This is absolutely amazing. Peter Lightweight writes that his Alienist interpretation of Galatians 3:28, in which “the boundaries of the old world have been shattered in Christ,” forming “a single human race,” was also Alexander the Great’s vision of the world.
But the Bible says nothing about “Scythian, barbarian, Hellene, Roman, and Jew” being forged “into a single people” physically, as Alexander desired. Alexander wanted Greeks and Persians to intermarry because he thought the mixed offspring would form a ruling class that would broaden his kingdom and erase ancient blood bonds. According to Bosworth, “Two motives are given – to reduce his troops’ longing for domestic life in Macedonia and to create an army of mixed race whose only home was the camp.” He had the ultimate goal of merging Europe and Asia, but the 10,000 mixed marriages that Alexander authorized lasted scarcely a year.
Through force of arms, Alexander was the dictator of the world for a short time (he died at age 33). The book of Daniel foretells, 250 years before Alexander was born, that “there was no one who could rescue from his power; he did as he pleased and magnified himself.” Yet his kingdom was divided in four parts after his death, as Daniel prophesied. It was not even a divided kingdom at that point. It was no kingdom at all.
Now read Leithart’s approving quote of Plutarch:
[Alexander] brought together into one body all men everywhere, uniting and mixing in one great loving-cup, as it were, men’s lives, their characters, their marriages, their very habits of life. He bade them all consider as their fatherland the whole inhabited earth, as their stronghold and protection his camp, as akin to them all good men, and as foreigners only the wicked; they should not distinguish between Grecian and foreigner by Grecian cloak and targe, or scimitar and jacket; but the distinguishing mark of the Grecian should be seen in virtue, and that of the foreigner in iniquity; clothing and food, marriage and manner of life they should regard as common to all, being blended into one by ties of blood and children.
This is what Leithart thinks the gospel does as well! He believes that it mixes all peoples together, allowing them to intermarry, erasing their nationhood, so that the whole earth is considered their country and the whole human race their tribe. But compare what you’ve just read to what John Calvin taught us:
[Calvin] abominated “mixture,” one of the most pejorative terms in his vocabulary; mixture in any area of experience suggested to him disorder and unintelligibility. He had absorbed deeply not only the traditional concern for cosmic purity of a culture that had restricted mixture to the sublunary realm but also various Old Testament prohibitions. Mixture, for Calvin, connoted “adulteration” or “promiscuity,” but it also set off in him deep emotional and metaphysical reverberations. He repeatedly warned against “mixing together things totally different.” “When water is mixed with fire,” he observed, “both perish”…
The positive corollary of Calvin’s loathing of mixture was his approval of boundaries, which separate one thing from another. He attributed boundaries to God himself: God had established the boundaries between peoples, which should therefore remain within the space assigned to them, a painful thought for an exile. “Just as there are in a miltary camp separate lines for each platoon and section,” Calvin observed, “men are placed on the earth so that each nation may be content with its own boundaries.” In this manner, he concluded, “God, by his providence, reduces to order that which is confused.” He sometimes conceived of Scripture itself as a God-given system of boundaries imposed on human existence…
The only Christians who still agree with Calvin on this point are Kinists. It’s now common for race-mixing “Christians” to refer to believers as their kin, and to unbelievers as foreigners. Cultures, customs, and languages are likewise to be dissolved into an urban soup. Leithart writes:
When the earthquake of Alexander’s conquests ended and the rubble was cleared away, the peoples of the Mediterranean discovered, to their astonishment, that he had left behind a new, cosmopolitan type of human.
He believes this to be a precursor of the “single human race” effected by the gospel. The “new, cosmopolitan type of human” is what allowed Rome to be more powerful than Greece, and to accommodate a larger population, he writes. But again, turn to the book of Daniel, where Rome is described as brittle, like iron mixed with clay. It was strong in terms of conquering enemies but weak in terms of uniting the subjugated peoples.
That’s because they were still racists, writes Leithart.
Tribal consciousness of course remained strong among pagans. Blood and ancestry and tradition were still powerful social forces. In important ways, though, barriers started crumbling centuries before the cross, during the time when Israel, bearer of the Abrahamic promise, was forcibly sown among the nations.
