NXR Podcast - THE CONFERENCE - The Rise Of The Christian Prince - Stephen Wolfe Aired: 2025-05-24 Duration: 35:26 === Conservatives Love Great Men (07:42) === [00:00:00] Leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform. [00:00:04] I get it. [00:00:04] It's annoying. [00:00:05] Everybody asks, but I'm going to tell you why. [00:00:07] When you give us a positive review, what that does is it triggers the algorithm so that our podcast shows up on more people's news feeds. [00:00:16] You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't. [00:00:21] We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears. [00:00:28] Well, thank you for being here. [00:00:30] I didn't know there'd be so many. [00:00:32] People here for to listen to a guy who believes in natural law. [00:00:36] So it's a rare thing, but hopefully, you know, David and I can have a good discussion and hopefully you'll, you know, come to the conclusion that we're not actually so far apart. [00:00:46] But so thank you to Joel for this and the invitation. [00:00:49] This is a really great conference and it's an honor. [00:00:52] It's definitely an honor to be here among great men and women. [00:00:58] So I'm talking about the prince and or the prince as great men. [00:01:05] So, our world hates great men. [00:01:09] Why do they hate great men? [00:01:12] They hate great men because such men transcend the rules and the moralistic norms of the age. [00:01:20] And by force of vision and by personality, they gain a devoted and loyal and inspired following. [00:01:30] And that great man leads them into hardship for the good of themselves and their posterity. [00:01:38] But why do liberals fawn over the ice cream devouring Joe Biden? [00:01:46] Why did Obama, Mr. Smooth and Mild, cause young women and men of the aspiring class to swoon at his rallies? [00:01:55] Do you guys remember that? [00:01:56] Literally, people would collapse in his presence. [00:01:58] That's power, I'll give him that. [00:02:02] But why is that? [00:02:03] Because at heart, the liberal has a weak soul. [00:02:08] It's animated by bureaucratic sameness and management. [00:02:13] Everything is a process of fairness through procedure, through box checking, and oftentimes cooked evaluations. [00:02:24] For them, power is diffused, it's implicit, it is soft. [00:02:28] That is, it is longhoused. [00:02:30] The great man in such an order is obsolete, so they think. [00:02:35] To them, he is destructive to the system. [00:02:40] Now, the conservatives, for their part, in our day, seem to love some great men. [00:02:46] They love Lincoln, Churchill, and Ronald Reagan. [00:02:50] But notice that the conservative loves such great men for their universal ideas. [00:02:56] Lincoln completed the aspirations of the founding by enacting universal natural rights, and Churchill defeated a threat to universal democracy while losing his empire. [00:03:10] And Reagan led a liberal world to triumph over the evils of communism. [00:03:17] So all these men, all these men in their own way, made the world safe for democracy. [00:03:25] So in the early 2000s, the conservatives looked up, took up this theme, took up this theme of universality, and they had a bust of Churchill staring at them in the Oval Office. [00:03:37] And what did they do? [00:03:37] They invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq. [00:03:41] And to do what? [00:03:42] They did it to spread democracy. [00:03:45] Universal democracy is in the heart of every single man, a liberal Democrat waiting to come out. [00:03:52] So each of these men, and certainly you can admire these men, but for the conservative, they're cherished for their contribution to humanity. [00:04:01] Just listen to Reagan's celebrated farewell address, which I recommend you do, as he casts the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock as freedom lovers, just freedom lovers seeking freedom, and he renders the American as simply any human who wants to work hard. [00:04:19] He renders him into the universal economic man. [00:04:23] Now, the new right today, the new right of which we're a part, likes to question whether we actually won World War II. [00:04:31] But that's not because of some love for the Third Reich or Hitler or anyone like that, but because the aftermath of our victory led to the lifting up of humanity to the degradation of the victors' own historical peoples. [00:04:47] That is why they question, we question whether we actually won World War II. [00:04:51] And the conservatives since then, the conservatives and the liberals have been united on this general program. [00:04:57] which is to invade the world and to invite the world. [00:05:02] Why did the old guard conservatives hate the slogan, make America great again? [00:05:08] It's because it spoke of American greatness, not aspirations for international liberalism. [00:05:16] So the liberal and the conservative in our day, for related reasons, despise the idea of the great man, one whose vision is for national greatness, driven by concerns for a particular people. [00:05:30] And thus, David and Solomon were for the Israelites, and Solon was for the Athenians. [00:05:36] Lycurgus