The Case for Christian Nationalism

6. What Laws Can and Cannot Do | III. Civil Law in a Christian Commonwealth

Previously:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

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. (emphasis mine)¹

Martin Luther posted his ninety-five theses over five centuries ago. Since then, hundreds of major Protestant denominations have formed, each with their own set of unique beliefs that they considered important enough to disfellowship with another group. Conservative Presbyterians make up 0.8% of American citizens, less than a quarter of the number associated with a Pentacostal denomination, less than a sixth of the number of non-denominational Christians, less than a tenth of the number of Baptists, and less than 1/28th the amount of nonreligious Americans; there are even more liberal Presbyterians than conservative.² Wolfe will end his chapter on revolution with another emotional appeal, using authoritarian language of destiny rhetoric, to call for Christians to “cultivate [their] resolve” and make use of their current “power and right to act”.³ One must conclude that he either holds the delusional belief that conservative Christians still have the numbers to form a formidable revolutionary coalition, that he and his compatriots could carve out a tiny, Presbyterian nation in United States territory, or one of these groups could politic itself into a power-position in the right-wing side of an impending second civil war. I will address the logistical impracticality of Christian revolution (and its lack of Scriptural warrant in our place and time) when that chapter is reached, but here it is worth noting that Wolfe is not writing abstract theory; though he will later state in this section that other Christian commonwealths might not find a state church necessary, given the opportunity here and now, he would seek to violently impose Presbyterianism on his Christian countrymen.

It should also be restated that his “complete good” is not inherently Christian language, but very much inline with the language of 20th century totalitarian utopianism. Christianity tells us to seek heavenly good above earthly, and that the true good can be found in the most dire of circumstances (Colossians 3:2, Matthew 6:20, Philippians 1:21). As much as Wolfe says he dislikes post-war American cultural Christianity, he repeatedly appeals to its sensibilities of personal peace and affluence.

From his quotation of Franciscus Junius that “grace perfects nature; grace does not, however abolish it,”⁴ we can glean where he received this notion that he has repeated throughout the book. The same section of Junius’s The Mosaic Polity also states, “Law is the ordering of reason to the common good established by the one who has care for the community.”⁵ Wolfe has implicitly used and explicitly quoted this treatise so much in this chapter that one could call his view of law Juniusan as much as his view of nature is Thomasian. Interestingly, the French reformer contradicts Wolfe’s separation of command and power and his statement that law cannot alter belief, in this same section:

But any ordering of reason is so regulated that the reason of the one who orders influences the reason of those who are under the ordering, and in turn the reason of these would depend upon the reason of the one who orders. Only then must be it called a law. Any laws done in any other way are not laws, but must be called customs, unless perhaps someone would want to speak οµώνύµως [homonymous], or equivocally.⁶

Though his heavy reliance on Junius for definition of law results in a reduction of doctrinal errors in this chapter, and though this section’s main sentiment of the mutability of law between different peoples is correctly drawn from the reformer, Wolfe restates an error that he likely arrived at through a misapplication of Junius; he again claims that civil law “can be a supernatural conclusion from natural principles that have interacted with supernatural truth” (emphasis mine).⁷ Junius writes, “For even if the principles and conclusions that are natural according to human reason are present in human beings by natural law, nevertheless it is necessary that other principles above nature be inspired and infused by God so that we may know that end beyond nature to which we have been ordered, and the truth that would certainly lead to that end” (emphasis mine).⁸ As previously shown, supernatural conclusions do not flow from or as a result of man’s recognition of natural principles, but, as Junius confirms, God’s supernatural truth flows from Him to his elect, free from our input. It may seem like splitting hairs, but the difference between supernatural truths resulting from recognition of natural principles and them being infused by the self-sufficient will of God determines one’s view of His sovereignty; this difference in views strikes at the heart of Wolfe’s motivations and methodologies for the creation of his “Christian nation”.

Special revelation is above reason, but it is not contrary to reason;⁹

Wolfe again has his order of operations and rules of inerrancy backwards. A properly Reformed version of this sentence would read, “Special revelation is above reason, therefore our flawed human reasoning must remain congruous with it to be true.” When he follows this statement with, “A Christian body of law is the only complete and true body of law,” he is stating something not wholly true, for we are still in a battle of spirit and flesh and cannot do anything complete and true; even if we were able, he has shown himself to be unqualified to determine a genuine Christian body of law. Certainly, to do so at least requires the ability to exegete, but Wolfe would have us believe that his personal reasoning, informed by 16th century Catholic and Reformed opinions on nature and Scripture, is sufficient.

