Cultural Disunity and the Triune God, Part 5–The Trinity in Creating

Read Part 1-Introduction, and Part 2-Racism, Hegemony, Critical Race Theory, and Intersectionality, and Part 3-The Influences of Hegemony, Critical Race Theory, and Intersectionality, and Part 4-Societal Events.

How does the Triune God—the God who, the Bible claims, made and upholds the universe (Gen. 1, Col. 1.16-17), fashioned every human being (Psa. 119.73), sustains every life (Acts 17.25)—respond to these ideologies, and what hope does He offer for America’s disunity?  First, God has not created humanity to be divided groups and races hostile to Himself and one another, but as one diverse human race united in Him.  Second, God has made every human being in that human race in His image.  And third, the Triune God graciously reconciles people to Himself and to each other through His Son, giving them new identities in Him. 

God has not made humanity to be divided and hostile, rejoicing in their divisions under the guise of rejoicing in their diversity.  God responds to the idea of racism and the reality of racial prejudice at the very foundation of the ideologies which propound them.  God did not make many races; He made one united human race.  And that one race was meant to rejoice, not in their own diversity, but in the superabundant glory of one God—a God who is overflowingly abundant in His creation.  First, then, the idea that humanity can be divided into different biological races is neither a Biblical conception nor a scientific reality. 

Race is actually not a scientific reality, but rather “a social construct.  It’s not a Biblical idea.  It is a constructed idea.  You won’t find the idea of races in the Bible unless you find it in the proper historical context, where we see, number one, that we are all the race of Adam. …we aren’t even different colors.  Technically, from a genetic perspective, from a bio-chemistry perspective, we are all actually the same color, and our color comes from melanin.  We all just have melanin to differing degrees.  We are just different shades of the same color.  The racial categories that we have are artificial.  They are not Biblical in nature nor are they genetic in nature.  It’s not real” (Baucham, Irreconcilable Views of Reconciliation (Voddie Baucham)).  In fact, to divide humanity into different races, as these ideologies do, is racist in and of itself from the very definitions these ideologies give for racism.  “To attribute to the individuals of a community the attributes of that community on the basis of their racial identity is called racism,” said clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson.  “That’s what racism is.  There’s no other way of defining it.  It is attributing to the individual the characteristics of the group as if the group was homogeneous” (Peterson).  And it is considered to be a scientific fact in American culture that humanity is made up of biologically differing races. 

For years Americans have been told, and their children have been taught in the public schools and upper education, that these ideologies are backed up by a scientific fact: the theory of evolution, also known as Darwinism.  Darwinism, from its origin on, has been the scientific backing for racial division.  “Darwinism as a worldview was a critical factor… in influencing the development of Nazism, [and] in the rise of communism” (Bergman).  One way in which evolutionary theory did this was in the idea that people evolved from apelike ancestors.  This idea led to classifying “racial” people groups as less evolved than other “races,” therefore being closer to their ape ancestors (Mitchell).  Charles Darwin himself affirmed the classification of humanity in these terms, writing that some races are “favored or superior,” going on to write of “the extermination of lower races so that a master race can be achieved” (RB).  For example,

“At some future period… the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races…  The break [between humans and non-humans] will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian [aboriginal] and the gorilla” (American Right To Life) (Darwin). 

But the idea central to Darwinism that some human races are more evolved from apes than other races is not a scientifically sound theory.  Here is what a molecular cell biologist said in an article published August 30, 2014, in the heat of the Ferguson Missouri riots, “…data show that the DNA of any two human beings is 99.9 percent identical, and we all share the same set of genes, scientifically validating the existence of a single biological human race and one origin for all human beings.  In short, we are all brothers and sisters” (Hadjiargyrou).   The concept of race is not biologically grounded.  Owen Strachan writes that “…while there are different people groups… with different cultural practices, the human race in unitarian.  There are not essential biological differences between people of varying skin pigmentation…” (Reenchanting Humanity 219).  The classifications of race are not scientifically supported.  For when the Triune God created the natural universe, the Persons of the Trinity created the universe out of their love for each other so as to extend that love to created beings who would reflect His own superabundant diversity in unity (Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity 43).  And only a triune God can make a world of abundant diversities meant to function in unity.  What, then, does it mean to think of God as Trinity? 

To think of God as Trinity is to think about the deepest reality of who God is, and therefore, it is not simple.  Trinitarian theologians make no apology that God is not simple in His essence, for it is a glorious reality.  God is Triune because God is a Father, a Son, and a Spirit, who are all Persons in relationship with one another and all equal in glory and in eternality.  Yet there are not three gods, but one God.  The Father is not created or begotten, but is eternally the Father of the Son; the Son is uncreated but begotten by the Father, eternally being loved by and loving the Father; and the Spirit in both uncreated and unbegotten, preceding eternally from the Father and the Son (The Athanasian Creed).  And it is this God who created the universe.  

Referencing John 17:24-26, Michael Reeves wrote that “The Father loved [the Son] before the creation of the world, and the reason the Father sends Him is so that the Father’s love for Him might be in others also.  That is why the Son goes out from the Father, in both creation and salvation: that the love of the Father for the Son might be shared” (Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity 44), as is recorded in Genesis 1-2 and John 1.  “Being perfectly loving, from all eternity the Father and the Son have delighted to share their love and joy with and through the Spirit.”  This means that God is in His nature a sharing God (Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity 31).  And this is the logic behind creation.  “The Father, Son and Spirit have always been in delicious harmony, and thus they create a world where harmonies—distinct beings, persons or notes working in unity—are good, mirroring the very being of the triune God” (Reeves, Delighting in the Trinity 59).  “Our Trinitarian God, living unity in living diversity” (Strachan, Critical Race Theory: Four Problems with CRT (Part 3)), desires His significantly diverse creation to be united in Him.  God’s response to racism and the ideologies that promote categorizing humanity, then, is that He has always been overflowingly giving in creation.  If this is true about God and why He created the universe, then critical race theory and intersectionality, along with the classifications and prejudices of race, must go.