Martin Luther #4 (Wilson/Wesson Podcast Critique, Egg on Face?

In this podcast, Oliver Woods discusses a blog post by Doug Wilson and Joel Wesson about Christian nationalism. Woods argues that their focus on natural law and Thomas Aquinas' definition of law is misguided and goes against the doctrine of the word of God. He believes that relying on natural law instead of the Bible leads to the destruction of Western civilization. Woods also criticizes Stephen Wolfe's book on Christian nationalism for not properly exegeting scripture. He concludes that the focus should be on God's definition of Christian nationalism in Exodus 20-24, rather than relying on human reason and natural law. Hey everybody, welcome to TheGreatBibleReset.com. This is Oliver Woods, and we're committed in this podcast to sounding the alarm about the urgent need to return to the original intent, not of the Constitution, but of the Law of God, in order to divert the wrath of God on America. Now, our format today is a little bit different. It's going to be in the form of a critique of a blog post to illustrate the tragedy of Luther's error with regard to the civil magistrate. And it's a little bit dated because this podcast was originally published earlier this year, but it's evergreen. And you can go on YouTube and search for it. It's titled, Are Christian Nationalists About to Have Egg on Our Face? with Doug Wilson. Now, this post, it's a discussion between two very gifted Christian leaders, Pastor Doug Wilson and Pastor Joel Wesson, regarding Canon Press's publication of In Defense of Christian Nationalism by Dr. Stephen Wolfe. And with all due respect, I believe that these two men have been diverted onto a sidetrack that can only further provoke the judgment of God against America. It's a sidetrack that we've followed many times in church history, and it's always ended in a very bad place. The objection is not against Christian nationalism per se, but it's against an erroneous counterfeit masquerading as Christian nationalism that is in fact an attack on the doctrine of the word of God and God's definition of Christian nationalism that we find summarized in particular in Exodus 20-24, the Mosaic Covenant. And this doctrine is in fact articulated very well in a doctrinal statement of the Association of Classical and Christian Schools, of which Pastor Doug Wilson is the founder. Quote, we believe that God reveals himself through the creation, preservation, and government of the universe. We further believe that God makes himself more clearly and fully known through the scriptures, which are the only inerrant and infallible word of God, our ultimate and final authoritative rule of faith and practice. These scriptures are made up of 66 books from Genesis to Revelation, the authority of which depend not upon the testimony of any man or church, and are all to be received as the word of God. Bear that phrase in mind, because it's very important, which depend not upon the testimony of any man. So bear that in mind as we proceed with this discussion. And this is a very good statement, because it distinguishes between God's general revelation, which is described in Romans 1, intended by God to drive us to his special revelation in the Bible. But here's the problem. Stephen Wolfe is a Thomas, or what is known as a Thomas. He quotes Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theological, which was the approved commentary on the Roman Catholic faith more than any other source. And here's how Aquinas defines law. It's very short and simple. He says, And that's it. End of quote. This is the heart of natural law, based on fallen human reason and fallen nature, rather than the law of God and Christian nationalism as defined by God, especially in Exodus 20-24, summarized. Natural law is fine for science, but in my humble opinion, both of these two pastors are in grave danger of hastening the destruction of Western civilization, because they fail to recognize that natural law in the realm of theology is heresy. Isn't it obvious that it replaces the Bible with human reason in the area of Christian ethics? The very opposite of what that doctrinal statement called for. Natural law has done more to deliver us to our current desperate state of judgment than virtually anything else in the history of Western civilization. And these pastors fail to recognize or admit that Romans 1 is talking about natural revelation. It's got nothing to do with natural law or natural theology. Both of these concepts are unorthodox attacks on the absolute authority of the word of God, the Bible. Most Bible school theology classes, evangelical at least, teach that there are two forms of revelation. General revelation and special revelation. General revelation is powerful, but it's incomplete, and it's intended by God to drive us to His specific or special revelation in the Bible. It's not a warrant to ignore the Bible, or replace the Bible, or presume to prove the Bible with our own common sense manufactured natural law, like Stephen Wolfe. And this is why Jesus Christ never answered the question, by which authority do you speak these things? He wouldn't answer it, because He was the authority. The word made flesh. And all He would do is say, the only sign that will be given you is the gospel. You know, the sign of Noah, or in the fish, or whatever. He would use that to convict the unbeliever. He would not try