The Case for Christian Nationalism

2. Redeemed Nations | II. State of Grace (Part 1)

Previously:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

This section begins with a much needed and belated stating of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Wolfe does well in briefly expressing the need for a savior, and how the redeemed are not judged by the Law, but are still bound to it as a “rule for duty and happiness in this life”.¹ Within this description, though, is a quote of note on Adam:

The substance of this eternal life [in the state of glory] was not introduced in the Gospel: it is the same life promised to Adam.²

Before delving into Wolfe’s view of redemption, in which he claims Christians are returned to Adam’s full state of integrity, it should be noted again that he believes the probationary state of Adam would be indefinite, or at least long enough for mankind to leave the garden and populate a significant portion of the earth while under probation, and this extended humanity would then potentially ascend to glory through fulfilling the covenant of works. As shown above, this produces more hamartiological and soteriological questions than answers. For example, what would happen if hundreds of thousands of people populated the earth, and Adam, the covenental head, then decided to eat the fruit? Would the rest of humanity, who have been faithfully obeying the covenant, still be thrust into sin and death? It is doubtful that Wolfe has given the ramifications of his goodness of prelapsarian nations theory much soteriological thought - at least not along these lines - which undoubtedly has an effect on his overall view of salvation.

While it is true that the commandment to fill the earth (Genesis 1:28) comes before the naming of the forbidden fruit (Genesis 2:16-17) in Scripture, both Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 are two, complimentary, intertwined accounts of the same creation. As Francis Schaeffer wrote:

But there is a stronger case for unity [between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2] than the simple recognition of interplay and overlapping between the two accounts. Jesus himself ties them together. Hence, in order to set this unity aside, we would have to deny the way Jesus approached the two chapters. In answering the Pharisee’s question concerning divorce, Jesus said, “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female…” Jesus is alluding here to Genesis 1:27. But he continues: “And [God] said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh.” These later words in Matthew 19:4-5 are a quotation from Genesis 2:24. So Jesus puts the passages from Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 together as a unit.³

Thus we cannot unequivocally declare the commandment to be fruitful and multiply a prerequisite of the probation, any more than we can say God made man, male and female (Genesis 1:27), and then later made female again from man’s rib (Genesis 2:21-22). What is revealed in Genesis 1 through Genesis 3 is a condensed, unfathomably weighty revelation from the infinite Creator, containing both literal and metaphysical truths about a state of humanity vastly different from our own. It must be treated with cautious reverence. We are given no explicit confirmation that Adam’s probationary period would extend beyond the garden, or that man was to greatly multiply and share in the probationary state. To build an entire ethical and political system from the assumption of an indefinite probationary period, that would apply to innumerable humans, is the result of a very poor hermeneutic - or lack of one altogether, if this is one of the points of theology that Wolfe is completely relying on intermediaries for.

This theory begins to take on new dimensions in the definition of sanctification that follows. Though well stated in some ways, it contains highly questionable assertions about holiness shared between unfallen Adam and the redeemed. Wolfe claims that, “The restored image [of God in the redeemed] is the same in substance as that which Adam possessed before his fall, which oriented his heart to heavenly life… The believer is a complete human being, restored to integrity.” The proper assessment that, “The sanctified on earth are not perfect,” is followed up with, “but all the gifts that were either eliminated or corrupted by the fall are restored.” We are also told, “Reformed theologians of the 17th century were not scared of the term inherent righteousness.”⁴

The statement about the “restored image” in redeemed man is categorically false. Those who have the gift of the person of the Holy Spirit have their spirits rightly oriented towards God, but they are still corrupted by sin. While Adam’s spirit, pre-fall, was oriented towards God, and he was capable of sinning, he was not yet corrupted. Secondly, it is the same image of God between the redeemed and reprobate that makes the latter fully culpable for their sin (Romans 2:14-16). Paul told the church at Corinth to imitate him as he imitated Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1), yet he also had this to say about his behavior as a born again Christian:

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. (Romans 7:15-20)

And as Calvin noted in the Institutes:

