The NXR Podcast - August 16, 2025


THE FRIDAY SPECIAL - Classical Two-Kingdoms And The Intersection Of Church and State

Topics
natural law civil discussion two kingdoms
Hosted by
Joel Webbon Harrison Smith Antonio Griffith Dale Partridge Wewsley Todd Calvin Robinson
Mentioned
Abraham Lincoln Trump George Washington Calvin Seneca Luther James Christian Prince Martin Luther John Calvin Aristotle Napoleon Sabbath Hookard Depart Ockham Plato Numa
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Episode Stats


Length

48 minutes

Words per minute

176.25

Word count

8,513

Sentence count

279

Harmful content

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

24

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss natural law, civil law, and Kuyperianism vs. classical 2 kingdom theology. We also discuss the Christian prince and his role in the development of Christian nationalism. This episode is part 7 in a 10-part series that we re doing on all things Christian nationalism and nationalism in the Christian tradition.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:30 All right, welcome back. This is episode seven now in a 10-part series that we're doing on all
00:00:49 things Christian nationalism. And this may be, for many of you, the episode that you've been
00:00:54 waiting for. We're going to talk about a few things, three things in particular. We're going
00:00:58 to talk about natural law and how it relates to civil law. We're also going to talk a little bit
00:01:03 about kind of Kuyperianism versus a classical two kingdom theology. And I'll update the audience
00:01:10 where I'm kind of at with that and give Stephen a chance to poke some holes if he can. And I think
00:01:17 he'll be able to probably at least get us to think. And then lastly, drum roll, please,
00:01:23 we will talk about the Christian prince. And so I think this will be a great episode. So let's
00:01:28 go ahead and dive in natural law civil law start the discussion okay um yeah so my my view which
00:01:35 i take to be the classical protestant view um is that that civil law um also known as positive law
00:01:42 is uh is must be derived from the moral law of god right and the moral law can be considered as
00:01:50 the natural law meaning that it's immutable it's creational um it's universal applied to all all
00:01:57 men. Um, but it's also revealed in scripture, summarized in the 10 commandments. So that's
00:02:04 what I was going to say. Part of the reason you, you never have bothered me with natural laws.
00:02:08 The first time I had you on our show, it was like two years ago, right after you published the book.
00:02:12 And one of the questions I asked you, and I already kind of knew the answer, but I was just
00:02:16 confirming was, you know, because I had actually done the reading. Um, I knew that the reformers,
00:02:21 I knew Calvin, I'd read the institutes and those things. And, um, I knew that you had, you know,
00:02:25 the classical reformed position. And all the reformers, when they said natural law,
00:02:32 natural law was synonymous with the Decalogue. It wasn't just the second table of law. It wasn't
00:02:37 just a natural instinct of common sense. It includes that, but it wasn't merely reason
00:02:43 and how we should treat our fellow man. But for the reformers, they would have said that the
00:02:48 Sabbath is a part of natural law, that the first table of the law, commandments one through four,
00:02:55 uh have no other gods before me don't make any graven images don't take the lord's name in vain
00:02:59 and remember the sabbath and keep it holy that that this is a part of natural law so when you
00:03:04 talk about natural law i knew that you were talking about it in the way that calvin and others have
00:03:07 which doesn't really bother me because it's the deck law it is the moral law of god yeah so that
00:03:13 what this means then is this is why i use moral law um is then i can say that you can get at the
00:03:19 moral law in principle via reason that doesn't mean it's always successful but you can get at
00:03:24 the same law through scripture so one is by faith so because god said so right that's basically what
00:03:31 faith is god says so and god is true so you believe it um and the other one is uh is through
00:03:36 reason or proper thinking about it so um so you get at the same thing so in principle you should
00:03:44 be able to get to all 10 commandments um by reason and of course by faith both the same thing so
00:03:52 So what this means then is when I mean that the civil law, which is an explicit, outward, promulgated, do this, don't do that, promulgated and enacted by a legitimate authority, so it can't be an illegitimate person.
00:04:07 You can't stand up in the street and say, I'm the king and let her do this because you're not a legitimate authority.
00:04:13 You then can derive that positive or civil law from reason and principle or from scripture or from both or whatever.
00:04:22 So you're thinking about what you ought to do in a particular situation can be informed by those things.
00:04:29 And I think there have been in the past in the Reformed tradition, they would affirm that.
00:04:34 I would say that's the broad consensus.
00:04:37 um now whether you emphasize scripture or you emphasize reason or experience that will change
00:04:44 depending on who it is and they're all this is not like liberal versus conservative this is just
00:04:48 all orthodox guys um so you can take like richard hooker would emphasize reason and experience a lot
00:04:55 i think calvin who emphasized scripture more but calvin would still acknowledge that reason
00:04:59 in principle can get you there in part the irony is because of scripture yeah that's that's romans
00:05:05 1, Romans 1 doesn't just say, it's really Romans 2 that gives the focus on, you know, like your
00:05:12 own conscience within yourself, even as an unregenerate man, simply made in the image of
00:05:16 God. You have a conscience, it's been, it's, you know, the images of God has been tarnished by sin,
00:05:21 but it still a vestige remains intact, and because of that vestige of the image of God that remains
00:05:26 intact, even for unregenerate man, Romans 2 talks about, you know, natural law, and it's very
00:05:31 obvious even to the non-christian um that that there's a certain way of treating his his neighbor
00:05:37 his fellow man but that's romans two but romans one um really has more of a focus on what we
00:05:44 consider to be the first table of the law um that that by nature by what god has made natural
00:05:48 revelation um we know that god exists uh not just that we should be kind to our fellow man but we
00:05:55 know there is a god he exists and we know not all but some of his attributes have been clearly
00:06:00 displayed, namely His eternal power and divine nature. And we can reason from that that if there
00:06:06 is a God, and there is one God, not gods, but a God, then we shouldn't have any idols and other
00:06:13 gods before Him. We also can reason from nature that this one God who does exist, that we shouldn't
00:06:22 blaspheme Him, we shouldn't have other gods before Him. We also can reason by the light of nature
00:06:27 that this one God who exists is the invisible God
00:06:30 and therefore images will always fail
00:06:32 to accurately express him
00:06:34 and then therefore begin to represent other gods
00:06:38 and idolatry.
