, in truth, what you’re getting at in this essay isn’t clear. Do you disconnect the idea of Covenant (invisible spiritual reality) to the visible manifestation of the covenant—like marriage?