The Case for Christian Nationalism
The Case for Christian Nationalism
2. Redeemed Nations | I. State of Sin
The stated intent of this chapter is “to identify the theological basis for continuity and discontinuity in social relations between the three states.”1 Wolfe begins this task with a description of the Reformed doctrine of Total Depravity, leaning on several quotes from Calvin. While it is admitted that “man’s natural gifts were corrupted by sin,” and that man has an “active and efficacious inclination toward evil,” this section is immediately followed up with the statement that he “retains his basic instincts for social relations.”2 Yet, as Calvin notes in the Institutes, “Wherefore, although we grant that the image of God was not utterly effaced and destroyed in him, it was, however, so corrupted, that any thing which remains is fearful deformity.” (emphasis mine)3 The Apostle Paul paints a more visceral picture of our post-fall state:
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. (Romans 1:28-31)
There is no natural gift possessed by fallen man that is not so tainted by sin as to make it utterly corrupted in relation to its prelapsarian counterpart, most especially our “instincts for social relations”. As David tells us of those who deny God, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity; there is none who does good.” (Psalm 53:1) If there is any seeming goodness in the social relations of the reprobate, it is due to the Spirit’s restraint of lawlessness (2 Thessalonians 2:7), not of natural goodness passing through the fall. There is not a single aspect of our natural reason that is not corrupted, rotten, and debased. Though God, in his mercy, has ordained (and restrained) pagan civil magistrates in the past (Romans 13:4), we cannot rely on the natural reason of their philosophers to form the basis of a Christian nation. We must start with Scripture.
Certainly, the effects of sin are all around us: Man rebels against God and commits varieties of moral offenses against his fellow man. Polygamy was prevalent; domestic and civil tyranny is common; people defraud their fellow man; nations unjustly dominate others. But these are abuses of these relations.4
These are indeed abuses of interpersonal relations, but that is the natural state of fallen man. These are not simply regrettable occurrences, but the norm of our behavior. It is only those who have placed their hope in the finished work of Christ on the cross, and who are being actively sanctified by the Spirit, who have any hope of making sin the exception in their mortal life (Romans 8:1-8). Wolfe will affirm the need for the covenant of grace and the sanctification of the Spirit in the next section, but he will also seemingly keep the Gospel subservient to nature, in the realm of government.
As Charles Hodge wrote, commenting on Romans 9:3, “The Bible recognizes the validity and rightness of all the constitutional principles of our nature. It therefore approves of… peculiar love for the people of own race and country.”5
Given statements from Wolfe of the superiority/inferiority of different people groups, both previously in this book and on social media, we cannot dismiss any continuing, positive reference to an innate love of one’s own race as simply a benign synonym for culture. He will address “love of nation”, in depth, in the following chapter, but I will continue to make note of any reference to this line of thought, wherever it is found.
This subsection is completed with a restating of the unprovable claim of multiple nations being a natural, prelapsarian good.
The end of civil government has not changed, because its end is subordinate to the ends of human nature, and human nature in itself has not changed. (emphasis mine)6
As shown above, human nature has been so corrupted by the fall that “any thing which remains is fearful deformity”. This is the very definition of having been changed. Wolfe’s statement, yet again, puts him at odds with the core doctrines of his own church. As the Westminster Confession of Faith states, “From this original corruption, whereby we are utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all evil, do proceed all actual transgressions.”7 Wolfe may claim that the only change to man was the removal of supernatural gifts, and this means natural gifts have not been changed, in of themselves. But that would be to deny how the return of spiritual gifts to the redeemed alters the very character of their natural gifts. These gifts do not exist as an independent ideal, separate from the knowledge of God. Otherwise, what is sanctification? (1 John 3:9)
If something is natural to man, then civil government must provide conditions for people to freely and harmoniously pursue it. This includes suppressing the things that hinder man in achieving his full humanity.8
Where can we go to discover what is natural to man, apart from Scripture? Plato, in his natural reasoning, felt that grown men having sexual relations with young boys was not only natural to man, but inherently good for society, as long as the boy was loved for his soul as well as his body.9 Where should we go to confirm or deny this belief? Though he has yet to explicitly affirm Aquinas's view that man's natural reason is sufficient to enjoin him to the eternal law, enough of this comes through Wolfe's theory of civil virtue to render its lack of an exegetical foundation more than troublesome for Reformed audiences.
Hence, crafting policy (and ethics generally) in a fallen world requires us to consider unpleasant trade-offs, and magistrates must have the fortitude to enact and enforce the greatest good, despite unfortunate costs involved, and Christians should recognize the necessity of such choices and shun the moralism that limits action.10
“Unpleasant trade-offs” and “unfortunate costs” is quite a euphemistic way to describe the violent policies that Wolfe advocates for, including active suppression of other religions and civil punishment for heresy. This is the type of language used by totalitarian leaders to downplay the atrocities committed to achieve their utopian vision. For Lenin, it was not that Kulaks were violently ripped from their homes and mass banished, if not outright murdered; he had merely exhibited “the fortitude” to “shun the moralism that limits action” and accept the “unpleasant trade-offs” needed to “enforce the greatest good” of converting farms to communes. Later, when Wolfe progresses to the legislative details of his optimum state, I will show, using the examples of American nativist violence towards Catholics and the 1838 Mormon War in Missouri, that the likeliest outcome to his policies would be a Holodomor-like atrocity.
The section is closed with an articulation of the need for aspects of democracy to place checks on the authority of fallen men, including universal suffrage (for males alone).11 As previously stated, one wonders where Wolfe believes he will find a Western people who would not overwhelmingly vote against his proposed civil/religious hierarchy. We do not live in a 16th century city-state, of less than 20,000 residents, with an overwhelming plurality of Protestants (many of whom were religious refugees and, therefore, zealous), ruled by a theocratic council of elders, whose seat of power was shaped by a millennia of cultural cachet for the Justinian Code. Even these city-state governments were anything but perpetually stable, peaceful, and of one mind. In 1538, Calvin was banished from Geneva for refusing to give the civil magistrate control over who could access the Lord’s Table, and would not be allowed to return until 1541.12
Can it be believed that the American people, a majority of whom do not even hold church membership13, would not violently rebel against any attempt to institute a state church and the civil enforcement of religious doctrine? Would they not be joined by a plurality of conservative, American Christians? There would be no practical way for Wolfe's government to be maintained in the 21st century West, outside of a sham politburo and Stasi-like suppression of dissent.
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Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 81.
Ibid., 83, 84.
Jean Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), sec. 1.15.4.
Stephen Wolfe, 87.
Ibid., 87.
Ibid., 88.
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), sec. 6.4.
Stephen Wolfe, 89.
Plato, Symposium, 181.
Stephen Wolfe, 90.
Ibid., 90.
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), 64-66.
Gallup Inc, “U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time,” Gallup.com, March 29, 2021, https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-below-majority-first-time.aspx.