Making Sense - Sam Harris - #443 — What Is Christian Nationalism？

00:00:00.000 i'm here with doug wilson doug thanks for joining me great to be with you thank you

00:00:24.180 so yeah you debated my friend christopher hitchens back in the day that was probably

00:00:28.920 i don't know 15 years ago or so did you remember what year you did those debates i don't remember

00:00:33.360 the year it was um it was a wonderful time actually christopher and i got along great actually

00:00:38.360 yeah you you seem to i could so i watched the uh the documentary that was born of that collision

00:00:43.560 that was literally titled collision right and you guys were debating if memory serves whether

00:00:50.340 christianity is good for the world that was kind of the focusing question yeah yeah correct so we

00:00:55.760 won't we probably won't recapitulate much of that i mean i i think we might fall into debate on a few

00:01:01.500 topics i think that's inevitable but what i really want to start with here is just to have you educate

00:01:07.740 me and my audience about the american religious landscape i just have a bunch of questions for

00:01:12.980 you uh i should say you have a new book titled frequently shouted questions about christian

00:01:18.080 nationalism yeah so we'll get into that but just to orient us maybe just the first question is how

00:01:24.400 would you differentiate it from what most americans might think of as mainstream christianity if that

00:01:31.120 phrase sure as much so in the baskins and robins of christianity what flavor am i right yeah uh rocky

00:01:37.660 road that's what i so basically i i grew up in an evangelical home conservative bible believing parents

00:01:47.040 my mom had been a missionary in japan my father was a navy officer who got out to do personal evangelism

00:01:54.200 so i i grew up in a home that was decidedly christian and evangelical evangelical in i was

00:02:02.700 born in 53 evangelical during my boyhood prior to jimmy carter simply meant conservative bible

00:02:09.180 believers outside the mainline denominations there'd been a big battle in the first part of the 20th

00:02:16.000 century in the mainlines the presbyterian church the methodist church and so on between liberalism and

00:02:22.520 what came to be called fundamentalism and basically the liberals won and captured the mainline denominations

00:02:29.840 the conservative believers sort of retreated into the into the woods and built their own alternative

00:02:39.100 structure they abandoned the seminaries and built bible colleges built christian radio stations and stayed

00:02:46.320 there until the 1970s more or less and i grew up in that quadrant of the of the christian faith

00:02:54.560 in the 70s you might say uh led by francis schaefer polarized by francis schaefer uh the conservative

00:03:02.540 believers re-engaged in what became known as the culture wars back in the days of the moral majority and the christian

00:03:10.540 coalition uh those folks and that was something that we were part of and there has been in recent years

00:03:21.740 after the election of jimmy carter who was an avowed born-again christian there was a resurgence of

00:03:29.320 people identifying themselves with evangelicalism and it grew significantly so maybe spectacularly

00:03:38.120 became a movement and then it too developed a right wing and a left wing you know conservative and

00:03:44.960 more moderate or liberal and the most recent iteration of it would be covid and post covid where

00:03:53.680 the red-pilled evangelicals who have become more and more pronounced in their willingness to be christian

00:04:01.280 in public has coalesced and the the moderates have done what uh has usually been done which is try to

00:04:09.720 mute these divisions and get you know play well with others and try to get along as best they may

00:04:16.260 that's basically a 30 000 foot flyover of where i think we are so would you consider yourself a christian

00:04:24.240 fundamentalist a biblical literalist an absolutist how how would you differentiate those terms and

00:04:31.140 and uh yeah yeah that's great i would i would consider myself a fundamentalist in the sense of

00:04:37.300 believing the fundamentals of the christian faith i believe the apostles creed in other words and i

00:04:44.200 believe it in the sense that it it was held when it was first handed down but fundamentalist has also

00:04:50.780 taken on cultural significance so like a fundamentalist to someone who's a wears a black

00:04:56.740 skinny necktie and uses is a king james version only guy and that sort of thing that's sort of a

00:05:03.680 cultural phenomenon i'm not necessarily fundamentalist in that sense but i do believe the fundamentalist of

00:05:09.680 the christian faith i would describe myself as a biblical absolutist which is not the same thing as

00:05:15.720 taking the bible literally a biblical absolutist is someone who would take the bible naturally

00:05:21.940 taking it the way it presents itself to be taken so when luke writes his gospel and he says at the

00:05:30.700 beginning i interviewed a bunch of eyewitnesses and i wrote it down carefully he's presenting it as

00:05:36.100 sober history so i take it as sober history uh psalms that are poetry present themselves as poetry

00:05:43.040 i take it as poetry when the book of revelation presents itself as apocalyptic literature i take

00:05:50.100 it as apocalyptic literature and not as literal surveillance cameras of the of the future so you

00:05:57.240 want to take the bible naturally and respect the genre in which it was written whether it's history

00:06:03.340 poetry prophecy apocalyptic and so on so taking the bible naturally what does the concept of

00:06:12.780 biblical inerrancy do for you do you think the bible is still inerrant but some sections can't be

00:06:20.660 taken literally or is that how that breaks yes so for example as a biblical absolutist i believe the bible

00:06:28.020 so i would say what the bible intends to convey by what it wrote down i seek to take it that way so i seek

00:06:38.280 to understand it the way it was originally intended and then take that to the bank but when jesus says i

00:06:46.160 am the door i don't look for a doorknob or in psalm 23 you don't have to go find a green pasture to lie

00:06:52.720 down in to be a good christian i don't take it literally that way is there anyone who takes it yeah i mean

00:06:59.260 literally literally i mean i can't imagine anyone is there are some people there honestly there are some

00:07:04.040 people who try it it cannot be done consistently but there are some people that try there's a school

00:07:11.540 of theology called dispensationalism right and the watchword for that school of theology is literal and

00:07:20.020 less absurd so you you take it literally unless that you find yourself dealing with round squares

00:07:27.540 so why aren't you a dispensationalist then all right so that's a that's a big question but i would

00:07:34.060 say it boils down to the relationship of the old testament to the new testament so there are two

00:07:41.100 basic approaches one of them says that the old testament doesn't apply unless the new testament says

00:07:49.440 that it does and the other view says the old testament applies unless the new testament says that it

00:07:55.500 doesn't right so i'm a reformed christian reformed presbyterian christian and not a dispensationalist

00:08:04.940 and i would belong to the school of thought that says the entire bible is to be taken as the word of

00:08:10.480 god and the old testament applies to us today unless the new testament says that it doesn't and the

00:08:17.240 principle the central example of that would be the animal sacrifices right in the old testament so the

00:08:23.680 animal sacrifices are there the new testament says that christ's death fulfilled all the animal

00:08:29.080 sacrifices so we're not to offer up animal sacrifices anymore so the new testament says we're not to so i say

00:08:36.940 good we're not to but the other approach basically parks in the new testament first and if the new

00:08:44.020 testament repeats something from the old testament then okay that that's obligatory right they their new

00:08:50.960 testament centered okay so just to get my bearings here so how old do you think the universe is

00:08:57.400 based on your reading of the bible or any other stream of information yeah based on my rudimentary

00:09:04.500 math skills uh the the world is about six thousand years old okay okay so i'm a young earth i'm a young

00:09:13.300 earth creationist right okay so anyone kind of coming at this from the outside from secular society trying

00:09:18.340 to fit you in the canonical debates around the collision between science and religion and you

00:09:24.140 know evolutionary biology and christian theology understands which side of that argument you're on

00:09:29.740 right i'm an anti-darwin i'm an anti-darwinist young earth creationist having said that and i know that many

00:09:37.780 of your viewers and people who follow you and have read your stuff are going to park me right next to the

00:09:43.620 flat earth guys you know because of that statement of how old the the the world is but one of the

00:09:50.240 things that i would just point out in passing is when people say that the universe the cosmos is 14

00:09:56.440 billion years old or whatever the whatever the current number is they are presupposing a newtonian

00:10:03.140 balcony somewhere that they get to stand on to watch the whole thing and one of the things that

00:10:09.740 relativity shows us is that time is not what we you know where is my question would be where is the

00:10:17.660 cosmos 14 billion years old is it at the center at the point of the explosion is it at the event horizon

00:10:25.120 what clock are you using to calculate the age of the earth well generally the rudimentary textbook

00:10:32.940 answer is we imagine a newtonian clock and it's like an earthbound perspective and i would say

00:10:39.580 things like time and eternity are not that simple okay but then what why would you be tempted to

00:10:47.020 sign on the dotted line with something like 6 000 years old i mean when the claim that the world

00:10:53.100 to take it out of the cosmos for a second just talk about the rock we're on to claim that the world is

00:10:58.020 6 000 years old is to make a a fairly straightforward claim about calendar time i mean because you're you're

00:11:06.000 making that claim about if i said well how long ago did the the miracles depicted in the bible how long

00:11:12.380 ago did they occur you're saying okay walk back a day and another day and another day and you're in

00:11:17.620 the timeline of your life and then it's before you were born and then it's about 2 000 years before that

00:11:23.340 right yeah and a year is still a year it's still 365 days of the sort that we would recognize

00:11:28.640 so you're you have a fairly standard view of time to capture that and presumably you're walking that

00:11:34.800 all the way back to the beginning and you're just you just have 6 000 years to deal with right that is

00:11:39.900 exactly correct if i go back to genesis where it gives us the genealogies and it says that so-and-so

00:11:46.740 was the father of so-and-so and he fathered this son when he was 150 years old it's and there's a whole

00:11:55.360 chain that goes back and it's just a straightforward math problem right so if you're going to believe

00:12:01.480 the bible i believe the first 11 chapters of genesis are to be taken as authoritative and not

00:12:08.640 just chapters 12 and on so i um yeah i just accept it in a straightforward straightforward way i believe

00:12:16.800 in a historical atom i don't believe in evolution at all uh well let me correct that i i do believe in

00:12:23.420 variation within species so if every every creationist for example looking at the human race

00:12:32.040 sees the different ethnic groups uh asians and blacks and whites and and so on and believes that

00:12:39.560 they are all descended from noah and his wife so clearly we believe in in variation within species

00:12:45.620 but we don't believe in the transformation of one species to another right right okay

00:12:52.620 so i'm resisting the temptation to get into any of those details with you because i really just i do

00:12:57.200 want you to to educate me before we get sidetracked on anything thank you so your church is you're a

00:13:03.200 post-millennialist rather than a pre-millennialist please pick those concepts for us so most pre-millennialists

00:13:12.140 are are dispensationalists the the fellows i mentioned earlier and the three main positions with regard

00:13:21.060 to the millennium which is the millennium is a thousand years of peace that christians like to fight about

00:13:27.020 so there you go um so you have the millennium and the pre-millennialists believe that christ returns

00:13:36.220 prior to the millennium so all of these you have the fixed time period of the millennium and then where you

00:13:43.960 place the return of christ with regard to that millennium so the pre-millennialist believes that christ will

00:13:50.160 return and then there's going to be a thousand years of peace the amillennialist which is another

00:13:56.600 view not mentioned here the ah is a term of negation which says that they believe the millennium is a

00:14:03.340 figurative a figurative symbolic reality the reign of christians with christ in the heavenly places

00:14:10.320 and then at some after some indefinite period of time christ returns so there's no literal earthly

00:14:17.220 millennium for the amillennialist then the post-millennialist believes that the gospel

00:14:23.400 is going to be victorious the nations will be discipled the great commission will be successfully

00:14:29.020 fulfilled the nations will come to christ and that will usher in the millennium this golden period

00:14:36.660 after which christ will return post-millennium so pre-millennial christ comes before it post-millennial

00:14:44.380 comes after an amillennial uh believes there is no literal earthly millennium so in all the talk about

00:14:51.180 the rapture that people are familiar with and the like the left behind novels that were much talked

00:14:56.120 about in secular culture and widely read in christian culture is that entire conversation a pre-millennialist

00:15:02.840 one or do you have some part in that as well no that that entire conversation is dispensational

00:15:08.920 and pre-millennial and pre-millennial and most even so uh the reformed calvinist presbyterian types

00:15:16.280 that i represent are not in the north american evangelical mainstream there were a significant

00:15:24.300 presence there but north american evangelicalism is overwhelmingly dispensational overwhelmingly pre-millennial

