Introduction
The purpose of his book is to show that Christian Nationalism is, in principle, just and the ideal arrangement of society, and that it is worth pursuing.
Nationalism refers to a totality of national action, consisting of civil laws and social customs, conducted by a nation as a nation, in order to procure for itself both earthly and heavenly good.
In simple terms nationalism is a nation that puts its own interests first and works to achieve them. By a strict definition few nations would not be "nationalist." He writes in chapter 3 that "a nation can be incompletely nationalist. The essential conditions for complete nationalism are (1) a national self-conception, and (2) a national will to act for itself." A nation that didn't see itself as a nation wouldn't be nationalist obviously, or one that had decided that a universal humanity's good outweighed pursuing what it needs. But at a technical level, any nation that sees itself as a nation and is most concerned with its own interests is "nationalist." Even the USA is governed by people who claim to be acting in its best interests.
He defines "national action" to include all actions that individuals take that contribute to the common good of the nation. His example is a mother nursing her child, in addition to having the direct good of the child in view, it contributes to the national good by raising up the child to be healthy and productive. All These actions of different individuals are interconnected and rely on each other (mothers cannot nurse children without fathers protecting or if the state took the child), thus civil laws and social customs are the rules of action that determine what you ought to do, either explicitly in civil laws, or implicitly in social customs. Rules of action are proper only if they order to the national good. e.g. tossing trash from cars is illegal, as it is detrimental to the national good of a clean, beautiful, and protected environment. Civil law and social custom are complimentary, some things are inappropriate or out of the reach of one or the other.
The national will acts for itself, for its good, mediated through authorities that it (the people) institute, and the people act according to the dictates of that authority.
"Heavenly good" is included in the definition of even generic nationalism because he contends ordering people to their heavenly life is a natural end for even the generic nation.
A nation as a nation does not receive eternal life. Rather it acts for itself so that heavenly goods (e.g. the gospel, the preaching of the Word, the sacraments) are made available and apparent to all and every person is encouraged to take them for eternal life. The inclusion of heavenly good in his definition of the goals of a nation is a claim that would be contested.
The book is based on natural principles. "While Christian theology assumes natural theology as an ancillary component, Christian political theory treats natural principles as the foundation, origin, and source of political life, even Christian political life."
Chapters 1-2 cover "the study of man in theology…and how it shapes social and political life." Chapter 1 discussed how society would have functioned in an unfallen world. He argues that government would have existed regardless as an organizing force to coordinate men's various efforts towards common goals (the cultural/dominion mandate). Chapter 2 then discusses the nature of the Fall and how it corrupted the world, society, and man. He argues that it augmented the government's power to include the use of force to restrain evil, in addition to its already existing power to organize man toward his good. These chapters struck me as generally the weakest and least enjoyable in the book. Chapter 1 seemed very speculative (and therefore the conclusions of chapter 2 as well), pretty speculative for use as a foundation of Christian political philosophy. The question remains whether the theorizing in chapter 1 is a necessary cornerstone on which to justify Christian nationalism.
Chapter 3 elaborates on nationalism, not specifically national christianity. This chapter was very compelling to me. It argues for the naturalness and therefore goodness of man's instinct to love and prefer those closest to him, "one's own," those who share his common customs, norms, language, history, and ancestry/blood. He adds to the traditional Christian schema of types of love, benevolent, beneficent, and "complacent."
Chapter 4 argues for Christian Nationalism. It consists of a series of independent arguments that the government has the right/responsibility to privilege Christianity & enforce Christian social norms. On the initial reading it ironically wasn’t the most compelling chapter of the book.
Chapter 5 is very good. It defends the goodness of cultural Christianity and/or Christian culture. Even Kevin D. Young's extremely negative review of the book as a whole had positive things to say about his defense of cultural Christianity. His argument is that cultural Christianity, which sets Christianity as the standard norm in society, creates social conditions that aid in the reception of the Gospel and people coming to faith, akin to the Christian norms of a Christian family. Society "teaches" people at a pre-rational level what is good and true and what is evil, false, and ludicrous. Beliefs that come about through the help of society are no less real and valid, and in reality the immense majority of what we believe and accept as normal we learned non-rationally through our upbringing.
Chapter 6 is on Civil Law. He says laws are righteous if they flow rationally from Natural Law. Additionally, laws should be suitable to the given circumstances in order to be a good law. Laws can be righteous but not good (i.e. based on a true principle of natural law, but as constructed not beneficial, not conducing well to the good of the community). Civil Law can direct man outwardly, it cannot command the soul. Still, laws can help people towards that which is good for the soul. e.g. sabbath laws remove distractions from people, encouraging them to focus on God.
Chapter 7 is on the specifics of a Christian magistrate, which he refers to as a Christian Prince to emphasize his belief in the importance of their personality and gravitas. This chapter also discusses the magistrate's relationship with the church, which he approaches from a traditional presbyterian 2-kingdoms view. He assigns significant power within the authority of the civil magistrate, including the ability to remove error from the church and reform it. He withholds only things that "materially conduce to a supernatural end" from the magistrate, i.e. pastorship, preaching, the sacraments, etc. Chapters 3-7 are the body of the book that explain his understanding of Christian Nationalism and complete his argument.
Chapter 8 Argues for the moral permissibility of violent resistance to tyrannical authority. tyrants are those who make habitual practice of tyrannical actions that strike "at a fundamental good of human society." The people's right to do this is based on the fact that the ruler's authority is a delegated authority based on the consent of his subjects, and they can decide to remove that consent.
Chapter 9 discusses religious liberty issues. His view is that the government cannot compel internal things or punish false belief, nor should punishment be to reform an errant mind nor anyone whose false religion causes no harm to others. "The classical Protestant position is that the civil magistrate can punish external religion; e.g. heretical teaching, false rites, blasphemy, and Sabbath-breaking, because such actions can cause public harm, to both the soul & the body politic." Arguments against the establishment of religion can be either in principle or prudence (i.e. it's not effective), but he rejects them both.
Chapter 10 argues that America's establishment was based more in protestantism than Enlightenment principles and that the majority view was the government should encourage/assist Christianity. When colonies suppressed dissenting religion it was always argued for based on the public harm principle from chapter 9, and that the greater toleration was based on the specifics of the changing society (prudence) and not a change in principle. They decided that it was ineffective and caused more societal issues than it solved.
Chapter 1 - Nations Without the Fall
The almost universal reformed view was that man would not have lived on earth forever even if he had stayed in the state of integrity. Upon completion of his task of dominion he would have been translated to direct communion with God in heaven without death. The heavenly state would have been the same as the one we receive in Christ, (including, for example, the absence of marriage or childbirth). Thus man was created with "two ends," earthly and heavenly, of which the heavenly would be granted by God upon completion of the earthly.
Towards these two ends, God gave man 2 sets of gifts, natural and supernatural (or spiritual), natural gifts are the things constitutive of man, without which he wouldn't be a man, reason, gregariousness, a will, etc. Spiritual gifts were those which allowed man to achieve spiritual good in his actions, to contemplate God and his heavenly ends in performing an action, without spiritual good man could perform an action that was good in substance, but could not perform it with a pure heart towards God's glory in accordance with the spiritual demands of God's law.
The covenant of works was the original divinely instituted condition for heavenly life. It was to perfectly keep the moral, or natural, law.
The moral law can be viewed separately as a rule or covenant (the divinely proscribed conditions for eternal life), though the initial terms of the covenant were obeying the law as a rule. The moral law as a rule is for man's happiness according to his nature; following it is his only way to achieve happiness and the fulfillment of his nature as man. Now Christ has satisfied the law for us covenantally, but we are still obligated to obey it as a rule.
