The NXR Podcast - THE FRIDAY SPECIAL - It Is Not Sin To Love Your Kin

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00:00:30.000 All right, here we are. This is episode five. I'm Joel Webin, and I am here with Dr. Stephen Wolfe,

00:00:51.540 and it's an honor and a privilege. We're on episode five. We've been recording all day.

00:00:56.000 So this is our last episode for today.

00:00:58.520 And tomorrow, Lord willing,

00:00:59.720 we're going to record the next five episodes.

00:01:01.460 So you are tuning in with episode five

00:01:04.020 of a 10-part series talking about Christian nationalism.

00:01:07.300 And the last two episodes, I think we're bangers,

00:01:10.680 if I do say so myself.

00:01:11.940 Yeah, I think we'll get on Right Wing Watch

00:01:13.560 a couple of times.

00:01:14.880 Definitely.

00:01:15.540 Yeah, I think we gave them plenty of content, 1.00

00:01:17.320 those ladies over there. 1.00

00:01:18.260 We talked about the juice. 0.98

00:01:19.960 There's probably some males over there too, right?

00:01:21.760 Not just the-

00:01:22.700 J-O-I-C-E, juice.

00:01:24.340 We talked about that in our last episode, Israel and propositional nationhood and where this kind

00:01:29.700 of came from, this idea and problems with that. And, and we, we didn't, you know, we were, we were

00:01:34.480 hinged, but just spicy enough, I think. And so anyways, the last two episodes, we talked about

00:01:40.180 what is a nation? First two episodes, we talked about defining Christian nationalism. But so we

00:01:47.460 defined Christian nationalism and nationalism in the first two episodes. We tried to define

00:01:51.840 nationhood. What is a nation in episode three and four? Episode five now, we're going to talk about

00:01:56.800 not so much Christian nationalism, but what is a Christian nation? Yeah. What is a Christian nation?

00:02:04.320 Yeah. Yeah. There is a good question in this. And there's a reason why I started off with,

00:02:12.680 in the book, talking about the nation. Because I don't think, you know, I think the grace does

00:02:18.860 not destroy nature. So if there is this thing called nation that is a natural thing, and its

00:02:24.340 components are fundamentally natural, then the question is, how does grace relate to that nation?

00:02:31.360 And I think it's a really, really important question, because the tendency today among

00:02:38.700 Christians is to think that in order to form a political unity, or a political community that

00:02:45.480 you'd call Christian, all you need to be is Christian. That's it. But to my mind, that is 0.74

00:02:52.120 grace destroying nature. It's running against something that is fundamental to us as human

00:02:57.740 beings. And so I would say that just as grace perfects and completes nature, the gospel

00:03:05.960 completes and perfects the nation, but without destroying it.

00:03:09.560 right and so in that we're getting into would nations exist in a pre-lapsarian world if adam

00:03:15.640 and eve had ever fallen um would we still have nations would there still be governments would

00:03:20.360 there still be laws even if there was no sin and you would say yes yeah yeah i guess we didn't get

00:03:25.940 into that in past episodes yeah that would be a good yeah sure yeah yeah so in um i i think and

00:03:34.180 there's there's precedent for this in the reformed i don't know enough to say if it's the most if it's

00:03:39.280 majority view. A lot of guys don't actually address this question. The guys who do address

00:03:43.980 the question tend to say that there will be political communities, that there will actually

00:03:49.460 be not only nations, but there'll be civil government over these nations. So you find

00:03:55.560 that in Samuel Willard. Samuel Willard was a New England Puritan, died in 1707, I believe.

00:04:03.060 And then you have Lambert Deneu, I think is how you say his name, who died in 1696, another

00:04:08.100 reformed philosopher. So they would affirm that there is civil government in a state of integrity.

00:04:14.940 So if Adam had not fallen, there would be political communities and they would all have

00:04:19.620 civil magistrates. Now, why would that be the case? Well, because when you reflect on a political

00:04:26.220 community, you have diverse vocations, you have diverse interests, you have a corporate entity

00:04:32.280 that is the people.

00:04:34.060 And those people would need

00:04:35.760 some kind of coordinating, directing effort.

00:04:38.840 So we're coordinated in our mobility

00:04:41.100 when we get on the road and drive the car.

00:04:44.500 And there's rules to the road

00:04:45.780 and that facilitates our various interests.

00:04:48.700 The car going this way stays on that side,

00:04:50.820 doesn't run into you because he's following the rules,

00:04:52.900 we're following the rules.

00:04:54.160 So the same thing would be in a complex society.

00:04:58.040 You would need not to restrain sin,

00:05:02.280 or anything like that, but you would need to direct those people in the sort of common good.

00:05:08.300 Each individual could have the best interest for the community at large, but there's not enough

00:05:13.000 knowledge in each individual to know how to coordinate all these people, everyone individually.

00:05:17.320 And this is true for, I mean, you think of like chess clubs have some director who runs it. You

00:05:23.660 have corporations where you have a CEO. And they don't have a director because everybody would

00:05:28.760 cheat right but they have a director because even if everybody has integrity and will play the game

00:05:33.860 fairly there's still rules to the game and things have to be organized and things have to be

00:05:37.800 scheduled and yeah right like it's very natural to us to say if you're going to start something

00:05:42.260 start an entity in which there's going to be several or maybe hundreds of people there all

00:05:47.400 these people could could wish the best for that entity whatever it is but you need to coordinate

00:05:52.680 those efforts and you'd have a committee or you have some individual doing the directing and so

00:05:57.020 same thing it would i mean think of the the the numerous vocations and interests that each that

00:06:02.940 we have in a political society even in like a pre-modern one there's just a lot and so each

00:06:08.460 uh the blacksmith could want the best for his neighbor the carpenter the farmer but in their

00:06:13.180 relations you'd have some kind of overseer that would then direct them in their common so common

00:06:19.820 life together could we say it like this that nations and by consequence governments are not

00:06:26.780 merely necessary by virtue of our fallenness but by virtue of our finitude the fact that we're

00:06:32.460 creaturely yeah you know that even if we had never fallen in a pre-lapsarian world we would still

00:06:37.420 never be infinite we wouldn't be omniscient we wouldn't be omnipresent we wouldn't be any of

00:06:41.740 those things we would still be creaturely so even if unfallen still finite and it's by virtue of

00:06:46.140 our finitude that we require an organizing principle. Yeah, that's on civil government.

