I see that the white supremacists don’t like me:
http://spiritwaterblood.com/2008/09/free-money-and-loose-women/
To some extent, the white supremacist movement is a dumping ground for losers. However, it also represents a backlash to affirmative action and liberal assaults on “white privilege.”
How important is racial identity from a Christian standpoint?
1. Race qua race seems to be a natural adaptation to climatic variation. At that level, it’s a pretty trivial feature of self-identity or social identity.
To the degree that race becomes a more important feature of self-identity or social identity, that isn’t due to race qua race, but the incidental association of racial identity with other forms of identity.
2. There’s an obvious sense in which, for me to be a different race, I’d have to have different parents. In that sense, racial identity is essential to my self-identity. But it isn’t racial identity, per se, that’s essential to my self-identity. Rather, it’s only essential in the derivative sense that if I had different parents, I would be a different person. Here the differential factor is parentage, not race.
3. And even with respect to (2), it’s possible to be a biracial child.
4. Hypothetically speaking, it’s easy to conceive an SF scenario in which my racial characteristics are altered. Yet I’d still be the same person inside (as it were). The same mind, same brain, same memories, same parents, same formative experiences. So a change in racial identity wouldn’t entail a change in self-identity.
5. There’s also an obvious sense in which my self-identity is frequently bound up with my relatives: my siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, &c. We tend to be close to those we’re related to by blood. And, in many cases, that involves a degree of racial identity.
6. But that, too, is rather incidental. I can grow up with anyone. It could be a blood brother, half-brother, or stepbrother. Race isn’t intrinsic to the emotional bond.
7. Likewise, the fact that I’m close to my white parents or my white siblings doesn’t mean I’m close to your white parents or your white siblings. Being white doesn’t mean I related to you, even if you happen to be another white man or woman. You’re a perfect stranger to me. By contrast, my best friend might be a childhood friend of another race.
To be sure, there’s an attenuated sense in which all white folk are related to each other, but in that respect there’s an attenuated sense in which all human beings are related to each other.
And, of course, many people are estranged from their parents or siblings. Conversely, adopted kids may be much closer to their adoptive parents than their natural parents.
8. A more important sense in which racial identity can figure in self-identity involves the relation between race and culture. Social conditioning has a powerful influence on self-identity. And there’s often a correlation between race and culture.
Even so, that’s quite incidental. For example, it’s quite possible for a person of one race to become acculturated to a society with a different racial composition. Take the case of white children who were kidnapped by Indians and raised as Indians. They went “native,” as the saying goes.
9. In addition, many societies are racially and culturally diverse. Western civilization is an amalgam of different cultures. And America is a nation of immigrants. Under those circumstances, the correlation between race and culture is quite diffuse.
10. In this respect, Confederate racism is rather ironic since the old South was not a racially or culturally homogeneous society like Iceland. There was a crosspollination between black and white.
11. Up to this point I’ve found it convenient to speak of a person’s race. But, of course, race is a fluid identity. What race is Tiger Woods?
Racial differentiation ranges along a continuum. There’s no such thing as racial purity.
12. Modern white supremacy is the flipside of the hip-hop culture. Both subcultures represent reactionary and degenerate expressions of self-identity, grounded in a particular form of social-identity.
At one level, white pride is the logical counterpose to white guilt. But it’s only logical if you accept the premise of racial identity as a fundamental feature of self-identity.
And there’s something ironic about an obsession with racial self-consciousness. If you have to spend a lot of time second-guessing whether you’re white enough or black enough or whatever, then you’re playing a role rather than doing what comes naturally to you. Whether it’s a hip-hop “artist” or a contemporary Confederate, what we see on display is a lot of playacting as a substitute for genuine self-identity. It merely exposes the emotional insecurity of the individual. An identity crisis. The felt need to have your self-identity conferred on your by the group.
But from a Christian standpoint, our self-identity ultimately comes from God, not society.
I noticed this statement on the website:
ReplyDelete"Folks, our nation is white and Christian."
If this is meant to be descriptive, it's not only theologically and ethically uninteresting, it's false.
Is it meant to be normative? Our nation *should be* white and Christian? Without endorsing relativism, wouldn't this be a pre-text for Hitler's Germany? If our nation *should be* then should all nations? Or is it a matter of etiquette? "Our nation" drives on the right side of the street just like "our nation" is white and Christian.