The natural law can be summarized as obligating man to serve to God's glory as his chief end. It is unchangeable, man's immutable standard of righteousness. "The moral law took place as soon as man was made, and continues to the end, without any alteration, the same as it was." - Samuel Willard. It is not arbitrary, for it is exactly made to suit man's nature. "God as creator put his will for man in man's very design."
Being made in the image of God refers to the spiritual and natural gifts God gave man. His image elevates man in dignity & majesty over the rest of creation, and this why why he rules over all else. Thus, the dominion mandate is not an arbitrary divine command disconnected from human nature and the gifts God gave man. Rather, it proceeds from the very nature of man and is not rescindable without violating the fundamental nature of man. "Man's right to rule creation as vice-regents is derived naturally and necessarily from divinely-granted majesty." Man's dignity refers to his gifts that elevate him from the rest of creation. "Only humans have rationality, moral duty, choice, and the ability to acknowledge & worship God." (The contrary view would be that the dominion mandate was an adventitious duty—an addition to natural duty not flowing from man's nature.)
Prelapsarian Social Relations
He argues that "providing an account of human society in the state of integrity is essential to Christian political theory. Only then can we determine continuity and discontinuity between the four states of man. For example, if the formation of distinct nations is natural to prelapsarian man and grace affirms and restores nature, then the nation in principle is not a consequence of the fall and grace does not undermine it."
The family, not the individual, is the basic unit of society. Woman was made as a helper suitable for man to help him in achieving his task of dominion. Man or woman alone is unable to complete this task, as fruitfulness is an integral part. Thus, the building block of society is not the individual, but teams of husband and wife. "The manner in which the woman received her existence serves to place her in the kind of relationship to the man such that she is inseparably bound to him." - Herman Bavinck. Man does not exist to support woman, rather he governs his household orienting it to the divine mission he received from God. His wife is a needed helper in accomplishing that mission, which they work towards together.
Man was also made gregarious. That is, desiring and suited to community. Community is to the benefit of all, as men rely on each other in the specialization of labor and are able to achieve more than they would completely isolated.
Man was also created as a space-bound being. We only have direct knowledge of our immediate surroundings. This is not a result of the fall; it is how man was designed. Thus, even in an unfallen world, distinct cultures (i.e. ways of life) would have developed in different areas, as man traveled and conquered the world, creating communities throughout the world. Thus, "cultural diversity, is therefore, a necessary consequence of human nature, and so it is good for us… man's limitedness was not a divine mistake; neither is cultural diversity, separated geographically, an error. It was God's design for man, and that's a necessary feature of his good." "Unfallen man is benevolent to all but can only be beneficent (i.e., act for the good of) to some." Man has a "directed gregariousness" towards those with whom he shares geographical closeness & the same expectations, and way of life. Again, this is not a result of the fall, but integral to the design of man as man.
Hierarchy and inegalitarianism are also inherent parts of the constitution of man. In contrast to the modern spirit of egalitarianism, "inegalitarian principles are so common and foundational in the Christian political tradition that one might call inegalitarianism a catholic political doctrine." Inequality in bodily stature, beauty, knowledge, virtue [?], domestic authority, and civil authority were regularly affirmed as good and not due to the fall." Inferiority in a trait is not some type of natural defect, "good things of the same class can differ in excellence." Men would have all been alike in their sinlessness, but we would not have been identical, indistinguishable cogs. People would have both been born with different giftings, and pursued different skills in life. Hierarchy in marriage was explicitly established before the fall. "The possession of certain gifts makes one suitable for a position of superiority and others suitable for obedience. Hierarchy is, therefore, not some postlapsarian necessity. But neither is it morally neutral. It is good in itself, even of higher worth than egalitarian arrangements." The goodness of creation is not found in each part obtaining equality with every other part…The diversity of ranks in human society, each performing its function for the whole, is society's perfection. Hence, by nature the perfection of human societies assumes an inegalitarian principle." A sinless society with those gifted to lead in positions of authority is obviously "more perfect," as he uses the term, than a society without that.
Civil Government
Pretty much all of the above in this chapter I find to be fairly obvious and indisputable once one thinks it out, but from here on he attempts to prove the existence of prelapsarian civil government and how it would have looked, and this section is where things seem speculative. Additionally, all of the above has been fairly universally affirmed by the church, but significant figures, including Augustine and Martin Luther, explicitly rejected that a civil government would have existed sans fall.
He has 2 arguments for the necessity of prelapsarian civil government, clashing interests and the inequality of gifts.
1. Since communities would contain a diverse group of people, all with different jobs, families, and incomplete knowledge of others, there would inevitably be varying and clashing interests, despite the fact that all share the same ultimate end of God's glory. "Clashing interests occur not from ill-will or from the neglect of neighbor, but from natural epistemic limitations: we cannot know in every case how our actions might hinder or frustrate others in pursuit of their ends…Clashing interests might include externalities in production or in community development. For example, the construction of a dam might harm those living downstream…[Thus] the ordering agent of civil society, even in a prelapsarian world, is civil government. Its original function is not to restrain sin, since it orders an unfallen people. Its purpose is positive: it reconciles the diverse interests of families and vocations in order to establish and maintain civil peace." Prelapsarian laws would have been freely followed by all trusting that they are for their good, without need for threat of punishment.
This argument alone I don't find convincing of the necessity of a governmental structure similar to ours, because it doesn't address the real presence of God with man prior to the fall, while some type of hierarchy would have to exist, there's no obvious reason it couldn't come directly from God.
2. "Egalitarian social arrangements leave no means for those suited to command to govern others, and therefore nature would be in contradiction, if egalitarianism were natural. Thus, the necessity of civil hierarchy, and the denial of egalitarianism, follows from the existence of unequal civil virtue by nature…A natural aristocracy would arise in each community to rule, establishing a rule by the best [in civil skills]."
"Since civil society is a composition of households and men are the heads of households, the public signaling of political interest…would be conducted by men, for they represent their households and everyone in it…If one affirms male-headship and individualism, then household representation is an empty title (lacking a distinct outward-facing end)." Women's suffrage is a result of the Fall. lol.
Chapter 2
This chapter is on the effects of the fall, what changed and what stayed the same.
He asserts that total depravity as classically articulated is commonly misunderstood. It did not state that the fall completely destroyed man's nature, or that he lost his knowledge of natural law or his entire ability to perform it, nor did man lose his faculty of reason or civic virtue. "The reformed doctrine of sin as articulated by post-Reformation Reformed theologians is not unlike that of Roman Catholic Thomists."
The natural gifts of man were corrupted but not destroyed. The spiritual gifts, those necessary for his perfection and ability to pursue eternal life and worship God rightly from the heart — faith and righteousness "to perform theological good"— were lost. Man can no longer choose spiritual things.
Our natural instincts were corrupted but their fundamental principle remained, "all men have impressions of civil order and honesty." - Calvin. "With respect to the moral commandments of the second table of the law there is always much agreement among the nations, inasmuch as the work of the law continues to be written on their hearts." - Herman Bavinck. "Even without a teacher they [pagan nations] have learned that God should be worshipped, parents honored, a virtuous life be led and from which as a fountain have flowed so many laws concerning equity and virtue enacted by heathen legislatures, drawn from nature itself." - Turretin.
