I post this public testimony, written by Michael Hunter as another witness against the slow liberalism that masks as conservatism among the ever fracturing Reformed denominations. In this response to his particular inquisitors, my friend shows himself to be what he is: a guileless man with a clear mind and conscience bound to God’s Word and the stable faith of our fathers. May his courage and steadfastness encourage you in your own trials as you follow Christ. —Shane Anderson
Originally published on X: https://x.com/reftranslations/status/1880718761021645196?s=46&t=shwNtHqNyztVGHO3vFhObA
For anyone interested, here are the questions that the Minister and His Works Committee of Grace Presbytery (ARPC) asked me and my fellow minister during their investigation, along with my responses. No charges have been recommended based on these responses.
This should be instructional for a variety of reasons, some of which I may highlight in the future.
1) Have your views regarding the Westminster Standards and the Constitution of the ARP changed in any way since your ordination?
No.
2) Would you describe yourself as some variety of Theonomist? If so, can you explain what you mean by that?
I agree with WCF 19 on the law of God. I have previously described the Confession’s position as “general equity theonomy,” since the Westminster divines affirm that, although the “judicial laws…expired together with the state of that people [i.e., Israel]” and are “not obliging any other,” the “general equity” of these laws is still binding. None of the civil laws of the OT violates the general equity of the moral law. So while the civil laws of the OT do not oblige any nation today, every nation must apply the general equity of the civil laws to their own circumstances, and it is not immoral to use the OT civil laws as a model. Thus, Beza writes, “Although the particular forms of the laws never pertained to us, nevertheless, since their author is God himself, the most just and equitable Legislator, it is most right for magistrates to look to the most perfect example of the Mosaic laws (as often as some particular circumstance of time, place, or persons does not hinder them) to establish their own laws.”
3) What do you mean when you use the phrase, “Race Realism?”
This is Michael Spangler’s term, not mine, so you would have to consult his writings. To my knowledge, I have never used the term in any books, articles, teaching, or preaching. Of course, I do believe that races are real. So, for example, I believe Rachel Dolezal, a white woman, is sinning when she identifies as a black woman because she is denying objective reality.
4) In its mission statement, the Pactum Institute, of which you are a Research Fellow, says it seeks to promote, “Christian Familialism and Ethnic Complementarianism as representing the organic and divinely ordained social order for mankind.” Can you unpack how you understand that statement and its goal?
No, for the following reasons. These are Adi Schlebusch’s words, not mine. He and I have never discussed this statement, and I have not read any books or articles where he elaborates on these terms. I have never used the terms “familialism” or “ethnic complementarianism” in books, articles, preaching, or teaching. You would have to ask him how he defines those terms.
Further, the fellows of the institute are not required to adhere to all the language of the institute’s founder as he describes the institute’s mission. Indeed, when I became a fellow, I was never required to sign or affirm anything, and Adi indicated that “there are no contracts” for becoming a fellow, “just a mutual association that is mutually beneficial.” Adi is aware of and allows differences among the institute’s fellows.
It may help to describe the circumstances under which I became a fellow. Adi saw the video of my remarks before the Winston-Salem city council, in which I preached against the LGBTQ+ movement and called our civil magistrates to repentance. Because of those comments, he then contacted me and asked if I would like to join the institute. Before I agreed, I wanted to make sure it would not be an issue at the church. So I asked Eric if he thought it would be fine for me to join the institute. He looked over the website briefly and informed me that he did not see an issue with joining and that it seemed like a reasonable Christian organization. Of course, even if the institute were not Christian, this would not necessarily be an impediment to joining, since the church neither prohibits Christian scholars from associating with universities that propagate evil ideologies nor forbids Christian doctors from working for healthcare networks that openly promote wickedness, etc. We can only give an account for our own writings, teaching, and preaching.
5) What are your beliefs regarding segregation in cultures and in the church?
