on making the sword righteous August 5th, 2024 in a nutshell. It has to be affirmed at the outset that we cannot impose Christianity at the point of a sword.

Our weapons are not carnal, 2 Corinthians 10, 4 and 5, but our weapons are in fact mighty and after they pull down strongholds and a Christian consensus develops

as a result of effective evangelism and church planting, we find that we still have these swords.

What shall we do with them? So absolutely, swords do not

create Christians. But can Christians create righteous swords? Can anything be

done with these things? The issue is not whether swords can make men Christian. They cannot. The issue is whether swords can make men Christian. They cannot.

The issue is whether Christian men can make swords Christian.

Introduction. Stephen Wolf recently circulated an image of a page from Carl Truman's Forward

to James Bannerman's classic work, The Church of Christ.

As a highlighted paragraph from that image made clear to me, before we can get anywhere helpful in our discussions of Christian nationalism,

we need to deal with a fundamental confusion first.

The paragraph is ironic because it begins with a statement that offers to quote unquote

clarify a lot of confusion.

As you may not have seen the offending paragraph I'm talking about,

I've reproduced it below for you.

Quote, a grasp of these basic principles helps to clarify a lot of confusion.

First, if the Church's power is spiritual, then the notion that the

civil magistrate should be used to coerce belief is shown to involve a terrible confusion

of categories. To put it bluntly, the sword cannot be used to impose Christianity.

Had the church understood that throughout history much bloodshed could have been avoided. Today, while the stakes may not be as high, this principle should be a sobering truth to those who use the language of a

Christian nation in too glib a fashion. Churches are Christian. It is hard to see how a nation might qualify

as such. Truman and Bannerman, Church of Christ, page 14. The real confusion. A real confusion of

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