Reasonable Latino Reads Josh Buice's Baptist vs Christian Government Article

Why Josh Buice’s Article on Christian Nationalism Misses the Mark

All right everybody, welcome back to the channel. I am The Reasonable Latino and we are going to be reading a Josh Bice article in today's video and responding to it. Now, Josh requested that I do this and I want to just kind of introduce how this happened because I thought it was so weird.

It was very weird the way Josh kind of challenged me to read this article and respond to it. If you remember from yesterday's video or earlier today, I don't know when I'm going to post this, but if you remember, I went over this screenshot, right?

He has this screenshot with this poster with all the faces and he says that one reason he's not a Christian nationalist is because most Christian nationalists aren't Reformed evangelicals. Yesterday, we kind of tore into that about how stupid that is, how illogical that is, how dumb that is, how ridiculous that is, and how much I don't like that attitude.

We don't have to repeat that here, but what happened was this is a, let me show you, this is a standalone tweet, right? There's no thread here. There's no link here. This is just an isolated tweet and so I had responded to that isolated tweet in a quote tweet and so on my Twitter feed, I sometimes I'll do that, right?

And I just made the point that I mentioned yesterday that the overwhelming majority of Christians, forget the nationalism, just Christians are not Reformed evangelicals. So is this is your logic apply there too?

Like it doesn't make any sense, Josh. And he responded to that and it was so weird. Like he makes it seem as if I'm changing the subject or that I'm like running and hiding from his article, like refusing to engage, but it's like, this is my Twitter feed.

Like I only saw this tweet. It's not connected to anything. There's no link here. I didn't even know it was part of an article. That was just very weird. Look what he says. He says, what about the actual substance of my article yesterday or a week ago?

Do you have anything to say about the positions? It's like, dude, like this is, but by the way, this is projection for sure because they've been doing this for weeks. They've not been engaging for weeks.

They're just putting out their lame, you know, Protestant Pope, you know, saved by the government, you're racist, all that stuff, refusing to accept correction, refusing to be corrected. Oh, it's just post-millennialism.

And it's like, yeah, but, but you know, the guy's book who you're responding to actually isn't a post-millennial. What are you talking about? It's just still post-millennialism. It's like, what are you talking about, bro?

So this is, this is him telling on himself here, but I just thought that was so weird. Josh, why did you do this? Why did you make it seem like I'm dodging you? You're dodging me. That's what's going on.

G3's dodging me. Maybe not me. Oh man. Anyway. So we're going to read. I'm happy to engage your, your articles. I mean, I don't read G3. What can I say? I didn't know you made an article. I didn't know you wrote articles.

I don't read articles. I, let me take that back. I hate read articles. So if I'm reading an article more often than not, it's from my gospel coalition or something like that. I'm not, I don't really read a whole lot of content that I agree with.

I don't even read Doug Wilson articles. I wait till it comes out on video and then I listen to it. Sometimes I don't even listen to all of them. So anyway, I don't know if I'm allowed to say that I'm on the fight last feast network.

I actually don't follow Doug Wilson that carefully. I do like him though. And that's for sure. All right, Josh, let's, let's, let's boogie. Let's read your article now because your tweet here doesn't link anything.

And I didn't even know it was an article. I'm not a hundred percent sure this is the article you want me to respond to something. I mean, it was, it was, it was, it was published the same day that makes me think it is the article and it's about Christian nationalism.

That makes me think it is the article, but it's called Baptist doctrine and Christian nationalism. And that doesn't, that makes me think it might not be the article you're referring to because surely you're not asking me to respond as a Baptist.

That wouldn't make any sense, Josh, but I mean, maybe you don't know that I'm not a Baptist. I don't know who knows. All right, Josh Boyce, Baptist doctrine and Christian nationalism. Let's just read it.

Let's get it. I'm the reasonable Latino, by the way, and I'm going to be reasonable today. Okay. As we look at the world around us, especially the world in America where I live become more and more perverse and openly pagan.