00:15:33.580 so post-millennialists like myself are very much in the minority report right now it seems to me to

00:15:41.440 have pretty big implications i mean so the problem with pre-millennialism again from a secular point of

00:15:48.060 view is that it seems to invite almost a kind of nihilism i mean it's sort of the worst things get on some

00:15:54.760 level the better things get from that point of view though the world can completely unravel and at any

00:16:00.000 moment the good people are going to be raptured there's nothing really to construct or to care

00:16:05.300 for to maintain here necessarily but on on your view the post-millennial view which frankly is a little

00:16:11.400 more like the view of islam right there's this notion of we the good religious people who believe

00:16:17.860 in god rightly effectively need to conquer the world and establish a thousand years of peace and

00:16:24.380 prosperity and good christian order before history will properly end with the return of christ correct

00:16:32.680 and broad outlines the one difference that i would make is that paul in second corinthians 10 says that

00:16:39.580 our weapons are for doing this are not carnal so we we don't use physical force it's not to be advanced

00:16:47.860 by the sword right in romans of romans 4 13 paul says that abraham was promised that he would inherit

00:16:55.640 the world but not by law rather through the righteousness of faith so that's the one thing

00:17:01.460 the other thing is i think you're right about the um uh and if you had a dispensationalist on he could

00:17:08.920 present a case for why maybe this is uh unfair i'm not trying to be unfair to them but as i've watched

00:17:16.400 the dispensational vibe affect christians the worst things get the more people think that we're right

00:17:24.340 on schedule right yeah you know okay the jesus is gonna appear anytime and take us out of here and so

00:17:31.480 they they view the because they also believe that we're in the last days we're coming up on the last

00:17:37.600 little bit yeah and they feel like the last helicopter flight out of saigon you know the rapture is god

00:17:45.700 helicoptering us out of here and then you let the world go to blazes and which is on your account

00:17:51.940 there's you're you're absolutely sure we're nowhere near the last days in fact we're probably not even

00:17:56.440 within a thousand years of the last days that's correct i believe that future school children will

00:18:02.120 be looking back on our era studying us as part of the early church right so i i think we've got a long

00:18:08.640 way to go and i believe that our labors to make the world a better place are not in vain as paul says

00:18:15.920 in first corinthians 15 58 your labors in the lord are not in vain i believe that we can make the world

00:18:22.080 a better place and i believe that if god blesses that will be he will bless and prosper it and we

00:18:28.680 want to leave it better than we found it so this seems to be a pretty big point around which to have

00:18:35.620 such a difference of opinion yeah how is the difference of you here justified by recourse to

00:18:41.460 the bible and what what do the dispensationalists say you're wrong about and and how do you return

00:18:46.340 the compliment yeah i think that's a great question the way i describe it is this let's say someone

00:18:53.640 converts to christianity while in college you know they their life falls apart they have a crisis

00:18:59.220 conversion they go they go buy a bible and they say i'm interested to find out what it teaches about

00:19:06.260 the end times oftentimes new christians want to study the book of revelation first which is not smart

00:19:11.940 but yeah it's the climax so they yeah they get a bible and they start reading through it and in

00:19:17.660 matthew 24 for example jesus describes what scholars call decreation language decreation language is what i call

00:19:27.040 collapsing solar system language the moon turns uh blood red the the sun goes uh dark the stars fall

00:19:35.060 from the heavens and so it's that's apocalyptic imagery and jesus uses it there in matthew 24 so

00:19:43.420 this new christian reads it and he says okay i'm a christian now i believe the bible and it talks about

00:19:49.520 the sun and the moon and the stars all going out and they go out and the sun just went down and the moon

00:19:55.820 is right up there and the stars are all there and so they say okay this since this is true it must be

00:20:02.820 talking about the future it must be talking about the end of the world right it hasn't happened yet

00:20:08.920 so it's talking about the end of the world that's one way of approaching it and that's the way the

00:20:15.200 dispensationalists interpret it and that school of thought is called the futurist approach so you look

00:20:22.760 at these prophecies and say they haven't clearly haven't happened yet and so they must be something

00:20:28.480 that is going to happen in the future i belong to the preterist school of thought and predator comes

00:20:35.180 from the latin word for past where you look at this language in matthew 24 and the disciples begin

00:20:43.120 that chapter by saying jesus tells them you see all these uh temple buildings not one stone's going to be

00:20:49.780 left on another the disciples come to him and say when's this going to happen what will be the sign

00:20:54.660 of the end of the age and then jesus lays out all of matthew 24 and in the course of which he uses that

00:20:59.700 collapsing solar system language well he's quoting from isaiah 13 right all right and if you go back

00:21:07.840 to isaiah 13 verse 10 there's that language and then you back up to the first verse of isaiah 13

00:21:13.480 and it's an oracle concerning the king of babylon and then you say okay this same decreation language

00:21:20.120 occurs in isaiah 34 where it's applied to the king applied to edom and then it happens in ezekiel where

00:21:27.860 it's applied to egypt it happens in the book of amos where it's applied to israel it happens in the book

00:21:33.720 of joel which apply where it's applied to israel and so you you say okay i want to interpret the new

00:21:40.980 testament from the lessons i learned reading the old testament and everywhere in the old testament

00:21:47.580 where it uses the decreation language it's always talking about the destruction of a nation state or a

00:21:54.600 city so you're thinking it's like 70 ad this stuff came to pass absolutely so jesus says expressly that

00:22:02.240 this generation will not pass away until all these things have been fulfilled so it's it's an idiomatic

00:22:09.120 hebraic way of saying your lights are going to go out your dynasty your regime is going to collapse

00:22:17.180 it's going to fail everything is going to come down around your ears so that line and that's how

00:22:23.120 it's used every time it's used in the old testament it's always talking about that and then jesus says

00:22:28.740 this temple is going to be destroyed not one stone left on another the disciples ask when this is going

00:22:34.300 to happen jesus says within one generation and then quotes quotes the old testament to that effect

00:22:40.360 so basically what bertrand russell for example and others have pointed out jesus thought he was living

00:22:47.280 at the end of the world yeah well i don't think i don't think jesus thought that at all i believe that

00:22:52.900 jesus thought he was living at the end of the judaic aeon living at the end living at the end of the old

00:22:59.000 israel that was going to come crashing down in 70 a.d okay a few more concepts here that i have

00:23:04.980 questions about so so where does the concept of dominionism fit in here what is meant by that term

00:23:10.760 okay good in genesis where god creates adam he he delivers what is called the cultural mandate

00:23:20.700 to be fruitful multiply replenish the earth then after the flood the cultural mandate is uh

00:23:29.000 reinstated and god gives the same basic cultural mandate to noah and his descendants fulfill the

00:23:36.620 earth multiply replenish the earth take care of it and then in the new testament i believe that we have

00:23:43.940 a a new testament variation on the same theme in the great commission where jesus says all authority

00:23:51.980 in heaven and on earth has been given to me therefore go disciple the nations baptizing them teaching them

00:23:58.320 to obey everything i've commanded you and then the book of hebrews says we don't see we don't see

00:24:03.140 everything subjected to man yet but we see jesus so we walk by faith looking to subdue the earth

00:24:09.640 in a productive flourishing way and that is called in our circles exercising dominion

00:24:17.540 so it's not rape the earth it's cultivate the earth so that it flourishes

00:24:24.480 yeah but are you part of the new apostolic reformation is it because i associate dominionism

00:24:30.260 with that movement no that basically uh that as i understand it is a movement that's going on in

00:24:37.220 charismatic circles and i think you'd probably find some areas of what they say that would map

00:24:43.460 onto what we're saying but we're coming from different places okay so what now to the uh title of

00:24:49.720 your book what is christian nationalism given all that you have said so far yeah christian nationalism

00:24:55.880 is in the short form is the conviction that secularism is a failed project the attempt to

00:25:06.240 govern ourselves without reference to a transcendent reality is coming up short and we're starting to

00:25:14.540 see the pieces fall off around us in a number of different ways post-world war ii sort of the

00:25:22.040 the liberal democratic secular heyday the high water mark of uh liberal democratic secularism

00:25:30.160 the united states was king of the hill and everything looked like fukuyama talked about the end of

00:25:36.480 history you know it looked like looked like we've got gotten there a lot of christians sort of went

00:25:42.880 along for the ride okay this i love my country and things look swell and everybody the sky's still

00:25:48.040 blue and everything but beginning in the 60s with the sexual revolution and then the downstream effects

00:25:55.300 of the sexual revolution and the place where we are now with drag queens and transsexuals and furries

00:26:04.860 you know all the nor what i call the normies and the grillers you know this the suburban average christian

00:26:13.180 guy is looking at the world and he thinks everyone has lost their ever-loving mind what's what is going

00:26:21.100 on uh so justice uh jackson the supreme court couldn't answer the question what is a woman in her

00:26:28.300 confirmation hearings because she's not a biologist which is to me like saying i don't i don't know whether

00:26:33.620 it's raining or not because i'm not a meteorologist but a lot of people looked at that a lot of regular

00:26:39.800 people looked at that and it just they're just left aghast and they've come they've come to the

00:26:46.540 conclusion many of them that uh the secular project has sort of uh done a face plant and particularly

00:26:55.200 in the last five years where i travel in circles where people believe that virtually every respected

00:27:04.960 institution in america disgraced itself in the last five in the last five years whether it was the

00:27:12.100 military or congress or the courts or higher education or the or the cdc or the military everything

00:27:19.940 just came unstuck and so a lot of people don't know what to believe anymore don't know what to think

00:27:25.880 don't i grew i grew up in a high trust society yeah and we are now at the at the dregs level the

00:27:35.060 basement level of we're a low trust society and then some and some and that leaves a lot of people

00:27:41.080 susceptible to conspiracy theories and the latest thing they read on the internet and other people

00:27:47.540 it's opened them up to things that we were saying 20 years ago or 30 years ago about the necessity of

00:27:55.620 a confession that christ is lord we need a transcendent grounding for what we say we're going to do as a

00:28:02.860 people together and if we don't have that transcendent grounding then everything comes apart in our hands

00:28:08.140 as it is doing so the conviction that secularism is a failed project and that christians need to be

00:28:15.860 christians in public and say i i believe that what we need to do is confess our dependence upon god

00:28:24.120 and upon his son jesus christ and orient ourselves that way that's the short form of saying christian

00:28:30.480 nationalism okay well great let me just make sure we're dealing with the same definition of secularism

00:28:36.500 because many people confuse that term with with atheism right so secularism in my lexicon has no

00:28:43.320 implication of atheism it's simply an agreement and it's really born of the christian tradition

00:28:48.400 an agreement to keep religion out of politics and any kind of you know coercive posture with respect to

00:28:57.680 public life so you can be a christian in the privacy of your life and uh in your home uh i can be an

00:29:04.460 atheist or a muslim or a buddhist or whatever i want to be and uh we agree that in the public square

00:29:11.500 it's not that we're not going to express our faith in any conspicuous way you can wear whatever you

00:29:16.360 want to wear you can announce that that you guys are celebrating on on any given day a certain holy

00:29:22.700 moment but with respect to the laws that the government is going to make and um the requirements

00:29:30.080 on citizenry those are going to be basically agnostic with respect to anyone's faith commitments

00:29:37.440 that's how i think of secularism and i can come part way in agreeing with you secular at first i

00:29:43.380 agree that secular does not necessitate atheism for example in the medieval period there were the

00:29:49.480 regular clergy who were living according to monastic rule right and then there were the secular clergy

00:29:54.980 yeah who were who were out in the villages and towns ministering to regular people also there is

00:30:01.040 secular life that is the word profane comes from profanum outside the temple so you could say there's

00:30:10.280 the sacred space and then if we're using this lowercase s there's the sacred space word and sacrament

00:30:17.700 the worship service is proper and then there's the secular realm which is the world of automobile

00:30:24.300 mechanics and computer coding and just regular life so i don't mind using the word secular there

00:30:31.660 in that sense and a christian can be in his secular life a believer in god and so on but secularism the

00:30:39.340 way i was talking about the secular project had to do with the way you just formulated it and here's this