Is it meant to refer to our history? Since it was white and Christian in the past, it should be today.
Again, what is the nature of this "should?"
It's not biblical since peoples of all race will be in heaven, the Bible doesn't demand that "our nation" be "white and Christian."
And, wouldn't this "should" hinder evangelism?
If we can rightly say that "our nation is white and Christian" couldn't a middle eastern country say, "Our nation is brown and Muslim?" Could an oriental nation say, "Our nation is yellow and Buddhist?"
What is the morally relevant difference between the two?
It can't be that the Bible affirms the Kinist's side. Notice the quoted statement is in the form of a conjunction. So if one of the conjuncts is false, the entire conjunction is. And, it *is* false that the Bible argues that "our nation" *should be* "white" (whatever that means anymore, anyway).
So, why couldn't *other nations* argue, "we are x-religion and y-race, so keep those pasty white Christians out of here!"? Why would it be moral for *us* to make the above argument but not for *them*?
So the Kinist ideas could allow for a peoples to keep their nation X and Y. Since this is unbiblical, Kinism is.
But perhaps they want to fix their error and claim that race doesn't matter, regardless of race countries should be Christian. That's what matters.
Despite some questionable assumptions, viz. reconstructionist, triumphalist, and theology of glory possibly inherent in the above ideas, the above ruins the Kinist argument.
If they want to claim that race *and* religion doesn't matter in the other countries as a pretext to hinder evangelism, then they've lost the *morally relevant* reason to do so here...unless they affirm relativism.
Also problematic is the distrust in God. This is God's history, guys. Nations rise and fall. In fact, the fastest growing pockets of Christianity are in third-world countries. At the end of the day it doesn't matter much if you keep your precious "nation and race" as it does if you are found trusting and resting in Christ alone.
"Let God be true though all men are liars."
The Kinists also seem a bit ignorant:
"If it ceases to be either [a white and Christian nation], it is no longer our nation."
But there are actual members of this nation who are not white and Christian. How can this nation be "their nation?" There are more than those who belong to "our."
See, if "our nation" (aka USA) *IS* "white and Christian," then if it "ceases to be" it will *also* cease to be the USA!
But, since "our nation" IS NOT "white and Christian" (at this time) then there is *no more USA*!
But the USA still exists as a nation.
Therefore, it is false that "if our nation ceases to be white and Christian" it will no longer be the USA.
To remedy *this* they can remove the language of identity (i.e., "is"). But then what of the Kinists argument? It looks sliced and diced again.
Apparently the number of teeth missing correspond to the number of brain cells missing.
I should add that since this nation right now *is not* "white and Christian," then, according to the Kinist, it isn't their nation anymore.
ReplyDeleteSo why are they fighting for it?
Who asked them to come into a nation that isn't their own and fight?
I can just walk into Cuba and start fighting.
Since, per their own statements, this nation isn't theirs anymore, then they need to keep their nose out of other people's business.
Ironically, since they, per the logic of their argument, admit that this nation is not theirs, then they are illegal aliens.
If someone is going to admit that they don't belong here, then keep your mouth shut and leave the discussion to the members of this nation.
If they don't like this outcome they can either (a) argue that this nation *is* "white and Christian," or (b) admit their poor use of logic and remedy their arguments.
Steve, you write a lot of good posts.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very, very good post. Thank you for your incisive thinking.
But from a Christian standpoint, our self-identity ultimately comes from God, not society.
ReplyDeleteI fully agree.
Although I can hear quibblers quibbling, "Christians are no better than racial identity folks! You folks argue amongst yourselves as to who is more Christian, or who is more faithful to the Biblical text. Eg., witness the ferocious in-fighting between Calvinists and Arminians, between Evangelicals and Catholics (or Orthodox), between Conservative Christians and Liberal Protestants."
That's a good observation Truth...but as a matter of historical interest if nothing else, it is worth noting, since Steve mention's Confederate racial identity, that the 19th century spawned a set of "identity" movements centered on ecclesiology.
ReplyDelete1. The various "restoration" movements, like Mormonism, the Campbellites, etc. all centered on the identity of the one true restoration church.
