By Davis Carlton

Charles Johnson of Reformed Theology Delatinized has responded to Rev. Michael Spangler’s series on Race Realism posted at the Pactum Institute Blog. I encourage everyone to read Spangler’s own response that he has posted to Johnson’s critique. I have given a preliminary response to Johnson in which I specifically critique his claims that Spangler uses certain passages that are descriptive in nature and thus cannot be used to derive imperatives. In other words, Johnson argues that just because God has created the various races and ethnic groups, we cannot infer that these are central to our identity or that we are required to preserve our distinct ethnic or racial identity. In this response I would like to interact with the arguments that Johnson makes in regards to the Law and how it pertains to the preservation of national identity.

Earlier on Tribal Theocrat I asked the very relevant question, “What is a Nation?” This was a play on Matt Walsh’s documentary, “What is a Woman?” In a way Johnson’s response to Spangler is his attempt to step up to the plate and answer this significant question. Johnson appears to believe that national identity has something to do with shared history, language, culture, and religious belief, but Johnson is adamant that national identity exists independently of shared race and ethnicity. This is particularly clear when he is talking about American identity. In particular I want to address the claims that Johnson makes about the laws governing tribal land ownership as well as kin rule.

Spangler asserts that “Israelite law required that their ruler be a fellow Jew.” This prompts Johnson to respond: “Our commonwealth has a similar law in the constitution that the president be a ‘natural born citizen.’ But a law requiring he be white would be of quite a different nature. Like the last point, this one confuses citizenship and race.” It’s worth mentioning that Johnson is ignoring history in order to make his rejoinder. I pointed out on Faith & Heritage that America was purposefully founded as a white nation. The intention of the Founding Fathers was that America was to remain a white nation with European roots, but did not want newcomers from Europe to gain too much power. This is the basis for the provision of the Constitution that the President was to be a “native born citizen.” The Founders had no intention of America opening its borders to people of all different races and religions. Johnson can call this “racist” if he wants to, but it’s dishonest to appeal to a provision in the Constitution while entirely ignoring its original context or the intention of its framers.

More importantly, Johnson’s argument is wrong about the Law of Kin Rule. Johnson accuses Spangler, and by extension Kinists, of confusing “citizenship and race.” Johnson falsely states that proselytes or converts to the worship of the true God were “integrated into the people and their offspring were afforded all civil rights and privileges of full-blooded Israelites.” Spangler noticed this mistake as well, and he responded, “Johnson cites Num. 9:14, which only says that strangers may keep the Passover. His claim confuses the two kingdoms of Christ, the church and the state, the spiritual and the temporal, which two things were clearly distinct in both Old and New Testament.”

Spangler further appeals to George Gillespie (who also cites the Anglican scholar John Selden), “there was a distinction of the Jewish church and Jewish state, because those proselytes, being embodied into the Jewish church as church members, and having a right to communicate in the holy ordinances among the rest of the people of God, yet were not properly members of the Jewish state, nor admitted to civil privileges; whence it is also that the names of Jews and proselytes were used distinctly, Acts ii. 10.”

Johnson’s argument presupposes that references in the Law to brethren must refer to spiritual brothers of the same faith and religion, while strangers and foreigners are those who have not received the covenant by means of circumcision. This is not the case. The word brethren is used in reference to fellow ethnic and hereditary Israelites, while sojourners generally refer to peaceful inhabitants within Israel who worship the true God in spite of not being Israelite citizens themselves. There was to be one law for the Israelites as well as resident foreigners (Lev. 24:22; Num. 15:16, 29). In these parallel verses we can see that “you” and “your country” are synonymous with “the children of Israel” and contrasted with strangers.

This can also be seen in verses like Lev. 18:26: “Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgments, and shall not commit any of these abominations; neither any of your own nation, nor any stranger that sojourneth among you.” This verse clearly demonstrates that sojourning strangers (non-Hebrew residents of Israel) were expected to keep the Law that God had revealed to the Israelites. While not all these peaceful resident foreigners would have been true believers, they would have at least been externally conformed to the worship of the God of Israel. The best interpretation of these verses is that God extends to non-Israelites the same standard of justice, but reserves the civil rights and privileges of citizenship to the hereditary “children of Israel.” Samuel Rutherford reflects the historic Christian understanding when he says, “The King is a relative.”

