[Vision2020] Doug Wilson confirms my thesis

[Nick Gier]

Greetings:

This is delete key time for those not interested in the Wilson Saga, but 
even for those who are, it is 4,500 words with a third repeated from a 
previous post. You can also read it at www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/evang.htm.

Next time, Doug, make a carbon copy for me!

Nick Gier

SIXTEEN DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CONSERVATIVE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY AND 
WILSONIAN CHRISTIANITY

In a recent post (May, 2005) on the Moscow, Idaho list-serve "Vision 2020," 
a participant could not find any differences between conservative 
evangelical Christians (CECs) and Doug Wilson, so he wonders why we single 
out Wilson and not the others.  In response I have listed 16 ways that they 
differ.

Without having the courtesy to tell me, Wilson did respond on May, 30 on 
his own blog.  I have now added his response and my rejoinders on July 
25.  Next time, Doug, please do the right thing and send me a carbon 
copy.  I had to autoerotically google myself in order to find your 
response.  Come to think of it, blogging without telling your personal 
targets is a rather blatant form of autoeroticism.

Note: I draw the following from my evangelical friends and acquaintances as 
well as my in depth study of them in my book "God, Reason, and the 
Evangelicals" (www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/gre.htm).  In the early 1980s 
when I started my research for this book, I had a rather monolithic view of 
CECs, but I was pleasantly surprised at their great diversity.  The freedom 
from denominational ties has liberated some of these thinkers from 
traditional Christian doctrine, particularly in the area of divine power 
and divine foreknowledge.  I also discovered that a strong minority of them 
have rejected "detailed inerrancy," a view that leads Wilson to a form of 
ethical relativism that holds that slavery is OK if the slaves have 
Christian masters, and that any act is right as long as Wilson's God 
commands you to do it. See #5 for details.

Another Note:  In his eagerness to defend himself, alert readers will 
notice that Wilson does not answer the main point of my exercise: to wit, 
to show that he differs from most CEC thinkers.  By defending his own 
views, he reconfirms my original thesis.

Yet Another Note: Wilson suggests that I am out to settle a "personal 
score."  This is news to me.  One of my jobs, and it will continue until I 
die, is to protect the Academy from its detractors and its fraudulent 
imitators.  That is a professional, not a personal, duty.  I find Wilson to 
be a very charming person, and I enjoyed him very much as one of my 
students.  It is just a great shame that he has not used his philosophy 
degree very responsibly.  For more on my personal history with Wilson click 
here.

1.  No CEC minister I know has declared that he heads up a "New 
Reformation."  Read for yourself the arrogant and self-aggrandizing 
statements at http://www.credenda.org/issues/15-4presbyterion.php or read 
Wilson's Reformed is Not Enough (Canon Press, 2002).

DW: Turns out, neither have I. I don't think that I head up a New 
Reformation. But I do think that we can all learn from and apply in the 
microcosm what great Reformers have done with ages and continents. Learning 
and applying at your own level is what every Christian is called to do. And 
as it happens, my level is a small university town in northern Idaho.

NG: In his early days Wilson called himself a "New Testament" Christian, 
following the religion of "historic" Christianity.  I was surprised to 
learn that at some point (late 80s?) he became a conservative 
Presbyterian.  I listened to a tape of a debate  that he had with a 
minister from Grangeville.  Wilson spoke for the affirmative on the 
question of "Is Calvinism Biblical?" and I believe that the bright guy from 
Central Idaho soundly defeated Wilson.  He was especially effective in 
demonstrating that the God of the Bible does not foreclose the future by 
damning people before the creation of the world before they have a chance 
to act on their own. After reading Reformed Is Not Enough and after my 
debate on the Trinity with Doug Jones, Wilson's right hand man, I'm not 
sure he's a Calvinist at all.  (See this link for the debate on the and 
this link for my questions about Calvinism.) Jones' view of the Trinity 
appears to be Eastern Orthodox and many conservative Presbyterians are now 
asking for Wilson's excommunication.  Wilson appears to be as free and easy 
with his theology as some Unitarians I know.

