This is the third article in a three part series. You can read the first article here and the second article here.

From Slave to Son: The Death and Resurrection of the Nations 

Introduction

Thomas Merton said that judgments from God are also always the mercy of God.[1] Though this thought is perhaps perplexing at first, we would do well to listen to the Kentucky anchorite. For we have the tendency to view biblical curses as ends rather than means, a concept consistently rebuked by the prophets (Zeph. 3; Is. 24-25; Zech. 10:9). This important truth applies directly to our discussion about Ham. For Ham did sin; Canaan, the nation descended from Ham, was cursed; but, in this final essay, we will consider the third point made in article one–namely, that the curse on Canaan is void. And it is void precisely because, though the curse of subjugation fell on Canaan, His full penalty of slavery was mercifully borne by Another. 

Nature, Grace, and the Nations

Our final point is unquestionably the simplest to see and understand; yet, ironically, it has the most fruitful significance for us. Simply put, the curse on Canaan is void because the curse of Canaan was broken by the cross of Christ. Gregory Nazaianzus, the fourth-century patriarch of Constantinople, teaches us that “that which He has not assumed He has not healed” (NPNF 2.7:440). To rephrase Gregory: what is not assumed is not redeemed. That is, if Jesus was not really a flesh-and-blood man, there is no redemption of flesh and blood. Though he was specifically retorting a Christological heresy, we can apply this astute observation easily to our discussion of Canaan, mutatis mutandis. For Jesus Christ was not merely a man as we typically consider men; that is, as autonomous individuals. He was fully man, but no man is mere man. To be man is to be a creature in society; we are in God’s image, and God is a society of Persons (Gen. 1:26-27; 2:18); thus, we are not primarily individuals but interdividuals, unknowable apart from our associations–associations personal, vocational, and national. 

And remember: what is not assumed cannot be redeemed. When the Word became flesh, then, He added to His divinity not mere humanity as such but all that it means to be human. In Christ, God assumed a personal identity (Jesus of Nazareth), a vocational identity (Son of Mary, Carpenter, and–eventually–Christ), but also a national identity (Israelite). If the nations mattered not, Jesus would have come out of nowhere (John 7:27ff). But we know that, when He was manifest among us, He came from Israel since Israel was not only a member of but chiefly a representative of all other nations as their priest (Ex. 19:6). At the height of Israel, geographically, was Mount Zion, the location of the temple, the largest section of which was the Court of the Gentiles, since it was to be the place where all nations were to pray to Yahweh (Is. 56:7; Zech 14:16-17). And at the height of Israel, liturgically, was the Feast of Tabernacles. Corresponding to the seventh day of creation as the seventh feast, at Tabernacles or “Booths,” Israel celebrated Yahweh’s dwelling in their midst and sacrificed seventy bulls (Lev. 23:24ff), representing the seventy nations of Genesis 10, which includes the Hamite-Canaanite nations, looking forward to their full inclusion (Deut. 16:16).

Christ Himself, we know, is the true Temple-Dwelling of God among the Nations, the Sacrifice in Whom the seventy nations were assumed by representation. For in life, the Son walked in a world held together by the cultural homogeneity of the Greeks, the sons of Japheth (Dan. 8:21; 11:2), whose tents had grown large enough to provide a civilizational shelter to the world that then was. His death, at the hands of the Judean elite, was that of a slave of Rome. In Rome, we have the zenith of Hamitic-Canaanite libido dominandi (Dan. 7:7-8); they embodied the height of Canaanite enslavement by being enslaved to making slaves of all beneath their boot. Thus, Paul tells us directly that He was found in the form of a slave (Phil. 2:5-11). Yet, though He died as a slave and for slaves in the Greco-Roman milieu, He died as the Christ of Israel, those who bore the name and vocation of Shem; and above all, He died as the Second and Last Adam, by virtue of His miraculous incarnation. Thus, in Christ, all the nations were assumed–if not in origin then certainly in representation. Above His cross, therefore, was nailed an inscription for all nations to read in their own language (Gen. 11:1-9) so that the world might again begin to lisp in union the praises of the King of Kings (John 19:20).

Yet, redemption without resurrection is no redemption at all (1 Cor. 15). Moreover, no sacrifice was complete unless it became an olam, an ascension of smoke rising to Yahweh. Redemption began at the incarnation, but it is not complete until the ascension. Thus, to bring the new life, the new reunion of the nations assumed, the resurrection, ascension, and subsequent enthronement of Jesus Christ establishes a kingdom “not of this world”–that is, not in association with a particular people group of this world–which “tears down the dividing wall” between even the most hostile nations (Eph. 2:14); in Christ and the new covenant ushered in by His blood and bodily assumption, the nations as they were in the old covenant are no more because the cross of Christ broke the curse on the Canaanites and their heirs, making one new kingdom that all nations are called to join.[2] 

