The NXR Podcast - THE FRIDAY SPECIAL - Christian Nationalism, Aristotle, & The Plague Of Multiculturalism - S05E01

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00:00:30.000 All right, here we are with Dr. Stephen Wolfe. Thanks for coming on the show.

00:00:50.660 Yeah, thanks for having me.

00:00:51.480 You're welcome. So we are going to be doing a 10-part series all on the topic of Christian

00:00:57.500 nationalism. And what we want to do from the very outset is actually have Stephen define Christian

00:01:03.040 nationalism and answer, really, I would argue, and I think you would make the same argument,

00:01:08.360 90% of your opponent's objections to your book come from the introduction. And I think it's

00:01:14.500 because, not because the introduction is uniquely flawed, but because I think a lot of your 0.76

00:01:20.780 opponents didn't get past the introduction and are really silly in a lot of their objections. 0.97

00:01:26.960 So like, you know, biblicism is a rampant plague 0.96

00:01:30.460 on evangelicals, especially in the Baptist world, 1.00

00:01:33.340 which I'm a part of.

00:01:34.760 And so for a lot of guys,

00:01:36.380 they read the one line where you said,

00:01:38.260 I'm not a theologian.

00:01:39.440 And I've had to correct so many guys and say,

00:01:41.160 when Stephen Wolf says he's not a theologian,

00:01:43.300 you need to understand that those of you who are objecting,

00:01:46.240 Stephen Wolf would also say that you are not a theologian.

00:01:49.320 He means I do not have a PhD in theology.

00:01:52.920 He doesn't mean I haven't read the Bible

00:01:54.200 and I don't have theological ideas

00:01:55.760 or that I don't know basic theology

00:01:57.440 or the Westminster Confession of Faith.

00:02:00.060 Everybody, and part of this is Sproul's fault,

00:02:02.440 who I love, but everyone's a theologian.

00:02:05.180 I know what he means, but let's just be honest

00:02:07.620 and say 99% of these theologians

00:02:09.720 that everyone is one of are bad theologians.

00:02:12.820 And so, you know, all you're saying is that

00:02:15.080 I'm going to assume the theology of the reformers

00:02:19.540 and then work from that to political philosophy.

00:02:22.040 Is that right?

00:02:23.340 Yeah, when I said I'm not a theologian,

00:02:25.680 I mean, I don't work out of the discipline of theology, and there's a classic distinction

00:02:32.160 that the Reformers made and the post-Reformation Reformers made, and that distinction would be

00:02:39.060 between theology and politics and ethics. And a lot of them wrote about in those different

00:02:44.440 disciplines, but some did not. And a lot of the guys who wrote political works like Bartholomew

00:02:49.180 Keckerman and guys I'm working on now and on Alstead, um, they, they, they wrote not as

00:02:55.540 theologians, but in kind of the, the realm or discipline of politics. So that's what I was

00:03:00.380 focusing on. Um, but, but also I, I've never been trained in going from scripture to theological

00:03:06.780 statements. And, uh, so I wanted to, I wanted a robust theological system from, from which I could

00:03:14.100 build a political theory. And that's what I've studied. That's what I know. That's what I could

00:03:20.420 call myself as a political theorist. I have a PhD in political science. And so I wanted to assume

00:03:26.540 certain doctrines that I considered and still consider the majority opinions of the Reformed

00:03:31.440 tradition and work from those. And I wanted really solid statements because I wanted to work

00:03:37.460 analytically, syllogistically, systematically to build a systematic or a system of political

00:03:43.860 doctrine. And to do that, I needed good, robust theology. And I'd rather just, instead of doing

00:03:50.720 the work, which has already been done for us, you can pick up Turretin's three-volume Institutes

00:03:54.880 of Olympic Theology, it's already been done for us, and the statements he makes are repeated

00:04:00.720 throughout our tradition, so why not just take those and work from them?

00:04:05.500 Right. Stand on the shoulders of the people who came before us. I completely agree. But I do think that, you know, if I could be frank, I think that you, sometimes your modesty betrays you. I think you're being too modest. Like, so I know that some, again, of the boomer brain Baptist, and for the record, I'm not picking on older people. Boomer is a state of mind. It's not merely an age. You can be a 30-year-old boomer.

00:04:31.360 The spirit of boomerism is strong with many young individuals.

00:04:35.760 And so what I'm saying is that a lot of like kind of boomer type biblicist Baptist, when

00:04:42.540 you made that one little statement just a moment ago, where you said, you know, I've

00:04:46.580 never been trained in the work of going from scripture to theological statements or positions.

00:04:52.060 A lot of guys are going to hear that.

00:04:54.000 And in their presumption and arrogance, they're going to say, well, then what business does

00:04:57.580 he have, you know, right?

00:04:59.220 And they're just going to write you off.

00:05:00.540 Yeah. I mean, what they'll say is that how can you have a Christian, how can it be Christian

00:05:05.380 nationalism when you didn't do exegesis? And the simple answer is that if I'm using theological

00:05:13.020 statements like, you know, Christ is Lord, and I'm speaking to a Christian audience,

00:05:18.340 do I need to demonstrate that truth from scripture or can I assume that? And if I'm

00:05:23.440 using Christ as Lord in an argument with an audience that affirms that, then I can work

00:05:31.480 from there and have a Christian conclusion from that. So if you have Christian doctrine that we

00:05:35.800 all agree on, and that's my audience, then you can make a Christian statement and conclusion

00:05:41.420 from that. And that's precisely what I did. And so I would just say if people have a problem,

00:05:46.220 um i mean the problem should be with the soundness of my of my arguments right and so if you agree

00:05:53.940 with the premises and it's a valid argument then you're compelled yourself to agree with the

00:05:58.580 conclusion agreed and so if you're going to attack me instead of saying i didn't ground these

00:06:03.820 statements in scripture you should ask is are those statements true or false that's what you

00:06:07.980 should be asking and i think if you actually approach it from that uh perspective what you'll

00:06:13.500 find is that you actually agree with those statements. And so that should be the area of

00:06:20.500 attack. But yeah, I think there is, within the 20th century, this, like you said, this

00:06:24.520 biblicist, it's really kind of rooted in a type of reactionary fundamentalism. So I don't like

00:06:30.080 tossing out fundamentalists all the time. It's usually overused. But there is this fear of

00:06:35.980 believing anything or stating anything without having a sort of scriptural proof next to it.

