Greg Bahnsen versus Kinism

Greg L. Bahnsen

“It would seem obvious to many people, that when we talk about the external relationship of the family, that there is to be discrimination after all. And what I mean by that is that you can’t form a family on the basis of an inter-racial union; that a man of one race and a woman of another should not be joined together in union.

"That is, the family should be an external example of racial discrimination. It’s not that you don’t, for instance, judge that a Negro family, is just as much a family as a white family is a family. What we’re saying is that the very constitution of the family must express racial discrimination; there ought to be no inter-racial marriage to put it very plainly.

"Well, you know that the feelings run very high on that type of an issue and I’m hesitant to even address it for that reason. So, let me just say in advance to those who are going to disagree with what I’m going to say here is, let’s be good brothers and sisters in Christ and disagree, one, in a good spirit and secondly with the attitude of edifying one another….When it comes to the family, it seems to me that God’s word does tell us on what basis that you can discriminate in the forming of a family. Just as with the church, you can discriminate towards individuals.

"Of course, the basis of that discrimination is the man’s an unbeliever or the man is in unrepentant sin. In the family, it seems to me that there can be discrimination as well; but it seems to me that the grounds of discrimination, in Old Testament and in New Testament are religious grounds.

"Now, the difficulty is in the Old Testament because Israel was not to inter-marry with her heathen neighbors, many people feel that’s a national discrimination; but in each case that I know of, the Bible clearly explains that they are not to inter-marry with other cultures because of religious problems.

"That is, you are not to join a Hebrew, a man that has been redeemed by God, who is committed to the Covenant Lord Jehovah, with someone who is not. In fact, in the cases of those outside the nation of Israel, outside the culture of Israel, who come into Israel, and who do profess allegiance to Jehovah, they enter into marriage contracts in Israel and that’s perfectly alright…obviously, even in the Old Testament, it was for religious reasons, that there was discrimination within the family.

"Of course, Paul teaches us, as you all know, that we are not to be unequally yoked together and other passages that teach even more clearly, that a Christian and a Non-Christian are not to marry. So there is to be a form is discrimination in the constitution of families; but I dare say that that form of discrimination is never racial in the Bible. The people that I cannot marry, that class of people - that set of people is never defined in racial terms; it is always defined in religious terms….The fact is it’s not immoral. The Bible does not present grounds to charge a man with immorality for marrying a woman of another race.”

(Greg L. Bahnsen: Lecture GB351 “Racial Discrimination,” minutes 23:13-29:20)
[Disclaimer: Covenant Media today promotes the Federal Vision heresy, although Bahnsen himself would have rejected it.]