Douglas Wilson’s disagreement with Hillsdale President Larry Arnn raises a number of important points about morality, free government, and religious liberty. It is extremely important that fair-minded people of faith can have civil discussions about these urgent matters, and Wilson’s rebuttal is a model of friendly, constructive dialogue.

Let me start off by noting for the record that Wilson presented his readers and viewers a slightly altered and abridged version of Arnn’s second statement, which reads in full:

I appear to have made some people mad by saying a Christian nation is impossible. Let me propose another formulation that I have used often and for years: America is the most Christian nation because it recognizes the principle of religious liberty, which comes from the mouths of the Founders and of Jesus himself, when he says that His kingdom is not of this world. At Hillsdale we believe that Jesus is the Maker and Savior of all. We also believe with the Founders that no law is good that compels anyone to believe that. Laws that compel belief are what led to centuries of religious persecution and warfare in so-called Christian Europe.

Setting aside the points in Wilson’s response on which all reasonable people agree — e.g., there can be no religious liberty for jihadists and Aztecs — his objections come down to two arguments. The first is that all valid moral judgments must have a transcendent ground of authority if they are to be more than subjective “values.” His second argument is that governments are moral agents, and all laws necessarily have moral implications.

Both premises have been accepted by students of political philosophy at least since Plato and Aristotle, even though the ancient Greek philosophers were not Christians. These arguments were also accepted by the American founders, most of whom were Christian. But Wilson adds a thought that departs from the American founders’ understanding, and thus misunderstands the role of morality in law.

In explaining his first premise, Wilson correctly states that any objective morality must have an “independent and uncreated authority that over-arches” individual whims or preferences. But he insists that this morality can only be “grounded in the nature and character of the living God.” Finding a non-arbitrary ground of right and wrong comes down to a “dispute between the Christian and the secularist,” and Wilson emphasizes that there “is no way to split the difference on this.” If you affirm an independent authority of moral judgment, “you need to be ready to give us His name.”

This is a clear rejection of natural law and of the Bible. Deuteronomy 4:5-7 and Romans 2:14-15 plainly tell us that the Gentiles can know what is just in their hearts, without revelation. When Wilson claims, “it really is Christ or chaos,” he is rejecting — whether he intends it or not — the biblically acknowledged principle of natural law and the natural moral reasoning from which it is derived.

When the members of the Continental Congress signed the Declaration of Independence, they were upholding a long tradition of moral philosophy — going back to Socrates, but including many Christian theologians — that understood the natural world as morally intelligible and meaningful. But because our judgments are often imperfect, influenced by passion or self-interest, reason by itself was considered insufficient to regulate human conduct and ensure obedience to just laws. The Bible provides indispensable clarification and support to rational judgments, while churches, ministers, and fellow congregants supply the instruction, encouragement, and community of faith necessary to keep us on the straight and narrow.

That said, we don’t need the Bible to tell us adultery is wrong; we can discern this truth for ourselves by considering human nature and the natural role of the family. (See Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, 1107a.) Nor does the Bible tell us what the speed limit should be, or how much to tax capital gains.

Wilson’s claim that government cannot act in a morally responsible way unless it explicitly bases law on the Gospel repudiates this long tradition of moral philosophy, which is also the American tradition. The founders expected the American people to be Christian. And they expected that churches, under the protection of religious liberty, would actively promote the moral habits necessary for republican constitutionalism. But the government would pass fair and reasonable laws only on the basis of man’s rational understanding of justice based on human nature.

Wilson’s reply seems somewhat confused about these distinctions. He says there should be separation of church and state, but simultaneously wants “Christ formally acknowledged” and to have “no separation of God and state.” Does Wilson mean that Barack Obama and Donald Trump were both appointed by divine dispensation to be Christ’s representatives on earth (which would certainly show that God has a sense of humor) and were both granted sacerdotal authority to interpret Scripture for the United States?

If not, does he mean only that the government may and should publicly acknowledge the God of the Declaration of Independence — the “Creator,” the author of “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” and the “Supreme Judge of the world?” If so, I would venture to suggest that he would find no disagreement from Larry Arnn. But when Wilson insists that the government must “formally acknowledge Christ” he opens the door to precisely the religious conflict and oppression of medieval Europe that the founders wanted to escape.

I am not sure that Wilson is clear in his own mind how he resolves these ambiguities. He is, of course, free to believe “it really is Christ or chaos.” He is not, however, free to attribute this view to the American founders or to claim that religious liberty in America is reducible to this binary choice.

For the founders, the laws of nature and of nature’s God — accessible to all rational humans — supply the sufficient ground for republican morality necessary to make self-government work. Demanding, as Wilson seems to do, that public officials proclaim their personal faith in Christ is neither wise, nor moral, nor American, nor Christian.