to prove His authority. So we gain nothing by doing this, because in the eyes of the world, natural law has been blown to smithereens by their cherished evolution doctrine. So why do we do it? Only the word of God itself can pierce this veil of blindness. And it always starts the same way. Like, for example, Blackstone. William Blackstone, his commentary on the common law of England. In the introduction, he gives great lip service to the Bible. He says, but he equates natural law with revealed law. He says, upon these two pillars, natural law and revealed law, rests the foundation of all truth. And then he immediately shoves the revealed law aside and proceeds with nothing but natural law. And, you know, I've scanned through the whole book, and looking, counting up the references to Scripture, which are less than ten. You can count them on two hands. Maybe twelve. I can't remember for sure. But I was looking for them. And, you know, the claim that the common law of England is all about the law of God is just not the case. Because natural law almost immediately elbows out revealed law as some strange thing, as the minor prophets put it. Or in a misguided attempt to use natural law to prove the authority of the revealed law. It always results in the authority. It always does the exact opposite, because it elevates the authority of what we're using to prove or validate the Scripture above the Scripture. And so Scripture is pushed aside. And it's an incredible trap that Satan has lured us into, where natural law takes precedence over the authority of Scripture. It's sleight of hand. It's like an ace up the sleeve. It's a bait and switch. And Woolf candidly admits in his introduction, he says, that he is following this same shopworn formula in his introduction. Quote, the primary reason that this work is political theory is that I proceed from a foundation of natural principles. That means natural law. He doesn't say that, but it's natural law. Well, Christian theology assumes natural theology as an ancillary component. No, it doesn't. It does not. That's my editor's note. He goes on and says, Christian political theory treats natural principles as the foundation, origin, and source of political life, even Christian political life. Wrong, wrong, wrong. That's the heart of our problem right there. It's the exact opposite. We need to be thinking God's thoughts after him, as he's defined Christian nationalism in Exodus 20-24. And so Richard Woolf, Stephen Woolf, elevates natural law above biblical law in the formulation of political theory. So coming to the temptation of Eve, you shall be as God, knowing good and evil, determining for yourself what is good and evil, how best to govern yourself. This is a crystal clear example of the temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden. If these two men don't come to their senses, return to the theonomic teaching of Monson, Rastuni, North, and so forth, they're going to destroy everything they're laboring to create because this is theological folly. Woolf is anything but a step in the right direction, as Pastor Wilson puts it. To call it misguided is being charitable. It's anti-Eventilian to the core. It's one more step down the primrose path to national destruction of America. And throughout this discussion, these two pastors are talking about kinism. It's almost like a red herring distraction to camouflage their real objection to Woolf's in defense of Christian nationalism. And apparently they don't really realize what they're doing. Because the offense is not Christian nationalism per se, but Woolf seeking to be like God, knowing good and evil, and defining good and evil in replace of God's revelation. Thus elevating his own natural law political theories above the political theology of the Bible. And for Canon Press to publish this is a disgrace. We don't have to make up our own psychobabble definition of Christian nationalism like Woolf. God defines Christian nationalism very clearly in Exodus 20-24, but Woolf will have none of it, based on his self-imposed refusal to exegete scripture. And this is not some minor little thing we can work out later, as Pastor Wilson likes to put it. Woolf probably quotes Aquinas more than anybody. And Aquinas preached the works, righteousness, gospel, and worldview. Aquinas may have repented during the last three months of his life. He probably did. After all the damage was done, he came home from some conference and claimed to have received a revelation or a vision from God. And he closed the book and he refused to complete it. He said, everything I've written is like so much straw. He reputed it in his whole life's work, in the last three months. Everybody forgets that or they don't even know about it. Looking ahead to the founding of America, the Anti-Federalists certainly didn't think the U.S. Constitution was spreading the power as thinly as possible, as Pastor Wilson puts it. He says, if a Martian came to Earth, a neutral third party, he would be amazed at how thinly the U.S. Constitution spreads the power. But Wilson seems to be blinded by his classical enlightenment weasel words. But Patrick Henry, he wouldn't have it. He argued vehemently against the U.S. Constitution and the Virginia Ratifying Convention. He said, I smelled a rat. And he wouldn't attend the main convention. He was invited. For one thing, he said, both the power of the purse and the