The Case for Christian Nationalism

6. What Laws Can and Cannot Do | IV. Modern Theonomy

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The Case for Christian Nationalism

The subsection on theonomy contains very little actual content on the subject, and how it describes adherents’ view of Mosaic civil law is inaccurate.¹ Simply put, modern theonomy is the position that God’s laws, as revealed in the Old Testament, are morally binding (not to be confused with literally) unless they have been modified or overruled by later revelation, especially that of the New Covenant. Though theonomists often do themselves no favor in how they argue their case, this is not as fundamentalist or radical a position as it may initially sound. The New Covenant overrules quite a large amount of the Mosaic law, including all of the ceremonial law (Hebrews 4:14, Matthew 27:51) and the portions of civil law regarding the cleanness of food and people (Acts 11:5-18). As Wolfe affirmed in the last section, the Mosaic civil law is a perfect application of natural law; one must logically conclude that, unless otherwise stated by God, the moral principles communicated in that civil law are still binding to Christians. As one of the most prominent theonomists of the 20th century, Greg L. Bahnsen, wrote, “Our obligation to keep the law of God cannot be judged by an extrascriptural standard, such as whether its specific requirements (when properly interpreted) are congenial to past traditions or modern feelings and practices.”² It is easy to see how one could read this and come to the misunderstanding that Bahnsen was looking to adopt Mosaic civil law, wholesale, but he also wrote in the same essay:

But it is theologically legitimate to make contemporary use of this biblical material on civil law. On the one hand, to deny that these revealed dictates (or at least those in the Old Testament) are unchanging moral absolutes is implicitly to endorse the position of cultural relativism in ethics (“They were morally valid for that time and place, but invalid for other people and other times”); this is diametrically contrary to the testimony of Scripture (Malachi 3:6; Psalms 89:34; 111:7; 119:160; Ecclesiastes 12:13, Romans 2:11). On the other hand, to affirm that the principles for civil government found in the Bible (even the Old Testament) are binding in our day and age might suggest to some people that no differences between Old and New Covenants, or between an ancient agrarian society and the modern computer age, have been recognized. After all, in the Old Testament we read instructions for holy war, for kosher diet, for temple and priesthood, for cities of refuge at particular places in Palestine, for goring oxen and burning grain fields…

It is one thing to realize that we must translate biblical commands about a lost ox (Exodus 23:4) or withholding pay from someone who mows the fields (James 5:4) into terms relevant to our present culture (e.g., about misplaced credit cards or remuneration of factory workers). It is quite another thing altogether to say that such commands carry no ethical authority today!³

Between the positions of Bahnsen and Wolfe, the former has the upper hand, in this respect: If both agree that the Mosaic civil law is the divinely revealed, perfect application of natural law, even though Christian nations may use other references when forming their civil law, should they not be obligated to use God’s perfect application as their primary source and moral standard?

A Christian nation is, by definition, a corporate Christian - assuming it achieved such a status by peaceful evangelism and not through a violent revolution by an oppressive minority. Ethically, all properly functioning nations are bound by the same set of morals as individual citizens; otherwise, they become tyrannies (this is the basis for rule of law). As Bastiat wrote, “Collective right, then, has its principle, its reason for existing, its lawfulness, in individual right; and the common force cannot rationally have any other end, or any other mission, than that of the isolated forces for which it is substituted. Thus, as the force of an individual cannot lawfully touch the person, the liberty, or the property of another individual - for the same reason, the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individuals or of classes.”⁴ When we apply this principle to any self-described “Christian” nation, it becomes apparent that the laws and practices of that nation must be bound by the same scriptural commandments as the individual Christian, or it would lose the right to that designation. Thus, Wolfe’s definition that a Christian nation is one that orders a Christian people to its complete good is incorrect, because one individual, Bob, outwardly directing another, Jim, on how to be a good Christian does not automatically make Bob also a Christian. Bob must also be bound by the same tenets of Christianity he is directing Jim in before he can lay claim to that title. In practical application, Wolfe’s nation has no safeguards to prevent it from using doctrine it does not follow as a cudgel against Christian citizens, much like some will take a verse from Scripture out of context and attempt to manipulate the behavior of a Christian to their advantage.

