CHAPTER TEN
THE COVENANT PRINCIPLE, PART FOUR:
IMPLICATIONS OF THE Ethno-Covenantal Solidarity Principle

Introductory Principles

Contrary to New Age, Revolutionary and Secular Humanism, ethno-linguistic diversity is a permanent and not a transitory feature of our human existence. It is not a "remnant of feudal or bourgeois mentality". The distinction between two different peoples, implies their self-determination and responsibility before God. That distinction is created, hence real and eternal. It is analogous to gender but not identical.

Ethnicity or ethno-covenantal solidarity (ECSOL) is made up of two harmonious components. First it is a beautiful moral and spiritual unity — not uniformity — of a common language and faith-culture. Second, each ECSOL exists in beautiful diversity throughout eternity in the perfect harmony of the one, "City of God" (Rev 5:9-10, 7:9, 12:5, 21:24, 22:2; Zep 3:8, 9, 20; Ps(s) 22:27-28; 47; 67; 86:9; 87; 96; Isa 2:2-4, 66:18-24; etc.).

No person needs to repent of his joy in being ethnic whether Zulu, Afrikaans, or Xhosa except when patriotism and nationalism becomes an idol, the final arbitrator of what is right (see Php 3:2ff). Every living person by God’s design is ethnic. To tear ethnicity from a man’s soul is to destroy an individual’s identity as a person-in-family, community, and culture. Thus to tear ECSOL out of a person is to tear apart a man’s eternal psyche causing immense personality and socio-cultural pathology.

Contrary to Western humanism, humanity in Scripture is always man-in-community. Men are never isolated, self-oriented, autonomous individuals whose deeds and attitudes effect only himself (Ge 4:8-10; Jos 7 [group accountability for sins of one: Achan], Ro 14:1-4, 7-8, 13-15, 19, 21; 1Co 8:9-13, 10:24-33).

ECSOP rejects racism

It is significant that many Reformed churches seem to reject the correct missiological insights of the HRLS and the other schools of thought with a similar understanding of ethno-cultural groupness. These theologians and churches so overemphasize the biblical doctrine of human unity implicit in the creation of the first Adam as the progenitor of the whole human race, that they neglect or relativize true ethno-covenantal (as well as gender, etc.) diversity.

Second Adam doctrine and racism

Second Adam and the division of humankind. The first error is crucial. The doctrine of the second Adam teaches the fundamental division of humanity. It does not its organic unity. Without this division, there is no redemption. It teaches that there are two federal or covenantal heads of mankind: Adam and Christ. All in Adam, individual and multiple peoples, are dead on account of sin (Ro 5:12-22). All in Christ, including individuals and peoples, are alive because of his righteousness (Ro 5:17ff).

Second Adam is not a unitary, renewed humanity. The doctrine of the second Adam does not teach a unitary, renewed mankind. It teaches the recapitulative renewal of the original creation design in Messiah (Eph 1:10). All mankind, in all its beautiful diversity — ethnic, gender, and age — is now to be redeemed and transformed in the New Creation brought by Christ according to the promise of the Abrahamic covenant (see Eph 1:10ff; Col 1:15ff; Ro 3:29-4:18, 11:11f, 15:9-12; Gal 3:6ff). Pentecost is a substantiation of this (C&S, 32).

Now, in the age of the Spirit of the new covenant, the promise to Abraham will be fulfilled. The ethno-covenantal

mosaic, the "world" of peoples but not every individual, will be "saved" (Jn 3:16-17, 6:33, 12:41,47; Ro 11:12ff; 2Co 5:17ff). The miracle on the day of Pentecost was "tongues," languages of the "whole world." The miracle was not of ears: the listeners did not understand one new unifying language. C&S reads into Scripture non-covenantal assumptions.

Two Adams doctrine rejects racism. Mankind in Adam is a genetic unity. Scripture is crystal clear about this fact. Therefore, there are no genetically superior or inferior races. However, in rejecting group racism, one must not relativize ethno-covenantal group solidarity (ECSOL).

Granted, some in the relativizing process, do not absolutely reject ECSOL in the organizing of local congregations, at least initially (see e.g., C&S, 110-114). Scripture, however, does not relativize ECSOL either pragmatically or as a matter of principle. It teaches that fallen mankind was existing in true, ethno-linguistic diversity and a real, rebellious unity. Ethno-linguistic diversity is not merely a relative characterization of humankind. It is part of created design.