00:06:41.840 but sometimes, and just in an argument, you can assume what your audience already assumes and

00:06:48.060 you can work from it. I mean, that's the nature of argument itself. Especially if we want to

00:06:51.580 progress like that. The only way we're going to progress is we're going to like, we have to assume

00:06:56.660 certain things have already been established. Otherwise we're just reinventing the wheel

00:07:00.220 again and again. Like, I mean, the stereotypical guy who, you know, um, and, and some of this is

00:07:07.100 because of higher criticism and all these kinds of things, which fundamentalism tried to stand

00:07:10.720 against. But because there's been, you know, all these liberal attacks on basic, you know,

00:07:17.720 fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith, a lot of, you know, the most recent generation of

00:07:23.500 Christians, instead of being able to stand on shoulders of giants who preceded them and carry 0.57

00:07:28.440 the ball further and forward, they've had to simply redo the work that's already been done 0.97

00:07:34.400 because people are like, well, how do we know that the Bible is really the word of God? And so then

00:07:37.680 you spend 60 years with guys going back to original manuscripts and learning the Hebrew

00:07:42.680 and learning the Greek and this and that. And the final conclusion is, yeah, the ESV would have done

00:07:47.700 just fine. That was good. King James is probably a little bit better, but it turns out there's a

00:07:57.320 difference in building a house versus inspecting a house. The most previous generation, I feel like

00:08:01.900 we've devoted 95% of our time to inspecting the house built by our fathers, uh, instead of

00:08:07.780 building new wings and new and new developments and new structures. And I appreciated that about

00:08:13.640 your book, um, that you didn't go and, uh, and indict your fathers. And when I say spiritual

00:08:21.880 fathers, I mean, guys like Calvin, you know, and the reformers, but instead, uh, you said,

00:08:26.380 I'm going to trust my fathers. They built a house. It's sound. And I would like to build an addition

00:08:31.220 to the house. We're going to add a

00:08:33.540 grandma suite in the backyard, you know,

00:08:35.540 whatever. So... Yeah, I mean

00:08:37.600 in my audience, like the people

00:08:39.600 I was criticizing in the book,

00:08:41.820 I'm going after people

00:08:43.400 for the most part who assume 0.79

00:08:45.280 or argue within the Reformed

00:08:47.400 tradition itself.

00:08:50.120 And so if I'm going to take

00:08:51.440 from that tradition, then they should be okay with

00:08:53.480 that. And for the most part, I

00:08:54.920 assumed what I thought I could assume

00:08:57.100 and then I argued for things I thought I

00:08:59.420 really couldn't just assume. So

00:09:01.120 I think it is a majority, and we'll get to this in a later episode, I think it is a majority

00:09:05.460 position in the Reformed tradition that in the state of integrity, had Adam not fallen, that

00:09:10.480 there would have been some type of civil government, civil magistracy. That, I think, is the majority

00:09:16.500 position. But I did not assume that, because I knew it would be very controversial to just assume

00:09:20.780 that, because I think most people don't know that, largely because it's kind of buried in Latin.

00:09:26.060 There's still, as things are coming out, we're seeing more and more, it's easier to demonstrate

00:09:30.360 that that is the majority position. But I didn't assume that, so I argued for it.

00:09:35.560 And so people can make whatever they want with those arguments. But the things that I assumed

00:09:40.520 the most were in the realm of anthropology, assumptions of the ends of man, assumptions

00:09:46.680 about the constitution of man, the role of reason in man in his original state. And so I assumed all

00:09:52.520 those things. And then because that's like the foundation of a political theory. So if you read

00:09:58.120 the foundational text of political theory even if the ones you don't like so like the leviathan by

00:10:02.280 thomas hobbes um or or lox trees on government he he starts with the question of what is man

00:10:09.880 and so i wanted to get those theological groundies in place so then i could do what i consider myself

00:10:16.680 good at which would be political theory um and uh so anyway i i would just say again like if people

00:10:22.840 again, if you're going to criticize, instead of criticizing that method, which is really kind of

00:10:28.940 a superficial criticism, you've got to go at, is what I'm saying true, or is it false? And does

00:10:35.920 the conclusion validly follow from the premises? Right. I completely agree. And that's it. So I

00:10:41.720 really think like, yeah, so I think the argument that I don't use scripture, for example,

00:10:47.840 I really think that is one of the worst criticisms. It's the most understandable, 0.72

00:10:51.380 but also the worst criticism because what it reflects is this, I think, a very 20th century

00:10:57.480 mentality that we're afraid of reasoning. Like we're afraid of the traditional notion

00:11:03.840 of an argument with premises. And it has to then be built around exegesis. And I think what people

00:11:10.900 will find out more and more as they read these works that are being translated, which I'm very

00:11:14.760 excited about in the next year, they'll see that a lot of our Reformed forefathers,

00:11:20.260 they did not actually do exegesis in their—I mean, some of them did, but a lot of these works

00:11:25.500 are not full of what we would consider exegesis. In some places, they cite Aristotle more than

00:11:32.520 they cite Scripture. And again, you can disagree with that all day long, but as they understood

00:11:36.780 the political discipline, it was a practical—it's practical philosophy, and it deals with our

00:11:43.080 our experience in the world, our understanding of ourselves and our nature, and then applying those

00:11:49.460 practically in real life. And so that being said, there is the philosophy side. And even in the

00:11:56.580 book, I say, I hope there is a guy who does theology, who's trained in theology, who will

00:12:02.420 then provide a theological argument for what I'm saying. So in other words, or I should say a

00:12:07.280 biblical argument. So it'd be, and I know there are actually maybe two or three people doing that

00:12:11.760 as we speak. And so, which is very exciting because like we could, like philosophy will

00:12:18.800 not contradict, like true sound philosophy will not contradict scripture. Yeah. So like scripture

00:12:24.860 is revealed truth. And a lot of that is kind of above nature. So it's things that mainly concern

00:12:30.480 salvation. Like the Trinity itself is above nature. You can't reason to that. But there are a lot of

00:12:37.200 things like God is one, like that's a sort of statement that is a natural truth that you could

00:12:42.760 actually demonstrate at least in principle through philosophy. It's also stated in scripture. And so

00:12:48.700 you can go at that question of the oneness of God from these two different lights, as they say,

00:12:53.900 from the light of revealed truth and the light of reason as well. So I did it from the side of

00:13:00.340 politics or political theory or practical philosophy, and others are now doing it from

00:13:05.280 the side of revealed truth trying to demonstrate the same conclusion that's great and you know

00:13:10.540 light's not god's not going to contradict himself right um natural revelation will not contradict

00:13:15.940 special revelation um and so again you come to the same conclusion on natural truth from the twin

00:13:22.120 lights um scripture and and reason amen um so we want to you know in this episode in the second

00:13:29.760 half, we want to give a definition for Christian nationalism. But before we do, I would be remiss

00:13:36.040 if we don't talk about that infamous racist Aristotle. So a while back, by the time this

00:13:44.860 airs, this will be some time we'll have passed in between. But I think a lot of our listeners

00:13:51.300 will probably remember the notorious showdown between Eric Kahn and Dr. James White. And I love

00:14:03.060 them both. But I think that, you know, Dr. White was unfair in some of his criticisms. So I came

00:14:09.520 out and publicly defended Eric Kahn and saying, you know, he posted on X, not even Aristotle

00:14:17.460 directly, but it was somebody commentating on something that Aristotle had said.

00:14:21.520 And it was about nations and their ability to not be chaotic and not be having factions and

00:14:28.680 divisions and these kinds of things. And he just simply said that one of the things that helps with

00:14:32.560 that is if there is an ethnocentric or monoethnic polis, body of people, citizens. But it wasn't

00:14:43.360 just that. There were a few statements, some explicit, some implicit, baked into the pie.