There's a natural temptation to feel the growing tension and look for an immediate solution. In many cases, it leads to Christians to embrace a muscular version of Christianity that stands against drag queen story hour and the latest LGBTQA pronoun madness.

I don't think that's muscular Christianity that stands against that stuff. It's just standard, you know, authentic Christianity, because this is the thing like, those of us, Josh, maybe I can help you out here because I don't think, I think you're kind of out of touch a lot of the time.

I do. I do. Regular Joe Christians who haven't had their minds turned into goo by seminary yet, you know, we read the scripture and we see a Christianity on the march. We see a Christianity that's victorious.

We see a Christianity that is kicking down the gates of hell. Like the gates of hell can't stand against the church. We aren't meant to be doormats. And even if, and this is, this is not necessarily about post-millennialism because there's a lot of people that don't necessarily have a lot of optimism in the eschatology that likewise see this.

It's like, look, I don't know how much time we have here. And I don't know when Christ is going to come back. And I don't know what's going to happen in the next couple of years, but as long as I'm in the game, I'm going to play to win that game because I see in the scripture, it says the gates of hell can't stand against the church.

So let's try kicking those things down. I don't know if that's really muscular version of Christianity. I just think that's just a non-feminized version of Christianity, a non-cisified version of Christianity.

That's like, yeah, let's stand up against this. We don't have to let the, the, drag queens have those children. Who says, says who? We don't have to, we don't have to let LGBT become the de facto religion of our country.

Says who? Let's get it. Let's get to work. You got that right. People are looking for that. Anyway, let's continue. For this reason, many Christians are attracted to the ideology of Christian nationalism without the first thought of where it arises from.

Much like people who, after the death of George Floyd, began posting black squares on Instagram as a sign that black lives matter. This is, this is the strategy. They, they think it's like the new wokeness.

I know that I've seen, I've heard some people explain a little bit about that. If that, that's another one that's, it's like the, you're a racist argument, the, you're a racist strategy. It's not really an argument, it's a strategy.

That, if this is your rhetoric, I mean, good luck to you in, in your, all your endeavors, but that's, this is not, this is not going to work. It's not, it's not like the, the black lives matter thing.

It's not, it's not like that. Oh man. It's like, yeah, you know, black lives matter because this, this, this, this, this fentanyl addict got choked out by a cop because he was, he was aggressive and completely crazed by fentanyl.

And, and that's, that's very similar to, to people saying, yeah, I'm sick of the trannies ruling everything. How about we do something about it? How about we do something about it? I don't know. It doesn't really seem to be the same thing to me.

I don't know. I mean, it's like the problem with wokeness wasn't that they were politically engaged. The problem with wokeness was that they were bringing the intersectionality into the church and, and, and when they were politically engaged, they were politically engaged in an evil way, top to bottom.

They were voting for evil candidates. They were, they were promoting evil doctor, um, uh, policies. It was evil, their, their political engagement. So it's not like the Christians being engaged politically is the problem.

Maybe he's not saying that. I don't know. He just, he just kind of puts this out there, but it's the way they were politically engaged. It was the fact that they, that they tied, you know, you know, intersectionality and, and, and, and socialism to the gospel.

They said, this is the gospel. It's the gospel to get reparations. This is, that's the gospel or at least part of the gospel. It wasn't like, yeah, you know, we're Christians here. And, uh, you know, we've got a lot of, of fellow Christians in various jurisdictions.

You know, we actually don't have to allow the kids. We don't. That's very different. I don't know. Call me crazy. Call me crazy. I'm just too reasonable. I think that's my problem. Soon enough, those same people were publishing the language of BLM on social media without the slightest clue where BLM originated in the baggage that it brought with it.

In a recent article titled the different shades of Christian nationalism. I attempted to point out that there are various different shades of Christian. I had to stop it. I had to stop it. Oh man. I don't know.

In the real world is 30 seconds later. I've been laughing for 30 seconds. That's that sentence is funny. I'm sorry. I don't know why it's just funny. It's like, it's like saying in my article, the three best flavors of Mountain Dew, I explained that what's the three best flavors of Mountain Dew were.