00:06:40 Yeah, actually what you just said there,
00:06:41 that was certain pagan philosophers
00:06:43 came to that conclusion as well.
00:06:45 So Numa, Pythagoras. 1.00
00:06:47 So without being a Christian, 0.99
00:06:48 the non-Christian doesn't just innately recognize 0.95
00:06:52 by virtue of his conscience 0.90
00:06:53 that he shouldn't murder people,
00:06:55 but he also can argue by the light of nature that um he should worship god now there is i guess a
00:07:02 qualification with that though um because and calvin's very clear in this in his uh would it
00:07:09 be second volume or second book of this that uh that our reasoning powers with regard to to natural
00:07:16 theology or to god first table stuff is actually far weaker than our our ability on second table
00:07:23 stuff this is why calvin would say that like they're as blind as moles when it comes to
00:07:28 the true god right but they're actually pretty decent at the second table duties that that is
00:07:34 the pagan philosophers he says that and the reason he says that's not arbitrary he takes us back which
00:07:39 is a again i'd say a classical distinction going to augustine and earlier that uh at the fall man
00:07:45 lost those i think the the common word is obliterated was obliterated those faculties
00:07:53 or that ability to have acknowledged the higher truths of the first table. And so that means
00:07:59 you're driven down, instead of having a heavenly orientation, you're driven down to the things of
00:08:03 the earth, you create idols, various forms of, in the worst case, human child sacrifice. 0.97
00:08:10 And that's because within that, you're blind as moles. Because that heavenly orientation, 0.96
00:08:16 those faculties are gone. But whereas what is retained, though diminished and weakened,
00:08:21 would be those faculties of your own earthly life.
00:08:24 And part of that is you just can walk around
00:08:27 and experience, like, I don't like getting my stuff stolen.
00:08:30 And you can say, well, maybe there should be
00:08:32 a law against theft.
00:08:34 And so the power to reason on second table
00:08:36 is actually stronger.
00:08:37 And that's the basis of reformed theologians
00:08:42 and philosophers appealing to Plato and Aristotle
00:08:45 and Cicero and Seneca and Xenophon
00:08:48 on issues from home economy to ethics
00:08:51 to politics, because those are all fundamentally earthly things. And so from there, that's why they
00:08:59 could appeal to that. And that's also one reason why it's very common, Calvin said it, of course,
00:09:04 Hookard said it, other people said it, that you can take the common experience. If you study the
00:09:09 polities of the pagans, there are obviously bad practices in there, usually associated with the
00:09:15 religious side. But in terms of the laws of governance and their thinking about laws,
00:09:20 they can actually be very um useful uh for thinking about politics and ethics um and our
00:09:26 even christian societies yeah um so let's talk for a second um i and tell me if it's uh premature but
00:09:34 can we shift gears a little bit to two kingdoms yeah well let me let me say one more thing about
00:09:39 law if i might just to because my own mind needs completeness here so you can appeal to scripture
00:09:44 for these laws um and uh see yeah i just want to emphasize that that that i don't i don't care if
00:09:52 it's a just law and you appeal to scripture that's perfectly fine i think it's totally
00:09:56 ground as that that's um yeah because god wrote a book and we can appeal to the book right it's not
00:10:01 just a book for god's people but for all people yeah it's perspicuous you can you can you can see
00:10:05 it it says this the only thing i would say though is i don't think that scripture provides a
00:10:10 blueprint for the political system, or I'd say even the economic system, or the body of law you
00:10:18 must have in every place. So when you do politics, it's deliberation. It's in consideration of
00:10:24 circumstances, the characteristics of the people. Some people are not suited for democracy or
00:10:29 republic. Some people are more suited for a monarchy. And that's all context-dependent.
00:10:37 And the same thing with particular laws.
00:10:39 So the laws in one place could be different in another place
00:10:42 because this law over here will be effective
00:10:45 given their circumstances.
00:10:47 It won't be effective over here.
00:10:48 You need something else.
00:10:49 So that's how politics is.
00:10:51 Deliberation upon the circumstances,
00:10:53 come to a decision, enact the law,
00:10:55 and then promulgate it and enforce it.
00:10:57 Right.