00:30:46.520 would be the thing that we find we're up against and what we disagree with i believe that corporate

00:30:52.420 entities like nations towns nations cities denominations universities are moral agents

00:30:59.940 they can launch genocidal attacks for example they can break treaties they can oppress a minority within

00:31:09.300 their boundaries a university can break a contract that they made with a professor they can break their word

00:31:16.180 so individuals are moral agents but when we come together to act in concert

00:31:22.100 we remain moral agents and when we come together as americans to make a moral you know moral decision

00:31:31.560 my very favorite question in this is by what standard now if you have the secular space we have to be

00:31:39.560 agnostic about our islam or hinduism or christianity or atheism then what possible moral standard

00:31:49.700 could we have can we adopt if someone said well how about utilitarianism i say yeah but i'm not a

00:31:56.580 utilitarian i don't follow jeremy bentham or john stewart mill you know why do we do a lowest common

00:32:03.240 denominator morality and what is permissible and not permissible so for example is monogamy the norm

00:32:11.220 because we live in a downstream from a christian heritage or if we bring in millions of muslims do we go

00:32:19.660 up to four wives the way muhammad taught is that an option so basically i think that we have painted

00:32:27.800 ourselves into a corner uh with the the immigration debate has uh slopped over into the debate about

00:32:36.560 how we make collective moral choices because it and it's frightfully confusing because not all

00:32:42.820 worldviews generate the same moral system and it places they're radically at odds with one another

00:32:50.000 and so if someone says uh look why don't we just adopt the morality of the average npr listener i'd say

00:32:58.620 well i'm not i don't listen to npr why you know how are we going to navigate this when we have

00:33:05.420 i'm not sure i would sign on that dotted line either frankly but yeah well if we come common

00:33:10.560 ground i think we'll get into the foundations of morality pretty soon but again i still just want

00:33:16.760 to spiral in on on what you what your project is right so and i should uh remind people who

00:33:23.980 or inform people who may not be aware of this we're speaking today not merely because there's this

00:33:29.760 point of contact with hitch that you know you debated my friend and i and uh uh i find you

00:33:34.760 interesting for that reason but you have become in in the intervening years very relevant in the

00:33:41.060 the religious political landscape i mean you've attracted a fair amount of press recently because

00:33:46.260 pete hegseth are who runs our uh war machine uh the department of defense is uh if he's not in

00:33:53.640 your congregation he's been influenced by you as a pastor correct yeah he's in the he's a member

00:33:59.260 of a church that's in our denomination right yes so maybe you can just describe that how big is your

00:34:04.880 church and how many churches are in your denomination are in this cosmic scheme of things

00:34:10.280 we're a small denomination we're about if you count the mission churches and candidate churches we have

00:34:16.100 about 170 congregations mostly in north america but we have congregations in europe and in the

00:34:24.300 philippines and japan and canada so we have about 170 congregations maybe 30 to 40 000 people

00:34:33.480 in these congregations and um so it's a small it's a small denomination as denominations go

00:34:41.680 but we are also connected to a number of you know we have a publishing house and uh here in moscow and

00:34:49.220 we have we're doing a number of things that have as you said attracted notice yeah so we're in the

00:34:57.060 game anyway yeah well i think i just want to ask you some more questions that will perhaps tease out

00:35:03.500 the ways in which your this project the the christian nationalist project may be at odds with

00:35:08.620 what many people certainly many secular people will will hope to have achieved uh in our country

00:35:15.080 and uh globally can i offer something that might might prime the pump it might just get it out of

00:35:20.960 the way at the beginning what christian nationalism is not about fusing church and state okay so you

00:35:29.860 like you still like the the line from uh matthew and elsewhere that uh render unto caesar those things

00:35:36.060 that are caesar's unto god those things that are god's that is correct and so i am a big fan

00:35:41.260 of the first amendment i'm now and this has to be parsed out carefully because the first amendment

00:35:48.680 was addressing the federal level the only entity that could violate the first amendment was congress

00:35:54.760 congress shall make no law concerning the establishment of religion the founders did not want a church of the

00:36:01.740 united states the way there's a church of england or the way there's a church of denmark right and i agree

00:36:07.460 with that wholeheartedly at the time the constitution was ratified three of the states came in with hard

00:36:15.400 establishment at the state level massachusetts connecticut new hampshire all came in with the

00:36:21.040 congregational church and then when vermont came in as the 14th state after the constitution was adopted

00:36:27.540 they came in with a hard establishment also other states like south carolina had what i would call a

00:36:34.380 soft establishment where south carolina said basically the protestant religion is the official

00:36:40.480 faith of this state but there was no connection to any denomination right that that would be soft

00:36:47.180 soft establishment uh now i believe that established a hard establishment at the state level is also a bad

00:36:55.920 idea i'm against it at the state level also but it's not an unconstitutional idea because the states that

00:37:03.900 ratified the constitution were practicing hard establishment and soft establishment and they

00:37:09.980 had religious tests for office at the state level but they were they were prohibited at the federal

00:37:15.420 level so i'm in favor of the first amendment i applaud the separation of church and state and i would

00:37:21.940 argue for a separation of for a formal separation of church and state at the state level but then i would

00:37:29.080 and this would be the place where we'd get into a possible disagreement i don't think it's possible

00:37:34.160 to separate morality and state and as soon as you are talking about morality you have to answer the

00:37:40.480 question which one which morality so well i'm sure the devil will be in the details here are you are you

00:37:48.180 saying there would be no religious test to hold public office and so muslims and atheists could be members

00:37:54.500 of congress or or become president or would you then say that how could a muslim or an atheist have

00:38:00.240 the the requisite morality to serve in those offices if we were to return to the form of christian

00:38:06.320 nationalism that we had during the early 19th century and we that's what we had at the founding

00:38:13.540 was a a form of christian nationalism then what frequently the states would do is they prohibited

00:38:20.420 public office to someone who didn't believe in god or a future state of rewards and punishments

00:38:27.440 that was a common phraseology but so they did have religious tests bare minimum religious tests

00:38:34.660 at the state level but those were excluded at the federal level now if and this is a another thing if

00:38:43.700 we're whiteboarding this and you're you're asking me to describe the ideal christian republic

00:38:48.740 500 years from now i would sketch out a number of things we could talk about this presbyterian utopia

00:38:57.100 500 years from now if you ask me what my interest is right now my interest right now is not to exclude

00:39:05.620 atheists and muslims right now we've got bigger fish to fry in the moment right so uh so so just so

00:39:14.120 that i can understand the significance of that the way you're introducing time there you're arguing for

00:39:19.280 a kind of pragmatism and incrementalism on on the way to the presbyterian utopia you would want to get

00:39:27.400 to if you could wave a magic wand you'd get us there immediately but you know you can't so you want to

00:39:32.820 figure out a path between where we are now and and there right that is correct because i believe that

00:39:38.640 jesus taught that the way to get from here to there is by peaceful means preaching persuasion

00:39:45.920 church planting and that's a time uh you've got to let the bread rise right before you bake it and

00:39:52.760 so consequently i don't want to do anything in a tyrannical heavy-handed way right okay well i'm

00:39:59.140 going to go searching for a tyranny or the next best thing what so let's linger on this phrase christian

00:40:05.840 nationalism for just another second because what do you do with all the people who will answer to

00:40:11.880 that name who seem to mean a few more things by it i mean there's kind of a white ethno state uh

00:40:19.000 yearning that one here is among so-called christian nationalists there's a fair amount of anti-semitism

00:40:24.880 one can find among christian nationalists how do you view that those are those contaminants to this

00:40:30.200 concept or those parts of it no those are those are contaminants to it and one of the things that

00:40:36.840 we're involved in doing is i've written one book mere christendom i've written uh and canon press our

00:40:44.780 publisher published stephen wolf's book the case for christian nationalism then my mere christendom

00:40:50.660 and then frequently shouted uh questions that you just referred to and we have been very very careful

00:40:57.420 to keep all traces of uh white ethnocentrism anti-semitism all of that stuff out so the stuff

00:41:07.580 that we're arguing for does not include that that's not that's not an element of it you are right that

00:41:14.780 there are places that i call on the dank right there are places on the dank right and on the internet

00:41:21.220 mostly on twitter mostly some of which are actual actual anti-jew i i don't like to the word anti-semitism

00:41:29.240 is almost worthless now like racism is almost worthless now but ethnic white supremacy or jew hate

00:41:37.140 or things like that are either people with very troubled spiritual lives it's not the christian way

00:41:45.700 or they are fbi bots trying to make everything look bad and we agree that sort of thing does look bad

00:41:53.200 now in the providence of god i have gotten to the place it's a gift of god but i've gotten to the

00:42:01.280 place where i'm able to speak as a representative of christian nationalism and as long as christian

00:42:08.420 nationalism is associated with the kind of project that we want to see which is simply an acknowledgement

00:42:14.460 that jesus rose from the dead and that has ramifications for how we live corporately

00:42:19.240 and has nothing to do with hating the jews and nothing to do with despising blacks or asians

00:42:26.460 i'm happy if nick fuentes for example succeeded in becoming the figurehead of christian nationalism

00:42:35.540 and he and you know he is the one on the cover of time uh then i would cheerfully hand in my chips

00:42:42.000 and ask you to deal me out and i'll i'll go call myself something else look for a new name yeah

00:42:46.560 look for a new name well so then what do you think about the jews and their um their problematic place

00:42:53.880 in the history of christianity i mean i i it's strange to have to remind anyone of this but

00:42:58.960 jesus was was jewish and all the apostles were jewish the virgin mary was jewish so anti-semitism has

00:43:05.240 always been a bit of a conundrum except for the fact that when you look at what it means to be a jew

00:43:11.660 for the last 2 000 years in the presence of christianity it has meant by definition a repudiation

00:43:19.340 of the central tenet of christianity which is that jesus was the messiah and the son of god etc so

00:43:25.920 the um animosity the theological animosity that that kindled is fairly easy to explain and

00:43:34.180 straightforward how do you view jews judaism and and the history of and the present moment of of

00:43:41.200 jew hatred uh in the light of your faith yes you put your finger on it basically for many conservative

00:43:48.960 jews or let me qualify that practicing jews they would be more upset for example if their youngest son

00:43:57.660 became a christian than they would be if he became an atheist right um and for many jews the central

00:44:06.840 point of identity of being jewish is sort of not christian and it's a tangled history that goes all

00:44:14.840 the way back and it has to do with the rejection of the messiahship of christ so christians say that

00:44:21.440 christ is the messiah of israel and the practicing jew today says no he isn't and if jesus either rose

00:44:28.860 from the dead or he didn't and that's not a point you can split the difference on so as a christian i'm

00:44:35.880 not a jew uh and a jew who believes what he has taught he has been taught by his rabbi is not a christian

00:44:44.580 that doesn't mean it doesn't follow from that that we as christians are allowed to be venomous

00:44:50.780 toward people who don't believe basically it goes back to my earlier point we should preach the gospel

00:44:57.100 love charity compassion put together an apologetic for the christian faith including an apologetic for

00:45:04.580 the jews and seek to persuade them and where there have been christian and i would say oftentimes

00:45:10.920 christian in name only pogroms and persecutions of the jews we'd say that that was awful that was

00:45:18.460 wicked and that should not be done and i was in the and this give walks right into an argument let's

00:45:27.020 say i'm having a discussion or a debate with a fellow christian who doesn't like the idea of christian

00:45:32.820 nationalism you know he's he's a christian he wants to go to heaven when he dies but he his central

00:45:40.480 belief is as my friend joe rigney says you shall not do christendom you shall not do a christendom

00:45:45.920 so i'm talking to him and he says well i'm afraid that if you christian nationalists get their way

00:45:50.340 and you establish a christian state you're going to persecute the jews you're going to start locking

00:45:56.020 them up or exiling them you're going to do what christians in the past have done and i would say well

00:46:01.460 i hope not i hope we don't do that but let's say for the sake of argument that we did let's say that

00:46:06.820 we took over and we started mistreating the jews i would ask you do you think jesus in heaven what do

00:46:13.920 you think jesus in heaven thinks of about what we're doing to the jews would he be for it or

