The Second Argument for Christian Nations Among a Series
Read the first argument of this series here.
(1) Every entity created by God is equipped with the means necessary to fulfill each of its God-ordained ends.
God would not demand that any entity act in ways he does not equip it to act. Ought implies can.
(2) The nation is an entity created by God.
This is true whether distinct nations are pre-fall or post-fall.
It follows: (3) the nation is provided with the means necessary to fulfill each of its ends.
This conclusion implies the following: (4) Every end of the nation is something for which God has provided the nation with sufficient means to fulfill.
It is universally acknowledged that, (5) Promoting earthly good is an end of the nation.
Thus it follows syllogistically from (4) and (5), that (6) Promoting Earthly good is something for which God has provided the nation sufficient means to fulfill.
In other words, since an end of the nation is the promotion of Earthly good and God has equipped the nation with the means to fulfill its ends, the nation is provided with the means necessary for it to promote Earthly good.
But (7) the nation can promote Earthly good effectively only if it also promotes heavenly good.
This is the only controversial premise thus far. The moral law of God, consisting of both tables, cannot be separated, for it is a single, coherent, and mutually dependent law. Virtue and piety are different—in content and object—but true virtue is not achievable without true piety (with only very few exceptions). When you abandon the First Table, you eventually lose the Second. For a body politic, full of regular people, piety is ancillary (or a necessary support) to virtue. A virtuous citizenry requires a pious citizenry. Thus, a civil government cannot fulfill its direct end of civil virtue without the presence of piety among the people.
Now, the civil administration cannot administer the things of piety. This is the role of ecclesiastical ministry. But the civil administration, given its end of virtue, has an interest in a flourishing and true religious ministry, even though it cannot claim for itself the administration of sacred things (Word and Sacrament). For this reason, it has powers around sacred things with the end of promoting the external form of true religion in the interest of public virtue. This is the positive side of civil power regarding religion—acting for true religion. But if this positive power is doubtful, the civil power certainly has negative authority regarding religion. That is, it has the power to suppress that which would ordinarily harm virtue, namely, gross impiety, blasphemy, irreligion, and subversive religion. Since these promote civil vice, civil authority has the power of suppression by necessity since it cannot achieve its God-ordained end of civil virtue without having the means to restrain or at least discountenance that which is virtue-killing.
We can conclude that (8) God has provided the nation the power to promote true religion and/or suppress and/or discountenance false religion and irreligion.
Now, since Christianity alone is the true religion, (9) God has provided the nation the power to promote the Christian religion or at least to suppress or discountenance false religion and irreligion.
Lastly, since all entities ought to seek to fulfill their ends, using the necessary powers ordained for these ends, it follows that the nation ought to (at least) suppress or discountenance false religion and irreligion, being deleterious of virtue and (to my mind) also promote the Christian religion. How and to what extent it acts to this end will vary with circumstances in accordance with prudence.
Image Credit: Unsplash
Wolfe’s argument relies on deduction. And that deduction starts with premises that, if they are not questionable, they are not entirely accurate and may not be in line with God’s Word.
If Wolfe wants to argue that that the two tables of the law are inseparable, the problem lies in his premises. Why? The firs purpose of the law is to reveal our sinfulness. And even becoming Christian is not a cure for not following the law because as Romans 7 and James 2-3 testify, we constantly fall short of God’s law. Also, part of Romans 2 talks about how unbelievers who follow their consciences sometimes surpass how believers in God in doing what is right. That is one of the reasons why Romans 2 starts with a warning to those who believe in God not to judge the unbelievers mentioned in Romans 1. And if we who have the Spirit often fail in being godly, how can we always expect unbelievers to do what we believe we can do. The history of Christendom also points to the many failures of Christianity.
One’s discipleship begins with one’s faith in God. One’s faith in God is the result of the work of the Spirit in one’s heart when one hears God’s Word. And because whether the Spirit’s work causes one to believe depends on God’s election, what becomes of any nation’s ability to promote and adequately follow both tables of the law? Heck, just following one table of the law is impossible.