He believes that the gospel sweeps away “tribal consciousness,” “blood,” “ancestry,” and “tradition.” He mistakes these for the covenantal barriers that Christ tears down in Galatians 3:28. He states plainly that “Paul’s declaration…[was a] cosmopolitan message [that] resonated with the best aims and aspirations of Greco-Roman civilization. When he addressed a Greco-Roman audience, he didn’t have to convince them that cosmopolitan civilization was a human good…” It really worked wonders for Rome, didn’t it? And here he plainly states that “Jews” were the last legitimate tribe on earth, and everyone else must be amalgamated: “Cosmopolitan Paul was struggling to graft Jews, the last tribe, into the tree of the Gentiles.”
Well, let’s see if Lightweight practices what he preaches. First we need to ask why he ran from the mission field in Birmingham, Alabama, and high-tailed it to Moscow, White-aho. Oh, right, it’s the “calling.” Funny how the “calling” is always to areas of less cosmopolitanism. Here are some pictures of one of his recent church events. You can play “Where’s Waldo?” with the black child. Someone should ask Leithart when he’s going to get serious about this cosmopolitan, new-human-race splat that he’s shoveling.
“The prophets consistently speak of people on the basis of their hereditary identity. God told the Israelites to beware of the Canaanites, not simply unbelievers. God commends the Rechabites who followed the precepts of their forefathers, not simply abstract pious believers. Paul stated unequivocal loyalty to his ethnic nation, even though they were unbelievers (Rom. 9:3). Paul goes on in the next two verses to describe the unique blessings that Israel has enjoyed. Is this because they earned it? No, but it is not independent of heredity either.” ~ David O
”A people without a heritage are easily persuaded.” ~ Karl Marx
“Plutarch records that Alexander “he believed that he came as a heaven-sent governor to all, and as a mediator for the whole world, those whom he could not persuade to unite with him, he conquered by force of arms, and he brought together into one body all men everywhere, uniting and mixing in one great loving-cup, as it were, men’s lives, their characters, their marriages, their very habits of life.”
The Romans later adopted Alexander’s vision of imperial universalism, as I have pointed out before. More on this subject here:
http://www.thephora.net/forum/showthread.php?t=34852&page=2&highlight=papini
“Thomas Bertonneau writes:
To the extent that modern liberalism is a type of aggressive, messianic reality-denial, determined to get inside peoples’ heads and dictate their beliefs, certain features of antique and late-antique society do seem to forecast it. Alexander’s successor in Egypt, Ptolemy I, and his successor in Syria and Anatolia, Antiochus I, both styled themselves soter or “savior.” The Ptolemaic and Seleucid dynasts uniformly developed a style of governance that mixed secular authority with priestly officiousness tending toward the claim of living divinity.”
Those troops that imposed the will of Hellenistic ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes (forced cultural assimilation to paganism) on Jews in the Maccabean era were mixed-race mercenaries:
http://www.betnahrain.net/1History/Parpola1.htm
“On the contrary, the Seleucid Empire soon became “Syro-Macedonian.”49 The Roman historian Livy, quoting two second century BC testimonies, Manlius and Titus Flaminius, observed that “the Macedonians of Seleuceia and Babylonia have degenerated info Syrians [and] into Parthians … The armies of Antiochus III [222-187 BC] were all Syrians.”50″
“First, some background. In 2004, Sandlin agreed with Jew Allan Bloom “that the United States was the first nation in the history of the world of which one could be a part simply by adhering to a set of ideas – skin color and accent and ethnicity are irrelevant”
That statement is actually incorrect. The first major example of “proposition nation” in history was not the United States but the pagan Roman Empire.
In the 2nd century AD, Greek rhetorician Aelius Aristides from Asia Minor thus praised Roman meritocratic universalism in his panegyric:
http://loudoun.nvcc.edu/home/docampbell/Hist101/Documents/AeliusAristides.html
“. . .No part of the earth escapes your rule, unless you have rejected it as useless . . . . And extensive and sizable as the empire is, perfect governing does much more than mere territorial boundaries to make it great. . . .The world is now like a well-swept and fenced-in front yard. The world speaks in unison, like a chorus; and so well does it harmonize under its chorus master that it joins in praying that this empire may last for all time.
. . . Like one continuous country and one race, all the world quietly obeys. Everything is carried out by command or nod, and it is simpler than plucking the string of a lyre. If a need arises, the thing has only to be decided upon, and it is done.