2. The Tractarians among the Anglicans.
3. The Landmark Baptists and the Baptist-Presbyterian "wars" over ecclesiology and pulpit sharing.
4. Even Rome had its own movement, centered around Vatican 1.
Those who center their thinking on racial identity are living in the 19th century. It's time to move on.
And this is a demonstrable falsehood from the original article:
ReplyDeleteAs for female authors of the 19th century, you will read about Alcott, Howe, Stowe, and Dickenson, but never Evans or other forgotten Southerners, and this is yet more evidence of what we have lost.
Have "we" lost this heritage? No. I'm a Southerner. My ancestors fought in the Civil War too, so it's not as if my "heritage" is alien to the Antebellum South. I also took a class in Southern Literature in college.
Southern Lit is its own genre of literature. I went to a small university. I by no means had to attend UNC-CH to take a class in Southern Literature. One can read peer-reviewed material devoted to the subject.
Indeed, right now, we are living in a time when we have as many if not more Southern writers alive as/than lived in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Right now, Southern Literature is quite popular.
The real reason many people have not heard of these female writers is related to their ignorance of American Literature itself. It's also related to good old fashioned misogyny - and one of the ironies of the original article is that decries the ignorance of the works of these female writers while promoting Southern values - values that were historically quite misogynistic. Indeed, the works of Evans, et.al. is often described in such terms (that is, as a voice crying in the wilderness of the Antebellum South), because their works are often centered on the management of the plantation in the absence or incompetence of the male. These are women who function in place of or in spite of the male leaders. They are, nevertheless, women who know their "place," not women who are generally more empowered - unlike the female characters that emerge in the literature produced during the Southern Renaissance period of our literature or the modern period.
Indeed, that's what really strikes me about the original article. It's not so much about race and women, it's about Southern identity - but it's not enough to be a Southerner, one must be a "true" Southerner, one who believes in the old South, the racist South, the misogynist South. the South of Old Charleston or Wilmington (without the Jews of Wilmington of course, because as we all know, they didn't really contribute anything to Eastern NC life, and Atlanta before Sherman.
Good arguments. It's true that kinism, or any type of racism for that matter, is untenable on any rationally principled basis.
ReplyDeleteYou didn't mention in this post the Biblical arguments aside from the observation that there will be people of every ethnicity around the throne.
Jesus had a slightly mixed genealogy: Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheeba.
The entire book of Acts as well as the context of many of Paul's letters involve social ethnic heterogeneity whether in the spreading of the gospel or within local groups of believers.
The condition for marriage of believers in the NT is NOT what race someone is, but that a believer should marry another believer.
The condition of marriage regarding ethnicity in the OT was not primarily focused on race, but that there is a recognized link between culture and religion and marrying someone of a culture that does not recognize worship of the true and living God infuses the culture, at least of the home, with the worship of false gods.
Then there are biological arguments. While once researching kinism, I stumbled across a forum where a group of kinists were derogatorily accusing people of mixed race of being inbred. It's an indicator of the level of irrationality required to buy the kinist position.
Due to genetic degradation people of mixed race tend to be genetically stronger because genetic errors aren't duplicated in both sets of DNA.
My wife and kids just got back from an extended mission trip to Venezuela. Part of their trip involved ministering among the Yukpa Indians, a small relatively isolated population in the Sierra de Perija. They noticed an trend of genetically rooted morphological deformities. It is not good to say that Yukpas should only marry other Yukpas. This is inbreeding. They've speciated to the point of lacking the genetic diversity in their population to cover the current level of degradation.
1. Racial differences caused by climate variations are not restricted to climate adaptations. For example, cold weather played a role in increasing the brain size of European hominids, but once the extra cerebral matter was there, natural selection found ways to put it to work that had nothing to do with the weather.
ReplyDelete2. Race is more than parentage. Naturally, you descend from your parents. But both you and your parents descend from your grandparents, and all three of those generations descend from a fourth one that preceded them, and so on. If for a sufficient number of generations, a population has bred within itself, then it will become a race by shaking out (by natural or cultural selection) genetic mismatches such as can result from race-crossings.
That is, genetic mismatches will occur as long as they can, but they will (or should) prevent reproduction by anyone afflicted by them. Civilized man has been an exception, and that's why mankind is afflicted with, for example, nearsightedness - the focal length of the eye's lens is not compatible with the depth of the eye socket. Once the shaking out of genetic mismatches has gone to completion, or nearly so, then the population has acquired a racial type by which it can be recognized. Skin color might be a part of the type. A distribution of IQ might be another.
