The Case for Christian Nationalism: Christianizing the Nation One Mixed Syllogism at a Time

Overview of Chapter Four of Stephen Wolfe's polemic in favour of Christian Nationalism

In the introductory piece in this series I flagged Stephen Wolfe’s use of what he calls ‘mixed syllogisms.’ In Chapter Four these supposed ‘mixed syllogisms’ come into play in order to make the argument that any given nation should be a Christian nation. As I noted at the outset, this method of making an argument is not actually a thing. In the field of logic there are all kinds of non-classical logics that can explicate rational systems, but the combining of a supposed truth known to be true and taken as true as a result of special revelation from the Christian god with some other premise supposedly justified wholly on natural grounds just isn’t a valid way of doing logic. In many of Wolfe’s Twitter comments he has bemoaned the fact that no one takes his ‘rational defense’ seriously as a rational defense. Of course this is simply because there is nothing rational about Wolfe’s project - all of the premises that supposedly make Christian Nationalism work depend on special revelation from the Christian god. Consider Wolfe’s argument for why civil authorities ought to direct the people of the nation to the Christian religion:

[Confining civil authorities to earthly ends] fails to recognize that natural principles can have supernatural conclusions." Consider the following syllogism:

(1) Civil govemment ought to direct its people to the true religion.

(2) The Christian religion is the true religion.

Therefore,

(3) civil government ought to direct its people to the Christian religion.

The major premise is, in my view, a principle of nature, meaning that its truth is creational. I provide several arguments below for this major premise. The minor premise is supernatural (viz., known from Scripture by faith), and all Christians affirm this statement. The syllogism is valid. Since one premise is natural and the other supernatural, it is a "mixed" syllogism. This fact has no effect on the regular operations of logic, (sic) but it does make the conclusion supernatural (or theological), for the subject "Christianity" is of revelation. Thus, we see a supernatural conclusion from a natural principle. (pp 183-184)