That unity was a unity-in-rebellion of family-peoples, not a unity of mere individuals. Anderson, Wagner, the NGK scholars of the past, and others have indeed made a thorough accounting of specific character, context, style, purpose, and historical situation. Their exegesis cannot be written off as proof texting.

Many Humanist theorists believe that the good of all humanity must result in a deliberate and systematic destruction of ECSOL. This takes place by deliberate "detribalization" and/or ethno-linguistic integration on all levels of the "global village". According to the findings of this dissertation, this policy would invite massive social anomie, chaos, revolt and destruction. This would be the result of the curse of God against arrogant man who refuses to submit himself to God’s created design. "Detribalization," then, seems to be an ethnocentric euphemism for destroying ethno-culture by enforced acculturation (see concept "Assimilationist Racism" in Wagner 1981).

Introduction: Distinction between Citizens and Aliens

As seen, the ECSOP does not deny the possibility of assimilation from one ethno-linguistic group to another. According to the just biblical model of a God-fearing Commonwealth, conversion (Ru 1:16; Jos 2:9-11, 24) and assimilation takes at least three generations (Dt 23:7-8). Only at this point is the ger receive full citizenship in the political nation even though the family has been believing for at least three generations. The point of becoming a citizens is to become a legally, adopted, and assimilated member of the ECSOL. The ECSOL is a common culture, a large extended family and a common language.

The universal equity of biblical law, therefore, makes a careful distinction between ethno-covenantally related, citizens and permanent resident, ethnic aliens. This is true even if all these aliens were born within the borders of the same geo-political area as the ethno-covenantally related citizens (Ex 12:49; Lev 16:29, 17:15; 29:22, 24:22; see Eze 47:21-23, concerning the [believing] aliens in the land, etc.; Rushdoony 1973, 530-33). Only the citizens possess a full civil franchise. Israel lived for four generations in Egypt as aliens according to God’s own prophetic testimony to Abraham (Ge 15:13; see Ex 22:20, 23:9; Lev 19:33-34; Dt 10:19, 16:11-12, 23:8, 24:17-18, 19-22). Never did they possess the "franchise" as citizens of Egypt. The implications for the North American context are also evident.

Equal Dignity and Equal Protection of Law

The universal equity of biblical law commands that the resident alien be treated (1) righteously (Dt 24:17-18), and kindly ("You shall love him as yourself"); (2) without partiality or persecution, just as the native born citizen (Lev. 19:33-34; Ex. 22:21, 23:8-9); (3) with one law and one standard of justice (Lev 24:22; see Ex 20:10) for all men without respect of person. This implies equal protection of law and bans petty apartheid, Jim Crow legislation as well as affirmative action. (4) Neighbor love for the alien implies supplying him with food and clothing when he is needy (Ex 23:6-9, Dt 10:17-19; see Rushdoony 1973, 100).

Resident aliens are subject to the godly customs and the law of a land (Ex 12:49, 20:11; Lev 16:29, 17:12, 15; 18:26, 24:16-22; etc.). They are responsible to hear and know that same divinely guaranteed constitution with the purpose and goal that they would worship the God of the Land who is indeed the Lord of all peoples (Dt 31:9-13).

Apart from visitors and foreign businessmen conducting temporary business, all aliens are considered permanent residents and must assimilate. This implies assimilation into the (1) people and language, (2) law, (3) godly customs, (4) and most importantly acceptance of the covenantal constitution of the Lord of the land, Yahweh-Jesus the Creator.

The equity of biblical law, in making distinctions between peoples, does not support modern, equalitarian, democratic ideologies. Only proven, morally responsible citizens (those who are ethno-covenantally related) are given the franchise, the right to participate in civil decision making and defense (see Rushdoony 1973, 100).

It is not wrong to classify people by cultural and linguistic based "ethnicity." However, race-bound "apartheid" stressing the more or less arbitrary factor of color and trying to crudely identify race with ethnicity is evil, unjust and has overstepped Scripture. This aspect of the justification for ethnic distinction and separation has resulted in extra-biblical legislation to maintain "racial" identity. That aspect is indeed heretical.

Apartheid Theology and the resulting race classification system was grossly unjust. Race was used as a crude and painful ethno-linguistic, demarcation device. A non-racial, objective, ethno-linguistic classification system is just if it is not used as a basis for biased justice in the courts and in legislation.

