By Adi Schlebusch
In any discussion of moral matters, it is always vital to take into consideration whatever epistemological framework is informing the moral framework. This is because it is ludicrous and counterproductive to speak about right versus wrong without addressing the issue of truth and falsehood. All genuine Christians universally hold Scripture in high regard and view it as the perfect and infallible means for acquiring the truth on any issue. When it comes to this issue in particular, history also testifies to the fact that nature itself isn’t a particularly helpful guide, because nature’s witness is insufficient to bring anyone to a clear, coherent position on the matter. Nature is always interpreted through the lenses of the dominant worldview promoted by means of the public education system. And as a result, in 1956, 96% of Americans opposed miscegenation, while in 2021, 94% approved of it. Yet, it is obviously not the testimony of nature which had changed over the course of a single lifetime, but rather the worldview informing the people’s interpretation of that testimony.
The problem with this debate among Christians in particular is that when an appeal is made to Scripture there are passages which seem to support both the pro- and anti-miscegenation position. For example, those who argue that the Bible supports and encourages racial amalgamation contend that Moses, an Israelite of the line of Shem, took a Cushite wife, a descendent of Ham (Numbers 12). Those who oppose miscegenation likewise appeal to Jacob being commanded by his father Isaac to marry a Semite and not a Canaanite woman (Genesis 28). And so a whole host of biblical texts can be thrown back-and-forth at one another. For example, those who take the pro-miscegenation position would counter that not all of the patriarchs advise to their children were always wise, while those who take the anti-miscegenation position would argue that if Numbers 12 is read in the context of the entire Pentateuch, it becomes evident that Moses’ wife was indeed a Semite and not a Hamite, and that this was in fact the historical position of most interpreters.
The point is that there isn’t a definitive, convincing argument to be made by appealing to a Biblical text on the matter and there clearly isn’t a convincing argument from nature. Therefore, we have no other option but to look towards logic or deductive reason in order to understand the true moral status of miscegenation. Thankfully, God not only reveals Himself and his will expressly in Scripture, but also by means of that which by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture (Westminster Confession of Faith 1.VI). So when it comes to moral questions, for example, there are some issues which are expressly addressed and condemned in Scripture, such as murder and adultery, but there are other sins which are only regarded as sins by virtue of being rationally deduced from Scripture, such as cannibalism or pedophilia. There are also actions which some pietists wrongly regard as sinful, such as pirating films or music in order not to fund the godless entertainment industry, but which deductive logic clearly teaches us isn’t sinful at all.
In order to make any valid logical deductions, however, it is important to start with the propositions of Scripture. Scripture clearly teaches that all people descend from the same ancestors: firstly Adam and Eve, and then secondarily, Noah and his wife. Science also confirms that all humans are indeed related. In fact, many scientists figure that one only has to go back as little as 2000 years to find a single ancestor from whom everyone on the planet is descended.
And you thought you and your brother or you and your mom were family? Well, it turns out you and the rice farmers in in rural Laos are family as well. The question then is, shall we conclude that distinct families don’t exist? If everyone is family as Scripture itself testifies, does it even make sense to distinguish between one human family and another? To some readers this may seem like an absurd idea at first, but the reality is that many of the world’s leading scholars indeed now view the family as nothing more than a social construct on the basis that one cannot draw definite biological boundaries between one family and another.
So the challenge such scholars pose is this: can an argument be made that there are there indeed distinctions between families which exist independently of our minds, or do these distinctions only exist because we generate them by means of our own cognitive or mental processes? Can we point to a reality outside of ourselves to distinguish between one family and another, and for that matter, between one extended family (i.e. tribe, nation or race) and another? Well, Divine Revelation clearly does make such distinctions—all the time. In fact, Scripture presupposes distinctions between families, tribes and nations so often from Genesis to Revelation, that referencing all the relevant texts would be an almost impossible task. As a result, I will here only mention a few texts in which race itself is presented as either integral to or as an extension of nationhood: Psalm 22:27, 96:7, Jeremiah 13:23, and Zachariah 9:6.
So, if Scripture doesn’t see the common ancestry of all human beings (proposition A) as precluding the very real distinctions between not only families, but also between nations as extended families (proposition B), and these nations are consistently be defined along racial or ethnic lines (proposition C), such that any attempt to define nations in heterogenous terms is directly contrary to divine revelation, then it logically follows from propositions A, B and C that sub-units of nations, families, should likewise be homogeneous. In other words, if it is unbiblical to consider nations as ethnically heterogeneous units—as it clearly is—then deductive logic demands that it would also be unbiblical to view families in such terms. This provides a moral preponderance against miscegenation, and forms the central ground of some Familialists’ opposition to it.
Of course, many would object to such a position on the basis of I Cor. 7:39, where Paul states that a widow “is at liberty to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.” The objection is that, based on this passage, the only restriction on marriage is religious. “Only in the Lord” is understood to mean “only believers.” However, it can be disputed whether “in the Lord” can be limited to implying that religion should be the only consideration. Again, employing the Analogia Scriptura, i.e. the principle of comparing and clarifying Scripture with Scripture, our attention is drawn to certain perspicuous marital restrictions involving believers (for instance, incest is prohibited even among believers), then we can know that “in the Lord” has a broader scope—it refers to the total constraints of God’s law, both that which is expressly set down in the law, as well as that which can be logically deduced from it.
Logic thus teaches us that to deduce from the fact that human beings share common ancestors (Proposition A) and that the boundaries between the various family-based social units which make up humanity cannot be clearly defined (Proposition B), that these units don’t exist, is a logical fallacy. The relevant logical fallacy in this case is commonly known as the Loki’s Wager fallacy, which is the irrational insistence that because something cannot be clearly distinguished, it cannot be discussed. The name of the fallacy is derived from the myth of the Norse god Loki once made a bet in which he wagered his head, and lost. When it was time to pay his dues, Loki insisted that he had no problem with giving up his head, as long as his neck remained wholly intact. Everyone concerned agreed that certain parts were obviously head, and others were obviously neck, but since no one could agree where Loki’s neck ended and where his head began, he managed to keep his head indefinitely.
In other words, simply because there exists a single human family to which all members of humanity belong, does not logically negate the existence of smaller familial relations and units designed by a God who in his divine wisdom has chosen to providentially effectuate both unity and diversity among his image bearers. The Triune God is the Ultimate One and the ultimate Many, from which humanity as designed in God’s image derives both its unity (One) and diversity (Many), both of which ought to be cherished without any tension, since they are so beautifully harmonized in Scripture. Therefore, it is precisely those moral duties pertaining to these divinely ordained familial units—the many—in terms of preserving these units for the sake of the telos of their design, that is central to the Familialist position.
The author is a senior researcher with the Pactum Institute.