The NXR Podcast - THE LIVESTREAM - Are All People Really Equal？ w Dr. Stephen Wolfe

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00:00:30.000 In today's episode, Dr. Stephen Wolfe, who is the author of The Case for Christian Nationalism,

00:00:37.140 will be joining the show. We're going to be talking about an article that he recently

00:00:41.760 published through American Reformer in response to John Carter's pseudonym, an author who

00:00:48.560 essentially is saying that egalitarianism and everything that it's produced is ultimately the

00:00:54.600 fault of Christianity, that rooted in the doctrine of the Imago Dei, that all people are made in the

00:01:00.780 image of God. That's where we've got, stemming from that, forced equality for all peoples, men and

00:01:08.140 women, individuals, and even nationality, different peoples from around the world, everybody being

00:01:14.600 equal, everybody being the same. So he titled his article the Imago Dei, which is clever. I think

00:01:23.020 that's fair to say, basically saying that Christianity is the source, the fault of all

00:01:29.520 of our BLM nonsense, all of our DEI nonsense. And Stephen Wolf did a good job responding to that,

00:01:38.680 showing that this is the product of liberalism, but not historic Christianity. Now, I understand

00:01:43.460 why there may be some confusion, because Christianity, in many cases today, is nothing

00:01:48.840 more than liberalism 20th century liberalism walking around in a christian skin suit but

00:01:54.440 understanding historic christianity and the distinctions are absolutely vital sadly there are

00:02:02.060 a growing number i think of people on the right wing who are antithetical to christianity because

00:02:10.940 they see christianity as the culprit for what brought us here today but it's not liberalism

00:02:17.820 and Christianity. Historic Christianity remain distinct, and that's what we'll be discussing

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00:02:48.240 forward slash donate. Let's dive in.

00:03:01.440 All right, Dr. Stephen Wolfe, thanks for joining us. Go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us

00:03:06.440 why you wrote this article. Yeah. So I'm Stephen Wolf, author of Case for Christian Nationalism

00:03:13.360 and all that. Yeah. So for this article, I was actually asked to write it by someone,

00:03:20.340 an American reformer. I had not heard of John Carter or his blog, but apparently it was an

00:03:25.980 article that was well-read within our circles. And it's a subject that I've studied a lot and

00:03:31.180 thought about. And so I thought I would give it a review. I think it's very important

00:03:35.960 to—I do—actually, in a way, I agree with his concern that there is an overemphasis upon

00:03:44.580 equality, egalitarianism, broadly understood among Christians today. And we use language

00:03:52.940 like infinite dignity and stuff like that. And so I thought it was an opportunity to say,

00:03:56.900 actually, it's not equality or inequality. It's actually you can affirm both. You can affirm that

00:04:04.820 there's a fundamental equality between man, and yet also at the same time logically and coherently

00:04:12.440 affirm that you can have inequality in various ways. And so what I was really trying to do

00:04:19.020 was in a way less respond to him, even though I did, but actually try to bring this information

00:04:27.100 and these arguments to Christians so that they don't have to fall and assume that this talk of

00:04:33.200 the imago dei, and image of God, and all that necessitates a type of modern understanding of

00:04:42.440 equality. So that's what I was trying to do. Great. So I think for this first segment,

00:04:48.040 what we'd like to do is get a little bit, share some of the quotations from the article by

00:04:52.800 John Carter, and steel man his position a little bit, because I think some of his thinking

00:04:58.300 does accord with nature and the antithesis to his thinking that we would not categorize as being

00:05:06.660 historically Christian, but the antithesis to his thinking is, I think, much of the cause of many

00:05:12.720 problems that we're currently experiencing in the West. So Wesley Todd is going to share some

00:05:18.940 of the quotations from this article, and we'll all kind of respond together. Yeah, I think this

00:05:23.980 is an important argument to be aware of. For yourself, Dr. Wolfe, for us certainly, we spend

00:05:29.680 a majority of our time defending scripture and our exegesis of it from the left. So that would be

00:05:34.960 those that would attempt to take the Bible, and especially the New Testament, maybe the Beatitudes

00:05:39.040 from the Sermon on the Mount, and make prescriptions that would say things such as borders or strict

00:05:44.300 immigration policy would be unbiblical. I remember a post from years ago where a woman claimed

00:05:48.660 Jesus was a brown-skinned Jewish refugee who hung out with sex workers and advocated for universal

00:05:54.400 health care. So she's going in, she's attempting right there to try to rewrite scripture to kind

00:05:58.820 of fit into her narrative. We spent a lot of time saying, no, here's what the Bible itself

00:06:02.860 actually teaches. But this other attack that John Carter kind of has here, it's not so much

00:06:08.000 as I see it, an attack based on the scripture itself, but it's based on kind of the consequences

00:06:14.200 and what came out of a Christian Europe.

00:06:17.160 And so instead of going to the Bible and saying,

00:06:18.800 well, the Bible advocates for all of these really leftist,

00:06:21.580 really progressive ideas,

00:06:23.200 we'll say the Bible says what it says,

00:06:24.500 but the people that took those ideas

00:06:26.080 and then went on and applied them

00:06:27.700 created the 20th century liberalism that we have today.

00:06:31.580 And that's doing a lot of damage

00:06:32.740 that has destroyed and flattened nature across.

00:06:35.480 And so their dislike for Christianity comes from,

00:06:38.000 I think Christianity is actually kind of the foundation

00:06:40.420 and the root of this.

00:06:42.220 John Carter in his article,

00:06:43.420 And credit to him, this is a long, well-written article.

00:06:46.360 This is something that he spent a lot of time on, that he developed, and I think you would

00:06:49.960 agree because you did so.

00:06:51.380 It deserves to be taken seriously.

00:06:53.480 You can find his substack, Postcards from Barsoom.

00:06:56.700 Barsoom is spelled B-A-R-S-O-O-M.

00:06:59.920 But he says this in his article.

00:07:01.080 Again, the article is titled The Imago D-E-I.

00:07:04.960 He says, when all the verbiage of centuries of accumulated political theory and moral

00:07:11.460 philosophy is peeled away, equality is, in its origin, a fundamentally theological proposition.