It's like, what's the point of that sentence? Obviously that's what you did. If the article's titled different shades of Christian nationalism, I'm assuming that you pointed out that there are different shades of Christian nationalism.

Why write that sentence? Josh. Oh, Josh. Oh man. That's a weird, I mean, there's nothing wrong with the sentence. It's a totally fine sentence. It just, I don't understand why it's there. Okay. In a recent article titled the different shades of Christian nationalism.

I attempted to point out that there are various different shades of Christian nationalism. The largest base of Christian nationalists do not live in Moscow, Idaho. In fact, they're not even reformed in their theology.

The largest base of Christian nationalists are followers of general Michael Flynn, Michael Flynn, and operate in this political sphere. For instance, in 2021, Michael Flynn led a prayer at one of his rallies where he repeated the same prayer that the false prophet is Elizabeth Clare popularized in 1984.

As he asked for attendees to commit themselves to the ideologies of Christian nationalism, Michael Flynn, general Michael Flynn is the most important Christian nationalists out there. Okay. Yeah. I mean, he just, he just says it like it's self evident.

I don't know. I don't know, man. Maybe then, maybe then you should have started with with refuting Michael Flynn. Instead, you claimed that you were only going to respond to Stephen Wolf because he's the most important leader and Doug Wilson is the most important leader and you weren't going to respond to every Tom, Dick and Harry.

And then now Michael Flynn's the most important leader. I don't know. Maybe you guys should have got your story straight. I I've heard that you spent a lot of time and energy and, and, and time and talk and discussion on planning out how to unroll this, this anti-Christian government thing that you're doing, whatever, whatever it is you're doing as Christians, you're against Christian, uh, Christian government.

Um, I've heard you spend a lot of time thinking about this. I'm just curious, like, like maybe you should have planned it out better. Cause it certainly seems like you're flying by the seat of your pants.

I'm just an observer. I'm just a reasonable observer. I don't know. That's the sound seems like that to me. Let's continue. I have problems with the Christian nationalist movement on the basis of several ideological and theological points.

First of all, the Christian nationalism movement is, is language that was weaponized against the church by progressives as a pejorative label that conflates white nationalists with Christian nationalists.

And suddenly it becomes white Christian nationalists. Christianity is a big enough hurdle to our pagan world. So why would we need to embrace another pejorative label such as Christian nationalists to hinder the work of Christ?

Even if you, why would we embrace another pejorative label such as Christian nationalists to hinder the work of Christ? Even if you could convince me of the teaching of Christian nationalism, I would not be willing to accept the name badge.

This is so interesting. This is so interesting because, you know, as a reasonable Latino and a reasonable observer, he kind of like tries to distance himself from trying to identify Christian nationalists with white nationalists, Nazis, you know, that kind of thing.

And, um, but, but him and his little crew have been doing that. You've been participating against that. You're the one weaponizing these, this pejorative label. You're the one that's embracing it. And you're, and you're joining the progressives in doing this.

You, you're the one who decided to go with, you guys are racist. You guys are Nazis. You guys are this and that. Like, like you guys are doing that. Don't distance yourself from that, Josh. You got to own that.

It's not the progressives doing it. It's maybe they started it, but you're participating in it. You're in that propaganda war. Your, your allies are like CNN and MSNBC when it comes to Christian nationalism.

Those are your allies. And the young Turks, those are your people, Kyle Howard. That's the thing. Like that, that's what's so crazy about this. Like you're doing that, not them. Well, I mean, they are too.

But, uh, but he puts this out there and this is what I, this is what I think is interesting too. It's like, he says, if, if you embrace this pejorative label, it'll hinder the work of Christ. And he just puts that out there like it, as if it needs no explanation.

It's just self-evident. It's self, it's apparent that doing that, embracing this, this pejorative and not caring what they say about you anymore, that's just automatically hindering the work of Christ.

I don't think that's self-evident at all. You need to explain that one, Josh, how that hinders the work of Christ, uh, in, in the civil realm to, to, to, to say, I don't care two rips what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says, what, uh, what that fat guy from CNN says, what the black guy from CNN says, you know, they're all the same.