All the essential components existing today were present also before the fall. The distinctions and dissimilarities between men and women, parents and children, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends; the numerous institutions and relations in the life of society such as marriage, family, child, rearing, and so forth; the alternation of day and night, workdays and the day of rest, labor and leisure, months and years; men's dominion over the Earth through science and art, and so forth – while all these things have undoubtably been modified by sin and changed in appearance, they nevertheless have their active principle and foundation and creation, in the ordinances of God, and not in sin. - Herman Bavinck
The corruption of our natural social relations have run rampant, polygamy was common, nations unjustly dominate each other, men defraud each other, hatred of other ethnic groups has been strong, "but these are abuses of these relations. The fundamental relations of Man — Damascus, Ken, national, international, civil, and spiritual — are ubiquitous among fallen man, because natural law, reason, and instinct remain operative." The fall didn't create new institutions, it corrupted those that already existed.
"The Bible recognizes the validity and rightness of all the constitutional principles and impulses of our nature. It therefore approves of parental and filial affection, and, as is plain from this and other passages, a peculiar love for the people of one's own race and country." - Charles Hodge (Rom 9:3)
"Our fundamental instincts—say, a mother's preference for her own children—are reliable; they say something about our nature as created. The same is true of our instincts or 'biases' for our own people and country. They are natural to us by design. We can further conclude that the diversity of nations throughout history is not a part of the fall but if human nature."
While prelapsarian government would've existed to direct well-intentioned but uncoordinated individuals to the common good, the fall necessitated the augmentation of civil government with the power to suppress sin. It still has the same end in mind—civil peace & the best conditions for the good of its people—but it can no longer achieve that perfectly. It now must craft policy that involves unpleasant trade-offs between competing goods. Additionally, hierarchical power is now abused, which typically requires some degree of egalitarian checks to ensure good behavior (e.g., universal voting, anti-discrimination laws), but these are postlapsarian institutions and not natural to man. Rights like voting or the ability to hold office are positive rights, not strictly natural. "It follows that the more righteous the community, the fewer required egalitarian institutions."
"Redemption restores to us the same gifts that Adam possessed, we are equipped for the same sort of works. Whatever tasks Adam had, Christians too have those tasks, for those tasks are the only telos of those gifts by their nature." Thus, he repeatedly comes back to the phrase, "Grace restores nature."
The Gospel & Natural Social Relations
"Since Grace restores nature and natural law contains all the moral principles concerning social relations, the Gospel does not alter the priority and inequality of loves amongst those relations. A Christian should love his children over other children, his parents over other parents, his kin over other kin, his nation over other nations. The instincts that lead one to these unequal loves are reliable. Grace did not, despite what is popularly, suggested, introduced, equal love for all, or an overriding duty to the abstract 'marginalized' or to the abstract 'outcast' or to 'identify with the weak.' There are no 'Gospel duties' that undermine duties to those who are closely bound to you. Grace affirms these natural hierarchies of love. Matthew Henry rightly said that 'the highest degrees of divine affection must not divest us of natural affection.'"
The rise of neo-Calvinism has led many Reformed churches to believe that the Gospel ushered in a full-scale social & political revolution to change the fundamental structures of our world. What most of Christianity considered the natural order is actually a fallen structure." And the Gospel began a social revolution that strikes at the heart of all pre-Gospel social relations. He disagrees, saying, "First, the Gospel is primarily about eternal life." Social structures were originally designed to support man in his pursuit of the good. The Gospel did inaugurate a new means to his good—eternal life (meaning, not the covenant of works)—so those social structures should point to and support this new means to it. "Christians are not required to conduct a thorough critique of the 'order of nature' reflected across time and nations but rather to consider that order as indicative of man's natural needs in social organization. "The Gospel does not eliminate, undermine, or 'critique' the basic principles that have structured societies and relations of all ages and peoples."
"Regarding our eternal salvation, it is true, that one must not distinguish between man and woman, or between king and shepherd, or between German and Frenchman. Regarding policy however, we have what St. Paul declared here; for our Lord Jesus Christ did not come to mix of nature, or to abolish what belongs to the preservation of decency and peace among us." - John Calvin commenting on 1 Cor 11:2-3.
"The spiritual kingdom of Christ and civil government are things very widely separated…[The civil] government is distinct from the spiritual and eternal kingdom of Christ, [which] begins the heavenly kingdom in us." - John Calvin. The 2 kingdoms are separated in the sense that the spiritually unifying consequences of the Gospel do not subvert the natural order or change nature. The Gospel does not eradicate national distinctions in the same way it doesn't eradicate sex distinctions.
He has a very narrow view of the purpose of the instituted church. It is for the local administration of sacred things to an assembly of believers (preaching and administering sacraments). It does not form an alternative civil community.
In conclusion, "grace does not destroy what is natural but restores it." Grace perfects nature.
Chapter 3 - Nationalism
I think love for one's country means chiefly love for people who have a good deal in common with oneself (language, clothes, institutions) and in that is very like love of one's family or school: or like love (in a strange place) for anyone who once lived in one's home town. - C.S. Lewis
This chapter is a conceptual, not historical, treatment of nationalism.
What is a Nation
"The idea of nation is notoriously difficult to define, and identifying true nations is equally challenging." He uses the terms nation, ethnicity, and people-group basically synonymously. "No nation (properly speaking) is composed of two or more ethnicities." This is because a nation is a community that acts collectively for its collective good, a government ruling multiple nations inevitably deals with the competing customs & interests of the various "nations" fighting against each other.
"Ethnicity, as something experienced, is familiarity with others based in common language, manners, customs, stories, taboos, rituals, calendars, social expectations, duties, loves, and religion." Having these similarities gives a community unity, allowing people to understand each other, work towards common goals, and gives a sense of "home" to its people. Nations are more than just a common bloodline (though the bible does affirm that there is a natural bond simply from ancient blood ties), or a common creed (though nations have those too), nations arise from peoples conducting life together throughout their history going back generations. A nation is more than, but not less than a "community in blood," bloodties are essential to a nation, but they aren't alone sufficient, common history in living in a common land, common culture and beliefs are all a part of what makes a nation.
Principle of Similarity
"The human instinct to socialize and dwell with similar people is universal." Likeness causes friendship, love, and community. The principle is that we naturally do, and it is good to, love those more similar to us more than those who are not.
Your instinct to conduct everyday life among similar people is natural, and being natural, it is for your good...since man is drawn to the goods made possible in social life, he is naturally drawn to the necessary conditions for that good, which includes in-grouping according to the principle of similarity...Hence, the preference for those who are similar is natural and arises not necessarily from maliciousness towards those who are dissimilar. Similarity enables you to exercise the highest love to your fellow man and to receive the highest love in return.
We are attracted to similar people, and nation-states require a level of homogeneity to be healthy, because national similarities and ties are necessary to cooperate in a productive, common life.
"Since the intensity of an act results from the principle of action, and the principle of action is unity and similarity, we ought to love in a higher degree and more intensely those who are more like us and more closely united to us." - Thomas Aquinas. We love our family more than other families, our Christian brothers more than everyone else, and our nation/ethnicity/people-group more than other nations.
Mass immigration [from culturally alien nations], in the form it is practiced in the liberal West, is a profoundly socially destructive force, antagonistic to historic modes of life. It fractures the foundations of society upon which liberal institutions and freedoms are built...It is less a matter of welcoming the stranger into our society as a guest, and much more typically a matter of a host people being steadily dispossessed of their land by a liberal polity to which all are slowly subjected as an evermore atomized and amorphous mass of people. - Alastair Roberts
Nations (like households) should have hospitality, but when immigration occurs at such a level that it is displacing the nation itself and causing huge societal conflict, it is harmful and immoral.