00:10:57 So for instance, if you had a society
00:10:58 that never had cars before,
00:11:00 and then all of a sudden they have cars,
00:11:01 and nobody knows how to drive,
00:11:03 and they're all really just learning on the go
00:11:05 for the first time,
00:11:06 um, you might have lower speed limits and we want to say that's an injustice because the max speed
00:11:12 on their highways is 45 miles per hour. Whereas in America it's, you know, 70 or 80. Yeah. We
00:11:17 wouldn't say like, this is a breach of the law word of God. Like we'd say, no. Yeah. And actually
00:11:21 on my own street, we, we actually asked North Carolina to, to do a speed assessment because
00:11:26 I'm on a country road where people go 70 miles an hour down my, my street. And we're like, well,
00:11:30 we want to put up a posted speed limit, bring it down to 45 because there's kids here. Yeah. And
00:11:35 unfortunately they didn't actually go for that um which uh speaks bad i think about the bureaucracy
00:11:41 but it was contextual in the sense that like let's say that there weren't a bunch of families
00:11:44 with a bunch of kids yeah it was just open field yeah open farmland yeah you might 55 is fine but
00:11:50 now you have families with kids the circumstances have changed and the kids you'd like to not get
00:11:55 your kid run over and so you request to have a speed limit reduction because of the circumstances
00:12:00 yeah okay two kingdoms are we ready um yeah sure okay so uh just i know it's probably easier said
00:12:09 than done but um or in this case hard to actually say but can you give us just as as concise as
00:12:16 possible yeah a brief synopsis of the classical two kingdom approach yeah so we often say two
00:12:23 kingdoms um it's more precise to say twofold kingdom um i'm okay with saying two kingdoms
00:12:28 Because it's one king.
00:12:29 One king, basically one kingdom,
00:12:33 but there's two modes of reign.
00:12:34 And so you can say two kingdoms.
00:12:36 One would be in which Christ rules the church directly.
00:12:39 Ministers are not magistrates
00:12:42 in the sense that they can legislate their own laws.
00:12:44 They follow the laws of Christ.
00:12:45 I'd say it's a, I'm a moderate divine order guy.
00:12:48 So it's a, the church is a sort of divine order
00:12:51 instituted by Christ.
00:12:52 He's the king of the church immediately
00:12:55 and the ministers serve under him as emissaries or, you know, ministers.
00:13:01 They administer the laws of Christ with regard to the ecclesial context.
00:13:06 But the other mode would be civil, or you could say earthly,
00:13:10 and that would be, I'd say, mediated through civil magistrates.
00:13:15 And that would be, whereas the church appeals to the inward man,
00:13:19 tries to persuade them of the truths found in scripture,
00:13:21 um the civil kingdom is interested in outward action right so they can't legislate that you
00:13:27 believe this or that matters of the heart yeah matters of heart they can't say suddenly be scared
00:13:31 or beef you know you can't legislate emotions because it's all like internal stuff but they
00:13:36 can legislate the outward and so within the two kingdoms in there are you can say two swords sword
00:13:41 of the spirit wielded by the minister and then you have the sword of the civil magistrate which
00:13:46 strikes the outward man only and so these are the two modes of reign and because in that
00:13:51 second mode when it comes to the civil kingdom, the common kingdom of the civil magistrate,
00:13:57 because it's outward. It's concerns, behaviors, outward actions, and not matters of the heart.
00:14:04 The way that I've worded it to people is even though the Decalogue should be in full view
00:14:09 with the Christian prince, he doesn't actually have laws to mitigate the first or the 10th
00:14:17 commandment. I actually think that's interesting that like within the Decalogue, you have two 0.53
00:14:21 tables of the law, and it's both the first and the last. So you have one commandment in each
00:14:27 tables, like bookends that are actually regarding the heart, like images would be visible, outward,
00:14:35 external, you know, like, like, it's something that's witnessable. It requires an action of
00:14:40 making an image and then hoisting it up in some public space, you know, that would actually,
00:14:45 deter worship of the true God. Whereas the first commandment, have no other gods before me in terms
00:14:51 of not necessarily your actions, but in terms of your heart and your affections, there would be no
00:14:58 way for the civil magistrate to actually regulate that. And then likewise, it's like, well,
00:15:04 at what point or in what way does the civil magistrate in a Christian nation regulate the
00:15:09 10th commandment, thou shalt not covet? Well, he does it in precisely all the ways that are
00:15:14 breach of the Ten Commandment becomes so robust that it spills over into a breach of the fifth,
00:15:20 sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth commandment, that you're coveting without any restraint of
00:15:25 the heart, and that's not punishable by the civil magistrate. But if your covetousness
00:15:29 becomes so great that it spills over into causing you to murder or causing you to steal,
00:15:36 then coveting actually is, in a sense, being punished by virtue, by proxy of punishing theft
00:15:42 and punishing murder. And that's what James says in the book of James. He answers that question,
00:15:48 he raises it, and then he answers it. Why is it that you have factions and divisions among you?
00:15:53 Is it not because of your covetous desires within you? You desire, but have not, so you murder.
00:16:02 And so coveting is punished, but only when it rises to the extent that it spills over into
00:16:07 a breach of commandments. So, commandment number 10 is punished by the civil magistrate when it
00:16:12 causes you to breach commandments 5 through 9. Likewise, commandment number 1 is punishable by
00:16:18 the civil magistrate when that idolatry of the heart rises to the extent that it spills over
00:16:22 into a breach of commandments 2 through 4. Does that, would you agree with that? Yeah, no, I
00:16:27 completely, I think that both tables pertain to both of the ecclesial and the civil sphere,
00:16:33 but in different respects. So obviously the outward would be the civil magistrate deals
00:16:38 with the outward sins. And this is why even like polytheism can be suppressed, atheism can be
00:16:43 suppressed. If it's outwardly expressed, then it becomes outward. You say, you know, there is no
00:16:48 God and therefore the civil magistrate can say, no, don't say that. So that would be, he's not
00:16:53 trying to reform your heart because he can't. He's not punishing you simply for the belief in it.