00:06:51.580 The other idea is that there would be distinct nations with their various customs and ways in

00:06:55.580 life. And I think this follows from, if you imagine man spreading across the earth, not every spot is

00:07:03.200 habitable and there'd be distinct city-states or peoples that would coalesce around maybe the water

00:07:09.040 like the ocean or maybe lakes or in forests or whatever. And even though they would have a

00:07:13.960 connection to the root of Adam, there would still be a separate geographic separation and there'd be

00:07:18.660 a separation of time. These people live on the other side of the mountain. Yeah. And like you

00:07:22.960 said, there's the, we have limitations of not being able to communicate directly. Now we can

00:07:28.040 do internet and all that, but, but ordinarily you wouldn't know what's happening a few miles or

00:07:32.880 hundreds of miles away from you. And so these people will then develop their own music and

00:07:37.320 dress and their own dances and their own festivals. And even though there wouldn't be sin, there

00:07:42.540 wouldn't be, like, there would be hospitality if you went from here to there. There would be an

00:07:47.700 experience of foreignness. Like I said in a previous episode, you become a spectator rather

00:07:52.200 than a participant. And there's nothing wrong in itself with that. There's nothing wrong with this

00:07:55.540 nation doing it this way and you do it that way. And I think it shows, like, that God has designed

00:08:02.500 us that we can have a cultural diversity. It is a sort of a painting of mixed colors that when you

00:08:09.060 take nations as a whole, if you put them together, it shows the wisdom of God in creating man such

00:08:15.840 that they can have diverse ways of life. And those ways of life, though different, can be sinless,

00:08:22.400 can be good. And so that's how I'm thinking. I also think if you believe that everyone would

00:08:28.680 be the same, what faculty of man would make that happen? Are we omniscient? Do we know what's

00:08:34.400 happening? Is all the culture established by Adam in the beginning then mandated through all the

00:08:39.200 peoples who spread the earth? So it just seems very obvious to me, given how we understand ourselves

00:08:44.900 in like our non-sinful nature, in the nature as created by God, that there would be these distinct

00:08:51.560 nations. And so when we look around the world today, we can see nations that contain sinful

00:08:57.660 elements, everything from sinful liturgies and pagan sacrifice, all these things that are bad,

00:09:03.340 but the diversity in itself and the differences that we find among different peoples that we

00:09:09.280 don't think consider sinless the different ways of dressing and dancing and music and the we don't

00:09:14.200 find that stuff bad but it does show that people as they move apart from one another will develop

00:09:20.200 these unique ways of life so i think that's natural to us and if that's natural to us that

00:09:24.780 means nationhood itself its distinctness is natural to us and uh that should be affirmed

00:09:30.740 And because it's natural and naturally good for us,

00:09:34.580 then grace does not destroy it.

00:09:36.360 So that's the logic I go to.

00:09:37.960 That's good.

00:09:38.500 I like that.

00:09:39.620 And like people push back a lot against that.

00:09:42.560 I don't need to go too far into that critique,

00:09:44.340 but I think if you just reflect like two things,

00:09:47.320 again, reflect on, we enjoy diversity, like in a way,

00:09:51.700 like we enjoy going to a foreign country

00:09:53.600 and experiencing difference.

00:09:54.780 And we sometimes marvel at the different ways people act.

00:09:57.580 And we consider that good.

00:09:58.760 when we imagine like you know as uh you see like a missionary board uh where they have like here's

00:10:04.400 the different countries and here's the like you know it's all kind of silly and um stereotypical

00:10:08.760 but you have like the different dress and ways of all and you can think pray for the peoples of the

00:10:13.120 world well in that way it's kind of cool to see how people are different right and they do things

00:10:18.080 differently and they have different names and names for things and anyway i won't keep going on

00:10:22.240 that. But, um, so when we get to Christian nation, I remember like the Ugandan, uh, choir,

00:10:28.640 the kids choir, like come and visit, you know, Baptist churches, you know, growing up and, um,

00:10:34.720 they would come and raise money for Uganda and they would bring, you know, on their visit,

00:10:39.080 like 20, 30, 40 kids who were part of like a program that was being supported by, you know,

00:10:44.420 American churches where they would preach the gospel and those kinds of things, but they would

00:10:48.120 also have schools and they would bring the kids and choir and they wouldn't come and sing you

00:10:52.820 know amazing grace they would come and sing ugandan songs yeah you know they were christian

00:10:57.440 but still ugandan uh with with different you know drums and instruments and and sync your patient

00:11:04.580 and and different you know melodies that were distinct to their people and if they came and

00:11:10.320 sing without any accent perfect english you know amazing grace with a symphony like we might say

00:11:17.100 well this is really cool how these ugandan kids you know are you know have learned western culture 1.00

00:11:21.260 but we'd probably be a little bit disappointed because we're expecting ugandan culture you know

00:11:26.880 and so yeah right we get that and i think that i think my my argument would be more obvious to

00:11:32.740 people in a in a pre-modern era um but nowadays we have a homogenizing tendency like we we kind of

00:11:39.740 even though we like diversity we're also think that everything should kind of be the same

00:11:44.480 McDonald's in every corner, I suppose. People don't like that. That's one of the weird things

00:11:49.640 too, is you don't like going to the Coliseum in Rome and across the streets at McDonald's. You

00:11:56.140 think it spoils something. But at the same time, we kind of want everything to be the same. It

00:12:01.720 doesn't make any sense. But I think in a pre-modern world, that would make more sense to

00:12:04.500 people. But then if we move to Christian nation, what this means then is that you can have 0.81

00:12:10.880 Christian nations that are different than one another culturally, and yet still be just as

00:12:16.540 Christian. So you can have different ecclesial traditions. I know Presbyterians like the

00:12:21.320 regulative principle, but sorry, that's Scottish. I mean, there is something to say for the 0.91

00:12:27.120 regulative principle, and I actually affirm it in a moderate way. But there would be different

00:12:32.160 peoples in different places doing different things in church. And ordinarily, and especially

00:12:37.580 most christians would be okay with that um and the even even the like when uh opc ministers go

00:12:44.740 to uganda they have to and there's a mission in uganda and the for the opc they have to accommodate

00:12:50.760 that difference of culture in their ecclesial practices um even if they they don't want to

00:12:56.440 um they do but but you know there is that presbyterian thing anyway so like you'd have

00:13:02.420 just as you'd have christian nations all across the world in the post-millennial hope but each

00:13:07.280 one would be different. They'd identify through their ancestors and the great events that they'd

00:13:13.220 honor. Let's say they were pagan and they became Christian. Well, they would honor that missionary

00:13:18.100 who came to them to preach the gospel. When I was in Hungary, there was a statue to a

00:13:26.180 missionary who was martyred by the Hungarians when they were pagans. And he was from Italy.