3. There is no such thing as a "biracial child." Children who are called that actually have no race at all, and that is still the case whether the child has legal permission to identify himself by the race of one or the other parent, or to claim both.
A mixed breed has acquired genetic mismatches, whether they show or not. Those mismatches can appear in his offspring, whether or not they appear in himself. Mixing races undoes the natural process of genetic mismatch weeding and "sets the clock back" by a dozen generations or more, since it will take that long, assuming that no more racial mixing occurs in the family line, to recover the inner harmony of the genotype.
There are examples of "good looking" mixed breeds. The mismatches don't always show, and it is possible for, say, a mulatto female to inherit her skin color from her Black parent and her body shape from her White parent. Such a combination might be regarded as pretty, since it is the Black body proportions that offend White sensibilities most, rather than the dark skin. Nonetheless, that mulatto female contains inner genetic mismatches that can appear visibly and hurtfully in any children she has. SHE might have got a lucky toss with her recessive genes, but that doesn't mean her children and grandchildren will also receive such fortunate combinations. Where defects or mismatches exist, they will sooner or later appear, if not in this generation, then in one descended from it.
4. If you changed your race, either of two things would happen to your IQ. If you remained at the same percentile in your new race as your old race, then you'd either be smarter or stupider, depending on whether the new race's average IQ was higher or lower than the other race's average IQ.
On the other hand, maybe you figure you can keep the same IQ by having a different spot on the "bell curve" of the new race than the one you had on the curve for the old race. In the latter case, you're not only changing your race, you'd also be changing your LUCK, and if you could do that, why not wish genius upon yourself while you're at it? And a pile of money. Wings, too.
5. Your family is more closely related to you than most of your race is. With family, you can measure the degree of relatedness approximately by consanguinity. You share half of your genes with your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your son, and your daughter. You share one quarter of your genes with grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, half-siblings, nephews, and nieces. You share one eighth of your genes with great-grandparents, great-grandchildren, and first cousins.
The actual degree to which you are related to your relatives would have to be measured by an examination of your genes and those of the relative. Consanguinity is an estimate, but it is usually a very close estimate because of what some people call "the law of averages" (large numbers of random draws tend to show the shape of their distribution). When consanguinity becomes too diffuse or complicated to measure accurately, you must use genetic surveys to find the degree of relatedness, or, inversely put, genetic distance.
Your race is a clump of people in genetic distance space. Normal inbreeding in a geographically isolated population (not incest) tends to cause racial clumps to appear. The White race is about 0.008 genetic distance units wide, though you might include the Persians as the most extreme outlier at 0.020 units. The Ashkenazi Jews can be found at about 0.050 units. The Turks, 0.080 units. The Chinese, 0.120 units. The African Blacks, 0.220 to 0.270 units. All of these distances are relative to the Belgians, who are the White national group having the shortest genetic distance sum with all the other European national groups (the Germans are in 2nd place in that sense).
The White race's member groups are gathered into a ball less than 0.01 units in diameter (excepting the Persians, who might be better considered almost-Whites than Whites). The Ashkenazi Jews are apart from this clump. The Turks are even further apart. The Chinese, further still. And the Africans aren't even in the same constellation.
The clusters of populations in genetic distance space are races. There are, of course, populations that exist between clumps, and among these are mixed breeds and a few small, isolated races of variant genotypes. But the hominids of our times are largely characterized by race, which is proved by the fact that more hominid populations are found in clumps than between them.
There is, in fact, more than one race of Black Africans. Dark skinned Africans form a collection of races and cultures who are collectively labeled "Blacks" by other races for the expedient reason that none of the African races are anywhere near them in genetic distance, and the word Black is used as a collective term meaning "dark skinned other," rather than as a careful attempt to identify any particular dark-skinned race.
The Jews are a cultural group "umbrella" comprised mostly of a few races, with the Ashkenazi race being dominant at present. (This was not always so; once upon a time the Sephardim were dominant.)
The non-Jewish European White peoples are ONE race, partitioned by culture, which is the opposite of the situation that prevails for Jews.
