Family as the Pattern for Nations

“The tribes [of Israel] existed by circumstances of birth before circumcision was reinstituted by Moses and their structure was not altered by the rite. As with all other nations, membership was normally by birth: the structure was given in the created order of the family, and that in turn was the pattern for the structure of the nation.

The human rights notion of the human race as essentially formed by the will of man entering into social contract is notoriously scandalized by the existence of races, peoples, nations, tribes and languages. Even to insist that these groups do exist is to risk the derisive epithet of ‘racist.’ But to deny that they not only exist but that they are unalterable and determinative of human order is to deserve to be called a fool and a liar. National and language groupings have prevailed in the United States over as many as seven or eight generations of the imaginary ‘melting pot,’ and show no signs of dissolving even though, for most, English has become the mother tongue. Even the major church divisions retain the national divisions brought over from Europe and Britain: the various Lutheran bodies, Dutch and German Reformed, Presbyterian (Scottish), Anglican or English, as well as Irish Catholic as distinct from Italian, Polish or Spanish. Jews, to be sure, are fiercely Jewish, despite the abrasions between the Ashkenazies, the Sephardim and those from Central Europe and Russia. Nobody has yet integrated the Negro race, changed their color or destroyed their elusive community structure.

If there is a natural law governing the formation and structure of human society, it is the will of God and it is seen in the divisions of the earth along lines of generation and blood descent with the inescapable familial pattern for all. Men are born into it without any act of consent of the individual and are cast into a given state by virtue of that birth, which can be altered only within the limits of the circumstances which are also given.

None of this is amended or altered or done away in Christ. Christ’s sovereignty in no way denies or negates Christ’s own operations in the creation of the world and its government. God cannot deny himself nor improve upon his work: else He is not eternal. The advent of Christ as Sovereign did not somehow allow God to enter into the government of the world; rather it opened the way for man to participate in God’s own authority and power which he exercises without ceasing and has from the beginning.” ~ T. Robert Ingram in What’s Wrong With Human Rights