Immigration control can be discriminatory and unjust when it assumes guilt before proven innocence, based on "respecting the face" of a person. There is no Biblical precedent for any immigration control laws. The one important exception is an implicit or explicit declaration of readiness to leave foreign people, laws, gods, and language (e.g., Ru 1:16) to linguistically and culturally unite with the ethno-covenantally related citizens. This is an oath of declaration of willingness to immigrate and assimilate (see Covenant Principle, Part One).

In both the biblical law and ancient culture, leaving one’s own land and people meant to leave its gods. To come to a new land was to assimilate (1) into its people, and hence (2) adopt its language and (3) its God/gods. For example, to marry a non-immigrant foreigner was to marry "the daughter of a foreign god" (Mal 2:11).

When a country allows immigration of a large number of people and families not willing to assimilate into the new countries faith, language, and customs, it results in a virtual Trojan horse. It could soon turn into an army of occupation equivalent to the occupying Midianites and other aliens who invaded Israel in the time of the Judges. Though part of the curse process (see Dt 27-28), they pose a real danger to the integrity of a country and the ethno-covenanted citizens’ right of self-determination under God. Removal of such rebel aliens, with due Christian compassion on their housing/food needs, seems to be both kind and just. This has great implications for Africa, Europe, the former Soviet Republics, and North America.

ECSOL and Accountability for Deeds and Land

The Creator explicitly claims to have created and to delight in diversity, including ethno-linguistic diversity. He claims responsibility for moving whole peoples across the face of the earth (Am 8:7) as well as chastizing armies (Hab 1:5ff; Isa 44:28-45:3; etc.)

All mankind then is responsible to obey Yahweh the Creator of the peoples. Every people is collectively responsible to seek God (Ps 2; 96; Isa 45; Eze 14:12-20). He is therefore the only God (Jer 32:19-20, 27); Savior, King, Ruler, Chastizer, Controller, Guide, and Judge of the peoples of the earth. All peoples, as ECSOL’s, are collectively chastened and judged by him (Ps 94:10; Zep 2:6-8; Eze 14:12ff; etc.).

Every people, their times of habitation, and their geographical location is determined by the Creator so that mankind "would seek him and perhaps . . . find him. . . ." (Ac 17:26-27; see Isa 45:1-7, etc.). He ordained that they should spread out, fill their land with their own descendants, and exercise godly dominion over it (Ge 1:28, 9:1, 7; Ps 8:5-8).

This dominion implies (1) ruling over the land God gave them as his obedient servants, (2) making the land fruitful for the good of man and for the glory of God (Ps 85:9-10; 96), and (3) destroying the usurping demonic control over that area (Da 10:10f, Rev 12:7-12, 1Jn 3:8, etc.) Therefore, the Creator gave to each people on the earth a portion of land as an inheritance over which to rule for his glory (Ac 17:26, 12:14-17).

Secondly, Yahweh gave each of the peoples an inheritance, a homeland, and circumscribed that homeland’s borders (Ps 74:17). He judges those who remove the national borders of other peoples except when that removal is by his command (Isa 10:13; Hab 2:8, 10, 17; Dt 4:37-38, 2:5, 9, 19).

Thirdly, God commands peoples as a solidarity of families to worship and obey the King of heaven in their land:

Christ repeated this command in the Great Commission (Mt 28:17ff; Lk 24:47ff): "disciple the peoples/ethnic groups". The flip-side of being "discipled" is to obey all that the King has commanded.

Further, if an ECSOL is (1) obedient to the tôrâh-Word and authority of the Lord, and (2) exercises dominion through the practice of virtue (e.g., diligence, generosity, self-control, saving, thrift, justice, honesty, compassion, and faithfulness), then it will be comprehensively and collectively blessed. This blessing is irrespective of whether the land is "overpopulated", resource poor, isolated or dry.

This comprehensive blessing consists of the following long range blessings: (1) population and economic growth, (2) health, (3) international respect, (4) military strength, (5) increasing longevity, and 6) spiritual strength (Lev 26; Dt 7, 28; Isa 65:17-25; Ps 37).

