The modern world brings us a great many blessings, not least of which is fast, free access to the Bible in our own languages. If you are literate, and have access to wifi, you really have no excuse for not studying the Scriptures. This allows us to form coherent, and more importantly correct theological worldviews. This makes it very hard for heretics to argue in defence of their views. An honest student of Scripture always has the upper hand.
A common counter to this is the argument from tradition. "Lump what Scripture says, this is what the Church has always believed". There are a great many problems with this approach, but for this article, let's just focus on the fact that anyone can use it.
See, the thing about humanity is that there will never be perfect unity. There has never been a point in time when all people of a certain religious persuasion have held to the identical doctrine, including those who call themselves Christian. I say it that way because in spite of the claims of many heretics, heretics have always existed. And, ironically, they have always claimed tradition as their foundation. In fact, as early as the second century, we see the claim that Scripture can only be interpreted by tradition being quite aggressively tackled by Irenaeus. In Against Heresies, Irenaeus states that heretics, "When, however, they are confuted from the Scriptures, they turn round and accuse these same Scriptures, as if they were not correct, nor of authority, and [assert] that they are ambiguous, and that the truth cannot be extracted from them by those who are ignorant of tradition. For [they allege] that the truth was not delivered by means of written documents, but by word of mouth."
The problem is, just like today, there have been heretics plaguing the Church throughout history. While the ink of the New Testament was still wet, Satan had sent his goons across the globe, preaching "authoritative" traditions that had no business existing. And, just like today, even true Christians, being products of their time, were far from immune to the deceptions. The result is that literally anyone can argue that their views have historical precedent. Including racists.
One other blessing our modern world has is that racism is dying. The "race war" we see being fueled by the radical Left is a death throe. Liberty and justice have won their battles, as everyone, regardless of the color of their skin, is equal in the eyes of the law. At least, in Western nations. One of the most beautiful fruits of this is that "interracial" marriage is entirely legal. Not only legal, but common. But just because racism is dying doesn't mean it is completely absent from our world. Many racists still believe "interracial" marriage is a sin.
Take, for example, the numpty in the screenshot of the header image. He objected to a post which basically just paraphrased Scripture. In Acts 17:26, we are told that all nations are of one blood, so the image said "One race, human race, one blood, red blood", which surrounded a black man and a white man's hands, holding each other to symbolise unity. But the numpty claimed the different races are actually different species.
I called the guy out. I reminded him that it is actually possible for twins to be born with different skin colors, and it hardly makes sense to consider twins to be separate races. Therefore, either there is only one human race, or race is a meaningless concept. Personally, I'm cool with either conclusion. If you're going to piddle around with the meanings of words, go for it. But of course, historically, "race" and "species" have been considered synonymous. Worse than that, it was claimed that there was a hierarchy of 5 human races, with "Caucasians" (white people) as the highest, and "Negroes" (black people) as the lowest.
Now, for the Christian, there is only one correct view (and it happens to be backed by science): Even if you believe "race" is a real concept, there are no meaningful differences between human beings. Certainly none that should prevent us from marrying. Yet, as you can see, the racist stuck to his guns. In order to shrug off the duo-tone twins argument, he decided to accuse the mothers of adultery, a claim that is not only unfounded, but is also laughable to anyone with a remotely healthy interest in science. Twins are not formed by sleeping with two men, but by the splitting of one fertilised egg into two (identical twins), or by two eggs being fertilised by two different sperm (fraternal twins).
But setting aside his embarrassing lack of biological knowledge, he also claimed that Tobit forbids "interracial" marriage, that the Bible keeps warning about women from other nations, that there were "exceptions" but they weren't the rule, and he followed all of this up with... "You do know this was basic orthodox Christianity up until the 1960s."
Was it? What gives you that impression? We can set aside the fact that Tobit, which isn't even Scripture, doesn't seem to say a thing about "interracial" marriage as far as I can tell. Let's first focus on the claim that "The Bible constantly warns against women from other nations".
Now, to an extent, this is true. Pre-Christian Israel did, in fact, have divinely inspired laws against marrying pagan women. Key word: pagan. See, given that Moses himself, who wrote those laws, married an Ethiopian woman, and that God punished Aaron and Miriam for when they took issue with this (see Numbers 12:1-9), race is clearly not the thing in view here. The problem was religion. When a person became a Jew, they were no longer associated with the nations they came from, nor the pagan gods they served.
It is worth noting, at this point, that there are exactly 0 passages in the New Testament that reiterate laws against intermarrying with other nations. This is significant, for actual basic orthodox Christianity teaches that we are no longer under the law. The painful irony here is that anti-semitic Church "Fathers", like Justin Martyr, even went as far as to say "The custom of circumcising the flesh, handed down from Abraham, was given to you as a distinguishing mark, to set you off from other nations and from us Christians." So, even if it was beyond dispute that, with a few exceptions, the law prohibited "interracial" marriage, it was never supposed to extend beyond Israel. People in other nations could quite happily intermarry, and after the law was fulfilled in Christ, even Jews, to whom the law applied, were able to intermarry with whomever they saw fit.
There is one exception that applies, and it has nothing to do with race. See, Scripture tells us "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?" (2 Corinthians 6:14). But this has nothing to do with race, but faith! Just as in pre-Christian Israel, "interracial" marriage isn't the problem, interfaith marriage is the problem. A white Christian marrying a white unbeliever is so much more problematic than a white Christian marrying a black Christian. This cannot be disputed by a reasonable man!
Biblically speaking, the concept of race is meaningless. Tell me, how many couples did the Lord begin the human race with? 5 of each different color? No. One. One man and his wife started the entire human race. And God never added more either. In fact, when the sin of the single human race reached its peak, God sent a global flood to destroy the human race, even the whole Earth. Except 8 people. One man, his wife, their three sons and their wives. So, whatever color we are, we are all descended from 8 people who were themselves descended from a single human couple. Even the nations that did inevitably form as the human population grew again are actually the result of the Tower of Babel, wherein the whole human race was separated by God confusing the language.
And my friends, this is all sitting there in the Bible. The divinely inspired Bible. And it is, and has always been basic orthodox Christian belief that when God speaks, it doesn't matter if it is by word, or by book, mankind does not have a right to disobey.
So, to quote the Good Lord Himself, "Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?" (Matthew 15:3). Lump your tradition! I don't care if you can prove there was only 7,000 Christians in every generation who believed the truth of Scripture (1 Kings 19:18; Romans 11:4), I would be quite content to join them in the minority, because at the end of the day, 20 billion people cannot outrank God. Ever. And that, ladles and gentlespoons, is why "this is the historical belief" will never be a valid argument. If you cannot prove your views from Scripture, they are irrelevant at best, and outright damnable at worst. Either way, let us take to heart the words of the second wisest king the Jews have ever known: "Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar." (Proverbs 30:5-6).