2.  No CEC pastor I know would sanction an April Fool's stunt, complete 
with stealing UI letterhead and using some else's FAX line, to announce an 
alleged UI sponsored lecture entitled "Topless and Proud."  He tells us how 
proud he was of his son-in-law's actions:

"By the time you receive this, our local police will probably have 
forgotten all about it, so a little bragging is now safe, and perhaps it is 
even in order. But first some background. Our local city council, through a 
series of ridiculous circumstances, decided to quit restricting female 
toplessness. The noble senior editor of this journal [Wilson's son-in-law], 
encouraged by some winks and nudges from me, not that he needed any, made 
up a flyer which announced a topless and proud lecture series by topless 
feminist scholars."  See the full text at 
http://www.credenda.org/issues/11-3meander.php and the police report at 
http://dougsplotch.com/looter.htm at the bottom of the page.

DW: Gier takes umbrage at my sanctioning of an April's Fool's joke of some 
years ago, in which flyers were distributed all over the UI campus, 
announcing a series of lectures by top feminist scholars. In the 
advertisment, the top feminist scholars were to deliver said lectures while 
topless, making them top topless scholars. The lectures were on things like 
"breasts as embodied intuitions," and other such post modern hoohah. 
Anyhow, because these are difficult times to be a satirist in, a bunch of 
people thought the lectures were for real, and it caused quite a commotion 
for a day. Gier is quite right that I thought it was a hoot, and even aided 
and abetted somewhat. But he is wrong that the main perpetrator was my 
son-in-law. The senior editor of Credenda at the time was Doug Jones, and 
he was the evil genius behind the real time reductio.

NG: Wilson condemns himself out of his own mouth.  I repeat my original 
claim: no self-respecting CEC minister would sanction such an act against 
the major university in her town.  Doug: that was university letterhead 
that Jones used and a departmental FAX machine!

3.  While most CEC ministers believe that homosexuality is a sin, very few 
join Wilson & Co. in calling for their execution.  The Daily News caught 
Wilson in a generous moment when he admitted that the Bible would also 
sanction exile rather than death. Two articles in Wilson's Credenda Agenda 
(vol. 3: nos. 9, 11) supported capital punishment for "kidnapping, sorcery, 
bestiality, adultery, homosexuality, and cursing one's parents."

DW: Gier maintains that I support capital punishment for any number of 
things, including bestiality, adultery, cursing one's parents, and 
homosexuality. The fundamental mistake that Gier makes here is in failing 
to distinguish a refusal to apologize for those things being capital 
offenses in the Bible, and wanting to impose such legislation now in the 
modern world, across the board. I will not do the former, and I don't want 
to do the latter. Because those things are in the Scriptures, and because 
we are called to be biblical absolutists, there is clearly no inherent 
injustice in such sanctions. At the same time, Christ came to save sinners 
from their sins, and from the consequences of their sins. This includes the 
sin of homosexuality, and the consequences of homosexuality. Christ is the 
Savior of the world; He came to bring mercy to the world. As a minister of 
this gospel, I preach forgiveness of sins, including homosexual sins, and 
invite everyone to come to the mercies of God in Christ. I do not want to 
send homosexuals to their deaths. I want them to turn from their sins, turn 
from death, and come to Jesus Christ. But does their sin deserve death? You 
bet. But so do my sins deserve death. The prophet Ezekiel put it well -- 
the soul that sins shall die. There are no exceptions to this reality, for 
all have sinned, and Christ is the only Savior.

NG: Presumably with the sanction of Wilson himself, Greg Dickison (Credenda 
Agenda vol. 3: nos. 9, 11) states that "if we could have it our way" (my 
emphasis), then there would be capital punishment for "kidnapping, sorcery, 
bestiality, adultery, homosexuality, and cursing one's parents."  Dickison 
also quotes biblical passages (without qualification) that support slavery 
as "ordained and regulated by God," death for apostasy (Deut. 13.6-9), and 
cutting off a woman's hand for touching a strange man's genitals (Deut. 
25.11,12).  When Christianity rules Moscow, the USA, or the world, then 
these will be the laws.  Furthermore, if Wilson's sins are equal to the 
homosexuals', why then are they the only ones who are denied basic civil 
rights?  Wilson can change his arrogance and intolerance, but gays and 
lesbians cannot change their God-given attraction to the ones they 
love.  It is execution or banishment for them only that Wilson recommended.

