Introduction
The recent debate over whether interracial marriage was categorically sinful has largely been ineffective in relaying actual truth. On one hand, there is Samuel Sey spouting nonsensical notions that there is no such thing as race, so therefore, interracial marriage is nonexistent. This is offensive to the senses which can determine by sight alone that race and ethnicity are self-evident. Statistical data further prove this as behavioral outcomes, like criminality, electoral decisions, or academic achievement, are racially correlated.
In the debate between Joel Webbon’s team versus Ruslan and GodLogic, they presented two competing yet flawed arguments. Ruslan went as far as to suggest White people are not a real race, despite contrary historical precedent, while conflating the ecclesial and the earthly realms with regards to marriage against arguments that at scale, interracial marriage would destroy Whites as a race. Ruslan’s biblicism cannot comprehend the question of whether the magistrate has a duty to preserve the demographics of his nation, which would involve being against interracial marriage at scale as a matter of policy.
Joel Webbon’s camp fell short in their framing of the debate to whether interracial marriage was “normative” to God’s design, ultimately arguing that while it is morally permissible, it is contrary to God’s normative design. The problem with framing the debate over whether something is normative is that societal forces are actively propagandizing the image that multiculturalism is historically normative, which thus corrupts how people view history. Rather than the phrase normative offering clarity, it creates confusion because people cannot comprehend what is normative.
Ultimately, both sides discuss the issue of preference with regard to race and age but avoid the true question of whether parental preference in marriage is morally binding to the child under the 5th Commandment. This would render violations by the children sinful under the conditions established by the parents. Can interracial marriage be conditionally sinful through violation of the 5th Commandment? This, we affirm.
Children in Subjection to Parents
The Reformed orthodox have always ascribed to the notions of marriage being regulated by the 5th Commandment, Honor thy father and thy mother. All earthly authority is rooted in this commandment: children unto parents, wives unto husbands, servants unto masters, people to their magistrates. Inversion of this ordained hierarchy is contrary to God’s law. Even on the subject of marriage, the Reformed were stauncher advocates of parental oversight than their Catholic counterparts, who taught that children could enter into the sacrament of marriage without parental consent. The evidence for this is present throughout Scripture and history.
In the Old Testament, the consent of parents is assumed and enshrined in the Law. Deuteronomy 7:3 reads, “Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son.” This verse, which parallels with Exodus 34:16 is a charge to the parents over their children. Jeremiah 29:6 further instructs the exilic Israelites, “Take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished.” This is again, charged to the parents, not the children. As Francis Turretin asks, “How could such things be said unless children were in subjection to parental power, especially in the contraction of marriage?” (Institutes of Elenctic Theology 11.7.17).
Other examples in the Mosaic Law assume parental oversight, particularly the case where an unmarried daughter is seduced and defiled (Exodus 22:6-7). The father is permitted to choose whether to permit the marriage of his daughter to the seducer or have him pay the virgin dowry. Furthermore, a father has the authority to nullify any vows his daughter made without his consent (Numbers 30:5), further proving that children are not independent of their parents.
The New Testament further subjugates children to their parents in marriage. The 5th Commandment is exegeted by St. Paul in Ephesians 6:1, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.” It would be ridiculous to suggest marriage is somehow exempt from this commandment.
Paul also exemplifies this in 1 Corinthians 7:36-40:
36 But if any man thinks he is behaving improperly toward his virgin, if she is past the flower of youth, and thus it must be, let him do what he wishes. He does not sin; let them marry. 37 Nevertheless he who stands steadfast in his heart, having no necessity, but has power over his own will, and has so determined in his heart that he will keep his virgin, does well. 38 So then he who gives her in marriage does well, but he who does not give her in marriage does better.
39A wife is bound by law as long as her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is at liberty to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. 40 But she is happier if she remains as she is, according to my judgment—and I think I also have the Spirit of God. (NKJV)
One of the flaws in Ruslan’s arguments was the repeated use of verse 39 to suggest that a woman is “at liberty to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord,” that one’s faith is the only requirement presented in Scripture, yet this verse applies strictly to widows, not unmarried women. The prior portion clearly gives the father the charge to decide what is best for his daughter (“his virgin”) during a portion of the epistle where St. Paul rejects the aversion towards marriage and marital sex present in the Corinthian Church.