First, it depends on what you mean by “segregation in cultures and in the church.” I do not believe it is immoral to make distinctions within a society. For example, in some countries, there are royal and noble families who have privileges and rights that others do not have simply by reason of their birth. This segregation is not intrinsically immoral. I also do not believe it is immoral to have ethnic-specific institutions and events. For example, when I was at WTS, there was a Korean Fellowship event regularly held on campus; on at least one occasion (and I think this was their regular practice), white students were asked to leave since it was an event for Koreans. This is not intrinsically immoral. Again, when I was at WTS, there was a BIPOC group that held events on campus. As the name suggests, it was a group for black and indigenous people of color. This is not intrinsically immoral. It is also not intrinsically immoral for ethnic groups to preserve their own identity and distinction from other ethnicities through social and political practices. For example, Israel’s laws openly promote and seek to preserve Jewish dominance in their country, which requires maintaining distinctions from non-Jews. This is not intrinsically immoral. Indeed, as Vos writes,
Nationalism, within proper limits, has the divine sanction; an imperialism that would, in the interest of one people, obliterate all lines of distinction is everywhere condemned as contrary to the divine will. Later prophecy raises its voice against the attempt at world-power, and that not only, as is sometimes assumed, because it threatens Israel, but for the far more principal reason, that the whole idea is pagan and immoral…Under the providence of God each race or nation has a positive purpose to serve, fulfillment of which depends on relative seclusion from others.
I believe that it is good to preserve boundaries between the various ethnicities and races of the world because it is better to live in a garden of many-colored roses than to live in a world of gray, cheerless uniformity and homogeneity.
The church, of course, is a unique institution. Many of our spiritual fathers practiced various forms of segregation in the church, including but not limited to ethnic segregation. For example, seating was sometimes sex-segregated, with men sitting on one side and women on the other. Also, in Reformation England there were “strangers’ churches,” that is, ethnic-specific churches, such as a Dutch church, a French church, and so on. Indeed, we are familiar with ethnically dominant churches now, such as Korean churches. But, while such practices are permissible, I believe that no distinctions should be made among Christians as Christians, since the church is a spiritual, not a natural, institution. While natural distinctions are appropriate, such distinctions do not apply to spiritual identity and Christian fellowship as such. Thus, J. Gresham Machen writes, “Is there no refuge from strife? Is there no place of refreshing where a man can prepare for the battle of life? Is there no place where two or three can gather in Jesus' name, to forget for the moment all those things that divide nation from nation and race from race, to forget human pride, to forget the passions of war, to forget the puzzling problems of industrial strife, and to unite in overflowing gratitude at the foot of the Cross? If there be such a place, then that is the house of God and that the gate of heaven. And from under the threshold of that house will go forth a river that will revive the weary world.”
6) You mention the “Curse of Ham” in your article on Natural Communities, what is your understanding of this curse and how does it apply to black people today?
I actually never mention the “Curse of Ham” in those articles; indeed, I intentionally avoid the expression because Ham was not cursed, Canaan was. I write, “The descendants of Shem and Japheth received blessings that the descendants of Ham did not receive, not because of anything they did, but simply because of their lineage. Indeed, one branch of Ham’s race, the Canaanites, are uniquely cursed because their ancestor Ham sinned against his father.”
I agree with the Westminster Divines’ Annotations that “the word enlarge imports a temporal blessing upon Japheth for the increase of his posterity and an enlargement of their territories; for the European Gentiles...extended their temporal empire so far as to account themselves lords of the world.” The Divines indicate that the descendants of the three sons of Noah inhabited the three regions of the world: Asia (Shem), Africa (Ham), and Europe (Japheth). Likewise, I agree with Matthew Henry that the descendants of Japheth, who “peopled all Europe” possess “the blessing of the earth beneath.” Again, I agree with J.G. Vos: “Noah’s prophecy concerns the broad lines of the future development of the various branches of the human race. God would enlarge Japheth. Japheth was the ancestor of the Indo-European peoples, to which we ourselves belong. It is a fact of history that for the last 2500 years the Indo-European peoples have been dominant in world affairs, not only in material and scientific progress, but also in political control of the major part of the civilized world.”
So while Africans and their descendants are not uniquely cursed (unlike the Canaanites), I agree with the Westminster Divines that Europeans and their descendants are uniquely blessed with temporal blessings.