Nations also should make conditions to becoming a citizen that work to ensure those joining have connection to the people and place. Aquinas, agreeing with Aristotle, suggested newcomers shouldn't be able to become citizens until the 2nd or 3rd generation of residence.
Love
Christians will ask, "Aren't we called to love all equally?" assuming the affirmative answer is obvious. But...a quick glance at the Christian tradition (and mild reflection on one's own relationships) reveals the almost ubiquity of the opposite view - that the intensity of love varies by degree according to similarity and the extent that another is bound to you. Augustine writes, for example, that "since one cannot help everyone, one has to be concerned with those who by reason of place, time, and circumstances, are by some chance more tightly bound to you."
The different types of love of God are often split in reformed theology into benevolence (well wishes) beneficence (action toward someone's good) and complacence (the special delight and pleasure the Godhead takes in their trinitarian union, and that believers uniquely share in). He uses this concept of complacent love (a kind of self-love he says) to explain the special love we have according to the principle of similarity.
Complacent self-love is not so much a delight in your child's or your county's virtues. Nor is it some means of excusing bad behavior...You still love your own child even when he or she is being disobedient; indeed, your great disappointment in their disobedience is because of your love and preference for your child. The same is true for you and your people. This explains why the apostle Paul had "great heaviness and continual sorrow in [his] heart" for his "kinsmen," who had rejected Christ (Rom. 9:2-3).
Everyone loves his country, his manners, his language, his wife, his children; not because they are the best in the World, but because they are absolutely his own, and he loves himself and his own labors in them. - Johann Herder
The conclusion section of this chapter, detailing the ills of the universalist, non-nationalist west, was really good.
Something this chapter does not really address at all is the apparent Scriptural teachings to push us beyond our basic natural instincts. Christ taught that even unbelievers loved their own, but His people were to go beyond that. Wolfe would say that yes we should love all people, but that that doesn't go against the principle of first taking care of those closest to you. "The fall introduced the abuse of social relations and malice towards ethnic differences" and that is what Christ was teaching against.
Chapter 4 - The Christian Nation
Many today reject the possibility of the Christian nation, claiming that only individuals and churches can be qualified as "Christian." God redeemed individuals and established the church to serve Christians, they might claim. But don't we have Christian colleges, Christian seminaries, Christian publishers, Christian businesses, Christian charities, Christian coffee shops, and more? Yes, but these are voluntary associations, I suspect they would say. But what when about the family? Can the family be Christian? It would seem that if nations cannot be Christian, then the family cannot be Christian.
"The Christian nation is analogous to the Christian family. The christian family is the natural family Christianized." It is christianized in the sense that its collective direction and purpose has been oriented towards honoring God. "The family, as an entity, is not redeemed by the work of Christ, nor is it an institution of grace. " If a nation cannot be Christian, than neither can a family. But of course there is such a thing as the Christian family…Its natural principles are fulfilled in the light of grace.
"An implicit Christian nation is an unfaithful nation, one that lacks the will to explicitly place itself under God."
Christian Nationalism Defined
Christian Nationalism refers is a totality of national action, consisting of civil laws and social customs, conducted by a Christian nation as a Christian nation, in order to procure for itself both earthly and heavenly good in Christ.
He is not arguing that Christian government can in itself make people be saved.
Civil power cannot directly bring about spiritual good. No civil magistrate can command or exercise dominion over the conscience. Civil power cannot legislate or coerce people into belief; it can only command outward things – to outwardly do this or not do that. No classical Protestant has ever claimed that civil action can itself bring about assent to, let alone true faith in, the Gospel. Though the ultimate purpose of civil action can be the spiritual good of the people, the direct object cannot be the conscience. Spiritual good is a matter of the heart before God in Christ. Thus civil action for the advancement of the gospel only indirectly operates to that end.
Natural law is universal, which some use to argue that government should be "common" based solely on natural principles. He argues that supernatural truths interact with natural principles such that a Christianized civil order is grounded in natural principles—e.g., 1: you ought to obey God's commandments (natural principle). 2: God commands, "don't eat of the fruit of the tree." (supernatural truth). Therefore 3: You ought to obey that command. Natural principles can lead to supernatural conclusions.
He presents 8 independent arguments that civil government ought to direct its people to the Christian religion which I have very briefly summarized below.
1. People are prior to government and can establish a government for their good, including spiritual good, and thus they ought to do this.
2. If civil government is in principle prevented from knowledge of spiritual good, it must in principle affirm that earthly goods are the chief end of man. But that is false, which would result in the government orienting people to their detriment.
3. Civil government ought to regulate outward things for the complete good of the people.
4. Civil is not an ad hoc instrument, but is a prelapsarian institution necessary for man's good according to his nature. It was necessary for ordering man to his original ends, and it still should today order man to his ends, including true religion.
5. The telos of society is supporting man in procuring all good things, most fundamentally heavenly good. Civil government is a means of society for those ends, which includes religion.
6. Civil government has an interest in directing its people to anything that contributes to their safety and its administration of law and justice. A people right before God contributes to this.
7. Government must encourage the civic virtue of its people. Nothing greater contributes to virtue than true piety before God. Thus government should direct its people towards true piety.
8. Almost all civilizations instituted some means of support for religion, this indicates such support is, in principle, permissible in natural law and part of the telos of civil communities. This was a common argument of Christians historically, appealing to the writings of pagans like Plato & Aristotle who argued (by necessity) from natural principles.
He responds to the objection appealing to 1 Peter 1:17 that we are exiles in this world (and thus shouldn't strive for Christian societies at large) by saying that we are set apart from the fallenness of the world, not earthly life itself or natural principles. We are strangers to the world in decay because we have been reconciled to nature, and that this objection is highly historically conditioned and would have been unknown to the church throughout history.
There isn't much discussion in this chapter of practically why it's good for the government to be Christian, focusing more on arguing that it just should be by design. The practical reason as I see it is simply that it supports cultural Christianity, which is good for all the reasons covered below in chapter 5, most importantly that it ultimately leads more people to salvation by pre-rationally teaching them the truths of Christianity.
Chapter 5 - Cultural Christianity
The argument for cultural Christianity that is much more persuasive to me is not "Wouldn't you prefer to have neighbors with Christian standards of decency, respect, and admonishment, even if it is merely cultural?", but that Cultural Christianity actually aids immensely in the spreading and acceptance of the Gospel to people, that culture teaches. Social power is not wrong innately, in fact it is good, as it is required for society to function. But its abuse can lead people to sin. It can be harnessed for good or evil.
What It Is and What It's For
Cultural Christianity is a mode of religion wherein social facts normalize Christian cultural practices (i.e., social customs) and a Christian self-conception of a nation in order (1) to prepare people to receive the Christian faith and keep them on the path to eternal life, (2) to establish and maintain a commodious social life, and (3) to make the earthly city an analog of the heavenly city.
"Cultural Christianity, as a mode of Christian religion, is pre-reflective, prejudicial judgment on the rightness of Christian belief and practice."
Social power is not evil in itself or a result of the fall. It arises naturally and necessarily in human relations, and it directs people to act in ways that are necessary for living well but that nature does not directly supply. Its abuse can direct one to sin, of course, but the force itself is good, for it serves a necessary function in human society.
Cultural Christianity uses social power to normalize Christian beliefs and practices. The content of Christian culture communicates the Gospel & other truths of Christianity to the people. Arguments saying that the professing Christians in Christian nations are fake assume a modern idea that only belief that came about through dispassionate logical reflection of competing arguments is somehow valid. This is just not how people work, most (possibly all) of our most profoundly held beliefs were instilled in us pre-rationally through our family and broader society as children. People don't come to positions by dispassionate logic, our affections play a much greater role, and cultural Christianity teaches our affections.