00:13:31.820 So he came from Italy to Hungary, and he preached the gospel, and he was killed, he was martyred.

00:13:38.320 And so now that Hungarians is a historically Christian nation, they honor that person who came to preach the gospel.

00:13:45.620 Despite the fact that they rejected it, it is something they've now, as a sort of, I guess, national repentance, and now honor of the guy who came, even though he's Italian.

00:13:55.440 But that's uniquely Hungarian. 0.95

00:13:57.120 Like, I can see that and say, that's great, but it's not mine. 0.77

00:13:59.680 Like that's, that's different than when I think of my ancestors, I think of Mayflower, I think of, uh, Massachusetts Bay Colony, you know, Salem, Massachusetts. I think of that because that's where my people come from. They're the ones who Christianized this land, made the trek, and I honor them, um, because I'm connected to them. Um, but that's me as an American.

00:14:19.420 So, yeah, so the Christianity element doesn't eradicate that.

00:14:23.480 It doesn't remove it, doesn't take it away,

00:14:25.260 the cultural elements of your society.

00:14:28.700 It perfects it, it corrects it.

00:14:31.400 So the analogy, I've used this in a previous episode,

00:14:34.040 but the analogy is with the family.

00:14:36.840 So natural family, you like board games,

00:14:40.020 you like hiking, you might like taking a Saturday drive

00:14:43.020 on the country road or whatever you like doing as a family.

00:14:46.520 If you became a Christian,

00:14:47.600 you don't have to get rid of that. Like if you like, I knew a guy who unfortunately was really

00:14:52.020 into, um, road biking and, uh, he became a Christian and he thought that he should get 0.99

00:14:57.680 rid of that. Um, eventually he came back to it and all that. Now, if it was like an excessive 0.99

00:15:01.800 thing, it's corrected. You shouldn't still like being on the bike and ride around in the streets.

00:15:06.000 But, um, but, uh, so that, and that's okay. It affirms what you like. It's just like an individual

00:15:11.720 who becomes Christian does not lose his personality. Like I have a personality,

00:15:16.500 you have your personality. All these people have their personalities. And I didn't lose that when

00:15:21.140 I became a Christian. You didn't lose yours. Your kids aren't going to lose theirs. And so,

00:15:28.700 yeah, same thing with the nation. You retain that. But then there's a question of, well, what if,

00:15:34.940 can it just be Christians? Like, can everyone just be a Christian in a nation? Can we all

00:15:38.840 compose, just pluck, like, let's say we pluck all these Christians from different parts of the world 1.00

00:15:43.640 and put them in a place 1.00

00:15:45.800 and we all suddenly say,

00:15:47.540 we're going to be a political community now.

00:15:49.120 We're going to be a Christian society.

00:15:51.680 What would that work? 1.00

00:15:52.980 And I would say it would not work. 1.00

00:15:56.100 You don't speak the same language.

00:15:58.440 You don't have the same political ideals.

00:16:02.640 You don't have,

00:16:03.640 like we, an Anglo-Protestant tradition,

00:16:05.460 we like limited government.

00:16:07.760 The Nordic countries don't like that.

00:16:10.620 China doesn't like that.

00:16:13.640 Other countries, yeah, most countries don't like that.

00:16:15.620 And so you bring them all together and you're like,

00:16:17.340 I think there should be high taxation

00:16:18.720 so that we can all provide ourselves

00:16:21.020 and love ourselves through taxation

00:16:22.800 such that we can have single-payer healthcare.

00:16:25.520 But then the Moscow, Idaho crowd comes along

00:16:29.080 and they say, that's socialism, that's theft.

00:16:32.200 It's just not gonna work

00:16:33.200 because we have different ideas of politics.

00:16:36.340 Now, if you were to go,

00:16:37.520 let's say you're a theonomist, Baptist, post-millennial,

00:16:41.760 and you agree on everything 0.91

00:16:43.860 and you were to go to Germany

00:16:45.320 and meet a guy who's exactly that,

00:16:47.680 who also speaks English,

00:16:48.900 you know who I'm talking about.

00:16:51.760 And you're like, we're just the same.

00:16:53.120 We could form a political community.

00:16:54.480 Well, of course you could.

00:16:55.940 You agree on everything.

00:16:57.400 You're probably also all libertarians as well.

00:17:00.680 And so, yeah, but if you go to,

00:17:03.020 you know, a Lutheran church

00:17:05.080 among the few faithful left in Norway,

00:17:07.000 they probably are not going to agree with you

00:17:09.220 that taxation is theft.

00:17:11.760 they're going to think actually my tax dollars go such that i can love my community through

00:17:16.340 social welfare or social socialized medicine right so anyway um yeah anyway it's not going

00:17:23.380 to work you still need a cohesive people with a people in a place with ancestry in a place that

00:17:28.500 is then christian so that's my monologue on that that's great i think the uh the the whiskey is

00:17:36.080 letting me just go on long rants like you do all the time. Yeah, I do that a lot.

