Anthropological Error of Christian Nationalism

The Nation, the Soul, and the Will

Christian Nationalism is on the rise, used both as a pejorative and as a self-proclaimed label. But because the phrase is used by those who despise it and those who identify with it, definitions become a problem, and there have been some horrible ones.

However, Stephen Wolfe, arguably the most prominent self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist author, has done the movement a service by providing a succinct, specific definition of Christian nationalism. According to Wolfe,

Christian nationalism is 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.

Despite what one thinks of Wolfe’s project, one has to be thankful for such a definition!

And yet as this definition reveals a fundamental flaw at the heart of Wolfe’s project - an anthropological error.

The Anthropological Error

The error in Wolfe’s Christian nationalism, indeed, on any nationalism of this variety, is that it is based upon a fundamentally erroneous view of the will. Notice how the concept of “national action” is central to Wolfe’s definition. A survey of his book shows that the phrase “national action” occurs 21 times, “national will” 22 times, and “collective will” 8 times, and that is not including anywhere where the concepts are present and the exact phrases are not.

To give a sense of how central this idea is to his thesis, let me give some quotes:¹

The civil power of the prince comes immediately from God as the root of civil power, but the people, by their consent, are the instrument or mode by which God confers it on him. The people need civil authority because the national will for its good is insufficient to order the nation; it needs some intermediating authority between the national will and national action. The prince has his authority precisely because of this national will, and thus he is charged by the people to order them concretely to the end of that will, namely, to their national good.” (Introduction)

My principal interest is a reinvigoration of a collective will that asserts and stands up for itself. (chapter 3)

Becoming or maintaining itself as a Christian nation, in an explicit sense, is an act of national will. (chapter 4, emphasis original)

As a collective entity, a nation has a collective will for its collective good. It must have a collective will, because the nation is a moral person, responsible for itself before God. A collective will is expressed in the first-person plural—we desire the good of the whole, the good of us as a people….Political theorists have long argued that a people’s collective will is the means of consent to be under civil government, and I agree. But the nation can will only for its general good. Nations in themselves, viewed simply as a people, lack an ordering agent and so cannot effectively act for their own good in any immediate sense….The nation can act for its good but only mediately: They must establish an ordering agent, namely, a civil government. They must install a prince. The prince is the one through whom the people act for their own good. (chapter 7)

The nation as a nation is not an ad hoc collection of individuals but an entity in itself, a body politic. Just as individuals have the right and duty of self-preservation and self-defense in the interest of their life and goods, so too does the nation, for both are moral entities. (chapter 8)

For Wolfe, nations possess a national will that can only be realized in action through a representative intermediary, the prince. Indeed, Wolfe goes so far as to say that nations are “moral persons” and “moral entities.”

However, it is my contention that this view of the national will is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the will is, and a departure from classic, Christian theology.

De Anima

A survey of Christian praxeology will show that, across the board, the will was viewed as a faculty of the soul, that is, a power possessed by an individual with a soul. This isn’t necessarily a distinctly Christian idea either. Aristotle puts the will in the soul when he says,

There are in the Soul three functions on which depend moral action and truth; Sense, Intellect, Appetition, whether vague Desire or definite Will. (Ethics, VI.2)

If, however, the will is a faculty of the soul, then to speak of a “national will” implies a “national soul.” And yet, speaking properly, souls belong to individuals and none other. Petrus Van Mastrict gave this definition of the soul,

The soul, if you consider its essence, is nothing except a spiritual substance by aid of which an animate being operates from itself.” (Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 2, p. 256).

He unpacks this definition in four ways: the soul is:

1. A substance…because by it one man differs by a whole species from all others, and also, after death it subsists through itself.

2. A spiritual or immaterial substance, because it perceives immaterial things, and also does so in an immaterial way, through comparison, abstraction, reasoning, and reflection.

3. An incomplete substance, ordered to composition with a body, through which it is recognized to differ from the angelic essence.