00:46:18.700 against it or does he not care and those are that's basically the options either jesus likes what we're

00:46:24.440 doing to the jews in which case i'd have to rethink everything or he doesn't care let me ask you i mean

00:46:31.180 it seems if we're asking about the point of view of jesus what is the fate of the jews or all really

00:46:37.820 all non-christians on the day of judgment in your view yeah yeah the fate of everyone who's outside

00:46:43.820 of christ if someone is outside christ jew or gentile they are lost right so i said they go to

00:46:49.960 hell for eternity is that's the eschatology but but not for being jewish people go to hell for being

00:46:55.480 sinners not for being jewish or navajo or swedish the uh the issue is their their sin and christ is

00:47:02.800 the only remedy for sin so if someone's outside of christ i believe they're lost but the fact that

00:47:09.120 someone's lost doesn't give me the right to abuse and mistreat them if i start abusing and mistreating

00:47:15.580 them then i'm just giving the world evidence that i am lost right it's just not right so if if christ

00:47:22.980 is either christ approves of what we're doing which is ridiculous or he doesn't care in which

00:47:28.720 case why should i care or christ disapproves of what we're we christian nationalists are doing

00:47:35.500 to the jews and if christ disapproves of it then i would ask my friend well should we modify our

00:47:41.740 behavior in the light of what christ disapproves of and he says yeah i think we should stop it and i'd

00:47:46.760 say yeah i agree with that and welcome to christian nationalism because what we're doing is we're

00:47:51.840 wanting to conform our behavior to what christ would have us do that's the that's the bottom line yeah

00:47:58.600 and i think we'll get to this obviously you can get a very benign pacifist sort of ethic out of at

00:48:05.900 least christ and in half his moods in the in the gospel but what seems unavoidable here is that if you

00:48:11.680 really think the stakes are this high i mean if the difference between believing the right thing about

00:48:15.640 christ and god and the moral organization of the universe and believing the wrong thing really

00:48:21.280 amounts to an eternity in paradise or an eternity in hell at the end of you know when the final

00:48:28.120 reckoning is made then it seems to me you do have a problem of tolerance in that there's only so much

00:48:34.140 blasphemy and apostasy and religious confusion you can tolerate right so if your neighbor is uh preaching

00:48:42.060 his um errant gospel too loudly in your respitearian utopia if you find out that this the teacher at

00:48:50.120 your kid's school is um not even preaching an alternate uh religion but just calling into doubt

00:48:57.260 some essential feature of what you deem to be the right religion the eternal salvation of your

00:49:04.260 children's soul hangs in the balance right so this is right this is worse than having a pedophile on

00:49:10.200 the playground who can only damage your child for you know within the precincts of this life

00:49:14.620 you're talking about somebody who could by their serpents tongue and and malicious reasoning

00:49:20.140 so confuse your child that they would spend eternity in hell just how much can a good christian be

00:49:26.640 expected to tolerate on that yeah well yeah why why wouldn't we crack down on that guy yeah so

00:49:31.300 you're forgetting in my presbyterian utopia there would be no public schools so it's all it's all

00:49:37.160 private education which means that you would fire that teacher right you would say okay so you solve

00:49:42.360 that problem immediately but this is a the the larger question that you pose is one that i address

00:49:48.480 in my book mere christendom and this the thing that christians who are too hasty or too eager for

00:49:56.240 the imposition of blasphemy laws well first before going any further i would say all societies

00:50:02.940 have blasphemy laws we call them by different names but i could go downtown in any major city

00:50:09.620 in america and get arrested within half an hour simply on the basis of what i was saying so it's

00:50:15.900 what you blaspheme what what you're not allowed to blaspheme not whether you blaspheme so that's

00:50:20.760 the first thing but the second thing from a christian perspective is that christians should never forget

00:50:26.480 that the lord jesus was executed on a blasphemy charge that's why he was killed blasphemy and

00:50:34.700 when we give the government the authority to define blasphemy what we're doing in effect unless we have

00:50:42.800 a robust system of checks and balances what we're doing is giving them impunity for the for their

00:50:49.540 blasphemy all the all the way through the scripture in in old testament new testament the greatest

00:50:55.700 blasphemers are the state the kings and principalities and powers and so what i want to do is i want to

00:51:03.400 restrain restrain the greatest blasphemer first so if someone says okay we we christian nationalists

00:51:11.120 have got power let's suppress that village atheist who's putting out that newsletter with 17 subscribers

00:51:17.700 i would argue no let's leave that guy alone just leave him be because we have to figure out how to

00:51:24.220 restrain the greatest blasphemer first which overwhelmingly in scripture is the kind of state

00:51:31.560 that executed jesus and being a religious state doesn't keep them from being blasphemous and dostoevsky

00:51:39.140 had i think great great spiritual insight here when he had jesus hauled up in front of the grand inquisitor

00:51:46.460 the brothers care matzo yeah so what what you have there is christians have to have strengthen their

00:51:53.300 view of how wicked blasphemy is but they have to realize that the state is the one that is primed to

00:52:02.000 be the greatest blasphemer and to do the greatest damage with their blasphemies so i i want to restrain

00:52:08.560 the state from blaspheming and that means we have to deal with the village atheist blasphemer with other

00:52:16.040 lesser lesser means and not i i really want to have resort to the law as a last resort well so then

00:52:23.900 just where does your christian nationalism if it were fully accomplished intrude into the lives of

00:52:30.260 those who don't consider themselves christian nationalists so it's to take gay marriage and

00:52:35.420 homosexuality generally what's your what's your take there yeah let's say if i were christian

00:52:42.320 nationalist king for a day obergefell would be done uh no no same-sex mirage same-sex couples would

00:52:49.480 not be able to get married they would not be able to adopt children uh would their sex be illegal and

00:52:56.660 and punishable you mean this the sexual acts yeah the sodomy or so i believe and this is let me frame

00:53:03.460 this first when i first began ministering in the 70s as a preacher sodomy was a felony in all 50 states

00:53:12.480 now the point i'm making here is that the america of the late 70s was not a totalitarian hellhole but

00:53:22.680 we had we had laws like that on the books and what that basically amounted to in practice was the

00:53:30.460 ability of a magistrate a local municipal police department or whatever to shut down bathhouses

00:53:37.040 to have a vice and that'd be the sort of thing that i'd be interested in a vice squad that could

00:53:42.180 shut down bathhouses or deal with prostitution although sodomy is not quite the right framing

00:53:47.280 because obviously sodomy is can be accomplished between a man and a woman as well right so that

00:53:52.800 presumably should also be illegal and punishable that was the case in english and american law right that

00:53:58.720 was the that was the case and it depends on whether you're talking about oral or anal you you know it

00:54:04.200 depends on that sort of thing but i think if i'm not mistaken are considered sodomy right right according

00:54:10.400 to the legal definition as it pertained that time yes right but there are indications in the song of

00:54:17.440 solomon which is biblical erotica and this goes back to my point earlier about being a biblical absolutist

00:54:24.940 and taking the literature the way it presents itself uh the song of solomon is going to tell

00:54:31.560 me the song of solomon is going to save fellatio for a waiting public yeah well yes all right so is

00:54:39.060 that the good news well it might be the good news for some people but uh the the point is that in the

00:54:47.060 song of solomon particularly if you read a commentary or or translation that didn't tidy things up or

00:54:53.760 boulderize it for the public there are some pretty racy aspects to the song of solomon and i wouldn't

00:55:00.220 want to make anything illegal that uh would outlaw the song of solomon or categorize the song of solomon

00:55:07.980 as pornography that would be an example of christian wowsers going too far now what normally what

00:55:15.180 normally happened and there was a case out of texas where some officers went to a i forgot the name

00:55:21.400 of the case but they went to a house they had a warrant for some other offense i don't know the

00:55:26.100 drug offense or but they had a warrant and they went into the house and they caught a couple of guys

00:55:32.640 in in the act and so they threw that charge in also i am primarily interested in the suppression of public

00:55:41.940 vice so no more uh homosexual marriages no more pride parades no more no more flaunting that sort of

00:55:50.420 thing but i don't want don't want a sex gestapo either so in in many ways i'm a libertarian and so

00:55:59.920 i want jumping over to an illustration of the public space there would be uh muslims and hindus would be

00:56:07.400 free to think what they think and pray the way they pray and get gathered together with other people

00:56:12.160 but there would be no minarets church bells yes but no minarets because the public space belongs to christ

00:56:20.060 so what about adultery then what would what should be the punishment for adultery if i'm not mistaken

00:56:25.960 the the biblical at least old testament punishment is uh you get stoned to death or otherwise put to

00:56:32.380 death right actually this is this is the case for homosexuality and adultery heterosexual sin and

00:56:38.180 adultery both the capital offenses in the old testament many people take them as minimum penalties that's

00:56:45.220 that's the threshold you've got to do at least that uh i take them as maximum penalties and there

00:56:50.900 are the reasons for what do you got to do at least that what can you do beyond stoning someone to death

00:56:55.080 oh there'd be other thing you know uh tear down the monuments uh you could you could find destroy the

00:57:01.120 cattle as well as the person you just stoned to death right you you could you could i'm sure that

00:57:05.620 people could come up with something but the point is i don't take it as the minimum penalty where you

00:57:11.700 have to do that i take it as the maximum where king david committed adultery but wasn't executed for

00:57:20.160 it king asa and king jehoshaphat closed the bathhouses and exiled the homosexuals and didn't execute any of

00:57:28.420 them but they were praised for their action so you you have indications of this so relating to your

00:57:34.780 question about adultery i would the one of the first things i would do is get rid of no-fault divorce

00:57:40.100 so that divorce had to be for cause and it had to be a violation of the covenant and adultery is

00:57:47.840 is a violation of the covenant so again i don't think you're being at all evasive here but i just

00:57:54.500 i want to put a a fine point on it you are open-minded with respect to the sanction of capital punishment

00:58:01.680 in response to homosexuality and adultery there are cases in which you think that could be

00:58:08.820 the maximum biblical sanction could be and should be applied correct there are i could envision a

00:58:15.920 circumstance where that could happen capital punishment could be applied without injustice

00:58:21.140 right so i can envision that that doesn't mean that doesn't mean however that you just have a

00:58:27.320 conveyor belt and you're just gonna you're just gonna apply that sanction woodenly well one one uh

00:58:33.680 case does come to mind we have a president of the united states who is uh widely believed to have

00:58:40.160 committed adultery on his current wife just after she delivered their son uh with a porn star with whom

00:58:47.260 he we can only imagine uh also committed sodomy uh shouldn't that be a uh a killing offense if any

00:58:54.580 should be well if so that could be yeah so but don't don't go in the speculation with the stormy

00:59:01.780 daniel's one i think if you go earlier to his first marriage i think that's acknowledged on on all hands

00:59:07.960 uh that trump was not a faithful husband right okay so then that's a scenario where stoning to death or

00:59:15.240 otherwise being put to death at least should have been on the menu someone should have been deciding

00:59:19.700 whether or not to do that in his case yeah i think that's a so for example i mentioned king david

00:59:25.060 earlier king david was the king and obviously having someone who is the head of the government

00:59:32.540 who is who's guilty of that sort of crime you do have certain practical problems about about how to

00:59:39.120 go about it but in terms of what a person deserves adultery a man who will betray his wife will betray

00:59:47.660 anything or anyone and it's it's a just in the biblical world it is a very very serious thing

00:59:55.200 okay well what about um the rights of women i think you have or i'm for them yeah but what about the

01:00:03.240 right to vote i think there's been some controversy around this question should women be able to vote

01:00:07.420 so um i mentioned earlier what my agenda would be if i were suddenly making this decisions about what

01:00:14.620 would happen tomorrow what you know no abortion tomorrow a burger fell is gone tomorrow women

01:00:20.460 and voting is a is a thornier problem what i would prefer to see there is something like what we do in

01:00:27.100 our church in our church government we vote by household and so normally under ordinary circumstances

01:00:34.420 the head of the household casts the vote for the household and when the woman is the head of the

01:00:39.740 household a widow or divorced woman or a single woman who's out on her own with her own

01:00:44.520 household she votes in in our church election she votes as well so it's not an xx xy chromosome thing