7) What are your beliefs regarding interracial marriage, and in particular, marriages between whites and blacks? Would you marry a white woman to a black man if they were both professing believers?
I do not believe that interracial marriages are per se sinful, though some may be sinful per accidens. Further, not all marriages that are lawful are necessarily wise, so even where there is no sin, additional factors may make certain marriages imprudent. In my view, a minister is not obligated to marry two people just because they are professing believers; the minister must be satisfied in his own mind that the marriage is suitable. For example, a marriage between a 65-year-old Christian man and a 25-year-old Christian woman is neither illegal nor per se sinful. But it may be imprudent, and if the minister is not satisfied in his mind that the couple have sufficiently addressed the potential difficulties of the relationship, he may rightly refuse to marry the couple, while acknowledging that their marriage will be lawful if they choose to marry anyway. If I was satisfied that an interracial Christian couple had sufficiently addressed the challenges arising from the distinctive features of an interracial marriage, I would marry them.
But I also believe that opposition to interracial marriage, even if erroneous, is neither a violation of our Standards nor incompatible with being a faithful Christian. Indeed, this was the dominant position of Christians (including Presbyterians) in America from the 17th–20th centuries. The anti-miscegenation laws began in the colonies in the 1660’s and were created by a largely Christian population; these laws were established within a few decades of the Westminster Assembly. Further, most eminent Presbyterian leaders, such as Charles Hodge, Basil Gildersleeve, and J. Gresham Machen, were opposed to interracial marriage. And it would be absurd to think that our own denomination’s founders, who lived in the South in 1822, believed that approval of interracial marriage was a requirement of the Standards or of basic Christian conduct. According to a 1958 Gallup poll, 96% of Americans opposed the legalization of interracial marriage; this includes the overwhelming majority of our own denomination and the vast majority of Christians in America at the time. Since the standards for being a Christian have not changed, and since the examples provided were Christians, their views, however erroneous, cannot be incompatible with being a Christian now. I will never condemn my spiritual fathers by condemning those who hold the same views as my spiritual fathers.
8) Do you agree with Michael Spangler that black people are intellectually inferior to white people and that while it would be permissible for a white minister to come in and preach to a black church because he is intellectually superior, it would not be permissible for the black minister to preach to a white church?
Multiple studies indicate that blacks have a lower average IQ than whites. The average IQ of sub-Saharan Africans, as well as Haitians, is about 67. The average IQ of blacks in America is about 85. The average IQ of white Northern Europeans is about 103. The average IQ of white Americans is about 103. The average IQ of someone with Down syndrome is about 50, and in the US someone with an IQ below 70 is generally regarded as mentally handicapped and so incompetent to stand trial. Now IQ, like the rest of creation, is a gift, and our own Standards recognize “superiors in…gifts” (WLC Q. 124). So if we are referring to IQ, then, yes, whites on average are intellectually superior to blacks.
Given the nature of the work, I believe that, ideally, a minister will have an above-average intellect relative to his congregation. So while I do not believe that there should be any rule prohibiting a black minister from shepherding a white congregation, I believe that the disparity in average intellect would obviously be an issue for consideration before choosing a candidate.
More importantly, I believe that, generally speaking, it is wiser for ministers to come from the same sorts of communities as their congregants, since congregants will be more likely to embrace and respect their ministers and since the ministers will better understand the experiences and needs of their congregants. Again, there is no rule here. But, as E.J. Young noted in The Presbyterian Guardian in 1964, “In our desire to make all men welcome in the church there is one fact that must not be overlooked. Men are not equal. There is danger of embracing the modern political doctrine of egalitarianism, a doctrine which is thoroughly unscriptural. Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that men do associate with their own kind of people.” Ministry is more effective when the leaders have this natural connection with and affinity for their congregants. For this reason, the apostles in Acts 6 appointed Hellenistic deacons to address the needs of the Hellenistic widows who were being neglected. For the same reason, missions, in my view, is most effective, not when white men are sent to plant churches among black Africans, for example, but when black Africans are trained to be ministers and sent to plant churches among their own people (as with MRN).
9) Do you believe that a black man should not be elected to the office of elder in a majority white church?