was for the Spartans, Cincinnatus for the Romans, Alfred the Great for the Anglo Saxons, William the Silent for the Dutch, Edmund Burke for the British, George Washington for the Americans, Napoleon for the French, and Robert E. Lee for the American South. [00:05:59] So, great men are not bound by the chattering commentary class. [00:06:05] Nor the literati, those who in our day are so ideologically bound by procedural norms that they prefer a slow decline to necessary action. [00:06:16] They have endless words and few deeds. [00:06:19] They fear presence, gravitas, vitality. [00:06:23] They fear the yearn for life, the yearning that distracts the average man from expending his life force on meaningless labor and consumption. [00:06:33] The nation for such people is not a collective entity. [00:06:37] With a collective purpose, a way of life, shared loves, but a huddled mass of disparate individuals contributing to GDP and an internationalist ideology. [00:06:50] The great man rejects such people. [00:06:52] He transcends the moral pieties of the age which bound men to weakness, to being slaves, or at best lovers of warmth and small comforts. [00:07:03] He crosses the Rubicon. [00:07:06] He awakens men from slumber and sloth. [00:07:09] Just as Xenophon aroused the 10,000 to action and adventure. [00:07:14] As Themistocles, as Athens burned, united the Greeks to defeat the Persians at Salamis. [00:07:22] As the exiled El Cid led his followers against Muslim-held Spain. [00:07:26] And as Washington rallied the Continental Army at Valley Forge. [00:07:31] These were great men who, in conditions of crisis, inspired their fellow men to embrace hardship and to strive with united purpose. === Power Returns to Leaders (15:19) === [00:07:42] So one thing that distinguishes the political right from the political left is its conception of power. [00:07:51] For the right, power is preferably open, it is explicit, and is more personal. [00:07:57] It typically has its figurehead, a true identifiable object of praise or blame. [00:08:04] Think, for example, about the old paintings of kings who are wearing swords. [00:08:09] So I'm not speaking about absolute power. [00:08:12] This power should be constitutionally curtailed and limited and directed. [00:08:17] Nor does this require a centralization of power. [00:08:21] But power for the right should be identifiable and personified. [00:08:26] That is, in some way, embodied in a person. [00:08:30] But today, in our time, can we identify who specifically is responsible for, say, the spread of transgender ideology? [00:08:41] Well, maybe some of you can. [00:08:44] But I won't go there. [00:08:44] So, but in our time, power is diffused. [00:08:50] through a network composed of professional associations such as the American Medical Association, the media, academia, foundations, and government agencies. [00:09:00] Power in liberalism, especially in modern liberalism, is implicit. [00:09:07] With a few exceptions, no one mandates by law what you must think or care about. [00:09:12] And yet all of a sudden, the new current thing is presented to us and we, by a strange social pressure, feel compelled to have an opinion, to talk about it. [00:09:25] They tell us which person or country we must stop and hate for a couple of minutes. [00:09:32] There are many things that we could stop and think about, but our mind is captured by this thing presented to us. [00:09:39] The nation is repeatedly swept up in unthinking thought. [00:09:45] So, as Christians are being slaughtered, being slaughtered in Africa, in Syria, and other places, as freedom of speech is crushed even in places in the West, what are we talking about instead? [00:09:56] We're talking about Israel and Ukraine. [00:10:00] But again, power in liberalism is unidentifiable, or at least it is irreducible. [00:10:05] As Biden was incapacitated for four years, who was running the federal government? [00:10:12] Who was making the decisions? [00:10:14] Again, some of you guys might know, but who was making the decisions? [00:10:17] As for radical social change, its source is often indiscernible and is easy for them to simply dismiss any theory as conspiratorial, outlandish, or evil, or due to, you know, Ethnic jealousy or something. [00:10:34] But change just simply happens suddenly. [00:10:38] It's like the wind, you know, not where it comes from, nor where it is going. [00:10:42] The secular spirit moves, and suddenly we must celebrate the man in a dress. [00:10:49] Now, perhaps this is due to liberal managerialism, where individuals bounce between governments, corporations, NGOs, foundations, media, academic jobs, everyone moving up the academic ladder, playing the same game, operating according to the same rules. [00:11:05] And of this brand network. [00:11:06] And each organization has its talking head, all of them saying the same exact thing. [00:11:12] And so the devilish spirit moves and the aspiring class conforms. [00:11:16] But of course, this is mere theory and it's me trying to discern a diffused implicit power. [00:11:23] Now, everything conforms to this very implicit power, the sort of thing that tugs at our hearts