00:07:18.840 He also says that equality has, for so long, been understood as an absolute good, both an

00:07:24.220 underlying spiritual reality of the human condition and, somewhat paradoxically, an ideal

00:07:29.600 for society to strive towards, that the assumption that equality is both real and positive goes

00:07:35.240 largely unquestioned, including by many of those who oppose the idea's destructive practical

00:07:40.260 consequences. And so he says, we all take it for granted that equality is good. I'm here to

00:07:45.540 challenge that. And he roots it in his article that it's Christianity and theology that initially

00:07:51.940 give rise to this idea that equality is an ideal to be achieved. It's something that's good in

00:07:57.560 society. And so because of that, he goes and turns around and says, and the blame for that,

00:08:02.160 its theological claim would be Christianity. Now, Stephen, we want to handle both because like you

00:08:08.360 said, there's a truth, it's not either or. There is both equality and inequality. And so he spends

00:08:15.060 a ton of time advocating in some senses for the inequality, which we can handle in the second

00:08:20.220 segment. But there is an equality that the Bible and especially Christian tradition, since he's

00:08:25.380 arguing the Christian tradition resulted in destructive effects, but even the Christian

00:08:29.280 tradition, that it does come in and say, yeah, there actually is equality, but we root it in

00:08:33.620 the Bible, and it doesn't destroy, on the latter half, the inequality that we can easily observe,

00:08:38.860 too. Yeah, I'd say, first of all, the notion of human equality does not actually originate from

00:08:45.900 Christian theologians. You can find it elsewhere, but you can find it most pronounced within the

00:08:53.360 Roman Stoics. So Cicero, Seneca, and others have already affirmed this type of equality,

00:09:00.220 fundamental equality. Cicero talks about man almost as a divine image, and he places that

00:09:07.300 in the realm of reason. And so it actually predates, the idea of human equality kind of

00:09:13.080 predates the Christian era. And then even when you get into, I would question that it's purely

00:09:22.060 a theological proposition, strictly speaking, because you actually have a lot of people in

00:09:27.660 the early modern period, emphasizing equality, actually central to their political system. Take

00:09:32.280 like Hobbes, Locke, but they would ground equality. I mean, particularly Hobbes, he grounds his notion

00:09:38.380 of equality really in experience. You go around and you talk to people and you realize there's

00:09:43.140 varying levels of capabilities and gifts and all these sorts of things. We come to realize there

00:09:48.000 actually is a more foundational, basic equality across mankind. So within the Western tradition

00:09:55.040 broadly in both pre-Christian and Christian, there is a recognition of some type of equality

00:10:01.100 among men that is not technically theological. Now, you can find the basis of equality

00:10:11.200 in theological propositions, but not only within there. So I would kind of push back against that,

00:10:18.600 um and uh and certainly others such as such as the um certain enlightenment figures in german

00:10:24.820 philosophy would also say that there there's a fundamental equality that rooted mainly in the

00:10:30.080 in the faculty of reason that distinguishes us from you know non-rational animals so um

00:10:37.060 yeah uh and yeah go ahead no i was gonna say uh equality under a law was a big thing that

00:10:44.120 you made the point on is if you don't have equality under law it'd be very strange and

00:10:48.040 it actually would be unjust by biblical standard to have a law that applies to only one type

00:10:52.740 of people, especially as it refers to criminal law, but a different law for others.

00:10:56.600 And for the record, I mean, just five days ago, we were talking about foreigners holding

00:11:00.040 public office.

00:11:01.140 We don't think those that are born in a country other than the United States should be allowed

00:11:04.980 to hold public office.

00:11:06.420 So we recognize certain applications of the law.

00:11:08.980 They're just different.

00:11:09.840 People are born different places.

00:11:11.320 But when it comes down to it, as far as equal treatment, especially when it comes to criminal,

00:11:15.000 when it comes to penalties, one of the points that you make is that if we're really going to

00:11:19.140 say people aren't unequal, then the law itself would have to be distributed and split potentially

00:11:24.860 into a number of categories. A law for these people that are morally culpable and upright

00:11:28.920 in character. And then for these individuals, well, we can't really count on them. And so you

00:11:32.960 make a big point about under the law, especially, and for a long time, you spoke of Roman society,

00:11:38.780 the Greeks, they certainly recognized you have to have a law that applies to everyone.

00:11:42.720 right yeah and really i mean this this goes down to moral equality as well so there there is a

00:11:49.600 fundamental law that that all human beings follow in the christian tradition it's called you know

00:11:54.500 often called the moral law um and in both pre-christian and christian it was called the

00:11:59.480 natural law um so there is the same standard law but that that comes in principles so the the

00:12:05.280 natural law you can break it up in different kind of orders of it but but when it's actually applied

00:12:10.260 in society in concrete ways that actually say do this or don't do that, it comes in the form of

00:12:17.160 being very particular. So some people groups, for whatever reason, may need different laws.

00:12:24.060 They'll need different laws. Sometimes they actually need, we might say, stronger governance

00:12:29.760 than others. And so you find in American tradition in the 19th century, laws tend to be

00:12:37.360 more relaxed. And that was part of the idea of the spirit of Anglo-Protestanism,

00:12:43.880 which kind of gave birth to this country. And so we can flourish as free people in liberty

00:12:48.600 with order under law. But in political systems in the past and other places around the world today,

00:12:55.940 you have different laws, sometimes more laws applied with penalties that could be harsher.

00:13:03.940 So there can be actual different orders, different ways of life, and all of those laws and customs can conform to the natural law with its civil application and yet be different because the circumstances and the people themselves, for whatever reason, could be different.

00:13:21.680 So you could have, I think you could say that in civil law as bodies of law, you could have some laws that are by necessity, given the characteristics of the people, you could say that it would be less free and would restrain liberty more because they don't have a sort of tradition of self-governance and order.

00:13:46.880 And so you can't have equality in that sense, I guess. You could say that some people will have less liberty for that reason, other people will have more. And that's just recognizing the founders themselves even criticized France at the time. This is 1780s, 1790s.

00:14:03.480 they're saying that even the frenchmen are not ready for civil for for self-government in the

00:14:09.420 in the form of the of american liberties because they just didn't have the tradition of it

00:14:14.220 um and so so for that reason they weren't ready and would result in a sort of murderous revolution

00:14:19.700 as it did so anyway um yeah with that uh what about let me throw a couple of hypotheticals

00:14:26.760 at you because i can i completely um agree in terms of place and time so like different time

00:14:32.800 periods and different nations that like okay you know like if if all of a sudden haiti sets up you

00:14:39.640 know christian nationalism praise god that's great you know um and let's say haitians are

00:14:44.480 um actually getting saved through you know a word and sacrament in the church and uh and they have

00:14:50.300 christian civil magistrates well given some of their history um i i would say yeah they they

00:14:57.380 probably need to be you know exercising a little stricter governance for a season

00:15:01.760 than another nation that's a little bit more well-ordered

00:15:06.980 and has a longer heritage and trajectory of self-governance.

00:15:12.460 I completely agree with that.

00:15:13.440 And I also agree with laws changing over time.

00:15:18.220 The immutable transcendent law of God remains precisely that,

00:15:22.720 immutable, it's unchanging.

00:15:24.140 But in terms of its specific, particular applications,

00:15:28.320 that does change.

00:15:29.640 That changes with technological innovation.

00:15:31.760 You know, like that, like we're going to have new civil codes and restrictions and guidelines as we move into more and more artificial intelligence.

00:15:42.280 I mean, it's essentially at some level, like it's, you know, likened to, you know, moving from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age.

00:15:49.220 It's just, it's a different world.

00:15:51.020 The invention of cars, right?

00:15:52.960 Well, now we need laws.

00:15:54.620 It's the same, you know, immutable law of God to defend and preserve and protect.

00:15:59.760 uh the the sanctity and dignity of human life but now applied to uh driving on the road so seat

00:16:06.500 belts and speed limits and these kinds of things so that happens in terms of um a different set of

00:16:12.120 laws for two different nations different places and perhaps different sets of laws for the same

00:16:17.820 nation but at different time periods um what about this is the hypothetical now what about um

00:16:25.080 a different set of laws for different groups of people in the same time period in the same nation?