As I noted in the previous answer, I do not believe that there should be a rule here. But it is generally wiser for officers to belong to the communities to which their congregants belong.
10) What do you believe should be the qualifications to vote in American governmental elections? What should be the qualifications to vote in congregational meetings in the ARP?
As a minister, I have no opinions on civil voting laws since the church has no opinions on civil voting laws. Christians are allowed to be monarchists who believe that only one man, the king, should be able to vote. Christians are allowed to support aristocracies in which only the members of elite families vote. Christians are allowed to support representative republics in which only certain members of the community may vote. And Christians are allowed to support democracies in which nearly anyone may vote. But none of this is a matter of orthodoxy, and none of it falls within the jurisdiction of the church. Nations have the freedom to arrange their own political systems, and denying the vote to some portion of the population is not in itself a violation of any moral law, since there is no moral right to vote.
Regarding church voting, I can accept our current practice of allowing all communicant members to vote. But as I noted when I was interviewed by the committee in 2022, I would prefer to raise the age limit. More specifically, I would prefer for members to be at least 21 to vote, and I would also prefer to limit voting to heads of households.
11) What are your beliefs regarding slavery?
Slavery is the ownership of another person with respect to his labor. The patriarchs purchased people for labor. God blessed Abraham by giving him “menservants and maidservants” (Gen 24:35), which included those who were “bought with money of any stranger” (Gen 17:12). God also blessed Isaac by giving him “great store of servants” who are listed among Isaac’s possessions (Gen 26:14). We should not covet our neighbor’s manservant or maidservant since they belong to our neighbor (Exod 20:17). God authorized Israel to hold foreign slaves as inheritable possessions forever:
Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever (Lev 25:44-46).
Jesus Himself commends the faith of a centurion who had a slave (Luke 7:9), at a time when slaves had virtually no rights under Roman law. Under the same Roman system of slavery, Paul commands slaves who are “under the yoke” to “count their own masters as worthy of all honour, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed” (1 Tim 6:1). He recognizes that some slave masters are “believing,” “brethren,” “faithful,” “beloved,” and “partakers of the benefit” (1 Tim 6:2). Scripture repeatedly imposes obligations on masters and slaves toward each other.
The Westminster Divines apparently did not view slavery as a violation of their Standards, since multiple members of the Assembly owned or participated in companies that used African slave labor (e.g., William Fiennes, Philip Herbert, Henry Rich, Robert Rich, John Pym, Benjamin Rudyerd, Josias Shute, John White). In 1683, only a few decades after the Assembly, a presbytery in Ireland sent the Scots-Irish presbyterian minister Francis Makemie to America to establish the first presbytery in the colonies; Makemie would later be known as “the father of American Presbyterianism.” From the 1680’s to his death in 1708, Makemie, in addition to being a minister, ran a plantation in Virginia, and when he died, he left 20 African slaves as an inheritance to his family. Neither his home presbytery nor the newly established presbytery in America apparently viewed this as a violation of the Standards. During the same period, Matthew Henry compares the slavery authorized in Scripture with English slavery. He writes, “This servant must not be an Israelite, but a Gentile slave, as the negroes to our planters,” and, “Thus in our English plantations the negroes only are used as slaves.”
The situation was the same in the Dutch Reformed church of the 18th century. Jacobus Capitein was a black man who had been sold into slavery as a child. His Dutch master later freed him. Capitein received his Master’s degree from Leiden University. His dissertation was a biblical and theological defense of slavery, including the Dutch involvement in African slavery. This dissertation was praised by members of the Dutch Reformed church, and Capitein was then ordained in the Dutch Reformed Church the year after he graduated, becoming the first black man to be a minister in a Protestant church. So the Dutch Reformed Church too affirmed the lawfulness of slavery.
Our own church was founded as the Synod of the South in 1822. While some of its ministers opposed the slave institution, the church did not bind anyone’s conscience on the question, and the Synod had members in good standing who owned slaves.