There is an excellent extended paragraph on p214 detailing the collapse of Christian practices among believers (family worship/bible reading catechizing children) following the decline of cultural Christianity. "The church can and should admonish you to conduct [such] practices…but society is, by its nature, most effective at ensuring that the people's heart owns it."
The end of Cultural Christianity is both the salvation of souls and harmonious societal life together. It achieves the salvation of souls only indirectly, by presenting the content of the Gospel and Christianity to people, teaching their pre-rational affections to love Christianity, a preparative action for salvation, which of course can only occur through the spiritual power of regeneration, but God uses earthly means to bring people to salvation. No one can be saved without assenting to the truth claims of Christianity, cultural Christianity cannot produce faith, but can cause assent, one of the necessary preconditions for salvation.
Against the Celebration of the Decline of the West
He strongly attacks the positions of those positively celebrating the decline of Christianity in the West, exemplified by Russell Moore, who seemingly prefers hostility to cultural affinity for Christianity because it weeds out hypocrites.
Perhaps you are exceptional at protecting your children; you can afford to send to a Christian school, effectively paying an ideological security service. But most people are not exceptional; most people are average; and most cannot pay to secure their kids from society's ideology...All Christian parents today have to stay wearingly vigilant to protect their children from some "authority" or television show...pushing the latest progressive moral agenda...Increasingly they must separate their children from basic programs, services, and events...Left-wing ideology is the norm; it is the social fact of our society, impressed upon the minds of us all.
To reject cultural Christianity is to affirm "the Gospel flourishes when the enemies of God have social power, and it flounders when Christians have this social power. Thus, a God-ordained natural power - a means of ensuring social solidarity - aids the church when this power is hostile to Christ. The God of the Gospel turned something that he ordained, as the God of nature, against the Gospel so that it would advance. Bizarrely, social power remains a means to faith, but only when that power is abused...How can the proper use of a natural power harm the Gospel but its abuse support it?
"How can the proper use of a natural power harm the Gospel but its abuse support it?" Is a great line, the fact that God can work through evil to produce a good, doesn't mean that we should prefer that evil out of some desire for a later good. God also produces great good through good itself. We shouldn't act as if because God produced much good out of Joseph being sold into slavery, that Joseph on the front end of that story shouldn't have tried to prevent the evil his brothers were doing to him if he could have.
Responding to the criticism of hypocrisy
He completely acknowledges that cultural Christianity often produces hypocrisy and has no innate spiritual power to regenerate.
"The question is whether the normalization of Christianity in society prepares people for the reception of the Gospel such that (ordinarily) more come to true faith than in the absence of cultural Christianity."
Any sociological study of the question would show a yes response by a huge margin, but of course true faith is invisible and cannot be measured empirically. Still, there are reasons to believe the answer is yes. It communicates the Gospel to the people, teaches their affections to love Christianity, & convinces many of the people of the truthfulness of the claims of Christianity.
The primary thing that cultural Christianity does is communicate the teachings of Christianity to the people, and the Word of God is the power through which people are saved.
To me, it is just self-evident that a society where the content of the Gospel is being taught to the citizens is infinitely preferable in almost every way to one where they are inculcated to dismiss Christianity.
"The power of the Word does not increase or decrease based on the speaker's knowledge of who is and is not truly converted." And regardless, a nation hostile to Christianity doesn't actually solve the problem of hypocrisy and knowing who the true believers are anyway.
It is rather foolish, especially in our time, to think that hostility to orthodoxy will create a clear distinction between saved and unsaved...[e.g.] Priestesses now have regular columns in national newspapers...The regime will not permit a clear line distinguishing regenerate and non-regenerate.
While the costliness of faith in times of persecution can reveal the authenticity of faith, it does not clearly reveal the authenticity of belief, as in the inward assent of propositions...Persecution, if directed at those who affirm orthodox beliefs, will reveal true and false faith...But this speaks only to the direct effects of the less frequent overt form of persecution. More often, persecution arises out of a more general and implicit social hostility against the Christian faith. That hostility conditions society against not merely faith itself but assent to the Gospel. It portrays the Gospel as ridiculous, implausible, immoral, dangerous, or subversive. Now, since direct assent to the Gospel is a precondition for faith in the Gospel...social hostility eliminates a necessary condition for faith. In consequence, society seeks to inject into each person's sentiments an anti-Christian prejudice.
Modern liberalism is not designed to overtly persecute Christians. it attacks intellectual assent to Christianity, portraying Christianity as silly, out-of-date, harmful, or ridiculous. Christians are so historically conditioned to be on guard against persecution for their faith, they have been completely blindsided by the assault on the plausibility of the Christian truth claims from a liberal modernist perspective.
Not really relevant to his argument, but just how many young girls getting raped or turned into a "man" is the disappearance of some professing Christian "hypocrisy" worth?
Post Script:
All Christians today agree that the family is a vital source for transmitting the faith to the younger generation. It is not clear, however, why the family can play this role but not civil society. Being a member of a Christian family does not save any of its members. No one accuses Christian families of being hypocrite-factories, sending their kids straight to hell. So why is preparation permitted in the home but not in civil society? It seems that the typical reasons to reject cultural Christianity strike just as hard against Christian families.
Any arguments against cultural Christianity would also eliminate Christian families. If it is good for parents to raise their children teaching them Christ and God often uses that in the salvation of those children, than civilizations can do the same.
Chapter 6 - What Laws Can & Cannot Do
This chapter discusses what law is, natural law and its relation to the Mosaic law and what our laws should be today, and what law's end (i.e. ultimate purpose) is; he also contrasts his view with that of the Theonomists and includes a brief section on disobeying unjust laws.
Social custom…implicitly orders us to earthly and heavenly ends by the force of social power. But this prejudicial ordering has limitations: it is neither centralized nor possessed and exercised by a decisional authority, nor does it permit the use of outward force to achieve compliance. In its nature, prejudice is unwieldy; difficult to direct, shift and change; and lacks flexibility.
For this reason social power is not sufficient alone to order a society to its right ends. Social power alone is unwieldy and able to be subverted; it is vulnerable to being undermined by a hostile government. Civil powers that have been determined to eliminate christian social norms in the West over the last century have been significantly successful. Laws aimed at destabilizing gender norms, sexual conduct, & acceptable language have been remarkably successful (though an underlying knowledge of the reality of the world, such as sex differences & their implications, is impossible to eliminate entirely). & An ideal nation has civil power & social power reinforcing each other in right conduct & beliefs. Western concern for liberty has provided the pretext for the government to act to eliminate any type of social power against anti-Christian behavior.
He defines civil law as "an ordering of reason enacted and promulgated by a legitimate civil authority, that commands public action for the common good of civil communities." (Ordering in the sense of to give an order.)
"Natural law prescribes universal principles and universal conclusion from those principles." Example of Deut 22:8 presupposing a principle of not constructing things that cause reasonable possibilities that someone may injure themselves, but the specific command to put a railing on your roof is not a universally binding command in cultures where roofs are not hazardous (in America people don't regularly go on their roofs), but the principle here remains valid and should be used in building codes.
A purported law that does not order according to reason is no law at all. That is to say, unjust laws are not laws, properly speaking, and so they do not bind the conscience to obedience...lex iniusta non est lex [An unjust law is not a law] was affirmed from Cicero to Augustine through Aquinas to classical Protestantism.
