By Davis Carlton
Dr. Ben Dunson, Professor of New Testament at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, has posted an article critiquing Kinism. Dunson’s article trots out many of the arguments that are typically deployed against Kinism, and Rev. Michael Spangler has posted a brief, point-by-point response on X that also summarizes my own objections against Dunson’s arguments. The main thrust of my response is simply to point out that I’ve noticed the same problem emerge over and over with those seeking to critique Kinism while failing to adequately define the terms that they are using. I have pressed this issue about how the Bible speaks of national identity several times before (see here, here and here).
At first glance, this might seem like a strange charge to level against Dunson in his critique of Kinism since he spends a good deal of time discussing terminology. Dunson equates Kinism with race realism and further states, “What this means for the kinist is that the world has a set number of distinct races, and that race is a mostly unchangeable, permanent biological reality found in a specific group of people.” Dunson spends a good deal of time trying to disprove Kinism and race realism by disputing definitions and how words are precisely used in the Bible. I think that Jason Dixon’s article on the self-evidence of race answers this kind of argumentation well. Race is real, and trying to bog down discussion in technicalities and definitions doesn’t refute reality.
Dunson argues that the idea of race as a fixed biological category derives from polygenism and Darwinism, the belief that mankind evolved from distinct populations of bipedal primate ancestors. Later on Dunson rejects the idea that race is real because, according to him, race isn’t actually a fixed biological category, stating that “races are clearly not static realities.” Many of the arguments that Dunson makes also fall under Loki’s Wager fallacy, in which one seeks to “obscure a concept by claiming it could not be defined.” One can acknowledge that the races do share common characteristics and that the exact genetic boundary can be difficult to pin down, while still believing that the races are distinct.
Dunson argues that ability of the races to intermix demonstrates that race isn’t “real” because it isn’t “fixed.” To quote Dunson at length, “Simple observation would show us that—to use the modern, semi-biological understanding for the sake of argument—races are clearly not static realities. A Hispanic man who marries an Asian woman, for example, will have children that take on certain physical characteristics of each. If those children were to marry people of other “races,” ongoing change would occur. Kinists argue that race is a static reality, but the observable reality of life is that this is false. The unchangeableness of race, rather than reflecting biological reality, is merely what kinists believe should be the case, which would require “races” not to intermarry. Race, then, turns out to remain permanent and unchangeable only if the kinists prevent the “races” from intermarrying and having children.”
What are we to make of this argument? I’ve addressed it previously in my response to Doug Wilson when he argued against race realism. Race isn’t negated by the presence of race-mixing. I pointed out in my response to Wilson that mixed is a category recognized by the Biblical authors. Moreover, race is static enough that mixed individuals will eventually have descendants that fall into one category or another. The broad reality of race is maintained because of how we inherit a finite number of genes from our ancestors. Over time, outliers in our family tree get filtered out as genes from the majority of one’s ancestors get passed down. I believe that this is a way in which God has ensured that the diversity of race that has existed for millennia remains in spite of mixing.
Is it possible that these racial differences could become so mixed that the original type with its distinct characteristics disappears entirely? I and other Kinists have warned that this is precisely the agenda of secular globalism that seeks to eradicate the White race through mass migration as well as anti-natalist and pro-race-mixing propaganda. Whites are at a greater risk of disappearing since our physical traits are recessive rather than dominant. But does this theoretical possibility prove Dunson’s thesis that because distinct races could disappear that race as a meaningful category is therefore not “real”? Obviously not. Just because something can be destroyed in some way, doesn’t make its present existence somehow unreal.
I also find it ironic that Dunson spends so much time suggesting that the concept of race is poorly thought out and obscure, stating, “So, what is race? Is it a matter of skin color, a matter of national ancestry, a matter of biology, or something else? In the mind of most people, it is probably a poorly thought-out mixture of the three.” In reality, all three of these categories are entailed together. Skin color as a distinguishing characteristic is inherited from one’s ancestors and the laws of genetic inheritance are governed by biology.
After complaining about race being a poorly defined concept, Dunson states that the concept of nationality is a “perfectly good alternative” to the concept of race and/or ethnicity because talking about different races or ethnicities could lead to “the perception that one is actually defending some form of racial supremacy.” However, instead of providing any real clarity, Dunson’s endorsement of the concept of nationality is murky at best.
Dunson first mentions nationality by stating, “In the nineteenth century, and into the twentieth century, ‘race’ was commonly understood to refer to what today would be called nationality: thus, one was of the English race, or the Spanish race, or the Chinese race.” Later on, when discussing ethnicity, Dunson says that while the concept of ethnicity has become synonymous with race, the “older understanding” of ethnicity, “basically means nationality,” before concluding that nationality is a better alternative to the concept of race and/or ethnicity because they are poorly defined and have become conflated together in modern discourse.
Dunson then immediately pivots to talking about culture, but never at any point does Dunson provide the clarity he complains is lacking in discussions on race realism and ethno-nationalism. Dunson seems to identify nationality with culture, and thus different nationalities are simply the product of different cultures, with nations presumably being relegated to a mere geopolitical reality. The idea seems to be that it’s okay to talk about inequality of cultures so long as these inequalities are not attributed to genetics or biology.