4.  Very few CEC pastors lead their congregations in imprecatory prayers 
against their enemies.  According to a former church member, Wilson's 
favorite seems to be "Break their teeth, O God, in their mouths" (Ps. 58.6).

DW: Of course, this is what is involved in psalm singing. It is not 
possible to sing psalms without noticing that the psalmist had enemies, 
just like we do. And so we do sing, and pray, in an imprecatory way. We 
also sing and pray in line with the instructions of the rest of Scripture, 
which includes the injunction to love our enemies. This is harmonized by 
asking God to destroy our enemies, and our first request is that He would 
destroy them as enemies by turning their hearts, and making them our 
friends. But if that is not His pleasure, we still ask God to deal with His 
enemies according to His Word, and the lies that they tell.

NG:  Come on, Doug, you can't be serious!  Millions of Christians sing the 
psalms without a single hint of cursing their enemies. (Literal 
interpretation of scripture once again runs amok!) My Unitarian choir sings 
sacred lyrics all the time, knowing full well that we are engaged in an 
aesthetic exercise, not a theological one.  I don't know how many 
Christians have told me that they go to church to sing and socialize not 
accept dogma.

5.  Most CEC theologians, such as Stephen Davis, consistently reinterpret 
biblical passages that impugn Yahweh's moral integrity, but Wilson revels 
in pronouncing that every immoral act seemingly committed by Yahweh was 
indeed committed by him.  Commenting on the stories of Abraham and Job, 
Douglas Jones, Wilson's right hand man, actually admits that God is 
"morally insane" and "dangerous and unpredictable"("Playing with Knives: 
God the Dangerous," Credenda Agenda 16:3).  In his book Debate about the 
Bible, Davis wisely argues that it was sinful Israelites, not God, who 
carried out the genocide of the Canaanite peoples.

DW: Gier objects that I do not explain away the passages that teach that 
God commanded the Israelites to wipe out the Canaanites. He refers me to 
the high example of Stephen Davis, who says that it was the sinful 
Israelites, not God, who carried out the genocide of the Canaanite people. 
The problem is that the Bible says that God commanded it, and a problem 
related to this first problem is that I know how to read.

NG:    Yes, I know that you can read.  (We would have not have accepted you 
into our graduate program if you could not.) It is the way you read the 
Bible that is the problem. If given enough time to reflect on the 
implications, I'm certain that most evangelicals would side with Stephen 
Davis on this important point. Wilson's concession that God commands 
genocide undermines the moral foundations of Christianity, and makes it 
impossible for Wilson to condemn any action as immoral.

6. No CEC minister that I know has paid the gambling debts of errant 
college students out of church funds.  Even though the IRS requires that a 
1099 be filed for any payment over $600, no such document exists for this 
$1,000 transaction.  For the entire story, as yet to be covered by the 
local press and complete with letters, e-mails, affidavits, tape 
recordings, see http://dougsplotch.com/index.html.

DW: Gier objects to the fact that I paid the gambling debts of errant 
college students out of church funds. Except that I didn't.

NG: Is Wilson now telling us that he paid these debts out of his own 
pocket?  That is not how anyone privy to this scandal understands 
it.  People can read all the documents at http://dougsplotch.com/index.html 
to judge this piece of historical revisionism, at which Wilson is getting 
very adept.

7. Very few CEC ministers who run their own schools would openly deny that 
they have these schools, but Wilson, who accredits 157 schools, regularly 
speaks at their commencements, and requires that they read his textbook on 
Christian schools and buy his books, said the following:

"Do your schools support neo-Confederate and Christian nationalist views? 
Yes or No? MY SCHOOLS? I DON'T HAVE ANY SCHOOLS . . . . OKAY, OKAY. WE 
REPUDIATE ALL ICKY VIEWS. NEVER HEARD OF 'EM."  Wilson's full caps in his 
reply to my questions, posted on Vision2020 on December 9, 2003 at 
http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2003-December/005891.html.