6. Race is why emotional bonds evolved. You might feel that you have "an interest" in helping someone not related to you, such as a business partner of another race, but this is simply Randian selfish interest that depends on what the other person can do for you if he so chooses. Love is something else.
Love evolved as an emotional pressure to remain in the service of someone else, or several someones else, when it would be contrary to your personal interest to do so. It came from natural selection with events in which a person sacrificed his own interests to those persons most nearly related to him, so that his genes (incorporated in the bodies of those other people) would gain an advantage that they could not gain if the sacrifice had not been made. That's why love causes people to do "crazy" things, like willingly dying to save their children, to name an instance that might not seem all that crazy to most people. Biological relatedness is intrinsic to an emotional bond, and anyone who denies it is kidding someone... perhaps himself.
7. Being close to your White family members does not mean that you are AS CLOSE to the members of a different White family. But you are indeed "closer" (emotionally) to that other White family than you could ever be to a Black family. I'm assuming that you are White, of course. The progression from family, to race, to species is logical, and it involves a lessening of emotional bond in the same order. If you resort the order, you deceive someone... perhaps yourself. If you remove race from the progression, you do likewise.
Being White DOES mean that you are related to me. It means that you and I have a common ancestor who lived less than 40,000 years ago, and probably less than 1000 years ago, and maybe less than 200 years ago. The fact that both of us are White means that a genetic survey on us both would reveal similar genes, and that is the true basis of relateness. Consanguinity is only an easily made estimate. If your best friend is someone of another race, then you have had a very unusual life.
8. Cultural conditioning for White people is all about dispossessing them of their racial identity. To the extent they still have it, they've had to oppose the conditioning of the parts of the ambient culture (which is created by Jews and disseminated via the media) that would have them discard it. The culture tells White people that race does not matter, that it's only skin color, that enlightenment is to forget that race exists, that racial knowledge is ignorance (and vice versa), that although statistics can teach us important things about collections, there is an EXCEPTION when the collections are races - it would be "immoral" for us to learn anything about races from statistics, and we don't want to be immoral do we?
There's a correlation between race and culture because culture originates in race. That is, a culture grows out of a race as your hair and fingernails grow from your body. A race is limited in what culture it can make by the limits on its physical and intellectual abilities, which in turn are determined by their genes. Environment plays a role, too. But the large role is simply the quality of the genes that define the race.
9. America originally was composed of White free citizens. Negroes did some labor, but the did not count insofar as America's founding went. All the Founding Fathers were White, not just some of them. Negroes neither made the decisions, nor participated in choosing the men who did make them. And because America was White, it prospered and grew strong enough to throw off colonialism and become independent - and do even better independent than under colonialism (something that not all former colonies can truthfully claim).
A grave mistake was made in the middle 19th century, when leaders in the North and in the South permitted Jewish bankers in Europe to turn America against itself in a bloody war, out of which both sides emerged burdened with war debt in the Jews' favor. Another mistake was made by the corrupt men who finagled the illegal passage, the bogus ratification, and the unconstitutional imposition of the "14th Amendment," whose actual purpose was contained in the paragraph that says the public debt of the United States "shall not be questioned." Yet another mistake was made in 1913, with the sneaking passage of the Federal Reserve Act through a rump Congress while most of the Congressmen were away on Christmas vacation.
But those mistakes occurred because Jews were not kept out of the United States, as they should have been. Letting Jews come into America along with White immigrants was the original mistake of the United States, the mistake that led directly to the others. Without the Jews, the Negroes would have been shipped back to Africa in the last half of the 19th century (at which time, they were willing to go).
10. There has been limited racial interbreeding, and although White people have been intimidated (with laws) to the point of fearing to show their distaste for mixed children (and for the White parents who helped to produce them), that distaste has not gone away. It remains, and you can see it in glances followed by a quick look-away. Once it was followed by a frown, but as I said, laws have intimidated White people to the point of making them fear to show what they really think. Still, the percentage of mixed children with respect to all children is small. It's a destructive trend (i.e., it threatens to "set the clock back" by reintroducing genetic mismatches to, and lessening the average genetic quality of, the population), but it is a trend that, at present, can still be reversed.
11. Tiger Woods is of no race. He has parents of two different races. He is one of those fortunate racial crosses who don't show mismatches in his phenotype. However, they are present in his genes, and they can appear in his children, and in his later descendants.
