Dr. Stephen Wolf and the host debate Christian nationalism, defending Aristotle's political theories against biblicist critics who demand explicit scriptural proof for civil government in Eden. They clarify that Aristotle's warnings on oligarchy targeted non-Christian nations, distinguishing true Kyperianism from homogenizing globalism that erases ethnic distinctions. The discussion critiques modern "Two Kingdoms" views for creating false nature-versus-grace divides, arguing instead that nations have natural obligations to order themselves toward the Triune God alongside families. This sets the stage for a ten-part series defining Christian nationalism, civil law, and Anglo-American Protestantism. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Biblical Arguments and Theological Grounding00:13:33
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All right, here we are with Dr. Stephen Wolf.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
You're welcome.
So, we are going to be doing a 10 part series all on the topic of Christian nationalism.
And what we want to do from the very outset is actually have Stephen define Christian nationalism and answer really, I would argue, and I think you would make the same argument 90% of your opponent's objections to your book come from the introduction.
And I think it's because, not because the introduction is uniquely flawed, but because I think.
A lot of your opponents didn't get past the introduction and are really silly in a lot of their objections.
So, like, you know, Biblicism is a rampant plague on evangelicals, especially in the Baptist world, which I'm a part of.
And so, for a lot of guys, they read the one line where you said, I'm not a theologian.
And I've had to correct so many guys and say, when Stephen Wolf says he's not a theologian, you need to understand that those of you who are objecting, Stephen Wolf would also say that you are not a theologian.
He means, I do not have a PhD in theology.
It doesn't mean I haven't read the Bible and I don't have theological ideas or that I don't know basic theology or the Westminster Confession of Faith.
Everybody, and part of this is Sproul's fault, who I love, but everyone's a theologian.
I know what he means, but let's just be honest and say 99% of these theologians that everyone is one of are bad theologians.
And so, you know, all you're saying is that I'm going to assume the theology of the reformers and then work from that to political philosophy.
Is that right?
Yeah, when I said I'm not a theologian, I mean I don't work out of the discipline of theology.
And this is, there's the classic distinction that the reformers made and the post Reformation reformers made.
And that distinction would be between theology and politics and ethics.
And a lot of them wrote about in those different disciplines, but some did not.
And a lot of the guys who wrote political works, like Bartholomew Keckerman and guys I'm working on now and Alsted, they wrote.
Not as theologians, but in kind of the realm or discipline of politics.
So that's what I was focusing on.
But also, I've never been trained in going from scripture to theological statements.
And so I wanted to, I wanted a robust theological system from which I could build a political theory.
And that's what I've studied.
That's what I know.
That's what I could call myself as a political theorist.
I have a PhD in political science.
And so I wanted to assume certain doctrines that I Considered and still consider the majority opinions of the Reformed tradition and work from those.
And I wanted really solid statements because I wanted to work analytically, syllogistically, systematically to build a systematic or a system of political doctrine.
And to do that, I needed good, robust theology.
And I'd rather just, instead of doing the work, which has already been done for us, you can pick up Turretin's three volume Institute of LinkedIn Theology.
It's already been done for us.
And the statements he makes are repeated throughout our tradition.
So Why not just take those and work from them?
Right.
Stand on the shoulders of the people who came before us.
I completely agree.
But I do think that, you know, if I could be frank, I think that you sometimes your modesty betrays you.
I think you're being too modest.
Like, so I know that some, again, of the boomer brain Baptist, and for the record, I'm not picking on older people, boomer is a state of mind, it's not merely an age.
You can be a 30 year old boomer.
The spirit of boomerism is strong with many young people.
Individuals.
And so, what I'm saying is that a lot of like kind of boomer type biblicist Baptist, when you made that one little statement just a moment ago where you said, you know, I've never been trained in the work of going from scripture to theological statements or positions, a lot of guys are going to hear that.
And in their presumption and arrogance, they're going to say, well, then what business does he have, you know, writing like, and they're just going to write you off.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, what they'll say is that how can you have a Christian nationalism when you didn't do exegesis?
Right.
And the simple answer is that if I'm using theological statements like, you know, Christ is Lord.
Right.
And I'm speaking to a Christian audience, do I need to demonstrate that truth from Scripture or can I assume that?
Right.
And if I'm using Christ as Lord in an argument with an audience that affirms that, then I can work from there and have a Christian conclusion from that.
So if you have Christian doctrine that we all agree on, and that's my audience, then you can make a Christian statement.
And conclusion from that.
And that's precisely what I did.
And so I would just say if people have a problem, I mean, the problem should be with the soundness of my arguments.
Right.
And completely agree.
So if you agree with the premises and it's a valid argument, then you're compelled yourself to agree with the conclusion.
Agreed.
And so if you're going to attack me, instead of saying, I didn't ground these statements in scripture, you should ask, are those statements true or false?
That's what you should be asking.
And I think if you actually approach it from that perspective, What you'll find is that you actually agree with those statements.
And so that should be the area of attack.
But yeah, I think there is within the 20th century this, like you said, this biblicist, it's really kind of rooted in a type of reactionary fundamentalism.
So I don't like tossing out fundamentalists all the time, it's usually overused, but there is this fear of believing anything or stating anything without having a sort of scriptural proof next to it.
But sometimes, and just in argument, you can assume.
What your audience already assumes, and you can work from it.
I mean, that's the nature of argument itself.
Especially if we want to progress.
Like, the only way we're going to progress is we're going to, like, we have to assume certain things have already been established.
Otherwise, we're just reinventing the wheel again and again.