00:17:43.060 No, that makes a lot of sense. I agree. Only pushback I would give, because I'm with you

00:17:48.160 probably 90%, only pushback is I do see how it can be tempting or leave the door open to,

00:17:56.980 basically what you have to distinguish between is what are true cultural distinctions that are

00:18:04.220 permissible by scripture and then what you know there are some because if you're not careful you

00:18:11.160 can you can give off the impression that um that basically there's no transcendent morals there's

00:18:19.260 you know very or at least very few there's you know very few like god does have his law word

00:18:26.080 it is transcendent it is immutable there are certain things that uh people can even collectively

00:18:32.360 decide we like this and god can decide too bad you like it but it's bad it's wrong this is the

00:18:41.780 wrong way of doing things and so um that would be probably the only pushback that i would offer

00:18:47.500 is that there has to be something to temper preference there has to be you know like for me

00:18:53.140 you know i've come to the point where it's like i would say i'm you know i'm not a reconstructionist

00:18:59.780 but I'm a general equity theonomy guy with, the way I word it is, with strong sympathies to natural

00:19:05.740 law, is how I would say it. You're almost there. You're close. I'm in the arc. But part of what

00:19:17.400 makes me strong in my sympathies to natural law is I recognize that although I think the general

00:19:24.460 equity of the civil laws, and then the summary law and the Decalogue gets you pretty far. You

00:19:30.600 know, let's go with special revelation as far as it'll go, right? Special, you know, like God's

00:19:34.280 written two books. Natural revelation is God's book as well. He's speaking. But one of those

00:19:39.460 books is, I think, the perspicuity of special revelation is higher than the perspicuity of

00:19:46.160 natural revelation. And it's not just in terms of clarity, but also the fact that with special

00:19:54.260 Revelation, the canon is closed. Whereas providentially, throughout history, like

00:19:58.740 nature in terms of the cosmos and the stars and constellations and the skies, you know, Psalm 19,

00:20:04.320 pour out speech, these things are timeless. But there's also a sense within natural revelation,

00:20:10.820 there is some place for providence and history and how things unfold. And whereas special

00:20:18.380 revelation, the canon is closed. So it's, I would say two aspects, heightened clarity,

00:20:23.360 and then also completion and in that sense there's a superiority given to special revelation and i

00:20:28.860 don't think you would disagree with me he would say yeah wherever the bible speaks yeah let's go

00:20:32.360 with the bible yeah um the problem is not that the bible is unclear and not that the bible isn't

00:20:38.900 finished complete the canon being closed but the bible is not exhaustive um meaning that um there

00:20:46.360 are still multiple different uh studies and practices and fields uh where the bible just

00:20:51.760 doesn't speak exhaustively to those things wherever the bible speaks it speaks clearly

00:20:55.640 and the central message of the bible is a completed whole message um but when it comes

00:21:02.080 to mathematics and all these things like it is true that ultimately it's grounded in the fact

00:21:05.520 that you know like why does two plus two equal four because uh because jesus is lord and i can

00:21:12.120 say that and that's and that is true um but i also um in order to understand trigonometry and

00:21:18.720 you know, and all these different quantum mechanics, you know, like, um, I'm, I'm appealing

00:21:23.620 to nature. I'm relying upon God, but, uh, as he speaks through nature. And so all that being said,

00:21:29.360 um, this is the big thing that kind of got me out of, um, the, the, the tight theonomic, uh, position

00:21:36.780 immigration. So the theonomist would say, well, immigration can be drastically mitigated. And I

00:21:43.800 think they're right, um, to a point. And then, and then actually I think it shifts and they become

00:21:48.540 terribly wrong. And this is part of what changed my opinion. So they would say, I think it's three

00:21:54.100 or four or five different mechanisms that would mitigate immigration. One, if you had an ideal

00:21:58.660 theonomic society. So let's say America is the theonomic nation of America. And post-millennialism,

00:22:05.800 it all panned out, it worked, and we're rocking and rolling. Okay, you need to make a public

00:22:12.320 profession of christ of you know to the christian faith the triune god um if you want to live in

00:22:18.480 america so you need to be a christian um you need to go through legal avenues you can't be an illegal

00:22:23.740 immigrant you have to come legally um also no welfare in this system and that's something that

00:22:29.700 you know you would we've talked about and but from a theonomic perspective um no wealth welfare

00:22:35.080 that belongs to the household in terms of sphere sovereignty and not to the state

00:22:39.400 um so there is generosity but it's not compelled it's not compulsory um and so therefore it's not

00:22:46.140 through taxation so no welfare so so that removes an incentive and works as a mitigation to

00:22:50.760 immigration you're not coming for a handout you're coming for opportunity sure um but but you're

00:22:55.580 gonna have to work you're not gonna get free cash um and then uh you have to do it legally you have

00:23:00.080 to make a christian profession and then uh let's say even you know to add an extra thing um there's

00:23:06.320 a sense of you know like ruth your people will be my people your god will be my god and and we

00:23:10.660 could argue from that i think from from a um maybe not a necessary inference but but uh by way of

00:23:16.460 implication we can argue from the text your people are going to be my people part of that means your

00:23:20.720 history your customs those kinds of things i'm coming to um i'm coming to work i'm coming as a

00:23:26.540 christian i'm coming legally and i am coming to be an american i'm going to assimilate okay so

00:23:31.980 there's four things. However, in terms of theory, theoretically, what's possible?

00:23:40.220 Will this say postmillennialism is true? And I am postmillennial. And let's say theonomy is true

00:23:46.280 for ethics and law and government. What happens if in the great postmillennial hope, America is

00:23:52.340 Christianized 5,000 years before all the other nations? Well, you don't get welfare, you don't 0.85

00:23:58.880 get a handout, but let's say all the other nations, like, is free money the only incentive?

00:24:03.460 What if all the other nations are torn by war? What you would get in a theonomic Christian nation 1.00

00:24:07.980 is not a handout, but you get safety, no cartel, no tribalistic wars, no, it's not North Korea. 0.98

00:24:16.800 I mean, just for safety alone, much less economic opportunity, because we would think that Christian

00:24:22.020 laws would lend towards blessing, you know, material blessing, all these kinds of things.

00:24:25.800 So you're going to get economic opportunity.

00:24:28.020 You're going to get personal and physical safety for you, your children, your family.

00:24:33.000 And freedom of worship. 0.92

00:24:34.600 Let's say you live in another nation and Christianity is illegal. 0.84

00:24:37.920 You have to do underground house churches and things like that.

00:24:40.220 So freedom of public worship and the Christian God being the publicly recognized Christian faith.