00:16:57 We'll get to this in a later episode, but we're not punishing you just for the belief in itself,
00:17:02 but for the external expression of it which he deems harmful both out both to souls into the
00:17:07 body politic um and the likewise the or differently that the church will say okay good don't you don't
00:17:15 steal that's bad they'll say don't steal but they'll say you know for the eighth commandment
00:17:19 they'll say okay work hard but as you work hard work hard in the lord or work hard for the lord
00:17:26 so they're appealing to your heart so that your good work outwardly becomes completely good
00:17:32 inwardly as well because you can do all you can do all sorts of outward virtuous actions right
00:17:36 but you in order for it to be an actually good work it has to be both outwardly and inwardly
00:17:41 and that's for romans 14 anything that does not proceed from faith is sin right and the civil
00:17:46 magistrate is not going to take that um as something that's that's actually literally
00:17:52 punishable. But the minister in the house of God would say, he actually would appeal and even
00:17:59 command and say, it's not enough to just simply do outwardly the right thing, but we want our
00:18:04 works to be done in faith. Without faith, Hebrews chapter 11, without faith, it is impossible to
00:18:12 please him. And we want to be not just righteous in a conformity with our outward behaviors,
00:18:18 but we actually want to be pleasing to god which requires the heart yeah and this is how the church
00:18:23 and state together can coordinate um in the sense that they are promoting in people uh the the to
00:18:33 act in the complete goodness unto the lord so outward inward now i don't want to conflate
00:18:39 like the two kingdoms with church and state that's i think the air of the modern two kingdoms kind of
00:18:44 did that a little bit no i i wouldn't say whereas augustine did a better job i think with the city
00:18:50 of man and city of god yeah no i i don't i don't think they did that i there is a sense in which
00:18:55 the the i'd say the instituted church as a presbyterian like anglicans don't agree with
00:19:00 this i don't want to get into that dispute but there is a sense in which the the visible
00:19:03 instituted church is part of the of the spiritual kingdom of god but what but i i would say that
00:19:09 the principal distinction is between the the elect which is an inward reality the church is people
00:19:14 versus the church institute yeah no i'd say that like the spiritual kingdom of christ is fundamentally
00:19:19 in the elect which is known only by god because it's only visible to god who is true elect and
00:19:26 who's not and so that's and so the church as an institution functions to administer to those
00:19:33 people so they they do they do word and sacrament for those people so that institution is oriented
00:19:39 to the people of God as the elect of God, the spiritual kingdom of Christ. In that sense,
00:19:44 the instituted church is part of, is the outward expression in a way of the more inward reality of
00:19:53 the invisible kingdom of God. And so what this means then is that the civil kingdom,
00:19:58 it deals with outward things. I just don't think that the civil kingdom can enter into the church
00:20:03 and tell the minister what to do and has command over the minister as a minister.
00:20:09 But the minister, as a fellow citizen, as a man, in his capacity as a member of that society, is under the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate.
00:20:19 So he can't tell you what to preach on, how to administer sacraments.
00:20:23 The civil magistrate can't himself preach the word as a minister.
00:20:28 He can't preach the word as a—I guess you could be both, even though that's frowned upon.
00:20:33 But the governor shouldn't administer the Lord's Supper.
00:20:36 Right.
00:20:36 And likewise, the minister shouldn't hang anyone.
00:20:41 Right, yes, because as a minister, he does not have the power of outward punishment.
00:20:46 I mean, there is church discipline, but that does not involve some sort of corporeal punishment.
00:20:51 It's not physical.
00:20:52 That's just separation from the church.
00:20:55 So that would be the broadly.
00:20:57 what this allows you to do is to say that in the spiritual kingdom of Christ, in the invisible 0.90
00:21:06 church, there is neither male nor female, Greek or Jew, you know, master-servant, which is true. 0.95
00:21:12 There's a sort of equality that's been established in that realm among the elect, such that there is 0.98
00:21:18 no—that gender doesn't play a part, or your ethnicity doesn't play a part in your status
00:21:25 with regard to salvation justification for god you're yeah you you as a woman or a man
00:21:31 remain as an individual before god and you're saved um equally among that so even if you're
00:21:39 a slave you're just you could be actually more pious and more um righteous than your master
00:21:45 because even though both of you are christians um in that kingdom of god you can be first in
00:21:50 the kingdom of God and be a no-name slave because you do your work diligently to the Lord and your
00:21:57 good works, even though they're unseen by man, they're only seen by the master and you're a
00:22:03 slave, you could be first in the kingdom of God. But because there is a distinction, there's a
00:22:08 two-foldness, you have the civil kingdom where now the natural order of things remain as they are.