One of Wilson's Moscow graduates is principal of Cary (NC) Christian School 
and he was forced to withdraw Wilson's booklet Southern Slavery as it Was, 
whose co-author is a founding director of the neo-Confederate League of the 
South.  For more see www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/slavepage.htm.

DW: Though I am on the board of ACCS (Association of Classical and 
Christian Schools) I am an ex officio member, meaning that I don't have a 
vote. There are about ten other members of the board who do vote. I have 
not been on any accreditation visits. Gier knows not whereof he speaks.

NG: John Calvin was not a citizen of Geneva and could not vote, but he was 
the absolute authority and all things moral and theological.  The Provost 
of the University of Idaho is an ex officio member of the Faculty Council 
and because of that Council members rarely ever vote against the 
administration.  Defending Wilson on this point, Dale Courtney states on 
his blog that these schools are not required to read or assign Wilson's 
writings.  But the Cary Christian School Board must "have read, and be able 
to articulate the key concepts and principles of Recovering The Lost Tools 
of Learning by Douglas Wilson, Crossway Books."  I would like the e-mail 
addresses of all the other schools so that I can check to see if this is 
really the only Wilson school that makes this requirement. It's too bad 
that I can't trust Wilson if he says that it is.

8.  Not many CEC churches, even in the South, support neo-Confederate 
views, but one of Wilson's best friends Steve Wilkins is a founding 
director of the neo-Confederate League of the South (LOS).  The LOS has 
been declared a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the LOS 
is taking more control of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who just 
elected Kirk Lyons to its national executive board.  An outspoken racist, 
Lyons was married by neo-Nazi Richard Butler in 1990, when Butler still had 
his compound in Hayden Lake.

DW: Neo-Confederate, etc. But Gier has an interesting way to finally nail 
me on this one. One of my best friends is Steve Wilkins (true). Steve is a 
director of the League of the South (was true). The LOS has been 
infiltrating the Sons of Confederate Veterans (I dunno). The SCV just 
elected Kirk Lyons to its national executive board (did they?). Lyons is an 
outspoken racist and was married by Richard Butler of the Aryan Nation in 
1990 (whoa). And Richard Butler was once involved in a love triangle with 
Kevin Bacon and Jennifer Lopez. Okay, I made up the last one.

NG:  Again Wilson does a clever dance around this one.  If Wilson is not a 
neo-Confederate, why is it that it is Lee's birthday, not Washington's or 
Lincoln's, that is celebrated in Logos School?  Why is it that Lee portrait 
is proudly displayed in classrooms and the Confederate flag displayed at 
social functions?  Why is it that a conservative Presbyterian minister 
wrote to the Moscow Pullman Daily News that he saw a Confederate flag in 
Wilson's office, along with other Civil War memorabilia?  And why is it 
that Wilson wrote an editorial for Credenda Agenda supporting the general 
idea of succession?

With regard to Steven Wilkins, he was a founding director of the League of 
the South, but when we made it an issue in the Wilson Saga, he became a 
consultant to the Board of Directors, and when we continued to make that an 
issue, he is now an Affliated Scholar.  Even if he disappears from their 
website, he is still connected to Southern hate group. The Southern Poverty 
Law Center (I dismiss Wilson's slurs in this direction) has documented the 
League of the South's attempt to take over the Sons of Confederate 
Veterans.  Yes, Kirk Lyons was elected to the latter's executive board and 
yes he was married by Richard Butler.

9. Most CEC ministers would support the international genocide treaty, but 
not Wilson. "Do you support the international conventions against genocide? 
Yes or No? THIS ISN'T A PRO-LIFE TRICK QUESTION, IS IT? IT IS? THEN NO" 
(http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/2003-December/005891.html). 
Notice Wilson's flip style in this exchange: This is typical of the way he 
debates.  As I liked to say: those who live by the flip will die by the flip.

DW: He draws this conclusion from the fact that in a previous exchange, 
when he asked if I supported international conventions against genocide -- 
"Yes or no?" -- I replied with a question of my own. "This isn't a pro-life 
trick question, is it? It is? Then no." Gier does not like my "flip" style. 
And I don't like it when pro-abortionists like Gier posture as though they 
were against genocide.