00:14:49.480 And I took it as at least three. One, Aristotle is saying, yeah, if everybody are from the same

00:14:57.440 tribe, the same lineage, then that's going to help. But then it wasn't just that statement.

00:15:04.200 He went beyond that. He said, that becomes exceedingly necessary. You need that help

00:15:09.540 in not all nations indiscriminately, but in a nation with a particular form of government,

00:15:15.940 namely democracy. And then he, you know, again, this guy commentating on Aristotle said that what

00:15:21.920 Aristotle was getting at is that in a, especially a raw democracy, which none of our founders were

00:15:27.500 fond of and wasn't their desire or vision for our nation, but something that devolves and becomes

00:15:33.640 less and less of a republic and more and more of a just, you know, the voice of the people,

00:15:37.580 the voice of God, very democratic by nature, um, that kind of form of government, uh, usually is

00:15:43.900 not, if we're honest, it's not truly a democracy, but democracy gives way for an oligarchy. Um,

00:15:51.080 like, you know, uh, leading up to the 2024 election, you know, there was a, a poll that

00:15:55.960 was done that said, uh, 20% of people who took this poll and it was thousands of people said

00:16:01.060 that they would vote, uh, for whoever Taylor Swift told them to that the more you move away

00:16:05.440 from a republic, an aristocracy, which is, you know, is different than a republic, but those

00:16:10.800 who are qualified, what inevitably happens is it's not that each and every individual in a

00:16:15.440 democratic sense has equal weight and say, but naturally those who are influencers, whether

00:16:21.100 they be, you know, celebrities or actors or, you know, somebody in the NFL, you know, athletes

00:16:26.800 or leaders of corporations or Elon Musk or whatever, they rise to the top inevitably.

00:16:32.780 and um and so then your democracy is actually not really a democracy it becomes an oligarchy and

00:16:38.540 these people can sway and get the masses to do whatever they want you know the the npcs the

00:16:42.580 non-player characters you just you know elon switches out the chip and says uh we're doing

00:16:46.760 the trump dance now you know whereas just a couple years ago we were kneeling you know

00:16:50.840 in solidarity to the suffrage of black americans you know with colin uh kaepernick you know and

00:16:55.940 and it's so quick that the masses can just on a dime shift and and that's because we've moved

00:17:01.080 away from a republic, more to democracy, and out of that democracy emerges an oligarchy. Some people

00:17:06.460 are nefarious, others maybe not, but just about across the board, none of them are really qualified

00:17:11.180 to be political leaders. So I took it as Aristotle saying that in that form of government, not

00:17:17.580 necessarily a monarchy, not in every form of government, but in a raw democracy that gives

00:17:22.240 way to an oligarchy, those leaders, for their own ends, for their own benefit, can pit different

00:17:32.060 tribes and factions against one another within a nation. And so if you have a clear natural divide

00:17:37.380 by having multiple different lineages and tribes, then that becomes just a breeding ground for

00:17:45.580 resentment for nefarious political leaders, oligarchs to play off of. And so Eric Kahn

00:17:50.660 retweeted that and said, basic, I can't even remember what he said, but he basically said,

00:17:54.100 yep. And James White, of course, said, you know, yeah, Aristotle was right. Exactly. And James

00:17:59.380 White responded by like, no, you know, and clutched his pearls. And so then I came out to defend,

00:18:04.940 you know, Eric, because he's my friend and because I think he was right and said, Eric's not being a

00:18:10.340 racist, you know, and, but notice, here's the thing, two things explicitly said in this and

00:18:15.840 one implicitly, and I'll say this final thing and give it to you. One, Aristotle didn't technically

00:18:23.060 say, at least in this quote, in this commentary on Aristotle, it did not say that no nation ever,

00:18:29.660 in all places, in all times, couldn't have more than one ethnicity and get along. Number two,

00:18:37.000 instead, he said, different ethnicities with a particular form of government, namely a democracy

00:18:43.500 with oligarchs who are playing off of it with nefarious means. And then number three, I think

00:18:48.580 we can assume implicitly Aristotle is also talking about a nation that's not Christian. So this is

00:18:54.500 also what naturally might happen aside from Christian nationalism. So when Eric retweeted

00:19:01.760 that, said Aristotle was right, Eric was not saying that a Christian nation with a different

00:19:06.180 form of government, not a democracy, but rather perhaps a monarchy or perhaps a republic or an

00:19:11.440 aristocracy. Eric was simply saying, when he says Aristotle was right, you have to take what

00:19:17.420 Aristotle said. A non-Christian nation with this exact form of government, democracy devolving 0.93

00:19:25.840 into oligarchy, with multiple different ethnicities, probably isn't a good idea. 0.76

00:19:31.540 What Eric did not say is that in a Christian nation with a republic, you know, that you can't

00:19:40.000 have some different ethnicities. And so I came out and defended him with that. But all that being 0.83

00:19:44.780 said, at face value, when I looked at it, I had to stop and pause and think for a second, but I was

00:19:50.280 like, yeah, Aristotle is right. And none of that means that the gospel is impotent. But what he's

00:19:59.260 saying is just naturally, he's observing that apart from saving grace and apart from a Christian

00:20:05.200 nation, just a, you know, pagan nation with an oligarchy and raw democracy and multiple different,

00:20:12.940 you know, Somalians and Haitians and this and that. And it's like, of course it's true. How do 0.99

00:20:19.160 I know? Because I wasn't born 15 minutes ago. It's happened here. That's the whole thing that's

00:20:24.920 been happening for the last few decades is one group of leaders, Democrats, playing off of the

00:20:31.180 plight of, of one minority group against another majority group and, and transferring guilt and

00:20:37.680 this and that so that they can get elected. And like, of course it's true. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I 0.94

00:20:43.240 mean, yeah, I have a lot to say on this. I think I'm crazy though, real quick. No, I mean, you're

00:20:47.680 absolutely right. Um, I mean, there's Aristotle and Joel are right. That's what they're both

00:20:52.540 right. Yeah. You guys are both right. Um, yeah. I mean, first of all, in the Aristotle thing,

00:20:56.600 this has been really frustrating because I, I, I, again, like this doesn't mean that James

00:21:00.480 why it's wrong with his criticism of the use of Aristotle. I understand that critique. But it's

00:21:07.600 when people lose their minds over it, you have to—if you know the Christian political tradition,

00:21:15.320 especially after the 12th century or the 13th century, the use of Aristotle is ubiquitous. And

00:21:21.000 it's not just Thomas Aquinas. It's not just, you know, Marsilius of Padua. It's Calvin's using the

00:21:27.740 the four causes of Aristotle and his Ephesians commentary.

00:21:31.220 Yeah, you had like two weeks where like every day, multiple times a day,

00:21:35.540 you're posting Calvin quoting Aristotle.

00:21:39.040 Yeah, and everyone quoted him like the New England Puritans

00:21:42.720 would call Aristotle the philosopher.

