Acts 17:26 and a Biblical Approach to Ethnicity
Globalism is an affront to God
In modern American Christianity there is a lot of, frankly, unscriptural teaching about matters of race and ethnicity. Much of it, of course, is found in the mainline denominations, but has even reached into conservative and Evangelical denominations as well. This teaching implicitly supports a woke, globalist approach which is perfectly in accord with the antichrist spirit of our present age. It is, of course, the doctrine of multiculturalism and “critical race theory” that has made the jump from secular cultural Marxism into the so-called Christendom. I won’t go into a lot of detail about this here, but you can find the subject covered fairly deeply in this podcast.
However, just because we’re used to seeing the subject of ethnicity dealt with in this way doesn’t mean that doctrinally conservative Christians should avoid or despise this topic. Indeed, we should recognise that the Bible gives us some clear teaching about God’s plans and purposes for the nations, though this will not accord with the prevailing approach taken by most Big Evangelical and other denominational “thought leaders.” It may not always mesh with what some within the Dissident Right would like to see, either, but as Christians we are bound to align with Scripture over any earthly philosophy or political program.
The logical place to begin this discussion is to define what exactly is meant by terms like “nation” and “ethnicity.” I’ll be using these terms more or less synonymously, for reasons that will shortly become apparent. We should keep in mind that these terms do not describe “race” in the modern sense of the term as it has been used for the past couple of centuries. Neither, however, do these terms (and especially looking at “nation” now) refer to a political state, one which is usually defined by some kind of propositional citizenship. In short, a nation is not some politically defined entity that someone from a foreign land can just join by receiving some kind of paper citizenship.
Instead, “nation” as it is used scripturally translates the Hebrew term goyim (in the Old Testament) and the Greek term ethnos (in the New Testament). In both cases, these refer to membership in a group that is most closely defined by cultural sameness. In other words, members of a nation share with each other deep cultural ties, sharing a common language (a major defining factor for groups throughout history), culture, mores, customs, and so forth. Obviously, this definition doesn’t demand a common genetic heritage, though for obvious reasons those who share the same long-standing historical culture will almost certainly share a genetic lineage as well, since cultures are deep and abiding. Simply moving to a new country and adopting a few superficial attributes does not mean someone has actually become part of a new nation.
If it seems like this is something that has been “engineered” into human societies from above, that’s because it is. To see why, we have to first go back to the book of Genesis, chapter 11. If you’re familiar with the Bible, you know that this chapter contains the record of the tower of Babel and the dispersion of mankind. Remember what exactly the tower of Babel was - it was a specific attempt by early post-diluvian man (most likely under the leadership of the rebel Nimrod, though we aren’t specifically told this) to revolt against God’s authority. Specifically, they were resisting God’s earlier command to Noah’s sons and their descendants to “replenish the earth” (Genesis 9:1). The word translated as “replenish” in the Qal stem has the sense of filling, of bringing something to fullness or accomplishment. Essentially, God wanted mankind to spread out and to fill the whole surface of the earth. Mankind instead wanted to remain united in one place, and in doing so to try to replace God’s sovereignty with his own (this is what lay behind the idea of building a “…tower, whose top may reach into heaven.”) In a nutshell, what we see is an incipient globalism in which mankind vainly thinks to overthrown God’s authority over him.
God’s response, if you recall, was to confound the languages, essentially destroying any possible unity and forcing various different groups of people (who presumably spoke the same languages after the confoundation) to spread out over the earth. This initiated a process of linguistic evolution that continues to take place to this day. This also emphasises the role and importance of language as a determinant of “nation.” As different groups migrated away in their respective directions, their languages continued to develop and change and concurrent processes of ethnogenesis, ethnodivision, and ethnofusion continued to separate groups. As this was taking places, each group would become more and more bound together internally by their common language and by the customs, mores, and cultures that they developed over time in response to a whole host of stimuli such as their physical environments, neighbouring tribes, and so forth.
So now let’s fast forward to the New Testament and Paul’s sermon at the Areopagus in Acts 17. The relevant portion I’d like to deal with are verses 22-28,
“Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.
“For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.
“God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
“Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;
“And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
“That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
“For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.”