00:22:14 So you still have husband and wife, you still have master-servant, you still have the
00:22:19 different nations and different ethnicities yeah and the principles of the hierarchy
00:22:24 is are not shaped by like the slave might be pious but he's uneducated he cannot lead anyone
00:22:30 but he might be first in the kingdom of god however he's not fit to rule in a christian
00:22:34 society you need the civil magistrate who is by his natural abilities is able to rule in that
00:22:40 capacity so the that distinction allows you this is why i think actually like a sort of two-fold
00:22:47 of kingdom theology should be obvious to people. Unless you want to homogenize and globalize and
00:22:54 do all these other things, if you maintain a distinction between husband and wife and also
00:23:00 maintain that you can be equally saved before God in the kingdom of Christ, then you are a type of
00:23:05 twofold kingdom person. If you distinguish between the civil sword and the spiritual sword, that is
00:23:10 a type of twofold kingdom. If there are principles of earthly life that you want to remain untouched
00:23:15 because they're natural and yet you affirm equality within the kingdom of god that's a
00:23:20 form of two kingdom theology so it is i think it's fair to say it's a form to be um technical
00:23:27 so what i would have said in the past and and still largely agree with this is i would have
00:23:32 said one king two kingdoms and three spheres and so you know a lot of the kyperian types yeah would
00:23:39 the the kyperian types would say that yeah of course there's a two-fold nature they just want
00:23:45 rooted in kingdoms they would root it in spheres um and in that sense there's you know you could
00:23:50 even argue a threefold nature and instruments given uh not just duties and roles you know
00:23:56 um and and then of course corresponding privileges and rights and authority but then also
00:24:00 tools you know so um to the to the home has been given the rod to the the state has been given the
00:24:06 sword to the church has been given the keys and um and so what i would have said in terms of the
00:24:11 kingdoms. So one king, two kingdoms, three spheres. In regards to that two kingdom aspect, I would
00:24:17 have said that it's not so much a divide between, you know, sacred and secular or sacred and common,
00:24:23 but rather, and it's also certainly not a divide necessarily between church and state, I would
00:24:29 root that as being, you know, the distinction in spheres rather than kingdoms. But what I would
00:24:34 say, there is still two kingdoms of sorts, one king, still sovereign, ruling above both of them,
00:24:40 but two kingdoms in the sense of not sacred and common, but light and dark, a kingdom of light,
00:24:47 a kingdom of dark. And I would say that at some level, and I'm curious to hear your pushback to
00:24:52 this, because I'm sure it'll be helpful for me. But at some level, I would say that wherever you
00:24:58 find righteousness, and especially wherever you find a Christian, whether he's in the, you know,
00:25:05 the church institute, the visible church, or whether he's functioning in his role more broadly
00:25:11 in the, you know, the politic outside of the institute of the church. Wherever you find a
00:25:20 righteous man, a Christian man, you find, and wherever he acts in righteous ways, you find an
00:25:26 advancement of the kingdom of light. So, in other words, if you have a false teacher in the church,
00:25:30 it's in the church in terms of spheres but if he's you know if you have benny hen
00:25:36 um you have an advancement of the kingdom of darkness but in the sphere of the church
00:25:41 if you have constantine you have an advancement of the kingdom of light but within the sphere
00:25:46 of the state and that's kind of been my thinking i'm sure there are certain flaws what would you
00:25:50 say i i say that's perfectly compatible with what i'm saying so i i i um if you want to like the
00:25:56 kingdom of light uh i would agree with that in the sense that um the the two-foldness of kingdom
00:26:05 there's proper coordination between church and state i guess that's how i would say it
00:26:09 whereas and i would just say there's a coordination between spheres yeah for the advancement of one
00:26:14 particular kingdom light yeah i mean it's why even that i don't have a really a problem with
00:26:19 okay um the whole sphere thing i i don't i think that would require like a longer discussion on
00:26:25 exactly figuring out where the distinction or the differences are there. I don't see how they're
00:26:31 incompatible. The idea with like three estates, that's common within tradition. So, excuse me.
00:26:38 I would say that if you want to talk about kingdom of light and kingdom of darkness, 0.86
00:26:41 it would be the state or just the nation as such becoming a Christian nation. And the principal 0.89
00:26:49 role in that would be orienting people to the church, um, which would orient them principally
00:26:55 to kingdom of God, kingdom of life. But I would say that that would be, I would say in a way that
00:27:01 even the spiritual kingdom of God is coming to earth when, when the civil magistrates enact laws
00:27:08 that would order people to the church and that are just, um, and ultimately point them to the
00:27:14 highest good. Right. So I would agree with that. Um, I just, I would just frame it the way I
00:27:18 approach it would be a little bit differently. I think that the state in earthly life is supreme,
00:27:26 but it's subordinated to the highest good, which would be eternal life. And so that means that
00:27:33 its function is in a way to be, in one sense, to be under the church, not in the sense that
00:27:39 the church is directing it or telling the magistrate what to do, but in the sense that
00:27:44 his ultimate principal mission is, is eternal life for the, for the, you know, uh, for the,
00:27:50 his people under his. Right. And I think the reason why it appeals to me, what I just expressed
00:27:54 this one King, two kingdoms and three spheres and the distinction of the kingdoms being light
00:27:59 and dark rather than sacred and, and, uh, common. Part of the reason it appeals to me is, is because
00:28:05 within the, you know, invisible and visible church scheme, it's not just individual people that,
00:28:11 you could be administering the Lord's Supper and baptism to someone who in the final analysis
00:28:22 proves to be an apostate. It's not just that that is possible. We know that's possible from
00:28:29 scripture and experience, but it's also feasible that you cannot just have a true church that is
00:28:38 made up of, you know, a majority of people who actually belong to the invisible church. They're
00:28:42 truly regenerate. They're truly God's elect. But with isolated individual instances of people who
00:28:48 are unregenerate and apostates and who are given the sacraments because by all visible appearances,
00:28:55 it was the right thing to do. But on the final day, there's this Lord, Lord, you know, did we
00:29:01 not this and that and the other? Depart from me, I never knew you. But in my mind, it's feasible
00:29:06 that um not just at an individual person level but in terms of uh whole entities like like you
00:29:14 could have a false church the whole church is false uh whereas i would still say that uh it's
00:29:20 still a part of the church institute so that part of this it for me it's it's a way of reconciling
00:29:26 for instance you know it's a way of reconciling roman catholicism it's a way of like like my
00:29:33 desire, I'll just put my cards on the table, my not only desire, but as a post-mill guy, my prediction
00:29:38 is I don't think that the Roman church will utterly fail and be eradicated. I think the end
00:29:49 game, if I was to guess at the mind of God, is that the Roman church would repent, that they 0.87
00:29:56 would undo Trent. I don't want to see the Roman church fail, actually. I want to see the Roman
00:30:02 church come back into the fold, you know, almost like a Romans 11, you know, Jew and Gentile thing, 0.99
00:30:09 but with papists and Protestants, I would like to see them that, you know, if I could use these 0.99
00:30:14 terms in some sense, the natural branches grafted back in to the root that is Christ and not be 0.89
00:30:20 replaced, but be repentant. And so for me, it gives me a grid, a frame of including both,
00:30:28 you know the eo got you know eastern orthodoxy and roman catholicism within the church institute at
00:30:33 large um while also recognizing that it's not just isolated individual people but but as a whole
00:30:40 church that it um that that an argument can be made and i'm not saying for each and every
00:30:46 individual like i understand that there are some catholic priests that really are sound a lot more
00:30:52 protestant in terms of their conception of soteriology and salvation by grace but on the
00:30:57 whole, I could say that the Roman Catholic Church is not a true church. And yet, I could say,
00:31:05 but it is truly a part of the institute of the church, and I'm very hopeful for their inclusion.