00:16:33.360 Would that be just?

00:16:36.800 Well, yeah. I mean, we actually kind of already have that because we have the federal system.

00:16:43.220 So that would work for, yeah, federal laws, state laws, county ordinances. So we kind of already

00:16:49.980 already have that. Um, if, uh, and, and yeah, and if you distinguish between a citizen and just

00:16:57.960 legal resident, there'd be different laws. Um, I think though, that if you, if you are true

00:17:03.940 citizens of a nation, there should be equality, uh, under, under that law. So, um, but because

00:17:13.980 otherwise you run into the risk of, I mean, I guess you could say, I mean, every, every law can

00:17:18.960 have like on the margins, it can affect people. It shouldn't. Um, so yeah, it's a, it's a challenging

00:17:25.700 question, but the, I mean, the historic principle is equality under the law, going back to the

00:17:30.300 Romans. And if you're going to admit people as citizens, then as citizens of a Republic,

00:17:36.540 you are under that body of law. And so this just emphasizes that who you're going to admit at

00:17:41.960 citizens is actually very, very crucial to your, to your society. Um, but, but I think if you

00:17:47.660 distinguished citizen and resident alien, or even if it's a permanent resident, you can apply

00:17:52.180 different laws differently. And, uh, uh, but, uh, but otherwise it, it strikes me as an arbitrary,

00:17:58.520 uh, distinction. And I also don't, I'm not even sure if it's even it's, if it's even required

00:18:04.780 to do that, because if, if you have a certain law, if you have a certain, you know, uh, people

00:18:11.160 in mind with a law because, because within that society, there's a, within, you know, the,

00:18:16.960 those people, there's a higher, there's a prevalence of some, um, some sort of disorder,

00:18:22.400 you know, social, civil disorder, and you're targeting principally them in that law and it

00:18:30.740 comes to apply to everyone else. Well, it just means that the people who don't, don't have that

00:18:35.300 disorder, aren't going to be affected by the law. Right. So if you have some people who are,

00:18:39.260 exactly you could still have the law universally yeah you can have a universal law and if it comes

00:18:44.380 to target a certain disorder a certain problem then the people who generally don't uh contribute

00:18:50.020 to that problem aren't actually uh the the force of that law is not actually being applied to them

00:18:55.320 now there are cases where i mean but to be fair there are cases where the laws do come to affect

00:19:01.300 you so if there's a small number of people on a certain road that drive too fast and 90 of the

00:19:06.860 people actually drive safely and you have to reduce the speed limit that that comes to affect

00:19:12.060 everyone in a negative way so there is that um and then but yeah there's other ways to to seek

00:19:18.480 to reform uh that the various disorders that don't actually require two sets of of different laws

00:19:25.740 right so real quick let me ask you in terms of uh citizenship and then we'll we'll go back to

00:19:30.940 some more of this article and some of the citations but in terms of citizenship because i i agree with

00:19:37.700 you i think that um for those who are you use the phrase true citizens for those who are true

00:19:42.800 citizens of any you know body politic any any nation they um yeah i think they should be equal

00:19:49.860 under the law and if certain swaths of the population are more affected by that law fine

00:19:56.900 but but it's still a universal law for all true citizens and uh for those who don't really have

00:20:02.440 they're not contributing to lawlessness in that particular way well then no harm no foul right

00:20:07.240 they can still have the law and they'll be unaffected by it so i i think that's great

00:20:11.200 but in terms of of i i don't know if i've ever asked your opinion so we've talked about it

00:20:16.660 um several times on our show uh in terms of you know if we were king for the day you know whatever

00:20:21.940 how um how citizenship would work like what who would be considered true citizens what would the

00:20:28.940 standard be um and i'm just curious to hear your opinion um if you know like what do you think the

00:20:36.560 ideal for america as it is today not america you know 250 years ago um but but when you look at

00:20:43.820 you know who we are today and and the caliber of people that we have today who i i personally to

00:20:50.860 show my hand, I think are, are far less capable. All of us on the whole are just less capable of

00:20:57.040 self-governance, um, than, than our forefathers were. Um, and so when you look at, uh, just who

00:21:04.300 the people are today, some of the problems that we have today, um, what would you hold as, as the

00:21:10.040 criteria for that true citizenship category? Yeah. So different places can do it differently.

00:21:17.720 So I don't think there's an absolute way that you must grant citizenship to certain people.

00:21:23.720 I mean, Aristotle and Aquinas both mentioned the idea that a resident who is granted permanent status, their family cannot achieve citizenship until the third generation.

00:21:34.240 I think that's a very, very good policy, and I have nothing against that.

00:21:38.720 And I think that would be good for the United States.

00:21:42.220 And the reason behind it is that you have a sort of buy-in.

00:21:44.820 By the third generation, you are connected to that people in that place.

00:21:50.920 If you come into, yeah, I've said before that if I were to marry some Hungarian and move

00:21:56.140 to Hungary, I might love Hungarian culture.

00:21:59.440 I might love its history.

00:22:00.960 But in the end, when I feel home, it's going to be America.

00:22:05.380 But then my grandchildren, you'd think, because they are kind of removed from my sort of

00:22:12.880 displacement and actually grew up there and, and all that, then they would feel connection to

00:22:17.520 Hungary. So they, they would then be granted citizenship. So that's my view. Um, and I think

00:22:23.360 that'd be a good policy, but, but yeah, but if you're already a citizen, I think if you, your

00:22:28.880 children are citizens by default, um, and, uh, I think birthright citizenship is absurd, meaning

00:22:35.320 like if you're a foreigner and have a child here, that's utterly absurd. Um, so that should be taken

00:22:39.800 away. I think dual citizenship should be taken away. Um, I think that's a bad policy. It's an

00:22:44.680 absurd policy. The idea of citizenship itself is that you are loyal to that place. And if you have

00:22:50.440 dual citizenship, then you're dual loyal. You have dual loyalty to two places. And usually how that

00:22:56.720 works, not all the time, but usually how that works is it's not the United States that is your

00:23:02.120 first love. It's actually the other place you don't live. Um, and oftentimes that's the place

00:23:06.960 you send money to um that's the whole reason you're here you treat you treat your second home

00:23:11.780 as an economic zone by which you make money and you ship it back um and and other i agree with

00:23:17.080 you but i'm gonna have to ask you to yeah i agree with you 100 but for you know since we're live

00:23:23.440 streaming for the sake of the audience i'm gonna have to ask you to cool it with the anti-semitism

00:23:27.120 just kidding yeah that would offend a lot of people for that reason but i think it's

00:23:33.660 absolutely central that you have in terms of your earthly loyalties, you are loyal to a single

00:23:41.880 nation. And for people who have migrated here lawfully and they seek to make this their

00:23:49.260 residence, I think they have a duty as far as they can to try to conform themselves to the ways of

00:23:55.800 the place that they move to and that the children that they have, the grandchildren would be

