The Right Response Ministries conference titled Christ Is King: How To Defeat Trashwended with a day focused on hashing out the debate between Natural Law and Theonomy. Give or take a thousand Christians from all over the country showed up, including myself who flew to Texas to be at the event.
The day began with a panel that provided a lot of wisdom for the times. All the panelists agreed that Christian Nationalism was not dead. Thomas Achord made a surprise appearance in his resurgence. And he empahisized the great commission’s call to baptize and disciple nations means that Christian Nationalism will never die as a concept. Other panelists, like AD Robles, highlighted that dead things are ignored not continuously derided as dead.
AD Robles additionally highlighted on a different topic that Christians should not expect pastors to be more based than they are, but they should look for pastors who are loyal to their parishioners. This was great advice.
Stephen Wolfe gave a riveting lecture on the Christian Prince, highlighting the historic usage of the term “Christian Prince.” Wolfe discussed how conservatives like personified power that can be seen in a representative, and liberals prefer implied and untraceable power, embodied by the question: who was actually running the Biden administration.
David Reece was afterwards and gave a mini-sermon on the parable in Judges 9, where the productive trees refuse to rule and so the bramble bush rules instead. Reece urged Christians to seek and accept power and its accompanying responsibility.
Then Wolfe and Reece debated Natural Law and Theonomy. Half of the debate focused on the epistemological claims and the other half the practical role of government. The epistemological claims made by both Reece and Wolfe were compelling, however, this part of the debate is comparably insignificant to the practical application section.
The two debated the role of government to police roads, regulate land, and perform building inspections. To much applause, Reece criticized the American bureaucracy’s inability to have dominion over land, highlighting the government’s ownership of Arizona land, which inflates real estate prices and prevents development. Stephen Wolfe countered pointed out that American bureaucracy is notoriously bad, but this is not how other nations view or experience bureaucracy.
David Reece, using Theonomy, argued that the government does not have the right to hold public land, and the government’s role in policing roads stems from their ownership of them and traffic laws were akin to trespassing. This was also applied to littering. Wolfe asserted that the power to create malum prohibitum laws. Wolfe believed things like large lakes could not simply be regulated via property rights and were common property. Wolfe asserted that California has the right to ensure that a parking garage can withstand a 7.0 earthquake, whereas Reece believes the law should be merely punitive. Wolfe, instead, believes that the law can and should curtail unwanted behaviors.
Who people thought won the debate is directly correlated to their views on public land. But the two sides have much to agree on, a factor which should not be overlooked.
3 Responses
You’ve done a great job of simplifying things here.
Wish I could have been there. Thank you for these daily updates!
My people parish from a lack of knowledge.