This seems to conflict with what Dunson said about nationality when he said that ethnicity used to be synonymous with nationality prior to ethnicity being conflated with race. If Dunson wants to be able to speak of unequal cultures without having to deal with the issues of ancestry or biological inheritance, then this doesn’t make sense if nationality matches an older definition of ethnicity, because Dunson defined the original meaning of ethnicity as referring to a group of people united by “common descent” in addition to “traditions and customs, language, religion, and geography.”
By suggesting that his concept of nationality is consistent with the older definition of ethnicity, Dunson subtly concedes the major pillar of Kinism, which is ethno-nationalism. Dunson seems to hyperfocus on the particular words that the Bible uses and in so doing, misses the forest for the trees by inadvertently glossing over how Biblical terms support ethno-nationalism. Dunson concedes that Biblical words could be translated as race in our modern English language. Dunson concedes that “Tribes (phylōn) are lineage-based subdivisions within nations (ethnous).”
Quibbling about definitions aside, the concept of race based upon the hierarchy of relationships within mankind is thoroughly Biblical. If nations are indeed comprised of tribes, which they obviously are as in the case of Israel, and tribes are “lineage-based,” then we must come to the inescapable conclusion that nations are simply a broader “lineage-based” category. This is consistent with how nations are identified and enumerated in The Table of Nations (Genesis 10). This concession by Dunson undercuts his argument against race as a Biblical category. If nations are “lineage-based” extensions of tribes, then all that remains to ask is whether some nations are more closely related to each other than they are to other nations? The answer to this is an obvious yes. King David writes, “All the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord: and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before thee” (Psalm 22:27). Likewise David also speaks of “kindreds of the people” (1 Chr. 16:28, Ps. 96:7).
This is also consistent with Israel being identified as brothers to the Edomites (Num. 20:14/Deut. 23:7). This can only make sense if we understand Israel as a “lineage-based” nation that would be brothers to the Edomites because of their descent from Esau and mutual descent from Abraham and Isaac. Since Israel and Edom are identified as distinct nations, the fact that the Israelites are brothers to the Edomites demonstrates that there are broader “lineage-based” categories than the nation. I think that the Bible generally identifies this as a people or genos and that this roughly corresponds with our concept of race, but regardless of the specific terminology that is employed, the concept is clearly present in the Biblical text.
Jeremiah 13:23 (“Can the Ethiopian change his skin?”) demonstrates how the Biblical authors and readers understood the reality of race. I’ve addressed this verse before, but it’s worth demonstrating how the underlying assumption disproves what Dunson claims about the concept of race being incompatible with a Biblical worldview. Jeremiah mentions the appearance of Ethiopians as something that naturally cannot be changed in order to illustrate how fallen man cannot change his sinful habits apart from God’s grace. The “static reality” of race is assumed by Jeremiah as a premise of his argument. The Ethiopians or Cushites are listed among the nations descended from Noah in Genesis 10, so clearly they fit the definition of a nation in the Biblical sense. The reason that Jeremiah mentions the appearance of the Ethiopians is because it would have stood out to lighter complexioned Israelites, though this observation is no more of a value judgment than his observation immediately after in which he notes that leopards have spots.
Given all this information, we can see that Jeremiah believes, and expects his readers and listeners to understand, that the nations have relatively fixed physical characteristics that can be identified by their appearance. It would not disprove or undercut Jeremiah’s argument to posit a scenario in which Ethiopia was flooded by mass migration from Finland in which after several generations of reproductive stagnation among the native Ethiopians combined with the demographic emergence of ethnic Finns in Ethiopia that the Ethiopian had, in fact, changed his skin. In this case, Jeremiah and his contemporaries wouldn’t think that Ethiopia had changed a “static reality” of their national character, but rather that Ethiopia had for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist. This is because Jeremiah and his contemporaries understood that a nation wasn’t an idea, a propositional construct, or arbitrary lines on a map. A nation was hereditary, and thus inextricably tied to the people who founded it and their descendants across generations.
Dunson and others critiquing Kinism don’t articulate the role that they believe that God has for national distinctions in His plan or give adequate attention to what the Bible teaches about nations as a positive reality. Usually critics of Kinism simply attribute national distinctions to the tragic necessity of God’s judgment against man’s rebellion at Babel. The reality is that distinct nations coming to the knowledge and worship of the true God was God’s intention from the beginning. “All nations whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord; and shall glorify thy name” (Ps. 86:9). The Apostle John’s vision of Heaven culminates in all nations coming into the New Jerusalem (Rev. 21:24-26, 22:2). The Kinist drive to preserve national identity is rooted in the goodness of our national identity as revealed in Scripture.
More could be said about Dunson’s critique, but I believe that Dunson has failed to defend his primary argument against Kinism that race isn’t “real.” Race is real, and more and more people, young White men in particular, are becoming aware of the world that has been taken from us. Dunson’s critique seeks to dismiss legitimate concerns with a handwave on technical grounds of the exact meaning of words. Meanwhile, Dunson allows himself to speak very loosely of “nationality” and culture in a way that doesn’t come close to meeting the strict standards of exactness he demands from Kinists. This used to work much better, but the day is fast approaching when this kind of rhetoric will not work at all.