and gets us at the psychological level. [00:11:32] And thus, even rhetoric itself has become passive aggressive. [00:11:36] The HR lady with a smile one day says you're fired without cause. [00:11:42] Threats to your livelihood are concealed under language of concern. [00:11:48] That should sound familiar. [00:11:50] We've experienced a lot of concern from fellow Christians. [00:11:54] And this is based, this is what I call Wolf's Law. [00:11:57] So I made my own law. [00:11:58] Thank you. [00:11:59] Some of you know it. [00:12:00] But among Christians, the more they talk about loving your enemies, The more willing they are to wield the left-wing mob to get you fired, to render you a social outcast, and to see you financially ruined. [00:12:16] So now you can remember Wolf's Law now. [00:12:18] But the moral rhetoric, especially among Christians, is a veiled threat. [00:12:25] But the right still holds on to this ideal that our rhetoric should be assertive and direct, and that power should be open and it should be explicit. [00:12:35] Now, Donald Trump, for all his faults, more than anyone in my lifetime, has embodied this ideal. [00:12:41] I call him the most ironic great man of history. [00:12:46] He's embodied this ideal imperfectly. [00:12:49] That is one reason why he's so hated. [00:12:51] He's shown that you can just do things, that you can just say it, that all those promises of the Republican Party that I heard for decades, they can just happen. [00:13:01] You can actually achieve it when there is a will to do it. [00:13:06] So it is for these reasons that I think people are so angsty about the title Christian Prince. [00:13:13] Which is a term, by the way, that is nearly ubiquitous in the Christian tradition. [00:13:18] So it's kind of bizarre. [00:13:21] But it suggests a title of a man who does not ask the ladies for permission. [00:13:27] It is a man whose ethics is good and evil, not safe and scary. [00:13:34] So the Christian prince, as I described him in the case for Christian nationalism, is a great man. [00:13:40] He is, no surprises here, a prince. [00:13:42] He is a distinguished man of his particular people. [00:13:47] Excelling in virtue. [00:13:49] The Christian qualifier does not make him a man of humanity nor a man of all Christians. [00:13:55] He is a Christian prince for his particular Christian people. [00:14:01] So, some people have suggested that this prince of mine is a man of absolute power, unhindered in action. [00:14:08] But this is really what I'd call a universalist projection, stated by those who lack any conception of a particular people with their own political tradition and constitution. [00:14:20] The prince is a man of a people for those people. [00:14:25] He is bound by a way of life. [00:14:28] So I am not calling for a return to monarchy, nor to some ancient conception of dictatorship, nor to a 16th century Geneva. [00:14:39] I know some of you might want some of that, but that's not what I'm saying. [00:14:42] So every people has a constitution. [00:14:45] Every people has a constitution. [00:14:46] It's either written or it's unwritten. [00:14:49] And that is it is a political architecture that limits And directs absolute power or abstract power, excuse me. [00:14:57] It limits and directs power in the abstract. [00:15:00] So, in ordinary circumstances, this prince that I've described is bound by his way of life, or I should say, the people bind him to it. [00:15:11] See, the point of the prince, among other things, is that political rule must return to great men who lead their people to greatness, who can inspire a sense of we across generations. [00:15:26] Who remind the living of their ancestors and of those yet to be born. [00:15:32] That is, they are temporal leaders of what Edmund Burke called the eternal society. [00:15:36] As he said in his own words, that it is a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. [00:15:46] So the prince is a man in whatever capacity or whatever title we want to give him in our political system who reminds us that we live in a society gifted to us from the dead, and we labor now for our progeny. [00:16:02] We work with and we work for an inheritance. [00:16:07] Every generation is both the given and the givers of a way of life. [00:16:13] So of course there are different types of civil leaders. [00:16:15] 16th, 17th centuries we hear of kings and princes, civil magistrates, governors. [00:16:20] Today we have presidents, congressmen, prime ministers, members of parliament, all those. [00:16:25] And of course many countries today have a separation of powers so that the legislative, executive, judicial powers are in different branches of government. [00:16:35] That's not always how it's been in the history. [00:16:39] But Prince, I do not refer to any specific type of ruler. [00:16:42] It's more of a ruler in general, emphasizing the personal nature of leadership, his virtue, gravitas, and piety. [00:16:52] And I cannot conceive of a renewal of Christian commonwealths without great men leading their people to it. [00:16:59] Nor can we expect a revival of national will by the leadership of policy wonks and mere regulators. [00:17:07] That