If an ECSOL as a whole will not obey God but turns instead to idolatrous Humanism and human wisdom (Pr 3:33, 14:34; Jer 1:10, 7:21-24, 9:25-26,11:1-8, 12:14ff), God will curse them comprehensively. The people will become (1) a net debtor, not a lender nation, because of economic decline and mismanagement, (2) there will be an epidemic of infertility and infant mortality (see Hos 9:11-13) with a decline in the native population (Lev 26:22); and 3) ethnic aliens will increase and eventually rule over the intermarried citizens (Dt 28:43-44). If this process continues unchecked, God will ultimately destroy them as an ECSOL entity (see Ps 37; Jer 12:17; Job 12:23; Dt 4:37-39, 8:19-20; Ps(s) 9:4-6, 66:7; Jer 27:5-7; Am 9:7-8; Zep 2:4-14, 3:6).

It is clear that God’s foreknowledge included an understanding of man’s genius as well as the absolute sinfulness that would be the tragic result of the Fall. Therefore, one obvious purpose of the command to de-centralize ("multiply and spread over the earth") was to prevent man from being able to do "whatever he would purpose" (Ge 11:6). God desired to prevent man from unifying all of culture in the absolute evil of total rebellion against himself (Ge 6:5, 11-13, 8:21).

Reformed Theology agrees that man is totally sinful. The history of the Great Flood (Ge 6-8) and the constant stubbornness of Israel bears unmistakable testimony to that fact. Therefore, if God had allowed man to remain one ethno-linguistic group, the whole of mankind would have again become totally rotten and totally united in comprehensive and oppressive evil. The rebellious "leaven" of some rotten men would have spread to the whole of mankind because there would be no group boundaries to check the fermentation of evil (1Co 5:6ff).

Comprehensive evil necessitates total destruction such as occurred in the Flood. However, God promised he would not again totally destroy life upon the earth (Ge 8:21-22) until the end of time. Only at that time, just before Christ comes upon earth a second time, Satan will again succeed in uniting disobedient men in rebellion against God (Rev 20:7-10; see Wright 1983, 105-106).

Since the Fall, the evil that resides in the spirit of man, causes him to rebel against God. That rebellion brings oppression in the religious, socio-political, economic, familial, and personal spheres of life (Ro 5:12ff, 3:9ff; Eph 2:12). Therefore, power concentrated without check or balance in the hands of sinful men always results in oppression and tyranny in a centralized state (Ge 6:5, 11-12; 8:21; 1Sa 8-12).

Created ECSOL therefore compartmentalizes and decentralizes humanity. The ECSOP checks the flow of evil and power from one group to the next. One group may obey and be blessed, another disobey and be cursed. Thus the ECSOP creates unique, intermarried, yet overlapping, ethno-cultural "spheres." Each extended family group (ECSOL) is directly responsible to God.

ECSOL and Ethno-Cultural Self-Determination under God

As seen, Scripture explicitly claims that God created the languages (Ge 11:1ff) and the various peoples on the earth (Ps 86:9; Ac 17:26). Therefore, ECSOL is inseparably connected in the decree of God with faith and language. The result is that two separate peoples can be similar in language but different in faith and resulting culture (e.g., Swiss, Austrians, and Germans).

Clearly the difference between the Hebrew and the Canaanite was not language. The spies communicated without problem with the harlot Rahab (Jos 2). The Gibeonites spoke to Joshua and his men without interpretation (Jos 9). Therefore a key distinction between the Hebrew and the Canaanite peoples was the Canaanite’s covenants with idolatrous gods and the differing cultures which flowed out of those covenants. Every such covenantal religion always works its way out into culture, which Scripture describes as the "ways of a people" (Lev 20:22).

Language Rights not Inalienable before God

When God sends a prophet to his own ECSOL, he states:

When a people will not listen to the divine Law-word in their own language, Yahweh sends judgment on them. He sends first the alien of another tongue who slowly rises to be the "head" while the citizen becomes the "tail." This certainly implies the erosion of the citizen’s language as the lingua franca of a land (Dt 28:43). Eventually God sends a foreign invader so that "with foreign lips and strange tongues, God will speak to this people" (Dt 28:49; Isa 28:11, 12; 1Co 14:20-21). Rebellion against God means the eventual loss of language and then extinction as an ethnic solidarity. Throughout history, new ECSOL’s are being formed and some being extinguished.

Language and the Three Divine Institutions

A God-fearing families of an ECSOL have the responsibility to instruct their children in their own language the worldview of God’s Word. The church must proclaim the Good News and God’s Law-word in the language of that people. Faith comes by understanding in intelligible language (Mt 28:19ff, Ro 10:17). The civil government is responsible to give impartial judgment to all, citizen and alien, in the language of the citizen so that all will fear and not do that evil again (see Dt 13:11).