01:00:51.740 it's a household thing for for us now what i would like to do is i'd like the church to practice that

01:00:58.920 kind of polity in church government for a century or two and have people admiring it and seeing how well it

01:01:07.420 works and adopting it gradually and slowly into our civic affairs so it basically the same way

01:01:15.240 that republicanism became a small r republicanism became a thing where that polity was beta tested test

01:01:24.400 driven first in church governments in the presbyterian movement and the reformed christian movement

01:01:30.860 uh this is how churches governed themselves and that became sort of the lab in which we test drove

01:01:38.080 this sort of uh governance and it translated quite naturally into the civic uh arena so in in the

01:01:45.420 fullness of time a single woman would still be able to vote but once she married then her husband would

01:01:51.660 vote for her is that yeah well her husband wouldn't vote instead of her her husband would cast the vote

01:01:57.620 that she and her husband and household that he was representing the whole household right but presumably

01:02:02.920 he would have the power to simply decide what the household should be voting right i mean isn't he in the

01:02:09.900 leadership position there yes he would have if if they disagreed he would break the tie and he might break

01:02:16.200 the tie by going with her desires or he might break the tie his way but under the current system where

01:02:22.580 the husband and wife go both go vote if they if they agree with each other all you're doing is

01:02:28.660 multiplying the total tally by two and if they just if they disagree with each other then they're just

01:02:35.020 canceling each other out they might as well just save the gas money and stay home and have a nice steak

01:02:39.680 dinner but it just seems there's something strange about the idea that i don't know someone like amy

01:02:44.900 coney barrett right who's a supreme court justice doing the the lord the lord's work presumably

01:02:49.820 supporting many uh the view of many uh religious people in this country by virtue of being married

01:02:55.100 she shouldn't be able to vote or you know vote her conscience if it differed from her husband's

01:02:59.980 in this scheme yes it seems it uh the reason this strikes us slaps us in the face as being very odd

01:03:07.200 is because we are an atomistic generation we we think that the primary unit of society is the

01:03:16.640 individual and each each individual is like a bb and then you put all the bbs in a sack and it's like

01:03:23.580 a big beanbag so you can push it in anywhere and then you have certain lax moral things ubiquitous porn

01:03:31.620 and other things that in effect grease the bbs i believe i would i'm a burkean conservative and i

01:03:38.960 would go back to burke's notion of the little platoons i think a healthy society is a molecular

01:03:44.800 society where the where each individual bonds in complex molecules with family extended family

01:03:52.620 churches denomination towns that sort of thing you have complex molecules forming and because we have

01:03:59.720 a sort of a radical individualistic and egalitarian view we want each individual to cast their sacred

01:04:06.720 vote and we treat it almost in a sacramental way so it's like a civic sacrament i believe that the

01:04:14.280 society would be much healthier if men uh learned to think of themselves as representing not their own

01:04:22.360 opinions but rather representing their household so so if the problem with individualism

01:04:29.700 is this teaching all the individuals to think selfishly instead of in terms of their their

01:04:37.480 responsibility to their loved ones well then what about slavery why can't we practice it and it seems

01:04:43.880 to me theologically at least the slaveholders of the south were on firmer ground than the abolitionists

01:04:50.320 it seems pretty clear from my reading in the bible that jesus and paul and anyone else you might

01:04:56.280 mention in the new testament certainly expected the institution of slavery to endure uh and they

01:05:02.080 you know rather than abolish it or um castigate slaveholders as evil they simply admonished both

01:05:10.280 slaveholders and slaves to behave in certain ways so as to make the institution more sane perhaps but

01:05:16.560 this was not a picture of a world in which slavery was obviously against god's law right i have to begin

01:05:24.360 by congratulating you for reading the bible more accurately than many christians on this point

01:05:29.340 so and let me put it to this way i've often said that there are times where a theological liberal or

01:05:37.760 an unbeliever can be trusted more fully with representing what the bible says than an evangelical

01:05:44.260 inerrantist can be and the reason is the evangelical inerrantist is stuck with whatever he comes up with

01:05:52.780 right if an unbeliever such as yourself can read paul and say this is what paul taught ho ho ho you know

01:06:02.200 but an evangelical who says this is what paul taught he has to say uh i agree with that right and the problem

01:06:10.600 is if he doesn't agree with that or if he's going to get in big time trouble uh if he says out loud what

01:06:16.180 the bible actually says now as it happens i believe that slavery as an institution is uh gone and good

01:06:24.560 riddance and i'm i'm not trying to i don't want to redo or do over at gettysburg so that's not what

01:06:30.800 this is about but i do believe honesty with the text and this goes back to my commitment to biblical

01:06:36.540 absolutism uh would recognize that philemon the book of philemon is a letter written by the apostle

01:06:43.100 paul returning a runaway slave onesimus to his master philemon who was a friend of paul's and

01:06:50.600 probably the one of the elders or leaders in the church at colossus so and then you have first

01:06:56.780 timothy 6 and ephesians and multiple places in the new testament where it tells christian masters how

01:07:03.720 to behave and it tells christian slaves how to behave slavery was ubiquitous in the roman empire and

01:07:10.340 christian masters are taught what to do christian slaves are taught what to do and the 10 commandments

01:07:16.360 that many christians are fighting to get back into the public schools the 10 commandments are delivered

01:07:22.100 to a slave owning people and and two of the two of the 10 commandments have slaves in them the the

01:07:29.220 fourth commandment on the sabbath you have to give a sabbath rest to your men servants and your main

01:07:34.740 servants your slaves male and female slaves and then the 10th commandment you're not allowed to

01:07:39.960 covet your neighbor's slaves so bare minimum honesty requires christians if they say i'm with the i'm with

01:07:48.440 the bible all the way well we have to say according to the bible a man could be a responsible christian

01:07:55.680 and a slave owner and not be in sin simply because he was in that relationship he would have to do all

01:08:03.360 the all the things the bible said to do and i think he would agree that manumission was the long-term

01:08:09.740 desired goal because the spirit of the lord brings liberty with him the gospel sets people free it sets

01:08:16.000 men and women free and i think that has civic uh ramifications and has implications for the slave trade

01:08:22.960 and so on but you're absolutely right one other thing the slave trade is prohibited in scripture

01:08:30.320 kidnapping was a capital offense in to in order to sell someone was a capital offense in the old

01:08:35.900 testament and the slave trade the middle passage slave trade was appalling an abomination and so

01:08:43.240 by talking about the relation of a christian master and a christian slave i'm not defending all the abuses

01:08:50.200 yeah except it would have been so easy had god or jesus or anyone else in the bible wanted to make

01:08:57.420 it clear that slavery was an abomination they simply could have said that right i mean they're you know

01:09:02.040 on your account they have the principal crimes the murder and theft and blasphemy and idolatry and

01:09:10.060 homosexuality even have been specified and ruled out of christian morality but slavery hasn't

01:09:17.580 happened yeah literally owning another person and and forcing them to be your farm equipment is part

01:09:24.260 of the culture part of the culture yeah back then yeah there were many things were part of the culture

01:09:28.420 that christianity disavowed and this was not one of them so it seems to me that i mean if we're being

01:09:34.300 honest what has happened in your case and the reason why you're grateful that we don't have to

01:09:39.060 relitigate this and the slavery the chattel slavery is behind us is that you have received some

01:09:46.460 instruction from a larger moral conversation a secular moral conversation the larger moral progress of

01:09:53.240 western philosophy and uh the growth of humanism and uh other notions of human rights that are not

01:10:01.260 best found or even on this particular point even possible to find in the bible well actually ross doubt

01:10:09.620 that tried to press me on the same on the same point and with regard to with regard to slavery

01:10:15.280 in the modern world the movement toward the abolition of the slave trade and the movement against the

01:10:23.420 whole enterprise which as thomas soul has pointed out slavery was ubiquitous in the world and there's one

01:10:29.980 civilization that recoiled from it at a certain point and that was west the west that was uh one of the

01:10:37.160 prime movers in that was one of my heroes william wilberforce right a member of a member of parliament

01:10:43.540 an ardent evangelical part of the clapham sect that was an abolitionist sect that was that fought many

01:10:51.780 abolitionists were religious clearly but what what i'm arguing is that if the theological case is better

01:10:57.920 made in defense of the slaveholders which i think it quite obviously is and you seem to agree

01:11:03.120 then we should just be honest that what is informing the morality of the abolitionist is a wider conversation

01:11:10.580 an extra biblical conversation i.e. a conversation that does not find its cash value in judgments of good

01:11:18.400 and evil in the bible where you i i know this because i know if we're going to talk about the foundations

01:11:23.900 of morality you're going to say that an atheist like myself has to make it up and whereas a christian can just

01:11:28.760 find it all in the bible but my point is you're not finding this in the bible well i i think i am so um

01:11:35.420 and and here's why i don't want to go to the outside unbelieving secular world for a great advance in human

01:11:43.680 morality like i tell you what let's not let's not have slaves anymore i believe that there are good

01:11:50.000 reasons for seeing that paul particularly paul was playing the long game in his fight against slavery

01:11:58.180 he what he was doing is subverting a pervasive institution and he subverted it in an in a number

01:12:05.700 of ways so for example he said masters treat your slaves as a fellow human being as remember you have

01:12:14.060 a master in heaven so he he flattened the relationship in the in the roman empire a slave was simply an

01:12:21.840 animated tool there were no rights at all and paul prohibited that and he said in christ there's there's

01:12:30.960 neither jew nor greek slave nor free male nor female so he laid that down he in corinthians he said

01:12:39.100 if you're a slave and you have an opportunity for freedom take it this is obviously to be preferred

01:12:44.960 and probably the center the central text that i'd point to is the letter of philemon where paul says

01:12:51.740 i'm returning onesimus to you i was tempted to keep him so that he could be your servant on to me on

01:12:58.760 on your behalf but i didn't want to do anything apart from your will but it's very clear that paul

01:13:05.040 wanted philemon to set onesimus free and an early bishop of ephesus was a man named was a man named

01:13:14.980 onesimus and i believe that philemon fulfilled paul's wish and you see all kinds of things within the

01:13:21.920 book of philemon that indicate the long-term logic of the gospel is subversive of the slave trade but

01:13:29.320 you're what what you're right about is that it's not a quick fix so it's possible for a slave owner

01:13:35.980 to be a good christian and have a christian slave and treat him right that's possible

01:13:41.120 which ardent abolitionists denied so i would affirm the slave owners in the south had the better part

01:13:48.140 of the argument there so presumably you'd find it hard to argue against your descendants in your

01:13:54.140 your presbyterian utopia who decide to bring back the practice of slavery by recourse to the biblical

01:14:02.620 reasoning yeah it would we'd have to have an argument but i can assure you we would have one

01:14:08.100 but but but it's an argument you would probably lose if you had recourse to only the bible well i

01:14:13.660 don't know i if basically i've i've recently written a commentary on the book of philemon and it's

01:14:19.940 astonishing how how subversive paul was with regard to the whole institution the the issue is it's sort

01:14:29.240 of like it's like polygamy so the christian faith is inherently monogamous god created adam and eve not

01:14:37.260 adam and eve and sally and susie so it's that's the creation uh norm christ and his bride christ is a

01:14:44.420 monogamous christ and his bride uh the new testament requires a bishop to be the one woman man and so

01:14:52.000 you have those like three facts in the bible and it comes into a polygamous world and over centuries

01:14:59.340 the christian monogamous ideal emerged and i think in much the same way that the anti-slavery

01:15:06.880 mentality emerged but i think it emerges naturally out of the christian worldview well so then what about

01:15:13.440 something like killing your children for talking back to you which seems to be suggested and

01:15:18.660 is it leviticus or deuteronomy or exodus or all three deuteronomy deuteronomy i just read that this

01:15:24.600 morning actually so why don't we stone our children to death for talking back to us okay so in the old

01:15:29.980 testament when the parents turn over the the rebellious delinquent child the level of rebellion

01:15:37.700 had to have been really significant it was not an example of mom and mom and son getting an argument

01:15:45.500 over the dishes and he said do them yourself that's not a capital that's not a capital crime it's

01:15:52.840 interesting that that passage of executing a rebellious son is a requirement that jesus repeats