00:24:00.600 encouraged to adopt the good ways. If there's evil customs, you don't adopt evil customs,

00:24:05.280 but you adopt the good customs of the place you move to. So there's nothing wrong with people

00:24:09.840 moving to different places when they're allowed legally. It's that they have the moral duty

00:24:15.160 to begin conforming themselves and their children, grandchildren to the ways of the place such that

00:24:21.320 this is home. When they land on the airplane and they look out and you see your people,

00:24:29.800 you feel a sort of relief of now i'm in the place where there's common expectations customs and a

00:24:35.140 sense of common history and this is this is what you have so um yeah i think i think that's part

00:24:40.820 of moral duty but uh great all right but i think i mean it's like oh yeah go ahead was i figure i

00:24:46.840 was going to talk about more like uh equality stuff yeah that's what i was about to say is

00:24:51.420 the title of your article is not defense of christian equality lord knows we've had 40 years

00:24:55.140 of that so we'll go to our first commercial break and come down come back and talk about that

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00:28:50.260 So welcome back, Stephen. I'll go right to you. We've covered equality, equality under law,

00:28:55.660 but what are the ways in which, as a Christian, we can defend the areas and the times and the

00:29:01.880 senses in which men are not equal? Yeah, I mean, let's start with the image of God and just the

00:29:09.940 kind of the sort of metaphysics that kind of undergirded a lot of Christian thinking.

00:29:16.800 Really, when you think of like the dignity of man, we have to understand the dignity of man

00:29:24.000 is rooted in the sort of being that God created us as. So it's not as if God created this,

00:29:31.220 like this, you know, a hundred pounds of flesh, or sometimes more, and say that that thing has

00:29:38.940 dignity. It's not as if to say that, you know, you're the image of God, and God's just declaring

00:29:44.520 that, and that's it. Actually, we are the image of God by, and we have dignity because of the

00:29:52.480 sort of faculties that we have, the way that God created us. When we say we have human dignity,

00:30:00.980 dignity is actually a term of relation in a way. So if we have higher dignity than the non-rational

00:30:07.800 animals, because we have reason, because we have understanding, because we have contemplation,

00:30:13.040 because we can worship God, none of the other animals actually have that ability,

00:30:17.060 but God equipped us with that. And so we have higher dignity relative to the animals for that

00:30:24.700 very reason. And what this means then is I think we have then speak of a passive dignity. That is,

00:30:34.820 we can encounter another fellow man and we can consider him made in the image of God. There's

00:30:42.420 certain duties we have to that, just the basic human duties. They can have a claim to life. You

00:30:48.300 can't strike them or kill them. They have a right to worship God properly, a right to hinder them

00:30:55.880 in their worship of God. So there's certain natural rights that they have that are built in,

00:31:00.440 given the very sort of thing they are, and to pursue their end, their actual purpose as created,

00:31:06.500 and so we ought to recognize that. And when we actually exercise those abilities,

00:31:11.020 when we actually think rightly, when we act morally, when we worship God properly,

00:31:16.600 we're actually fulfilling our lives as human.

00:31:19.780 We are in a way completing or perfecting ourselves in action.

00:31:23.780 And the highest thing you could do is worship God.

00:31:25.720 So actually, people don't realize this, but the highest expression of human dignity,

00:31:30.040 the highest expression of our elevation above all animals is our worship of God on Sunday.

00:31:36.440 So when you're thinking that when you're Sunday worshiping this Sunday,

00:31:39.880 you can think, wow, we are actually imaging the man because we're acknowledging and worshiping

00:31:46.180 God. But what this means is, I touched on passive dignity. There is a way in which man is actively

00:31:52.860 dignified or acts in dignity. And so if you commit immorality or if you obey your pure instincts

00:32:02.660 that go against reason, or if you worship false gods and worship idols, you're actually acting

00:32:08.600 below your calling as a human being. You're acting without dignity. And so, and a lot of,

00:32:16.320 I mean, Calvin, a lot of people, because of the order of being, because it's, you know, animals

00:32:21.500 and then man, animals, they just obey instinct. They just obey the sort of impulses of nature.

00:32:29.520 And because God created them to do that, they typically get that. We were not created to only

00:32:35.480 obey our instinct. We're there to obey our higher faculties. But when we don't, that is, in other

00:32:42.320 words, we are to bring our soul into order by reason of our higher faculties. But when we

00:32:49.740 don't, when we actually obey our lusts, when we obey certain impulses that are directed towards

00:32:55.400 evil ends, we're acting animalistic. We're acting lower on the order of being. And so you'll see

00:33:03.620 people hooker richard hooker said this and john calvin said this matthew uh matthew hale said

00:33:10.240 this all these guys in in the reform of broader protestant tradition said that actually some

00:33:15.660 people behave in ways akin to animals and so that's like inequality of of a moral life and

00:33:26.060 what this means then is the people who by habit or evil custom or whatever it is if they have

00:33:32.780 that more uh if they start behaving sort of akin to animals they need far greater restraint i mean

00:33:39.900 there is the the founders would say john witherspoon said that um that laws don't have much

00:33:46.040 to do with the moral law like if you have a people who obey the moral law you don't actually need a

00:33:51.420 whole lot of civil law because people are doing it but the moment people in mass began begin to

00:33:57.700 simply uh uh glorify in their just base impulses they actually degrade themselves and in order to

00:34:05.980 um to prevent or restrain that degradation and for their and harm they might have in themselves

00:34:12.640 you actually need further restraint upon them usually through civil means um so there is that

00:34:19.480 so again there is a fundamental equality of faculty we have these things that we can um by

00:34:25.040 which we can act with dignity. And so there's a passive dignity owed our fellow man. So that's a

00:34:31.180 sort of natural equality, you might say. But that doesn't mean that every action is an expression

00:34:38.300 of being human. In fact, it's an expression of subhumanity. Not that they are in themselves

00:34:44.000 subhuman, but in their actions in obeying their lusts, which is true for all of us. I mean,

00:34:49.040 It's a good way to actually reflect upon your sanctification.

00:34:53.700 If you're obeying your lust against the moral law, you're actually acting like some wild

00:35:00.580 guy, acting like a beast, and you ought not do that.

00:35:04.140 So if you act rightly, you're actually obeying the moral law and you're acting humanly and

00:35:08.680 imaging God.

