The Case for Christian Nationalism

6. What Laws Can and Cannot Do | V. Disobeying the Law

Previously:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

The ancient maxim that “an unjust law is no law” is justified on the grounds that laws are civil commands to act according to reason in accordance with the natural law.¹

As a Christian, one does not set the rule for his outward behavior based on ancient maxims, but by the instructions from the Creator given in His inerrant word. Here is what Scripture has to say about obeying the laws of men:

Be subject for the sake of the Lord to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do good. For such is the will of God that by doing good you may silence the ignorance of foolish men. Act as free people, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as slaves of God. Honor all people, love the brethren, fear God, honor the king. (1 Peter 2:13-17 LSB)

Wolfe would say that this verse communicates our obligation to the “public reason” of the civil magistrate, but that unjust laws are “laws in name only, and God does not bind one’s conscience to them.”² Unfortunately for his argument, the very next sentence from Peter destroys that notion:

Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are crooked. (1 Peter 2:18 LSB)

I referenced the Legacy Standard Bible, because its translation denotes the difference between the δοῦλος (doulos, slave) of God and the οἰκέτης (oiketes, household-servant) of an earthly master. The Roman domestic servant was also under the authority of a human institution, one that derived its authority from the societal hierarchy that ended with the Emperor, codified in civil laws; the master is, in essence, a domestic-level civil magistrate above his servant. God here binds the conscience of servants to their domestic masters, even if they are σκολιός (skolios, crooked, perverse, unjust). This level of deference is not given as something separate from a lesser level of deference required of the governmental authority, but in addition to it. As slaves of God, we are bound to “be subject for the sake of the Lord to every human institution”, and are not given the freedom to disregard laws simply because we, in our subjective interpretation, find them “unjust”.

Wolfe rightly references Acts 5:29 to demonstrate that we are duty bound to obey the commandments of God above explicitly contradictory commands of men; that is because God’s authority is always higher, binding us to his expressed commandments first, not because we have been given the liberty of conscience to arbitrarily decide which human laws adhere to natural law. Note how, throughout the Apostles’ ordeal with the Sanhedrin, while they were unjustly being persecuted, they remained perfectly obedient to its earthly authority when it did not contradict God’s commandments. When Paul and Silas were unjustly arrested in Philippi and had the opportunity to escape after an earthquake, they remained in jail and used the example of their peaceful submission to authority to convert their jailer (Acts 16:25-34).

Wolfe lays out four types of “accidentally unjust” law which he claims one can legitimately disobey³, all of which have questionable practical applicability. Note that the issue is not whether or not a law can actually be unjust, by these definitions, but how tenuous the supposed principle is that we can disregard subjection to authorities when we subjectively perceive a law to fall within these bounds.

1. “Illegitimate authorities or non-authorities cannot obligate anyone to some civil action, even if the action is good.” What constitutes a legitimate authority? How does an authority gain or lose legitimacy? If a Christian determines, by his own subjective reasoning, that his government is illegitimate, can he disobey every one of their laws? If a group of citizens are Christian socialists and believe that their capitalist government is illegitimate, because it misinterprets natural law, do they have the same right to revolution as capitalist Christians in a communist nation?

2. “Legitimate authorities [cannot] demand what is beyond another’s ability.” Do we all now get to decide what is and is not beyond our abilities as citizens? Can a Christian business owner decide that his tax debt is “beyond his ability” and come up with his own figure, or ignore taxes outright? Can a Christian civil engineer decide that the latest safety regulations are overwrought, and “beyond his ability”, and build a bridge to his preferred, deprecated specifications?

3. “When the magistrate’s personal good is the reason for some law, then that law is unjust, for the reason for any law is the ground of its legitimacy.” Could anyone name a single law, in any republic, in the history of the world, that did not benefit one of the legislator’s group identities more than another group of citizens? Does a Christian citizen have the right to disobey a law, because he perceives some legislators passed it for their personal gain? Since it is exceedingly rare, in our time, that a magistrate enacts a law and explicitly says it is for their own benefit, what is the objective metric by which this determination can be made?

4. “Any law that does not conduce to the common good is unjust, for essential to any just law is the suitability to achieve the end of the law.” Could anyone name a single law passed by a modern legislature that was not promoted as being for “the common good”? The Affordable Care Act, colloquially known as Obamacare, was sold as being for the common good, but a significant portion of Americans disagree. Can a consortium of Christian owners of medical insurance companies, who believe these regulations are not for the common good, ignore them and create their own “insurance black marketplace”?