power of the sword are concentrated in one branch. So much for division of power. Nor was he mollified by the Bill of Rights. And he said, if you adopt this thing, he spoke disdainfully and gestured disdainfully towards the front of the room where it was posted, we will experience a bloody civil war within 100 years. And that's known as Patrick Henry's prophecy. And what did we get? Four score and seven years later. Everybody knows. I mean, from what I can see, Pastor Wilson displays no understanding or at least no appreciation whatsoever of the critical difference between a covenant with God and a commitment to obey his law in our government and a secular, godless, enlightenment social contract. And why that is the heart of the matter of the offense to God. He just dismisses it with kind of a flippant comment. Everybody got their point, as if it's no consequence. And he ignores the social contract and what it really is and how John Locke defined it in Chapter 8 of the Second Treatise of Government. He said, all you got to do to form a government is get your people together and decide which rights are you going to give up, which few rights are you going to protect the body, the greater bundle of rights. And then you vote on it. And then he said, this is that, this majority will, this is that and that only which determines the foundation of any lawful government in the world. And no mention of God whatsoever or God's law whatsoever. And this is, what do we see in the U.S. Constitution, a preamble. We, the people, do ordain and establish this Constitution. That's John Locke, the father of the Enlightenment, to a tee, textbook example. And later in Article 6 he says, this Constitution and the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land, no mention of the higher law of God whatsoever. All it seems to matter to Pastor Wilson is this supposed division of power. Now some, if not most, of the state charters were distinct covenants with the Triune God, at least they gave lip service to him in the preamble, although not many made the law of God their supreme legislation like Massachusetts did originally. Rhode Island distinctly did not. They self-consciously left God and his word out. The U.S. Constitution of 1787 was modeled most closely after Rhode Island from the standpoint of ignoring and thus breaking covenant with the Triune God. So it's somewhat ironic that Rhode Island was the last to sign because they should have jumped right on it. But the U.S. Constitution may have a Republican skeleton, and it does. It's a secular republic. But in my opinion it's thoroughly corrupted by its democratic heart. The preamble is Lockean social contract through and through, modeled precisely after the secular social contract of Chapter 8 in Locke's Second Treatise of Government. John Locke is known as the Father of the Enlightenment. We the people are sovereign grantors of power, not God. And that's, what do you think God thinks about that? Not much. You know, he's great in patience. But I think the Civil War was a shot across the bow. And there was a group of Christians after the Civil War, late in the 1900s, who believed that, that the Civil War was a result of excluding Christ, the King of Kings, from our U.S. Constitution. And that was their goal, to amend their preamble, to do that. And they had some really great conferences, like 10,000 assembled in Portland, Oregon, just after the turn of the century in 1901 or 1904. And then they had a 20,000 meeting a few years later on the East Coast, where a lot of Europeans attended, because they were concerned about what was happening in America. And so maybe God thought, well, maybe they're going to repent. And so he gives us another 100 years. And what have we done? Not much. They couldn't get it out of committee. So they turned to political action to try to get enough votes to get it out of committee, to be voted on. But then they kind of lost their vision. And what have we had for the last 100 years? More of the same, right? And so my sense is God is tired of being mocked. And I think most of us, as Christians, get that same feeling of the foreboding, of the judgment of God resting on America. Alfred the Great was not the beginning of the English common law system, as Pastor Wilson alleges. He was on the right track, because he and his immediate successors were instituting a restitutionary form of government, system of law, in which restitution was paid to the victim and to God. But that was all overturned at the Battle of Hastings and replaced by Norman and Germanic common or folk law, with Henry II, known to history as the father of the common law. And Henry II was no paragon of virtue. He respected the law of God to the extent that it gave him authority over the church so he could make up his own laws. At the same time, Roman law, or Justinian's law code, had been introduced into the universities and was being reinterpreted by Aristotelian dialectic It's kind of almost like discovering a third testament. The schoolmen applied logic to eliminate discrepancies and contradictions and come to a universal code of law that would back up this common law. And the papal revolution began in 1075, divorced both church and state even more emphatically from the law of God, with the church developing a system of canon law, which Luther symbolically burned, along with his papal bull of his excommunication, when he