is why I prefer the word prince. [00:17:10] In a way, he's the sort of mediator of the nation's will for itself. [00:17:15] It denotes both an executive power and a personal eminence in relation to the people. [00:17:21] The prince is the first of his people, the one whom you can look upon as the father or protectorate of your country. [00:17:31] The prince is a world shaker of our time who brings a Christian people. [00:17:37] Back to a self consciousness and who restores the will for their good. [00:17:44] That is what I think we are lacking in America, in particular. [00:17:47] I think it's a will, a collective will for our good. [00:17:50] And I think that a prince can actually restore that. [00:17:54] Someone, the sort of great men, can restore that. [00:17:57] So, prince is a fitting title for a man of dignity and greatness who will lead a people to liberty, virtue, and godliness. [00:18:07] So, the prince holds an office on behalf of God as creator. [00:18:12] Francis Turreton, my favorite theologian, writes that the principal and supreme end of the civil magistrate, as such, is the glory of God, the creator, conservator of the human race, and the ruler of the world. [00:18:28] It is a natural office. [00:18:31] That is, it's required by the nature of man, whose function is the right ordering of civil society for righteous and pious living. [00:18:40] Now, this civil power that he possesses, it originates from God. [00:18:45] And so in this way, the prince mediates God's divine civil rule. [00:18:50] He is not a mere steward or a simple administrator of laws as if he simply issues a divinely prescribed code. [00:18:58] He is magisterial, not ministerial. [00:19:02] He makes public judgments in application of God's moral law, effectively creating law, though derivative of natural law, and he has the power to bring about what he commands. [00:19:16] Thus, the prince holds the most excellent office, exceeding even that of the church minister, for he is most like God in that office. [00:19:30] The prince, unlike the church minister, is a mediator. [00:19:32] He's a vicar of God in outward civil affairs. [00:19:36] As John Calvin said, civil rulers represent the person of God as whose substitutes they in a manner act. [00:19:47] So, for this reason, the prince is called a god in scripture, Psalm 82 6. [00:19:52] He has, as Calvin said, a sacred character and title. [00:19:57] In a sense, we see God in the magistrate. [00:20:00] Samuel Rutherford says, for example, that the king hath a political resemblance of the king of heavens, being a little god, and so he is above any one man. [00:20:12] Calvin says that when good magistrates rule, we see God, as it were, near us. [00:20:18] And governing us by means of those whom he hath appointed. [00:20:22] Elsewhere, Calvin writes that the image of God shines forth in them when they execute judgment and justice. [00:20:30] So, the dignity of civil rulers for John Calvin is so great that he says, The palaces of princes ought to resemble a sanctuary, for they occupy the dwelling place of God, which ought to be sacred to all. [00:20:47] So, a lot of these quotes are kind of shocking, but this is a very traditional position on. the nature of the office of the civil magistrate. [00:20:56] That's jarring to modern ears, and I think we should listen to it with humility. [00:21:01] So, Calvin demonstrates the divine magnitude of the princely office, especially in terms of presence in relation to the people. [00:21:14] So, having the highest office on earth, the good prince resembles God of the people. [00:21:18] Indeed, if I'd be so bold to say, he is the closest image of God on earth. [00:21:24] So, this divine presence through the prince, which is very common in the reformed tradition, speaks to his role beyond civil administration. [00:21:33] The prince personifies their national spirit, unifies them under a mission, and inspires an intergenerational will to live. [00:21:44] He directs men in fulfilling the dominion mandate to fulfill man's nature. [00:21:49] He inspires noble action, sacrifice, common affection, and he casts a vision for national greatness. [00:21:56] As Thomas Carlyle once said, we all love great men. [00:22:01] Ah, does not every true man feel that he is himself made higher by doing reverence to what is really above him? [00:22:09] So the prince promotes national self-love, that is, loving our nation, and a manly moral liberty. [00:22:17] He recognizes national sins, but swiftly resolves them and leaves no license for exploitation or room for lingering self-doubt and the lack of national confidence, which is what ails us today. [00:22:32] He encourages and challenges the boldness and spirit of youth while elevating the old and venerating the dead. [00:22:42] He silences the social mammies and he countenances the Spartan bootstrapper. [00:22:49] He loves and enacts justice. [00:22:51] With martial virtue and resolve and thumos, he fights the foreign aggressors, sacrificing himself for his people's good, and he establishes peace with other nations. === The Christian Prince's Duty (03:53) === [00:23:02] He worships God. [00:23:04] And calls for his people