His discussion on nonconformity to unjust laws is elaborated on in his chapter on revolution. He does state here that citizens should, in general, give great deference to the law giving authority on the assumption that the lawgiver has good reasons for his judgments since he is in a better position to judge what is in the best interests of the nation as a whole, but this deference is not absolute. Individuals have the right to disregard laws that are unjust, because they aren't truly laws at all. He also generally thinks resistance through a "lesser magistrate" is generally the best way to resist.
"An important principle of civil law is that its reach is limited to things that the other spheres of life cannot effectively regulate to the common good. Thus, the individual, family, society, civil associations, and churches have primacy in ordering the things of life." I think I'm likely to agree with his claim here, but he just presents it as a principle without any argumentation for it and I would like to see it clearly justified.
He reiterates his statements from chapter 4 that law cannot touch the conscience "because the conscience is a forum of persuasion and civil power is a power of command."
He makes a distinction between righteous and good laws. All just laws are both righteous and good, righteous meaning the are based in a true principle of natural law, and good meaning they suit the circumstances and actually work towards the common good. Thus we don't just copy & paste the same natural or mosaic law to all nations in all times. Lawmaking requires discernment and application based on the particulars of a people. The Mosaic law is one example of a perfect application of the natural law, but it wouldn't be perfect for us today exactly as it was; it serves as a general guide for all nations when crafting law. The end of all law is the common good of the community, achieved by securing their natural rights, punishing evildoers, & praising good conduct.
General principles of the natural law cannot be applied to all men in the same way on account of the great variety of human affairs: and hence arises the diversity of positive laws among various people. – Thomas Aquinas
Related to that, but mentioned in the next chapter he says that, "Pastors are in a good position to determine what is righteous, but they are (ordinarily) not in the best position to determine what would conduce to the common good with regard to policy."
Civil government is Christian not because it declares itself Christian (whether through pomp, titles, or constitutional preambles) but because it actually orders a Christian people to their complete good. This includes acting for the peace and good order of the instituted church, which administers the chief good. Thus, action, not declaration, makes a commonwealth Christian.
Also, in the next chapter, but more relevant in this section, is the below:
Whether or not Sunday is now a holy day by divine positive command, is irrelevant here; the fourth commandment, like all the other commandments, is perpetually binding as to his underlying moral principle. All ought to set aside a day for undistracted worship and divine contemplation. Hence, there must be some positive institution of the Christian Sabbath, and the most fitting day (given apostolic practice, and by long tradition) is each Sunday...Sabbath laws train people in virtue; they are pedagogical.
I believe the phrase "Laws train people in virtue; they are pedagogical." is incredibly true and very important.
All law, including those of a Christian nation, is based in natural principles, but based on his arguments in chapter 4 those natural principles can have supernatural conclusions.
He has a brief section comparing his understanding of Christian Nationalism to modern Theonomy movements. He is generally positive of theonomists, but says they have tended to neglect social power and social cohesion, & to be hostile to cultural particularity.
Chapter 7 - The Specifics of What a Christian Prince Will Do
"The nation is a moral person, responsible for itself before God." This is clearly shown in Scripture in the countless places God comdemns, punishes, or rewards nations for their collective behavior. As a moral person, the nation has a will as a collective entity. Laws are an expression of that will, what the nation says is good and bad, right and wrong, virtuous and evil, is revealed in their law.
He summarizes his earlier argument for government's natural existence below:
Now, since the nature of man, necessitate civil society, and since the nature of that society requires an ordering agent, the power of that ordering agent must be natural as well. This is a consequence of natural reason: would God create something that lacks what is necessary for that thing to achieve its purpose? Would God create human society with an inherent need for an ordering agent and not provide the power for ordering? No. God designs are always coherent. It follows that the power of magistrate – civil power – is part of the created order. As Samuel Rutherford writes [in Lex, Rex], "God, and nature intendeth the policy and peace of mankind, then must God and nature have given to mankind a power to compass this end; and this must be a power of government."
The creation of governments is natural to man, but the specific arrangement is voluntary. Similar to marriage being a natural institution, but the union of any particular man & woman is a choice. The arrangement is a product of the community, the authority is from God (innate to the nature of man) but it is mediated through the consent of the people. Civil leaders hold a fiduciary power instituted by God & transferred to them by the people.
His language describing the "Christian prince" is extremely high, saying they hold the most excellent office, exceeding that of a church minister, they are a sort of "national god" in the sense of being a mediator of divine rule for a nation, they embody the people & execute their will, they inspire noble action and love & enact justice. I would not use all the same language he does here.
We live in an age with a dearth of great men. He attributes this to the de facto gynocracy we live under. Masculinity is pathologized & the feminine ideals of fairness, equity, equality, & inclusion have been institutionalized, resulting in feminine but self-destructive policies (e.g., mass immigration). He uses the term "prince" because of his belief that it will take a great man to inspire society to overthrow this degradation, return to the self-confident pursuit of greatness and the recognition of hierarchy & particularity & reinstitute the masculine ideals that civilization requires to flourish.
The Christian prince can "enact laws that both correct ungodly and unrighteous features of national culture and support good features of culture." This is exact opposite of many of our laws now (in important issues like family law and welfare this is the direct material result of female institutional empowerment, to tie into the previous paragraph).
There is an extended discussion of two kingdoms theology, which Calvin explains as one kingdom "placed in the soul or inward man, relates to eternal life…the other pertains only to…the external regulation of manners…The government is distinct from the spiritual and internal kingdom of Christ." The church, both invisible in the hearts of man and visible in the preaching of the Word & administration of the sacraments is a part of Christ's spiritual kingdom & not under the jurisdiction of the State.
When Christ said "My kingdom is not of this world" He was contrasting civil and spiritual power. The spiritual kingdom does not advance at the point of a sword, but freely by the Word. This does not mean that civil powers don't have an obligation to submit to the law of God revealed in Nature or order society towards the spiritual kingdom. "Spiritual power is insufficient to order outward life…[it was] neither intended nor able to." Not sure what I think about that statement.
He denies that any civil leader can be the head of the Church because they wield civil power only not spiritual power and Christ is the sole ruler of the church.
However, he believes that the State can act for the benefit of the church, in the same way that a husband doesn't perform the duties of his wife but procures what is necessary for her to fulfill those duties, and even approves or corrects her performance. The ruler should "correct the lazy and erring pastor but not perform the duties of pastor." He also says the Christian ruler should fund the ministry & provide schools for theological education and protect the church from heretics & disturbers of the peace. He even says the ruler has the power to call synods to resolve doctrinal conflicts & confirm or deny their judgments. He sympathizes with historical concern about civil authorities using this power, but he believes that in principal they do have it. He says civil leaders can eliminate error from the church, sense error cannot be truly a part of the church.
On the other side, he denies that ministers have the power to depose a ruler nor absolve people of their oath to him, nor lead a revolt against him, even if he is erring concerning morals or ecclesiology. They can cast spiritual judgment, excommunicate but their spiritual authority cannot remove his civil authority.
His described relationship of the church and the government gives me great pause. Rulers as a protector & provider of the church sounds nice, but talk of civil rulers deciding on doctrine and removing ministers they believe to be erring throws up so many alarm bells in my American mind.
Neither civil nor spiritual leaders have the power to institute new sacred ceremonies not proscribed in Scripture. But he does allow for the creation of particular days as religious holidays, as they are not regarded as holy in the absolute sense, in the same way you might especially praise God on the anniversary of your salvation, so to can nations.
He concludes with the encouragement to to "pray God would bring about, through a Christian prince, a great renewal."