These same observations also apply to what Johnson says about the inheritance laws of Israel, but there are also additional arguments that Johnson makes in regards to these laws that deserve a response. First, Johnson cites Matthew Henry’s commentary in which he argues that one of the purposes of these laws was, “That their genealogies should be carefully preserved, which would be of use for clearing our Saviour’s pedigree.” Johnson lists other purposes that Matthew Henry cites, but conspicuously absent is this one, “That the distinction of tribes should be kept up.” This is the second purpose that Henry gives after “clearing our Saviour’s pedigree.” This is to say that Matthew Henry saw value in preserving the distinction between the tribes of Israel, and that the inheritance laws were given for that purpose.

Johnson quotes Matthew Henry saying, “if lands be granted to a man and his heirs, upon condition that he should never sell or alienate them, the grant is good, but the condition is void and repugnant: Iniquum est ingenuis hominibus (say the lawyers) non esse liberam rerum suarum alienationem—It is unjust to prevent free men from alienating their own possessions.”

If this was all that Matthew Henry said then it would seem that the law of England did indeed contradict the Law spelled out in Lev. 25. Would this be a good thing? Johnson doesn’t say but presents this statement without further commentary. Matthew Henry gives several purposes for the law of inheritance, such as preventing the over-accumulation of wealth and also destitution. If England simply ignored these concerns then it would seem that it has done so to its detriment. Are modern Englishmen better off for having “freely” been alienated from their historic estates and great houses in droves after the 20^th century World Wars?

Johnson states that Matthew Henry contrasts this law with the law of England, when he actually deems the two laws to be complementary. Johnson only quoted the first part of Matthew Henry’s comparison which continues, “Yet it is agreed in the books that if the king grant lands to a man in fee upon condition he shall not alienate, the condition is good. Now God would show his people Israel that their land was his, and they were his tenants.” This seems to indicate that Matthew Henry understood England to be keeping the general equity of the inheritance law, which grants broad freedom to a man to dispose his possessions as he pleases, while intentionally designating estates as something that are entrusted to families as a whole rather than mere individuals.

Daniel Hannan’s great comment comes to mind: “It is extraordinary, walking about the grounds [of the great estates that are such a marked feature of the English countryside] today, to think that their eighteenth-century owners laid out their seedlings in such a way as to reach perfection hundreds of years later. What assurance those early landscape gardeners had in the stability of the nation and its political system. They expected their parks to be enjoyed, in their ripeness, by their great-great-great-grandchildren. They felt certain that their homes wouldn’t in the meantime, have been expropriated by a tyrant, wrecked by a mob, or used to billet foreign invaders.” (Daniel Hannan, How We Invented Freedom & Why It Matters, 2013).

Johnson makes other arguments that I disagree with, but these are the main issues that I take with his response to Michael Spangler. The Law is favorable to ethno-nationalism in a way that Johnson hasn’t fully considered. I appreciate that Spangler’s series of articles have prompted responses because it forces Christians to think about these issues in greater depth. Ultimately, I believe Charles Johnson’s criticism of Spangler’s “racism” fall flat. Johnson accuses Spangler – and by extension Kinists – of violating Deut. 12:32 by adding to the Law, but the above observations make it clear that ethno-nationalism preserves the general equity of the principles that inspire the laws of kin rule and inheritance.

As a side note: Charles Johnson has argued for exclusive psalmody to be used in public worship. I don’t intend to respond to his arguments, except to say that I’m not convinced. I believe that Christian worship should be thoroughly Biblical, but that uninspired hymns and prayers can be used. I only bring this up because Charles Johnson represents what I believe are sadly misplaced priorities that can sometimes plague thinkers in the Reformed world. It is foolish to accuse Christians of sinning by singing hymns written by Paul Gerhardt and Isaac Watts while simultaneously suggesting that the modern globalist zeitgeist is perfectly in conformity with the spirit of Christian ethics. The world tells white people that their race doesn’t matter, and Christians like Charles Johnson are joining this chorus while at the same time harping on issues that should have been settled centuries ago. The problems of the deracinated secular globalist paradigm are becoming ever more obvious, and I think that more and more young Christian men will come to reject these kinds of arguments in the future.