The Case for Christian Nationalism
2. Redeemed Nations | II. State of Grace (Part 3)
Previously:
Two-Kingdoms Theology, as presented in the Institutes, is now expressly named, and immediately misrepresented for ethno-nationalist ends. Calvin is quoted directly, regarding the wide separation of the kingdoms, and then this quote is manipulated to serve Wolfe’s vision of “natural order”. It bears repeating that he has previously stated that this natural order renders people superior or inferior to each other both on the micro, individual level and the macro, ethnic/cultural level.
The two [kingdoms] are “widely separated” in the sense that the spiritual leveling and unifying consequences of the Gospel have their own place and are kept from mixing up nature and thereby subverting the natural order. (emphasis mine)1
It is not “the nation and affections of nationhood [that] are natural to man as man”2 that Calvin gives as the reason for the separation of the kingdoms in the quoted section; it is the dual, opposing threats of those who would take their “Christian liberty” outside of the spiritual kingdom and use it as an excuse to reject all civil authority, and those in civil office who would declare power over the church. Calvin is not concerned with protecting man’s naturalness, but with protecting God’s supernaturally ordained civil order, which restrains sin among the reprobate, and protecting the body of Christ from those who would claim it an area of their natural dominion. It is worth quoting this section at length:
Having shown above that there is a twofold government in man, and having fully considered the one which placed in the soul or inward man, relates to eternal life, we are here called to say something of the other, which pertains only to civil institutions and the external regulation of manners. For although this subject seems from its nature to be unconnected with the spiritual doctrine of faith, which I have undertaken to treat, it will appear as we proceed, that I have properly connected them, no, that I am under the necessity of doing so, especially while, on the one hand, frantic and barbarous men are furiously endeavoring to overturn the order established by God, and, on the other, the flatterers of princes, extolling their power without measure, hesitate not to oppose it to the government of God. Unless we meet both extremes, the purity of the faith will perish.3
Wolfe acknowledges the former concern, mostly presented by Anabaptist dissidents in the Reformers’ time4, by correctly likening it to today’s theologically and politically liberal “gospel politics”5, what is often little more than a ecclesiastical facade to a Hegelian-Marxist eschatology. Conspicuously absent from his modern analysis is the other extreme threat to “the purity of the faith”, perhaps because this is where his camp and its obsession with natural hierarchy not altered by the Gospel, a reactionary sans-gospel politics, resides.
Christians should affirm the nation and nationality and even seek to order their nations to heavenly life.6
Should Christians “seek to order their nations to heavenly life” through overturning a magistrate’s disordering rule by force, as Wolfe will later argue? This is certainly the dilemma for 21st century, Protestant Christians in the West, all of whom live under governments that do not champion Christian ethics and, more often than not, expressly work against them. Greg L. Bahnsen, perhaps the most prominent theonomist author of the late-20th century, did not think so. As he wrote, “The morally proper way for Christians to correct social evils that are not under the lawful jurisdiction of the state is by means of voluntary and charitable enterprises or the censures of the home, church, and marketplace - even as the appropriate method for changing the political order of civil law is not violent revolution, but dependence upon regeneration, re-education, and gradual legal reform.”7 It is the duty of members of the spiritual kingdom to work towards the reordering of a pagan, or doctrinally-unsound, temporal nation, not by exuding physical force in the temporal realm, but through peacefully executing the Great Commission and trusting in the work of the Spirit. “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4).
Next, a mostly orthodox description of Reformed theology’s distinction between the visible catholic church and the true people of God is presented. This distinction is necessary for Wolfe’s later advocacy of paedobaptism as an initiation rite into the body politic. But Wolfe again makes the false claim that it is the redeemed who are "fully human, having been sanctified and having received the divine image.”8 As shown above, both the reprobate and redeemed have the imago Dei, and there is no new image imparted upon the latter, but instead the gift of the person of the Holy Spirit is given to illuminate the hearts and minds of believers.
This section is completed with a good, general description of the differing purposes of the two “civil and ecclesiastical administrations”. However, Wolfe’s later arguments for civil enforcement of Christian doctrine have been irreparably damaged due to his insistence, up to this point, that the temporal kingdom’s foundation is not “altered by the Gospel” in any way. Logically, if the temporal kingdoms of men rest wholly on natural principles (general revelation), mostly apparent to pagan and Christian alike, and those principles are not altered by the Gospel (special revelation), in order for the civil enforcement of Christian orthodoxy to be an apparent natural good - as opposed to the civil enforcement of Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Islam, or any other religion that natural man unaltered by the Gospel may choose - those principles must be altered by something that would orient them towards Christianity and its ethics. Otherwise, how does this hypothetical government justify outlawing behaviors that are often condoned by the natural reason and religions of men outside of Christendom, such as polygamy and pederasty? With only the gospel-improved human interpretation of “natural principles” at hand, by what standard would Christian men rightfully claim others are working against natural law and not themselves? Wolfe’s ethical foundation is enough to build a government that meets the bounds of Romans 13, in that it could potentially not be a terror to good conduct, but, by keeping the Gospel at arm’s length, he has failed to lay an ethical foundation for the civil enforcement of religious orthodoxy, as he will later argue for.
If Wolfe’s constant is removed from the equation these logical dilemmas quickly disappear. His theory requires the existence of categorical imperatives, altered by neither the Gospel nor man’s total depravity, to contort behaviors that Christians inherently know are corrupted by the flesh into pre-gospel natural goods. On the other hand, men who have had their corrupted nature repaired by the Gospel, not merely improved, and who no longer suppress general revelation, create nations and laws based upon that repaired human nature, guided first and foremost by God’s inerrant word and His Spirit. They have a base of absolute Christian ethics from special revelation to govern by, and the motivation to let the true faith flourish by protecting its institutions and allowing them freedom to operate. They can still build nations that care for and protect the citizenry while appealing to shared, spiritual ideals instead of a collectivism of fleshy ethnic/cultural identity.
Next:
Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 107.
Ibid., 106.
Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), sec. 4.20.1.
Matthew J. Tuininga, Calvin’s Political Theology and the Public Engagement of the Church: Christ’s Two Kingdoms, Cambridge Studies in Law and Christianity (Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 47-53.
Stephen Wolfe, 107-108.
Ibid., 108.
Greg L. Bahnsen, God and Politics: Four Views on the Reformation of Civil Government : Theonomy, Principled Pluralism, Christian America, National Confessionalism (Phillipsburg, N.J.: Presbyterian and Reformed Pub. Co., 1989), 24.
Stephen Wolfe, 109-111.