Chapter 8 - The Right to Revolution
The dire situation of Christianity in the West calls for action. But what kind of action? If the general thrust of this work has been true, then the spheres and powers outside the instituted church and family are important, if not vital, for the Christian life. That is, each of the natural orders of life—civil, familial, ecclesiastical—has its distinct powers for good, and together they constitute a holistic ordering of man to the complete good. Today, the civil sphere is given subordinate status in Christian thought, shut off from cognizance of eternal things, and we are conditioned to believe that is normal and good. But the result is a deadening of our sense towards impropriety and impiety. Open blasphemy in our public square is shrugged off as "to be expected" or part of the world's "brokenness." We have settled into a posture of passive defense, bunkered behind the artificial walls of churches and the porous borders separating the family from society. A hostile and secularist ruling class roams free, and few Christians are willing to take the struggle to a higher level. But we do not have to live like this...Here I will justify violent revolution.
The above opening to this chapter is one of the most rousing I've read.
The Right to Resistance or Revolution
Revolutions occur when the people forcibly take back the civil power ruling power they delegated to transfer it to another entity. They can be either just or unjust.
Revolutions are just when the ruler is tyrannical. "A tyrant is any civil ruler who actions significantly undermine the conditions in which man achieves his true humanity or, as I've called it, the complete good. Tyrannical conditions strike at the fundamental and necessary features of human society that conduce to our good…A tyrant in effect is one who, though having the appearance of civil authority, is but a man ordering fellow men to great evil."
God instituted government for our good, not evil. They are God's ministers (Rom 13) for good not evil. So their commands are ultimately commands of God, but no unjust command is an ordinance of God, so unjust commands are commands of the man only, not of God, and are backed by nothing but human power; they do not bind the conscience.
This same principle is at work in all hierarchical relations. See the quote below regarding father-son and marriage relationships.
Consider the father-child relation. The child ought to obey his father within the scope of fatherly order. But if the father were to lose his mind and seek to murder his son, the son is free to resist, seize, and incapacitate his father…The same is true with the husband-wife relation, and with other relations. In each case, the principle is that when some superior acts in ways ill-fitting his office, he acts not as a superior but as a fellow man, and, thus, as an equal...For this reason, the authority can be resisted as an aggressor, though he retains his title.
This principle was a bit of a lightbulb moment for me, and immediately gave clarity to a lot of my thoughts on other institutions from marriage to church elders. Those in submission are obligated to obey those in authority as long as the command is in keeping with the authority of the office. If it is not, the authority is acting tyrannically and can be justly ignored. Governments act outside their authority when their commands order towards evil not good.
Just as individuals have the duty of self-preservation & self-defense so to do nations. A tyrant is a type of domestic enemy. A just violent revolution is a type of self-defense. Civic power is a fiduciary trust transferred by the people (though instituted by God) and thus they have the right to take it back.
Side note: Destroying a nation's cultural particularity is destroying a fundamental condition of living well (See Ch 1-3), and thus is tyrannical and a just cause for revolution.
Revolution For Christianity
He says that "Violence cannot itself advance Christ's kingdom. Indeed, this is the very reason why his kingdom is not of this world. But violence can be used to secure it indirectly & outwardly." The church doesn't advance by force (because it operates in the conscience), but force can be used to preserve & protect the church by confronting and eliminating outward threats to it. [This sounds at first glance like an attempt to get around or explain away the general thrust of Christ's teachings, but on the other hand, to deny this is ultimately to deny that Christians have the right to self-defense, which is absurd.]
Civil rulers who attack Christianity have attacked God Himself. They are not acting as ministers of God and are enemies of their people's good.
Christians were not prepared for the challenge of liberalism. We were on guard for threats to liberty and outward persecution (The stuff of Foxe's Book of Martyrs) but the West has mastered attacking Christianity through implicit and psychological means. "The uniqueness of our time is that modern liberal power seemingly protects religious liberty while simultaneously undermining religion with implicit social power. Secularism dominates the institutions and has normalized a 'neutral' value system that conflicts with Christian moral teaching. 'Neutrality' and 'diversity' provide the perfect cover for the pervasive use of implicit power to undermine and control religion." Christians have, largely willing, given the public sphere to hostile secularization. This is not natural or inevitable, and it is really incredible that secularism is the default assumption in all public environments in a nation where more than 80% of us believed in God (more than 90% up until 2011). The belief in God was very firmly established and it has taken decades of forced secularization to even whittle away 20%, yet still secularism dominates the culture. "Though seemingly limited in explicit power, liberal regimes have universal reach. Every square inch is secularist, unless granted an exception by the state…The universalize culture in the US, generated largely by those on the coasts, has created conditions – foreign to much of western history and theology – that preclude Christian culture in a Christian self-conception at the state, county, and town levels."
The regime's chief objective is suppressing an activist Christian religion that seeks Christian normalization and anti-secularism. The American regime does not want to eradicate religion. Thinking so was the error of prior generations of concern Christians, and perhaps also the error in strategy of the New Atheists 20 years ago. Rather, modern liberalism, at least in the post-Trump era, requires that the distinctives of the religion are either rendered harmless to the regime, or the regime harness it for its own ends. Harmless religion is a quirk, an expressive identity among other identities, or some harmless way to LARP a medieval fantasy or transcendent rites. Threatening religion is browbeaten by other Christians, who find psychological comfort in being subservient to those who despise them. Religion thereby is neutralized as a public threat to the regime, and the resulting Christian ethos is a perverse euphoria in being dispossessed of one's Christian heritage and celebrating the decline of the Bible belt or cultural Christianity or the ideals of Mayberry. It is a bizarre and inhumane inversion and distortion of true religion – our brave new religion does not give hope in the midst of decay and loss, but obligates you to celebrate the destruction of the very people and place that nourished you, even lead you to your faith.
Post Script: The reason the famous Romas 13 passage doesn't discuss revolution is easily explained by the fact that Paul commanding revolution at the time would have been absurd. His silence on the topic cannot be construed as a denial of its permissibility. "When revolution is unfeasible, Christians must wait patiently on God for deliverance—disobeying what is unjust and obeying what is just." The unjust ruler still retains his title until it is taken from him by the people, so his just laws are still binding and instituted by God until such a time as the people decide to remove his office from him.
Chapter 9 - Liberty of Conscience
In this chapter Wolfe argues for the government's right to punish the actions of false teachers, heretics, blasphemers, and idolaters.
All Christians agree that the government cannot compel internal things such as belief or feelings, nor should it punish someone for a false belief, nor punish someone who's false religion is causing no outward harm. But everyone also agrees that the government can punish actions of false religion like rape or murder, so in actually both sides agree that the government has the right to punish false religion that causes public harm, while not being able to touch the mind. But most today would limit harm to only physical [read: non-spiritual] harm. The argument being that God gave the government authority to prosecute crimes against human beings, not crimes against Himself. But Wolfe contends that "the assumption that external false religion does not harm souls [of others] is clearly false." Christians widely recognize this in other contexts, we praise parents who are diligent to keep their children away from anti-Christian influences so that the children are raised in the fear of the Lord, for example. Civil authorities, having power over civil space, ought to do the same. External false religion can harm other's souls by misleading them. "Therefore, [it] is rightfully subject to civil restraint or punishment."
There's no question that those who actively and outwardly expels damnable error, can lead people astray, especially when they have skill and personality. Even those who are eternally secure…can be diverted from the path of righteousness. Christian parents regularly act to keep their children from such people, ordering the household into an exclusively Christian space. Within the extent of their powers and vigilance, they eliminate anti-Christian influences so that children are raised in the fear of the lord. Civil authorities, having civil power over civil space, can and ought to do likewise.