NG:  When I asked him those 12 questions back in December, 2003, I expected 
serious answers. But Wilson cannot restrain himself, and I told him then 
that I would take him at his word, even his famous Flip Wilson word.  But 
wait, Wilson has answered seriously: God commanded genocide so it must be 
right (not wrong).

10.  All but a few CEC pastors would defer to CEC scholars in their 
congregations, but not Wilson. When Tracie McKenzie, a University of 
Washington civil war expert and a member of the Seattle Christ Church, 
dared to object to the errors in the slavery booklet, Wilson rejected his 
advice to withdraw the booklet.

DW: Gier objects to the fact that I differed on a question of history with 
a history professor within my own denomination. And I did do this, I 
acknowledge it. But lest there be no accountability at all, I submitted the 
manuscript of my forthcoming book on this vexed historical question to one 
of the top historians in the country, and he gave the book the mother of 
all blurbs. I hope Gier will approve of this as a substitute.

NG:  One of my prized piece of correspondence is from F. F. Bruce, a CEC 
Bible scholar, who admitted that a prominent British historian destroyed 
his credibility by supporting the historicity of Luke census.  (Yet another 
top CEC who has the intellectual integrity to reject "detailed inerrancy.") 
In a similar way, I believe that Prof. Genovesse will live to regret 
writing a blurb for Wilson's re-write of the slavery booklet. (Perhaps he 
thought that his professional colleagues will not be reading titles from 
Wilson's home grown press.) The Southern Poverty Law Center has noted the 
good professor's affiliation with the neo-Confederates.  We should all 
admire Prof. Tracie McKenzie for standing up to Moscow's John Calvin and 
having the courage to call him an intellectual fraud.  Incidentally, the 
charges of plagiarism in the first edition still stand, and the authors who 
were copied (20 percent of the booklet) reject outright the thesis that is 
presented without shame in Wilson's second edition.  We are confident that 
all professional historians will follow suit.

11. Very few CECs would support Wilson's practice of infant baptism, an act 
that makes them, according to Wilson, Christians in more than just a 
nominal way. How much more nominal this state of grace is, is hard to 
determine in Wilson's writings. Personally, I believe Wilson has switched 
from adult baptism so that he has more control over these children and 
their parents.

DW: Most CECs do not support infant baptism, and I do. Further, Gier thinks 
he knows why I support infant baptism. This particular ecclesiastical 
practice gives me "more control over these children and their parents." 
Jeepers. I don't know where to start a reasonable response to this line of 
attack, so I will just move on before Gier accuses me of spiking the 
communion wine with arsenic and laughing bwaa ha ha ha during the benediction.

NG: Please note that Wilson confirms my thesis that he differs 
significantly from most other CECs.  Both Luther and Calvin joined 
Catholics in liquidating those who believed in the reasonable proposition 
that people should be a consenting adults before they confirm themselves as 
Christians.  If it had not been for religious liberals in America, Baptists 
and many other evangelicals who follow them would not exist today. Finally, 
now that I know more about how Wilson operates than I previously and 
naively assumed, I stand by my claim that Wilson made this doctrinal turn 
primarily out of a desire to control, a sin that will bring him to the 
lowest levels of Dante's Hell.  The sexual sinners he condemns will forever 
chase their lovers at the second level, their only punishment being that 
they will never catch them.

12.  Not very many CEC ministers start their own denomination when their 
current sect criticizes them.  Conservative Presbyterian denominations are 
notorious for their strict discipline, but it appears as if rules are 
broken left and right in Wilson's Confederation of Reformed Evangelical 
Churches.  See http://dougsplotch.com/index.html.

DW: The problem here is that the formation of our presbytery had nothing 
whatever to do with any controversy. But to buttress his claim that in our 
presbytery "rules are broken left and right," Gier refers us all to that 
unimpeachable web-site dougsplotch.com. This is a website you can rely on 
-- it is what they call a smear-reviewed journal.

