[Vision2020] Doug Wilson confirms my thesis
keely emerinemix
kjajmix1 at msn.com
Mon Jul 25 17:11:35 PDT 2005
I was accused of going a bit breathless in my praise of Nick Gier's work,
below, when it first appeared on Vision in May.
For those of you who thought so then, get the bag ready -- this is better
and more valuable than the previous "best and most valuable" thing I've read
on Vision 2020, his initial thesis. Good work, Nick, and very much needed.
keely
From: Nick Gier <ngier at uidaho.edu>
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] Doug Wilson confirms my thesis
Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 14:28:40 -0700
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.
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