excommunicated the pope. On the other hand, the state, under the Christian tyrants, and that's an oxymoron, Roger II in Sicily, Philip II in France, Henry II in England, Frederick II in Germany, successively, one after another, over about a 150 year period, broke off from the church, from the law of God and created their own systems of secular law. And that's what governs us today, and it's not a restitutionary system of law, it's a retributory system of law, in which the offense is against the state. And think about it, what do we have today? Do we have restitution? Very little. But we have to pay a debt to society, or a debt to the state. And that's what we've got today. It's based on a secular idea. Pastor Wilson says the common law is based on precedence. Well, yes it was. But if those precedents are not firmly tied to the original moral law of God, then after 700 years or so of, you know, let's play the pardo game of gossip in our precedents, the common laws degenerate into tyranny, as they did in 17th and 18th century England. There were some 200, over 200 offenses, you know, that carried a death penalty in England. And juries were refusing to convict. You had to cut off the hand of a pickpocket rather than restitution. And it resulted in a secular utilitarian reform of the so-called British commonwealth men in the middle of the 1600s, notably James Harrington, who was a favorite of James Madison, John Milton, to some extent, and John Locke later in the century. Also, Jeremy Bentham came along in the early 1700s with his system of utilitarian law, the highest good for the highest number, and he put it on a mathematical basis. He actually, you know, computed, had a computation all worked out and everything. And this is said to have affected the law, system of law on five continents. And all of this was reinforced by Bunyan's pietistic picture of the Christian life as an obstacle course to be endured rather than a battlefield to be conquered in Pilgrim's Progress, sadly. Now, I know I'm coming across a little bit stressed out here. It's because the more I've delved into the lives of about 100 of the classical authors in a fair amount of detail over a 20-year period, the more obvious this plague of natural law becomes, I think. I've seen Christians tumble down this same natural law rabbit hole over and over and over. And it started with Justinian and with his common law. We talked about that. And Justinian turned the compilation or simplification of the Roman law over to a committee of 10 people headed by an atheist called Trebonian. And the only part that was actually biblical, which was the 10 tablets that they got from Solomon early on, they threw that out. And they kept everything else. So Justinian succumbed to the common law. Augustine did the same thing. The big thing in Augustine's time was Neoplatonism. So he said, well, okay, if everybody believes in Neoplatonism, which is this chain of being from the material world up to God with no creator-creatures distinction, he said, well, I'll just use that as an illustration of God, of the triune God. God the Father is the One. Jesus Christ is the Noose. And the Holy Spirit is right under them, I guess. And what did that give us? It gave us a thousand years of Neoplatonic retreat from the world. Because Augustine adopted that Neoplatonic model into his apologetic. Same thing happened with Alfred the Great, with Anselm. We'll talk about that a little bit more in a minute. Using logic to prove God in the Incarnation. It's like we learned nothing in 2,000 years. We return to the same old, like a dog returning. You know what? So yes, I'm mildly exasperated that this misleading teacher, Wolf, has been given a national audience among Christians to promote what seems to be another subtle attack on the Word of God. And so think of it like this. Here's a bottom line. Wolf states quite clearly in his introduction, nobody ever reads their introduction. It's almost like Cannon Press didn't read their own introduction. He's developed his political theory via natural principles, i.e. natural law as a foundation on which political theology is grounded. It should be just the opposite. Ventile taught just the opposite. One of his books demonstrates the history of this throughout the Church, the history of Western civilization. But here Cannon Press is claiming to be theonomic and Ventilian is deserting Ventile. Okay, let's pretend if Wolf had said, I've developed my salvation theory via natural principles as a foundation on which biblical salvation theology is to be grounded. And this is because I really don't know anything at all about how to interpret the Bible. I have no training in biblical exegesis, which he admits in his introduction. Okay, what would you think about that? Or, you know, I've developed my theory of the nature of saving faith via natural principles as a foundation on which biblical faith theology may be grounded. And that's because I really don't know anything at all about how to interpret the Bible. You know, I have no formal training in biblical exegesis. So, you know, I welcome anybody who wants to, you know, bring in biblical theology later on. But it's, you know, it's really not necessary. You know, I've got it all figured out and here it is. Well, would we consider this attack on the doctrine of salvation to be heresy or not? Well, most evangelicals probably would, right? Why then do