THE FRIDAY SPECIAL - It Is Not Sin To Love Your Kin
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Misogyny
3
sentences flagged
Toxicity
1
sentences flagged
Hate speech
26
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode, Dr. Stephen Wolfe and Dr. Joel Webin discuss Christian nationalism and how it relates to Christian nation-hood. They discuss the difference between a Christian nation and a Christian political community, and how nations were created in pre-Lapsarian times.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform.
00:00:03.800
I get it. It's annoying. Everybody asks, but I'm going to tell you why.
00:00:07.540
When you give us a positive review, what that does is it triggers the algorithm
00:00:12.040
so that our podcast shows up on more people's newsfeeds.
00:00:16.160
You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't.
00:00:21.580
We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.
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.
00:01:04.020
of a 10-part series talking about Christian nationalism.
00:01:07.300
And the last two episodes, I think we're bangers,
00:01:15.540
Yeah, I think we gave them plenty of content,
1.00
00:01:19.960
There's probably some males over there too, right?
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
00:04:50.820
doesn't run into you because he's following the rules,
00:04:54.160
So the same thing would be in a complex society.
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,
00:09:44.340
but I think if you just reflect like two things,
00:09:47.320
again, reflect on, we enjoy diversity, like in a way,
00:09:54.780
And we sometimes marvel at the different ways people act.
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.
00:13:57.120
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.
00:14:31.400
So the analogy, I've used this in a previous episode,
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.
00:14:47.600
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
00:16:13.640
Other countries, yeah, most countries don't like that.
00:16:15.620
And so you bring them all together and you're like,
00:16:37.520
let's say you're a theonomist, Baptist, post-millennial,
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.
00:24:28.020
You're going to get personal and physical safety for you, your children, your family.
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
00:30:51.440
There is a sense in which you feel an obligation
00:31:11.260
because the affection flows through your grandfather
00:31:20.820
or, oh, I worked with your father back in there,
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
00:31:40.140
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.
00:35:03.860
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,
00:35:36.500
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
00:40:39.960
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.
00:40:51.740
you can actually do harm to your immediate neighbor.
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
00:47:40.920
when we enact a law that is for the common good
00:47:43.700
We're trying to make sure people don't die, okay?
00:47:53.040
But I think there's a lot of commonality there.
00:47:59.340
for the devising, for deliberation upon the means.
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,
00:48:15.280
you and I could get along and come decision on it.
00:48:19.420
And the only difference of what you just espoused
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.