Likewise, American Presbyterians of various backgrounds believed in the lawfulness of the slave institution. Charles Hodge writes the following:
We have in modern abolitionism another illustration of this same truth...A holy slaveholder is in his view as much a contradiction as a holy murderer; and he therefore, cannot regard a slaveholder as a good man. But if, (as what sane man can doubt?) he may be a sincere Christian, to be in a state of mind which forbids our recognising him as such, is to be morally diseased or deranged...It is however, one of the most certain marks of a true Christian, to recognise and love the Christian character in others, and it is one of the surest marks of an unrenewed heart, to feel aversion to those who are the true followers of Christ...In itself, and as far as it is allowed to operate, it is evident that a principle which makes the man who entertains it, regard and denounce good men, who really love and serve the Lord Jesus Christ, as heinous criminals, unfit for Christian communion, must pervert the heart, and, where it has its full effect, destroy all semblance of religion...While we admit that...there are many good men among the abolitionists, we regard it as a notorious fact, that the spirit of the party, as a party, is an evil spirit; a spirit of railing, of bitterness, of exaggeration.
And again:
It is on all hands acknowledged that, at the time of the advent of Jesus Christ, slavery in its worst forms prevailed over the whole world. The Saviour found it around him in Judea; the apostles met with it in Asia, Greece and Italy. How did they treat it? Not by the denunciation of slave-holding as necessarily and universally sinful. Not by declaring that all slaveholders were men-stealers and robbers, and consequently to be excluded from the church and the kingdom of heaven. Not by insisting on immediate emancipation. Not by appeals to the passions of men on the evils of slavery, or by the adoption of a system of universal agitation...They caution those slaves who have believing or Christian masters, not to despise them because they were on a perfect religious equality with them, but to consider the fact that their masters were their brethren, as an additional reason for obedience. It is remarkable that there is not even an exhortation to masters to liberate their slaves, much less is it urged as an imperative and immediate duty. They are commanded to be kind, merciful and just; and to remember that they have a Master in heaven...It is not worth while to shut our eyes to these facts. They will remain, whether we refuse to see them and be instructed by them or not. If we are wiser, better, more courageous than Christ and his apostles, let us say so; but it will do no good, under a paroxysm of benevolence, to attempt to tear the bible to pieces, or to extort, by violent exegesis, a meaning foreign to its obvious sense. Whatever inferences may be fairly deducible from the fact, the fact itself cannot be denied that Christ and his inspired followers did treat the subject of slavery in the manner stated above. This being the case, we ought carefully to consider their conduct in this respect, and inquire what lessons that conduct should teach us.
Similarly, J. Gresham Machen writes that slavery is not intrinsically sinful, but rather it afforded "both slave and master genuine opportunity for the development of Christian character and for the performance of Christian service." B.B. Warfield says, “Paul…implicitly recognized ownership in human chattels. He even explicitly allows this ownership.” John Murray writes:
If the institution is the moral evil it is alleged to be by abolitionists, if it is essentially a violation of basic human right and liberty, if slave-holding is the monstrosity claimed, it is, to say the least, very strange that the apostles who were so directly concerned with these evils did not overtly condemn the institution and require slave-holders to practice emancipation. If slavery per se is immorality and, because of its prevalence, was a rampant vice in the first century, we would be compelled to conclude that the high ethic of the New Testament would have issued its proscription. But this is not what we find. It seems hardly enough to say that the New Testament quietly establishes the principles which would in due time expose the iniquity of the institution and by their irresistible force stamp it out. If it is the evil it is stated to be, we should expect more. The apostles were not governed by that kind of expediency; they openly assailed the institutions of paganism that were antithetical to the faith and morals of Christianity…And, without doubt, the economics of that day were to a large extent bound up with the evils that were the occasion for such denunciation. The apostles were not afraid to upset an economic status quo when it violated the fundamental demands of equity. The facts with which we are confronted require us to hesitate before we indulge in wholesale condemnation of the institution of slavery as such.
Examples could be multiplied. Indeed, Anglican bishop John Henry Hopkins’s A Scriptural, Ecclesiastical, and Historical View of Slavery demonstrates that church councils and ministers from the early to the medieval to the Reformed church and beyond affirmed the lawfulness of the slave institution.
12) What did you mean when you wrote to Adi Schlebusch regarding Covenant of Grace church, “We want to be a place that is a refuge for people who hold views like Spangler and me?”
