“Nations change by elites via institutions, not by reforming everyday life or ‘focusing on the family’ or reforming the church or ‘gospel-changed hearts.’ We should do all that. But it isn’t sufficient. Nations change by elites via institutions.”
Dr. Stephen Wolfe
1.) This is a Pelagian assertion because it suggests that it is the Institutional environment that creates the elites who in turn create the Institutional environment, who alone can change the Institutional environment.
2.) Why would the elites change institutions unless they first experience a “gospel-changed heart?”
3,) Wolfe wants to place the emphasis on elites but elites are not going to change Institutions unless those elites are first visited with the Gospel.
4.) Wolfe’s message here is that it is NOT individuals that are the problem but the institutions. This is Pelagianism with its teaching that it is the environment that is the problem. Change the environment, so Pelagianism goes, and you will change the individuals. Wolfe is teaching Pelagianism. If Wolfe really believes all this Wolfe is a Pelagian and not Reformed.
5.) Wolfe is giving a top-down explanation of how a culture is changed and this explanation is completely devoid of a bottom up dynamic. The simple truth is that cultural change is both a bottom up and top-down movement that includes from the inside out (change hearts) and that unless all this happens simultaneously cultural change is not possible.
6.) Wolfe’s approach guarantees top-down tyranny forcing change on a population that will bring substantive push-back.
7.) For the Pelagian Wolfe the only thing that must happen is elites changing the environment but how will elites do that apart from being raised in Christian families, Reformed Churches, and the reforming of everyday life. Per Wolfe only changed Institutions by elites is sufficient for change.
8.) Note, that the disagreement here isn’t that elites must change Institutions. The disagreement here is that elites do so apart from Christian families, changed hearts, and Reformed churches.
Natural Law thinking is inherently infected with humanism and this post by Wolfe demonstrates that truth yet again.