00:21:44.800 Like calling him the philosopher following from Aquinas

00:21:47.720 is again ubiquitous in the Reformed tradition.

00:21:50.160 Now that doesn't mean they were right to do that, 0.93

00:21:52.460 but it does mean that you should probably chill out.

00:21:54.280 Like you should probably not lose your mind over the fact that

00:21:57.420 in your own tradition you claim to be a part of, these guys all quoted him, often as authorities

00:22:04.280 in various things. They wouldn't cite these guys in theological matters because the anthropology

00:22:10.200 of the Reformed tradition is that when it comes to theological matters, man basically lost the

00:22:15.320 ability to reason properly when it came to theology. So that's why they're polytheistic

00:22:19.060 and sacrifices, all these things that they kind of devised to try to fill this gap in theology.

00:22:24.920 but that doesn't mean that they're worthless when it comes to politics i mean we'll get to

00:22:28.940 that a little later but um the point is just like you should just chill out a bit because

00:22:34.280 you're criticizing not just eric khan but calvin vermily junius uh zanke um kecker just go down

00:22:43.840 the line turretin all these greats of our tradition appealed to aristotle particularly

00:22:50.060 in ethics and politics as an authority on those matters.

00:22:54.960 So I just, you know, just like, again, chill out.

00:22:57.300 Yeah.

00:22:58.320 Not you.

00:22:59.400 No, I know.

00:23:00.580 But, and yeah, so I, yeah, and the reason, yeah,

00:23:05.900 so I think that in political matters,

00:23:08.180 like this is the problem I think with like people

00:23:10.180 like James White and others in that orbit,

00:23:13.500 because they're, sorry,

00:23:15.320 but they have a sort of post-millennial fantasy going on.

00:23:18.360 um and and that is that they can't conceive of a christian nation apart from some sort of broad

00:23:25.260 revival revivalism which to be fair none of that is innate to uh eschatology and being

00:23:32.120 i'm post-millennial and one of the big revelations for me about a year ago was just just looking

00:23:38.240 through history for one um but then also especially you know looking at biblical history

00:23:44.180 I was like, yeah, Josiah, so much of what God has done, we can ask the question in terms of

00:23:51.800 theoretically, what can God do? But even as a cessationist, the continuationist is always

00:23:58.140 going to, well, you're saying God can't do it. Yeah, but of course God can do certain things,

00:24:04.120 but the better question is, what does God do? What will God do? And one of the best ways to

00:24:09.680 answer to that, I think, is simply to say, what has God already done? Is there any patterns? Can

00:24:15.200 we notice a little bit? Can we notice any patterns on the part of God and what seems to be his MO

00:24:20.900 in biblical history and then providentially as it's played out in the gospel age over the last

00:24:24.680 2,000 years? And so whether it's Josiah or King David, what I've noticed is that God really can

00:24:31.580 sin revival in a grassroots way where it's bottom-up. Preachers throughout the land,

00:24:39.460 George Whitefield, these kinds of things, and you get enough critical mass of the everyman,

00:24:45.860 you know, the power to the people, regenerate hearts, and even then, they still have to be

00:24:51.920 trained on how does my Christian faith play out politically, so there still needs to be training

00:24:56.960 on application and this, but you can actually have a bottom-up grassroots revival where you

00:25:04.020 get 50% plus one of the population of a nation with regenerate hearts and enough training of how

00:25:10.920 to apply these regenerate hearts, regenerate minds in the political sphere to where they can

00:25:17.920 eventually vote their way into righteousness. That can happen. Historically, and certainly in

00:25:23.280 terms of biblical history, that's not typically what God does. If we're asking the question not

00:25:27.760 what can God do, but what has God done, the lion's share, the majority report, would fall on what I

00:25:35.480 would consider to be a top-down revival, where God, in his providence, uses one or just a handful

00:25:43.480 of individuals, works them into seats of real power, which is not inherently evil. Power can

00:25:49.480 be used good or bad. And then he gets a hold of those guys' hearts, puts them into the seats of

00:25:55.380 power, and then they say, under Christian nationalism, revoice for Nazis. If you use that 0.75

00:26:01.380 unironically, you will be immediately deported. But my point is, under Christian nationalism, 0.78

00:26:07.020 there will be no more avocado toast. And they literally just come in, and they lay down the 0.90

00:26:13.580 law without the majority support of the people. They just say, this is the way it's going to be.

00:26:17.800 And then the law, this is basic Reformed doctrine in its second use, has this pedological function

00:26:25.200 and serves as a tutor. And the people maybe don't like it at first, but eventually the law is used

00:26:32.100 to shape the people in their hearts and minds and actually sets the better backdrop for pastors in

00:26:37.620 churches to preach the gospel to people who now actually view themselves as sinners, because

00:26:42.320 in the state, there's a just law that is functioning as a clear mirror to show them

00:26:46.980 their own need for Christ, it's—obviously, that's what God has done, and to think that—so

00:26:55.160 anyways, my point is, I'm postmillennial, and for me, all that means—it means a lot of things—but

00:27:00.200 for this purpose, all that means is, you think it could happen, I think it will happen, right?

00:27:05.940 But when I say, I think it will happen, I don't see anything in postmillennial eschatology that

00:27:11.600 says that it will happen and it must happen bottom up. That you can't argue from eschatology.

00:27:18.200 Yeah, so I agree with everything you just said. My criticism, when I say post-mobile fantasy,

00:27:25.440 what I mean is that they see, they have a sort of progressive outlook so that the experiences

00:27:33.240 of human history with like what Aristotle's talking about, how ethnic distinctions or

00:27:39.640 differences create political conflict, that stuff will just all go away. Because in the progress

00:27:46.020 of the millennium, those issues will just go away. So when a sort of fantastical post-millennial

00:27:53.520 political theory is devised, it's with the assumption of some future state that they just

00:27:58.660 kind of posit these principles. And so they can reject all what they consider bad in the past

00:28:03.900 because that's eliminated by grace. And so that's one of my criticisms.

00:28:09.160 But we haven't gotten there yet.

00:28:10.880 You're arguing A to Z, but skipping B, C, D, E.

00:28:14.280 I mean, my argument was that those problems will never go away.

00:28:17.480 I think even, and I would hope that post-mobile people would see that.

00:28:21.200 But I guess as an on-millennial guy, I see that these problems of what Aristotle describes are going to be perpetual.

00:28:30.880 They're always going to be issues.

00:28:32.260 There's always going to be political disputes.

00:28:34.820 Politics is always going to be agonistic.