we tolerate Wolf's doing this when it comes to the authority of the Word of God related to biblical government? Is the Bible really that unclear about civil government, that we have to help God out by making stuff up? It seems to me what Wolf is saying, the Word of God has no clear authoritative teaching on the topic of civil government, and I'm therefore going to make one up exclusive of the Word of God, in which I have had no formal training anyway. So why do we permit a self-professed biblical neophyte dictator understanding the biblical doctrine of civil government, and nationhood, and Christian nationalism? Why? Why do we do this? But hey, Ken Impress, how about giving equal time for the remnant who remain suspicious of the supposed supremacy of natural law over revealed law? Think of St. Anselm. He's associated with the phrase, I believe in order that I may understand. Aquinas is associated with the opposite. I understand in order that I may believe. But at the end of their lives, it turned out to be the exact opposite. Because a fellow monk named Guenalo, countered Anselm's ontological argument with the example of trying to prove the existence of a perfect island by simply imagining that none more excellent island can be conceived. And he said that it would be absurd to suppose that one could in this way establish the existence of such a perfect island. And so Anselm responded more or less with bluster. He refused to back down from his ontological proof of God's existence because, quote, he is a being than which none greater can be imagined, end of quote. So Anselm stuck to his guns and that had repercussions all the way down the line with his successors. Aquinas, on the other hand, reported being confronted by a vision of God recanted everything he had written in so much straw. So how about imitating Aquinas in his repentant mode during the last three months of his life and maybe dust off a reprint of James Jordan's commentary on Exodus 20-24. Or if you want to be original, I've got a shorter commentary on the same passage. I call it a Handbook of Biblical Law for Leaders of Church and State to inaugurate a model legislation, biblical model legislation project that we could implement into state legislatures, you know, one law at a time. How about that? But maybe I'm wrong, but my impression is that Pastor Wilson is so enthralled by the classical literature of which Thomas Aquinas is a specimen, he's willing to excuse these heresies contained therein as simply intramural disagreements that we can settle these later, which is how he rationalizes publishing Wolf. He thinks it is this classical literature that has produced the freedom of Western civilization. From my point of view, it's pretty much the opposite. In almost every instance, the classical literature has diluted or replaced the impact of the Word of God. We saw it with Justinian, we saw it with Augustine, we saw it at the Battle of Hastings, St. Anselm, Henry II, even Cotton Mather. He introduced Plutarch's lives into the curriculum of the log cabin at the Harvard Log Cabin Seminary and was really enthralled with it. And he took Justinian's, not Justinian, the physics of Isaac Newton and used that to try to bolster the faith in God, used that as part of his apologetics. Well, what do you do when you do that? You elevate the authority of science and physics and Plutarch's lives above the Bible, above the authority of Bible. And that's why Jesus would never answer the question, by what authority do you say these things? And this is why science has come to occupy such a place of authority in American life. Because the pastors of that era did that. They tried to use an evidential apologetic rather than a presuppositional apologetic of Ventile. And Thomas Aquinas himself admitted three months before his death that everything he had written was like so much straw. He stood aghast at what he had written. Yet Wolfe's primary source of authority is Thomas' pre-repentant Summa Theologica. The same Summa Theologica that was placed on the lectern right next to the Bible at the Council of Trent where they articulated the Catholic Counter-Reformation against Luther and Calvin and so forth. With the publication of this outrageous, I call it, Evian attack on the Word of God, we might well ask why has Canon Press so egregiously abandoned their own doctrinal statement that the authority of Sacred Scripture does not depend upon the testimony of any man, i.e., Stephen Wolfe. This is more than just an egg on our face as Pastor Wilson so casually describes it. It's just one more in a long series of diversions from the narrow way of Scripture down this natural law detour that leads to nothing but a dead end of national destruction. Canon Press, please, you need to remedy this. So thank you folks for being here today. I really appreciate your attention and I invite you to please visit our website at greatbiblereset.com patronize our sponsors, the bookstore at kingswayclassicalacademy.com our longevity store at bloomersalive.com where 15% of your purchases help fund our scholarships for low-income families. Pick up a copy of Handbook of Biblical Law for Leaders of Church and State and for more in-depth treatment of this my book on the keys to the classics a biblical, a history of the decline and fall of western civilization. So thank you again for your attention today and we will see you here next week.