to do the same. [00:23:07] In a word, the prince ought to be a great man, the hero of the people. [00:23:14] And as such, his death only solidifies the nation, creating a heroic past. [00:23:21] So, as Ernst Renan said, great men, glory, he writes, this is the capital stock upon which one bases a national idea. [00:23:31] So, it goes without saying that the prince cannot mediate salvific grace. [00:23:36] So, I've elevated the prince high, but he's not that high. [00:23:39] No earthly office has that power. [00:23:41] And Christ alone is the mediator of grace unto eternal life. [00:23:46] Nevertheless, the prince, as God's deacon, is an instrument for eternal life by his lawmaking authority and personal piety and example. [00:23:57] Now, of course, I'm speaking not only of a prince, but a Christian prince. [00:24:02] The Christian prince is not a separate species of ruler, rather, he is the prince completed or perfected. [00:24:10] He seeks not only that we animals get our mash, But also that we seek the highest things, those of eternal life. [00:24:19] He brings the consciousness that we are a Christian people with a Christian homeland. [00:24:26] And in that light, our way of life must be Christian. [00:24:29] Our customs and laws ought to be Christian, all pointing to a homeland beyond. [00:24:36] Now, this is crucial. [00:24:37] See, the whole point of Christian nations is not to transform earth into heaven, nor is it to bring the kingdom in by violence. [00:24:48] Rather, it is to point our earthly life to the divine promise of something greater. [00:24:54] The nation is great only when it knows itself to be small compared to the glories of the New Jerusalem. [00:25:04] So, Anne Bradstreet, a poet of Puritan New England, she described that heavenly city. [00:25:10] So, let me read this The city where I hope to dwell, there's none on earth can parallel. [00:25:21] The stately walls, both high and strong, are made of precious jasper stone. [00:25:26] The gates of pearl, both rich and clear, and angels are for porters there. [00:25:32] The streets thereof, transparent gold, such as no eye did e'er behold. [00:25:39] A crystal river there doth run, which doth proceed from the Lamb's throne. [00:25:43] Of life there are the waters sure, which shall remain forever pure. [00:25:49] Nor sun nor moon they have no need, for glory doth from God proceed. [00:25:54] No candle there, nor yet torchlight, for there shall be no darksome night. [00:26:01] From sickness and infirmity forever they shall be free, nor withering age shall e'er come there, but beauty shall be bright and clear. [00:26:10] This city pure is not for thee, for things unclean there shall not be. [00:26:17] If I of heaven may have my fill, take thou the world and all that will. [00:26:25] Now, the greatest of great Christian nations, they do not parallel the city to come. [00:26:33] So let us always be mindful of that. [00:26:36] But Anne Bradstreet, the adored wife of Simon Bradstreet, a man committed to public religious orthodoxy in Puritan New England, was not denouncing Christian nations on earth with that poem. [00:26:50] Her message is a pious reflection on comparison. === Distinguishing Temporal Nations (05:34) === [00:26:56] We labor for a virtuous, pious, and beautiful nation, knowing that success makes us only smaller and smaller relative to our nation's lodestar. [00:27:09] Thus, the Christian prince, as a leader of the nation, has that delicate work of making us great by submitting our way of life to something far greater. [00:27:20] But he does not achieve this by making us, by earthly standards, weak and helpless. [00:27:26] but rather strong, virtuous, and pious. [00:27:30] That is, he reminds us to act like men. [00:27:37] All right, so Americans get uncomfortable with this idea of all this prince talk. [00:27:42] So let me calm your fears. [00:27:43] Well, not you, but the people watching this later on. [00:27:48] But as I said, the prince follows the people's way of life. [00:27:51] So an American Christian prince will be an American. [00:27:56] Okay, he'll be an American. [00:27:57] He will follow the American tradition. [00:28:01] and the American ways, and he will serve the American heritage. [00:28:07] The people who denounce me as a nationalist also, strangely also claim that I want some old world medieval political order. [00:28:17] But I am an American nationalist. [00:28:19] I want an American Christian nationalist, and that means something. [00:28:23] The American actually has content. [00:28:25] It means something. [00:28:26] I've said many times that George Washington is a good example for us. [00:28:32] He's a man who knew how to win, and he had the prominence and personality to become the American monarch. [00:28:39] In fact, some people suggested that to him, but he didn't want it. [00:28:43] He had the magnanimity and the prudence to keep and maintain a republic. [00:28:50] So considering him, let me just think of this guy, considering him the father of their country, Americans throughout the 19th century kept his image on their mantles, symbolizing virtue, order, and sacrifice. [00:29:04] Washington is, I think, the quintessential