At Any Cost At Any Cost

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It would seem that some controversy has arisen with regard to the mode of Christ's presence in the supper.

Now, those who are engaging in this controversy, and in this case, I mean stoking it, starting the controversy where there is none, are doing so in bad faith.

On top of doing it in bad faith, they are doing it foolishly twice over, once because it is foolish to engage in such a controversy in the way they are, and twice because they do not understand the terms they are employing, because they do not have access to the original language of the Book of Concord to see what those terms actually are, or the original language of the philosophical and theological terms being employed.

Now, of course, you do not have to know the languages to employ the terms, but it would behoove you to actually know what the terms mean, which is very clearly not the case here.

At any rate, the quote that comes up is not actually in Article 7, but in Article 8 of the epitome of the formula of Concord.

It is paragraph 17, so here it is.

The German...

Actually, I will just read the entire paragraph.

Therefore it is also easy for him and for anyone who likes to share his true body and blood in the Holy Supper, not according to the nature or property of human nature, but according to the nature and property of divine rights, says Dr. Luther, from our Christian child's faith, which is neither earthly nor Copernican, but is true and essential, as the words of his will say, that is, is, is my body, and so on.

Now, the part of that that is relevant for this issue here is the bit that says, nicht irdisch.

Irdisch is the term that is being mistranslated as physical.

Irdisch, auf Deutsch, does not mean physical.

It means earthly, mundane, terrestrial.

Now, that is a polemic against the Reformed.

That is what's actually happening in this paragraph.

There's a polemic against the polemic the Reformed often leverage against Lutherans, which is their accusation that we are cannibals, of course.

Now, that term, irdisch, as I said, does not mean physical.

If we wanted physical, that would be köpelisch, or leiblich, since you've got the word leib there in the quote from Luther.

The other term that comes up is the Latin term localitur.

That is one of the terms over which we fought with the Reformed, and still do to this day, although often the fights now are not in Latin.

Localitur also does not mean physical.

It means local, or locally.

When we say that we do not hold to a localitur understanding of Christ's presence in the supper, what we are saying is that we reject the accusation of the Reformed that we are cannibals, because their accusation is blasphemous.

They are calling Christ a liar, they are insulting the sacrament, and it should terrify them to speak those words, to even think those words.

Now, what the actual Lutheran position is, is this.

Christ is physically, substantially, sacramentally present in, with, and under the bread and the wine in the supper.

And he is so because he promises to be so.

That is the Lutheran position.

To say that Lutherans do not hold that Christ is physically present is a lie.

At the absolute best, it is a reckless misunderstanding of the meaning of the terms being used in the Book of Concord, in our dogmaticians, in our theologians.

It is to deliberately, quite frankly, because there is a point at which recklessness, negligence, rises to such a level that it is, in fact, intentional, it is, in fact, deliberate.

And that is the case here, because it is trivial to look up what the word Yiddish means, or what the word localiter means.

Just drop them into any of the various places online where you can translate from one language to another, and it will spit out the accurate meaning of these terms for you.

And that has clearly not been done by certain individuals who are engaging in

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This recording constitutes a section of my class on Genesis.

I began teaching the class before COVID caused any number of problems, of which we are all well aware.

At any rate, this recording is meant to be both standalone as an exegesis of a section of Genesis 12, and as an accompaniment to an episode of the Stone Choir podcast, one that will be released, incidentally, the same day as this recording.

It will be in the show notes for that episode.

The topic of that episode is dispensationalism, which is why this particular section of Genesis is relevant.

The section of Genesis that I will be exegeting in this recording is the beginning of Genesis 12, and I will start by reading that section.

It's just one paragraph.

Now, the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country, and your kindred, and your father's house, to the land that I will show you.

And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse.

And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.

For this recording, I will be focusing on verses 2 and 3, and so not the first verse about Abram leaving his country and his kindred, and going to a land that God would give to him or to his descendants more accurately.

Although this does not come through particularly well in English, there are seven blessings or promises here.

The first, God will make him a great nation.

The second, God will bless him.

The third, God will make for him a great name.

The fourth, he will be a blessing to others.

The fifth, he will bless those, that is, God will bless those who bless him.

The sixth, God will curse those who dishonor him.

The seventh, all nations will be blessed in him.

Now, this is an expansive set of promises, and we should spend some time unpacking them.

So we will go in order.

First, great nation.

Of this promise, Luther contends that not only is it gospel, and so it is, but that it is also a most outstanding passage and one of the most important in all Holy Scripture.

I would recommend you highlight or underline it unless you refuse to write in your Bible, which I do with most of mine.

Again from Luther.

First of all, you should consider that what the Lord promises Abraham here is altogether impossible, unbelievable, and untrue if you follow reason, because it cannot be seen.

If the Lord has something like this in mind for Abraham, why does he not let him remain in his land and with his kindred, where Abraham undoubtedly had some influence or reputation?