00:24:47.140 In other words, on one hand, it mitigates, I think in the short run, there'd be kind of like a bell curve.

00:24:53.300 in the short run, it would mitigate immigration. A bunch of people right now would say, well,

00:24:58.280 I'm not coming if I don't get free money. But in the long run, if the other nations

00:25:02.780 continue to rebel against Christ and become worse and worse, you know, hell holes,

00:25:07.460 and America becomes this incredibly prosperous, safe, moral, virtuous place, well, that's

00:25:14.620 incentive enough in itself. And so then what do you do? Theoretically, you have all these

00:25:21.360 mitigations put in place you got to be a christian you got to do it legally you got to work hard and

00:25:24.640 got to assimilate got it uh what if even with those things it's it's feasible it's possible

00:25:32.560 what if four billion people want to come to america legally to work to become american

00:25:38.300 assimilate and all make a christian profession theonomy has no other means no other mechanism

00:25:44.260 to mitigate that yeah and that's why uh one word prudence became really important to me

00:25:51.580 i was like i i don't know what you call that theologically if that's natural law then i then

00:25:55.760 i i'm a natural law person because there's got to be something in the christian political theology

00:26:02.500 to stop four billion people from coming to the united states so that's that's where for me i

00:26:08.500 started you know what i mean yeah yeah what do you think yeah you'd have to have some principle

00:26:15.440 of discrimination by which i mean like not in a bad way but in a in a way where some people are

00:26:21.680 in some people are out that's not necessarily moral and that's my whole point is i think there's

00:26:25.940 universal transcendent immutable law of god and in that sense all the nations that they're

00:26:30.460 christianized will have similarities because right there is there is such a thing as transcendent

00:26:35.720 truth. And it's across the board. It doesn't matter if you're Chinese or American or whatever.

00:26:39.740 Truth is truth. But it's not all moral. It's not all transcendent truth. There is something for

00:26:47.320 prudence, reason, and even preference to simply say, hey, we love you. We wish you no ill will.

00:26:53.380 We'll send missionaries. We might even be charitable and help as you seek to build your

00:26:59.040 nation, but you need to stay there. We're not allowing you to come. We're saying no.

00:27:03.540 and i don't think that's immoral yeah if you don't have a mechanism yeah i mean that's that's

00:27:11.160 kind of the state the west is in in a way right right now um is that you have there's no

00:27:17.620 i mean we have quotas but yeah i i guess the theonomist would have

00:27:23.560 the potential problem there um but i i do think it would be i do think it would be able to answer

00:27:29.700 that for me. And I pose the question to a lot. Oh, really? Yeah. I'd be interested in like how

00:27:34.280 they try to, I'm sure they try. I would say the decision though is moral in the sense that you

00:27:42.820 have a, you have a people that are already here and you should prefer them because that preference

00:27:51.260 itself is actually for your good and their good. It's just like, it's good for you.

00:27:57.240 like an order of morris it's just it's it is moral because it's love for neighbor and there's

00:28:02.000 a triage of neighbors that yeah and that's not some like that that's some like abstract thing

00:28:07.220 where it's like you know like when we when we talk about yeah the order of morris we're not talking

00:28:11.620 about some sort of arbitrary order of loves it actually when you think it through it makes sense

00:28:18.720 there it's better that we don't have like a a community of children in which we're no one's

00:28:24.660 a parent and we all love the children equally. There's a reason why, given our nature, that we

00:28:31.920 should prefer our children, your next-door neighbor should prefer their children. It's actually for

00:28:36.960 their good that you would give your undivided attention to these particular people. So it's

00:28:41.660 not just like a bare divine command. It's actually a command that works for the sort of being we are.

00:28:48.920 And so the same thing with the nation is that if you prefer your own nation, you prefer it because

00:28:52.940 those are the people whom you can communicate with and work with and develop a common project

00:29:01.380 in society and all that well historically with nationhood though like the further argument in

00:29:06.800 my perspective with the order of morris is these are the people i can communicate with these are

00:29:11.000 the people that i can work with i can collaborate with towards our national good and heavenly good

00:29:16.800 as well as all those things are true but also um it would be an argue from relations in terms of

00:29:23.780 family familial relation i part of the reason i would have an added obligation um is because i'm

00:29:30.340 more closely related to these people um so in the same way that like you know and we know this from

00:29:36.000 scripture you know certainly as it pertains to the immediate family you know titus um you're worse

00:29:40.920 than an unbeliever and have denied the faith if if even if you're charitable and providing you 0.87

00:29:45.940 know clothing and food for all all the kids in the village but if you neglect to provide for your own 0.90

00:29:51.180 children your own wife your own family and household then you're worse than an unbeliever 0.95

00:29:56.200 and denied the faith and so i feel like it would be an argument um by way of implication rippling 0.89

00:30:02.940 out from there and saying okay so my immediate family is my highest obligation and that i have

00:30:08.800 explicitly in scripture um but i think implicitly from that command of scripture that i can say okay

00:30:15.120 i have i have um my wife uh comes before all the other women in my neighborhood

00:30:19.920 but then i could argue beyond that um uh my parents and then i can argue my wife's parents

00:30:28.500 and then i can look at aunts and uncles and brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law and cousins

00:30:33.960 and and then if you just keep arguing out from that well even more too that the the people that

00:30:41.700 all those people worked with.

00:30:44.220 So let's say that your grandfather

00:30:47.300 had a partner in business with this other guy.

00:30:51.440 There is a sense in which you feel an obligation

00:30:53.980 to his children as well.

00:30:56.140 His grandfather worked with my grandfather

00:30:58.420 in their business.

00:30:59.420 And even though you might be very distant

00:31:01.380 in terms of genetics,

00:31:03.160 there still is that connection through them.

00:31:06.000 So now that his grandchildren,

00:31:08.840 you feel a certain affection for them

00:31:11.260 because the affection flows through your grandfather

00:31:14.220 through that other guy who then,

00:31:16.840 so, and that's just daily experience.

00:31:19.020 Like when someone says, oh, I know this guy,

00:31:20.820 or, oh, I worked with your father back in there,

00:31:22.560 or I was in the Navy with your dad back,

00:31:24.300 like there's that instant, like,

00:31:25.480 oh, I feel like I have a sort of obligation with that guy.