4. Given for this end, that an animate being may by its aid be able to operate from itself, that is, to live. (Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 2, p. 256)

Richard Muller gives a very similar definition in his Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms,

anima: soul; the spiritual, or nonphysical, part of the human being (homo, q.v.); the forma corporis (q.v.), or form of the body, which provides the pattern and direction of human life and is therefore called the entelecheia (q.v.), or entelechy, of the body, following Aristotle. Inasmuch as it is spiritual, the soul is a noncomposite or simple substance, albeit an incomplete substance that naturally exists in unity with the body. Furthermore, the soul, as form, is present in the entire body and not confined to one or another place. Although identified by its highest characteristic, rationality, the human soul also comprises animal and vegetative principles.

There’s nothing controversial here, this is standard fare Christian anthropology. However, given this definition of the soul, if the will is a faculty of the soul, then there can be no such thing as a national will, properly speaking. And if there is no such thing as a national will, there can be no totality of national action. And if that does not exist, Wolfe’s Christian nationalism crumbles.

So, is this the standard Christian view of the will? It is, overwhelmingly so. Consider the following quotes from across the centuries (yes, there are a lot of them because I want to show that this view of the will is ubiquitous):

Christian Definition of the Will

Irenaeus (130-202)

“The will is the reason (λόγος) of the intellectual soul, which reason is within us, inasmuch as it is the faculty belonging to it which is endowed with freedom of action. The will is the mind desiring some object, and an appetite possessed of intelligence, yearning after that thing which is desired.”

*Fragments from the Lost Writings*, V

Origen (185-253)

“For it will appear to be a necessary consequence that, if bodily nature be annihilated, it must be again restored and created; since it seems a possible thing that rational natures, from whom the faculty of free-will is never taken away, may be again subjected to movements of some kind, through the special act of the Lord Himself.”

*De Principiis*, Book 2, ch. iii.3

Alexander of Alexandria (250-326)

“1. Natural will is the free faculty of every intelligent nature as having nothing involuntary which is in respect of its essence.”

*Epistle to Æglon, Bishop of Cynopolis, Against the Arians*, 1

Boethius (480-524)

“The carrying out of any human action depends upon two things—to wit, will and power; if either be wanting, nothing can be accomplished. For if the will be lacking, no attempt at all is made to do what is not willed; whereas if there be no power, the will is all in vain. And so, if thou seest any man wishing to attain some end, yet utterly failing to attain it, thou canst not doubt that he lacked the power of getting what he wished for.”

*Consolation of Philosophy*, IV.II

John of Damascus (675-749)

“Further note, that will (θέλησις) and wish (βούλησις) are two different things: also the object of will (τὸ θελητόν) and the capacity for will (θελητικόν), and the subject that exercises will (ὁ θέλων), are all different. For will is just the simple faculty of willing, whereas wish is will directed to some definite object. Again, the object of will is the matter underlying the will, that is to say, the thing that we will: for instance, when appetite is roused for food. The appetite pure and simple, however, is a rational will. The capacity for will, moreover, means that which possesses the volitional faculty, for example, man. Further, the subject that exercises will is the actual person who makes use of will.

The word τὸ θελήμα, it is well to note, sometimes denotes the will, that is, the volitional faculty, and in this sense we speak of natural will: and sometimes it denotes the object of will, and we speak of will (θέλημα γνωμικόν) depending on inclination”

*Exposition of the Orthodox Faith*, ch. XXII

Anselm (1033-1109)

“My very dear daughters, every action, whether it deserve praise or blame, deserves it according to the intention of the doer. For the will is the root and principle of all actions that are in our own power, and though we cannot do what we will, yet every one of us is judged before God according to his will.”