Here, then, is the Bible’s post-resurrection political theology as summarized by Paul and John. For Paul, “There is no Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:11). To wit: “One has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh” (1 Cor. 5:14-16; Phil. 3:3-11). Paul, in fact, warns often against national divisions in the Church and specifically names genealogical division as a particular point of condemnation and disassociation from a brother (Titus 3:9) precisely because these divisions no longer mean anything in a world that is now only divided into the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of the Beloved Son (Col. 1:13). Also, when reading John’s apocalypse, notice that after the current millennial reign of Christ, as described in Revelation 20, those who are still referred to as the “nations” are also collectively referred to as “Gog and Magog” (20:7-8). E pluribus unum. Moreover, the “saints” of verses 9-10, who overcome the armies of the Enemy by miraculous deliverance, are “the Beloved City”—not only do we see a clear dichotomy between “nations” (the old kingdoms) and “saints” (the new kingdom) but also the idea of two covenant-bodies. However we square it, we may definitively say that whatever the “nations” are now, they are (a) clearly not presented in a positive light and (b) juxtaposed against the Church.[3] 

For Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, assumed the nations at His incarnation, took them down with Him into death at His crucifixion, raised them to walk in a new way at His resurrection, and restructured them as the one people with its own culture, language, customs, and liturgy at His ascension. 

Conclusion

As all other fruits of the fall, national divisions are both already and not yet destroyed.[4] As our father in the faith Augustine taught us long ago, the new covenant only knows two realms: those who belong to the City of God and those who belong to the City of Man. For the truth is that all nations fell under Canaan’s curse of subjugation–especially, mystery of mysteries, Israel Herself (Rom. 9-10). Yet, herein is the mystery revealed: “God has consigned all [nations] to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all [nations]” (Rom. 11:32, context added). 

So do you hate your Hamite neighbor, mocking their Canaanite bondage? Do you look down on the descendants of Shem because you fancy yourself of the tents of Japheth? Then repent and receive the good news of Yahweh’s nation-uniting victory. Hear the word of the Lord from Zechariah: “All the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Booths. . . . And there shall no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day” (14:16-21). All nations–even, or especially, the once-cursed Canaanites–are being brought into the New Temple of the Church (Rev. 21:24). So welcome them to Christ, and work to see him seated with you at His table; baptize them, and teach them all that He commanded.

[1]Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 68. Baptist theologian James M. Hamilton, Jr., has developed this point at length in God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgement: A Biblical Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010), esp. 139-269.  

[2]In one of the may beautiful passages in Athanasius’ On the Incarnation (a great, short, and endlessly fruitful read for the upcoming advent season!), he describes how even the bare physiognomy of the cross demonstrates this truth: “For it is only on the cross that a man dies with his hands spread out. Whence it was fitting for the Lord to bear this also and to spread out His hands, that with the one He might draw the ancient people, and with the other those from the Gentiles, and unite both in Himself. For this is what He Himself has said, signifying by what manner of death He was to ransom all: ‘I, when I am lifted up,’ He saith, ‘shall draw all men unto Me.’” NPNF 2.4:49-50.

[3]Away with Stephen Wolfe’s so-called received Protestant orthodoxy (44). Indeed, at the intersection of politics and theology, which he fancies his wheelhouse, the only contribution of his that is of note to us is how appropriately his surname matches the content of his writings. For the first thing that he suggests is that the sheep need not hear Scripture but tradition (16). Yet, Protestant orthodoxy is Scripture, and Scripture Protestant orthodoxy. “Grace perfects nature” (101, 116, 174) is Aquinas and not Paul. Grace, biblically, restores nature to nature’s proper goal, which is not a “two-end anthropology” (44). If the heavenly and earthly, body and soul, nation and nation, are not to be ultimately united into one, the Lord’s prayer teaches us to begin all of our prayer a pious farce. Much more needs to be said, but suffice it to say that, if our hope is only the recovery of the seventy nations, we are of all political theologians most to be pitied. All parenthetical references are from Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, ID: Canan Press, 2023).

[4]That nations (in the Genesis 11 sense) were never a part of God’s perfect intention for humanity is evidenced by the revelation of God’s perfect humanity. Beginnings are always known by their ends. You buy a lawnmower because you know from a picture you saw that a fresh-cut lawn is glorious. In Scripture, we are given the end for which all things were created–to be one in Christ (1 Cor. 15:28). This is not to suggest that there would have been no distinction whatsoever between geographically and genealogically divergent descendants of an unfallen Adam; however, there is a difference between united diversity and divided multiplicity.

Gage Crowder teaches literature and Bible at Providence Classical School in Huntsville, Alabama. In addition to his studies at Birmingham Theological Seminary, he is a contributing member of the Huntsville Literary Association and the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. His poetry and prose can be found in the The Legend, Poem Magazine, the Birmingham Arts Journal, Panoply and elsewhere.