I meant that I wanted CoG to be a place of refuge for people who affirm the Westminster Standards, walk in the paths of our spiritual fathers, and do not add requirements for church membership beyond the gospel and basic Christian obedience as our spiritual fathers understood it. In other words, I wanted CoG to be a place of refuge for traditional Christians who are despised by the world and punished by “cancel culture.” This was precisely the point of contention at CoG. Eric and I believed that our oath prohibited us from adding conditions to the gospel as a basis for Christian fellowship. If someone believes what our spiritual fathers believed, he is welcome to worship with us, even if he and our spiritual fathers were wrong about something. Max, Phil, and Todd took the position that we can and should add conditions to the gospel as a basis for Christian fellowship, such that the standards of Christian fellowship constantly change. That is, if someone believed X 200 years ago, he may have been a faithful Christian then, but if someone believes the exact same thing today, he should not be regarded as a faithful Christian now. Eric and I rejected this constantly moving target and ever-changing standard in favor of an immutable standard, such that if a Christian believed X 200 years ago and still was a faithful Christian, then a Christian can believe that very thing today and still be a faithful Christian, whether he is wrong on the issue or not.
13) Your Associate at Pactum, Adi Schlebusch, recently described the Holocaust as, “the Nazi’s battle with the Jews during World War Two” and has said he questions the, “the post-World War II consensus” regarding this event. What are your views regarding the Holocaust?
Again, you will have to ask Adi what he means by those comments. I have never discussed them with him.
Regarding my view, I am answering as a minister, and as a minister, I do not have (and cannot have) an official position on extrabiblical historiography for the following reason. The object of faith is the Word of God, and principally Christ revealed therein (WCF 14.2). Thus, the Word of God is our only rule of faith and practice (WCF 1.2, 1.6). Requiring belief in any historiography other than biblical historiography as a condition for Christian fellowship is either 1) adding to the canon or 2) denying that the Word of God is our only rule of faith and practice. Adding extrabiblical beliefs as a condition for a right relationship with God and Christian fellowship unlawfully binds the conscience (WCF 20.2) and is a denial of the gospel (cf. Galatians). Therefore, the Church cannot require a Christian to believe in any historiographical account outside the Bible. Therefore, extrabiblical historiography, including accounts of the Holocaust, cannot be enforced by the Church. The minister has no official opinions beyond what the Bible teaches as that teaching is summarized in the church’s subordinate Standards. Since neither the Bible nor the subordinate Standards have an official position on extrabiblical historiography, including the historiography of the Holocaust, neither does the minister.
Of course, there is a distinction between moral premises and historiographical premises. For example, if someone says that Lee Harvey Oswald did not kill Kennedy, that is not an impediment to church membership. If someone says that 1) Oswald did kill Kennedy 2) that Kennedy was civilly innocent and 3) that killing a civilly innocent person is okay, then it would be an impediment to church membership, not because of the historiographical premises (1, 2) but because of the moral premise (3). So if someone said, "If Oswald killed a civilly innocent person, that would be wrong, but I don't think Oswald killed a civilly innocent person," the speaker would not be impeded from church membership. Historiography deals with particulars; morality deals with universals. The Church cannot bind people's consciences regarding extrabiblical historiography (i.e., whether such an account of history is correct) because the Bible says nothing about those events and to do so, therefore, would be either to add that historiography to the Bible or to assert that the Bible is not our only rule of faith and practice. The Church can bind people's consciences regarding moral law because the Bible says everything about the principles of moral law (the Ten Commandments). But adding historical beliefs about the Holocaust (or any other extrabiblical historiography) to the Christian creed would be a functional denial of the Christian faith because it would add an extrabiblical condition to the gospel.
Further, I have never studied the primary source material regarding the Holocaust, which I am not required to do either as a Christian or as a minister, so I have no fully developed view of the matter.
14) Bret McAtee of Pactum has said, “Jews do in fact play a disproportionate role in the destruction of Western Civilization and the white race via the Great Replacement.” What is your view on this as well as modern Jews generally?
Again, you will have to ask Bret what he means by those comments. I have not discussed those comments with him.