00:28:36.560 there's always going to be differences and you have to struggle through that like grace is not

00:28:40.940 going to eliminate the nature of politics as it's as it's always been um and well that's even jesus

00:28:47.900 to put a verse on it like the poor you will always have right so like even in a post-millennial hope

00:28:53.000 like you're going to have to figure out what do we do with the poor what do we do with the homeless 0.97

00:28:56.360 what do we do with the immigrant what do we like yeah you'll always have to deal with those issues

00:29:00.580 and um i and so when when these guys when these guys in the past were citing aristotle cicero

00:29:06.840 seneca um you know even julie caesar all these when they were talking about these guys and

00:29:12.800 quoting them as authorities they were doing it when they were living in christian states

00:29:17.940 they had christian magistrates they had christian nations christian states christian governments

00:29:22.180 and they appealed to them because they were a body of experience of human history

00:29:30.980 in the arrangement of political society. And so they were in it, like they were in the Christian 0.51

00:29:36.660 nation, in the Christian state, in these things. And so they were not afraid to appeal to the

00:29:42.100 common human experience because they were actually, they didn't have to think through

00:29:46.580 some future state and then say, oh, it'll be like this, and then appeal to grace to eliminate these

00:29:51.960 various problems. Um, and so, you know, even if those problems, like you said, are going to go

00:29:57.600 away in, in, in the future, we still live in them now. I don't, and I don't think they're entirely,

00:30:02.880 like, I don't believe in it. I think that I actually do hold to, um, and I lean towards it,

00:30:08.560 not definitively, but the, um, the, uh, possibility, I would say more likely than

00:30:13.760 not of a golden age, but, uh, a golden age, even then, uh, poverty would not be ultimately

00:30:18.460 eradicated. Certainly distinctions among different ethnicities would not be eradicated. And that's

00:30:24.520 like God's created order has distinctions. There's distinction between male and female. 0.93

00:30:31.120 And it's so funny that like the complementarian, which I usually take opportunity to mock,

00:30:37.240 I would be patriarchal, but the complementarian will recognize, well, Galatians chapter three

00:30:42.560 can't be used to eradicate distinctions between gender you know like um uh you know male is still

00:30:48.080 male female still female um but but then they they're inconsistent or even perhaps dishonest

00:30:54.940 in their hermeneutic that in the very same breath it's like well male and female still exist uh but

00:31:01.240 um but no more jew and greek it's like well yeah like no more jew and greek in the sense that um

00:31:06.880 at the lord's table and the waters of baptism you know one spirit one church one one baptism

00:31:11.380 that we're all equal in the eternal sense of our dignity, our value in the sight of God,

00:31:17.000 made in the image of God naturally. And then, you know, and then as regenerate people, you know,

00:31:21.760 children adopted, there's no stepchildren in God's family and equal standing as members in a church.

00:31:27.080 And, you know, even you got guys like Robert E. Lee, who's taking the Lord's Supper right there

00:31:31.740 along with his slaves and their brothers in Christ and co-heirs in grace. And the same thing

00:31:36.400 with a husband and wife, you know, husbands, you're the head of the home, but don't rub it in. 1.00

00:31:41.380 your wife is a weaker vessel. Don't, don't exploit that, but rather exercise self-control 0.93

00:31:46.300 and compassion and sympathy because she is the weaker vessel and you are the head. And yet at

00:31:50.720 the same time, she's a co-heir in grace. And so it's, it's that kind of language. But my point is

00:31:54.900 if you, if you're consistent, then you look at Galatians three and you say, yeah, equality

00:32:00.860 when it comes to the things of God for male and female, but distinctions, natural distinctions

00:32:07.500 of male and female are not eradicated. Okay, great. Now apply that to master and slave and

00:32:13.300 Jew and Greek. There will always be distinctions. I'm highly offended by this, to be completely 0.81

00:32:20.280 honest. I have noticed that there's a disproportionate number of African Americans in the 1.00

00:32:28.540 NFL and the NBA, and I don't think that's fair. It seems as though that there actually might be 1.00

00:32:34.540 a pattern, that an argument can be made, not for each and every individual, but in a general group

00:32:38.360 dynamic, that African Americans seem to be better athletes in those particular sports than white

00:32:45.840 people. And I'm just very offended by, obviously I'm being facetious, I'm not offended, it's okay. 0.79

00:32:51.260 That's okay. People are different. There are distinctions, and there's a difference between

00:32:55.400 disparities that are caused by corruption versus distinctions. And I think, so all that being said,

00:33:04.320 even with being post-millennial, and even when we get to Z, if we get to Z by God's grace,

00:33:09.740 and even if that Z means a golden age of prosperity and the nations have flocked to

00:33:14.440 Mount Zion and all these things, which I do believe, I still actually think that nations

00:33:19.880 will be different. And if you're not careful, I think it's not just post-mill theology,

00:33:23.820 but I think it's the combination of the post-millennial eschatology combined with

00:33:28.160 some of the modern theonomic guys in terms of their ethics. When you put those together,

00:33:35.220 They won't always say it out loud, but as I've probed a little bit and asked some pointed

00:33:38.980 questions, what it's revealed to me from some of the post-Miltheonomic guys is they basically

00:33:44.480 believe that the law of God is so specific and such a particular and strict prescription

00:33:55.600 that essentially once this happens and we are in this golden age, there'll really be

00:34:01.340 no difference between China and Brazil and Somalia and America. Basically, the law word of

00:34:06.860 God doesn't just get you righteousness in terms of righteous laws and obedience and these kinds

00:34:12.520 of things across the board, but it really will, it'll get you the same stir fry recipes across

00:34:18.760 the board. It'll get you the same kind of art and philosophy and dances and music to where

00:34:25.460 But it's so funny, it's ironic, because heaven, we all acknowledge that there's a diversity of heaven, every tribe, tongue, and language, but it seems like some of the post-mill theonomic motivation or goals that they're working towards would eradicate the distinctions in heaven, because eventually, when they get to this golden age, there'd be no distinctions left on earth.

00:34:49.780 Yeah, well, one of the interesting things is because I'm a natural law guy, you often hear criticism of like natural law can, you know, you get whatever you want out of it.

00:34:59.580 But it's also true of people who emphasize grace at the same time.

00:35:07.260 So it just so happens that if you reject natural law and you emphasize grace and a Christian nation is this and that, it just so happens to look a lot like Reaganism of 1980.

00:35:18.340 and then all of a sudden the christian nation looks a lot like reagan's interpretation of

00:35:24.160 the pilgrims coming over into massachusetts bay colony and and salem anyone from anywhere can

00:35:29.700 be american and it's it's interesting because it's uh it's it's just it's fascinating to me how

00:35:35.200 how like the timeless politics of jesus just happens to be exactly fit with the conservative

00:35:41.220 politics of the 1980s and 1990s it's just what but yeah so this is the fear this is my fear is

00:35:46.680 that when you eliminate natural, like the idea that there is a natural, that there's something

00:35:53.760 natural about man that's fixed and immutable, you end up having this plaything of grace.

00:35:59.280 And that means you can create, you can engineer in your mind, in your imagination, anything you

00:36:05.200 want. And it just happens, like I said, it often will become precisely your political socialization.

00:36:12.160 So we have the boomer state of mind, as you mentioned before, the boomer state of mind was engineered in the conservatism of the 1980s and 1990s, Fox News. And so it just happens to be free market. It happens to be anyone can come here as long as they agreed to the covenant as they, instead of, instead of the propositions, now it's the covenant. And, and so, yeah, you can create anything you want and just happens to be that. So I, but I would say if you have a.