. . . Most noteworthy and most praiseworthy of all is the grandeur of your conception of citizenship. There is nothing on earth like it. You have divided all of the people of the empire—and when I say that, I mean the whole world—into two classes; and all the more cultured, virtuous, and able ones everywhere you have made into citizens and nationals of Rome . . .Neither the sea nor any distance on land shuts a man out from citizenship. Asia and Europe are in this respect not separate. Everything lies open to everybody; and no one fit for office or responsibility is considered an alien. Rome has never said “No more room!”
. . . No envy afflicts the empire. You have set an example, throwing open all doors and enabling qualified men to play a ruler’s part no less than a subject’s. No hatred creeps in either, from those who fail to qualify. Since the state is universal and like one city, magistrates naturally treat the governed not as aliens but as their own . . . . So of course things as they are satisfy and benefit both poor and rich! . . .
Under you what was formerly thought incapable of conjunction has in fact become united—an empire at once strong and humane, mild rule without oppression . . . So all people are now happier to send in their taxes to you than anyone would be to collect them for himself from others . . . . Everyone clings tight to you, and would no sooner see fit to break away than passengers on a ship would from their pilot.”
In 212 AD, emperor Caracalla finally declared all freemen of the empire – from Britain to Arabia – as Roman citizens:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutio_Antoniniana
“According to Cassius Dio, the only Roman historian to talk about this edict, and with only one sentence, the reasons Caracalla passed this law were mainly to increase the number of people available to tax. In the words of Cassius Dio : “This was the reason why he made all the people in his empire Roman citizens; nominally he was honouring them, but his real purpose was to increase his revenues by this means, inasmuch as aliens did not have to pay most of these taxes.”[1]“
Here is more of Aristides’ sycophantic praise of the Roman empire – you will see how New World Order ideology has deep roots (extending all the way to Babel, of course):
http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~fisher/hst205/readings/RomanOration.html
“You have divided into two parts all men throughout your empire… everywhere giving citizenship to all those who are more accomplished, noble, and powerful, even as they retain their native-born identities, [Aristides, for example, retained his citizenship in the Anatolian city of Smyrna while simultaneously possessing Roman citizenship] while the rest you have made subjects and the governed. Neither the sea nor the great expanse of intervening land keeps one from being a citizen, and there is no distinction between Europe and Asia…. No one is a foreigner who deserves to hold an office or is worthy of trust. Rather, there is here a common “world democracy” under the rule of one man, the best ruler and director …. You have divided humanity into Romans and non-Romans, … and because you have divided people in this manner, in every city throughout the empire there are many who share citizenship with you, no less than the share citizenship with their fellow natives. And some of these Roman citizens have not even seen this city [Rome]! There is no need for troops to garrison the strategic high opints of these cities, because the most important and powerful people in each region guard their native lands for you…. Yet there is not a residue of resentment among those excluded [from Roman citizenship and a share in the governance of the provinces]. Because your government is both universal and like that of a single city-state, its governors rightly rule not as foreigners but, as it were, their own people….Additionally, all of the masses of subjects under this government have protection against the more powerful of their native countrymen, by virtue of your anger and vengeance, which would fall upon the more powerful wihtout delay should they dare to break the law. Thus, the present government serves rich and poor alike, and your constitution has developed a single, harmonious, all-embracing union. What in former days seemed impossible has in your time come to pass: You control a vast empire with a rule that is firm but not unkind….
As on a holiday, the entire civilized world lays down the weapons that were its ancient burden and has turned to adornment and all glad thoughts, with the power to realize them…. Cities glisten with radiance and charm, and the entire earth has been made beautiful like a garden…. Like a perpetual sacred flame, the celebration is unending…. You, better than anyone else, have proved the truth of the proverb: The earth is everyone’s mother and our common fatherland. It is now possible for Hellene and non-Hellene [by this time the term Hellene did not refer simply to an ethnic Greek. It meant anyone who was a Roman citizen and who shared in the Greco-Roman high culture of the empire. Thus, Aristides, a native of Asia Minor, was a Hellene. A non-Hellene, or barbarian, was either someone from outside the empire or one of the empire's uneducated masses], with or without property, to travel with ease wherever he wishes, as though passing from homeland to homeland…. As far as security is concerned, it suffices to be a Roman citizen, or rather one of those people united under your rule….