00:35:10.000 So anyway, that's how you can affirm a basic natural equality of faculty, a basic universal

00:35:16.100 dignity of, um, of being yet that doesn't translate into action itself. So some people

00:35:25.260 higher dignity than others because they are conforming to the moral law, you know,

00:35:31.880 by means of good reason. Cool. That's helpful. Um, do us a favor. Uh, your audio about every

00:35:39.580 10 seconds or so gets weird. So, um, maybe unplug your microphone all the way and then

00:35:45.420 plug it back in wow we did hear everything you said though so yeah we pretty much got it all

00:35:50.960 every every now and then the words were bad what were you saying nathan you didn't finish your

00:35:55.020 thought i think it's better now i would just say too i think uh i think even of its demonstration

00:36:01.660 at new york city pride event for example the image of god is on display less i think of the

00:36:07.400 old sermon from gerhardus voss on hosea where the god is described as the one who gives life and

00:36:13.120 he's a rich tree laden with fruit. Well, if you go to New York City Pride, what you'll see is a lot

00:36:17.600 of people there who have taken all the possible means by which they could have been productive

00:36:21.780 and strong and modest and actually had children and raised them. They've hacked them apart and

00:36:26.980 bound them and destroyed them. They put them through the chipper. And so there are people

00:36:31.280 that categorically, as you mentioned, as far as rationality, they are human beings. They possess

00:36:36.240 the image in some sense, but their reflection and demonstration of it has been completely

00:36:41.420 destroyed. And then you could compare that to a nobleman. I think of the psalm where it says,

00:36:45.900 your wife will be a fruitful vine and your children will circle you around a table. Is the

00:36:50.800 image of God better seen, better reflected, better glorified? Is God himself made much of much more

00:36:56.740 with a man who runs his affairs well, who leads his family well in the Christian faith, who has a

00:37:01.940 wife and children? I think we'd all agree, yes. None of that violating, categorically, possessing

00:37:07.740 the rationality that separates man from beast. But on a continuous scale, so to speak, so not

00:37:13.920 binary, yes, no, but continually higher or lower, there is a way in which man, by his actions, I

00:37:20.080 know, Stephen, in your article, you root it in that man is actions, what he does. Man and his

00:37:24.900 actions can, to greater and lesser degrees, reflect the image of God that's been vested in him.

00:37:29.980 Right. A godly Christian marriage between a man and a woman with a desire for children and loving

00:37:37.240 them and caring for them is going to image the eternal marriage between Christ and the church

00:37:44.320 in a way that a homosexual, you know, alleged marriage between two men does not image or

00:37:53.260 reflect or manifest the marriage between Christ and the church. And so in terms of our behaviors

00:37:59.700 and actions, I think we all agree with that. Like, I'm sure some lib will, you know, maybe

00:38:06.980 push back and uh but i i mean just the language of you know even if you're in a fairly liberal

00:38:13.700 christian church um people you know just just it's common language of saying like i you know

00:38:19.280 i want to live in such a way that i bring god the most possible glory you know i think of you know

00:38:26.060 the scripture like uh let your good deeds be seen before men that they may um that they may glorify

00:38:33.520 your father in heaven, not for your own praise. Like as in Matthew 6, Jesus talks about doing

00:38:38.720 certain things, certain righteous, virtuous things in secret to where, you know, they're seen by your

00:38:44.520 heavenly father alone. And then you will surely receive a reward from him. But there's other

00:38:50.240 contexts of scripture that talk about living publicly, public life in such a way that it's

00:38:56.400 visible and virtuous so that that might bring glory to God. And the antithesis of that, you

00:39:02.960 know living a public life that's filled with vice and shame i think we would all agree that that

00:39:10.060 brings less glory to god or um the the word that you know is in scripture scripture talks about

00:39:15.980 the concept of bringing reproach uh that word reproach to the name of christ so there's a way

00:39:22.000 of imaging him more or less at least uh in the category of our behavior so is that is that kind

00:39:29.060 what you were saying, Stephen? That's absolutely it. I mean, it's the rhetoric of dignity. This

00:39:36.400 is where, you know, getting back to John Carter, where he's right, and we've all seen it. Hopefully

00:39:40.680 my mic works okay, by the way. But you see like these homosexual marriages, and then you see

00:39:47.500 some Christians say, well, I just, I don't agree with homosexuality, but I want to affirm the

00:39:51.620 dignity of the people involved, which is, again, ridiculous. That only makes sense if dignity is

00:40:00.700 just this fiat stamp of value that's disconnected from the nature of the thing. I suppose God could

00:40:07.840 do that, but that's not what he did. He created us with the faculties that distinguish us from

00:40:14.120 beasts. We are to use the faculties that he gave us, those higher faculties, to set in order the

00:40:20.200 various are being. And so homosexual union, in fact, is not setting those things in order.

00:40:27.660 And so for that reason, you're not affirming the dignity by showing up to the wedding. You're

00:40:32.320 actually affirming this sort of giving over to debased lusts. And so you're not actually

00:40:42.180 affirming dignity at all. You're doing the opposite. And so I think it's important to get

00:40:47.080 that i think i really think that it's i mean i've said a couple let me two or three times but i think

00:40:52.200 it's really important to and this is something christians don't think about because we've been

00:40:56.460 we have this this like post-continent understanding of dignity which isn't even

00:41:01.420 continent itself is he you talk about reason and he was against homosexuality all that but

00:41:05.080 but but it's it's again it's our dignity is tied to the very sort of we are and when we are that

00:41:14.820 being as intended, we are acting in dignity. And if we're not, we're not acting in dignity.

00:41:20.580 And so that means that, yeah, like someone doing what they want or giving the liberty to

00:41:25.260 into license and acting immorally in society, you don't have, you don't affirm their dignity by

00:41:32.220 tolerating it or expressly celebrating it or whatever you want to do. That's not how any of

00:41:39.000 this works. There is no sort of divine fiat stamp of value. Your very value is tied in with how God

00:41:48.220 made you. So in what way then, because I agree with all that, and I think that's well said,

00:41:53.220 but in what way is there an equality? So we already talked about equality under the law for

00:41:58.980 citizens of a particular place in a particular time. So these citizens in the same nation at

00:42:05.320 the same time period should have the same laws especially when it comes to um when it comes to

00:42:11.820 you know criminality and those kinds of things um so in that sense we have uh a inequality um but

00:42:19.320 there's also a sense where in the sight of god in the eternal ultimate um sense we would say that

00:42:25.440 all people um are made in the image of god and and therefore in terms of their eternal dignity

00:42:33.400 and worth would we would we agree with equality in that sense i know that i always have while

00:42:39.820 maintaining um for myself i would say yeah all people right that person with down syndrome

00:42:45.580 um is equal um in in the sight of god um and precious and we should care for them and be

00:42:53.900 respectful toward them and love them um but um i i don't want you know someone with down syndrome

00:43:00.480 to be the president of the United States.

00:43:01.980 I wouldn't vote for them to hold public office

00:43:04.120 because they're just simply not capable of doing that.

00:43:07.420 So I acknowledge that we're not equal at all

00:43:10.060 when it comes to our gifts, our capacity,

00:43:13.140 intelligence, strength, all those different things.

00:43:17.940 People are not equal.

00:43:19.640 And for me, I've kind of broken it up

00:43:20.920 into three primary categories.