01:16:02.040 in the gospel of mark without embarrassment jesus said you you know the word of god says honor your

01:16:08.800 father and mother and whoever curses father and mother let him die the death but you say and and jesus

01:16:14.920 attacks the pharisees for jiggering with that requirement so he he was not about to apologize for

01:16:21.300 it and neither am i but i i do want to maintain perspective so for a father and mother to turn their

01:16:28.840 a wastrel son over to the authorities to be executed his behavior had to have been really really bad

01:16:35.920 well let me let me make it uh worse then so i mean these are all killing offenses if memory serves in

01:16:41.780 deuteronomy but let's say your uh your wayward son or daughter goes off to a yoga class and decides that

01:16:48.220 they would really rather worship the god shiva and they come back and can't be discouraged uh from that

01:16:55.180 project and um on top of that they're gay on top of that they want to work on the sabbath uh give

01:17:01.260 the compound error upon error here uh surely you can turn that child over to the authorities for

01:17:06.980 killing uh yes if all right and here's and this is the big if that we talked about earlier when jesus had

01:17:14.800 the woman caught in adultery brought to him in the gospel of john what you have is a textbook case

01:17:21.460 of how you deal with that kind of sin in a new covenant way right it's not that the sin is okay

01:17:29.080 the sin's not okay and you want to effectively deal with it you you you want to you don't want to just

01:17:35.660 say girls will be girls or boys will be boys and you don't want to jolly it along you want to actually

01:17:42.220 deal with it so coming down with sort of the rough justice of deuteronomy on one little snide remark to

01:17:51.820 mom and you're executed or or the yoga class or that sort of thing that's not how i'd go back to

01:17:59.120 romans 4 13 that's not how the kingdom of god is established in the new covenant in second corinthians

01:18:06.480 10 it says we don't use carnal weapons so we don't try to institute this regime by means of

01:18:14.760 knocking heads together or punishing people it's simply not the way it comes about now once once

01:18:21.120 it's established once that everybody acknowledges the authority of god's word and we're living in this

01:18:26.960 republic and uh someone sins in a high-handed way i can see that it's going to have an impact on the

01:18:34.920 laws and i can see that at some point certain uh high-handed rebellions would be dealt with that

01:18:41.460 way and it says in proverbs if you strike the fool the simple learn wisdom so if someone is guilty of

01:18:49.200 outlandish behavior you know let's say a priest molesting altar boys and and in that setting that

01:18:56.800 person is executed for it that's going to steady a lot of people up yeah so what i heard you say there

01:19:03.800 i think is you uh invoke this notion this kind of pragmatic notion of incrementalism how do we get

01:19:10.400 from here to there but once we get there it sounds like the sanction for transgression will be um

01:19:18.600 quite a bit clearer right and yeah i'm not going to one of the things one of my baseline convictions

01:19:25.720 is i'm not going to apologize for any sanction that's clearly in the bible so when when these

01:19:33.480 judgments fell on people back in moses's israel right when the man there was a man who was executed

01:19:40.500 for picking up sticks on the sabbath i'm not going to apologize for that that was holy righteous and good

01:19:46.160 when when someone was executed for the various offenses you mentioned back then that was holy

01:19:52.000 righteous and good so i'm not going to apologize for anything in the bible now when it comes to what

01:19:57.620 we are going to do in the light of that one of the reasons i want to be prudent and careful is not

01:20:03.980 because oh look there's infidels out there watching us and we've got to sort of be aware of their

01:20:09.100 progressive gaze i want to be prudent and careful and slow because the the fundamental premise here is

01:20:16.800 the people the the civil magistrates who are running this show are sinners also so one of the reasons i am

01:20:25.480 such an ardent believer in limited government is because rulers kings princes congressmen are sinners

01:20:33.400 and when you give them power the more power you give them as it says in federalist 48 says that power

01:20:42.140 is of an encroaching nature power wants more power and i'm just deeply suspicious of the people who

01:20:50.840 want lots of power in order to execute sinners or flog sinners or do the because oftentimes the people

01:20:57.280 that want to do that are the biggest sinners so this is one of the reasons why i admire the u.s

01:21:02.900 constitution so much because it is a work of theological genius uh the american constitution has as its

01:21:11.520 underlying assumption never trust an american right never never trust anybody with too much power

01:21:18.960 and i believe that that's a deeply theological point right but it'd be you want to be prudent and slow

01:21:25.800 but you still want to get there and when you get there there is going to be defined by a condition of

01:21:31.940 sufficient purity and uh probity and wisdom on the on the part of of everyone concerned such that

01:21:39.320 you're not going to be surrounded and run by your society is not going to be full of and run by

01:21:44.480 sinners who just want lots of power these are going to be good christians with a biblical worldview

01:21:50.540 but then in that context picking up sticks on the sabbath could well be a killing offense because

01:21:57.240 it's biblical yeah so sure okay all right but but let me let me compare this to where we are

01:22:06.120 now right from a christian vantage point we are dealing we are making these points in a culture

01:22:13.340 that has to date legally dismembered 60 million americans in abortion talking about abortion about

01:22:21.760 abortion so when i when we're talking about things like slavery it would be better for a black american

01:22:27.880 to be conceived in charleston in 1855 than in baltimore in 2025 right your your odds are better your chances

01:22:38.120 are better so despite the uh temptation of the invitation i don't want to open the the abortion

01:22:44.600 debate because i think it's um it'll just take us too long to get it to anywhere like the end zone

01:22:50.700 i would just point out that in my view the problem of abortion of a single human fetus at whatever

01:22:57.760 stage it's a question of suffering or the absence of suffering and if there is suffering i will grant

01:23:03.240 you it's a a moral problem however you look at it i can't imagine you can believe that there's more

01:23:10.640 suffering entailed by being aborted at the the eight-week mark of conception or gestation when there's

01:23:17.560 more suffering there than in the life of a fully intact person who must live as a slave for years

01:23:25.500 and decades i mean it's just simply more suffering there is more there's a much more experience there's

01:23:29.860 more good human happiness that that person is deprived of and knows that he he or she is deprived

01:23:34.940 of there's the lash of the whip etc so i mean the comparison seems specious to me i can come with you

01:23:40.680 part way if the metric were suffering right then certainly in a border fashion that would be my metric

01:23:46.980 yeah an abortifacient that causes a fertilized egg to to not implant is an abortion in my

01:23:54.780 understanding okay and there's no suffering and that's equivalently that concerns you to the same

01:23:59.720 degree as a murder yeah it is a single cell not achieving implantation is as much of a moral offense

01:24:07.200 and problem worth avoiding then uh correct but then what do you do with the fact that god is the

01:24:13.040 greatest abortionist of all by that account because so many such a high percentage of pregnancies end in

01:24:18.480 miscarriage naturally if the good lord gave me a heart attack right now he would not be guilty of

01:24:23.460 murder the lord gives life and the lord he's the only one who has the right to take it away or authorize

01:24:29.220 it but the i was simply pointing out that my agreement with you that if suffering were the metric yeah if

01:24:34.940 suffering were the metric then you've got a sound point but i don't think it's the metric and i'm

01:24:40.200 simply trying to explain to you where evangelicals who are attracted to the kind of civic polity that

01:24:46.380 i'm talking about are what context do they believe themselves to be living in they believe them they

01:24:53.820 believe themselves to be living in a bloodthirsty culture well if suffering is not the metric i think

01:25:00.960 i'm going to follow this thread a little bit longer if suffering is not the metric what's wrong with

01:25:05.580 going to hell right i mean presumably the problem for me in your view is that you're being an atheist

01:25:11.180 uh of whatever spiritual convictions by fundamental confusion about the status of the bible and the

01:25:17.400 status of jesus and god etc is very likely to lead or if not certainly going to lead to my spending

01:25:24.380 eternity in a condition of excruciating suffering isn't suffering still the cash value of all of that

01:25:31.820 badness in the end no no uh suffering what's wrong with hell apart from the suffering well it is the

01:25:39.880 condition that warrants it so the central problem with uh hell is the absence of relationship with god

01:25:47.120 and the suffering is simply the the consequence of that so put it put it this way if if someone says

01:25:55.960 what's good about having a relationship with god what's good about heaven then oh uh we were created

01:26:01.940 for relationship with god and so one of the descriptions of hell is the outer darkness utter loneliness

01:26:09.600 uh you know being cut off from all communion and love and everything that's good and so what's happening

01:26:18.300 is the dynamics of damnation are that uh someone has once said that heaven is where we say to god

01:26:26.280 thy will be done and hell is where god says to man thy will be done so the wrath of god in romans 1

01:26:34.840 the wrath of god is explained as therefore god gave them up so the mercy of god is god restraining us

01:26:42.880 from becoming what we would become apart from his restraining mercy and damnation is the moment where

01:26:49.460 he chooses to let go of the reins and let us run headlong and when we run headlong we sort of curve

01:26:57.180 in upon ourselves and so the issue is not and this is an important point it's not as though you cheated at

01:27:03.760 cards one too many times and so god is going to throw you into a dungeon and have devils torture you with

01:27:10.860 red hot pinchers because you cheated at cards it's not like that the damnation is becoming what in one

01:27:18.920 sense hell and heaven are the same thing heaven is where you become what you have been becoming

01:27:24.780 and hell is where you become what you have been becoming all along so i think of hell as the ultimate

01:27:32.520 golemization of someone so they continue to devour themselves and everything collapses

01:27:40.040 into this agony but it's not someone who is sort of standing there and just just the way they are

01:27:48.580 now and then god has someone torture you i don't believe hell is god's torture chamber i don't think

01:27:54.400 it's like that i think it's much more a sinner collapsing in on himself well that's fine but what's wrong

01:28:02.000 with agony in that case well it's very unpleasant oh exactly so again the cash value of all of this

01:28:08.460 is a matter of experience right if the light simply went out if there was no experience after death

01:28:13.980 then presumably you would find nothing of interest in this part of the debate right what is of profound

01:28:20.740 interest and of paramount importance to you is based on a belief in eternity there are two very

01:28:27.800 different outcomes on offer right there is an eternity of agony and an eternity of the presumably

01:28:34.080 the opposite of agony some kind of you know utterly rapturous and fulfilling proximity to or union with

01:28:42.040 or contemplation of god right i mean i'm putting words in your mouth but presumably i'm not too far off

01:28:48.160 no it's the difference there that matters my point is that difference is experiential the difference is a

01:28:53.380 is a question of suffering and it's antithesis and so at the end of the day you too are anchoring your

01:29:01.180 moral worldview to the question of suffering yeah so jesus certainly encourages us to begin our thinking

01:29:10.340 at that point he says don't fear those who can kill the body only but fear the one who can throw both

01:29:15.560 body and soul into hell and fear has to do with punishment c.s lewis says that pain god speaks to us

01:29:22.520 through a megaphone in pain uh so it does begin there but i think where does it end how does it

01:29:29.140 ever escape there i mean you got me to at the end of that contemplation you got me all the way to agony

01:29:33.360 with that well i'm right back where i started which is no synonym for suffering basically i think a

01:29:38.880 judicious understanding of this is the abhorrent thing about hell is not that i'm going to be in agony

01:29:45.740 forever and ever that's not the most important thing about it the most abhorrent thing about it is that i

01:29:51.660 deserve to be in agony forever and ever in other words i'm the kind of i'm the kind of person so

01:29:57.320 think of it this way paul says in romans that the wages of sin is death but the gift of god is eternal

01:30:04.160 life so heaven and hell are not symmetrical it's an entirely asymmetrical thing so hell is a paycheck

01:30:11.360 down to the last penny and heaven is a gift it's a grace so what happens is when someone's suffering

01:30:19.580 in hell the the fundamental issue is not that i'm suffering these agonies the fundamental issue is

01:30:26.020 that i deserve every penny of it i'm the kind of person that deserves this but the deserving part if

01:30:34.120 that has any cash value at all it has the value of compounding the misery the knowledge that i deserve

01:30:41.700 this agony is itself another layer of my suffering i mean you're you're basically you're you're

01:30:47.580 describing the logic of the most acute sort of shame framed shame based you know flourish on top of my