Certainly Wolfe knows how and why we come to faith, and so why does he use the premises he has specified in the beginning of his argument? Why does he promote the notion of a Christian nation when such a notion is not supported in the New Testament? But God’s covenant people is not a nation but the Church which is universal in its outreach. The Church unites true Jewish believers with true Gentile believers into one body. And so why is Wolfe promoting Christian Nationalism? Maybe one of the reasons why Wolfe is promoting Christian Nationalism is because he has not fully faced what Adam’s sin has done to all of mankind. He has not adequately realized why God has said in His Word that he chose the simple and weak to shame the wise and strong. Perhaps Wolfe’s problem is that he does not adequately account for how the Fall has corrupted this world and how pervasive sin is in the lives of each person.
Instead of making absurd assumptions as you usually do, you could engage with the syllogism.
Even then, you advocate a pathetic position that ultimately is stating “Since we fall short of God’s Law, then there is no point in trying to uphold it.”
Another point, you could read the book Wolfe wrote to understand why he advocates for CN, though I doubt your ability to think clearly about what he writes.
Andrew,
Since you addressed a point I made in a round about manner, I will respond.
I never even implied that there’s no point in trying to keep God’s Law. My point was that there is no point in making all of the laws of society based on the Scriptures because all fall short, even us Christians. Are there some Biblical laws that should be laws for society? Yes. But we already have them in place. The problem is when we take an all-or-nothing approach to making Biblical laws the laws of society. Such an approach demands that we pass or vote against laws reflexively rather than wisely. In addition, what I said about our, that is the Christian’s, sinfulness is to make us realize that the disparity in morals and principles between believers and unbelievers is small if existing. Again, see Romans 3:9.
In addition, the first purpose of God’s law is to see our need for Christ as our savior. That is not an irrelevant task. How does that truth imply that we should make base many, if not all, of society’s laws on the Scriptures? Don’t you realize that Paul, in the book of Galatians, tells us that we bear more fruit of the Spirit the more we focus on the Gospel than on the law.
You have said this nonsense every day on this website for the last year and a half.
It would be beneficial if you could address the syllogism that is the thrust of the article.
You take truths and twist them for your devilish ambition, get behind me, Satan.
Sadly, you make important errors.
In part one (that I read) you say: “Nations ought to orient man to his heavenly end, because the nation acting as such is a means to loving one’s neighbor; and what is greater love of neighbor than pointing people to their highest good?”
But ‘pointing people to their highest good’ is not what Jesus of Nazareth, an ancient Jewish rabbi, and Living Word of God TAUGHT his followers was the greatest love of neighbor:
Apostle Paul (Galatians 5) tells us – For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF – what Jesus of Nazareth commanded us – “”The second is this, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12; and repeated in the other synoptic accounts, so trustworthy. John, no contrary to the synoptics has a fuller discourse about self-offering, self-sacrificing love for others – ALL others, including all creatures that God has created from God’s everlasting overflowing love).
It is valuable to cite Matthew’s great chapter 19 that courses through many of the thriving issues of family life and family love –
the bond of wife and husband, breaking that bond, the welcome and care of children, duties of respect for those not suited to marriage and child bearing – that includes those – including gay and lesbian persons – who do no choose the family life of child bearing, etc) –
includes ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ nested without a recitation of ‘the commandments’ – the Mosaic law – ‘DO NOT murder … commit adultery … steal … bear false witness … and DO honor father and mother … love your neighbor as yourself’
This appears to confirm your argument about a role of the state in social control, e.g. – managing society to prevent and punish murder, to prevent and punish adultery (breaking families apart), to prevent and punish stealing, to prevent and punish false testimony (deception that intends unjust harm through including through state power); but Jesus of Nazareth and Living Word of God thwarts that convenient interpretation.
The greatest good if NOT social control or theories of social control or national power – and not a theory of ‘natural law’ of social controlling state power – as you claim! Your argument is SURELY one that Jesus was familiar with. It was vital in the arguments of the Jewish civil/religious authorities: proper social control! So, we have a particularly clear statement from Jesus of Nazareth about your enterprise: NO! perfecting a theory of social controlling nation-state power IS NOT – as you say – ‘greatest love of neighbor’. NO!