Oath of loyalty. Aliens who leave their homeland and immigrate to another Christian land must realize that "your people will become my people. Where you will go I will go, and where you die I will die. Your God will be my God" (Ru 1:15-16, 2:11). An immigrant leaves his people and language, and identifies with the new faith, language, culture, land, and people. Ideally this could be done with a public oath of loyalty to Yahweh-in-Christ, in the new land’s language and land (see also .

Conclusion to Language Rights

A God-fearing, self-determining ECSOL, therefore, has the legal, God-given duty-right to protect the uniqueness of their God-created language. If it is righteous for a people to protect their language, then an ethno-church can proclaim the righteousness of this attempt if the other demands of biblical justice are met at the same time.

A threat to that unique cultural property may come either (1) from a subtle and induced or (2) from a violent and coerced assimilation. Whether the threat comes from violent foreign invaders or peaceful mass (im)migration matters little. Of all peoples, especially Afrikaners have a long and often tragic history of just such a determined struggle for linguistic identity and liberty under God. There are many other notable parallels in Europe and North America as well.

The result of the Great Commission is a coming time when all "the peoples/nations on every shore will worship Him, every one in its own land" (Zep 2:11 NIV). In Abraham’s seed [Christ: Gal 3:16] "shall all the families of the peoples be blessed" (Ge 12:3, 18:18; Ps 22:27ff; Ac 3:24ff, Ro 4:11f; Gal 3:6-9, 13-14, 26ff). One day, before his return all peoples will bow to King Jesus and all ethnic Israel will be saved (Ro 11; see Zep 3:9).

It seems that this will result an international, Christian commonwealth of independent ECSOL-based, nation-territories: (1) all bowing the knee to Lord Messiah Jesus (Isa 2:2ff); (2) with his Law as their constitutional framework (Mic 4:1-3; Isa 2:3ff, 50:4; Mt 12:18ff, 28:19f; Heb 8:10ff); and (3) with peace and mediation between them based on the Law of God as the final Norm (Isa 2:3ff). God’s Commonwealth is not equivalent to a centralized, World-State with no ethno-national borders.

Ethno-Churches Allowed within Biblical Framework

Wagner on church and culture

C. Peter Wagner writes further on the theme of the relationship of church to culture:

Padilla and Bosch on church and culture

Latin American Baptist theologian, René Padilla and the late South African missiologist, David Bosch, both vehemently reject the renewed ethnic emphasis of the Church Growth School of Missiology, calling it "cheap grace." Bosch claims that the deliberate "breaking down of barriers that separate people is an intrinsic part of the gospel. What is more; it is not merely a result of the gospel," it is the gospel! "Evangelism," Bosch immediately adds, "as such itself involves a call to be incorporated into a new community, an alternative

community" (Bosch 1982, 258).

Padilla, writing in "The Unity of the Church and the Homogeneous Unit Principle," agrees:

Certainly it is true that a person’s identity is found in Christ. This is the expression of true unity and the grace of the new creation. However, as Wagner has pointed out, it is also found in one’s own ethno-cultural group, gender, age group,

respect relationship to parents, and socio-economic class. This is an expression of real diversity and the creation design.

In other words, identity for a Christian is a case of both-and, not either-or. A covenantal view has always emphasized both blood (nature and covenantal family solidarity) and faith, not faith alone and isolated as the Radicals claim the New Testament teaches. Culture and identification of the gospel within a

culture is commanded by Christ in the Great Commission. He commands us to "disciple the peoples" as ethno-covenantal

In other words, Christ did not say, "Convert a few out of the peoples," or in other words, destroy God-created ethno-covenantal solidarity by extracting individuals out of their ethno-linguistic group. Again Wagner’s comments are poignant:

A Reformed, covenantal solution to this problem, which this dissertation follows, seems forthright. The problem of over-identification of Christianity with one or any culture is not to reject true ethno-covenantal solidarity and the real indigenization or contextualization of the gospel. C&S makes a valiant

effort to find this balance but fails.

The solution is to accept the Reformational sola Scriptura: the Bible as the sole judge of all spheres of life. This includes not just the New Testament but the whole universally valid equity of biblical law, especially as it is revealed in Moses and the Prophets. This leads directly into the next chapter.

