Terra nullius and migrationism

 

Koot van Wyk (Dlitt et Phil; ThD) Visiting Professor, Kyungpook National University, Sangju Campus, South Korea, Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College, Australia

 

Have you ever wondered where everyone came from? We live in a time when there are again a pop-up of territorial disputes. The Third-World cultures viewing themselves tall enough to take on the First World cultures for stealing property that they consider their own. China is grabbing not islands yet, but rock-features in the South China Sea in order to claim it for themselves. They insist that it was originally theirs. No-one lived on it and archaeology will not reveal any evidence, so is argued. The features are in the proximity of other nations around that are not Chinese. Wherever one stands on this issue is not the subject of this writing. Think of the Colonial powers who travelled in the 16th or 17th centuries to Africa and the Americas to discover what they perceived as terra nullius, land that belongs to no-one. Well, no-one? That is the current thrust of articles and court-cases arguing that what was considered terra nullius was only a one-sided perception and that although no-one was using the land at that time, or living near it, and although the people had the appearance of being uncivilized and not able to own any property, yet, so it is argued in legal cases today, they were by common law, their own indigenous law considered to be owners in their own way. Result: Colonial powers must have “stolen” their property and thus restitution will be to give it back. Funny, many may think, unthinkable, others would say, but yes, that is how a legal case went in Australia and a section of Australia in one region was “given back” to these people for this reason. The Colonial powers ceased to exist and the newcomers fused into the new land with also a mixture and intermarriage of who was there with those who came later. So today one cannot talk about the Colonial powers any longer, since everyone was there for centuries. That is in South America, North America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and one may add the Arabic migrations into North Africa after the time of Mo in the seventh centuries and later.

So what does the Bible say about this? Abraham is a good start. In about 2153BCE the Word of the Lord came to Abraham and said to him that the Lord brought him out of Ur and the Lord is giving him the land to possess it (Genesis 15:7). Terra nullius. But, anti-colonial hermeneutic scholars will argue, the land was not terra nullius. There were nations there. A number of observations are appropriate here. The term Canaanite is a labeling term for a conglomerate of nations. There was no nation with the name Canaanite. The is the case with  the name Philistine. They were not a nation. In Samuel and David’s day the labeling term Philistine meant people from Minoan and Mycenaean descent but in Abraham’s day it meant Amorites. These terms referred to migrants, nomads, traders, adventurers, entrepreneurs, homeless, sometimes criminals running away but people who moved into areas that people were not using to utilize it for themselves. They could be from any nation. It is this country that does not have a fixed nationhood, that the Lord now gave to Abraham because it is terra nullius.

There are revolutionary mechanisms in the world who push for the burning of what they term “colonial building projects” but one must remember that the hardship, the money, the energy, the dreams and visions of these building projects is part of that colonial nation’s legacy to the area. It is better to preserve it than to ransack or substitute it with another name. If one renames the building to a revolutionary in a post-revolutionary setting, it is legacy theft and any theft in the Bible is considered with grave consequences for any country. Suffering from floods, from earthquakes, from pests, from national disasters? God is not angry with the evil. He is angry with His remnant that fuses and goes against His requirements and precepts to please the evil in a country. It is because of the remnant that disasters come to a country.

All people, says that Bible moved or migrate. When the Arabs migrated after the 7th century to colonialize North Africa, the Africans migrated south and pushed out the Koi-Koi of whom no one survived. But, the Koi-Koi, the Bible indicates in its annals, also migrated from elsewhere. So the American Indian, the Maori in New Zealand, the so-called pre-1879 locals of Australia. There is not a country that has people that did not come there by migration. So while some jurisprudence scholars think it is ethical or moral justice to “restitute” since terra nullius is a “colonial” Roman Latin term superimposed wrongly over a country implicating that there is a no-owned property to take, the reality is that those who claim restitution came to that country in distant history also due to migration. That is what Genesis tells us with the event of migration after the Tower of Babel after the Flood of Noah in 2692 BCE. So who are we? Who are others in our country? We all are stewards of land-use provided from the Hand of the Almighty who allocates times and places to people, to respect, uphold, in peace and not with force and violence and mala fide intentions, wanting to break down other cultures’ legacy and sweat and tears of what they love and cherish. If God gives whomever power of whomever He keeps a watchful eye and all happens in relation with His faithful remnant and not because of favors He wants to do for the evil ones. The actions of landgrabbing are against the Word of God as the Wisdom book of Proverbs indicates in the following passages: 20:17; 21:6; 22:28; 23:10-11. Have you ever heard someone saying: “History will judge us . . . .”? There is no history that judge. It is God the Almighty that will be or is the Judge. He is the one who makes people stewards of their land and they either are tolerated or kept for a purpose to fulfill His prophetic plan that He designed long ago. That is why the study of prophecy is such an important aspect for the remnant since it outlines your own rise and fall according to His contours. Away with the concepts of Ernst Bloch and his cronies and followers trying to sidestep the reality of the metaphysical or God by using anthropological substitutes as Marx, Lenin, Hegel, Heidegger, and a host of supporters since did. Jean Paul Sartre in the early decades of the 20th century claimed that existence is more important than essence or being. Yes, for the unconverted evil person, but Nicodemus learned in John 3 from Jesus that he had to be “born again” with a new essence and this new essence born by the Spirit of God change the old man into a new creature and the existence fused with essence to become a new existence that substitutes the polarization of existence and essence that philosophers like Sartre and Camus and others taught. Now, we do not live any longer in the Theater of the Absurd, sorry Camus, but in a drama or tragedy on this earth (yes, José Ortega) but victorious with Christ because we are sojourners not people with absolute alienable rights (sorry Riha) on this earth which was stolen by Satan in the first place.

 

Dear Lord

Even Abraham settled in Palestine and was not satisfied that it is the city of God that He also told him about, the program of God to take everyone to heaven one day to get rid of evil and Satan here. Help us to be more faithful and part of Your plans. Amen.

 

 

Source:

Tomas J.F. Riha, (2000). "Right to property", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 27(12), pp.1148 – 1179. DOI Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/03068290010352966

 

Book of Moses: Genesis 15.

Proverbs