00:36:39.700 So you can do anything you want with nature, but that's a fair point. You can do anything you want

00:36:43.460 with grace. Yeah, and the liberals and the left-wing theologians do that as well. 0.95

00:36:48.280 You're right. And so this is why I think it's important to have a nature-grace distinction

00:36:53.400 and understand that the way humans have arranged and ordered themselves into history,

00:37:01.740 despite the abuse, it actually reflects something about human nature that's good,

00:37:06.960 that we ought to examine and affirm as good

00:37:10.540 and not let grace be this way to destroy all of that.

00:37:14.380 That there actually is like the natural distinctions

00:37:16.480 between people groups.

00:37:18.580 Those, even though there are abuses in there,

00:37:21.100 there's errors in there,

00:37:22.160 they need to be corrected by grace.

00:37:24.080 There is something,

00:37:24.920 there's an animating principle behind human nature

00:37:28.040 that drives people to group in certain ways

00:37:32.280 for their good.

00:37:33.860 and we shouldn't allow grace to destroy that

00:37:37.380 under some sort of fantastical project

00:37:39.380 of really homogenization.

00:37:41.600 Like you said, there wouldn't be a China,

00:37:42.900 there wouldn't be a Japan,

00:37:43.760 there wouldn't be this and that 0.75

00:37:44.660 because everyone's under exactly the same law

00:37:47.480 and somehow under the same customs.

00:37:49.600 Everyone's interchangeable.

00:37:51.380 You know, this person can be here and there

00:37:53.380 without any sort of disruption in their way of life

00:37:55.580 because everyone has the Christian way of life

00:37:57.260 and the Christian culture, which is universal.

00:37:59.900 It sounds like globalism.

00:38:01.560 right it sounds like the interchangeability of workers that uh this guy's cheaper labor so bring

00:38:07.740 him over he's just like anyone else the abstract human it's the same it's it's grace justifying

00:38:13.040 like that philosophy uh isn't it convenient you know that philosophy uh also um plays really well

00:38:22.420 to the gdp continuing to go up you know it's like our theology just so happens that uh it also works

00:38:29.680 really, really well with shipping labor overseas and hedge fund managers doing really well.

00:38:39.880 And that's where I'm like, all right. I mean, those are some of the things that got me thinking.

00:38:44.760 Like, okay, so you're a theonomist, but the way you apply theonomy also really works well

00:38:52.780 for you to be rich. Like, is that part of it? You promised me it's not part of it?

00:38:59.680 because it looks like it might be part of it.

00:39:01.500 And yeah, so all that being said, yeah, I'm with you.

00:39:05.600 It's also the fact that their underlying philosophy,

00:39:08.280 I was planning on getting this in another episode, I guess,

00:39:10.400 but their underlying philosophy

00:39:12.100 is actually deeply Enlightenment-informed,

00:39:15.120 or at least the socialization that led to the theology.

00:39:19.120 I mean, the free market stuff, that's Scottish Enlightenment.

00:39:21.820 That's Adam Smith.

00:39:23.440 That's Ricardo.

00:39:24.580 So the French and the British Isles basically contributed to our notions of free market.

00:39:33.060 So that's enlightenment.

00:39:34.100 The rejection of natural law is deeply enlightenment.

00:39:37.240 And that's like David Hume, Immanuel Kant.

00:39:40.560 Some other things about the human nature being almost like this bundle of sentiment without a good ordering principle,

00:39:47.900 that we need grace to sort of,

00:39:51.440 we need pure revelation

00:39:53.300 just to have some sense of what is good.

00:39:55.820 That's very much assumed

00:39:57.560 certain Thomas Hobbesian notions of man

00:40:00.260 as a bundle of sentiments.

00:40:02.360 So there is a deeply,

00:40:03.640 like even within this camp,

00:40:05.120 as much as they attack Aristotle and Aquinas

00:40:07.500 and these guys and their metaphysics,

00:40:10.200 there is a type of like enlightenment anti-metaphysics

00:40:12.980 that's operating in the background of all these guys.

00:40:15.440 We can get into more detail at a different place.

00:40:18.840 Super interesting.

00:40:20.160 Real quick, let me say this.

00:40:23.320 Part of it is back to every nation ending up being the same

00:40:27.900 and there being no distinctions and those kinds of things

00:40:30.740 if you use grace to completely eradicate or replace nature.

00:40:36.160 I hopped on, and I think you know this,

00:40:38.680 we weren't as close a couple of years ago,

00:40:41.400 but you probably maybe heard it through the grapevine

00:40:44.340 or I might have even said something like this directly to you. 0.61

00:40:46.600 So for me, I was just like, I'm just tired of pietism, you know? 0.96

00:40:49.820 And that was, that was my first thing coming out of COVID and BLM and, you know, these 0.89

00:40:53.620 kinds of, and I was like, I want to do something.

00:40:55.760 I, the Christian faith, um, it shouldn't just affect my marriage and my quiet time.

00:41:00.880 Like, it's like, surely, like surely we should do something, you know?

00:41:04.740 And so, you know, and, and you and I were talking, you know, offline before recording,

00:41:10.080 but for, you know, the past few decades, theonomy was the only game in town. 0.73

00:41:13.720 if you didn't want to be a pietist, you're a theonomist, you know, and, and praise God for

00:41:18.020 Rush Dooney and Bonson and Rush Dooney, I like, it's still my favorite. And I, I agree with it 0.96

00:41:22.960 because, because Rush Dooney kind of, if some of this is generational and he kind of preceded that,

00:41:27.280 you know, being a little bit older. And so Rush Dooney, um, I feel like Rush Dooney has a little

00:41:32.300 bit more in common with like someone like Pat Buchanan than he does Reagan. You know, he's,

00:41:36.140 he's a little bit less boomer ish. And, uh, and so anyways, so I, I hopped on the theonomic, um,

00:41:41.960 train. And I remember one of the arguments, you know, when you think of pietism, you know,

00:41:47.080 the mothership of pietism here in America, I always think of Escondido and, you know,

00:41:53.060 they, you know, just the radical two kingdom, you know, theology and those kinds of things.

00:41:58.480 And so I remember that, you know, somebody was writing, you know, from Escondido, some, you know,

00:42:04.200 strong rebuke, you know, to Kuyperianism. And I know you're not a fan, but, you know, but they

00:42:13.240 were, they were saying like, well, there's no such thing as a Christian stir fry. And so then some

00:42:17.720 Kuyperian guy, I forget the name, but I read it. And, you know, at the time it was influential for

00:42:22.220 me. He read, like wrote a response where he said, yes, there is, you know, the gospel affects

00:42:26.920 everything. There is a Christian stir fry. What's a Christian stir fry? Well, if you go into certain

00:42:30.480 people groups, they actually, when they cook, they cook by frying things in a pan. And one of the

00:42:36.200 ingredients is the flesh of other tribes that they've conquered, you know, and they're cannibalistic. 1.00

00:42:40.160 And so what is a Christian stir fry? A Christian stir fry is, one, it's not cannibalistic. 0.66

00:42:44.840 And I saw his point, because the point can be made in a general sense. This was a silly thing 0.95

00:42:51.560 about stir fry. But in a general sense, yeah, religion does affect diet. Of course it does.