The command of the law is, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). To accomplish this, the soul must previously be divested of every other thought and feeling, the heart purified from all its desires, all its powers collected and united on this one object. Those who, in comparison of others, have made much progress in the way of the Lord, are still very far from this goal. For although they love God in their mind, and with a sincere affection of heart, yet both are still in a great measure occupied with the lusts of the flesh, by which they are retarded and prevented from proceeding with quickened pace toward God.⁵

Sanctification is a process that begins when a believer is justified and that continues throughout their life. No one will be completely sanctified before their death (or, for a few, the return of Christ in their lifetime), and they will continue to sin until then. Wolfe affirms that he does not believe in complete holiness among the redeemed when he says “the sanctified on earth are not perfect”, but the way he describes a “restored image” and “inherent righteousness” in the children of God paints a rosier picture than exists in reality. This is concerning when we consider that much of his audience may be people who do not fully understand these very important points of doctrine. It could breed a sense of “Christian superiority” that, when combined with Wolfe’s championing of love of one’s own ethnicity/culture, could facilitate disastrous spiritual outcomes, especially when also mixed with his next topic of the dominion mandate among the redeemed.

The mandate is explained mostly through a critique of Westminster Seminary California professor, David VanDrunen’s, claim that redeemed man is not to continue Adam’s original work. Wolfe is correct that “Christians cannot bring heaven to earth, for Adam never had that ability in the first place,” and that Adam's dominion mandate was to “order earthly life”. But, as shown above, he has no Scriptural proof that the probationary mandate was to order that earthly life “to the promised heavenly life” any more than ordering would instead or also be an element of Adam's “heavenly” existence.⁶ In fact, the author of Hebrews tell us that the world to come will be subjected to man, in his state of glory (Hebrews 2:5-9). Therefore, it can be equally contested that this was the original “life promised to Adam” and his eventual progeny, should he have passed the probation in the garden.

[VanDrunen] fails to recognize that heavenly life was the gracious end of Adam’s obedience, not the natural end of it. Maturing the earth by his labor was natural to him, according to his nature, and this was natural to him even when considering Adam apart from the covenant of works.⁷

What was natural to unfallen man that, itself, was not a grace from the Creator? Wolfe here continues with his Promethean elevation of man’s nature as something seemingly self-contained. He says that “Grace perfects nature”⁸, but must we not first admit that grace repairs our corrupted nature? He will later say that grace restores nature, but, without acknowledging brokenness, this word also paints a mental picture of something already somewhat working as designed, and simply being cleaned up. With so many facets of redeemed man not altered by the Gospel, as Wolfe will continue to argue, would there be any significant difference between a revolutionary government formed on the basis of the Enlightenment value of man’s natural reason and one centered on claims of his natural mandate? As Timothy Tacket says of the disastrous pinnacle of the French Revolution, “The Terror arose… through a concatenation of developments emerging out of the very process of the Revolution itself,” a process born of “the profoundly humanistic faith in the ability of individuals to use their own good sense, their ‘reason’ to solve problems of all kinds.”⁹ It is quite reasonable to imagine a revolutionary National Assembly, of various political factions, denouncing each other as traitors for professing different interpretations of, and commitments to, “taking dominion”. I believe that this is why Wolfe, who is well knowledgeable in political theory, requires his proposed government to have a Caudillo, a Duce, a Christian Prince to “mediate the national will”¹⁰ and mitigate this inevitable political devolution. His theory's adherence to a foundation of Thomasian natural reason paints him into that corner, and negates any claims he may make regarding democratic checks.

Next:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

1. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 91-92.

2. Ibid., 92.

3. Francis A. Schaeffer, Genesis in Space & Time: The Flow of Biblical History, A Bible Commentary for Layman (Glendale, Calif: Regal Books, 1972), 40.

4. Stephen Wolfe, 93-96.

5. Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), sec. 3.19.4.

6. Stephen Wolfe, 96-98.

7. Ibid., 98.

8. Ibid., 101.

9. Timothy Tackett, The Coming of the Terror in the French Revolution (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2015), 342, 343.

10. Stephen Wolfe, 276.