00:43:22.860 Like I've said, I said at the New Christendom Conference,

00:43:25.320 I think that one of the great enemies

00:43:27.480 of historic Christianity in the church

00:43:29.540 is liberalism, especially the more, you know, later modern expressions of liberalism. And kind

00:43:36.080 of if liberalism was the car, the engine to me seems to be, the heart of literalism seems to be

00:43:41.420 egalitarianism. And then when most Christians think of egalitarianism, even the, you know,

00:43:46.320 quote unquote conservative Christians, like, well, I'm not an egalitarian, you know, because

00:43:52.020 we have male elders, you know, and then of course they're, you know, functionally egalitarian

00:43:58.360 because you know the wives of all the elders make the decision and they have female you know deacons

00:44:02.660 and they have women teaching in every virtual capacity you could think of outside of maybe

00:44:07.820 the lord's day but even then they might concede when it comes to mother's day sunday you know

00:44:11.720 anyways blah blah and we've had those arguments a million times and that's neither here nor there

00:44:15.620 that's that's not the purpose of this episode i'm sure i'll have those arguments um again in the

00:44:20.740 future but my point is to say that most conservative christians if they even acknowledge egalitarianism

00:44:27.420 as a negative at all, it's only in its effects in this one category, this first category of

00:44:34.580 male and female. But for me, I really think that, and I'm sure there are other categories that we

00:44:40.960 could flesh out as well, but I think three big ones would be male and female, men and women are

00:44:47.080 not the same. I think I said at the New Christendom Conference that Johnny and Jackie are not the

00:44:54.000 same. And then also at an individual level, um, Johnny and Jimmy are not the same. So even though

00:44:59.820 they're both male, um, Johnny may, may be a statesman and Jimmy may be an incredible plumber

00:45:06.660 and probably make more money than Johnny, you know? Um, but, but he, he couldn't be a statesman.

00:45:12.440 He doesn't have the faculty and the gifting for that. And that, and that's okay. Uh, but then

00:45:16.660 that's the second category. So sex individuals, uh, so male and female are not the same. Individuals

00:45:23.020 are not the same and then last um you could say it like this uh male and female are not the same

00:45:28.160 and then people individuals people are not the same but then peoples collectively peoples ethnicities

00:45:35.260 or nationalities or whatever word you want to use are also not the same which is why you know

00:45:40.640 we're not fungible widgets and we shouldn't import you know 500,000 Haitians into America

00:45:46.960 and grant them citizenship and you know if the Haitians you know develop a taste for apple pie

00:45:53.260 we say well they're just as American as you know you and me no no you're not um and so I think those

00:46:01.100 three levels with with gender with individuals and with peoples people individuals and peoples

00:46:07.820 nations you know however you want to describe that um there are differences so in that sense

00:46:14.620 I feel like, no, it's, and distinctions, we just have to acknowledge, and I don't feel like there's

00:46:19.940 anything to apologize, and I don't want to be cute, and I don't want to be deceptive. Distinctions

00:46:24.200 pretty much always introduce some degree of hierarchy, right? So when we start, you know,

00:46:31.540 acknowledging distinctions, then there are, among those distinctions, there are scales of better

00:46:38.980 and worse. Like this person is stronger. Stronger is better than weaker. This person is smarter.

00:46:45.540 Smarter is better than dumber. And so I think that in those three categories, both male and female

00:46:52.020 and individuals and peoples, there are distinctions and therefore there is some measure

00:46:57.980 of hierarchy. And that hierarchy may not be for individuals or even for peoples, it may not be a

00:47:06.640 fixed hierarchy, right? Deterministic, fatalistic for all of time. It's not to say that nothing can

00:47:12.880 change or fluctuate within reason over time. But I think those distinctions do exist. And by virtue

00:47:20.800 of there being distinctions that we can observe, that we can see, then there is some measure of

00:47:26.680 hierarchy and better and worse. And yet to me, it's just all that is entirely, right? We can walk

00:47:32.620 and chew gum at the same time all that is can be true that level of temporal inequality can can

00:47:39.020 run right alongside this eternal equality in terms of a spiritual sense eternal spiritual ultimate

00:47:47.500 sense of you know the weight of the soul the dignity of the soul that in that category that

00:47:54.000 there is an equality for all people and also in one nation at one time under the law i think that

00:48:01.140 that also would be um should be um equal for true citizens in one place at one time it would would

00:48:08.100 you have any anything to to clarify or push back on would you agree with that in this sense we're

00:48:13.680 equal in that sense we're not is yeah is that consistent with christian thought well i i think

00:48:19.480 that there are a lot of like distinctions here that people miss it's very easy just to have the

00:48:24.220 line all men are equal and all that and then they go from there but i think the first thing is that

00:48:29.300 there is like a baseline mercy so there is a type of temporal mercy to everyone because they're not

00:48:36.980 in hell right so there is a sort of baseline mercy and that you can call it common grace whatever but

00:48:43.140 you a lot of people in the past called it mercy and not common grace but um but it would be a

00:48:48.340 general i think yeah it would be a general mercy is how witherspoon put it but then even with that

00:48:53.980 mercy among, I'm talking about non-Christian nations, there is unequal restraint. So some

00:48:59.160 nations will have great civil rulers and decent laws, despite being pagans. We can talk about

00:49:06.140 ancient Greece and Rome and all that. So they can have laws that Christians have recognized that

00:49:12.220 are actually overall good, with particulars that are bad. And so there's a sort of higher restraint

00:49:18.520 based upon divine providence upon those people relative to others who actually did not have

00:49:23.360 at all, and so it didn't go well for them. So there is that inequality, but that's due to

00:49:30.040 not only the actions of men and thought of men, but also under divine providence.

00:49:34.740 But we can say that there is a qualitative distinction between a Christian and a non-Christian

00:49:41.040 in terms of God's relationship to that. So God does not treat Christians as non-Christians.

00:49:49.680 There is a higher love, a qualitatively higher love, because we're in Christ. There is a divine love there that non-Christians do not have. And within that, within the Christian world, there is a fundamental equality before God in terms of the fact that we all equally have a title to heaven through Christ.

00:50:10.360 So justification, if you're justified, is equal with regard to saying have a title to eternal life in Christ.

00:50:19.820 But then when you go from there, I mean, there's inequality regarding sanctification.

00:50:24.660 There's talk of unequal gifts in heaven.

00:50:28.640 So there is a type of inequality there.

00:50:31.580 but what i think is great though what's um pretty uh uh looks like pretty neat let me put it that

00:50:39.900 way is that uh your it doesn't matter like uh it doesn't matter what your social station is in life

00:50:46.980 you could be a no-name sort of maid that that no one knows you die few people go to your funeral

00:50:53.100 whatever it is and yet you in a way could be first in the kingdom of god and that's because

00:50:57.200 God looks at the heart, and even though you're seemingly a contribution, you may not be some

00:51:03.680 great military leader or civil leader or whatever you are, and yet your actions you did continuously

00:51:10.260 to the glory of God, and you stored up treasures in heaven. So there is, in a way, the heavenly

00:51:15.360 rewards are not equal, you say, or they're not one for one with the sort of contributions you

00:51:23.040 make an earthly life. So this is why this gets into kingdom theology, but in a higher sort of

00:51:28.620 spiritual kingdom, the order of it, that is the, in the order of heaven can be very different than

00:51:34.300 what you'd expect if you were a sort of seek glory on earth sort of guy. All right. So I think

00:51:39.180 there's that I got more. So just give me, give me time. Yeah. And now in civil life, um, in civil

00:51:45.760 life, in the earthly life, a ditch digger and a godly ditch digger and a godly civil ruler

00:51:55.100 can in a way be equal before God. Now, I know there's different duties and one has stricter

00:52:00.660 duties and all that, but in a way, in sanctification, you are equal before God because

00:52:07.040 the ditch digger, he can't do these other things, but he can act to the glory of God and he has,

00:52:11.920 and same with the civil ruler. So in a way, there's an equality built into that, but that

00:52:15.920 doesn't transform earthly life such that the ditch digger, because he's godly, is now praised

00:52:21.140 and gives honors at the end. His work is not qualitatively or quantitatively higher than the

00:52:28.600 civil ruler pertaining to his actual contribution in society. So there are differences between

00:52:35.060 people in the different social stations. And in terms of getting awards and in terms of being

00:52:41.240 praised in public and on a mass scale, the godly civil ruler deserves that more than the ditch

00:52:48.220 digger because it pertains to earthly life, but yet not before God in terms of eternal things.