00:31:13 Yeah, I mean, that was, many reformers thought something along those lines. It's tricky
00:31:17 to say something's a false church, and yet also part of the broad, you know,
00:31:23 low c catholic church right um yeah but that's where i'm at and it's funny you know
00:31:30 the reformation in some sense seems like the it's not an entirely like a counter movement
00:31:37 and separate in some ways it seems like just the other side of a singular coin of the enlightenment
00:31:43 that um i i'm i'm reformed so i i love the reformation we celebrate martin luther you know
00:31:51 and we do we do the whole thing and um and and and i have no apologies or shame but i do sometimes
00:31:58 feel a sense of curiosity and and borderline regret and wondering like could they have fought
00:32:07 harder you know like could like because i look at it and i'm like who's who's they the reformers
00:32:12 and trying to reform the catholic church like i see like because there's a certain sense you know
00:32:16 like we've we've used this expression before but like the toothpaste is very hard to go back in
00:32:20 tube and the reformation in some sense seems like pandora's box like like catholicism is easier i
00:32:25 know i understand all all i'm protestant for a reason i understand uh the failures and and and
00:32:31 the risk but um there was a certain way of viewing the world like things were more objective
00:32:37 the subjectivity of protestant theology um it's like well yeah we don't like the pope but then
00:32:43 everybody becomes their own individual pope you know and sola scriptura which i i adhere to and
00:32:48 and I love. At the same time, it's like, you know, it's not like, you know, doctrines of man versus
00:32:55 the Bible. That's a false dichotomy. Everybody's confessional. It's either a confession that's
00:33:00 tried and true, you know, and written by better men, or it's the confession that you're
00:33:04 subconsciously writing in your own head as you go along. But everybody has, there's no such thing
00:33:09 as an interpretation of scripture and then just the Bible alone. Everybody's interpreting scripture.
00:33:13 So it's really just whose interpretation is it going to be? And in the Protestant scheme,
00:33:17 the answer is very often who gets to interpret the bible the peanut gallery and the interpretations
00:33:24 really suck and you have millions of them instead of one and so all that being said i think like
00:33:30 the the reformation um followed the enlightenment in some sense that it really did give way it gave 0.98
00:33:36 theological explanatory power for accepting relativism and subjectivity whereas you know
00:33:43 catholicism was very much in line with the thinking of the day and the philosophy of the
00:33:49 day it followed that that like faith was objective like you can look and touch and see and and these
00:33:55 things are objectively true and and there's benchmarks and in a clear path that can you
00:34:01 know anybody could follow whereas whereas you know one of the one of the dangers of you know
00:34:05 the reformers is some but it really you know showed its head with the puritans was um the
00:34:11 navel gazing and, and, and over overly, you know, personal, not just subjectivity, but personal
00:34:21 constant, constant evaluation to where a lot of, you know, a lot of the Puritans had virtually no
00:34:29 assurance of like, they were constant, you know, he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves
00:34:33 and there was nothing objective to lay hold to, to know, it was just my heart and my heart is
00:34:38 constantly fickle do i really mean it do i really believe it and and uh catholicism is easier in so
00:34:45 many senses and and i know that it's you know it's gone too far and it's deeply flawed but i
00:34:50 and this would be like a 10-hour podcast i know i'm just i'm just saying i miss i miss the old
00:34:56 world that i was never even a part of but i've read about it and i and i see the appeal of of
00:35:02 these things touch see smell even incense and all like yeah and it's objective yeah i think
00:35:09 this is where like the federal vision guys tried to recover high objectivity i think it created a
00:35:15 lot of incoherence i know um problems that yeah because i look at them invisible invisible church
00:35:21 i think was doing just fine like why do we you know yeah um i mean this i guess this goes back
00:35:27 to that there are downsides to anything that is true. I would say that, I mean, I could go on for
00:35:35 a long time talking about all the problems with Roman Catholicism, but I don't think it was
00:35:39 actually as clear and objective as people thought. It was rooted in a tremendous amount of ignorance 0.87
00:35:49 of the average person. A lot of people had no idea what they were doing. There was a lot of
00:35:54 superstition um there was a lot of the the claims of the papacy allows the meddling of the papacy
00:36:00 into political matters that caused a tremendous amount of um strife conflict and war there was
00:36:08 claims of multiple popes at various times so i i don't um so i i don't think that it's a it's kind
00:36:15 of as rosy as uh as it seems and there's also i mean you if you want to be massive perversions
00:36:21 When I say rosy, I don't mean without perversions and without faults.