Well, I don't care what those people say. They could say whatever they want. I'm not, I'm not going to run from this. I'm a Christian and I'm a nationalist. I'm going to, I'm going to own that. That's fine.

You want to think you want to associate with that's racist. That's okay with me. Why would that hinder the work of Christ? You need to explain that, Josh. It's not self-evident at all. I could easily see that helping the work of Christ because finally, finally, we're not just reacting to what the Pagans say.

Oh, they don't, we don't want to be appear as racist. So let's just do things that don't appear racist. Like, like that's, that's what the, that's what woke white people do. That's what woke white people do.

Anything to not appear racist. So I guess I'm going to put the black square in my profile. Anything, whatever you say. I don't care what black lives matter. Just, I'm not racist. You've seen that meme with that, with that progressive church, uh, with black lives matter on their, uh, on their billboard burning in flames during one of the riots.

It's like, that doesn't work to constantly be reacting. Oh, this is, Oh, I don't want to, I don't, and the Pagans are like, go over here, go over here. And you go over there because you don't want to appear racist.

And the Pagans say, don't go over there. You don't go over there because you don't want to appear racist. Like that little game. I think that hinders the work of Christ. That makes more sense to me that, that when you, when you let the progressives and the Pagans own you so much that like anything that they don't want you to do, you run from anything you, they do want you to do.

You don't run from when you're constantly worried, what are the Pagans going to think of me? I think that hinders the work of Christ. Now I've got to prove that as well, but he just presents this. Like it's just obvious.

It's not obvious. It's not obvious at all. He says, even if you could convince me of the teachings of Christian nationalism, I would not be willing to accept the name badge within the sphere of theology.

I have some concerns with Christian nationalist movement on the basis of theological distinctions. One such concern is centered on historic Baptist theology. For instance, 1689 London Baptist confession on the civil magistrate only contains three paragraphs where the Westminster confession of faith contains four paragraphs.

It would be good to examine the reasons for this difference in light of the current discussions on Christian nationalism. When a person examines the 1689 LBC in Westminster confession, they can see the obvious difference with regard to paragraphs.

However, the real question is why did the Baptists determine to omit this paragraph? I'm starting to remember why I don't read blog posts. Oh man. It doesn't seem like it's at odds with much of Baptist distinctives.

However, the history of that paragraph matters. In 1788, the American Presbyterians revised the Westminster confession. They changed the paragraph to align with true biblical theology and Christian liberty that the Baptists had already embraced.

The original reading of the third paragraph of the Westminster confession reads, yeah, the American version is inferior in my opinion. I mean, I've thought that for a long time. The original Westminster was way better.

That's just my opinion, but hey, you know, obviously that's just my one man's opinion. The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the word and sacraments or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, yet he has authority and it is his duty to take order that unity and peace be preserved in the church, that the true God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed.

For the better effecting whereof he has the power to call synods to be present at them and to provide that whatsoever is transacted in them to be according to the mind of God. I like that paragraph. I do.

There might—like, if I, you know, really think about it and think it through, would I take exceptions to some of this stuff? I think potentially there could be some exceptions that you could take to this paragraph, but in general, I like this paragraph.

I think it's a good paragraph. I should have kept it. He continues—this is now Josh—he says, The third paragraph of the original Westminster denies the civil magistrate the power to administer word and sacrament.

That's good. But it crosses a line by extending to the civil magistrate the power to punish heretics and blasphemers in order to correct corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline. The Baptist rightly viewed this as a violation of the civil magistrate's sphere of duty and operation.

If this paragraph stands, the civil magistrate places his hands on both the sword and the keys. No, it doesn't! That's not correct. It doesn't. Or at bare minimum, is given the responsibility of using the sword to correct the human heart, which would not be possible.

No, that's not it at all. I could easily see a way for the civil magistrate and the church to work together but not blend, right? To work together but not blend, because the church would have the authority on some of these matters, and the civil magistrate would have the authority on actual carrying out the punishment.