*To Robert and the Devout Women under His Care*

Aquinas (1225-1274)

“On the contrary, Augustine says (De Trin. xiii, 4) that "all desire happiness with one will." Now if this were not necessary, but contingent, there would at least be a few exceptions. Therefore the will desires something of necessity…. On the part of the agent, a thing must be, when someone is forced by some agent, so that he is not able to do the contrary. This is called "necessity of coercion." Now this necessity of coercion is altogether repugnant to the will. For we call that violent which is against the inclination of a thing. But the very movement of the will is an inclination to something…. But necessity of end is not repugnant to the will, when the end cannot be attained except in one way: thus from the will to cross the sea, arises in the will the necessity to wish for a ship. In like manner neither is natural necessity repugnant to the will. Indeed, more than this, for as the intellect of necessity adheres to the first principles, the will must of necessity adhere to the last end, which is happiness: since the end is in practical matters what the principle is in speculative matters.”

*Summa Theologiae*, I.Q82.A1

Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575)

“There are two parts or faculties of our soul: Understanding and Will. Understanding discerns what to receive or what to refuse in objects. It is the light and guide of the soul as it were. The Will chooses, for in it lies both to will and to nill.”

*Decades*, 4.2, Of Repentance

John Calvin (1509-1564)

“Let us therefore hold, for the purpose of the present work, that the soul consists of two parts, the intellect and the will - the office of the intellect being to distinguish between objects, according as they seem deserving of being approved or disapproved; and the office of the will, to choose and follow what the intellect declares to be good, to reject and shun what it declares to be bad.”

*Institutes of the Christian Religion*, I.xv.7

“Similarly the will, because it is inseparable from man’s nature, did not perish…”

*Institutes of the Christian Religion*, II.ii.12

Girolamo Zanchi (1516-1590)

“By the name free will, we do so mean the free choice of a man, that we do not yet separate from it the faculty of the understanding whereby we judge and determine upon things as that is good and what is ill, or what is to be chosen and what to be refused.”

*Confession of the Christian Religion*, p. 44

William Perkins (1558-1602)

“Good works come immediately from the natural faculties of the soul; namely, from the understanding and the will.”

*Golden Chain*, ch. 51, 16th error

“I say conscience is a part of the understanding, and I show it thus. God in framing of the soul placed in it two principal faculties, Understanding and Will. Understanding is that faculty in the soul whereby we use reason: and it is the more principal part serving to rule and order the whole man, and therefore it is placed in the soul to be as the wagginer in the waggin. The Will is another faculty, whereby we do will or nill anything, that is, choose or refuse it.”

*A Discource of Conscience*, ch. I

Amandus Polanus (1561-1610)

“The will of man is that power of his will, choosing, or refusing that which the understanding shows to be chosen or refused.”

*The Substance of Christian Religion*, p. 17

William Ames (1576-1633)

“The perfection of the soul was that by which it was of an immortal nature, not only in those faculties by which it was a free principle of its own actions — in understanding and will — but also being adorned with gifts whereby man was made able and fit to live well: namely, with wisdom, holiness, and righteousness.”

*The Marrow of Sacred Theology*, I.viii.73

“Virtue is in the Will: 1. First, because the will is the proper subject of Theology as it is the proper principle of life, and of moral and spiritual actions….5. ”

*The Marrow of Sacred Theology*, II.ii.7

John Weemes (1579-1636)

“THere are two principal faculties in the soul; the understanding and the will, which continually accompany it, both in the body, and out of the body.

The understanding, is an essential faculty in the Soul, whereby it knoweth, judgeth, and discerneth naturally truth from falsehood.

The will, is an essential faculty in the Soul working freely, having liberty to choose, refuse, or suspend, not determinate to one thing.”

*The Portraiture of the Image of God in Man*, ch. XVI, “Of the Will of Man.”

Thomas Hooker (1586-1647)

“Quest. What was the image of God in the will?

Ans. However we see not our soul, yet there is a spiritual substance in every man, which is immortal, and hath two faculties: Understanding and Will. Now the faculty of the Will, is like the hand, that puts away, or takes anything.”

