Thread: Love & Race
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Old 06-04-2009, 08:10 AM
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Diligent Diligent is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by custer View Post
Maybe this is too simplistic, but...

How can "race" be a "Darwinian concept," when Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary defines race as
"1. The lineage of a family, or continued series of descendants from a parent who is called the stock. A race is the series of descendants indefinitely. Thus all mankind are called the race of Adam; the Israelites are the race of Abraham and Jacob." ???
According to www.aboutdarwin.com, a website "dedicated to the life and times of Charles Darwin," in 1828 when Webster had already formulated the above definition, Darwin was in school and "did not take his studies very seriously, spending much of his free time collecting beetles, reading Shakespeare, and having dinner parties with his friends." He didn't start publishing scientific diaries until 1836 and the Origin of the Species wasn't until 1859. I'm just saying that the idea of a "race" being a line of people couldn't have originated with him.
Interestingly, the Bible terminology is the "generations of [so-and-so,]" and one of Webster's definitions of a "generation" is a "race."
It seems like this discussion got off course by confusing race with nationality. It is only in a NEW dictionary that "race" has been expanded to include the word "nation." And still, when you are asked on an application to give your race, they're not asking where you're from!
The problem is, people do not generally use the word race to refer to things like the "race of Adam" as in that definition. And again, the word is not used in the Bible the way we are using it; not once. In fact I do believe we are all "the race of Adam." But that obviously doesn't settle the issue for folks who want to find something about "race mixing" in the Bible. Using the Webster definition you provide, we are all one race anyway.

The concept of race, as it is used commonly, is Darwinian. The idea certainly pre-dates Darwin. That is a side issue. Call it whatever you like; it's not a Biblical concept.

If we were using the word "race" to refer to the various "ites" of the Bible, it still wouldn't change the fact that the Bible shows all sorts of "ite mixing" without condemnation from God. Again, only Isreal under the Law was ever concerned with such things --- and even then it was about specific nations, like the cursed Canaan nation. While there are spiritual applications for we in Christ, there are no commandments for us to follow regarding "mixing" of skin colors.