And it's not unlike, for example, let's just say adultery was banned, right? Let's just say adultery was banned, and it should be. Let's just say adultery was banned, and let's just say there was a fine or something like that associated with it, right?

So the church finds out that someone committed adultery, a lady committed adultery against her husband, right? And the husband brings it up, and there's evidence on two or more witnesses and stuff like that.

And so it's, I mean, this happened, right? This actually happened. The church would have a responsibility to, you know, do church discipline and find out if there's repentance and things like that, and all of that kind of thing.

The civil magistrate has a separate responsibility. So it's the church has their thing, and they, you know, they might have to excommunicate or do church discipline or some kind of reconciliation or something like that.

But the civil magistrate has a different thing. And so if the husband brings charges against the woman in court, in the civil realm, they've got a separate thing, and they're going to, you know, they'll give them the fine or whatever it is.

Or, you know, if it was a death penalty offense, they would be the ones carrying that out. But they could work in tandem, right? They could work in tandem there. Or if there was some kind of someone stealing or something like that, they could work in tandem.

Like the church has their realm and their responsibilities, and the civil magistrate has their responsibilities. I don't see how that's automatically combining the sword and the keys. That doesn't make any sense at all.

And I think that just thinking about it for a few seconds, you could see how that wouldn't necessarily be the case in any case. But yeah, this is debated, right? And this is something that you need to debate.

It's not just self-evident that this is not correct. I mean, and again, it's obviously not automatically an inappropriate combination because, again, the nation of Israel had this, right? Where, sure, they had their ecclesial authorities, so to say, but then they also had their civil magistrate.

They also had their judicial branch, so to say. And so they would punish blasphemers. They would punish—they had laws for people that were trying to commit treason against Yahweh, and how they would handle that with the civil magistrate.

Like, obviously, there's a way to do this in a right way, and we need to consider that. Does that mean that we need to have Leviticus as the law of the land in the United States? No, it does not mean that.

But it does mean that we need to really take a good hard look at Leviticus, and a good hard look at Deuteronomy, and a good hard look at Exodus, and say, okay, well, how can we draw the general equity from that here in our situation, in the United States, or maybe in individual states, right?

Not every state needs to work the exact same way. Not every state has to work in the exact same way, or have the same polity, or things like that. Anyway, but it's just like, he just puts this stuff out there like it's just obviously.

It's like, well, no, this really wasn't obvious to hardly anyone until very recently. You know what I mean? Anyway, the third paragraph of the original Westminster Confession—oh, sorry, that's—. I already read that part.

The Christians who were leaving England for the New World had witnessed Queen Mary I use the sword to enforce the doctrine of transubstantiation, resulting in the burning of Protestants in the streets, and within a few generations, entire families sailed across the ocean to pursue religious freedom.

As Sam Waldron points out in his commentary on the 1689, the Baptists were the earliest Reformed Christians to uphold religious liberty. Soon enough, the American Presbyterians followed in the footsteps of the Baptists who rightly applied the teachings of Christian liberty, creating a necessary distinction between church and state.

Anyway, so—the American Presbyterians, right? Anyway, so this religious liberty thing is interesting, too, because we also have to consider how it applies to pagans, right? To pagans, people that don't— they're not Trinitarian, they don't honor Christ in any way, they're not even trying to, they're against Christ.

Like, religious liberty, up until very recently, like, Christians knew obviously that it's different for, like, a Satanist, it's different for a Muslim, it's different for something like that. Like, up until very recently, like, we need to consider that as well.

And so, is the difference between a Presbyterian and a Baptist and an Anglican the same as the difference between a Christian and a Hindu and a Satanist and stuff like that? Well, not even close. Not even close.

And so we need to consider that for those talking about Christian nationalism. When we study God's Word, we must not embrace the error of the Anabaptists who resisted Christian engagement within the civil government.

The Baptists, when drafting the 1689 LBC, expressed clear distinctions from this incorrect view by writing the following first paragraph of chapter 22. God, the supreme lord and king of all the world, has ordained civil magistrates to be under him, over the people, for his own glory and the public good, and to this end has armed them with the power of the sword for the defense and encouragement of them that do good and for the punishment of evildoers.