*The Pattern of Perfection Exhibited in God’s Image*, Q&A 4.

Anthony Burgess (1600-1663)

“God hath appointed and ordered in nature, that every apprehensive power should have an appetitive power proportionable thereunto. The apprehensive being like the eye to discern and discover the object; The appetitive like the hand to embrace it: Thus the Angels, as they have an understanding to know things, so they have a will to desire them; In beasts there is a sensitive apprehension by imagination, and a sensitive appetite accordingly. Now because man in his soul is like an Angel, and in his body communicateth with beasts, therefore he hath both a twofold apprehension, intellectual and sensitive, understanding and imagination; and also a twofold appetite, a rational one, which is the will, and a sensitive one, which is the sensitive appetite in a man, wherein the passions and affections are seated; The will then is in a man his rational appetite, following the proposition and manifestation of the understanding: For if a man did know what was good, or what is evil, and no appetite to embrace the one, or avoid the other, he would be no better than a stone or a statue for all his reason. We see then why God hath placed such a power in the soul, as the will is; It is that the good which the understanding manifesteth may be embraced and entertained, and the evil it doth discover may be shunned, Whether this will be distinct really from the soul itself, and from the understanding is a Philosophical Dispute, and will not tend to your edification.”

*A Treatise of Original Sin*

Samuel Stone (1602-1663)

“Q: What is the reasonable immortal soul?

A: A spirit of life with a faculty of reason & will, whereby a man is become a cause by counsel.”

*A Short Catechism*

John Lightfoot (1602-1675)

“The Elective faculty of the Soul or the Will, doth confer and debate with, and within it self upon every Election or refusal, when it doth either entertain or lay aside, what is presented to it by the understanding, choosing, or refusing, upon such a discourse and argumentation with it self as this; I choose it because it is good, and I refuse it because it is evil.”

*Sermon 24 February 1646*

Francis Turretin (1623-1687)

“Nor does there seem to be a real distinction here, but only an extrinsic with regard to the objects (as one and the same faculty of the soul both judges by understanding and by willing embraces what it judges to be good; and it is called “intellect” when it is occupied in the knowledge and judgements of things, but “will” when it is carried to the love or hatred of the same.)”

*Institutes of Elenctic Theology*, Vol. 1, X.1.v, p. 660.

Stephen Charnock (1628-1680)

“But man has a faculty to understand and will, which makes him a man.”

*On Being Born of God*, part 1

“The will, being a rational faculty, cannot be wrought upon but rationally.”

*On Being Born of God*, part 2

Van Mastricht (1630-1706)

“The second is the faculty of desiring or rejecting the good or evil, which is that of the will, which is occupied with regard to an end necessarily, and with regard to means indifferently, at least by its nature. From both the faculty of perceiving and of desiring arises then free choice, which is nothing other than the faculty of acting from counsel or rational complacency.”

*Theoretical-Practical Theology*, Vol. 2, p. 257

“The term will…denotes three things: (1) that force of our mind which is the principle of will or the faculty of willing; (2) the act of that faculty, or the willing itself; finally, (3) the willed object. …And thus, the will is that faculty of acting from free choice, or from rational complacency, and its act is called the rational appetite. For there is a natural appetite, by which vegetative things are directed to the good that is natural to them, though it is entirely unknown to them; sensitive appetite, by which brute beats are directed to their object as it is known to them by their senses, seeking the good suitable to them and fleeing the evil adverse to them; and the rational appetite, by which men and angles are directed to their objects as known to them b their intellect, so that from this intellection, whether it comes before or together with the appetite, we speak of this appetite as rational, from counsel, and from rational complacency.”

*Theoretical-Practical Theology*, vol. 2, 295-296

Samuel von Pufendorf (1632-1694)

“The most Wise Creator being pleased to make man an animal governable by laws, for this purpose implanted a will in his soul, as an internal directress of his actions; that the objects being proposed and known, this power might by an intrinsic principle, and without any physical necessity more itself toward them and might choose that which seemed most agreeable and convenient, and reject that which appeared unsuitable and incommodious.”