The context of this passage is that of Paul addressing a group of educated pagans in Athens, which even at this relatively late point in the history of the Greek world was still well-known for its philosophical schools and place in education in general. In his sermon, Paul uses the altar to the “unknown god” as a jumping off point for explaining to these men exactly who this God is, that He is their creator, and what are His expectations for mankind. He decries idolatry by pointing out that God is the Lord of heaven and earth and needs no earthly representation via idols made of wood, stone, or metal as found in the pagan temples of the world. The important implication here, as with other scriptural condemnations of idolatry, is that man is not free to represent God as he wants Him to be (which implies an element of sovereignty over God, making God into our own image rather than vice versa). God is God, and we yield to His sovereignty, not the other way around.
Then, Paul segues into God’s creation of man - as man is made in the image of God, it merely makes sense that we would worship God according to His dictates. We should seek to be in fellowship with Him instead of fruitlessly giving away His worship to material idols which gave life and breath to nothing. Indeed, one perspective on the matter of salvation in Christian theology is that it involves God’s acting through His Son - the God-man who has within Himself both the nature of God and the nature of man - to restore man to the original place of perfect fellowship he had with God in Eden, which will be fully realised at His return and with the glorification and theosis of His saints.
However, subsumed into Paul’s discussion is the origin of the nations from Genesis 11. In his concise presentation, we can see several truths presented that relate to our present day issue of globalism versus nationalism.
First, He made all nations from one blood. There is nobody who can claim to be of a different order, or to be autochthonous (as the Athenians were given to claiming). So yes, this does discard various claims that lend themselves to genuine racism (contra the made-up kind lefties are always babbling about). As different from each other as various ethnic groups may be, we are all ultimately descended from the same primeval parents. Hence, whatever differences may exist between people from different nations, they all are still created in the image of God and can receive the gift of salvation and restoration to God through Jesus Christ. This should remove any thought as to a moral right to hate men of other nations.
Nevertheless, he made man to inhabit the entire face of the earth, and that was accomplished by the separation of the languages, which led to a separation of different groups that more or less created what biology would call a “founder’s effect” in these populations, whereby small initial genetic drifting created large differences. Hence, we have the genetic origin of what would be called “races” today, which have largely persisted for thousands of years and until recent centuries were largely tied to historic geographic locations. There are, of course, ethnic subgroups within each of these larger clades of humanity. So while it is true that in Christianity, there can be a “soft universalism” of access to God through Christ, any further form of “hard universalism” that tries to erase racial and ethnic differences is not only illogical but is also not scriptural. God purposefully set in motion an ongoing series of events which created genuine cultural and social differences between different groups.
Paul notes that God determined the times and places for each group to inhabit its area. The outworking of God’s plan through history has borne out that each nation inhabits its alloted place for as long as God desires, but also that He can change these whenever He chooses. Historically, the instances of actual ethnic replacements have been relatively few and in many cases involved the adoption of a new culture (and hence, becoming part of a new ethnos) by one group being dominated by another. In many cases of historical imperialism, ethneis have been left to their own devices within their own lands provided they were loyal to the empire. This was, for example, largely how the Romans operated - in nearly all cases, conquered peoples still remained in their traditional lands and could operate internally according to their own customs and laws. It was only when a group of people repeatedly revolted or otherwise caused trouble that the Romans would intervene to disperse or displace them.
Finally, in v. 27, Paul gives the reason for all of this. This was so that the various nations would seek after God, having understood their need for Him rather than trying to rely on a false unity (which we understand today as the tendency toward globalism or multiculturalism) that sets them against Him. It was so that man would give up his vain efforts at uniting in the face of God’s strictures and would instead, as separated groups, seek God’s face for salvation. In a sense, the division of man into various nations, various ethnic groups, is God-ordained and specifically designed to keep man from rebelling against Him.
As such, globalism is against God’s purposes and things like modern multiculturalism are an affront to God. Contrary to what modern worldly “Christianity” might teach, there is no scriptural or spiritual basis for attempting to erase borders and amalgamate the various nations and ethneis together. Indeed, attempting to do so is an ungodly attempt to rebuild the tower of Babel (figuratively speaking) and to once again try to unite mankind in an unholy rebellion against his Creator.
I believe that the various nations of man can and should live in peace with each other as much as our inborn sin nature will allow. I see no reason why Christians of all races and ethnic groups cannot fellowship together around their common Saviour. But it is ungodly, and indeed antichrist, to go beyond this into the realm of using the Christian faith as an excuse to try to overturn the boundaries which God clearly established with regard to the existence and perpetuation of the separate nations. While many false teachers may malign it and mislead their flocks about the subject, the fact of the matter is that nationalism is God’s will while globalism is a sin that will one day face His wrath at the return of the Lord Jesus Christ.