Part one is here.
In the seventh chapter of The Case for Christian Nationalism, Stephen Wolfe tries really hard to sound like David VanDrunen. That is, he traffics strongly – two lanes worth – in the two-kingdom distinction between Christ’s rule as creator and redeemer. 2kers employ that distinction to elaborate how Christ’s rule over the state is different from his rule over the church even if both governments derive their power from the same Lord.
This distinction between creation and redemption, between civil authority and church power, also often explains 2kers’ willingness to affirm the legitimacy of civil authorities who are not professing Christians. Because pagans and Christians both use natural law to govern society, requiring civil magistrates to be Christian shows hesitation about the integrity of the creational and redemptive spheres, not to mention having doubts about Christ’s capacity to rule the civil sphere through the magistrates he providentially appoints.
These distinctions and worries inform Wolfe’s discussion of “The Christian Prince.” He sounds the most 2k when he quotes Calvin and Rutherford approvingly. Calvin distinguishes between one government which pertains to eternal life (spiritual) and the other which “pertains only to civil institutions and the external regulations of manners.” [301] Rutherford echoes Calvin when he contrasts civil and spiritual power. The civil authority is “coactive by the Sword, the other free, voluntary by the Word.” [303] Wolfe carries this distinction forward when he insists that “no ecclesiastical institution wields civil-like power over itself or over its members.” Churches are subject to civil authorities in such matters as building codes and emergency orders. But the church’s divine ministry – preaching, the sacraments, church discipline – “are outside the civil jurisdiction.”
Those distinctions between earthly and eternal matters, between repairing potholes and baptizing babies, are ones that Wolfe tries to explain and affirm. He acknowledges that discussions of church and state cannot escape 2k’s host of contrasts – “civil/spiritual, natural/gracious, earthly/heavenly, power/grace, or outward/inward.” He does not include sacred/secular but it is another in the 2k toolkit, however much Kuyperians have demeaned the distinction with the bumper-sticker phrase, “every square inch.” (Don’t the Dutch use the metric system?)
But Wolfe ties himself in knots when he tries to find ways for the Christian Prince to order civil affairs so that his subjects will – trigger warning – gain eternal life. For instance, he writes, “Christ’s mediatorial reign does extend to all things in a way, in that all things ought to be ordered to the spiritual kingdom.” He adds that the civil kingdom, “by its nature, is obligated to order the people to the things of eternal life” and those things are only found in “Christ’s spiritual kingdom.” For this reason, Christ’s “spiritual reign extends to the civil kingdom.” “Christ as spiritual Head of his church has instituted what the civil kingdom ought to order itself to.” [306]
At that point, Wolfe takes away the 2k that he had previously offered by way of Calvin and Rutherford. Instead of keeping the distinctions between creation and redemption intact, Wolfe collapses them.
Maybe the best example comes a page later after trying to give the civil kingdom spiritual significance. He does so by distinguishing Christians as church members versus Christians as the people of God:
Since the spiritual kingdom does not possess civil power, the civil kingdom cannot arise out of the spiritual kingdom. Nor does the civil kingdom arise out of the visible church (strictly speaking), for the visible church is the externalized spiritual kingdom. Civil power is indeed divine in origin but still natural to man as man. It is an instrument of human institutions. It originates in God, the creator, and is devolved through human consent.
So far, so 2k.
Hence, a Christian people can erect a civil kingdom, though not as the visible church but as the people of God. It is worth citing Franciscus Junius again: ‘For to the extent that we may be Christians, we do not cease being humans, but we are Christian human beings.’ A civil kingdom, instituted by a group of the people of God, is fundamentally human, follows natural principles, and possesses the same kind of civil power as all civil kingdoms. Yet, as I’ve repeatedly stressed, the fact that it is fundamentally human does not (like the family) preclude it from being Christian.
That last series of sentences reveals the main problem. Wolfe can acknowledge the legitimacy of “all civil kingdoms,” Christian or not, because their origins are creational or natural. But simply leaving civil authority on the relatively stable basis of the created order is not sufficient for Wolfe who wants – you may have heard – a Christian civil government (or nation). For that reason, he equivocates — just because the government formed by Christians is fundamentally human and natural does not mean it cannot be Christian.
This is a problem as the heart of Wolfe’s proposal. The civil government’s true purpose really is what is unusual if not controversial about Wolfe’s argument. He grants to the Christian prince a Christian mission:
The Christian prince is a civil ruler (as divinely ordained in nature) who possess and uses powers (both civil and interpersonal) to order his people to commodious temporal life and to eternal life in Christ.
That is Wolfe’s own definition. He adds, “if the prince must order his people to eternal life (by natural duty), and eternal life is attained only in Christ, the prince ought to order his people to eternal life in Christ.” Wolfe explains that the prince does this by laws, custom, personal example – not through word and sacrament.
This is a view of the prince that has no basis in the New Testament. Paul and Peter understood that the pagan emperors were divinely appointed to administer the laws of nature, but they would have been gobsmacked to think the Roman governors, Jewish kings, or Rome’s emperors were called to direct people to eternal life.
Wolfe invokes Calvin’s preface to the Institutes where he appeals to Francis I, King of France, to ensure that God’s glory and truth be preserved on earth. What Wolfe does not do is cite exchanges between Calvin and Geneva’s city government. When Calvin went beyond what the Christian councilors wanted on powers of excommunication, the Christian magistrates of Geneva told Calvin to take a hike.
The question Wolfe needs to answer is how he comes up with the idea that civil government’s purpose is to direct people to eternal life. Is it because he needs all things in life to be explicitly devout and reassuring? It is because he has lost confidence in the church as the means of carrying out the plan of salvation? Is it simply a function of the status envy that haunts members of NAPARC churches when they realize how small and marginal their denominations are?
Whatever the reason, the Christian prince that Wolfe defines and advocates would have been inconceivable to Jesus and the apostles for accomplishing the Great Commission.
Old Life 