Like, I mean, the stereotypical guy who, you know, and some of this is because of higher criticism and all these kinds of things which fundamentalism tried to stand against.
But because there's been, you know, all these liberal attacks on, Basic, you know, fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith.
A lot of, you know, the most recent generation of Christians, instead of being able to stand on the shoulders of giants who preceded them and carry the ball further and forward, they've had to simply redo the work that's already been done.
Because people are like, well, how do we know that the Bible is really the Word of God?
And so then you spend 60 years with guys going back to original manuscripts and learning the Hebrew and learning the Greek and this and that.
And the final conclusion is, yeah, the ESV would have done just fine.
Like that, you know, that's, you know, that was good.
You know, King James is probably a little bit better, but, you know, we, uh, turns out, uh, this, I, there's a difference in building a house versus inspecting a house.
The most previous generation, I feel like we've devoted 95% of our time to inspecting the house built by our fathers, uh, instead of building new wings and new developments and new structures.
And I appreciated that about your book, um, that you didn't go and, uh, and indict.
Your fathers, and when I say spiritual fathers, I mean guys like Calvin, you know, and the reformers.
But instead, you said, I'm going to trust my fathers.
They built a house, it's sound, and I would like to build an addition to the house.
We're going to add a grandma's suite in the backyard, you know, whatever.
So, yeah.
I mean, in my audience, like the people I was criticizing in the book, I'm going after people for the most part who assume or argue within the reform tradition myself.
And so, if I'm going to take from that tradition, then they should be okay with that.
And for the most part, what I assumed, what I thought I could assume, and then I argued for things I thought I really couldn't just assume.
So, I think it is a majority, and we'll get to this in a later episode.
I think it is a majority position.
In the reformed tradition, that in the state of integrity, had Adam not fallen, that there would have been some type of civil government, civil magistracy.
That I think is the majority position.
But I did not assume that because I knew it would be very controversial to just assume that.
Because I think most people don't know that, largely because it's kind of bared in Latin.
There's still, as things are coming out, we're seeing more and more.
It's easier to demonstrate that that is the majority position.
But I didn't assume that.
So I argued for it.
And so people can make whatever they want with those arguments.
But the things that I assumed the most were in the realm of anthropology, assumptions of the ends of man, assumptions about the constitution of man, the role of reason in man in his original state.
And so I assumed all those things.
And then, because that's like the foundation of a political theory.
So if you read the foundational texts of political theory, even if the ones you don't like, so like The Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes or Locke's Trees on Government, he starts with the question of what is man?
And so I wanted to get those theological groundings in place.
So, then I could do what I consider myself good at, which would be political theory.
And so, anyway, I would just say again, like if people, again, if you're going to criticize, instead of criticizing that method, which is really kind of a superficial criticism, you got to go at what am I saying?
Is what I'm saying true or is it false?
And does the conclusion validly follow from the premises?
Right.
I completely agree.
And I think that's it.
So, I really think, like, yeah.
So, I think that the argument that I don't use scripture, for example, I really think that is one of the worst criticisms.
It's the most understandable, but also the worst criticism.
Because what it reflects is this, I think, a very 20th century mentality that we're afraid of reasoning.
Like we're afraid of the traditional notion of an argument with premises.
And it has to then be built or an exegesis.
And I think what people will find out more and more as they read these works that are being translated, which I'm very excited about in the next year, they'll see that a lot of our reformed forefathers.
They did not actually do exegesis in their.
I mean, some of them did, but a lot of these works are not full of what we would consider exegesis.
In some places, they cite Aristotle more than they cite scripture.
And again, you can disagree with that all day long, but as they understood the political discipline, it was a practical philosophy, and it deals with our experience in the world, our understanding of ourselves and our nature, and then applying those practically in real life.
And so.
That being said, there is the philosophy side.
And even in the book, I say, I hope there is a guy who does theology, who's trained in theology, who will then provide a theological argument for what I'm saying.
So, in other words, I should say a biblical argument.
So it would be, and I know there actually are maybe two or three people doing that as we speak.
And so, which is very exciting.
Because, like, philosophy will not contradict, like, true, sound philosophy will not contradict scripture.
Truth is God's truth.
Yeah, so like scripture is revealed truth, and a lot of that is kind of above nature.
So, it's things that mainly concern salvation, like the Trinity itself is above nature.
You can't reason to that.
But there are a lot of things like God is one.
That's a sort of statement that is a natural truth that you could actually demonstrate, at least in principle, through philosophy.
It's also stated in scripture.
And so, you can go at that question of the oneness of God from these two different lights, as they say, from the light of revealed truth and the light of reason as well.
So, I did it from the side of politics or political theory or practical philosophy.
And others are now doing it from the side of revealed truth, trying to demonstrate the same conclusion.
That's great.
And, you know, God's not going to contradict himself.
Right.
Natural revelation will not contradict special revelation.
That's right.
And so, again, you come to the same conclusion on natural truth from the twin lights, scripture and reason.
Amen.
So, we want to, you know, in this episode, in the second half, we want to, you know, give a definition for Christian nationalism.
Democracy, Oligarchy, and Christian Nation00:10:10
But before we do, I would be remiss if we don't talk about that infamous racist Aristotle.
Okay.
You know, so like a while back, by the time, you know, this airs, this will be, you know, some time will have passed in between.
But I think a lot of our listeners will probably remember the notorious showdown between Eric Kahn and Dr. James White.
And I love them both.
But I think that, you know, Dr. White was unfair.
In some of his criticisms.