*Of the Law of Nature and Nations*, Bk. I, ch. IV, p. 27 (p. 51 in PDF)

Wilhelmus à Brakel (1635-1711)

“The soul of man is also gifted with a *will*, *which is a faculty by which we can either love or hate*. This faculty is called a blind faculty. This does not imply that man ignorantly loves or hates, but rather that it is the intellect, not the will, which judges in a given matter. It is the intellect which presents a matter to the will as being either desirable or contemptible, prescribing the course of action to be taken under the current circumstances. The will embraces this practical judgment blindly and acts accordingly. If one judges erroneously, the will functions erroneously as well. At times the intellect suggests something to the will which is enjoyable and advantageous but not according to truth. The will then embraces it as such, even though it is contrary to God’s law.”

*The Christian’s Reasonable Service*, vol. 1, ch. 10.

“God has gifted the soul of man with intellect and a will. The intellect consists of comprehension, judgment, and conscience. The faculty of judgment makes either a general determination about the validity of a matter and what sort of a thing it is, or it applies itself to the will of man suggesting and determining what is or is not be done, or what is to be loved or to be hated. The will of man consists of the ability to either love or hate something.”

*The Christian’s Reasonable Service*, vol. 1, ch. 15.

John Gill (1697-1771)

“The soul is the other part of man created by God; which is a “substance”, or subsistence;…it consists of various powers and faculties, the understanding, will, etc.”

*Body of Doctrinal Divinity*, III.3.2b, p. 407

“Moreover, the soul carries some shadow of likeness to God in its powers and faculties, being endowed with understanding, will, and affections; which are, in some respects, similar to what is in God; or there is that in God which these are a faint resemblance of; and though it consists of various faculties, there is but one soul; as God, though his perfections are many, and his Persons three, yet there is but one God.”

*Body of Doctrinal Divinity*, III.3.4b1, p. 413

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

“The will is plainly, that by which the mind chooses anything. The faculty of the will is that faculty of power, or principle of mind, by which it is capable of choosing: an act of the will is the same as an act of choosing or choice.”

*The Freedom of the Will*, p. 1

Charles Hodge (1797-1878)

“the word will itself is one of those ambiguous terms. It is sometimes used in a wide sense, so as to include all the desires, affections, and even emotions. It has this comprehensive sense when all the faculties of the soul are said to be included under the two categories of understanding and will. Everything, therefore, pertaining to the soul, that does not belong to the former, is said to belong to the latter. All liking and disliking, all preferring, all inclination and disinclination, are in this sense acts of the will. At other times, the word is used for the power of self-determination, or for that faculty by which we decide on our acts. In this sense only purposes and imperative volitions are acts of the will.”

*Systematic Theology*, vol. II, p. 288

Shedd (1820-1894)

“The will is that faculty or mode of the soul which self-determines, inclines, desires, and chooses in reference to moral and religious objects and ends.”

*Dogmatic Theology*, IV.3

John Girardeau (1825-1898)

“According to this analysis there are,besides the regulative principle of free causality lying at its root, two complementary factors constituting this special power of the soul – that of conation or effort, and that of election or determinate action. We therefore regard the will as the faculty of effort and choice.”

*The Will in Its Theological Relations*, p. 622

Louis Berkhof (1873-1957)

“To sum up it may be said that the image consists: (a) In the soul or spirit of man, that is, in the qualities of simplicity, spirituality, invisibility, and immortality. (b) In the psychical powers or faculties of man as a rational and moral being, namely, the intellect and the will with their functions.”

*Systematic Theology*, p. 207

Richard Muller (2017)

“Facultas: faculty, from the verb facere, to make; specifically, a resident ability, power, or potency (potentia, q.v.) to make or do something. Thus the intellect (intellectus, q.v.) and will (voluntas, q.v.) are understood as faculties of the soul.”