12. You betray your lack of understanding when you use the phrase "White supremacy." The correct cultural movement is called "White nationalism." The slave owners of the 19th century were White Supremacists. The White racists of the late 20th and 21st centuries are not supremacists, but nationalists. Anyone who refers to White nationalism as supremacy has been getting too much misinformation from Jewish TV.
I'm curious how you reconcile your views with the entire Old Testament where God Himself places lots of importance on race.
ReplyDeleteHe curses all the children of Adam, Cain, Ham, et cetera, all that talk about the "generations," the carefully recorded lineages, the genocides perpetrated by the Tribe.
Race and family are extremely important in the scriptures.
"God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem"—Genesis 9:27
DANIELJ SAID:
ReplyDelete“I'm curious how you reconcile your views with the entire Old Testament where God Himself places lots of importance on race.__He curses all the children of Adam;”
Of course, Adam would represent the entire human race. So you’re equivocating.
“Cain, Ham, et cetera.”
What makes you think these represent different “races”?
“Race and family are extremely important in the scriptures.”
These are hardly airtight categories. For example, a Jew was born into the covenant community by virtue of his lineage. However, a Jew could be excommunicated due to apostasy while—conversely—a Gentile could convert to the Jewish faith and thereby become a member of the covenant community. Paul, in Romans, also distinguishes between true Jews (“inwardly”) and nominal Jews (“outwardly”).
Of course, Adam would represent the entire human race. So you’re equivocating.
ReplyDeleteOf course. That then gets separated into the sons of Noah down to our present racial categories.
My point was that the Scriptures allow for racial and generational guilt which I'm assuming is passed through DNA.
It isn't an equivocation to taxonomize, and the human "race" is actually the human "species."
What makes you think these represent different “races”?
Interbred lineages with some characteristics of race would be my assumption, but let us assume they are not for this argument. Let me then shift to the million races talked about in the Bible. The Canaanites, Jebusites, Hiitites, ad nauseam. Are they races? Were some of them cursed? Did not God command the destruction of entire races in the Old T?
These are hardly airtight categories.
They are unless you argue like a Jew. It is real simple.
For example, a Jew was born into the covenant community by virtue of his lineage. However, a Jew could be excommunicated due to apostasy while—conversely—a Gentile could convert to the Jewish faith and thereby become a member of the covenant community.
Yeah. I'm searching for the argument?
Many people that immigrated to America considered themselves Anglus Natus though they weren't.
Paul, in Romans, also distinguishes between true Jews (“inwardly”) and nominal Jews (“outwardly”).
Paul is distinguishing between true CHRISTIANS and unbelieving jews! Christians are true jews, God's Jews, circumcised in the heart.
I just realized:
ReplyDeleteIf people can only marry people of the same "race";
And if someone with parents of different "races" are actually of no race at all;
Then they can marry anyone of any race they want.
No?
DANIELJ SAID:
ReplyDelete“Of course. That then gets separated into the sons of Noah down to our present racial categories.”
Our present racial categories are fluid and fuzzy.
And you’re assuming that the sons of Noah represent three different races. The Table of Nations (Gen 10) isn’t organized by “race.”
“It isn't an equivocation to taxonomize, and the human "race" is actually the human ‘species’.”
Since “species” is not a biblical category, you can’t map an extrabiblical category back onto Scripture as if the Bible is talking about what you are talking about.
“The Canaanites, Jebusites, Hiitites, ad nauseam. Are they races?”
Why would we classify them as different races? They’re all adapted to the same region.
“Did not God command the destruction of entire races in the Old T?”
People-groups, not races.
“They are unless you argue like a Jew. It is real simple.”
No, I’m arguing from Scripture. It’s real simple.
“Yeah. I'm searching for the argument?”
An obtuse statement. Examples of conversion to the covenant community and excommunication from the covenant community illustrate the fact that Jew/Gentile weren’t airtight categories.
“Paul is distinguishing between true CHRISTIANS and unbelieving jews! Christians are true jews, God's Jews, circumcised in the heart.”
I see you’re a Biblical illiterate.
Paul’s argument in Romans distinguishes between nominal Jews (who reject the Messiah) and a remnant of elect Jews (who embrace the Messiah).
Paul’s argument is hardly limited to a contrast between Jews and Christians. Paul was, himself, a Messianic Jew.