00:36:26 I mean rosy not in the sense of true or pure.
00:36:29 I mean there was a rosy element in terms of simplicity.
00:36:34 Yeah, if you have someone who claims to be able to mediate truth to you
00:36:39 and this is it or you're a heretic, then yeah, that becomes easier.
00:36:43 But there's other options.
00:36:45 You can become those.
00:36:45 You can have something that's simple and bad. 0.99
00:36:47 Or you can become Mormon. 0.98
00:36:48 Mormons have a similar thing as well. 0.94
00:36:49 Right.
00:36:50 I think ultimately it comes down to whether or not the Roman Catholic claim for itself is true.
00:36:57 And I think there's a lot of reasons to reject that.
00:37:00 So do I.
00:37:01 So yeah, we could, if simplicity was our principle, even then I think we have problems of who to choose for the source.
00:37:10 But truth kind of matters, even if it's complicated.
00:37:14 Simplicity isn't the only ideal.
00:37:16 Yeah, I mean, even if I, yeah.
00:37:17 I'd also, on the Enlightenment, I'd say that actually it was the Reformed guys who were in the early 17th and late 16th who were very conservative.
00:37:34 They were the Aristotelian realists and Thomists, whereas the Roman Catholics were often very nominalists and alchemists.
00:37:42 So you have Descartes, a central figure in modern philosophy, was a Roman Catholic and actually a defender of the Roman Catholic Church.
00:37:51 And part of his philosophy, people argue, was trying to defend the Roman Catholic claims for itself over against the claims of reason and Aristotelian philosophy of the Reformed.
00:38:03 So I don't think, even though you can identify Locke and these other guys as being Protestants, I don't think Roman Catholics, their narrative they give themselves is that it's nominalism from Ockham and then Luther, who was nominalist, and then that took the West down.
00:38:22 When actually it was many Roman Catholics were nominalists, including central figures of the Enlightenment being Roman Catholics, such as Descartes.
00:38:29 So I don't know, that's a long discussion.
00:38:31 but um well i think that at least whets people's appetite let's shift now though and um let's at
00:38:37 least begin the conversation surrounding the christian prince the prince yeah and i have a
00:38:42 feeling if i had to guess that um in about seven minutes or so i'll be saying and this is going to
00:38:48 be a two-parter yeah but let's start the conversation see how far we get yeah so christian
00:38:52 prince uh christian prince if you open a reformed political thing uh treatise or john calvin or
00:38:59 one or Luther, they'll talk about the Christian prince. Why did I use prince? Because when we
00:39:05 think of prince, we think of someone like a sort of great man, someone who has a type of gravitas
00:39:12 and is revered. He's not just a politician. I could have used the word statesman, but that
00:39:18 seemed kind of modern and also to our tradition somewhat foreign, not entirely, but we don't use
00:39:24 statesman as much anymore. But I wanted to use Prince because I think it would be a sort of
00:39:30 provocative word that would jar people from this idea of a politician, one, as a bad guy,
00:39:37 and also, two, as a sort of policy wonk, some guy who maneuvers in the background and all this,
00:39:42 but actually a figure, a man, like a great man. And so Christian Prince was my
00:39:48 attempt to recover in our Western thinking the concept of a great man. And we have great men
00:39:58 in our own tradition from George Washington. We mentioned before, you like him or hate him,
00:40:03 Abraham Lincoln was a sort of great man and others in our history.
00:40:07 Yeah, but he was great.
00:40:08 He was a great man by definition.
00:40:10 There's a difference in a great man and a good man.
00:40:11 Yeah, like you could say Alexander the Great was not exactly a good guy, but you could say that...
00:40:15 Napoleon was great.
00:40:16 right right so you have these these these figures in history who are uh kind of shake the world
00:40:23 and i think that's what we need like uh not um not necessarily someone who violates the
00:40:29 constitution like you want to throw the constitution no you can have a great man who um who operates
00:40:35 within the bounds of your political system who nevertheless by force of personality and action
00:40:40 is able to activate complacent hearts.
00:40:44 And that's what I think we need in our society today.
00:40:47 I think Trump is not a Christian prince,
00:40:50 but he is a sort of ironic great man.
00:40:53 And I hope that he's trailblazing
00:40:57 for a true Christian prince great man
00:41:00 to come about and to bring us back.
00:41:02 I see him as a precursor.
00:41:04 I don't think he is the great man,
00:41:06 but I think he's the closest we have.
00:41:08 And great man, again, being distinguished
00:41:10 from necessarily good man.
00:41:12 I think there are good aspects,
00:41:14 generally good aspects to Trump.
00:41:15 And there are aspects that I think are atrocious.
00:41:19 But so I think in some ways he's a good man,
00:41:22 in some ways he's not.
00:41:23 But in either case, I think he is a great man.
00:41:27 But even in that category of great man,
00:41:29 I don't think he's the greatest man.
00:41:30 I think he's a precursor to inspire a truly great man.
