I am not attempting to write a typical review of The Case for Christian Nationalism by Stephen Wolfe. Others have written exhaustive chapter-by-chapter reviews that faithfully represent Wolfe’s book. I am happy to recommend, for example, Kevin DeYoung, Neil Shenvi, Peter Leithart, and Wyatt Graham’s reviews.
Instead, I am interested in engaging—rather than strictly reviewing—this book from within the free-church tradition. “Free church” denotes an ecclesial tradition that insists that a church should be composed only of those who are self-consciously Christian.
1. Logic Trumps Bible
If you accept his logic, Wolfe’s book will seem very convincing. No one should dismiss the work as unserious, even if the staid prose disguises radical proposals and the rhetoric towards the end borders on the conspiratorial. But therein is the fatal flaw of this book: It is more logical than biblical. In saying that, I am not pitting the Bible against reason. I am pitting Wolfe’s application of reason against what I consider the Bible’s own exegetical and redemptive reasoning. Overlaying a logical heuristic at the expense of prima facie readings of Scripture is not a methodology that one can accept within a redemptive-historical hermeneutic. Wolfe admits toward the beginning he’s not a
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