00:31:29.160 And that's how the love of your natural relations

00:31:33.200 can filter out into the broader community

00:31:35.460 where you feel a sense of kinship,

00:31:38.220 even with people who are not kin genetically,

00:31:40.140 who may ancestrally be very different than you but that's that's that's even the the avenue of

00:31:45.960 appeal when it comes to to need and charity like we've seen movies and we've all had you know

00:31:53.540 personal experiences with us where a guy is down on his luck you know so to speak and what does he

00:31:59.300 appeal to he makes that exact argument he says well i was in the navy with your dad right he's

00:32:04.540 going to appeal to some kind of of tie commonality relations he does he doesn't uh come well these

00:32:11.420 days it's kind of shifted um but historically that's that's the that's the appeal even not

00:32:16.060 that long ago when i was a kid that's the kind of that's the avenue that someone would take

00:32:19.340 yeah right is um would you help me because i know you or i know someone that you know or i i had a

00:32:27.320 shared experience with with one of your family members or something like that that would be the

00:32:31.780 appeal um it's it's not a natural appeal to say i'm down with my luck and you have a an added

00:32:38.820 moral obligation to help me because i'm a stranger um you don't know me from adam and and why should

00:32:45.560 you help me because you don't know me um yeah things have been an inverted they have and now

00:32:50.660 contrary to our own like yeah yeah yeah um yeah and that's yeah that's i i i people don't like

00:33:02.020 that might be the popular rhetoric but people don't act like that right i mean the the left

00:33:05.960 well i should say there is that that heat the heat thing with the the leftists who love rocks

00:33:11.340 more than their own family members right um that graph dude that's that's gold yeah that that is

00:33:17.880 that's that's where like like in the tradition you have these guys like um talk about how there

00:33:24.280 is a like eventually people become like lose their humanity and that's like that's a graph

00:33:29.800 where people literally lose their humanity where they love like you know like birds more than they

00:33:34.340 love their own mother or father right um but i think most people and i think the majority of

00:33:40.140 people watching this eventually will say yeah i do sense that a guy i don't know from adam but

00:33:47.360 who knows who was like in a foxhole with my father in Vietnam. Like this guy, I feel, I have

00:33:55.260 a sense of obligation. My dad, you know, my dad would want me to help this buddy out. Right. You

00:34:02.420 know, like, so there is that. Yeah. And so going back to, like, that's, that's why I think, like,

00:34:09.520 that's actually a very good definition way to think about the nation. It's like interconnected

00:34:13.260 connected relationships that flow from your actual kin group out into the broader population

00:34:20.180 that then kind of gives you a natural feeling of obligation for not just generosity, but just

00:34:25.760 fellowship. You can have fellowship with a guy who doesn't want anything from you except just

00:34:33.080 the fellowship of conversation. You're sitting at a bar and you realize, hey, man, this guy lived in

00:34:37.220 the same town. This happened to me several times where I'm like, hey, I'm from Napa, California.

00:34:41.900 is like, oh, I'm from Santa Rosa, or I'm from Sonoma, or I spent time in the Monterey Military

00:34:47.920 Institute, whatever it's called in Monterey. It's like, oh, really? So we talked, like, there's,

00:34:52.120 like, you have this, yeah, this natural bond of just arising from that common experiences.

00:34:57.980 And that creates, it generates a sense of obligation and generosity for those people.

00:35:03.540 Right.

00:35:03.860 The willingness to sacrifice. I mean, I think the willingness to die for your people

00:35:08.220 is not that you know everyone that is your people,

00:35:11.880 but there's some way you can imagine,

00:35:14.020 not an imaginary,

00:35:15.060 but the way you can imagine the fact

00:35:16.720 that we're a oneness of them,

00:35:19.620 that you can die for a collective group

00:35:21.600 in sacrifice for a war or something like that.

00:35:24.800 Right, yeah.

00:35:25.900 And to, you know,

00:35:27.740 I feel like the counter would be,

00:35:30.580 you know, but what about all the verses

00:35:32.220 that specifically talk about

00:35:34.060 the obligation that Israel had to love

00:35:36.500 the stranger and the alien the foreigner you know um and i think all i would say to that is that that

00:35:42.320 is a uniquely christian obligation that that that exists and and we're not denying that but i i don't

00:35:49.180 look at any of those verses and and see a commandment from god um to love the stranger at the

00:35:56.520 expense of your fellow brothers in fact if you look beyond just the verses that talk about the

00:36:03.000 sojourner, uh, when it comes to certain things like interest, charging interest on loans, um,

00:36:08.900 God, this is God's idea, not just Israel, but God himself says, um, you can give out loans and

00:36:15.040 charge interest to the foreigner, but you can't do it with your brother. Yeah. You know, or commands 0.99

00:36:20.560 even with like, like, um, indentured servanthood. Um, there are more compassionate obligations. Um,

00:36:28.560 if you had a servant who was a fellow israelite and and and the text even goes and explicitly

00:36:34.920 names it and says because he is your brother yeah he's because he's he's your kin and and so

00:36:42.500 therefore so my point is um it's not to deny we're not denying that that that is a uniquely

00:36:48.340 christian element that that we derive directly from the scripture that christians care for

00:36:53.400 strangers well and and that's but nowhere in the bible does it say caring for strangers more than

00:36:59.260 your people or at the cost of your people that's the point that right right i i mean and even the

00:37:04.340 notion of hospitality is a common notion among among pagans so you can the the theme of hospitality

00:37:11.740 is like central to um the odyssey for example so it's like um and uh and throughout the the

00:37:20.180 pagan world i listen to the idea on 2x speed the idea of receiving um receiving the stranger

00:37:28.520 is is a is kind of a universal obligation but yeah um but but it's always a matter of

00:37:35.140 the generosity you can have towards people is a matter of the surplus right so you have a

00:37:40.540 household you provide the for the needs of your people in your household and then you have a

00:37:45.760 surplus. Which Paul literally says, let the thief steal no longer, but work with his hands so that

00:37:51.340 he might have something to give. But he only has something to give if he's productive and is able

00:37:58.120 to meet his own needs and the needs of his household and has a surplus. Yeah. So you use