A Christian people may want to censure atheism and blasphemy through civil law, but another people may find social power sufficient to that end.¹⁰

Wolfe’s totalitarian blinders shine through this sentence, in that he does not even give passing mention to the obvious and practical third option that a Christian people may decide that such censure is not warranted at all, even though he follows this with having no state church as a legitimate possibility. It would seem that, in his view, a commonwealth is not genuinely Christian unless it actively suppresses religious dissent. He later disingenuously states that he does not supply a set of laws when chapter 7 is dedicated to his case for a Christian monarchy, with a “prince” who “mediates the people’s national will for their good”¹¹, and chapter 9 defines laws against blasphemy, heresy and promulgation of false religions. What other body of laws would his readers be more interested in him explicating than the very structure of the nation and how it deals with dissent?

The subsection on the Law of Moses (separate from the next full section on theonomy) begins with the dubiously worded statement, “Questions around the Mosaic law are typically more theological in nature and best left for the theologians.”¹² Surely, since it contains the only civil law of divine origin, a full understanding of Mosaic law’s theology and history is a prerequisite for attaining the Christian “nation perfected”. If Wolfe does not understand the full context of what he admits is the “perfect application” of natural law, how can he be sure that he has not merely attained the nation moderately improved? Facetiousness aside, I have no doubt that Wolfe came to this conclusion less out of an altruistic stream of logic than from a desire to not leave his comfort-zone or undermine his case. It speaks more than anything else, thus far, to his primary desire for authoritarian power, and how “Christianity” is simply a means to that end; someone who is truly interested in Christian Nationalism above Nationalist Christianity would feel obligated, regardless of the final conclusions, to give a full chapter to the body of laws and commandments specially revealed in Scripture instead of brushing the former aside in four and a half pages, most of which are dedicated to how they are not more applicable to the Christian nation than human reasoning alone. Comparatively, he dedicates forty-six pages to the next chapter on his vision for a national, Caudillo-like strongman.

There is only one scriptural reference in this subsection, Deuteronomy 19:15 (the need for multiple witnesses), used as an example of something that “one might also consider… to be a universally wise law.”¹³ We are given no explanation as to why it only might be considered universally wise; this likely unintended admission of the inherent subjectivity of individual determinations of what may or may not be a universal principle proves them not to be inducible by human reason alone. We must start with Scripture.

There is an inherent contradiction in Wolfe’s affirmation that the Mosaic civil law is “a perfect example of the law,” but also that “it still belongs to the same genus as all bodies of civil law,” and that it only “can serve as a guide or source of law for all nations.”¹⁴ Jesus Christ is a perfect man, one who belongs to the same genus as all men, but does that mean we can choose whether or not to look to him, among a group of other men, as our guide for righteous behavior, and remain Christian? It is Christ’s divinity that makes him the example to emulate, just as the divine origin of Scriptural commandments, including Mosaic civil law, makes them the required benchmark for the principles of good Christian law; it also gives us the opportunity to appeal to something more than our own flawed reasoning. This is how 20th century theonomists, such as Greg L. Bahnsen, viewed the Mosaic civil law, not as an immutable set of copy/paste rules that all nations should use, unaltered; Wolfe will misrepresent modern theonomy with this false claim in the next section.

Next:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

1. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 260.

2. “Religious Landscape Study,” Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project (blog), accessed March 17, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/.

3. Stephen Wolfe, 352.

4. Ibid., 261.

5. Franciscus Junius, The Mosaic Polity, ed. Andrew McGinnis, trans. Todd Rester (Acton Institute for the Study of Religion & Liberty, 2015), 38.

Junius’s definition is just as subjective and open for abuse as Wolfe’s paraphrasing. Dictionary definitions of law are far more objective and center around the concept of rules of conduct enforced by an instituted authority. Unjust law is still law.

6. Ibid., 39-40.

7. Stephen Wolfe, 262.

8. Franciscus Junius, 50.

9. Stephen Wolfe, 263.

10. Ibid., 263.

11. Ibid., 276.

12. Ibid., 265.

13. Ibid., 268.

14. Ibid., 265, 266, 268.