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