So I came out and publicly defended Eric Kahn and saying, you know, he posted on X, not even Aristotle directly, but it was somebody commentating on something that Aristotle had said.
And it was about nations and their ability to not be chaotic and not be having factions and divisions and these kinds of things.
And he just simply said that one of the things that helps with that is if there is an ethnocentric, you know, or mono ethnic polis body of people, citizens.
And But it wasn't just that.
There were a few statements, some explicit, some implicit, baked into the pie.
And I took it as at least three.
One, Aristotle is saying, yeah, if everybody are from the same tribe, the same lineage, then that's going to help.
But then it wasn't just that statement.
He went beyond that.
He said, that becomes exceedingly necessary.
You need that help in not all nations.
Indiscriminately, but in a nation with a particular form of government, namely democracy.
And then he, you know, again, this guy commentating on Aristotle said that what Aristotle was getting at is that in a, especially a raw democracy, which none of our founders were fond of and wasn't their desire or vision for our nation, but something that devolves and becomes less and less of a republic and more and more of a just, you know, the voice of the people, the voice of God, very democratic by nature, that kind of form of government.
Usually, is not, if we're honest, is not truly a democracy, but democracy gives way for an oligarchy.
Like, you know, leading up to the 2024 election, you know, there was a poll that was done that said 20% of people who took this poll, and it was thousands of people, said that they would vote for whoever Taylor Swift told them to.
That the more you move away from a republic and aristocracy, which is different than a republic, but those who are qualified, what inevitably happens is it's not that each and every individual in a democratic sense has equal weight and say, but naturally, those who are influencers, whether they be celebrities or actors or somebody in the NFL, athletes or leaders of corporations or Elon Musk or whatever, they rise to the top inevitably.
And so then your democracy is actually not really a democracy.
It becomes an oligarchy.
And these people can sway and get the masses to do whatever they want.
You know, the NPCs, the non player characters, you just, you know, Elon switches out the chip and says, we're doing the Trump dance now, you know.
Whereas just a couple of years ago, we were kneeling, you know, in solidarity to the suffrage of black Americans, you know, with Colin Kaepernick, you know.
And it's so quick that the masses can just on a dime shift.
And that's because we've moved away from a republic more to a democracy.
And out of that democracy emerges an oligarchy.
Some people are nefarious.
Others, maybe not, but just about across the board, none of them are really qualified to be political leaders.
So I took it as Aristotle saying that in that form of government, not necessarily a monarchy, not in every form of government, but in a raw democracy that gives way to an oligarchy, those leaders, for their own ends, for their own benefit, can pit different tribes and factions against one another within a nation.
And so if you have a clear natural divide by having multiple different Lineages and tribes, then that becomes just a breeding ground for resentment for nefarious political leaders, oligarchs to play off of.
And so Eric Kahn retweeted that and said, I can't even remember what he said, but he basically said, Yep.
And James White, of course, said, You know, yeah, Aristotle was right.
Exactly.
And James White responded by, No, you know, and clutched his pearls.
And so then I came out to defend, you know, Eric, because he's my friend, and because I think he was right, and said, Eric's not being a racist, you know, and But notice here's the thing two things explicitly said in this, and one implicitly.
And I'll say this final thing and give it to you.
One, Aristotle didn't technically say, at least in this quote, in this commentary on Aristotle, it did not say that no nation ever in all places and all times couldn't have more than one ethnicity and get along.
Number two, instead, he said different ethnicities with a particular form of government.
Namely, a democracy with oligarchs who are playing off of it with nefarious means.
And then, number three, I think we can assume implicitly, Aristotle is also talking about a nation that's not Christian.
So, this is also what naturally might happen aside from Christian nationalism.
So, when Eric retweeted that, said Aristotle was right, Eric was not saying that a Christian nation with a different form of government, not a democracy, but rather perhaps a monarchy or perhaps a republic or an aristocracy, Eric was simply saying, A non-Christian nation with this exact form of government,
democracy devolving into oligarchy with multiple different ethnicities, probably isn't a good idea.
What Eric did not say is that in a Christian nation with a republic, you know, that you can't have some different ethnicities.
And so I came out and defended him with that.
But all that being said, at face value, when I looked at it, and I had to stop and pause and think for a second, but I was like, yeah, Aristotle is right.
And none of that means that the gospel is impotent or that the.
But what he's saying is just naturally, he's observing that apart from saving grace and apart from a Christian nation, just a pagan nation with an oligarchy and raw democracy and multiple different, you know, Somalians and Haitians and this and that.
That and it's like, of course, it's true.
How do I know?
Because I wasn't born 15 minutes ago, it's happened here.
That's the whole thing that's been happening for the last few decades one group of leaders, Democrats, playing off of the plight of one minority group against another majority group and transferring guilt and this and that so that they can get elected.
And, of course, it's true.
Thoughts?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, yeah, I have a lot to say on this.
Do you think I'm crazy, though, real quick?
No, I mean, you're absolutely right.
I mean, there's a lot.
Aristotle and Joel are right.
That's what I'm saying.
Yeah, they're both right.
Yeah, you guys are both right.
Yeah, I mean, first of all, on the Aristotle thing, this has been really frustrating because I, again, like this doesn't mean that James White's wrong with his criticism of the use of Aristotle.
I understand that critique, but it's when people lose their minds over it.
You have to, if you know the Christian political tradition, especially after the 12th century or the 13th century, the use of Aristotle is ubiquitous.
And it's not just.
Thomas Aquinas, it's not just, you know, Marsilius of Padua.
