An interesting exchange between two Lutheran college professors about Christian Nationalism recently caught my eye. The first article, a critique of Christian Nationalism, is by Thomas Korcok (an Associate Professor of Theology at Concordia Lutheran Theological Seminary in St. Catharines, Ontario). It was posted on the Lutheran Church of Canada’s website and describes Christian Nationalism as basically the attempt to reclaim a Christian culture for a nation through aggressive political action. Korcok concludes that Christian Nationalism should be rejected because it promotes an unBiblical version of Christianity that is potentially racist, violent, and unChristian. He further suggests that political activism itself should be eschewed and that the church should instead make the Gospel of Jesus Christ and its declaration in Word and Sacrament the center of its life. (In the Lutheran church, the Sacraments mean only baptism and communion, and also, with some qualification, the confession of sins. Luther pared down the rites of the church to only those which are instituted by the Lord in the Scriptures.)

The second article was written in response to the first. This article, “A Defense of Christian Culture in the Post-Pandemic Era” is by Harold Ristau, the President of Luther Classical College in Casper, Wyoming, which opens its doors this coming fall, an endeavor that I admire. But I have to say I find this article to be confused and troubling, starting with the title, “A Defense of Christian Culture in the Post-Pandemic Era.” As far as I can see, Korcok did not criticize Christian culture. In fact, when I did some research online, I found that he seems to defend Christian culture against secular culture. He’s written two books, both of which support a classical model of Christian education as being far superior to the models supported by today’s secular educational establishment.

And though Ristau’s article is said to have been written in response to the first, Ristau never directly addresses Korcok’s definition of Christian Nationalism nor offers his own. Nor does he directly address any specific statement of Korcok’s. Instead, throughout the article, Ristau appears to equate critics of Christian Nationalism to critics of Christian culture and then again to critics of any conservative, Christian participation in politics and then again to “the ones who failed to respond appropriately to the ‘pandemania’ during the recent pandemic.” And Ristau also appears to say that Christian Nationalism is a “gaslighting” term and therefore may not really exist except as a bogeyman used by those opposed to Christian activity in the public square; but then he also appears to say Christian Nationalism is a good thing that has “theological and political implications” that are in line with “the doctrine and practice of historic Christianity.”

Since Ristau equates critics of Christian Nationalism to critics of conservative Christian involvement in politics, he charges that those critics are justifying “soft-antinomian” behavior. This may take some explanation for non-Lutherans because the term “soft antinomianism” is not in the Lutheran Confessions nor even in common use among Lutherans today, but is a recent one that has been used by some Lutheran pastors and teachers in a theological controversy about Law and Gospel.

“Antinomianism” means “against law” (nomos is the Greek word for “law”) and is addressed by the Lutheran Confessions as a false teaching. It refers to those teachers during and shortly after Luther’s time who maintained that the Law (the moral law summed up in the Ten Commandments) should not be preached at all to Christians. They said that the Law is only for bringing unbelievers to repentance and that believers needed only to hear the Gospel (the free forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake); moral transformation, worked by the Holy Spirit through the Gospel, would follow from that.

The “Soft Antinomians” of today say Christians do need to continue to hear the Law, but say it serves only to convict believers of sin and work repentance in them to return them once again to the cross. “The Law only accuses,” a phrase taken from the Apology to the Augsburg Confession, is their motto. They say the Law should be preached to Christians only with that intent, never to exhort to good works or obedience; and, in fact, Christian preachers should not be telling believers how to live at all - that’s a return to the legalism from which they were freed by the Gospel. The pastor who coined the term “soft antinomianism” defines it this way:

“Soft antinomianism is an inability and even a refusal to preach about new obedience and good works. It does not exhort, admonish and teach in sermons about how Christians are to live because of what Christ has done for us.”

When the term is explained, this kind of antinomianism is rightly rejected by most Lutherans, as it is fairly easy to show that Luther, the early Lutheran Reformers, and in fact nearly all Lutherans up until the mid-twentieth century didn’t have any problem exhorting believers to do good works according to the Law of God. They taught that the Law, as well as accusing its hearers of sin, is also used by God to show believers how he wants them to live (this is the “third use of the Law” in Lutheran theology, though Luther himself seems only very rarely to have used that description).

(My description here of both “Antinomianism” and “Soft Antinomianism” is overly simple for the purpose of limiting the length of this article. For a fuller description, see “What is Soft Antinomianism?” by Mark Surburg.)

So I don’t see a problem with the use of the term “soft antinomianism” when applied properly. Believers should be exhorted to obey God’s laws and do the works God commands. But I believe Ristau is using it improperly when he uses it to describe those who warn against activity of the Christian Nationalist type in the public sphere, saying in effect that they are counseling disobedience to God's law. By doing so, though the terms are confused, he seems to elevate participation in conservative politics to a duty commanded by God on the same level as obedience to the Ten Commandments.

There are several significant problems with that. The first is the legalism inherent in adding a command (i.e., “You must speak out in the public sphere against ungodliness”) that’s not really found in the Bible to the Law that God wants us to obey. Of course, God wants us to speak his Word in public places, but that is a far cry from saying we must support a political movement that speaks its own version of the Law.

The second is the hand-waving used to equate “speaking out in the public sphere” to participation in conservative political movements, including perhaps Christian Nationalism. And also in equating the MAGA movement to conservative politics, and in treating opposition to MAGA and Christian Nationalism the same as opposition to Christian culture.