01:30:56.060 whatever physical agony there is there's this additional insult that i'm culpable for all of

01:31:00.940 this i deserve it i turned away from god i'm getting exactly what i deserve and i'm getting a good and

01:31:06.120 hard again you're simply describing the experience of being in hell which is suffering correct so some of

01:31:12.320 this is we're chicken and egging it right so i do grant that acute suffering and agony is an essential

01:31:20.800 part of this the bible teaches that it's not like it's a day at the beach you know i'm well my point

01:31:27.060 is there's nothing else you can put in there that matters apart from more experience that is awful

01:31:33.440 right and it could be psychological experience it could be emotional it could be sensory it could come

01:31:39.820 in channels that don't even exist for us as you know social primates in our current fallen state but

01:31:45.460 will exist in the fullness of time in our soul bodies after death uh there'll be a thousand ways

01:31:51.720 to suffer where now we only have you know five or six but whatever you're going to give me what's bad

01:31:57.980 about hell is just how awful it is to be separated from god right in all the ways one could be separated

01:32:04.920 from god yeah that's awful and i but i i don't think you can separate the agony from the dessert

01:32:11.040 that's right because well that that's fine but again i'm just saying you what you what you tried

01:32:15.640 to do in your differentiating my approach to thinking about something like abortion or presumably anything

01:32:21.920 else in terms of suffering and your approach is to take morality off what i consider to be you know a

01:32:28.820 kind of consequentialist or you know utilitarian gold standard of it matters what the experience

01:32:35.260 is right like that's that that the level of consequences is the cut is is whether this is

01:32:40.500 causing suffering or not for any being that can suffer and you seem to want to say well no no there's

01:32:47.260 a the real area of concern has nothing in principle to do with that it has to do with you know what god

01:32:54.280 wants or following god's law or proximity to god and my point to you is that when you drill down on

01:33:00.220 all of that all the theology and all the metaphysics what you still really care about is suffering and

01:33:06.360 glory you know at the level of experience and their and their vast difference right and so you you're a

01:33:13.340 consequentialist you're you're a utilitarian you just your utilitarian concerns are framed by christianity

01:33:19.700 and your expectation of what happens after death right well it's a consequentialist in the framing

01:33:26.100 of a personal god the triune god of scripture who blesses faithfulness and who curses rebellion

01:33:33.800 right so so it's all personal but it's uh it's not billiard ball physics consequentialism oh sure

01:33:40.560 it sure right but so it's a personal thing yes okay so um well i think we're going to still stay here

01:33:46.560 near the foundations of morality for a bit but i have a question about the uh the assassination of

01:33:52.360 charlie kirk and the the response to it that i saw and there are two very different responses i mean

01:33:58.480 i'm sure you watched some if not all of the memorial yeah i did and um i mean there were some

01:34:04.280 i think quite deranged and and scary uh eruptions of really a kind of divisive hatred from on that stage

01:34:11.880 but one thing that was quite beautiful and arresting was erica kirk's eulogy uh wherein she

01:34:17.880 forgave her husband's killer right seemingly drawing her ethics directly from the sermon on the mount

01:34:25.220 but i if i'm not mistaken you struck a different note on social media i think this is a quote and

01:34:31.000 please correct me if i'm wrong but sure you uh wrote the preacher in ecclesiastes tells us there's a

01:34:36.320 time for love and a time for hate a time for war and a time for peace this is not the time for love

01:34:42.100 and peace one why why do you draw that lesson for you know as a christian and as a christian how

01:34:48.740 would you be able to say that erica kirk is drawing the wrong lesson first i would say that i admired

01:34:55.500 erica kirk's speech very much so i had the same reaction to it that you did i i thought it was

01:35:02.340 wonderful so there's that and so then the question would be if i could anticipate you yeah how do i

01:35:08.340 reconcile that take with her her sermon on the mount forgiveness with the uh the duty of the

01:35:16.660 magistrate to punish right so what i would do is go to romans chapter 12 and 13 together in the

01:35:26.000 original book of romans they didn't have chapter and verse markings the whole thing was all of a

01:35:30.960 peace and if you if you're reading down through chapter 12 you see paul functioning at a very high

01:35:37.240 sermon on the mount levels bless those who curse you do not take vengeance for vengeance is mine

01:35:43.920 saith the lord paul is very much in the erica kirk vein in romans 12 and he says don't take personal

01:35:52.080 vengeance but not because vengeance is wrong but because vengeance is mine saith the lord and then in

01:35:58.400 chapter 13 it goes on to say that the civil magistrates are no authority exists except

01:36:04.820 has been established by god and they are established as god's deacon of wrath so there's no incongruity

01:36:12.560 for the christian there's no incongruity between personally forgiving someone who has wronged me

01:36:18.580 and uh leaving room for the cops to arrest him right so i think the two things blend nicely i don't think

01:36:28.300 trump's comments at the memorial service blended with what erica kirk was saying because trump was

01:36:36.060 vocalizing and he was aware of it too he he vocalized sort of personal animosity like i hate my

01:36:43.800 enemies and you know erica is a better christian than i am that sort of thing so i think that there

01:36:50.120 was a gap between what erica was saying and what trump was saying but i don't think there's a gap

01:36:55.680 between what erica was saying and if the shooter receives a fair trial and if they go through it i see

01:37:03.760 no problem with him being executed for that but i think that that erica could pray for him forgive him

01:37:12.840 send him a bible before his execution and not be contradicting her willingness for him to be

01:37:19.960 executed because it says in ecclesiastes 8 11 where justice is not speedily executed upon the criminal

01:37:27.720 there the heart of man is filled to do evil so i think the magistrate has the responsibility

01:37:32.660 to execute that level of wrongdoing to bring down judgment on it but i also believe that christians

01:37:40.300 have the solemn responsibility to love their enemies okay well that that way of partitioning

01:37:46.520 things actually makes sense you might be surprised to hear from my point of view we've talked about

01:37:51.580 this a little bit but i guess i'd like you to just take a clean swing at it what is wrong with

01:37:57.280 atheism in your view okay i believe that atheism collapses upon itself i don't think it's sustainable

01:38:06.320 because if i i belong to an apologetics school of thought called presuppositionalism okay and so

01:38:15.060 what i what i try to do is ask what kind of universe do i think i'm in and is my behavior currently

01:38:23.660 consistent with that universe okay so if if i believe that there is no god and that what's going

01:38:30.860 on around me is this concatenation of atoms you know cascading down through history and basically

01:38:38.140 time and chance happened to them all and this is just the cosmos is 10 tons of confetti dumped into

01:38:45.940 an f5 tornado it's like heraclitus everything is chaos then i a small piece of that chaos cannot know

01:38:55.120 anything including that it's chaos like the fish doesn't know that it's wet so if there is no god

01:39:04.180 what kind of cosmos would that necessitate and if i'm living in that kind of cosmos then how is it

01:39:12.200 possible for me to know that i'm living in that kind of cosmos so it's for me it's an epistemological

01:39:18.680 question how do i know what i know how do i know that i'm knowing and am i actually a knowing being

01:39:27.700 so if if you spill the milk on the kitchen floor and you want to know how it got there you don't

01:39:33.240 ask the milk it doesn't know it's the accident okay but in that account you seem not to be making

01:39:40.540 contact with what it's actually like to be an atheist right i mean so i mean an atheist is a

01:39:46.440 person like yourself who is conscious who recognizes from the moment of birth forward or

01:39:54.000 thereabouts that there there's a range of experience on offer in this condition and some

01:39:59.280 of these experiences are are very pleasant and some are very unpleasant and once let you know

01:40:04.700 language comes online we have a a common understanding of the world that is both more

01:40:09.700 fundamental and and wider reaching than anything in the bible in fact it's only by virtue of having

01:40:15.580 learned language in the first place that you can ever pick up a bible bible and read it and get

01:40:20.000 anything out of it and you know from an atheist point of view it's impressive you know if that is

01:40:24.580 a work of omniscience you know it's impressive how much is not in that book and you know when you think

01:40:30.300 of how perfect a book could be if it were written by an omniscient being uh and compare that book of

01:40:36.900 your imagination to what actually exists as scripture the discordance there is also impressive

01:40:41.300 which is to say that you know the greatest book on morality doesn't even get the question of slavery

01:40:46.260 right or not quite right but if but if there is no god if there is no god there is no right answer

01:40:51.520 on slavery well but that's simply not true because again we have this universe that admits of very very

01:40:58.040 positive experiences and very very negative ones and you and i share you and i are united in our

01:41:03.060 preference for the former right if there is a heaven to go to and a hell uh yawning beneath i certainly

01:41:10.960 would want to be in that heaven just as you would want to be in that heaven because i care about the

01:41:15.160 difference between eternal torment and eternal satisfaction but the nerve endings uh sam the nerve

01:41:21.240 endings of all the sentient beings that are are not hooked up together so consequently there's no such

01:41:28.560 thing as the collective amount of pain that's going on because the nerve endings the the experience of

01:41:37.420 pain is discrete in all the different individuals that have those nerve endings right and so

01:41:43.420 consequently well it is not shared but there's still a we can still talk about you for certainly

01:41:49.220 certain purposes we can talk about collective experience right if you have 10 people in a room and

01:41:55.360 they all have a similar experience of it's you know it's being too hot in the room and you know

01:41:59.700 where's the thermostat we can play that language game and we're not driven insane by it we we know the

01:42:04.880 room's too hot and and that's because all 10 of us are sweating right and so someone proposes okay

01:42:10.760 there's 10 of us here let's enslave this guy and make him guard the thermostat right um so which would

01:42:18.200 be permitted by the bible i would point out but not by my secular morality well my question is why

01:42:24.040 wouldn't it be allowed by your secular morality because there are consequences to a practice like

01:42:30.580 that and in the fullness in the full analysis we can agree or you know rational people can agree

01:42:36.640 that certain consequences are worse than others and well not for me well no because like no one wants

01:42:43.380 again this is a like a classic attack on consequentialism the idea that well you know

01:42:49.100 on the consequentialist account if it's all about just the the greatest good for the greatest number

01:42:54.200 why can't your doctor when you when you show up for a physical why can't your doctor knowing that he's

01:42:59.380 got five people other pay five other patients who could use your organs why can't he just you know

01:43:04.320 bring you into his back room and knock you out and vivisect you uh and deliver your organs to the

01:43:10.040 five needy patients who are waiting for them well okay in the in the tightness of that frame you may

01:43:16.500 imagine it's hard to argue against that on consequentialist terms because you've got one

01:43:20.760 dead person and five people who've been saved but if you look at the larger footprint of those of the

01:43:27.120 consequences of that practice if you look at what it would be like to live in a society where all of us

01:43:32.480 knew at any time we might be yanked out of the waiting room and vivisected murdered by our own doctors

01:43:39.180 who we've entrusted to keep us healthy because someone else needs our organs exactly no one would want to

01:43:44.760 live in that society for good reason it would be a society of terror and distrust right no that's why

01:43:49.380 you don't tell them well no but again it's still a society of terror and distrust the moment you don't

01:43:54.020 tell them it's not terror and distrust if nobody tells them of course because people would be

01:43:58.320 disappearing under those conditions where's mom mom went to the doctor why didn't why didn't she come

01:44:02.820 back oh she died in the doctor's office because we stole her organs right this is not the way the

01:44:08.240 world works we are we are collectively entangled in all sorts of ways where most certainly most of

01:44:16.380 the time i'll grant you you can create corner conditions where the temptation for torture or

01:44:21.280 the temptation to scapegoat or to mistreat the the the single person for the benefit of the mob

01:44:27.160 can be sharpened up to a point where it can be harder and harder to argue against it in that limited

01:44:32.360 case but in general we know that all of these boats rise with the same tide right we know that each of

01:44:39.880 us most of the time are better off in a fair society rather than a radically corrupt one even though we

01:44:47.500 can point to the instance of corruption that would work to our private advantage right so you can argue

01:44:52.880 for these compromises and trade-offs because you just have a larger footprint of consequences that

01:44:59.700 you're rationally evaluating right so i agree with you that if mom went to the doctor for a hangnail

01:45:06.240 and it took her condition took an unfortunate turn yeah that that'd be obviously ridiculous and i also