The following is my view of the Jews. God chose the Jews to be the nation, or ethnic group, through whom he would bring the Messiah and so accomplish our salvation. Thus, Jesus says that “salvation is of the Jews” (John 4:22). As I write in my Natural Communities article, “Jesus…continues to be a son of David, from the tribe of Judah, an Israelite, and a Semite.” And as I preached before presbytery earlier this year, “According to the gospel, Jesus Christ had to be a Semite, an Israelite, a Judahite, and a son of David.”
In Romans 9-11, Paul further addresses the status of ethnic Jews in the NT. The Jews in view here are united by blood, not necessarily by belief. Thus, Paul identifies the Jews whom he is discussing as his “kinsmen according to the flesh” (Rom 9:3). On this passage, Hodge notes that the connection is one of “race,” and Murray identifies the connection as “a natural, genetic relationship.” So Paul is discussing Jews as a racial or ethnic group, not a religious group. Indeed, one of the errors of the New Perspectives on Paul was reading first-century Jewish identity as religiously monolithic. Jews did not have to be united by religious belief to be Jews; thus, Paul, a Christian, can refer to Pharisees and Sadducees, who disagreed with him and with each other, as “brethren” because they are all racially or ethnically Jewish (Acts 22:1; 23:6). According to Paul, these ethnic Jews, as a category, rejected their Messiah and so were “broken off” (Rom 11:17). Similarly, according to the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, the Jewish nation, considered as a whole, killed the prophets and Christ, and so God destroyed them (in 70 AD) and bestowed His covenant on the Gentiles (Mark 12:1-12). Of course, there was a remnant of the Jewish nation that remained faithful, including the apostles and Christ Himself, and even today, we have ethnic Jews in our own congregations. But the Jewish nation considered generally was cut off, and their minds were blinded (2 Cor 3:13-14). Because this ethnic group actively rejected their own Messiah and because God cast them off (Rom 11:1-2), they have been particularly hostile to the Gentile Christian church, as indicated in Acts and throughout the church’s history. Thus, Paul writes, “As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes” (Rom 11:28). Likewise, Paul says that “the Jews…killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men” (1 Thess 2:15).
Now our own Larger Catechism requires us to view the Jews as enemies of God. According to the Larger Catechism, we are required to pray for the calling of the Jews (WLC Q. 191), which the Westminster Directory further explains as the “conversion” of the Jews. So our Standards assume that the Jews, regarded as a whole, are not converted. And, as Paul says, all who are unconverted are hostile to God (Rom 8:7). So when we pray for the Jews, we are praying for God’s and our enemies, as the Lord Jesus commanded us (Matt 5:43-45). Further, I believe that the views of our spiritual forefathers (e.g., Calvin, Voetius, Rutherford, Lavater, Bucer) regarding the Jews, while not always obligatory, are permissible.
I am also concerned that the crusade against antisemitism will become a threat to the Church. In 1936, J. Gresham Machen opposed “anti-propaganda bills forbidding criticism of racial and social groups.” He no doubt had in mind the 1935 New Jersey bill, known as the “anti-Nazi” bill, that banned antisemitic speech in political campaigns. Machen opposed such laws because he feared that they would eventually be used to limit the church’s liberty. Last year, a bill that was proposed in Florida included in the definition of antisemitism the statement that the Jews killed Jesus; this definition of antisemitism is growing in popularity in the US. If such a definition of antisemitism were to be adopted, certain texts of Scripture would effectively be illegal. The Church must assert her right to proclaim these passages without apology.
15) Michael Spangler has written, “Christians ought to recognize that many non-Christians see racial realities, and many do so better than we do. In the fight for truth we ought to acknowledge our unbelieving allies, and even learn from them…” Do you agree with this statement, and if so, who are these “unbelieving allies?”
Again, this is Michael Spangler’s comment, so you would have to ask him what he means and to whom he is referring. But of course, I suspect that there are unbelievers who recognize that races are real, while there are believers who deny such racial distinctions. So in that respect surely some non-Christians see racial realities better than some Christians, just as some non-Christians see political and historical realities better than some Christians.