Yes, I agree. That's good. The biblical basis for this paragraph is clearly Romans 13. The Christian should come to see that governmental authority and leadership is a good thing, since the authorities are literally referenced as servants of God, deacons.

I've made this point many times. A land that does not have civil magistrates established for the good purpose of upholding justice, establishing peace, and rewarding those who do good, will be filled with anarchy and the vileness of human depravity.

In short, the Christian should see government as a good thing, so long as government remains true to his job and refuses to blur the lines between the two spheres of the state and the church. Yeah, I mean, that's all fine and good, but the thing is, again, the big problems we have right now are we have pagans running the show, and they're making their doctrine, their pagan doctrine, of baby killing and baby diddling the law of the land.

And so, no, we should not hide away from the fact that, no, we're Christians here, and we're not going to allow that anymore, because that's what the Lord said. Why would we shy away from that? Why would we shy away from that?

I don't care what you say about religious liberty. No, you can't kill your baby. I don't care if you're a Jew and you think that that's part of your religious heritage. No, you can't do it. Robert Haldane comments, In the last chapters of the Book of Judges, there were dreadful consequences.

All right, there must be this clear distinction between the sword and the keys. The civil magistrate is given the sword, but the church is entrusted with the keys. To further this point, a clear reading of Romans 13 drives the point home.

In the text, Paul is referencing the second table of the Ten Commandments with regard to the civil magistrate. As Samuel Waldron observes, why is the civil magistrate not to enforce the first table of law?

Because he is somehow not subject to the word of God? No, because it's not his job. Well, again, it's not his job to define these things. I could see that, where it's like, okay, well, we're not the ecclesial authority.

We're not going to define what the doctrine of the church is. But it definitely is his job to dole punishments. That's for sure. And so if there are punishments attached to treason against the state, so here's something that maybe will help you out.

So in the United States, if you plan a coup, right, you try to get people to join China or Russia or something like that, the full weight of the state would be against you. You'd be arrested, and you'd go to trial, and you'd be put in prison, or maybe you'd even be executed.

You could be executed for treason, right? And in a state where it's like, okay, well, Christ is our ultimate authority, we're a Christian nation, and all of that, to sort of entice someone away from Christ, in my view, that would be tantamount to treason.

You'd be trying to entice someone over to the Hindu side or to the Muslim side, to try to undermine the authority of—I'm sorry, the order of the nation by doing that. And so why wouldn't there be a punishment attached to that?

Why wouldn't there be? And I think that's why there was a punishment attached to that in Israel, where it's like, even if your brother comes and secretly entices you to serve other gods, that was a death penalty offense in Israel, because you can't allow people to have insurrections against your order.

You can't allow it. It's just not something—if you're going to have an order, you definitely have to have that baseline of order. And so if we had a nation of Christians, and someone's trying to get you to serve Satan or get you to serve, you know, Allah or whatever it is, you can't allow that.

And why wouldn't the state be involved in that, right? Why wouldn't it? I don't know. I mean, he just kind of assumes that that's not how it should be. I'm not really sure. Okay. The original framers of the United States Constitution understood what would inevitably happen if civil magistrate had access to the sword and the keys, and there was no clear separation between the sphere of the Church and sphere of the state.

That's why they penned the following in the First Amendment. This is just like basic—this is like a basic misunderstanding. It's just basic stuff here. Here's what the First Amendment says. Congress won't make a law establishing a religion.

Okay, fine. So in our society, the Congress of the United States was not allowed to do that. That means literally any other body was able to do that, and they did, and they did do it. So states could do it, and it wasn't a problem.

Cities could do it, and it wasn't an issue. People could do it, and it's no issue. Like, this is the thing. I think O 'Fallon said this, you know, in the very early stages of this whole controversy, and it's like, so I guess the United States never was the United States because they had blasphemy laws at the inception.

I'm the reasonable Latino here. I'm being as reasonable as I can be. Congress shall make no law. That's right. Josh is right. Congress shall make no law. What does that have to do with what we're talking about?