Is the way to success easier among strange people, where one does not even have a place to set one's foot, than at home, where one's fields, friends, neighbors, and relatives are, where one's household has been well established?

Therefore the power of the Holy Spirit was great and extraordinary in Abraham, because he was able to apprehend with his heart these impossible, unbelievable, and incomprehensible things, as though they were real and already present.

Such must have been the case, especially since he was already approaching old age, for he was seventy-five years old, but Sarah was ten years younger, and barren at that.

The second blessing, I will bless you.

We would do well to interpret this promise as applying both to Abraham and to his offspring.

But who were the offspring of Abraham?

From Romans 9, But it is not as though the word of God has failed, for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham, because they are his offspring, but through Isaac shall your offspring be named.

This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise who are counted as offspring.

To some degree, this promise was fulfilled to Abraham personally, for

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As I record this, it is a little after 3 o'clock here.

Now I am decidedly a night owl, but that is not actually the reason that I am awake tonight.

I am awake tonight because I had to go down to the barn to deal with a pest.

But before I get to that pest, the reason that I was checking my camera, which I have a camera in the chicken coop for, well, obvious reasons.

But the reason that I was checking it specifically tonight is that last night a raccoon managed to get into the coop and killed one of my chickens.

And so of course I took some countermeasures and improved some things and buttoned things up a little more tightly.

But I also decided to stay up and watch the camera a bit just in case the raccoon attempted to make another entrance.

This particular raccoon seems to come around at about 2 o'clock, so I assume the raccoon is not going to show up tonight.

Did not show up earlier.

However, when I checked the camera, there was a skunk in the chicken coop.

And so I went down there to deal with that skunk.

Now it's most likely one of the, I believe there are two, or were, would be more accurate now, two skunks in my garden and I had no problem with them living there.

I've even given them food and some water.

However, at least one of them has decided that he wants to spend some time looking for things to eat in the chicken coop.

And of course that's not ideal because he could eat eggs or he could harass or even harm the chickens.

And so, not so long story short, I went down there and killed that skunk.

The reason that I did that, of course, is to protect the chickens.

And that is the topic that I want to discuss in this episode.

And that topic is stewardship.

What is the scope of man's stewardship of creation?

What does it mean to be a steward?

And so I would like to start off with two examples.

One, I really gave already, taking care of one's pets.

In this case, chickens are more livestock than pets, but nonetheless it's the same sort of concept.

When you acquire a pet or an animal of any kind, you have duties that come along with that.

You have to feed the animal, you have to water the animal, provide a warm place to sleep when it is cold, provide somewhere to get out of the heat when it is hot, etc.

We know what these requirements are, what these duties are that one undertakes in acquiring a pet or some other animal.

And then the other example is indeed stewardship, even though many people don't necessarily think of it as such, at least not immediately.

And that would be the plant life on your property, when you garden, when you do your landscaping.

You are engaging in stewardship of creation.

You are choosing between things.

You are selecting the plants you want, you are removing the plants you do not.

And that of course is really the distinction between a weed and a plant.

A weed is something we do not want, a plant is something that we do.

We may be more specific with regard to plants, calling them a crop or landscaping, whatever it may be.

But that is still stewardship.

And so we have these two clear types of stewardship.

And of course, if you think of the Genesis narrative, man is placed in creation as God's representative, as it were.

That is part of what it means to be the image of God.

Now I'm not getting into that deeply in this episode because that's not the central topic, but man is steward of creation.

In the scriptural narrative, there is actually no limitation placed on that stewardship.

Now some will argue that stewardship extends to everything except to other men.

But of course we know that is not the case.

For instance, if you owned slaves, you would have stewardship of those slaves.

You would have duties with regard to those slaves.

But perhaps a better example, because this one exists in almost everyone's life, children.

You are steward of your c

Interracial marriage is tantamount to murder.
— Corey J. Mahler ✠ 🗿 (@CoreyJMahler) April 29, 2023

On Human Race: Behavior and Society
What maintains societies? What destroys them? There are many factors that contribute to whether a society flourishes or fails — natural resources, weather conditions, IQ [two weeks], et cetera —, b…
Stone ChoirCorey J. Mahler


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Recently, I've started taking a break from Twitter on Sundays, really starting sometime on Saturday, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening.

At any rate, this past week, Saturday, I posted a tweet before taking my sabbatical, as it were, and that tweet blew up.

It got a lot of views, and I want to explain specifically what it is I mean by that tweet and why it is correct, why it is in line with right Christian doctrine.

And for reference, the tweet, verbatim, interracial marriage is tantamount to murder.

Now, it is important to note several things, and so I'm going to go through really four major points in this particular episode.

To start off, we need to distinguish per se and per quod.

Now I've distinguished this before elsewhere in, for example, the Stone Choir episode in which I distinguished per se from per quod, but just to go over it again briefly, something that is per se X is X intrinsically.