Many ethno-churches in the catholic church

Contrary to C&S, the universal church is also a covenantal unity of various ethno-covenantal family groups, exactly as the Abrahamic covenant (Ge 12:3, etc.), the Prophets, and the Psalms prophesied it would be.

Within the unity of the church universal, it now seems clear, there can exist several self-determining, ethno-churches (volksekerke). However, the signs of unity listed previously must be followed carefully in those churches.

ECSOL, voting, and human dignity

Voting Rights. All believers can and must be invited into a church building to hear the Word and partake of the sacraments. However, this does not imply that an ethno-linguistic alien can demand equal voting and leadership rights for himself and his ethnic companions (C&S, 37 is correct but not C&S, 39, 66, or 116).

This implies two tiers of membership for some churches that choose to be consequently indigenous: (1) full adult membership for those from the ethnos into which the church is indigenized; (2) honorary membership and counsel privilege analogous to Jethro’s relationship with Israel and Moses (Ex 18). This could included a non-voting membership on the elder board.

Voting and human dignity. Voting membership and eldership, limited and exclusively reserved to one ethno-covenantal group of families, can be and indeed are an expression of true diversity. If the conditions of true unity are carefully followed, then the conditions for true diversity do not "touch human dignity."

Surely protecting sexual exclusiveness with one wife and the exclusiveness of Christian education for one’s children, does not destroy Christian unity with other believers. In fact, this exclusiveness is part and parcel of the love commanded in the Law of God (Ro 13:8ff).

According to the Psalms (see Ps(s) 19, 119), God’s Law is eternal and totally just. The argument cannot be used that these principles are merely valid for the Old Testament people of God. Therefore, an ethnic alien’s dignity is only affected if the universally valid standards of the Word of God are not upheld with respect to him or her. This will prevent the double standards of Jim Crow and apartheid types of caste systems.

Divine Goals for ECSOL’s

By definition then, because every ECSOL is judged and responsible as a covenanted group, God gives to each the duty-right of self-determination under his suzerainty within a future, Christian commonwealth of nations. The only exceptions are those peoples who in the curse process have been turned over to the hegemony of another (not necessarily morally better) people (e.g., Judah [Jer 29:7ff]).

Every people has a covenant with a god. There is no religious neutrality for any people. Even Atheism is actually the religion of man (Jer 10:1-3; Dt. 32:12, 16-17). Any people today can make a covenant with God to be a God-fearing, obedient people analogous to Israel. These cultures can be transformed by applying the five, neo-Puritan principles. The result is that their culture(s) will begin to reflect more of the light of the Kingdom reign of Messiah Jesus (see Ro 11; see Isa 19:22-25 for non-Hebrew, converted covenant peoples "Egypt," and "Assyria" in days of Messiah).

God deals with men not only as individuals but also as ECSOL groups. God blesses and curses peoples/tribes as covenanted, group-wholes for their collective deeds.

Therefore, while the complete Bible calls for personal and individual salvation, at the same time, God also calls upon peoples and tribes to repent as covenant group-wholes (ECSOL’s). This biblical teaching is not unique to "Apartheid Theology."

Church Planting and ECSOP

Jesus never commanded the church to make every foreign individual a disciple, the logical conclusion of the viewpoint of some (e.g., David Bosch, Johannes Verkuyl). There is, however, a basic command to preach the Good News to every human creature (Mk 16:15). These two sides of the Great Commission are different.

Christ did, however, command God’s people to "disciple the peoples" as ethno-covenantal solidarities (ECSOL’s) within which live individuals and families. This is in line with the multitude of passages which foretell the conversion of the peoples and their leaders in the day of the Messiah, Abraham and David’s seed.

The Homogenous Unit Principle (HUP) is not exactly biblical. Churches do grow in overlapping family and friendship webs (McGavran 1955). Normally this means that congregations grow in a common lingual-cultural group: "faith comes by hearing and understanding" in a common language and culture (McGavran 1979, 1980). Individuals who possess several friendship-groups and individuals who are multi-cultural do indeed act as "bridges" to neighboring groups. Therefore, church planters should target family and friendship webs not social class or occupational groups such as is common in Church Growth strategy. In most industrialized lands this may amount to something similar to what many Church Growth scholars envision.

At the same time, however, Scripture commands the planting of churches in every ECSOL. Christ never commanded that every social class or occupational class group be discipled in the same sense as ECSOL’s. Extended family and friendship circles in an ECSOL may cut across these other types of groups and can be assimilated into one congregation without cultural or linguistic dislocation.