NG: According to standard conservative Presbyterian rules, elders, such as 
Roy Atwood, who lose control of their children must be removed from their 
office.  In the Morton Street Casino scandal this did not happen.  I grant 
that Dougsplotch is not a refereed journal, but neither is Credenda Agenda 
or Canon (Vanity) Press, but it contains documents, most on Christ Church 
letterhead, which Wilson has not denied or disputed.

13.  Most CEC pastors would respect other CEC colleges, but Wilson believes 
that very few of them meet his standards of true Christianity.  Wilson 
states that "evangelical establishment, particularly the evangelical 
establishment as now represented by its flagship colleges and publications, 
is completely adrift" (Credenda Agenda 17:1).  See also his "Classical 
Learning and the Christian College" at 
http://www.canonpress.org/pages/pdf%20pgs/quest.pdf.  Finally, check out 
his article "Why Evangelical Colleges Are Not" in Chronicles (September, 1998).

DW: When it comes to colleges, I am critical of the mainstream evangelical 
establishment. That is true. I am. Is that bad?

NG:  Once again Wilson has confirmed the fact that he stands apart from 
most CECs.  These fine Christians send their children and their financial 
gifts to these well respected liberal arts colleges, where I have had the 
privilege to lecture and whose faculty I meet every year at meetings of the 
American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature.  They 
have my respect and admiration; Wilson does not.

14. Most CEC theologians would reject Wilson's "Federal Vision" in which 
the individual self is supplanted by a collective self and where women 
would lose their right to vote.

DW: I am terribly interested in how Gier concluded that the individual self 
is supplanted by the collective self in the Federal Vision, and I am 
further interested in why he, a student of Buddhism, would have a problem 
with it. Couldn't it just be a John Knox meets Siddhartha kind of thing? 
But it isn't, and Gier's dog is biting the tires of the wrong car again. 
And on women voting, Gier also has it wrong. In our church polity, we have 
a system of household voting, and we have women who vote. Gier needs to do 
some actual research before pronouncing on things like this.

NG:  If Wilson will withdraw his omelet analogy that he uses to explain the 
Federal Vision, then I will reconsider my objection.  (Obviously, 
individual eggs do not preserve their identity in the mix.)  But we now 
have it on the film Our Town that he, along with Steve Wilkins and George, 
believes that only propertied males should vote.  Wilson's example of a few 
female heads of households voting in his church is better evidence for his 
clever definition of democracy: two coyotes and a lamb deciding what to 
have for lunch. Furthermore, households are abstract collectives not real 
individuals. In my church all members, real individuals, get to vote.

Finally, Wilson demonstrates once again why he got such a low grade in my 
Buddhism class.  The first half of the class is devoted to the study of 
Pail Buddhism, which does not dissolve the individual self into the 
Dharmakaya, but presents a view of the self that is significantly similar 
to the Hebrew view of the self. A graduate student and I have just finished 
a paper entitled "Hebrew and Buddhist Concepts of Self," which I have sent 
to Atwood, Jones, and Wilson.  (No reply of course.)  At first we vetted 
the paper with the best Buddhist and Bible scholars we know, and now it is 
being reviewed by two anonymous scholars chosen by the editors of "Asian 
Philosophy."  If the paper is rejected, we promise that we will not call 
the reviewers Buddha-haters, slanderers, or banshees.  Would that Canon 
Press had such a review mechanism for its submitted manuscripts.

15. Most CEC colleges and universities in the Pacific Northwest regularly 
attend and participate in the regional meetings of the American Academy of 
Religion and Society for Biblical Literature.  At the Moscow meeting in 
April 2003, 40 percent of the papers were presented by faculty from these 
schools.  As president of the region that year I invited faculty and 
students from Wilson's New St. Andrews College (NSA) to participate.  No 
one from NSA showed up, even though there were no travel expenses. Later 
NSA Dean Roy Atwood responded that they had better things to do.

NG: I am still awaiting Wilson's reply on 15 and 16.  Try not to be too 
superficial in your response, Doug.

16. Most CEC ministers would not instruct their congregants to anathemize 
other evangelical churches in their area.  A recent anonymous post from a 
Christ Church member calling himself "New Man" makes these condemnations 
clear.  One church is led by a solid Hebrew Bible scholar and devout 
Christian who was recruited to come to Moscow by Wilson's father.