00:52:54.540 So yeah, so there is hierarchy. So you can say there's an equality among Christians

00:52:58.760 in relation to God in their godliness. It doesn't translate into saying everyone's equal

00:53:08.820 regarding their contribution to the goods in this world.

00:53:12.740 And so you have what you might call to, yeah, go another place would be the idea of civil

00:53:17.720 dignity.

00:53:18.980 So in civil dignity, it's very clear in the tradition and in scripture that civil rulers

00:53:26.940 are actually have higher dignity because they own more than your average person.

00:53:32.980 And that's because they're literally given a power of God.

00:53:35.520 And they enact law. No one else can do that. They execute law. They enforce that law. They pronounce judgment upon people who do what's wrong. And so they image, because of that, they actually have a higher dignity regarding their office, because they have that office, than the average person.

00:53:59.080 And this just points back, again, dignity is tied to the sort of things that you are, the faculties that you have, and the various means you have in the world.

00:54:10.460 And so for a civil ruler with the power of God is therefore going to have higher dignity than others.

00:54:16.880 So what I'm trying to say is that there are these distinctions that are principled, that are coherent, where you can affirm equality in various ways, and yet that doesn't translate logically into equality in other spheres or other areas of life.

00:54:35.580 Good.

00:54:36.960 HJM in our chat, I'd like to hear your response, but I thought they had a reasonable comment.

00:54:43.640 they said heavenly rewards are based on what you do not who you are for there's no partiality with

00:54:51.620 god how would you respond to that because there is a hierarchy of rewards in heaven um i think

00:54:57.900 that's clear i would say there's a i forget which one but one puritan said that god loves the adverbs

00:55:04.560 and so it's you do it well and by doing something well that includes not only the substance of the

00:55:12.060 action you do in the world, but it also involves what perfects it, what makes it truly good.

00:55:17.800 I mean, a pagan can do what is good in substance, but a pagan cannot complete that good and make

00:55:24.100 it truly good because he cannot do it to the glory of God. And my point is that the heavenly

00:55:28.680 rewards would conform to you doing what is good in a complete sense. And so no matter your station

00:55:37.160 in life, doing even mundane tasks to the glory of God is sort of storing treasures for yourself

00:55:43.820 in heaven. Amen. No, that's good. Wes, are there any other, we're going to go to our last commercial

00:55:48.680 break here in a moment, but here at kind of the final end of our second segment, are there any

00:55:52.840 other particular quotes that you wanted to highlight? I have a good one here, but I think

00:55:56.540 we'll save it for the third segment and kind of wrap up with it. Okay. All right. So for those of

00:56:02.120 you guys who are listening to the broadcast live a couple points of order number one uh if you

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01:02:30.860 all right so steven i'm going to give it to you to land the plane but i'm going to read a quote

01:02:36.840 from your article here because i think it's one of the best ways to sum up to both bring together

01:02:41.320 equality and inequality you say this again the article title for anyone wants to find it

01:02:45.540 the christian defense of inequality from american reformer and you said this so by original nature

01:02:51.360 man is born free and equal but by his nature he comes to form civil society in which some rule

01:02:58.200 and others are ruled and just as in marriage those most suitable to rule by nature that is the

01:03:03.420 husband ought to rule hence equality and hierarchical difference are acknowledged

01:03:08.560 and are perfectly compatible natural equality and natural superiority are reconciled

01:03:14.780 yeah yeah again sorry for the audio problems but uh on that point

01:03:21.440 is the idea of political equality. So we're not born into, by pure nature, we're not born such

01:03:32.200 that another guy, someone else has a higher nature and rules us. But by nature, we're actually at a

01:03:38.640 level where we're equal. This is like the pre-political society. Obviously, you're born

01:03:42.160 into a country and you're under those laws. But in a sort of theoretical society, you're born free

01:03:48.760 and equal. And that's not just what you might read among American founders. It's what you'd

01:03:52.340 read all the way to Calvin and, and well before that. Um, and of course, we're at the fur and

01:03:57.120 others you're born, you're born free. Um, but that's, that's also true for, for marriage. So

01:04:02.180 you're born not in a, you're not born, you know, to, by, by nature to be, to marry this guy or,

01:04:08.200 or this gal, but you come to choose that. But it's also not true that you would do that. You

01:04:12.900 are by instinct led to marry someone. Same thing for civil society. So you can speak about how in

01:04:22.940 a pre-political state, you're all actually equal, but then by your nature, you come to form civil

01:04:29.280 society. And in fact, you need it. You need civil society. You need to be among others in order to

01:04:34.600 live well. So again, by nature, you're equal, you're free. And yet by our nature as well,

01:04:42.040 in order to complete what we are as social beings, as political animals, we come to form

01:04:48.040 political societies. And also, but embedded in that political society is the ruler and the ruled.

01:04:54.360 So you have some people who look to the good order of the people generally, and you are

01:04:59.120 as a people to submit to their rule. And my argument is that it's actually natural for us

01:05:06.600 to do that. It's natural that we would look upon someone whom we consider great and wise and look

01:05:14.200 to them to establish certain rules by which we live in society. And so, again, in other words,

01:05:21.240 it's reconciled. You can have both equality and hierarchy. There can be a tension. I don't think

01:05:26.500 there's any logical or necessary tension. But of course, throughout society, from the beginning,

01:05:32.180 there's been that sort of tension and that's largely a matter of what politics is is trying

01:05:36.880 to resolve the tension among different groups of hierarchical relationships um while also affirming

01:05:43.760 people's people's equality and the last thing i'll say is like if you're in a society um you

01:05:49.340 can be treated very much like uh you're treated as an equal as an equal person within that society

01:05:56.300 even if you're at the lower end of that society um you're treated as an integral member of that

01:06:01.660 society. And so you're, you deserve a sort of, uh, equality within that. You are a contributor

01:06:06.660 to that society, uh, fulfilling, you know, um, as, as Althusius would say, you know,

01:06:11.980 communicating your gifts to the good of the whole. Um, uh, whereas, but at the same time,

01:06:17.100 you'll have someone else who you'll have inequality because some people are going to

01:06:21.620 rule and others are going to be ruled and others are going to be more important than, uh, in terms

01:06:26.180 of the order and contribution of society. So I hope that makes sense. But the broad point again

01:06:32.520 is equality and equality are not necessarily opposed to one another, and they haven't been

01:06:37.980 for most of Christian history. I think John Carter's piece kind of misses the point,

01:06:43.080 or misses a lot, is that we have thorough, clear statements in political thought among theologians

01:06:49.960 going back millennia that do this very thing. Calvin says that by natural reason, we'll have

01:06:56.120 a hierarchical society. And he says also, we're naturally equal. Aquinas says the same thing.