Regarding this passage, Calvin’s Commentary states the following:
Now this passage serves to establish the authority of parents, which ought to be held sacred, as having its origin in the common rights of nature. Now if in other actions of inferior moment no liberty is allowed to children, without the authority of their parents, much less is it reasonable that they should have liberty given them in the contracting of marriage. And that has been carefully enacted by civil law, but more especially by the law of God.
Calvin asserts that under natural law, marriage is under the authority of the parent and that the State has the power to enact laws pertaining to marriage.
So much the more detestable, then, is the wickedness of the Pope, who, laying aside all respect, either for Divine or human laws, has been so daring as to free children from the yoke of subjection to their parents. It is of importance, however, to mark the reason. This, says he, is on account of the dignity of the sacrament. Not to speak of the ignorance of making marriage a sacrament, what honor is there, I beseech you, or what dignity, when, contrary to the general feeling of propriety in all nations, and contrary to God’s eternal appointment, they take off all restraints from the lusts of young persons, that they may, without any feeling of shame, sport themselves, under pretense of its being a sacrament?
Most protestants do not understand the historic debate, but Calvin asserts that the Catholic position celebrates as a sacrament marriage without the parental consent which are deleterious or contrary to the “propriety in all nation.” The ancients have long warned against marrying too young, believing it to be harmful. Aristotle’s Politics makes the case that a man ought to marry in his thirties, as that is most conducive to his familial estate and his physical prime. Matthew Henry’s commentary on Genesis 38 critiques Judah’s youthful marriage of his sons, from which the Sin of Onan derives its name. Calvin critiques the Catholics for calling holy that which is imprudent, but also a violation of the cultural custom.
Let us know, therefore, that in disposing of children in marriage, the authority of parents is of first-rate importance, provided they do not tyrannically abuse it, as even the civil laws restrict it. The Apostle, too, in requiring exemption from necessity, intimated that the deliberations of parents ought to be regulated with a view to the advantage of their children. Let us bear in mind, therefore, that this limitation is the proper rule — that children allow themselves to be governed by their parents, and that they, on the other hand, do not drag their children by force to what is against their inclination, and that they have no other object in view, in the exercise of their authority, than the advantage of their children.
Now, some might object that prohibiting interracial marriage is tyrannical in nature, but this is a very ahistorical view considering that acceptance of interracial marriage has only dramatically shifted in recent decades. Such a notion would be inconceivable to the mind of a Reformer, who being White would unlikely have entertained such a proposition for their children. Truly, marrying within one’s race is verifiably advantageous and can be easily argued. Moreover, historical marriage practices would have fathers preclude marriage on account of dowries or restrict it to the confines of class, a more restrictive criterion than that of race. Arranged marriages were normative to God’s design, while the idea of free romance deracinated from parental consent is far more recent, a development. Subsequent decades have rendered this romantic era unfruitful towards the cultivation of marriage and procreation.
The same argument would apply to large age-gap marriages or other pertinent criteria. If an older man pursued a woman in their twenties or even at the age of eighteen, the same argument regarding the Fifth Commandment would apply, that the parental preference can be made morally binding regardless of any profession of faith from the older gentlemen. There does not need to be a chapter and verse explanation for why the parents object. They can just say no. Likewise, a father can impose income requirements or reject a suitor on account of his history (criminal or otherwise) or character which he might find unvirtuous. This is not oppressive simply because the child complains or the father’s requirements violate modern sensibilities.
Of The Civil Magistrate and Marriage
The Reformers argued that the magistrate has the right to regulate marriage, which is enjoined to the Fifth Commandment. The Reformation was not a revolt against Tradition, but an appeal to the Tradition which they accused the papist of violating. Thus, they appealed to civil law, of which the aforementioned Calvin affirmed the magistrate’s ability to enact pertaining to marriage.
Francis Turretin cites the popular Justinian’s Institutes which was a legal textbook commissioned by Byzantine Emperor Justinian in 533 AD, wherein it states that children “must have the consent of the parents in whose power they respectively are, the necessity of which, and even of its being given before the marriage takes place, is recognized no less by natural reason than by law.” Justinian’s Institutes contains provisions regarding various situations, including a regulation that this requirement of consent applies to widows under the age of twenty-five.