The ECSOL churches may be formed into indigenous denominational groupings if they so desire and if the characteristics of unity are upheld. The same is not true of occupational groups or even necessarily of social class groups. In saying this, of course, again there may be a significant amount of overlap between the family and friendship webs of the ECSOL and the homogeneous units of the HUP theorists.

ECSOP and the New South Africa

The New South Africa, "democratic, united [i.e., undivided], non-ethnic and non-sexist" (according to Humanist slogans), is anti-Christian. This slogan, followed to its logical extent, will result in a unitary collectivist state. That must ultimately be controlled by a large security force and oppressive elite to keep order between ethnic diversity within the state. This is becoming increasingly true of the present government and occurred in the former Yugoslavia and USSR. Such a pyramidal type of state is the goal of Satan’s evil design for the world (Ps 2; Rev 13) and is reflected in the New Age, Marxist and the Secular Humanist vision for the RSA.

ECSOP and Unity in Christ

A covenantally Christian country and a Christian church has the right to distinguish between people on the basis of citizen and non-citizen if all are judged by one law. This is the principle of equal protection of law (see Universal Equity Principle). This principle also applies to the church if the principles of unity already mentioned are upheld.

Holding to this principle of distinguishing between ethnic alien and ethno-citizen in church and civil orders does not in the least negate the full privilege of an ethnic alien in the kingdom of Christ. In his church and a Christian civil order, he or she possesses equal value, dignity, and protection of law. C. J. H. Wright, citing Zepheniah (3:9), agrees that unity does not destroy real ethno-national identity in the kingdom:

As intimated earlier, maintaining of ethno-national diversity has covenantal implications. In Christ, all peoples will become covenantal peoples analogous to Israel:

Unity in Christ does not mean all ECSOL, age, class, and gender distinctions are broken down in the local congregations of his universal church. If this were so, then "no distinction" (Ro 3:22, etc.) must be interpreted as a sort of philosophical monism/holism resulting in pantheism. The reason for this is simple. If for example, the words in Colossians, "no Jew or Greek" are interpreted to mean that all ethnic group identity is broken down in the gospel, there are heretical consequences. The reason is that the following words "but Christ is all and is in all," must then mean "all are Christ." The logical consequence is that "I am Christ" (Col 3:11). The resulting doctrine is similar to New Age Pantheism or Gnosticism (see Lee 1987; Jones 1992, 1997).

Paul always interprets himself if Scripture is compared to Scripture. The exegete must compare all his various similar sayings on the subject of unity in Christ. For example, Romans (3:22ff) clearly says that "no distinction" means that all are sinners (Ro 3:23). Therefore, all must be justified freely, without merit of their own, by the merits of Jesus Christ reckoned to their account (Ro 3:24ff). It cannot mean that a Jew stops being an ethnic Hebrew (Ro 11:1ff).

In addition, the first letter to the Corinthians states that all are baptized into one Body — whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free — because now all receive one Spirit and thus all drink from him(1Co 12:13). To this Paul concludes, "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." As discussed earlier, this must mean that every mentioned group has equal access to God the Father through Jesus Christ in the Spirit (Eph 2:18).

These saying concerning unity in Christ would then mean that all ceremonial distinctions and rules separating these groups are destroyed. No remaining ceremonial rules can create ritual exclusivity (Ac 10:28, 34ff). There is now (indeed never was) any merit from physical birth (Php 3:1-11). Paul therefore believes the opposite of what the Pharisees are reputed to have taught: "Thank God I am not a Gentile or a woman or a slave!"

Lastly, the "wall of separation" which Paul mentions in Ephesians seems to refer to the wall in the Temple building which excluded Gentiles from full participation in Kingdom worship. That wall of separation and all it symbolized is removed in Christ. All groups, whether slave, free, Greek, Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, male or female can be "fellow citizens" in the City of God, the New Jerusalem above (Eph 2:11ff; Gal 4:26f; Heb 12:22ff; Rev 20:1ff). Into that city, all peoples and their rulers (kings) shall come (Rev 21:22f; Isa 2:2-4; Mic 4:1-3; Isa 60-66). All in that city are equally sons of God and sons of Abraham. At the same time, all maintain their own, unique and beautiful ethno-covenantal solidarity.