01:45:13.900 agree with you that the consequentialist hypotheticals can be expanded to the point where

01:45:19.920 you know it's it's it'd be hard for the consequentialist to argue on their own terms for the christian

01:45:26.400 i i do agree that it's far better to live in a fair-minded society that cares about justice

01:45:34.280 what i would maintain however is that we need to define justice what is it and why why do we define

01:45:45.780 it a certain way what moral system does it arise out of and is it obligatory on people who don't

01:45:53.880 have that moral system so if we have the kantian ethic the categorical categorical imperative

01:46:00.240 or utilitarian ethic i'm a christian i'm not a kantian i'm not a not a utilitarian why am i bound

01:46:08.260 by this i mean again i i would argue that you are utilitarian is not quite the right word given some of

01:46:13.900 the associations but the more generic term consequentialist i think is and i would argue

01:46:18.680 that you and everyone else when you really drill down on what you care about and what you could

01:46:22.780 conceivably care about you are a consequentialist and if you care about the difference between

01:46:27.440 eternity and hell and with its agony and its just desserts and eternity with god you are talking

01:46:35.040 about consequences the consequences of living rightly within the law as you believe it to exist now

01:46:39.960 whether you're right about whether we live in such a universe that's remains to be seen but and i think

01:46:45.500 there are reasons to believe you're not but if you were right again what you care about in that scheme

01:46:50.820 is consequences right now if here's the question i would have for you if you look back over human

01:46:57.740 history and you look at all the tyrants and despots and criminal warlords and whatnot who we would say

01:47:05.160 on a human level got away with it yeah right they maintained power until they died they got away

01:47:11.260 with it and they got away with all kinds of rape and pillage and everything and they died 200 years

01:47:17.260 ago we look at that person and say there is no judgment there is no reckoning for that person

01:47:22.880 that person bet wisely or luckily he landed on his feet okay but you see what you're walking into here

01:47:30.400 because on your account salvation has nothing really at the end of the day to do with a person's

01:47:36.640 behavior so you i can find you an atheist who behaves impeccably better than 99.9 percent of christians

01:47:42.880 his whole life does nothing but donate blood and donate money and and and and he comfort the dying

01:47:49.840 etc but because he's an atheist he's going to spend eternity in hell and i can find you a rapacious

01:47:56.100 psychopath who um on death row comes to jesus in the most impeccable fashion in the last hours of his

01:48:04.500 life after having raped and killed and tortured right and being put to death by a duly constituted secular

01:48:09.760 state but he's being put to death having found christ in those last moments uh found him fully

01:48:16.760 found him without residue he will spend eternity in heaven right that makes a mockery of any distinction

01:48:23.520 we would make as a matter of terrestrial morality right so the i said earlier that heaven was a gift

01:48:30.460 and that hell was a paycheck and so your your scenario is the thief on the cross received the

01:48:37.100 gift he he was a scoundrel and he it was a deathbed conversion with no bed and he was forgiven today

01:48:44.580 you'll be with me in paradise and someone was someone else was a moral upright citizen always did all

01:48:51.460 what was expected of him and so forth and is lost eternally because he didn't have christ yeah i

01:48:58.480 embrace that i embrace that i embrace that well so but i'm just saying that it interacts unhelpfully

01:49:03.720 with the rejoinder you were just putting forward which is all these awful people in the past are not

01:49:09.840 going to be judged uh in my view in my world view they got away with murder quite literally but i'm

01:49:16.700 pointing out all the circumstances where good christians at the end can get away with murder all

01:49:21.380 the while and the best people who've ever lived in terms of their terrestrial morality will spend

01:49:26.500 eternity in hell just because they didn't believe the right things about god so so you agree that

01:49:31.280 both our positions have people in them who get away with murder uh yes okay now what i'm saying is the

01:49:39.580 person who got away or seem to i mean i honestly don't know what you know what happens after death

01:49:45.180 and what you know obviously if i were a buddhist you know i'm i don't consider myself one although i've

01:49:49.960 gotten a lot of wisdom from buddhism in a buddhist framework you have a very different way of

01:49:54.700 accounting for all of this and no one gets away with anything but it's there's no there's no

01:49:58.660 personal god meeting out justice there's just the law of karma i can't say that i believe we have good

01:50:03.780 evidence for that either um certainly not not as a scheme that settles all accounts after death but

01:50:10.440 and probably alive i mean it's very easy to map the law of karma onto one's life and and see you know

01:50:17.480 some evidence for it in the sense that if you behave in certain ways the world tends to push back

01:50:22.700 and uh you know that there's a kind of lawfulness to that but certain people seem to do get away

01:50:27.900 fairly scot-free with behaving badly right and so we could point to maybe you've heard the joke

01:50:34.020 about the buddhist who said to the christian that he was going to get into his karma and run over your

01:50:38.100 dogma no i hadn't heard that one all right so finally i maybe i can just ask you about the belief

01:50:45.520 in the veracity of the bible and the veracity of the miracles in the bible presumably the miracles

01:50:50.180 are important you know if uh christ be not raised your faith is vain right i mean i'll let me just

01:50:55.460 i'll just i'll kind of cut to the chase uh in the interest of time i'm just given how i you know i

01:51:00.460 view this as a um as inscrutable in the sense that there are many other sets of miracles you could

01:51:07.240 believe in but you don't and and some of them are would seemingly be more credible or easier to

01:51:12.900 assess i mean like you take an indian guru like a saibaba i don't know if you ever heard of satya

01:51:18.500 saibaba the south indian guru he died about 15 years ago but he had a very large community of

01:51:24.640 mostly european devotees but not mostly but you know many european devotees were living with him in

01:51:31.200 india basically all of the miracles attributed to jesus were attributed to satya saibaba he he was

01:51:37.180 born of a virgin uh he produced he raised the dead he produced all kinds of you know water into

01:51:42.740 wine sort of miracles these seemingly were well attested to you know in the sense that you could

01:51:47.900 find people still alive today who will claim to have seen them uh and yet none of this merited

01:51:54.980 even an hour on cable television at the time right i mean this is this is all sort of obviously

01:52:01.500 incredible not worth paying attention to and yet your faith in the miracles of christianity

01:52:08.260 seems to be founded on the following translation which is if you take this same set of claims and you

01:52:16.380 move it back 2 000 years into the first century you know roman empire and put it in a context of

01:52:24.340 a pre-scientific context where you have people who have not even been exposed to anything like a

01:52:30.860 scientific worldview and these sort of empirical and logical demands it would impose on them and you

01:52:36.300 give the and you make the testimony about this set of miracles not contemporaneous but some

01:52:41.940 generation some two generations or at least one generation a generation and a half removed

01:52:46.380 so you have copies upon copies of texts written by people who were at the closest account i think you

01:52:53.180 know 35 years after the life of jesus and in some cases a full century after the life of jesus and you

01:52:59.380 have that testimony to a set of miracles suddenly that is more credible than the miracles that you're not

01:53:05.280 even interested in that i could immediately point to you to i mean there are even youtube videos of some of

01:53:10.300 these miracles or purported miracles of satya saibaba i as an atheist view both of these situations as

01:53:16.280 analogous and yet your religion is founded on the latter and it seems in some basic sense uh less

01:53:25.100 amenable to uh truth testing than the circumstance around satya saibaba that presumably you don't find

01:53:32.800 compelling uh just even at a glance so first i'm a thoroughgoing supernaturalist um so i just accept

01:53:41.080 the account of the miracles in the bible straight up straight no chaser right okay so jesus walked on

01:53:48.620 water he turned water to wine he rose from the dead he fed the 5 000 all of that so i'm a thoroughgoing

01:53:54.960 supernaturalist because i believe in a spiritual world and i believe that jesus was uniquely situated

01:54:01.840 in the intersection between that spiritual world and our material world but i don't believe that

01:54:08.160 miracles were limited to the person of the christ his apostles did miracles the prophets in the old

01:54:14.240 testament did miracles and i don't even have any a priori commitment to saying pagans or non-believers

01:54:21.600 are incapable of doing miracles in fact just the reverse when moses and aaron were confronting pharaoh

01:54:29.100 and they threw down the rod and it turned into a snake pharaoh's magicians did the same thing

01:54:35.700 with their rods and they turned them into snakes i believe in the reality of a spiritual world

01:54:41.340 right and i believe for example at philippi when paul cast the demon out of the fortune-telling

01:54:49.540 slave girl literally in the greek it's she had the spirit of a python which meant she was a devotee of the

01:54:56.380 god apollo who uh the oracle at delphi was the pythoness so she told fortunes and she actually

01:55:02.840 told fortunes there was something there because so you wouldn't doubt if i told you that there was a

01:55:09.420 a hindu guru alive today who is performing miracles you wouldn't be inclined to doubt the possibility of

01:55:17.700 that at this point no i know i would say uh the fact that he might have some genuine spiritual power

01:55:24.700 is on the table for me right but you know fraudulent i've seen illusionists uh western magicians

01:55:32.160 illusionists do some amazing things also and if they put on a robe and went out to an ignorant

01:55:39.120 population they could pass themselves off as a great guru also right so i budget for that that's a

01:55:45.580 it could be fraud it could be a genuine spiritual power and i would link it to deuteronomy 13 and

01:55:53.900 deuteronomy 18 where if someone leads you after another god then even if even if they're doing powers

01:56:02.180 and wonders and stuff you don't follow them because it's a different god so then if miracles are not the

01:56:08.520 point how do you establish the primacy of miracles are one of the point miracles are one of the points

01:56:16.580 okay so but but so is it the the specific miracles that that attest to the unique divinity of jesus

01:56:23.160 because i mean if i if i got you somebody again who was who about whom it was claimed he was born of a

01:56:29.400 virgin and he walked on water and he turned water into wine etc and he claimed to be god i mean this is

01:56:35.980 all you can you can find hindus and others who who check all these boxes how is it that you can

01:56:41.520 differentiate your set of truth claims anchored to the the ministry of jesus from all that yeah this

01:56:47.840 would go back to the deuteronomy 13 deuteronomy 18 thing when jesus came he came as the promised

01:56:54.180 messiah of god so he was born of a virgin true but isaiah prophesied it 700 years beforehand so i'm i'm

01:57:02.420 looking at all this converging on jesus of nazareth or or simply the text knowing about isaiah and the

01:57:10.260 other prophetic books the new testament texts could have been written so as to connect those dots right

01:57:16.040 that's another plausible interpretation yeah basically if we're sitting down to discuss the

01:57:20.240 options that's one of them right so you can you can't arrange where you're going to be born but you

01:57:26.760 can't arrange what you tell people about where you were born so that's a that's a fair objection so

01:57:32.120 basically i would look at christ as the messiah of god the promised messiah of god promised over

01:57:38.460 centuries and he comes and he authenticates his mission with his miracles and his manner of life

01:57:45.580 and his teaching so i find his teaching compelling self-authenticating there was something

01:57:53.880 uh i'd want to go to lewis's trilemma here this guy was not a nutcase he has too much moral shrewdness

01:58:01.380 to be a nutcase and he has too much moral shrewdness to be a liar and a charlatan and that leaves us with

01:58:09.500 he was who he claimed to be and then when you couple it with the miracles and the resurrection i find a

01:58:16.160 compelling compelling compelling case and i look at that and i respond in faith but i don't in this i

01:58:24.120 appeal to lewis again i don't believe that pagans can do nothing i i don't believe that it's all empty

01:58:31.280 and hollow over in paganism i believe that they inhabit the spiritual world also and many of them

01:58:39.000 are more in tune with that spiritual world than many western materialist christians are

01:58:43.740 doug wilson it's been an education thank you so much for your time great to meet you thank you

01:58:48.500 thank you and it was a pleasure being on your podcast thank you sam let me can i tell you one

01:58:53.900 thing before i go sure that was the best interview i've had in years oh nice thank you that was just

01:59:00.180 really fair-minded i really appreciate it that was really good i just want to know what you think

01:59:05.740 so i tried to get there not everybody does want to know yeah yeah thank you take care doug all right

01:59:32.620 you

Making Sense - Sam Harris - November 10, 2025

#443 — What Is Christian Nationalism？

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