00:38:03.520 that. That surplus is your opportunity for generosity. And so I think that's the basis of

00:38:10.320 hospitality in the household. But then hospitality at the national level works the same way. You have

00:38:15.320 an obligation to your nation. Yeah, so there's a national hospitality. You have an obligation to

00:38:20.360 your nation, given the sort of surplus that your nation has. And as you fulfill that obligation

00:38:25.500 first and well, so first love your own. And as you love your own, and if you do that by the grace

00:38:32.800 of God well, that's what gives you the fodder to then be able to go beyond your nation and an

00:38:39.960 overflow and have the surplus of generosity towards the stranger. Yeah, and the same thing

00:38:44.140 holds for your household, if you're being so generous that it's harming your ability to

00:38:48.500 acquire wealth or even acquire the, if you're, if you're so generous that you lose the ability to

00:38:55.500 have a, have a surplus, then you're, you're losing your ability to be hospitable. It's like a military

00:39:02.180 leader and they, they just hammer us into us. They're like, yeah, you're in charge. You lead

00:39:06.560 from the front. It's a harder job than what most other guys have to face, but you have to take care

00:39:12.100 yourself. They don't want the lieutenant who got two hours of sleep last night because he was

00:39:16.360 staring at a map for 10 hours. They want the lieutenant well-rested so he can make a decision

00:39:20.860 that saves lives. You are more dangerous if you don't care for yourself. You don't take time for

00:39:27.580 yourself. The same thing with the family. If you don't take care of your own family, you can't be

00:39:31.860 hospitable. Same with the nation. You have a common wealth. That wealth can then be used in

00:39:37.620 hospitable ways, but you can't overdo it. I think a lot of Christians have this idea of radical 0.97

00:39:42.580 hospitality or radical this and radical that. Yeah, David Platt sucks. I agree. 1.00

00:39:48.020 Yeah, they treat the nation as this thing that you can destroy with your generosity. And that's

00:39:53.920 precisely what people like Russell Moore and others, it is a type of Christian nationalism

00:39:59.780 where they're like, our Christian duty is to treat the nation as a way to fulfill our Christian

00:40:05.780 duties well it's like our politicians except instead of politicians treating the nation as

00:40:09.900 a tax farm it's pastors who treat the uh their churches as a tithe farm but it's all for somebody

00:40:15.820 else yeah yeah and so yeah so you you you destroy the surplus you destroy the wealth you destroy

00:40:22.880 the nation you you you treat your own people as second to to someone else to others um yeah and

00:40:31.220 And yeah, so, and I don't think that's my point

00:40:35.980 going back to like 20 minutes ago

00:40:37.740 is that that is a moral thing.

00:40:39.960 It is moral for you to consider your people first

00:40:44.240 because they are, like, you can do good for those people.

00:40:49.720 If you're overly generous with your nation,

00:40:51.740 you can actually do harm to your immediate neighbor.

00:40:54.400 So it is moral.

00:40:55.620 What I hear you saying is there is a mechanism

00:40:58.320 for mitigating mass immigration, 0.87

00:41:00.540 even if they all profess Christ and come through legal means and plan to work and plan to assimilate. 0.97

00:41:05.120 There's still, that's great, but that in itself is not sufficient.

00:41:11.600 If four billion people are all willing to do those things simultaneously, you can still say no.

00:41:16.220 And the reason you can say no is not arbitrary or merely preference.

00:41:20.220 It is preference, but it's preference based on morals.

00:41:22.520 But what I hear you saying, it's morals, but it's not biblicist morals with chapter and verse.

00:41:28.560 it's morals derived from nature well it's i mean not yeah it is morals derived from nature but it's

00:41:35.700 also it's political wisdom of assessing the state of your country and determining whether or not

00:41:45.040 including these people or this number of people will have a detrimental effect on the people who

00:41:52.460 your vote you're most obligated to right um so you could say it's a natural i mean i think it

00:41:57.540 is a natural principle, but it really comes down to the wisdom and prudence. So prudence is just

00:42:03.800 the word saying you assess the situation, you have these goods in mind, and you make a decision

00:42:09.540 to maximize the good. And sometimes that means there's cost to it. Like you say,

00:42:16.500 the cost is the $4 billion have no place to go. You only take in $200,000 or whatever the number

00:42:21.880 is um because you're trying to maximize a good given your your uh your order of obligation um

00:42:28.780 and the sort of good just just like you would you would um aid your children uh over some other

00:42:37.040 child who's in the same situation right like that's your obligation that's what you do as a

00:42:41.700 family and you feel you could have benevolence like goodwill for that person but you simply

00:42:46.400 don't have the resources as a household to then supply the the the good to that other person right

00:42:52.620 um yeah and that's pretty much where i've landed is i think that um the summary law of god that i

00:43:00.100 think is um transcendent and timeless found in the decalogue um that between that coupled with

00:43:08.800 you know the ceremonial law being abrogated but the the civil codes the general equity being

00:43:13.820 extracted, which I think in pretty much every case can track back to summary law. It's an

00:43:19.000 extension, a particular application of one of the Ten Commandments. But the civil, you know,

00:43:24.880 general equity of the civil law, and then the summary law and the Decalogue, that this is what's

00:43:30.580 clear, and then that becomes the starting place and sets the bounds. But I guess where I've arrived

00:43:37.860 in my theology is that that sets the bounds, and it does a lot of the heavy lifting. I think it

00:43:44.940 gets us a lot of the way. It's not nothing, not even close to nothing. But there's still decisions

00:43:50.920 then within those bounds. It sets the boundaries and puts up the buffers, but then there's still

00:43:57.060 decisions by way of reason and prudence and the light of nature within those bounds that still

00:44:02.980 need to be made. Yeah. And it doesn't have, I mean, you don't have to just appeal to the light

00:44:07.880 of nature. You can apply scripture, but I think if you're in the political context, you have to

00:44:15.900 first understand what's the end of politics. Well, what's the, what are you doing when you do

00:44:22.380 politics? And you have the end being the common good of the people who are within that political

00:44:29.820 community. That's what politics is. It's seeking after, maximizing the good, given the circumstances

00:44:35.200 of that community. And so you have then available means. The means could be law, policy. I mean,

00:44:43.260 through civil governments, usually, you know, it'd be law. And then in order to decide upon

00:44:49.700 which means or which policy you're going to enact, you have to again consider the end,

00:44:55.100 which is the good. And the definition of the good can be derived from reason, experience,

00:45:00.600 and scripture. But then you have to, then you say, well, what policy is going to achieve that

00:45:05.820 end of governance? The good, the maximal good of the people who's under this political order.