The third is the selective application of such a command to the things that we should speak out against. It is obvious Ristau wants us to speak out only against the immorality of the modern Left, not against the immorality of the modern Right, meaning Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. There are, however, many things in the MAGA movement that also should be spoken against, starting with the fact that it has subverted the Republican party and turned it into something that is not conservative but instead puts the will of an immature, vengeful, and narcissistic man above moral and political principles.

Ristau says that true Christians must embrace a conservative worldview, but yet Trump’s worldview clearly is not conservative. One of the highest tenets of conservative political thought in the U.S. is that it must adhere to the rule of law according to its Constitution. The “conservatism” of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement that Ristau commends to us does not do so. If it did, it would not have bought in to President Trump’s efforts to stay in office in 2020 following his defeat in the Presidential election of that year. If Trump’s supporters were conservative, they would not have rejected Vice President Mike Pence with disgust for sticking to the Constitution’s definition of his role in certifying the presidential vote instead of following Trump’s demand that he ignore that definition in order to keep himself in the presidency; because his Christian supporters believe a man even they admit is brutal and vulgar and at very best only a nominal Christian, they condemn as weak and cowardly an undoubtedly Christian man who was doing his best to stick to his duties under God and under the Constitution. Also, they would not brush off or rationalize President Trump’s radical use of executive orders to rule by his own authority instead of with Congress according to the Constitution. Just because Democrats have abused the Constitution doesn’t mean it’s right in God eyes for Republicans to do it also.

Ristau further states that a conservative worldview “includes a political perspective regarding the timelessness of God’s Law and Word.” This phrase, “the timelessness of God’s Law and Word,” is an odd one for a Lutheran. To a Lutheran, the Word includes both Law and Gospel. If the Law is separately named, standing beside the Word as timeless, so should the Gospel, which should predominate in any proclamation of the Word, and is really the truly timeless element of the Word. To me, there seems to be an ominous emphasis on the Law here, as throughout the article.

This emphasis on the Law seems to be justified in Ristau’s eyes because of his understanding of Luther’s teaching about the Two Kingdoms. The kingdom of the left-hand is the civil sphere and therefore of Law; the kingdom of the right-hand is the church and therefore of the Gospel. Ristau writes,

“Even America’s founding fathers did not boast a rigid separation of Church and state. The iconic language was intended to protect the life of the Church from overreach by the state, and not the other way around. The outlandish argument that the Two Kingdoms somehow coexist as two self-contained silos was foreign to our fathers. Luther is clear on the Church’s mandate to pray for, rebuke, and advise the prince. The prince was required to protect the Church and the freedom to provide her services. Accordingly, faithful Christians must preserve and even advance Christian culture in the public sphere. Without it the safety and mission of Christ’s Church on earth is at risk.”

But Ristau forgets that the Two Kingdoms (the German term is better translated as “the two governments”) are two ways that GOD governs, not two ways that Christians can govern at their own choosing. God is firmly in control of the left-hand kingdom, the civil sphere, whether Christians do anything or not. In spite of appearances, God controls everything that happens and depends on no particular system of government or no particular culture to guarantee the safety and mission of the Church. (Look at ancient Rome, the empire in power when the Church was born and grew rapidly in spite of the ungodliness of the government.) Nothing happens that God hasn’t foreseen and not one ruler has any power except what God has chosen to give him for God’s purposes, not the ruler’s own purposes. Christians can rest secure in that, and should not be anxious about human laws, governments, politics, or culture.

In his closing sentence, Ristau asks: “Which is a greater threat to the Church and society: Christian Nationalism or Christian apathy?” But this is surely a setup and a misuse of the terms. He has made it evident throughout the article that he doesn’t view Christian Nationalism as a real threat, being mainly something that leftists use as a bogeyman to scare conservative Christians away from politics; and he has also labored to show that conservative political involvement is expected of all Christians by God, so that declining to get involved in politics is failing God and His Law. So we’ve been very carefully guided to say of course Christian “apathy” is the greater threat. But hear Luther again on Christian participation in political movements:

“I say all this, dear friends, as a faithful warning. In this case you should stop calling yourselves Christians and stop claiming that you have the Christian law on your side. For no matter how right you are, it is not right for a Christian to appeal to law, or to fight, but rather to suffer wrong and endure evil; and there is no other way (1 Corinthians 6 [:1–8]). You yourselves confess in the preface to your articles that “all who believe in Christ become loving, peaceful, patient, and agreeable.” Your actions, however, reveal nothing but impatience, aggression, anger, and violence. Thus you contradict your own words. You want to be known as patient people, you who will endure neither injustice nor evil, but will endure only what is just and good. That is a fine kind of patience! Any rascal can practice it! It does not take a Christian to do that! So again I say, however good and just your cause may be, nevertheless, because you would defend yourselves and are unwilling to suffer either violence or injustice, you may do anything that God does not prevent. However, leave the name Christian out of it. Leave the name Christian out, I say, and do not use it to cover up your impatient, disorderly, un-Christian undertaking. I shall not let you have that name, but so long as there is a heartbeat in my body, I shall do all I can, through speaking and writing, to take that name away from you. You will not succeed, or will succeed only in ruining your bodies and souls...”
(“Admonition to Peace: A Reply to the Twelve Articles of the Peasants in Swabia,” Luther’s Works, Vol. 46, pp. 32-33, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1967)