01:07:01.320 Elthusius says the same thing. Everyone said it. It was only within the last few hundred years

01:07:06.480 where people, I think, began to, they were socialized in this sort of post-Kantian ethic,

01:07:12.200 and they theologized that. They basically theologized the modern notion of dignity,

01:07:17.340 and we have to escape from that and just really just go back to the thinking of

01:07:22.540 of Christianity for, you know, hundreds, thousands of years.

01:07:28.980 Yeah.

01:07:29.900 Yep.

01:07:30.380 Did you want to share one more quote?

01:07:32.380 Looks like you have one lined up.

01:07:33.720 Let me read your summary.

01:07:34.980 I think this is really good.

01:07:36.240 I mean, you wrote it, so I think you would stand by it.

01:07:38.220 I think it's the best way to kind of sum up,

01:07:40.340 just to put an exclamation point on it.

01:07:42.560 You said this, and this especially goes again to those on the right.

01:07:45.820 So we're not addressing the progressive,

01:07:47.240 but those on the right who critique Christianity.

01:07:49.580 And they say, Christianity is what brought about this mess and got us here.

01:07:53.140 And you said this,

01:07:54.140 The answer to equality talk is not abandoning fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith.

01:07:58.620 The answer is understanding them.

01:08:00.060 We can coherently affirm both natural and moral equality and civil and social inequality.

01:08:05.480 And we ought to, because equality is the bedrock of a hierarchical society

01:08:09.320 where each has the equal moral demand to work according to his abilities and to the benefit of all,

01:08:15.560 led by those most suited to lead.

01:08:17.680 but natural and moral equality do not require that all are equally praised, nor that each person has

01:08:23.980 quote, limitless value, unquote, nor that all have the same potential, nor that bad behavior is

01:08:29.800 excused or blamed elsewhere, nor that resentment and subversion are tolerated. The image of God

01:08:35.400 means that fallen man will act below his dignity, like animals, and ought to be restrained by civil

01:08:40.680 authority. Men must be governed, some more than others. Yep, well said. Men must be governed. Is

01:08:47.260 that a master and commander right yeah the movie yeah classic i'd like to add on to it and then

01:08:53.180 some more than others and then some more than others that is absolutely true yep okay well i

01:08:58.540 think that's well said i think we had one super chat uh that somebody put in so nathan if you

01:09:02.920 could pop that up one super chat it is from appeal to heaven seven he says uh for uh 499 from appeal

01:09:10.860 to heaven seven thank you we appreciate it he said uh good afternoon from the ogc ngs old glory

01:09:19.240 club nathaniel green society okay all right only christian men can restore this order don't let

01:09:25.400 pagans take this from you thanks uh right response ministries and dr wolf for this conversation

01:09:31.960 he's uh he's absolutely right um i'll be honest uh pagans on the right they actually can fix some

01:09:39.040 things. There are some things that they can fix, but it will create some other problems

01:09:47.140 in the other direction. And Christians should be, it's just, it's dishonoring to God. It would be

01:09:54.660 just truly a tragedy to allow a bunch of godless, you know, pagans on the right to come and fix all

01:10:02.040 these problems. It's our history, it's our heritage, it's our faith, and all the solutions

01:10:06.940 are right there for Christians. If I could say something about that. Yeah. Yeah. So it is true

01:10:13.980 that many people who are kind of on the pagan, right? They're not, I mean, they don't worship,

01:10:18.000 you know, Thor. There are some of those, but they have kind of brought us back to saying,

01:10:26.020 hey, there are some virtues within the ancient world that we've lost. I think that's true.

01:10:31.340 They've kind of, that's sort of mediated through Nietzsche and all that. So I think there's

01:10:34.520 something there that to recognize contribution. But I think the problem with a lot of the pagan

01:10:39.460 rite is they don't have, they tend to be just atheistic. And so the benefit of the Christian

01:10:49.480 system is, again, you can affirm the hierarchy, the difference, you can explain all that. And yet

01:10:56.160 you can also say that, you know what, each individual actually has an equal moral duty

01:11:00.600 to be a proper person in society like there is an actual moral duty behind it even the guy who is

01:11:08.600 less capable than another guy from performing his moral duty because there is actually that

01:11:14.440 moral duty it's not a sort of competition among um sort of amoral beings seeking uh the seeking

01:11:22.280 dominance there is dominance and yet there's also principled moral submission at the same time

01:11:28.740 And so I think the pagan rite, their problem in their theory, at least, is it turns into a law about Saul. There's actually no ethical reason why anyone who's weaker than you should submit to the strong. There's no reason for it. And so the only, you know, there's no moral reason for it other than fear. Like if they're afraid, then they're going to submit.

01:11:50.300 And so really the, the pagan rights political theory in general returns us, I think, to the

01:11:56.100 sort of reign of the Turks that Montesquieu identified. It returns it's worse than Hobbes

01:12:01.260 because Hobbes applied equal rationality and equality to everyone, but it returns even stronger

01:12:05.980 to the war of all against all. There's just, in the theory, there's nothing there, but the,

01:12:10.860 the Christian theory, I mean, apart from being true is also more expedient in the fact that you

01:12:16.480 have, again, universal moral equality where each person ought to conform to the more wise

01:12:27.020 and also affirm that there are some who are more wise and ought to lead.

01:12:33.400 Well said. All right. Well, let's leave it there. Dr. Stephen Wolf, thank you. It's a pleasure as

01:12:38.380 always to have you join us on the show. Real quick, let the listener know where they can

01:12:42.380 follow you if there's any projects that you're up to that you want them to be able to check out.

01:12:46.480 yeah so we're on uh what is it called the lone bulwark dot supercast dot com the lone

01:12:53.080 bulwark yeah so we're doing a few shows there scholar series ours politica's back and then

01:12:58.500 youtube channel and then twitter on uh at perf unjust don't ask me why i chose that but that's

01:13:04.000 my handle you'll find me so um yeah that's about it great well thank you so much for coming on

01:13:09.540 thank you uh to the listener for tuning in we appreciate it and lord willing we will see

01:13:13.700 everybody on monday at 3 p.m central time but make sure tonight 8 p.m tonight 8 p.m central time

01:13:20.360 we'll have the next episode in season three of the friday special with dr stephen wolf on all

01:13:25.860 things christian nationalism thanks for tuning in and we will see you guys again uh tonight and

01:13:31.280 then on monday god bless

The NXR Podcast - July 25, 2025

THE LIVESTREAM - Are All People Really Equal？ w Dr. Stephen Wolfe

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