It's Calvin's using the four causes of Aristotle in his Ephesians commentary.
Yeah, you had like two weeks where, like, every day, multiple times a day, you were posting Calvin quoting Aristotle.
Yeah, and everyone quoted him, like the New England Puritans would call Aristotle the philosopher.
Like, calling him the philosopher following from Aquinas is again ubiquitous in the Reformed tradition.
Now, that doesn't mean they were right to do that.
But it does mean that you should probably chill out.
Like, you should probably not lose your mind over the fact that in your own tradition you claim to be a part of, these guys all quoted him often as authorities in various things.
They wouldn't cite these guys in like theological matters because the anthropology of the Reformed tradition is that when it comes to theological matters, man basically lost the ability to reason properly when it came to theology.
So that's why they're polytheistic and sacrifices, all these things that they kind of devised to try to fill this gap in theology.
But that doesn't mean that they're worthless when it comes to politics.
I mean, we'll get to that a little later.
But the point is just like you should just chill out a bit because you're criticizing not just Eric Kahn, Calvin, Vermili, Junius, Zanke, Kecker, just go down the line, Turretin, all these greats of our tradition appealed to Aristotle, particularly in ethics and politics as an authority on those matters.
So I just, you know, just like, again, chill out.
Yeah.
Not you.
No, I know.
But, and yeah, so I, yeah, and the reason, yeah, so I think that in political matters, like this is the problem I think with people like James White and others in that orbit.
Because they're, sorry, but they have a sort of post millennial fantasy going on.
And that is that they can't conceive of a Christian nation apart from some sort of broad revival, revivalism.
Which, to be fair, none of that is innate to.
Eschatology and being so I'm post millennial, and one of the big revelations for me about a year ago was just looking through history for one, but then also, especially, you know, looking at biblical history.
Postmillennial Fantasies and Political Law00:14:17
I was like, Yeah, Josiah, so much of what God has done, we can ask the question, What, you know, in terms of theoretically, what can God do?
But even as a cessationist, that's, you know, the continuationist is always going to, Well, you're saying God can't do it, and it's like, Yeah, but of course, God.
Of course, God can do certain things, but the better question is, what does God do?
What will God do?
And one of the best ways to answer that, I think, is simply to say, what has God already done?
Is there any patterns?
Can we notice a little bit?
Can we notice any patterns on the part of God and what seems to be his MO in biblical history and then providentially as it's played out in the gospel age over the last 2,000 years?
And so, whether it's Josiah or King David, what I've noticed is that God really can send revival in a grassroots way where it's bottom up.
It uh, that preachers throughout the land, George Whitefield, these kinds of things, and and you get enough critical mass of the every man, you know, the power to the people, regenerate hearts, and um, and even then, they still, you know, they still have to be trained on how does my Christian faith play out politically, so there still needs to be training on application and this, um, but but you can actually have a bottom up grassroots revival, uh,
with where you get 50 plus one of the population of a nation with regenerate hearts and enough training of how.
To apply these regenerate hearts, regenerate minds in the political sphere to where they can eventually vote their way into righteousness.
That can happen.
Historically, and certainly in terms of biblical history, that's not typically what God does.
If we're asking the question not what can God do, but what has God done, the lion's share, the majority report, would fall on what I would consider to be a top down revival, where God, in his providence, uses one or just a handful of individuals.
Works them into seats of real power, which is not inherently evil.
Power can be used good or bad.
And then he gets a hold of those guys' hearts, puts them into the seats of power.
And then they say, under Christian nationalism, re voice for Nazis.
If you use that unironically, you will be immediately deported.
You know, tongue and teeth.
But my point is, under Christian nationalism, there will be no more, you know, avocado toast or under Christian, like, and they literally just come in and they lay down the law without the majority support of the people.
They just say, this is the way it's going to be.
And then the law, this is, Basic reform doctrine in its second use, you know, has this pedagogical function and serves as a tutor.
And the people maybe don't like it at first, but eventually the law is used to shape the people in their hearts and minds and actually sets the better backdrop for pastors in churches to preach the gospel to people who now actually view themselves as sinners because in the state there's a just law that is functioning as a clear mirror to show them their own need for Christ.
It's obviously that's what God has done.
And to think that.
So, anyways, my point is, I'm post millennial.
And for me, all that means, it means a lot of things, but for this purpose, all that means is you think it could happen, I think it will happen.
Right?
But when I say I think it will happen, I don't see anything in post millennial eschatology that says that it will happen and it must happen bottom up.
That you can't argue from eschatology.
Yeah.
So, I agree with everything you just said.
My criticism, when I say post millennial fantasy, what I mean is that.
They see they have a sort of progressive outlook, so that the experiences of human history, with like what you like what Aristotle is talking about, how ethnic distinctions or differences create political conflict, that stuff will just all go away because, in the progress of the millennium, those issues will just go away.
So, when a sort of fantastical post millennial political theory is devised, it's with the assumption of some future state that they just kind of posit these principles.
And so they can reject all the what they consider bad in the past because that's eliminated by grace.
Right.
And so that's one of my criticisms.
But we haven't gotten there yet.
You're arguing A to Z, but skipping B, C, D, E.
I mean, my argument was that those problems will never go away.
I think even, and I would hope that like postmodern people would see that.
But I guess as an amillennial guy, I see that these problems of what Aerosol describes are going to be perpetual.
There are always going to be issues, there's always going to be political disputes.
Politics is always going to be agonistic.
There's always going to be differences, and you have to struggle through that.