Nobody here—well, I shouldn't say that. Some people don't like the Constitution, and I think the Constitution could be improved upon, and it should be improved upon. That's my opinion. But not everybody says you have to do away with the Constitution.

In fact, most people that are Christian nationals don't want to do away with the Constitution, and I understand why they say that, because it's pretty good. Congress shall make no law. Okay, great. Granted, Josh, Congress will make no law.

What about the state of New Hampshire? We can make—why not? What about Vermont? They did. Vermont did. They had it established. The United States will cease to be the United States as long as we let governments establish religion.

Then there never was the United States. I'm sorry. You have to deal with that. You just have to, Josh. You have to. Therefore, when Stephen Wolff makes the case that the civil magistrate has the responsibility to enforce both the First and Second Table, it causes concern.

Why? Why would that cause concern? Because I don't think—listen, I don't talk to Stephen, but I'm pretty sure Stephen doesn't the First Amendment. I'm pretty sure he probably likes it, because Congress won't make that law.

That's okay. I'm sure he's okay with that. Maybe not. Maybe he isn't. But I'm sure that if we had a situation the way it was earlier in the United States, where Congress wasn't making those laws, but Vermont was able to, or Maryland, or Connecticut, or something like that, was able to do those things, which they did do.

They availed themselves of that because they understood what Josh apparently doesn't understand, that the United States Constitution was not a repudiation of the government being involved in this kind of way.

But Stephen Wolff wouldn't have a problem with the First Amendment, I think, if we had a situation that was more similar to that. Sometimes it feels like we're talking to ourselves here. I'm not going to lie.

It feels like we're talking to ourselves. And I've just told Josh this, and Michael Fallon heard it too at the time when he said, oh, blasphemy laws, the United States would cease to be the United States.

It's like, well, I guess the United States never existed in that case. They've heard it, but they won't change their opinion. They just don't listen. They don't think we have anything meaningful to say in this topic.

Therefore, when Stephen Wolff makes the case that the civil magistrate has a responsibility to enforce both the First and Second Table, it causes concern. Wolff writes, the civil magistrates may restrain outward expressions of false religion that, in his judgment, can, one, injure souls, two, are subversive to a Christian civil government, Christian culture and sacred ministry, or three, threaten to civil disruption and arrest.

And he restrains in order to establish or maintain the best outward conditions for his people to live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. I like that. I don't think that anything that Stephen Wolff wrote there would be anti what the First Amendment was about, which was about Congress not doing that.

It was about Congress not doing that. Josh, hear me. It was about the Congress, the United States Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate. It was the Congress like, oh, I guess it's just the House.

Whatever. Anyway, it was about the Congress. It wasn't about the idea of it in general. It wasn't about the like the you guys get it. You guys get it. In concluding words of a chapter on liberty of conscience, Wolff argues against what he calls second table only ism.

According to Wolff stated position above the civil magistrate, which he refers to as the Christian prince, has the duty to enforce both tables, which overlaps the spheres of authority and diminishes necessary separations between those two distinct fears established by God.

No, it doesn't. It definitely doesn't. It doesn't. It definitely does not. Not only do I find this troubling, but I find it to be a contradiction to Romans 13, where no mention of the first table appears in Paul's words to the church in the city of Rome.

But the thing is, Josh, like this is the thing that I think a lot of people are so frustrated with you, Josh. And let me just be as reasonable as I can be, because I had no expectations of you, Josh, because I don't really know how you write and what your thoughts are.

So I'm not frustrated with you about this, besides the fact that it seems like you never listen. Congress. But it's like, okay, Romans 13 is a critical passage here, but there's a whole lot of other Bible that applies here as well.

There's a whole lot of other Bible that applies here as well. And it's like, there's a huge book of law in our book, right? There's a huge book of law. Like we really need to take that a lot more seriously than we do.

I need to take it more seriously than I do. You need to take it more seriously than you do. And we need to figure out what the general equity of those laws that you would say seem to blend the spheres of authority.