00:41:35 And whether that's gonna be eight years of J.D. Vance,
00:41:39 you know, whoever that is and however that comes. But I do think that Trump has been used in the
00:41:45 providence of God to, to wet our appetite for greatness. Yeah. And Elon is an example too.
00:41:54 Yeah. And the way I see like great men is that they, they bring about a type of event in history
00:42:00 that comes to shape history profoundly. So certainly Napoleon shaped history profoundly.
00:42:06 George Washington did. Abraham Lincoln did. And I think Trump did as well, or is. And that is,
00:42:13 he's destroyed the neoconservatives, which is very good. He's now opened the possibility for
00:42:20 a type of new right that is just exploding now in both popularity and in thought, intellectual
00:42:26 and popular. And so that's why I think Trump is a sort of event in history. And so he's a sort of
00:42:32 great man. People often blame Abraham Lincoln for all the sort of ills we have, or various problems
00:42:40 we've had in our, but he nevertheless, as a man, was the one who burst that open and made it
00:42:47 possible. And so good or bad, that's what he was. And so yeah, that's what we need. Because of the
00:42:59 path we're leading in the Western world, which is descending lower and lower into anti-Christianity
00:43:07 and degeneracy, we need someone, a great man, to bring that all back, to restore and basically
00:43:14 a sort of reminder of our heritage of faith, our heritage of virtue and piety. And so anyway,
00:43:21 that's why. The Christian prince, I describe him in ways that the reformers describe civil
00:43:30 magistrates, which was their sort of divine figure. They're not divinized. They're not
00:43:36 made god. But as representative. Yeah, but they are, in a way, because they have a power. They
00:43:42 are, like I said, they are mediators of divine power, in a way. Not for salvation. He can't
00:43:48 bring about anyone's salvation, but he can order a people through enacting a law, and he can direct
00:43:56 a people in ways that—the ability to make law itself, that's firstly from God. God is the first
00:44:05 one who can say—is the only one who can say, do this and don't do that, but he can delegate that
00:44:10 power to individuals who then can direct that power to people. So there is a sense in which—people
00:44:17 got really upset when i said that like that's the most sacred office the civil ruler is the most
00:44:22 sacred office that it's um it's uh it more displays in principle can display more of
00:44:29 god than even the the um the church minister and that's because the church minister is a
00:44:35 emissary he's a he's a minister on behalf of christ he's not a mediator he doesn't mediate
00:44:42 grace right he the he um administers the means of grace but he's not the mediator of grace and
00:44:48 that's a deeply protestant thought you know because and that's why like you know the pope
00:44:52 vicar of christ yeah that's why i say and yeah and he and so in their thought like a priest really
00:44:57 you know especially the pope or a cardinal uh really really would be more than an emissary
00:45:02 that they really would mediate grace right and and so in that sense that would be the chief office
00:45:08 So within a Catholic, you know, Roman Catholic conception, the Pope would be greater than any president or king, but within a Protestant perspective, it elevates in some sense.
00:45:21 Yeah, so the medieval papacy would see the Pope as being the originator of both spiritual and
00:45:29 civil power. So in a way that a king has his power by delegation of the Pope, because the Pope is
00:45:37 the vicar of Christ on earth. Christ is the ultimate originator of civil and spiritual power,
00:45:43 and so it goes through the Pope. What it just means then is that the Pope can remove that from
00:45:47 you so if you become a heretic the pope can say you know what you now you're a usurper all of a 0.95
00:45:52 sudden i take that power back and when that happens that means you're a tyrant by deep by 0.97
00:45:57 in effect um which means that all of your people under you can now rebel even murder you legitimate
00:46:04 the pope can command uh the the roman catholic subjects under a say a protestant
00:46:10 magistrate to now rebel and to even murder. Papacy has the power, at least did. I think 0.56
00:46:19 still does, but they're all kind of wishy-washy in this now. But if you're a heretic, then they
00:46:24 can seize all your property. They can seize everything you own because you're a heretic, 0.99
00:46:28 whereas Protestants generally denied that. So you still have a right to what you have, 0.98
00:46:34 even if you're in jail or you're accused of heresy and under civil punishment.
00:46:37 um but the pope could claim and that all roots and that's rooted in the theology whereas in
00:46:42 protestants it's it it did like papacy said yo you made possible tyranny which is um that but
00:46:49 yeah there was an elevation of the role of the civil ruler in earthly affairs uh
00:46:55 as a as an effect of protestantism which really is a restoration of classical politics um you see
00:47:03 in Plato and Aristotle and Seneca and Cicero that the civil magistrate, civil ruler, is in a way
00:47:10 the supreme office of the land, and the priests have their functions within religion, but in a
00:47:15 way, within a civil sense, they are subservient to the magistrate. Whereas in the Roman Catholic
00:47:20 system, you really have church and state are separate, and the priests are, at least in the
00:47:26 medieval conception, are under that jurisdiction of the church, and so cannot really be punished.
00:47:31 this is the idea of like church lands they'd have church property church farms uh church armies
00:47:36 militaries all of that function under that that system flows from that theology um which
00:47:42 protestants rejected so anyway that's great so what do you think should we do um another episode
00:47:48 on the christian prince or should we move on to our next topic uh i don't know what is our next
00:47:53 topic religious religious liberty so we can i think we could probably move into that yeah we
00:47:59 can move in from we could do christian prince and religious liberty okay so uh this was episode i
00:48:03 believe seven yeah is that right so episodes uh eight if you stick around for the conversation
00:48:09 we'll talk a little bit more of uh the christian prince and then how that shifts and relates to
00:48:14 religious liberty yeah all right thanks for tuning in