Doug Wilson’s weekly letters column is equally a source of regular entertainment and occasional edification. I trek by it dutifully every Tuesday, as I do with several other writers who hold alternative theological views about this and that. My theory is that you can’t meaningfully address an area of perceived error without allowing its adherents to express themselves in their own words. If we don’t understand each other’s positions, we will always end up talking past one another.
Well, that is the theory, as I say. How it plays out is another kettle of fish.
A Detectible Theme
This week Doug’s column has a theme, if only by accident, and it doesn’t require the nose of a bloodhound to suss it out. Three of the first five emails are about politics — specifically the upcoming US election.
It’s probably fair to say most of Doug’s regular readers, like Doug, lean postmillennialist in their eschatology. That is to say they believe we are presently in the millennial reign of Christ, spiritually speaking at least, and that the timing of his bodily return to this planet depends on his Church’s faithfulness in discipling the nations and thereby creating a world suitably prepared for his personal presence and direct rule. To postmill Christians, elections are especially important because they present believers with an opportunity to express our preference for Christ’s will (as we conceive it) to dictate national policy, and to offer our nations an alternative to secularism, globalism, oppression, climate alarmism and other trendy exercises in governmental futility.
A Metaphor (Why Not?)
To put it metaphorically (because who doesn’t like a restaurant metaphor?), postmills are arguing amongst themselves about which eschatonic ought to be on the drinks menu, while premills expect to be dining prix fixe. We believe the future course of this world will be what our Lord and Savior determines according to his sovereign will, served up at the time of the Father’s choosing, and we expect to enjoy it a great deal more than any recipe for Utopia we might come up with via the use of our very limited, fallen intellects. Our most pressing obligation is to show up for dinner in the right attire.
I am not saying no premills are active politically, but to the extent we are, it is with the goal of speaking up against obvious wrongs in the immediate present as a matter of faithfulness to the truth. Any influence on policy we may have along the way is a bonus, and we have little hope of it lasting. We take the book of Revelation a great deal more literally than postmills, and therefore believe the next major event in God’s timetable is a relatively brief period of worldwide catastrophe, as opposed to an indefinite season of worldwide conversion.
Christian Nationalism
Back to the restaurant metaphor for a moment. For postmills, the bracing eschatonic du jour is a little concoction called Christian Nationalism, the ingredients of which are the subject of much debate in the supersessionist camp. “Should we stay at our present church?” one family inquires. The pastor, you see, is apolitical. You will not get much discipling the nations out of him. Another reader inquires whether Doug thinks good church leaders should tell their congregants how to vote. Horrors!
A third reader asks how he ought to think about Project 2025, the conservative Presidential Transition Project. As he puts it, “Imposing Christianity on unbelievers doesn’t seem right this side of Glory, because sin is not fully eradicated. We will need a new earth wherein only righteousness dwells before the Government that is on the shoulder of Jesus can be fully installed.” Doug replies that a “theology of disengagement” would not have done much about the slave trade, and we will let him have his straw man. Premill Christians don’t like slavery any more than postmill Christians do, but we can oppose the modern slave trade without trying to immanentize the eschaton simply because selling human beings is morally wrong. For us, it would not be a step in a program (the postmills call this gradual move toward an Old Testament-based theocracy “smashmouth incrementalism”), but rather a stand to take just because it’s right even though, notwithstanding the herculean efforts of the abolitionists, there’s as much slavery today as at any time in human history.
Hurry Down Doomsday
The interesting thing about a theological movement that seeks to bring on the return of Christ by human effort* is that if it can be said to be accomplishing anything at all, it is actually the reverse of hurrying down doomsday. Let’s suppose for a moment that postmill Christians could temporarily reverse the worldwide globalist trend through the explosive growth of a Christian Nationalist movement (I am NOT arguing they can!) and thereby delay the arrival of the man of lawlessness on the world scene. What they would effectively accomplish would be to delay the day of the Lord and therefore the return of Christ they are allegedly so keen to bring on.
Is that even possible? Surely not. Hebrews says, “The coming one will come and not delay.” Peter writes, “The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” No, the day of the Lord will come, and you can be sure it’ll come in the Father’s good time. No human effort, well intended or rankly evil, will ever speed it up or slow it down.
Meanwhile, the wise virgin awaits the bridegroom’s coming with a trimmed lamp and plenty of oil, content knowing neither the day nor the hour.
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* To be absolutely fair to postmills, most would surely say it’s Christ working through the Church, not the Church changing the world through human ingenuity or effort.
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