00:42:57.500 In India, the cow is not eaten, but the cow dung is being used in certain ways. And that like,

00:43:04.520 so diet can be affected like very directly by religion. I think like I just read to my girls,

00:43:13.100 I read Treasure Island and Ben Gunn, you know, is marauded on the island for six years by Captain

00:43:19.760 Flint and left to die. And when, you know, Jim Hawkins finds him, one of the first things that

00:43:25.920 he says is like, I wasn't raised to be a pagan. I had a good Christian mother, you know, and a good

00:43:29.480 Christian upbringing. He's like, please, sir, for these last six years, I've been without a Christian

00:43:34.240 diet, eggs and cheese and, you know, and that's how people thought. And I understand that it's 0.99

00:43:40.120 a fictional book, but the author still had that wherewithal to include it in his fictional

00:43:45.860 story, the idea of not just a Christian religion, but a Christian diet. And so I get the sentiment,

00:43:51.820 But the point is, if the Kuyperian, I think the truth is somewhere in between, because if the

00:43:57.040 Kuyperian guy who is writing that rebuttal to Escondido and saying, well, there is such a thing

00:44:00.800 as Christian stir fry, well, then there would also be, you know, Christian burgers and Christian,

00:44:04.640 you know, French fries and, you know, and everything, you know, there wouldn't be French

00:44:07.700 fries, it'd be Christian fries. And, you know, and then to music and to art and to philosophy

00:44:12.000 and to architecture. And then at the end of the day, what you would have is post-millennials

00:44:17.400 are right in their eschatology and the Kuyperian theonomic sentiment is right over here in its

00:44:21.580 ethics and how much the bible actually applies to every single sphere of life what you get is just

00:44:26.680 this this monolithic um monotonous glob of like you don't have nations you don't have distinctions

00:44:34.320 of culture i would take my my grandkids one day to visit japan and i'd like to see japanese people

00:44:41.920 in samurais but i wouldn't i just see i just see pictures of john calvin you know mcdonald's and

00:44:47.220 right you know exactly and so it matters it matters and when you think about it logically

00:44:53.180 it's like oh well of course there's distinctions because how can you get to revelation chapter 21

00:44:59.020 and and of every tribe and tongue and nation and like what are different tribes and tongues and

00:45:04.960 nations and these distinctions that that exist before the throne of god even now if if they

00:45:09.820 don't persist in some sense here on earth. It can't all be boiled down to a moral issue. There

00:45:17.400 are certain things. Not everything is moral. It is not morally superior to speak English versus

00:45:23.540 Mandarin. Language is not moral. It's natural and by necessity. And these are the kinds of things 0.99

00:45:30.820 where, you know, two years ago, I was very much like Kuyperianism. What I meant by that in the

00:45:36.260 same way that I would say today. When I say I'm a Calvinist, I've read the Institutes, believe it

00:45:40.160 or not. It was a tough read, but I did it. And I don't agree with every point. I agree with a lot.

00:45:45.460 But when I say I'm a Calvinist, and when most people say they're a Calvinist, what they mean

00:45:48.680 is I agree with John Calvin's soteriology. In the same sense, I would still say I'm a Kyperian,

00:45:54.100 and what I mean by that is what he's most known for every square inch. What I mean by that is

00:45:58.720 all of Christ for all of life. And I still think that that's the general sentiment of all of Christ

00:46:03.620 for all of life is a good instinct. And I'm a Kuyperian in that sense. I don't mean that I agree

00:46:09.500 with every sentiment of Abraham Kuyper and all the different things that he said, because it really

00:46:14.020 does begin to blur lines and create certain problems. And it took me a little while coming

00:46:19.260 out of COVID and stuff. I was like, well, I just don't want to be a pietist. I just want to be on 0.99

00:46:22.620 the team that does something. And Theonomist seemed to be the only game in town. And as Providence

00:46:27.880 would have it, you have been used to change that game. There's now another team in town and a lot

00:46:34.600 of young guys who put on the theonomic jersey, such as myself, and who would still be perfectly

00:46:40.520 comfortable saying, well, I'm a general equity theonomist of sorts and blah, blah, blah, as far

00:46:44.080 as meets the confessional position in the Westminster in the 1689. I'm still perfectly

00:46:49.360 comfortable there. But a lot of guys, you did change the game. Your book changed the game.

00:46:52.900 and they realize, wait a second, there's actually a position that goes way before. I don't have to

00:46:58.240 look to Rushduni in the 1970s, but I can look to the 1600s, and there's actually something that

00:47:03.420 makes sense of the world, makes sense of the scripture, doesn't cause you to invert and

00:47:08.220 become a pietist. You can tackle politics and tackle the culture all for the glory of God.

00:47:13.740 Yeah, I mean, what I tried to do is when I saw the game in town, so like you said,

00:47:19.120 there were the theonomists and then there were the modern two kingdom guys and the

00:47:24.120 Kuyperians and all that. And it was like,

00:47:26.660 he framed it a type of nature versus grace mentality.

00:47:30.800 So the modern two kingdom guys,

00:47:32.920 they want to say it's all nature in terms of the political and ethical life is,

00:47:37.980 is all nature. And so they were afraid of attaching Christian to anything.

00:47:43.400 So like, I think like Carl Truman would say there are no Christian plumber.

00:47:47.340 Like, you can't be, like, there's no Christian way to be a plumber or stuff like that, which

00:47:53.500 sets up this separation of nature and grace. 0.97

00:47:56.760 But then you have, yeah, the Kuyperian theonomic guys who are all on the side of grace.

00:48:01.780 They wouldn't probably want to make a nature-grace distinction, but that's probably close enough

00:48:05.940 to how you frame it.

00:48:07.720 So I didn't want to do the nature side because I actually think you can have Christian schools

00:48:12.500 and you can have, you can be a Christian plumber and Christian this and that. 0.96

00:48:17.340 But I also didn't want the homogenizing force of the theonomic side. And I didn't make anything up 0.99

00:48:25.960 on this. Instead of separating nature and grace, I distinguished them and was able then to

00:48:33.740 demonstrate a system in which you can have Christian schools, Christian families, Christian

00:48:41.040 nations, Christian civil government, Christian civil magistrates, um, without losing one or the

00:48:48.360 other, without eliminating nature and without, um, without, uh, eliminating grace, right? So I've

00:48:55.680 always used the classic, uh, like a Christian family, like a Christian family is a natural

00:48:59.980 thing, husband, wife, having or expecting children. Um, that's a thing in nature, but a Christian

00:49:04.520 family, you don't lose that. Like grace does not destroy that or undermine it. Um, but it corrects

00:49:10.140 deficiencies and perfects it because now you forgive one another in christ you do family

00:49:15.240 worship together you go to church together all those various christian things that you do

00:49:20.300 it not only adds various things that you do in the family it com it in a way completes the entire

00:49:25.240 thing without eliminating those natural principles and so it's meaningful to say christian family