Wolfe attempts to address the issue of when disobedience becomes warranted in the subsection, Epistemic Limitations⁴, but only digs himself a deeper epistemic hole. He appeals to repeated demonstration of unjust behavior, but that does not remove the subjectivity of “unjust”. It is also not human nature to remain objective and perceive only a few laws from an authority to be unjust, without applying that distinction, part and parcel, to the authority itself. Even “repeatedly” is a subjective determination. The proposal that we should or should not disobey, based on the frequency of unjust behavior, speaks against the universality of his principles of justice. He correctly identifies the “lesser magistrate” as whom the individual citizen should appeal to, but says nothing of what the citizen should do if he is not assisted by the magistrate; can he then revolt? I believe he left this unanswered on purpose to maintain more room to advocate for revolution in chapter 8.

Looking back at Peter’s instruction, he tells us, “For such is the will of God that by doing good you may silence the ignorance of foolish men” (1 Peter 2:15). What would more work against this instruction than a group of Christians deciding to go rogue, because they perceive the authorities “openly express contempt for [them] or affirm moral absurdities and a degenerate conception of the common good,”⁵ while these authorities currently stop short of using their preponderant force to demand Christians actively participate in those absurdities? Were the Roman authorities, while Peter was writing this, not openly expressing contempt for Christianity and affirming moral absurdities? Though the current American regime certainly takes an absurd moral stance, our day to day experience with governmental authorities is still overwhelmingly that of “punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do good” (1 Peter 2:14); for example, law-abiding Americans do not carry extra cash with which to bribe officials, as much of the rest of the world still must do. What happens on our televisions is not what happens to most of us in our daily life, at least not yet; we are still very much allowed to practice our religion and redress our grievances in relative peace. How much would the gospel witness, which is far more important than our physical well-being (and even that of our children), be damaged by extralegal Christian action at this juncture? Think about how much those who live up to the left-wing stereotype of “Christian nationalism”, that of someone marching into Congress waiving a flag-draped cross while screaming that this is a “Christian country”, have enlivened the “ignorance of foolish men”, as of late.

Wolfe references Christ’s instruction to “turn the other cheek” and follows it with the possibility of eschewing this commandment when “harm against you” would also result in “harm to those who are dependent on you”.⁶ This is entirely agreeable, but while the Christian has the duty to actively protect others under physical threat, and the duty to advocate for those being maltreated in other ways, he does not, as a Christian alone, have the right to “confront injustice and exploitation in order ‘to protect himself and his property from injury’”, no matter how badly Wolfe attempts to misrepresent Calvin with this quotation. Here is the reformer’s complete thought:

I admit that Christ restrains our hands, as well as our minds, from revenge: but when any one has it in his power to protect himself and his property from injury, without exercising revenge, the words of Christ do not prevent him from turning aside gently and inoffensively to avoid the threatened attack.⁷

There is a massive difference between shielding oneself from physical harm and actively confronting injustice aimed at oneself. We certainly have a right as citizens of a Western republic to confront injustice, and a Christian citizen of such a system can attempt to, as Wolfe says, “use the full, legitimate powers of law to secure his person and property.” A genuinely Christian nation would, of course, also imbue its law with such means of justice; one of the topics Scripture is most concerned with is seeking justice for the mistreated. But, Calvin could not have been clearer, in the very next verse of the same commentary (Matthew 5:40), about the Christian’s requirement of subjection to authority. Wolfe again cuts off the full quote when it works against his argument:

Christ now glances at another kind of annoyance, and that is, when wicked men torment us with law-suits. He commands us, even on such an occasion, to be so patient and submissive that, when our coat has been taken away, we shall be prepared to give up our cloak also. None but a fool will stand upon the words, so as to maintain, that we must yield to our opponents what they demand, before coming into a court of law: for such compliance would more strongly inflame the minds of wicked men to robbery and extortion; and we know, that nothing was farther from the design of Christ. What then is meant by giving the cloak to him who endeavors, on the ground of a legal claim, to take away our coat? If a man, oppressed by an unjust decision, loses what is his own, and yet is prepared, when it shall be found necessary, to part with the remainder, he deserves not less to be commended for patience than the man who allows himself to be twice robbed before coming into court. In short, when Christians meet with one who endeavors to wrench from them a part of their property, they ought to be prepared to lose the whole. (emphasis is the portion Wolfe quotes)⁸

It is patently absurd, and intellectually dishonest, that Wolfe would quote Calvin, to help build a case for disobeying unjust law and set the stage for his call to revolution, when the full paragraph instructs Christians to patiently endure grievously unjust legal action. Calvin confirms that, should the lesser magistrate not take up our cause, we should accept such injustice in peace. “For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly” (1 Peter 2:19).

1. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 271.

2. Ibid., 271.

3. Ibid., 272.

4. Ibid., 274-275.

5. Ibid., 275.

6. Ibid., 273.

7. John Calvin, Commentary on Matthew, Mark, Luke, [on Matthew 5:39]

8. Ibid., [on Matthew 5:40]