Matthew problematizes such easy assumptions with the parabolic conclusions – two of them – after this earlier teaching by Jesus. First, Jesus tells the ‘young man’ who has followed the Mosaic law carefully to do something contrary to ‘natural law’: sell all that you have and give to the needy! Second, the astounding pericope that punctuates the end of the chapter: Jesus tells his Apostles NOT to tend to, or obey, mother and father, IF that takes them away from the greatest love of neighbor: FOLLOWING Jesus, to do what Jesus does. Of course Apostles are confused, and particularly by the exclamation mark at the very end: ‘last will be first and the first last’. Apostles will earn more about what Jesus means and commands here through the Passion, Resurrection appearances/teachings, and Ascension.
The state – NO NATION STATE – can convey the meaning and command that Jesus gives here about ‘love your neighbor as yourself’. Remember this problematizing commentaries at the end of Matthew 19 are further explorations of the entire great chapter’s exploration of family and social life!
So, I call you to contend in your theory(ies) with this chapter. Please do.
I will move on to part two, following.
PS: my ancestors carried a precious rare Bible to North America across a dangerous 18th century Atlantic passage. They were Anabaptists – who would have known Calvin’s writing very well – being from Swiss republic areas, before freeing for religious freedom from the genocidal wars against them by STATE SOCIAL CONTROL. My ancestors’ punishment by the Virginia colony’s STATE RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY were well known to James Madison and Thomas Jefferson (since they were more or less neighbors on the western Virginia frontier). Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, and his discourse in his First Inaugural make it clear that Founders were not fond or friendly with imposed religion. Btw, I went to school with someone you likely know from Princeton, Robby George.
I think you’ve made a grave mistake in your summarizing Mark 12 because it leaves out Christ’s first and most important commandment: “Love the Lord your God with all of your mind, body, and soul.” As it stands, this is truly the highest end of man. The second of his commands (love your neighbor as yourself) truly springs out of the first. After all, can one truly love his neighbor without loving the creator that made him? Can you fully love the flesh of your neighbor while despising the hands that made it? That is the argument here. As people grow to despise God, they also grow to despise one another. Love of God is the source of loving what His hands have made. God’s creation has value because HE created it. Our neighbors bear the image of God and thereby have value.
Now, to your point that nations cannot compel love of God or love of neighbor, this is true. But I would say that no one actually believes you can compel love. But, you can compel actions. After all, does not the mosaic law require certain things as Civil Law to benefit your neighbor? For example, it requires farmers to leave the outer limits of their produce unharvested to provide for the poor and the stranger. The Law never claims to force people to love the poor and stranger with this provision, but it points to it in implementation. The civil law of the land should always be crafted to point to higher truths. The welfare that our country gives to the poor and needy should point to the reality that we SHOULD care about their well-being. Likewise, a nation’s moral prohibitions should be crafted to point to God’s glorious design. Yes, we will fall short of it, and we should be merciful in our judgements because of that. But that morality does indeed stand. You don’t have to stone someone to death to punish adultery, but you can still apply some penalty.
A criticism I hear from critics of Christianity is “you shouldn’t need a book of rules and punishments to just be a good person”. And I agree, if we weren’t fallen people, we would never have needed the Law. But, we are fallen and needed the Law to understand our own fallen nature. The Law did not bring salvation, but rather condemnation because we cannot keep it. But, God gave the Law to point to higher things; things that Christ so aptly summarized with two commandments: Love the Lord your God with all of your mind, body, and soul and Love your neighbor as yourself. So, it cannot be argued from a Christian perspective that civil law has no place in directing man to his highest end, as God Himself has done it.
Thank you. But …
1. but i did not avoid the first part of Jesus’ commentary on God’s law in Mark and the other synoptics. The first part is a ‘given’ in my argument for God’s unique valuation of humanity, and each human. As you say – although I am saying in different terms – the former aims toward and requires the latter.
2. you use the terms from the pericope about the ‘image’ on the coin (found in all the synoptics, with the same phrasing, providing a high reliability that the conversation took place with these words, recorded accurately). That is fine and dandy but since Wolfe is arguing about natural law I refrained from using those terms, preferring to use terms referring to God’s creation design
3. but since you use that it is valuable to point out that Jesus words tend to AFFIRM MY contention that nations are not ‘creations’ of God! As Apostle Paul claims nations are ‘arranged’ or ‘disposed’ by God, not ‘created’ by God. The argument Jesus makes with the coin is EXACTLY THAT: the nation – Roman empire – and its head – Caesar on the coin’s face ARE NOT divine creations other than in the idolatry of the Romans who made up all sorts of pagan bullsh-t about the origins of Rome.
