The Case for Christian Nationalism

7. The Christian Prince | III. The Origin of Civil Power

Previously:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

As a collective entity, a nation has a collective will for its collective good. It must have a collective will, because the nation is a moral person, responsible for itself before God. (emphasis mine)¹

Wolfe is absolutely correct here, though, as previously stated, if the nation is explicitly Christian then the nation is a Christian person, morally responsible in the all the same ways an individual Christian is. This would mean that the nation is bound by all of the same moral commandments of God as the individual. For example, while a Christian nation can prevent physical harm done to others, it must abide by the moral commandment to leave blasphemers in peace, with the prayer that “God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 2:24-26); otherwise, it is not acting as a collective Christian person. The Christian nation must use Scripture as its primary and infallible source of truth; it can never pass a law that would be considered a sin if an individual performed the same action. It would have extra responsibilities, such as after the fact determination of guilt and punishment, but its moral directives are identical to the individual, no more and no less.

The people lack coordination, and disorder (though unintended) will frustrate acts of good.²

If we apply this principle to Wolfe’s argument regarding charity, in chapter 5³, then the whole subsection would be negated in favor of state-controlled action; why would the people’s inability to coordinate themselves be limited to a vaguely defined national good? If we need a prince “through whom the people act for their own good” then should we not defer everything, including our charity organizing, to him as well? If Wolfe disputes this, then the statement that the “people lack coordination” that will “frustrate acts of good” is not entirely true. As we have seen before, the inherent contradictions in this theory disprove its claim that man’s interpretation of general revelation is sufficient for good, consistent, Christian government.

Next, there is nothing inherently wrong with a people being “ordered according to both the general conception of the common good and their own particularities,” but horrible atrocities have been committed in the past when the ordering force has decided that it is “not bound to any specific dictates of the people.”⁴ With a similarly questionable self-confidence and disregard of consent, Primo de Rivera said, “The leader should not obey the public; he should serve it, which is a different thing. To serve it means to direct the exercise of the command for the people’s good, achieving the good of the people ruled, even though the people itself be unaware what its good is.”⁵ As has been proven several times, throughout Wolfe’s book, one man’s interpretation of the “moral law of God”, by which he is bound, is entirely subjective. What would stop a lineage of theocratic Caesars from filling the highest echelons of civil and ecclesial government with sycophants who would confirm whatever their eisegetical hearts desire? This type of feedback loop has a historical precedent in what happened to the Catholic church in the four and a half centuries between the two councils of Nicea.

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.⁶

There is a very theologically dubious implication to this statement. Though God has a purpose for everything he creates, we are not necessarily inclined to correctly perceive that purpose; one example is the man born blind whom Jesus healed:

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” (John 9:1-5)

Wolfe would have us believe that, should a government not perform to his personal standards of national good, that it is abdicating its authority from God.⁷ Again, how could he refute a similar subjective interpretation from Christian socialists? They are equally concerned with “ordering” society, just not along the lines that he finds most beneficial.

There is another seeming contradiction in the next section with what was written earlier in the book. On the one hand, he says that “no one possesses an inherent, natural superiority in relation to other men such that, by pure nature alone, natural inferiors are bound by their nature to submit to them.” But, in his prelapsarian theory he stated that, through an “unequal civil virtue by nature”, a “natural aristocracy would arise in each community to rule, establishing a rule by the best.”⁸ Perhaps he would say that this is the difference between a principle of submission and practical outcomes, but the nature of how his aristocracy would rise brings the whole principle into question. If people are supposedly naturally (genetically) predisposed to have better civil virtue and, should two of those people pair and procreate, would they not produce offspring who are equally or more virtuous by nature? When two tall people have a child, the child often grows to be even taller. Assuming this immutable characteristic of natural virtue to be true (I do not think it is), how would a nation that fosters it through intra-marriage not breed itself a natural nobility, born to rule? Why should the naturally bred Alphas not rule over the Gammas? Considering he thinks aristocracy is born of nature, would not such an arrangement be natural law?

The power to order the whole must come from God; it does not inhere in or originate from any man or men in aggregate…

One important corollary is that recognizing the true God (or Christ) is unnecessary to possess this power, for having this power is simply a natural consequence of the people’s combination into human society.⁹

Is the power directly from God or a natural consequence? I suspect he would say it is both, as a principle of natural law, but that would be somewhat incorrect; God, through his supernatural providence, appoints all earthly authorities, whether they recognize him or not. This is why we are told “whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed” (Romans 13:2). Wolfe rightly recognizes Peter’s instruction to “honor the [Roman] emperor”¹⁰, but through his later argument on Romans 13 and revolution, we can infer that he believes this statement to really mean “honor the [office of Roman] emperor”; in his view, the people can dishonor and depose the person who is currently emperor if he is a tyrant. As I have shown, that belief is not drawn from Scripture (1 Peter 2:18). Though this is a point that I have made repeatedly, it must continue to be made when the subject of deference to divinely appointed authority comes up, because the supposed right to violent Christian revolution, in our day and time, is likely the key takeaway the average reader would glean from Wolfe’s book. If nothing else, I would hope to disabuse the reader of that notion.

Again, the statement, “Consent is the mechanism by which divine civil power is bestowed upon the prince”¹¹ cannot seemingly be rectified with his later statement that Christians would likely have to “disregard the non-Christian withholding of consent”. Though these two claims, on the surface, are contradictory, Wolfe has a trick up his sleeve; he precedes that latter thought with, “Today, those who are restored in Christ are the people of God. Thus, civil order and administration is for them.”¹² Here is the insidious underbelly of his poor theology of the “restored image”, creating an underclass of conscience not even worthy of giving or withholding consent for civil rule. Even the Romans did not withhold or revoke citizenship along these lines (Acts 16:37). This entire section, so concerned with convincing the reader that, under his civil government, the will of the people would be respected, is a bait and switch; only those who meet his set of religious qualifications will be counted as fully human, for they are the only ones with the image of God that is “same in substance as that which Adam possessed.”¹³ They are the ones allowed to decide if they possess the “proper motivation” and the “rational need” for submission, and whether it “conduces to living well.” Everyone else will be disregarded and told to submit.

1. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 279.

2. Ibid., 280.

3. Ibid., 218-223.

4. Ibid., 280.

5. Nick W. Sinan Greger, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera: The Foundations of the Spanish Phalanx (o.A: Independently published, 2018), 83.

6. Stephen Wolfe, 280-281.

7. Ibid., 349-351.

8. Ibid., 281, 72.

9. Ibid., 282, 283.

10. Ibid., 284.

11. Ibid., 285.

12. Ibid., 346.

13. Ibid., 94.