Something that is per quod X is X due to other circumstances, due to other facts.

And so it is important, it is vitally important to note at the outset that interracial marriage is not per se sinful.

And so of course that means that it is not per se tantamount to murder.

The issue is per quod.

The issue is that given external circumstances, given the surrounding facts, it is in fact sinful.

It is, as I said in my tweet, tantamount to murder.

The children that are produced from an interracial union are in fact not related to their own parents.

Now it is important to distinguish two senses in which we mean related here, because obviously I am using one and if I were using the other, it would not be true.

Yes, if two people of a different races have a child, that child is descended from them and therefore is related to them in the sense of being descended from them.

But biologically, genetically, according to the DNA of that child, that child is so far distant from his parents that in fact the parents are more closely related to any random member of their own race, of their own nation, than to their own child.

And I'll get into near the end of this episode why that is important, some of the consequences of that and what to do about those consequences.

But in addition to the fact that the child is effectively not related to his own parents, which carries a lot of problems with it, there are also health consequences.

Many times those who are born of particularly distant genetic stock, so parents who are less closely related, this is not going to be something that applies to say a German and a Dutchman or a Dutch woman and a German or a German and a Russian even, which is to say people descended from Japheth, Europeans, whites, that's within one of the overarching ethnic groups being of course the Japhethites, the Hamites and the Shemites.

Now this is something more distant if you have a European and an African, there are going to be health consequences of that union.

The child is going to be less healthy.

The child is going to have more problems than if he did not have such disparate lineage.

And of course this creates problems for medical care because the child is going to require more medical care for one and it is going to be more difficult to render that medical care because we have routines, we have various things set up for those of particular lineage because yes, you do actually have to tailor medicine to the genetics, to the lineage, to the DNA really is what you're doing, the biology of the patient.

In some cases it de

Terms

race
nation
ethnicity

ethnic



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So, as ever on the right, there has been a great deal of discussion over the issues of race, ethnicity, nation, nationalism, and related matters.

And so I want to go over these issues to make sure that people understand what is actually being said when these terms are used, what is sometimes not being said, what is being deliberately misstated, etc.

And so it is important to go over exactly what these terms truly mean, so that you know when someone uses them to mean something else, he is attempting to deceive you.

And so, of course, we start with race.

The second sense of the word race, the first, of course, just meaning running, is a group of people descended from a common ancestor or a class of persons allied by common ancestry.

Those two things, of course, mean the same thing.

It came to us through French, and earlier, most likely, through Italian, ultimately from Latin, the Latin being radix, root.

Now, some modern etymologists and linguists will attempt to say that it did not come from radix, that it has no connection to that.

I would hope most of you can see through that for what it is.

It's an attempt at deception.

It is an attempt to deny the connection here.

What does the term mean?

It means people of a common stock.

Well, what does that mean?

People of a common root, people with a common ancestor.

And so that is what race means.

It means people of the same blood.

But what is a nation?

Well, nation comes from us, ultimately, from Proto-Indo-European, the root being gene, which means give birth or beget.

Now, some may be wondering, how do we get from gene to nation?

Because those words are rather different.

It's true.

They are different in form, but it really takes two steps to see how we get from gene to nation.

And so it comes to us through Latin, before that, from Old Latin.

Old Latin would be gnasci, and that is be born, G-N-A-S-C-I. It drops the G in Latin, becomes gnasci, be born, also natus, nationem, all of these words related to birth.

And so, of course, you can see the connection there, because if you are related to someone by blood, ultimately that means birth.

That is the only way you can be related to someone by blood, is by birth, ultimately.

And so, nation and race are very closely related terms.

They are not identical terms, and they are not identical for this reason.

Race refers specifically to the people of common ancestry, those of the same blood.

Nation, in English, refers to those of common blood living in a certain territory.

And so it is both of those things.

Nation is blood and soil.

So nation is race plus territory.

That is the actual meaning of nation.

And so, for instance, those who will argue that you have a nation made up of different groups are just making an incoherent argument.

That is not a nation, because a nation, definitionally, is a race, a group of common blood, plus a territory, soil.

And so a bunch of groups living together in a common territory, who do not share blood, is not a nation.

That is a bizarre or a civil war, is what that is.

There is another term that is worth mentioning.

I mentioned it in the opening, as it were.

And that is ethnicity.

Ethnicity means the same thing as race.

This is just coming to us from Greek instead of from Latin.

This is particularly salient to Christians, because some of you will already have recognized the Greek word underlying ethnicity, because it's very similar.

It is ethnos, ethne in the plural.

Ethnos just means nation, or race, or people.

Hence, ethnicity and race are, again, identical.

In the Septuagint, which is to say the Greek translation of the Old Testament, this is translating goi or goyim, which is Hebrew for nation or race.

I would hope you are seeing a theme here.

And so when someone speaks to you about ethnicity, and tries t