4. so my argument is sustained.
5. I have not argued as you suggest that I denounce civil authority. I do not. But civil authority is not divine, may not pretend to supercede God’s righteousness: e.g. may not declare ‘just’ what is unjust, that would include, as Micah declares, social control without mercy or humility. Very much of the ‘Woke Left’ and the ‘Woke Right’ are merciless and arrogant. The tendency in many American Reformers pieces toward eugenical (even nearly racist) theories of governance is a shocking revelation of how close to, or how much they actually embrace, wicked idolatry within Christian Nationalism/Dominionisn; reflecting the same arrogant mercilessness of state control deploying Muslim Jihadism, or state control deploying Russian Orthodoxy, etc.
6. Indeed, as you argue civil law may support our awareness of sinfulness. You seem to believe that is a good thing; and so it is. SO WE CLEARLY should welcome civil government’s uses of so-called ‘DEI’, ‘affirmative action’ and other forms of law, policy and regulation that exposes our idolatrous abuse of God’s image in all people, through racism, through slavery, through ‘Jim Crow’, through failures to see and to prevent sexual harassment of women (and others), employment and other discrimination abusive of gay and lesbian persons (and others), and other social abuses of human dignity. These are examples of civil law directing us – AS YOU SAY – to recognize the sinful wickedness of our minds and desires without God’s wisdom.
7. I’m very sure American Reformer readers are doing to deny 6. above. But if you do they had better, then, not argue that the civil law is good as it directs us to recognize our sinfulness. DUH! as Homer Simpson would say.
8. I have successfully deconstructed much of Wolfe’s argument. Let’s see if he responds.
I would say that DEI does not accomplish its stated objective because it intentionally stigmatizes one race to promote others. Colorblindness is a far more just principle. DEI always favors the minority over the majority. It is a perversion of justice, not justice itself. One of the principles that I’ve always found revolutionary about scripture is that it not only states to not give favoritism to the rich, but also, not to give it to the poor. Justice itself is what we should strive for, not “evening the playing field”. DEI is unjust in its application and has to be done away with.
The LGBT movement is very clearly anti-Christian. I, and I believe most other Christian Nationalists, affirm the humanity of LGBT people, but cannot affirm the behavior. God has said it is wrong, and it will remain wrong forever. Now, we can show mercy, but we cannot let it be said that our society approves and affirms those things that God despises.
Now onto a point we agree upon. There is a strain of racial idolatry on the right that we have to be very careful about. It is absolutely real and needs to be handled carefully. It was largely created by the callous application of DEI principles that openly and ruthlessly discriminated against white men. So, of course these men feel aggrieved and rightly so. But, it has to be clear that the solution is not to revert to pre-civil rights era oppression of ethnic minorities, but instead, clear application of justice regardless of race or gender. It cannot be said that a place hires too many whites or too many men. All that can be outlawed is explicit bans on minorities. Otherwise, you are asking the law to guess someone’s motives. But back to the main point, it is absolutely crucial that we handle these people carefully because it is far easier to simply become an obstinate racist than to do the hard work of loving justice. Harsh language and derision are only going to drive them in deeper.
Dylan,
Is our first concern about DEI whether it stigmatizes one race? Or should our first concern about DEI be how much of it is true? If the truth stigmatizes, should we embrace lies instead? Doesn’t the basic message of the Gospel stigmatize all people? And isn’t the language of the Scriptures that describe our sinfulness harsh?
A great error is in your second argument where you assert “nation is an entity created by God”.
You must give evidence of this. You have not. Please do.
In fact evidence from the Bible presents that nation building was a great sin that angered God greatly enough to destroy them by the Great Flood (‘the’, rather than ‘a’, since God made a covenant with Noah not to do that again). Covenant?! VERY important for reading the Bible, and understanding Christianity … except for Antinominians, Gnostics, ivory tower snots, authoritarian idolators, and other sorts who prefer not to engage the Bible thoroughly, for whatever reason.