Grace is not going to eliminate the nature of politics as it's always been.
And so that's even Jesus, to put a verse on it, like the poor you will always have.
Right.
So, even in our post-millennial hope, you're going to have to figure out what do we do with the poor?
What do we do with the homeless?
What do we do with the immigrant?
What do we do?
Yeah.
You'll always have to deal with those issues.
And so, when these guys in the past were citing Aristotle, Cicero, Seneca, Um, you know, even Julius Caesar, all these when they were talking about these guys and quoting them as authorities, they were doing it when they were living in Christian states.
They had Christian magistrates, they had Christian nations, Christian states, Christian governments, and they appealed to them because they were a body of experience of human history in the arrangement of political society, and so they were in it like they were in the Christian nation, in the Christian state, in these things.
And so they were not afraid to appeal to the common human experience because they were actually, they didn't have to, you know, think through some future state and then say, oh, it'll be like this.
And then, and then appeal to grace to eliminate these various problems.
And so, you know, even if those problems, like you said, are going to go away in the future, we still live in them now.
I don't, so it's, and I don't think they're entirely, like, I don't believe in it.
I think that I actually do hold to, and I lean towards it, not definitively, but the, The possibility, I would say more likely than not, of a golden age.
But a golden age, even then, poverty would not be ultimately eradicated.
Certainly, distinctions among different ethnicities would not be eradicated.
And that's like God's created order has distinctions.
There's distinction between male and female.
And it's so funny that, like, the complementarian, which I usually take opportunity to mock, I would be patriarchal, but the complementarian will recognize, well, Galatians chapter three can't be used to eradicate distinctions.
Distinctions between gender, you know, like, you know, male is still male, female is still female.
But then they're inconsistent or even perhaps dishonest in their hermeneutic that in the very same breath, it's like, well, male and female still exist, but no more Jew and Greek.
It's like, well, yeah, like no more Jew and Greek in the sense that at the Lord's table and the waters of baptism, you know, one spirit, one church, one baptism, that we're all equal in the eternal sense of our dignity, our value in the sight of God, made in the image of God.
Naturally, and then, you know, and then as regenerate people, you know, children adopted, there's no stepchildren in God's family, and equal standing as members in a church.
And, you know, even you got guys like Robert E. Lee, who's taking the Lord's Supper right there, along with his slaves and their brothers in Christ and co heirs in grace.
And the same thing with a husband and wife, you know, husbands, you're the head of the home, but don't rub it in.
Your wife is a weaker vessel, don't exploit that, but rather exercise self control and compassion and sympathy.
Because she is the weaker vessel and you are the head.
And yet at the same time, she's a co heir in grace.
And so it's that kind of language.
But my point is if you're consistent, then you look at Galatians 3 and you say, yeah, equality when it comes to the things of God for male and female.
But distinctions, natural distinctions of male and female are not eradicated.
Okay, great.
Now apply that to master and slave and Jew and Greek.
There will always be distinctions.
Like I, you know, I'm highly offended by this, to be completely honest.
I have noticed that there's a disproportionate number of African Americans in the NFL and the NBA.
And I don't think that's fair.
It seems as though that there actually might be a pattern, that an argument can be made, not for each and every individual, but in a general group dynamic, that African Americans seem to be better athletes in those particular sports than white people.
And I'm just very offended by it.
Obviously, I'm being facetious.
I'm not offended.
It's okay.
That's okay.
People are different, there are distinctions.
And there's a difference between disparities that are caused by corruption versus distinctions.
And I think, so all that being said, even with being post millennial, and even when we get to Z, if we get to Z by God's grace, and even if that Z means a golden age of prosperity and the nations have flocked to Mount Zion and all these things, which I do believe, I still actually think that nations will be different.
And if you're not careful, I think it's not just post millennial eschatology, but I think it's the combination of the post millennial eschatology combined with.
This is some of the modern theonomic guys in terms of their ethics.
When you put those together, they won't always say it out loud, but as I've probed a little bit and asked some pointed questions, what it's revealed to me from some of the post mill theonomic guys is they basically believe that the law of God is so specific and such a particular and strict prescription that essentially once this happens and we are in this golden age.
There'll really be no difference between China and Brazil and Somalia and America.
Basically, the law word of God doesn't just get you righteousness in terms of righteous laws and obedience and these kinds of things across the board, but it really will get you the same stir fry recipes across the board.
It'll get you the same kind of art and philosophy and dances and music.
It's so funny, it's ironic because heaven, we all acknowledge that there's a diversity of heaven, every tribe, tongue, and language, but it seems like some of the post mill theonomic.
Motivation or goals that they're working towards would eradicate the distinctions in heaven because eventually, when they get to this golden age, there'd be no distinctions left on earth.
Yeah.
Well, one of the interesting things is because I'm a natural law guy, you often hear criticism of like natural law can, you know, you get whatever you want out of it.
But it's also true.
I've made that.
It's also true of people who emphasize grace.
At the same time.
So that's a good point.
It just so happens that if you reject natural law and you emphasize grace and a Christian nation is this and that, it just so happens to look a lot like Reaganism of 1980.
And then all of a sudden, the Christian nation looks a lot like Reagan's interpretation of the pilgrims coming over to Massachusetts Bay Colony and Salem.
Anyone from anywhere can be an American.
And it's interesting because it's just fascinating to me how the timeless politics of Jesus just happens to be.
Exactly fit with the conservative politics of the 1980s or the 1990s.
But yeah, so this is the fear.