A common argument against this is to refer to individual commandments, such as Christ’s instruction to turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39, Luke 6:29); surely, a nation cannot allow assault to go unhindered and unpunished. Scripture is also very clear on our duty to protect others from harm (Proverbs 24:10-12, Psalm 82:4, Isaiah 1:17). It is from this position that government acts against Second Table wrongdoing, while we, as individual Christians, do not repay evil done to us in kind. Another example of how government does not possess additional moral commandments, but only extra means to enforce them, is shown through the Sixth Commandment. If someone witnesses a murder in progress, they have the moral right to stop the assailant and even kill them if necessary; the Westminster Larger Catechism interprets the inverse of the Sixth Commandment as a duty to protect the innocent.⁵ What we, as individuals, do not have the right to do is enact after the face vengeance, even after receiving the evidence of multiple witnesses. This is the sole, collective right of the nation, though it is not an extra moral obligation, in and of itself.

The Reformed tradition, indeed orthodox Protestantism as a whole, confirms that the final authority for all matters is Scripture. If an individual Christian wishes to know if a particular course of action conforms to God’s will, or at least that it exists within his liberty of conscience, he does not rely on his own reasoning or what presses on his heart during prayer; he goes to the inerrant word of God to confirm whether or not such actions are permissible. In the same way, the corporate Christian nation must place all its actions under the authority of Scripture, part of which is the moral content of the civil law divinely revealed to Moses. To reuse Deuteronomy 22:8, a secular nation might look at that verse and consider it a good idea to embed proper safety standards into its law, but the Christian nation must do so; it cannot look to another nation that did not have such standards as an equal arbiter of good civil law.

But ordering ourselves to God must spring in large part from self-affirmation, from an instinct of peoplehood, and from the felt need to act for our own good. We do not fight for Christian civilization in the abstract or according to a ready-made, universal set of civil laws. We do not fight according to a bare divine law but according to a law of God that inheres and enlivens our whole being.⁶

Yet again, we are presented with an emotional appeal, using authoritarian language of destiny. One way to test for this type of language is to take a paragraph and see if it fits into the mental picture of someone standing behind a podium, wearing faux military garb, speaking aggressively with a raised, clenched fist, and whipping a crowd into an ecstatic frenzy. In this paragraph, that picture is accentuated by the repeating of the collectivist, aggressive call-to-action, “We do not fight”; this gives the reader/hearer a sense that they are a member of a collective waging a just and holy crusade against an invading other. By comparison, this mental picture would not work with any other paragraph in this section.

Wolfe’s hypothetical nation, by placing the brunt of its epistemic foundations in a hubristic appeal to human instinct and reasoning instead of a humble deference to scriptural directive, is not truly a Christian nation; it is a humanist nation that would enforce a selection of Christian mores, and the doctrine of a Presbyterian state church, via its civil law. Not bound by God’s inerrant word, and placing national right over individual right, it could pass any tyrannical law contradictory to scriptural commandments and explain it as “reasoned natural law that is good for the community”. Organized protests and political movements from Christian citizens against these humanist conclusions would likely be suppressed; as previously mentioned, Wolfe is frank about his lack of concern for the consent of non-Christians; why would he not equally dismiss Christians who appeal to Scripture above his human reasoning?

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The Case for Christian Nationalism

1. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 270.

2. Gary Scott Smith, 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), 23.

3. Ibid., 31.

4. Frédéric Bastiat, The Law (Creative Commons, 2013), 3.

5. The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms: As Adopted by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church : With Proof Texts (Lawrenceville, Ga.: Christian Education & Publications Committee of the Presbyterian Church in America, 2007), WLC Q. 135.

6. Stephen Wolfe, 271.