From Cross to Crown: Christian Nationalism and a Theology of Glory

The Case for Christian Nationalism. By Stephen Wolfe. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2022, 488 pp., $24.99 paper.

Many Christians today feel disenfranchised as they look at the world around them, noting the accelerating dissolution of the basic institutions and public moral grammar they took for granted even a few decades ago. In response, some have looked back to “Christendom,” the long era from Constantine to the Peace of Westphalia when the Western world was marked by the magisterial establishment of Christianity. That experiment, which was an intentional entwining of church and state, furnished Europe and its colonial descendants with a shared religious and cultural heritage that now seems all but lost. Against this backdrop, Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism stands out as a sophisticated defense of retrieving something like Christendom. This is, in my estimation, the clearest articulation yet of the Christian-Nationalist vision. Wolfe raises real questions and offers his own answers. Given the size and scope of the work, a total review would be difficult. I will focus instead on my main contention, that the project depends on a peculiar theological method which begins outside Scripture and only afterward turns to it for support. That is, it suffers from an authority problem at the level of formulation, and this problem produces two downstream distortions: it assigns to the state privileges that are reserved for the church alone, and it functionally adopts a theology of glory instead of a theology of the cross.

Wolfe’s work is rigorously logical; if you accept his premises, his conclusions follow. The problem is his starting point. He tells readers in the introduction that the book proceeds “from a foundation of natural principles,” making “little effort to exegete biblical text” (pp. 16, 18). Wolfe also assumes “the Reformed theological tradition” (p. 16) and draws upon its principal theologians (Calvin, Turretin, etc.). His method, therefore, begins with natural law premises, moves to Reformed retrieval, and only then to Scriptural citation. This makes the work more philosophical

than biblical and ironically undermines his prior Reformed commitments. Theologically, Wolfe effectively elevates reason and tradition to a magisterial status, while relegating Scripture to a ministerial role, which is a reversal of the Protestant dogmatic order that sees Scripture alone as magisterial, with reason and tradition as its ministers. Wolfe justifies these moves by saying he offers Christian political theory rather than political theology (p. 16). But any genuinely Christian theory is unavoidably theological, since calling it “Christian” necessarily claims derivation from God’s revelation in Christ through Scripture. To be sure, certain passages speak directly to political life (e.g., Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2), yet they focus on Christian submission to existing authorities, and Scripture never mandates a governmental form for Christians to establish. Israel experienced judges, monarchy, and foreign empires, and the New Testament church lived under Rome without advocating an alternative government. Scripture, therefore, permits prudential diversity in governmental forms, and none is normatively “Christian” in itself. Thus, in his Case, Wolfe constructs a theory from natural law and historical precedent, consulting Scripture only secondarily. This method pressures Scripture to support prior conclusions (in this case nationalism), risking eisegesis or outright contradiction. And as I will argue, following this method has led Wolfe to conclusions that conflict with Scripture, with two distortions standing out in particular.

The first distortion may be seen in how Wolfe’s political ideal assigns to the state privileges that are reserved for the church. For example, he says that the state has the right to “protect the church from heretics” (p. 312), call synods (p. 313), set aside days for “religious purposes” (p. 318), and pronounce binding theological judgments (p. 369); that is, that the state’s authority functionally extends to even the soul, thereby placing the church in a position of structural subordination. By contrast, Scripture teaches a jurisdictional distinction between the church and

the state. Whereas the state’s civil authority is ordained to, among other things, preserve temporal justice and peace by the sword (Rom. 13:1-7), the church alone is given the spiritual authority to preach the gospel (Rom. 10:14-15; 2 Tim. 4:2), to make disciples and to administer sacraments (Matt. 28:18-20), and to guard its members from heretical corruptions via church discipline (Matt. 18; Titus 3:10-11); the two must not be confused. When the state encroaches upon the church’s jurisdiction, it risks the creation of conditions that marginalize dissenting believers and inhibit necessary reform movements, as seen historically in the suppression of such groups as the Waldensians and Lollards, and in the persecution of nonconformists following the Act of Uniformity in seventeenth-century England.

A second and more fundamental distortion may be seen in the way that Wolfe’s vision of Christian nationalism runs contrary to Scripture’s general depiction of God’s people. In The Case for Christian Nationalism, Wolfe displays an implicit embrace of what Luther called a “theology of glory” (see his Heidelberg Disputation in LW 31, p. 39). In contrast with the theology of the cross, the theology of glory looks for God in power, success, and outward order rather than in weakness and in the cross, directly opposing Scripture’s portrayal of God’s people as a pilgrim community. In like fashion, beginning with a rational picture of how a nation should function, Wolfe defines Christian nationalism as “a totality of national action, consisting of civil laws and social customs, conducted by a Christian nation as a Christian nation, in order to procure for itself both earthly and heavenly good in Christ” (p. 9). Drawing on speculations about pre-Fall natural orders (p.70) and a philosophy of cultural homogeneity (see esp. 134-149), he treats this idealized arrangement—with civil laws, customs, and a “Christian prince” who advances Christ’s kingdom through a “theocratic Caesarism” (pp. 277-279)—as the pattern of what God intends for human society. In this framework, the earthly city becomes a preparatory analog of the heavenly one (213),

as the secular is subordinated to the sacred to orient people en masse toward salvation (p. 104). With this rational ideal as the starting point, visible strength and cultural influence can be read as signs of God’s favor. Scripture repeatedly challenges this instinct: Israel wanted a king “like all the nations” (1 Sam. 8:5–9), the disciples hoped Jesus would restore Israel’s political greatness (Acts 1:6), and the Corinthians were drawn to eloquence and prestige (1 Cor. 2:1). In each case outward success was mistaken for divine approval; a theology of glory. The theology of the cross, however, says that God reveals himself most clearly in weakness, suffering, and what looks like failure (1 Cor. 1:21–29). Scripture describes the church as a pilgrim people—strangers and exiles in this world (Heb. 11:13) who desire “a better country... a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:16). We are “sojourners and exiles” called to live faithfully among unbelievers (1 Pet. 2:11), with our true citizenship in heaven (Phil. 3:20)—not built on political power, but on union with the risen Christ. Any hope for lasting cultural or national dominance inevitably leads us to obscure that basic identity.

In conclusion, The Case for Christian Nationalism raises important questions and offers sophisticated answers. Yet by beginning with natural law premises and an idealized account of the nation, the project stands in tension with Scripture’s distinction between church and state and reorients Christian hope away from the cross and toward visible cultural strength. Whatever the problems our society faces, the Christian solution will always be the same: the preaching of the Word, the administration of the sacraments, and patient endurance as we await the consummation of Christ’s kingdom. Come, Lord Jesus.