The "neutral" or "common" space lasted only about twenty years, which shouldn't surprise us: the most common human arrangements in history for public space are decidedly not neutral…Experience over the last decades has made evident that there are two options: Christian nationalism or pagan nationalism. The totality of national action will either be Christian, and thus ordered to the complete good, or pagan – ordered to the celebration of degeneracy, child sacrifice (e.g., abortion), mental illness, and idolatry. Neutrality…will never hold… Christians ought to abandon their foolish commitment to neutrality, contestability, and viewpoint diversity.
This is somewhat the opposite line of argumentation taken by many modern Christians advocating for religious liberty against the encroaches of a hostile state, who say that the outward practice of religion is integral to what the religion is, and thus shouldn't be restricted, but those making those arguments usually just ignore thorny issues like religions of violence because the line of argument just is clearly false there, so in principle, the view that because outward expression of religion is integral to the religion it mustn't be hampered by the government is clearly false. The charge of causing hypocrisy is another lame objection, as all law causes hypocrisy in those who would otherwise do that behavior but are restrained against their will by the threat of punishment.
His view is that Christian civil government can restrain false religion that can harm souls, is subversive to Christian society, or causes disruption and unrest.
Prudence
That the government has, in principle, the right to restrain false religion doesn't necessarily mean it should. That is a question of prudence. It isn't an end, only a means to a "godly and tranquil public life."
Christians in the 17th-18th centuries who increased religious liberty did not do so largely out of a change in principles, but because experience showed them that prudence dictated more religious liberty better achieved the desired ends.
The "let the best argument win" prudential argument only works if you assume the other side is equally committed to contestability. But the last decade has shown that "free speech, openness, and contestability were all means to power for the left, not principles."
Progressive liberalism determines the acceptable range of opinion today, demanding that acceptable pundits on the right focus, their efforts on attacking the "far right." They must also have the same general concerns as the left (e.g., democracy, racial justice, LGBTQ rights), but they are allowed to have more "free market" solutions…The left-right fights in popular media give the appearance of wide disagreement, but this is a show, an illusion. The "liberal democratic" regime that we live in today has a narrow range of acceptable opinion, because it is ordered according to a…secularist vision of the good. The constraints for this vision are difficult to see because we are all enmeshed in them.
It is good to have diversity of viewpoints, but there will always be a range of acceptable opinion (The Overton Window) and it should be bound by Christian principles not secular progressivism. The fact that Christ's kingdom spreads through persuasion (really regeneration) of the mind does not entail a neutral public square. "neutrality or hostility to the faith, is not a prerequisite for genuine persuasion, and it is typically a hindrance. Prejudice, for Christianity, being preparatory, is a great help and persuading one to Christianity."
Another prudential argument is that if civil power is used against heretics someday it will be used against orthodoxy. However, "The power in question is already being used in the West to exclude religion from public life, culture, and institutions." The fact that power could be used for evil is always true but irrelevant. The civil power to punish murderers can also be used to aid murderers. The abuse of a thing does not negate the thing itself.
Non-Christians living in a Christian nation "are guaranteed a basic right to life and property (the absence of which would harm the common good), but they may be denied by law to conduct certain activities that could exploit or harm Christians or the Christian religion."
His view agrees with much of the prudential calls for general toleration, as it shows how different Christians are all able to live together in peace with their shared union with Christ.
Some of what he thinks it would be wise for the government to do, such as potentially enforcing church attendance (yikes!) I think would be unwise prudentially even if it were within the realm that the government does have the right to regulate.
Chapter 10 - America's Historic Anglo-Protestantism
In this chapter he argues that America's founding was based primarily on anglo-protestant principles and that the alleged influence of enlightenment thinking is overblown.
He first spends time discussing the religious situation in Puritan New England. Consistent with the protestant and reformed tradition, the puritans denied persecuting any other religious group for their religious beliefs, rather, measures taken against baptist or quaker groups were in response to specific instances of disturbing the peace. The baptists eventually achieved full toleration, not because of a change in the puritan's principles regarding absolute religious liberty, but because they showed they were capable of living in the Christian society without causing constant problems (prudence showed that religious liberty was the best policy in their situation).
He then jumps the founding era. Proponents of complete disassociation of civil government from religion were a distinct minority, but even they agreed that "religion was necessary for civic morals and public happiness." They argued that separation from government was good for religion.
The chapter includes a lot of quotes from various founding era statesmen illustrating that their arguments for religious liberty appealed to Christian protestant principles.
The most significant exception to the predominant view was Virginia. There James Madison and Thomas Jefferson's view of absolute religious toleration, without making the historic protestant distinction between inner and outer, won the day. However, Wolfe argues that Madison and Jefferson's importance on religious liberty in the founding era is exaggerated. Madison's view was extreme for his day, going past even that of John Locke. And Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance" on religious liberty was not relied on by the Supreme Court until the mid 20th century. There's little evidence that other states used Virginia as a model in determining there own constitutional positions on religious liberty.
The move towards Madison's view on religious liberty occurred more in the 19th century. The majority of those involved in ratifying the 1st amendment supported establishment in their own states. Therefore, it cannot be rejecting establishment in principle. Rather, it affirms the unsuitability & impracticality of Congress interfering in the states' exercise of religion with a specific church-state establishment at the federal level. At the time of the founding, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts had official establishments. It is only now after the 14th amendment that the federal government seized the power to prevent states' support of Christianity.
He says that is was a mistake for the founders not to include explicitly Christian language in the Constitution, but he says that was because the federal level of government was not viewed as the type of entity that needed a religious component.
Epilogue
He concludes with 37 short sections on various topics, discussing what could be the path forward.
The Christian Nationalist program is not conservative. There is nothing worthy of conserving of the liberal march of the last 40 years.
The United States military provides a good example of how conservatives are duped into fighting for causes that harm them. The military is full of patriotic, young Americans… who felt the duty to fight for their country. The impulse to serve is itself commendable… But this love of country was exploited, and young men were sent across the world to fight for "freedom" in places that…didn't care. We then see the rainbow flag in Kabul and NGOs advocating for transgender rights and gender studies programs…Get blown up in the name of liberal imperialism; shed blood to open up markets for Netflix and Pornhub; make the world safe for dudes in dresses.
America is basically an occupied nation; ruled by hostile elites who have imposed their will on an impotent populace.
As discussed in Chapter 7, we live under a sort of gynocracy where feminine virtues rule as civil vices. "Untethered empathy leads to policies that harm women and indeed everyone…The most insane and damaging sociological trends of our modern society are female-driven. The gynocracy is self-destructive and breeds social disorder. Feminine virtues greatly benefit individuals and society; they are indispensable. But they operate for good only when complemented with masculine leadership." Douglas Murray, in Strange Death of Europe, 'describes a German woman who, after being sexually assaulted by a migrant, 'lied about the identities of her attackers, because she did not want to "help fuel aggressive racism." She even wrote an open letter, apologizing to him!'"
"In modern life, truth and error are so subordinated in our minds to sentiments of good and bad that to affirm what is actually true, often requires you to endure the feeling of being bad for affirming it." This is very true, for this reason people refuse to say the objective truth about gender and racial realities, about homosexuality and sexual perversion, etc.
On the dominion mandate: "Human development is neither unnatural nor non-natural. Our development, though a product of choice, is natural to creation; it perfects creation. Thus, the developed landscapes and towns (and perhaps even cities) are natural. This should shape what we develop on the land and why we develop it." The unconditional pro-nature, anti-civilizationalism of the Left is a product of their opposition to God. They hate man fulfilling his purpose of taking dominion over the earth.
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