Wyatt Graham

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Books

Stephen Wolfe’s Christian Nationalism: A Review

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Canon Press published Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism at an opportune time. After two and half years of COVID, people are ready to resist the state’s imposition on their freedoms. Yet the book has undergone its fair share of controversy. Accusations of racism and kinism or at least an association with it have arisen. I do not fully understand the details of these accusations, and it may be that by the time my review comes out such matters will come to light.

My goal in this article is to review the book Christian Nationalism because it represents a conclusion that many people have intuited over the last decade. As Christians struggle to resist societal pressures and reassert the faith, they have developed an under-defined notion of Christian Nationalism, one likely borne out of the realization that Christians now live in a society that no longer privileges Christian moral norms.

Put more simply, a lot of people feel that the Canada or the USA of their youth no longer exists. The moral structure of their country, the Christian baseline for discourse, and more besides has been replaced with something else. Should we then find ways to survive these transitions as pilgrims or attempt to re-establish a Christian national consensus? [Read more…] about Stephen Wolfe’s Christian Nationalism: A Review

On the Obligations of the Four Cardinal Virtues and the Grace of the Three Theological Virtues

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After the assassination Julius Caesar, Cicero wrote “On Obligations” to his son Marcus, who was studying in Athens. He obviously meant it for the public as well, but it has the sense of a father writing to a son.

It might be the most important book on ethics in the West, at least until recent years. Yet it’s recent decline in popularity does not gainsay its classic status or the reason why it become a classic—classics become so because they have a sense of excellence.

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Platonism and Naturalism by Lloyd P. Gerson (a review)

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Lloyd P. Gerson ties platonism to five negations and one affirmation. Platonism denies nominalism, materialism, mechanism, skepticism, and relativism (18-19). Positively, it affirms the first principle of all, the Good or the One (19–20).  It affirms the reality of intellectual objects like truth, justice, and God. Platonism then, for Gerson, zeroes in on the affirmation that the world goes beyond nature, and that there is stable truth that grounds our life.  [Read more…] about Platonism and Naturalism by Lloyd P. Gerson (a review)

Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America (a review)

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Crawford Gribben’s work Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America makes sense of much of contemporary evangelicalism and the political mood of much of North America. Gribben spent a number of years interviewing, reading, and analyzing those who play a part in Christian Reconstruction in the Pacific Northwest (the book’s subtitle). 

Christian reconstruction refers to a broad group of people who want to reconstruct society around biblical law, or at least a Christian culture. Douglas Wilson might be the most popular member of this movement today. That said, he himself does not own the theonomist label, even though he affirms a debt to the thinking of R. J. Rushdoony. That latter founded the modern theonomy movement. 

Gribben then describes a diverse set of people who have moved to the Pacific Northwest (Idaho area) to resist the coming decline of American culture in the hopes of rebuilding a better life afterward. It is a strategic retreat to combat the coming decline. Yet this reconstruction hopes in a better future, and so it carries postmillennial eschatology.  [Read more…] about Survival and Resistance in Evangelical America (a review)

Christian Platonism: A History (a review)

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I understand Platonism to be a field of study. Platonism studies metaphysical objects like causes, numbers, purpose, evenness, oddness, angels, mind, justice, love, and so on. Now, I recognize that I am being reductive here. Plato and platonists have spoken about a great deal many things. But I find this basic and simple definition helpful because it names what Platonism is in a way accessible to most today. 

A brain surgeon studies the technique of brain surgery. A biologist studies biology. A platonist studies intellectual objects like love and numbers. It is easy to see why Christians might adopt platonic concepts. Theology—the study of the invisible, unseen God and his works—speaks about a divine Being whose existence lies outside of regular sense experience (sight, smell, etc.). An angel, heaven, a demon, a power, a throne, and more besides generally are understood to exist in a way that differs from a dog, person, or house. 

Christian Platonism, in my view, uses appropriate language to talk about intellectual (i.e. non-material objects). Christianity adopted that language to organize their thinking around God and his works. Particularly, to conceive of one God who Paul calls “invisible” (1 Tim 1:17) or to conceive of how the invisible Logos becomes flesh (John 1:14) takes careful thinking. Platonism or philosophical language in general provides the tools for the job, just as physics can describe how the world works. 

Alexander J. B.  Hampton and John Peter Kenney appear to say something somewhat similar in their introduction to Christian Platonism: A History when they say, “At various times, Platonigms has constituted an essential philosophical and theological resource, furnishing Christianity with a fundamental intellectual framework that has played a key role in its early development, and in subsequent periods of renewal” (3).  [Read more…] about Christian Platonism: A History (a review)