American great man, and I hope and we should hope for a new Washington to arise among us. [00:29:12] All right, so most ages, most ages only have one great man, which I'll call the one. [00:29:24] But still, we can strive to be great men among the few. [00:29:29] So there's the one and then there's the few. [00:29:32] So the greatness of the few is like Gilgamesh's Enkidu. [00:29:37] Some of you classical students will know this stuff. [00:29:40] Gilgamesh's and Kedu, David's Jonathan, Achilles' Patroclus, Alexander the Great's Hephaestion, Calvin's Beza, Napoleon's Berthier, and Lee's Stonewall Jackson. [00:29:56] These are the great men among the few. [00:30:01] But most of us will not be great in the ways that I've described. [00:30:08] But we can each be great in our own small way. [00:30:12] As great fathers, as great mothers, we can be great in our vocations, in our civic associations, our businesses, and in our churches, we can be great according to the laws of Christ. [00:30:24] Greatness is not limited to the one or to the few, there is greatness among the many. [00:30:31] But although our names will be forgotten in time, our greatness can live on in the great actions of groups. [00:30:41] So we do not know. [00:30:43] We do not know all the names of David's mighty men, but their deeds are recorded for us in Scripture. [00:30:50] We do not know all the names of the Spartan 300 who died at Thermopylae, defending Greek civilization from the Persian invasion, but we tell of their sacrifice to this day. [00:31:03] We do not know all the names of Xenophon's 10,000 Greeks who made their trek home, being hounded by the barbarians seeking their destruction, but they continue to inspire us. [00:31:16] We do not know all the names of those who fought and died for this country's independence. [00:31:23] But we celebrate their victory. [00:31:26] And in all these cases, those forgotten names were part of something that achieved great things. [00:31:36] Great things that live on, inspiring those who came after them, even inspiring the great ones and the great few. [00:31:47] So by forming a we and acting as one, we live on and we shape this world. [00:31:55] We can all be great by participating in one common struggle for our good and for the good of our posterity. [00:32:04] Now, we all of us, all of us want our children to be great, great Christian men and women. [00:32:10] Our chief goal is that they are great Christians, for we know that the kingdom of heaven, in the kingdom of heaven, even the least are the greatest. [00:32:19] In that heavenly order, the least known on earth can be first in God's heavenly kingdom. [00:32:25] But in this temporal, perishing world, however, we distinguish. === Gifts for Common Struggle (02:55) === [00:32:30] Humility and submission before God is foremost, but this does not destroy magnificence, eminence, and princely strength and resolve. [00:32:41] Rather, it perfects it. [00:32:44] Our earthly callings, according to the demands of this temporal world, are not dissolved by grace, but completed by it, made whole, set in order for the goods of this world and for the next. [00:32:58] Now, the conflation of nature and grace and the things of heaven and earth. [00:33:02] Which is practiced across respectable evangelicalism has led to passive aggression, victimolatry, emotional sabotage, and the baptizing of second wave feminism. [00:33:16] In short, it's the fusion of the faith with political liberalism and the sort of implicit soft power I spoke of earlier. [00:33:27] But in scripture and the Christian political tradition, civil and social power are explicit, they are direct. [00:33:36] It is confrontational, agonistic, and active. [00:33:41] And while it's true that earthly power is weak and it is dependent before God, that is not the case before fellow men. [00:33:52] And especially not before those who would do evil or seek the church's destruction. [00:33:58] So let me end by saying that we have a lot of work to do. [00:34:01] A lot of work to do. [00:34:04] We are currently in a state of recovery. [00:34:08] From years of fusing Christian theology with prevailing social dogma. [00:34:15] And all of this must be critiqued and trashed. [00:34:19] We need stronger institutions. [00:34:22] We need elite formation. [00:34:23] We need elites. [00:34:26] We need the recovery of the arts, of architecture, academics. [00:34:31] We need poets. [00:34:32] We desperately need poets and novelists. [00:34:36] We need novelists and we need, of course, statesmen. [00:34:39] We need strong families and churches. [00:34:42] And a strong, albeit small, state. [00:34:45] So let us as individuals be faithful to God for the good gifts he has given us. [00:34:51] And with those gifts, let us pursue the height of excellence that they afford us. [00:34:59] Let's not forget that all of our powers our bodily health, our minds, our reason, our station in life they are gifts of God for use, they're gifts of God for development and for action. [00:35:15] They show us in part the telos, the end of man. [00:35:20] So let us use them to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. [00:35:25] Thank you.