God’s CREATED – NOT nations – but COVENANTS with chosen people. Noah. Abraham, and through Abraham with Jacob. And through Jacob with Joseph … and then with Moses on behalf of the whole people liberated from bondage in state social control in Eqypt. And following through, by God’s gracious design, with David. And fulfilling all these covenantal promises – as described in the Hebrew prophets – in Jesus of Nazareth, an ancient first century Jewish rabbi, and Living Word of God.
Furthermore, another great error is when you assert: “the nation can promote Earthly good effectively only if it also promotes heavenly good”.
How on earth (as the saying goes) can we know the ‘heavenly good’. You must describe it and tell us where you discovered it. Did you discover the ‘heavenly good’ on earth? How? When? With what (to use scientific terms) validity and reliability?
Moreover, as a great contemporary Bible and ancient Christianity scholar – NT Wright – reminds us, the heaven vs. earth narrative is not the narrative of God’s covenantal work with humanity. The great arc of the Bible’s narrative regards God’s covenantal work that, after ‘in the beginning’, proceeds from magnificently abundant, continually prospering creation through to everlasting abundance, sustained by God’s glory for God’s glory, in new creation (i.e. NOT a Platonic heaven, NOT a heaven of the Amitabha Buddha, NOT an Aboriginal heaven of hunting with ancestors in the sky’s constellations, etc). NOT ‘heaven’: ‘new creation’.
And this ‘new creation’ is begun in those who follow what Jesus did, announcing that God’s new creation has begun. Known in the glorious self-giving of Jesus of Nazareth and Living Word of God, who commanded ‘loving your neighbor as yourself’. STATE POWER and SOCIAL CONTROL – including by STATE RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY – cannot command faith and cannot produce faith.
States, Apostle Paul states, are not ‘created’ by God; they are in terms used in Romans 13 ‘arranged’ and/or ‘disposed’ by God – NOT CREATED. Your error here is a great step far away from the Bible. Furthermore, even with the Biblical witness, you have not made any valid or reliable argument for ‘creation’ of nations. The make such a claim DISHONORS God’s glory! How? Because such a portrayal of God projects God to be vacillating and unreliable, unrighteous and faithless, like the ‘gods’ of pagan theologies.
Both to follow the Bible, and to preserve God’s SINGULAR HOLINESS AND GLORY- in God’s Trinity of persons – we should claim that God ‘arranges’ or ‘disposes’ nations; not that God has created Burkina Faso, or Atlantis, or the Khanate of Bukhara, et al in the way that God created humanity. It you continue to use ‘create’ you should define clearly; e.g. that ‘create’ is like God created the heavenly bodies … some of them crash into one another and explode … or crash into the planet Earth to expel planetary material that makes a moon, etc. But it is not the like the creation of humanity with whom God has a unique covenant relationship ‘from the beginning’. This uniqueness – as many people has written – impels our ‘Western’ ideas of ‘made in God’s image’ that became respect of ‘human dignity’.
DEMOTION of the uniqueness of God’s creation of humanity – demonizing humanity to the thermodynamic and gravitational wave power struggles of planetary bodies – is a source of Authoritarian Nationalist theories, including eugenical theories, and racist theories … that are overtly offensive to God’s commands against idolatry, and God’s promises to humanity in covenants. DEMOTION of the uniqueness of God’s creation of humanity produces idolatries of power, or social control, of superiority, etc. How? As Apostle Paul clarified: the hubris-pretense that the ‘natural order’ is about power, social control, superiority hands us over to the ‘prince of the power of the air’/God’s opponent.
This returns us to your concern for ‘natural law’. In Romans 1 and 2 Paul entertains those ideas. It is the uniqueness of God’s creation of humanity – and God’s covenantal care for humanity across millenia – that must win our attention. NOT the powers, intriques, corruptions of the nations that are captured by the ‘prince of the power of the air’. Obey nations that protect people from harm. Yes. Obey nations that provide conditions for survival and thriving. Yes. Aim to take roles in nations that protect people from harm; that provide conditions for survival and thriving. Yes. Aim to control others consciences by state power. No.
So, please return to clarify or modify the assertion the God ‘creates’ nations’. Please engage the uniqueness of God’s creation and covenant relationship with humanity. Please discuss the relationship of state power to Satanic influences and idolatries.
Thank you.
Always great points from Steven.