This is my fear is that when you eliminate natural, like the idea that there is a natural, that there's something natural about man that's fixed and immutable, you end up having this plaything of grace.
And that means you can create, you can engineer in your mind, in your imagination, anything you want.
And it just happens, like I said, it often will become precisely your political socialization.
So we have the The boomer state of mind, as you mentioned before, the boomer state of mind was engineered in the conservatism of the 1980s, the 1990s, Fox News.
And so it just happens to be free market.
It happens to be anyone can come here as long as they agree to the covenant, as they, instead of the propositions, now it's the covenant.
And so, yeah, you can create anything you want and just happens to be that.
So I, but I would say if you have a.
So you can do anything you want with nature, but that's a fair point.
You can do anything you want with grace.
Yeah, and even in the liberals and the left wing theologians do that as well.
You're right.
And so, this is why I think it's important to have a nature grace distinction and understand that the way humans have arranged and ordered themselves into history, despite the abuse, it actually reflects something about human nature that's good, that we ought to examine and affirm as good, and not let grace be this way to destroy all of that.
That there actually is like the natural distinctions between people groups.
Those, even though there are abuses in there, there's errors in there, they need to be corrected by grace.
There is something, there's an animating principle behind human nature that drives people to group in certain ways for their good.
And we shouldn't allow grace to destroy that under some sort of fantastical project of really homogenization.
Like you said, there wouldn't be a China, there wouldn't be a Japan, there wouldn't be this and that because everyone's under exactly the same law and somehow under the same customs.
Everyone's interchangeable.
You know, this person can be here and there without any sort of disruption in their way of life because everyone has the Christian way of life and the Christian culture, which is universal.
It sounds a lot like globalism.
Enlightenment Roots and Human Nature00:03:16
Right.
It sounds like the interchangeability of workers that this guy's cheaper labor, so bring him over.
He's just like anyone else, the abstract human.
It's the same.
It's based on the modern notion.
Isn't it convenient?
You know, that philosophy also.
Plays really well to the GDP continuing to go up.
It's like our theology just so happens that it also works really, really well with shipping labor overseas and hedge fund managers doing really well.
And that's where I'm like, all right, those are some of the things that got me thinking.
Like, okay, so you're a theonomist, but the way you apply theonomy also really works well for you to be rich.
Like, is that part of it?
Are you, are you, you promise me it's not part of it?
Cause it looks like it might be part of it.
And yeah.
So, all that being said, yeah, I love the fact that their underlying philosophy, I was planning on getting this in another episode, I guess, but their underlying philosophy is actually deeply Enlightenment informed, or at least the socialization that led to the theology.
I mean, the free market stuff, that's Scottish Enlightenment.
That's Adam Smith.
That's Ricardo, the French and the British Isles basically contributed to our notions of free market.
So, that's Enlightenment, the rejection of natural law.
Is deeply enlightenment, and that's like David Hume, Immanuel Kant.
Some other things about the human nature being almost like this bundle of sentiment without a good ordering principle, that we need grace to sort of, we need pure revelation just to have some sense of what is good.
That's very much assumed certain Thomas Hobbesian notions of man as a bundle of sentiments.
So there is a deeply, like, even within this camp, as much as they attack Aristotle and Aquinas and these guys and their metaphysics.
There is a type of like enlightenment anti metaphysics that's operating in the background of all these guys.
We can get into more detail at a different place, but super interesting.
Real quick, let me say this.
Part of it is back to the, you know, every nation ending up being the same and there being no distinctions and those kinds of things if you use grace to completely eradicate or replace nature.
I hopped on, and I think you know this, we weren't as close a couple years ago.
But you probably maybe heard it through the grapevine, or I might have even said something like this directly to you.
So for me, I was just like, I'm just tired of pietism, you know?
And that was my first thing coming out of COVID and BLM and, you know, these kinds of things.
And I was like, I want to do something.
The Christian faith, it shouldn't just affect my marriage and my quiet time.
Like, surely, like, surely we should do something, you know?
And so, you know, and you and I were talking, you know, offline before recording, but for, you know, the past few decades, theonomy was the only game in town.
If you didn't want to be a pietist, you're a theonomist, you know, and praise God for Rush Dooney and Bonson.
Christian Families and Covenantal Truths00:11:54
And Rush Dooney, I like, is still my favorite.
And I agree with him because Rush Dooney kind of, if some of this is generational and he kind of preceded that, you know, being a little bit older.
And so Rush Dooney, I feel like Rush Dooney has a little bit more in common with like someone like Pat Buchanan than he does Reagan.
You know, he's a little bit less boomer ish.
And so, anyways, so I hopped on the theonomic train.
And I remember one of the arguments, you know, when you think of pietism, You know, the mothership of pietism here in America, I always think of Escondido and, you know, just the radical two kingdom theology and those kinds of things.
And so I remember that, you know, somebody was writing, you know, from Escondido some strong rebuke to Kyperianism.
And I know you're not a fan, but, you know, but they were saying, like, well, there's no such thing as a Christian stir fry.
And so then some Kyperian guy, I forget the name, but I read it.
And at the time, it was influential for me.
He wrote a response where he said, Yes, there is.
The gospel affects everything.
There is a Christian stir fry.
What's a Christian stir fry?
Well, if you go into certain people groups, they actually, when they cook, they cook by frying things in a pan.
And one of the ingredients is the flesh of other tribes that they've conquered, and they're cannibalistic.
And so, what is a Christian stir fry?
A Christian stir fry is one, it's not cannibalistic.
And I saw his point.
Like, because the point can be made in a general sense.