00:45:12.120 And that can be a consideration of scripture, experience, and reason. And if it's scripture

00:45:17.020 alone, that's fine. If it's, well, most countries do it this way and it worked for them to do it

00:45:23.460 this way. So we're going to follow experience. And then there's also reason as well. So

00:45:28.640 yeah, I think that's like the big thing that I think is different from me and theonomists,

00:45:35.580 some hardcore theonomists, is I treat politics as a political thing, I guess,

00:45:43.660 instead of seeing that we have this ready-made blueprint for law, and that's a function of

00:45:48.780 politics to enact these these laws it's a matter of what's the end of politics what are the means

00:45:55.340 to achieving that um and then deliberating and deciding through prudence and wisdom on how to

00:46:01.380 achieve that so it's um and and and then making decision um whereas theonomists tend to approach

00:46:07.540 in political life as more of and correct me if i'm wrong but many tend to think there's a

00:46:13.540 non-legislative function and you just have this law book already set this is the law of the land

00:46:19.820 and then you just adjudicate based upon that that's some non-non-legislative theon not i'll

00:46:24.560 think that in large part but yeah but i think it's a matter of like what is politics yeah and and a

00:46:30.320 large part but even the even the theonomist would acknowledge that um you know so like the sixth

00:46:36.280 commandment thou shalt not murder and then stated in the positive light uh thou shalt preserve you

00:46:41.400 know, protect the dignity and safety of life. And then, you know, civil codes have the general

00:46:47.380 equity of that. So a parapet around the roof of a house, you know, because people slept up there

00:46:53.240 because they didn't have HVAC and during the summer months when it was hot and you didn't

00:46:57.160 want somebody rolling off and getting injured. And so you're preserving life. And so the theonomist

00:47:01.440 would be able to, you know, acknowledge like, well, we don't have balconies on the roof today

00:47:06.960 because we're not hanging out on the roof.

00:47:09.540 But we do have seatbelts and we do have,

00:47:12.460 so they are doing that.

00:47:14.500 This is where I think someone like yourself

00:47:16.540 and myself can actually be,

00:47:18.520 have a lot of unity on this.

00:47:19.960 Yes.

00:47:20.640 Because I might be more open, I don't know.

00:47:23.500 I might be more open to, I don't even know.

00:47:28.120 I would be more open to like,

00:47:29.780 to taking the collective experience of,

00:47:32.360 and pagan authors and that sort of thing

00:47:33.780 and seeing how did they handle this issue

00:47:35.320 and all that stuff.

00:47:36.960 But if we agree on what we're trying to do

00:47:40.920 when we enact a law that is for the common good

00:47:43.580 of the community.

00:47:43.700 We're trying to make sure people don't die, okay?

00:47:45.440 Yeah, it's like, yeah, we want to ban murder.

00:47:48.240 And then there's also, I mean,

00:47:49.080 the positive element is promoting life,

00:47:50.560 which you could probably do a lot with that.

00:47:53.040 But I think there's a lot of commonality there.

00:47:56.500 So one side would want to say scripture alone

00:47:59.340 for the devising, for deliberation upon the means.

00:48:03.460 I would say, yes, scripture,

00:48:05.600 but also let's consider these other things as well.

00:48:07.720 So I think there's a lot of, so yeah, we could,

00:48:10.020 I think if we were like the dual dictators

00:48:14.200 or something like that,

00:48:15.280 you and I could get along and come decision on it.

00:48:18.400 Or if we're part of the legislative body.

00:48:19.420 And the only difference of what you just espoused

00:48:21.080 and where I would be at is you would say,

00:48:22.860 yeah, well, scripture, of course,

00:48:24.440 but scripture plus reason.

00:48:26.280 And what I would, the only added clarification

00:48:29.480 that I would give from my personal position,

00:48:31.980 that is I would say, yep, scripture and reason,

00:48:34.380 but scripture first, then reason. So what I would say is as far as we can get with scripture

00:48:41.140 and its clarity applied to this particular situation, and then the moment that we've

00:48:47.280 exhausted scripture, then now reason. And I'll be the first to acknowledge we're going to need

00:48:53.300 some reason here, very likely. But for me, it's not scripture and reason. And we'll do some reason,

00:49:02.520 then we'll do some scripture, then some more scripture, then some more reason. For me, it'd be

00:49:06.060 like, you know, the old analogy of if you have pebbles, sand, and water, and you're trying to

00:49:12.660 fill a glass, you need to put the pebbles in first, and then the sand, and then the water.

00:49:16.820 And so for me, like the reason would be like the water, and scripture would be the pebbles. You put

00:49:22.200 the scripture in first, but we're going to need some water too. The pebbles will not fill every

00:49:27.920 cubic inch of the glass. It'll cover a lot of surface area, but there's still going to be room

00:49:35.940 for some water to fill in the gaps. All right. Cool. We're in agreement then. So we can end

00:49:43.020 today on agreement. There you go. Great. Okay. Well, thank you guys so much for tuning in. This

00:49:47.100 was episode five in a 10-part series with myself and Dr. Wolf talking all things Christian

00:49:52.880 nationalism i really encourage you if this is your first one to tune into um this was a good episode

00:49:59.040 definitely not bad but episode three and four i'm telling you like those episode three and four if

00:50:05.580 you're like man you know if you're like ah yeah but it wasn't that spike this was you know this

00:50:09.520 was like um this was you know one more thing yeah yeah yeah we're boring today yeah yeah i thought

00:50:15.660 you guys were extremist i i came to be offended uh then watch episode four and uh and you will be

00:50:22.660 sufficiently offended. So thanks for tuning in.

The NXR Podcast - August 02, 2025

THE FRIDAY SPECIAL - It Is Not Sin To Love Your Kin

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