00:49:32.000 and so it's also meaningful in in a very similar way to say christian nation or christian civil

00:49:37.640 ruler. See, the irony with that, though, I know you'll probably push back on this, but

00:49:42.160 I think I can actually do that and make the argument even a little bit stronger than you 0.56

00:49:47.780 as a Baptist. Because the devil's advocate, if I was Presbyterian, because I've heard the 0.62

00:49:53.420 Presbyterians make this argument, what they'll say to you is, well, you can do that with the family

00:49:57.220 because the Christian family is a part of the new covenant. And all the children are members of the

00:50:03.260 new covenant. They may not be regenerate yet, but they're part of the new covenant. So you can do

00:50:07.420 that with the family because the Bible does that with the family. The new covenant doesn't just

00:50:11.580 encompass the church, but within the Presbyterian scheme, covenantal federalism, the new covenant

00:50:18.260 doesn't just encompass the church, like regenerate church membership as the Baptist would hold,

00:50:22.020 but actually covers the family. But I don't see in the Bible where it covers the nation or where

00:50:25.920 it covers the state. Whereas for me as a Baptist, I can say, oh yeah, I have a Christian family. I

00:50:30.880 have five kids and they're very small. Only two of them are currently baptized as a guy who holds

00:50:37.280 to, you know, credible profession of faith preceding baptism. Forgive me, humor me for a

00:50:41.960 moment, you know, but, uh, but as that guy with my, you know, covenantal scheme as a reformed

00:50:46.240 Baptist, um, I'm still actually able and have been making the argument for years now. Uh, but no,

00:50:52.220 the whole family's Christian, all of them, even my, my newborn child who's three weeks old today.

00:50:57.300 Uh, she is a part of a Christian family. We are Christians. And when I lead them through family

00:51:02.000 worship and when I, and you, you probably would just say like, Joel, you're, you're really all

00:51:05.460 you're all you're confessing right now is that you're a presbyterian you're just inconsistent

00:51:08.560 you'll come there eventually but my point is even as a baptist and holding to the the particular

00:51:13.520 covenantal scheme that i currently hold i'm able to look at my young children who are not baptized

00:51:19.100 and say you are a part uh a member of a christian family and uh i teach them the lord's prayer and i

00:51:24.600 don't say uh when we you know learn the lord's prayer i don't teach them to say um mom and dad's

00:51:29.780 father who art in heaven but our father even though technically in the technical sense they

00:51:34.480 have not yet been adopted. As far as I know, they could be regenerate. Who knows? But the point is,

00:51:39.740 I've been perfectly comfortable as a Baptist with Baptist theology and covenantal theology

00:51:44.800 to consider my whole family, not just the regenerate members, Christian. And so when I say

00:51:50.920 from that standpoint, and so likewise, the same principle can be applied to a nation.

00:51:57.800 It means something. And I'm not saying it doesn't mean something with you. I just know that the

00:52:02.140 presbyterians who don't like christian nationalism who would disagree with you that's what a

00:52:06.420 westminster escondido presbyterian would probably use as pushback to you as you say yeah what you're

00:52:13.520 doing with the family doesn't work with the nation because the family is the new covenant yeah i

00:52:18.320 actually i got that pushback a couple weeks ago when i was in escondido um yeah and i would just

00:52:23.880 say that i'm not talking about covenantal obligations i'm talking about natural obligations

00:52:28.380 So a father, as the head of a household, is obligated by nature for him to order his family to the true God.

00:52:35.320 And the true God is a triumne God.

00:52:37.240 And so I don't proceed from covenantal obligations in that regard.

00:52:42.160 So I would say the same thing about the nation, is that a nation as such ought to order its people or order itself to the true God, which is a triumne God.

00:52:52.160 um and uh and so with that then they should also they should uh support the church and all that so

00:52:58.920 um i yeah so i i understand i've heard that argument before okay and and there's a reason

00:53:04.220 why in the book i don't actually proceed along the covenantal lines i proceed along natural

00:53:09.400 law arguments for that so i think that solves it um whether or not there's sound is a different

00:53:14.840 question but it makes it coherent um and i i think the and this is i'd say what the reformers

00:53:21.180 argued as well. Like when they would appeal to Cicero, Aristotle, Plato, saying that the civil

00:53:27.740 government ought to promote religion, what they're saying is that it's a natural duty because these

00:53:32.880 guys are making arguments apart from grace, apart from the covenant. And so when Calvin and Turretin

00:53:38.260 and these other guys say, look what Cicero said, and they're actually saying, no, there's actually

00:53:42.060 a natural obligation for a Christian ruler to order his people to God. So that's how I'd make

00:53:49.640 the best blasphemies and yeah yeah amen okay so let's uh right here at the end because i want to

00:53:54.980 keep the audience's attention and give them a little bit of an appetizer just a sample of what's

00:54:01.800 to come in this series so this is part one and as we said in the beginning of this episode we you

00:54:06.480 know we immediately came out of the gate lying by saying that we were going to define christian

00:54:10.340 nationalism we never got to it but so so i would say let's come right out of the gate in our second

00:54:15.260 episode, and we will define Christian nationalism. But beyond that, in later episodes, we also want

00:54:22.060 to not only define Christian nationalism, but also seek to define, attempt to define what is a nation.

00:54:29.380 I think of like Matt Walsh, you know, what is a woman? But right now, it seems like that's one of

00:54:34.300 the burning questions is, what is a nation? Because so many Americans, maybe that's probably a unique

00:54:38.880 problem to us. But right now, man, Americans are just insufferable when it comes to attempting to 0.95

00:54:46.180 answer that question. Is it an economic zone? Is it a set of propositions? And that's literally

00:54:50.980 what Reagan, God bless him, he did a lot of good things, but he hurt us. He's a product of his time,

00:54:56.880 but he hurt us as well by saying, you can move to France, but you can't be a Frenchman.

00:55:02.860 You can move to Scotland, but you can't be a Scotsman. But anyone from anywhere can

00:55:08.860 move to america and become an american that sucks i like that's not good and and so for americans 0.57

00:55:17.160 it's like i mean he he redefined what is a nation yeah he made people think that that was 0.99

00:55:24.860 that that was a belief from the beginning of the american tradition but that was not was not so

00:55:29.980 it was not for most of our history that was not the case so we're going to define next episode

00:55:34.040 right out of the gate what is christian nationalism but later we want to define what

00:55:38.340 as a nation and then tell the listener what are a few other things we're going to try to cover in

00:55:43.140 this series what is a nation what is a christian nation uh civil law um cultural christianity

00:55:48.700 the christian prince uh religious liberty and and uh and then some some american anglo-american

00:55:55.400 protestantism cool near the end yeah all right so stay tuned uh we hope that you've enjoyed this

00:56:00.740 first debut episode uh this will be again a 10-part series with dr stephen wolf over christian

00:56:07.700 nationalism, and we hope that you stay tuned. Thanks.

The NXR Podcast - July 05, 2025

THE FRIDAY SPECIAL - Christian Nationalism, Aristotle, & The Plague Of Multiculturalism - S05E01

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