This was a silly thing about stir fry, but in a general sense, yeah, religion does affect diet.
Of course it does.
In India, the cow is not eaten, but the cow dung is being used in certain ways.
And that, like, so diet can be affected, like, very directly by religion.
I think, like, I just read to my girls, I read Treasure Island, and Ben Gunn, you know, is, you know, marauded on the island for six years by Captain Flint and left to die.
And when, you know, Jim Hawkins finds him, one of the first things that he says is, like, I wasn't raised to be a pagan.
I had a good Christian mother, you know, and a good Christian upbringing.
He's like, please, sir, for these last six years, I've been without a Christian diet, eggs and cheese, and, you know.
And that's how people thought.
And I understand that it's a fictional book, but the author still had that wherewithal to include it in his fictional story, the idea of not just a Christian religion, but a Christian diet.
And so I get the sentiment.
But the point is if the Kyperian, I think the truth is somewhere in between, because if the Kyperian guy who is writing that rebuttal to Escondido and saying, well, there is such a thing as Christian stir fry, Well, then there would also be Christian burgers and Christian French fries and everything.
There wouldn't be French fries, it'd be Christian fries.
And then to music and to art and to philosophy and to architecture.
And then at the end of the day, what you would have is post millennials are right in their eschatology, and the Kyperian theonomic sentiment is right over here in its ethics and how much the Bible actually applies to every single sphere of life.
What you get is just this monolithic, monotonous glob of.
Like, you don't have nations, you don't have distinctions of culture.
I would take my grandkids one day to visit Japan, and I'd like to see Japanese people and samurais, but I wouldn't.
I just see pictures of John Calvin, you know, McDonald's, and right, you know, exactly.
And so, it matters, it matters.
And when you think about it logically, it's like, oh, well, of course, there's distinctions because how can you get to Revelation chapter 21 and of every tribe and tongue and nation?
What are different tribes and tongues and nations and these distinctions that exist before the throne of God even now?
If they don't persist in some sense here on earth, it can't all be boiled down to a moral issue.
There are certain things, not everything is moral.
It is not morally superior to speak English versus Mandarin.
Language is not moral, it's natural and by necessity.
And these are the kinds of things where, you know, two years ago, I was very much like, Kyperianism, what I meant by that in the same way that I would say today, when I say I'm a Calvinist, I've read the Institutes, believe it or not.
It was a tough read, but I did it.
And I don't agree with every point.
I agree with a lot.
But when I say I'm a Calvinist, and when most people say they're a Calvinist, what they mean is I agree with John Calvin's soteriology.
In the same sense, I would still say I'm a Kyperian.
And what I mean by that is what he's most known for, every square inch.
What I mean by that is all of Christ for all of life.
And I still think that that's the general sentiment of all of Christ for all of life is a good instinct.
And I'm a Kyperian in that sense.
I don't mean that I agree with every sentiment of Abraham Kyper and all the different things that he said, because it really does begin to blur lines and create certain problems.
And it took me a little while coming out of COVID and stuff.
I was like, well, I just don't want to be a pietist.
I just want to be on the team that does something.
And Theonymous seemed to be the only game in town.
And as Providence would have it, you have been used to change that game.
There's now another team in town and a lot of young guys.
Who put on the theonomic jersey, such as myself, and who would still be perfectly comfortable saying, Well, I'm a general equity theonomist of sorts and blah, blah, blah, as far as meets the confessional position in the Westminster in 1689.
I'm still perfectly comfortable there.
But a lot of guys, you did change the game.
Your book changed the game.
And they realize, wait a second, there's actually a position that goes way before.
I don't have to look to Rushdie in the 1970s, but I can look to the 1600s.
And there's actually something that makes sense of the world, makes sense of the scripture, doesn't cause you to invert and become a pietist.
You can tackle politics and tackle the culture all for the glory of God.
Yeah, I mean, what I tried to do is when I saw the game in town, so like you said, there were the Theonomists, and then there were the modern Two Kingdom guys and the Kyperians and all that.
And it was like he framed it a type of nature versus grace mentality.
So the modern two kingdom guys, they want to say it's all nature in terms of the political and ethical life is all nature.
And so they were afraid of attaching Christian to anything.
So, like, I think like Carl Truman would say there are no Christian plumbers.
Like, you can't be a, like, there's no Christian way to be a plumber or something, stuff like that, which sets up this separation of nature and grace.
But then you have the Kyperian theonomic guys who are all on the side of grace.
They wouldn't probably want to make a nature grace distinction, but that's probably close enough to how you frame it.
So I didn't want to do the nature side because I actually think you can have Christian schools and you can be a Christian plumber and Christian this and that.
But I also didn't want the homogenizing force of the theonomic side.
And so, and I didn't make anything up on this.
Instead of separating nature and grace, I distinguished them.
And was able then to demonstrate a system in which you can have Christian schools, Christian families, Christian nations, Christian civil government, Christian civil magistrates without losing one or the other, without eliminating nature and without eliminating grace.
Right.
So I've always used the classic like a Christian family, like a Christian family is a natural thing husband, wife, having or expecting children.
That's a thing in nature, but a Christian family, you don't lose that.
Grace does not destroy that or undermine it, but it corrects deficiencies and it perfects it because now you forgive one another in Christ.
You do family worship together.
You go to church together.
All those various Christian things that you do, it not only adds various things that you do in the family, it in a way completes the entire thing without eliminating those natural principles.
And so it's meaningful to say Christian family.
And so, Also, meaningful in a very similar way to say Christian nation or Christian civil ruler.