Turretin cites other historic legal precedents before concluding the following:
However, the reasons are to be noticed which are added in the civil law. (a) The paternal power is to be pressed on account of which children are not their own masters. (b) The succession of inheritance, that an heir be not introduced against the wish of the father. (c) The affection of parents, which is presumed to take the best counsel for a child…and from whose offspring it hopes for continual remembrance. (d) The judgment of an infirm children. (Institutes of Elenctic Theology 11.6.22)
The notion of inheritance gives a particular interest to the parents that pertains more to the civil than the ecclesial realm. Thus, as the enforcer of inheritance and contract, the state has a vested interest to regulate marriage to the benefit of the polity.
Regarding the restriction of miscegenation, American history has held to such laws from even the colonial era back to the colony of Virginia in 1691. Over half the states had such laws at one point in time. It was not until Loving v Virginia (1967) when such laws were declared a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, yet it is important to note that the era of activist judges drastically damaged the country through Equal Protection case precedent. Beginning with Brown v Board of Ed (1954), which was antithetical to contemporary legal practice, public education suffered dramatic declines and racial strife in schools resulted in White flight, deteriorating American cities into ghettos. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the Supreme Court used the 14th Amendment to invent a right to privacy over birth control in marriage—overturning a law that dated back to the Puritans, which would be expanded upon in Roe v. Wade (1972) to enact abortion rights. Loving v. Virginia would be the historical precedent used in the Obergefell decision, legalizing gay “marriage.”
The reason such laws were enacted was to protect the demographic integrity of the population, which goes back to Virginia’s 1691 colonial law which laments the existence of slaves and even the freed slaves in the colonial territory who were committing violence in its justification. America has a unique history in that there exist divergent races within the same soil, with disparities that are perhaps irreconcilable. South Africa, Rhodesia, and Australia have similar histories to America which necessitated these laws. The former, where the whites who established the country were a minority, required measures to protect their ethnic interests while adding additional penalties for rape, of which has ballooned under post-apartheid conditions. In Rhodesia, the laws were part of necessary measures that ultimately made a prosperous African nation that ultimately fell because they lacked the numerical strength to continue the fight.
The last several decades have proven that nations who fail to uphold their demographic integrity and instead suffer the tyranny of mass immigration have indeed suffered the consequences. Thus, shepherding the self-preservation of the nation is a duty of the magistrate. Because “kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers” (Jeremiah 49:23), it should be noted that such laws should only be enacted for the benefit of the polity and it is not inherently tyrannous just as the it is not inherently tyrannous for a state to restrict marriages that are incestuous or prohibit marriage of those under the age of majority. How miscegenation affects society at scale is a consideration the magistrate can determine in whether to regulate marriage practices. Mankind is not an autonomous island but are members of society, so society has a vested interest in successful marriages and may enact regulations to that end.
This does not make such laws a requirement, but the American tradition has proven that these laws were enacted as necessary measures in the era of their ratification. Where the modern view often assumes such laws to be malicious, just as with segregation laws, they were enacted because of contemporary circumstances which rendered them a necessity for public order. Just as with Chesterton’s Fence, one should not flippantly remove barriers enacted by their forefathers.
Conclusion
The issue of marriage and the Fifth Commandment has been reduced to tradition in the Western context, whereby obtaining the father’s consent to wed his daughter is traditional, but not required. Truly, the lack of emphasis on the Fifth Commandment as it pertains to marriage has correlated with divorce, decline in marriage as an institution, and the increase in out-of-wedlock births. The church needs to reinforce the true authority of the Fifth Commandment. This is not to suggest that parents must restrict interracial marriage, but they can most certainly impose such preference as morally binding upon their children along with a variety of other requirements without committing sin, for such is their duty to their children. In their judgment, which God has granted them, they have this liberty.
Parental authority needs to be reasserted in marriage to restore the institution of marriage. Whether this looks like a more formal courting process or just parents actively pursuing spouses for their children, the involvement of parents in the marriage process should be integral to the process.
2 Responses
So superficial judgement is ok now?
RE: Numbers 30:5
Yes, the text says a father may overrule the vows (seemingly any promises or pledges made, not specifically talking about marriage vows, although they would presumably be included under the umbrella rule).
But, in context, v.3 clearly specifies that a father’s authority over his daughter’s vows exists when she lives “in his house” and while she is “in her youth”.
That implies that such authority doesn’t necessarily exist outside of those parameters.
Therefore, if marriages are being arranged while one’s offspring are still considered juveniles in some capacity, then the parents retain final say in the matter.
This doesn’t speak directly to continuing authority over adult children. Especially if they are no longer in their father’s house.
Or are we saying that Jacob could have nullified Joseph’s interracial marriage to an Egyptian?