“Facultates animae: faculties of the soul; especially intellectus (q.v.) and voluntas (q.v.). These two faculties of the rational soul, intellect and will, are not two separate things but distinct modes of one thing (modus rei); i.e., they are modally or formally distinct but not really distinct. The soul is spiritual and therefore indivisible; it can just as accurately be said to understand and to will as to have understanding and to have will.”

“Voluntas: will, i.e. the faculty of will resident by nature in all spiritual beings; the appetitive power (potentia appetitiva) of a spiritual being. Will is distinct from intellect (intellectus, q.v.) in scholastic faculty psychology. The intellect is that which knows objects, the will is that which has an appetite or desire for them. Will and intellect are the two highest spiritual powers. The question immediately arises as to which of the faculties stands prior to the other. In the Thomistic model, intellect stands prior as the deliberative faculty; the will does not deliberate but merely inclines toward or desires that which the intellect knows as good or true. The will, thus, can be called an intellectual appetite (appetitus intellectualis) or a rational appetite (appetitus rationalis)….Will, defined as the appetitive faculty in man, must also be distinguished from choice (arbitrium). The will is the faculty that chooses; arbitrium is the capacity of will to make a choice or a decision. Thus, the will can be viewed as essentially free and unconstrained but nonetheless limited by its own capacity to choose particular things and, in view of the restricting and debilitating effects of sin (peccata, q.v.), in bondage to its own fallen capacities.”

*Dictionary of Greek and Latin Theological Terms*

Catholic Encyclopedia

“The term will as used in Catholic philosophy, may be briefly defined as the faculty of choice; it is classified among the appetites, and is contrasted with those which belong either to the merely sensitive or to the vegetative order: it is thus commonly designated "the rational appetite"; it stands in an authoritative relation to the complex of lower appetites, over which it exercises a preferential control; its specific act, therefore, when it if in full exercise, consists in selecting, by the light of reason, its object from among the various particular, conflicting aims of all the tendencies and faculties of our nature: its object is the good in general (bonum in communi); its prerogative is freedom in choosing among different forms of good.”

Conclusion

Clearly, these theologians are not in agreement about everything. One might have noticed that there is some disagreement as to the exact number of the soul’s faculties. However, one thing they all agree upon is that the will is a faculty of the soul, implying that beings without souls (including nations) do not have wills.

Fans of Wolfe may object to this argument by saying that Wolfe is just generalizing. He’s speaking in general terms like we do everyday when we speak of sports teams, families, fanbases, etc. After all, even libertarians speak about nations and governments doing things, and that is true. However, generalizations are useful but only if they do not break down when particularized. This is especially true in theology, philosophy, and law. One must always be able to demonstrate that the generalization proper and not obfuscatory. But Wolfe does not do this, indeed, I do not see how he could given the very clear and very precise definition of “will” found in classical Christian theology.

So, either Wolfe’s whole ideology is constructed upon a novel anthropology, or he is using terms imprecisely and by “national will” does not properly mean “national will.” However, if the latter is the case, then one wonders - what, precisely, does he mean? Perhaps he means the sum of the determinations of individual wills? If so, then it’s hard to see his Christian nationalism as anything other than rule majority vote - but that sounds much too like democracy for Wolfe and, even if he went down that route, it has a whole host of other problems and cannot ground his political vision.

It seems, then, that collectivism is at the heart of the nationalist project. I wonder, then, why Wolfe et al have failed to see the collectivism which I expect they see so clearly in the various strains of cultural marxism still hanging around today (e.g. CRT’s definitions of racism and white privelege). Probably because they have fallen into the trap of “political language” about which Orwell warned, in which phrases like “national will,” “consent of the people,” and “common good,” are used “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”²

1. I am using an electronic version of the book that does not correspond to the printed versions page numbers, so for each quote I will give the chapter from which it was taken. In addition, all emphases are mine unless otherwise noted.

2. https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/