See, the irony with that though, I know you'll probably push back on this, but I think I can actually do that and make the argument even a little bit stronger than you as a Baptist.
Because the devil's advocate, if I was Presbyterian, because I've heard the Presbyterians make this argument, what they'll say to you is, well, you can do that with the family because the Christian family is a part of the new covenant.
And all the children are members of the new covenant.
They may not be regenerate yet, but they're part of the new covenant.
So You can do that with the family because the Bible does that with the family.
The new covenant doesn't just encompass the church, but within the Presbyterian scheme, covenantal federalism, the new covenant doesn't just encompass the church, like regenerate church membership, as the Baptists would hold, but actually covers the family.
But I don't see in the Bible where it covers the nation or where it covers the state.
Whereas for me as a Baptist, I can say, oh, yeah, I have a Christian family.
I have five kids, and they're very small.
Only two of them are currently baptized.
As a guy who holds to, you know, Credible profession of faith preceding baptism.
Forgive me, humor me for a moment, you know, but as that guy with my, you know, covenantal scheme as a Reformed Baptist, I'm still actually able and have been making the argument for years now.
But no, the whole family is Christian, all of them.
Even my newborn child, who's three weeks old today, she is a part of a Christian family.
We are Christians.
And when I lead them through family worship, and you probably would just say, like, Joel, you're really all you're confessing right now is that you're a Presbyterian, you're just inconsistent, and you'll come there eventually.
But my point is that even as a Baptist and holding to the particular covenantal scheme that I currently hold, I'm able to look at my young children who are not baptized and say, You are a part, a member of a Christian family.
And I teach them the Lord's Prayer, and I don't say, When we learn the Lord's Prayer, I don't teach them to say, Mom and Dad's Father, who art in heaven, but our Father, even though technically, in the technical sense, they have not yet been adopted.
As far as I know, they could be regenerate, who knows?
But the point is, I've been perfectly comfortable as a Baptist with Baptist theology and covenantal theology to consider my whole family, not just the regenerate members, Christian.
And so when I say, from that standpoint, and so likewise, the same principle can be applied to a nation, it means something.
And I'm not saying it doesn't mean something with you.
I just know that the Presbyterians who don't like Christian nationalism, who would disagree with you, that's what a Westminster Escondido Presbyterian would probably use as pushback to you is you say, yeah, what you're doing with the family doesn't work with the nation because the family is the new covenant.
Yeah, I actually got that pushback a couple weeks ago when I was in Escondido.
Yeah, and I would just say that I'm not talking about covenantal obligations.
I'm talking about natural obligations.
So a father.
As the head of a household is obligated by nature for him to order his family to the true God.
And the true God is a triune God.
And so I don't proceed from covenantal obligations in that regard.
So I would say the same thing about the nation is that a nation as such ought to order its people or order itself to the true God, which is a triune God.
And so with that, then they should also support the church and all that.
So I've heard that argument before.
Okay.
And there's a reason why in the book I don't actually proceed along covenantal lines.
I proceed along natural law arguments for that.
So I think that solves it.
Defining Liberty and National Identity00:02:57
Whether or not they're sound is a different question, but it makes it coherent.
And I think the, and this is, I'd say, what the reformers argued as well.
Like when they would appeal to Cicero, Aristotle, Plato, saying that the civil government ought to promote religion, what they're saying is that it's a natural duty because these guys were making arguments apart from grace, apart from the covenant.
And so when Calvin and Turriton and these other guys say, look what Cicero said, and they're actually saying, no, there's actually a natural obligation for a Christian ruler to order his people to God.
So that's how I'd argue.
To suppress blasphemies.
Yeah.
Amen.
Okay.
So let's right here at the end, because I want to keep the audience's attention and give them a little bit of an appetizer, just a sample of what's to come in this series.
So this is part one.
And as we said in the beginning of this episode, we immediately came out of the gate lying.
By saying that we were going to define Christian nationalism.
We never got to it.
So I would say, let's come right out of the gate in our second episode and we will define Christian nationalism.
But beyond that, in later episodes, we also want to not only define Christian nationalism, but also seek to define, attempt to define what is a nation.
I think of like Matt Walsh, you know, what is a woman?
But right now, it seems like that's one of the burning questions is what is a nation?
Because so many Americans, maybe that's probably a unique problem to us, but right now, man, Americans are just.
Just insufferable when it comes to attempting to answer that question.
Is it an economic zone?
Is it a set of propositions?
You know, and that's literally what Reagan, you know, God bless him.
He did a lot of good things, but he hurt us.
He's a product of his time, but he hurt us as well by saying, you know, you can move to France, but you can't be a Frenchman.
You can move, you know, to Scotland, but you can't be a Scotsman.
But anyone from anywhere can move to America and become an American.
That sucks.
Like, that's not good.
And so for Americans, it's like.
I mean, he redefines.
What is a nation?
Yeah, he made people think that that was a belief from the beginning of the American tradition, but that was not.
It was not.
So we have not.
For most of our history, that was not the case.
So we're going to define next episode, right out of the gate, what is Christian nationalism?
But later, we want to define what is a nation and then tell the listener what are a few other things we're going to try to cover in this series.
What is a nation?
What is a Christian nation?
Civil law, cultural Christianity, the Christian prince.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
Christian liberty, and then some.
Some American, Anglo American Protestantism near the end.
Yeah.
All right.
So stay tuned.
We hope that you've enjoyed this first debut episode.
This will be, again, a 10 part series with Dr. Stephen Wolf over Christian nationalism.