This Pastor Went Too Far...

Remember when we said John MacArthur is one of the most polarizing pastors in America?

Well, John MacArthur is nothing compared to Douglas Wilson. Whereas MacArthur is generally accepted as an

Orthodox Christian leader, Wilson is far more controversial and complicated.

Wilson is a pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, faculty member of New St.

Andrews College, and an author and speaker. Wilson was also featured in the movie

Collision, which documented his debates with popular atheist Christopher Hitchens.

Like MacArthur, Wilson holds to Calvinist theology. If an unregenerate man is walking around in a liquor store deciding how he's going to get drunk that night, he is exercising his creaturely liberty.

He is free to choose vodka or gin or bourbon or another liquor store. This is the left -right kind of liberty.

What he is not free to do is to choose righteousness. Whatever he decides to do, apart from Christ, it will be sinful.

Even if he decides not to get drunk that night, apart from Christ, his decision will be a self -righteous one.

He does not have any moral freedom unless and until Christ saves him. The doctrine of God's sovereignty has to be understood at both of these levels.

When it comes to creaturely liberty, part of our quote -unquote Calvinism is to insist that God's sovereignty is fully consistent with our freedom as responsible agents.

Complementarianism, or the teaching that God created men to lead in the church and in the home.

Paul teaches us that the older women in the church are supposed to instruct the younger women a number of things.

Among the things he includes in the curriculum is the lesson on how to be obedient to husbands. But now, in this enlightened era, we teach the younger women to reach for their dreams, to follow their heart, and to not let anybody tell them what to do.

The sinfulness of homosexuality. In this first talk, I want to talk about the real sin of Sodom.

What Sodom's real problem was. What could possibly be meant by that phrase, the real sin of Sodom?

Isn't it obvious? The sin of homosexual behavior draws its name from Sodom, draws its name from that city.

What could be more obvious? And shouldn't we be suspicious of any attempt to draw our attention elsewhere?

The danger of critical race theory. If someone says, well, I'm for social justice because I'm for justice, well, that's way too simplistic because you have to ask what particular worldview is being advanced by the people who use the term social justice.

And the position that the government becomes tyrannical when it seeks to prevent Christians from gathering together in person for worship.

When I obey the Constitution and disobey a decree from some functionary who's not in his lane, the person who tells me to obey is not obeying

Romans 13, and I am obeying Romans 13. These are certainly all controversial positions, but they are also all pretty well accepted within conservative

Christianity. Two additional complicating factors make Wilson more hated than almost any other

Christian leader in the United States. First, Wilson has written a defense of the

South during the time of slavery. And second, Wilson has taught theology that many argue is heretical.

Wilson co -authored a pamphlet with Steve Wilkins titled, Southern Slavery As It Was, which condemned racism and said that the slavery practiced in the

South was unbiblical, but which also presented the South in a far more positive light than most people would agree with.

Wilson has responded to criticism against his views, saying, My defense of the

South does not make me a racist. I am not interested in defending slavery.

I don't believe we should practice slavery. What I said is that a

Christian man in the South could be a slave owner. He needed to follow the rules in the

New Testament. The whole debate about Southern slavery was whether 600 ,000 people should have been killed in a war to end the practice.

With an atrocity such as the Holocaust, I believe war was a moral necessity.

I don't believe Nazi Germany and the South were the same evil. What's my conclusion about Wilson's view of Southern slavery?

Two things. First, I disagree strongly with Wilson about the nature of Southern chattel slavery.

I think it was simply evil, that it was a completely different kind of slavery than the kind of slavery that the

New Testament regulates, and that there is absolutely no justification for Southern chattel slavery.

Second, I don't think Wilson is a racist, or that Wilson's views of Southern slavery disqualifies him as a

Christian teacher. Wilson never argued anything that was racist, and Wilson did argue that Christians should have pursued an end to slavery.

For me, a much more serious concern is Wilson's theology. Wilson used to be categorized with the

Federal Vision Movement, although now he has distanced himself from the term. Patrick Hines, a

Presbyterian pastor, criticizes Wilson's teachings concerning justification.

I think Hines has one of the clearest and strongest criticisms against Wilson's theology of justification.

So we'll play an extended clip here. Wilson argues a similar position, similar to Norman Shepard.

While he says that justified persons are secure in their position within the family of God, he adds the qualification that, quote, men fall away because their salvation was contingent upon continued covenant faithfulness in the gospel, end quote.

Now that's quotation. From Reformed is not enough. Oh, you're taking it out of context.

Just listen. Let's see if we can find it here. Let me read the whole paragraph for you so there won't be any flack for that, listen.

But this relates to perseverance, backsliding, and apostasy. His providence determines that all things will come to pass, the end is known, and cannot be judged.

But the same providence also knows what will happen causally the moment before. God oversees the end, but also the means, and his providence of the means is fully consistent with the nature of secondary causes.

Some things happen necessarily, like a rock tumbling in an avalanche. Other things happen freely, as when a man chooses to go left instead of right.

Other things happen contingently, as when one thing depends upon another. Cori Saria notes the importance of this in questions of apostasy, quote, this does not mean that God is surprised by our actions by no means.

It means that this is how we see things played out in the providential fulfilling of the degrees of God. The means by which men apostatize from the covenant is unfaithfulness.

The means by which men persevere in the covenant is faithfulness, end quote. In other words, to assert that men fall away because their salvation was contingent upon continued faithfulness in the gospel is not to deny the sovereignty of God at all.

So what's he asserting? And that's quote, close quotation. What's he asserting? Men fall away from the gospel by not continuing in faithfulness.

Okay, their salvation is contingent upon their covenant faithfulness.

Okay, now listen to what it goes on to say here in the RPC US report. All right, place here.

By making salvation contingent upon the covenant faithfulness of a believer, he has made salvation contingent upon a personal quality in or a state of being of the believer.

This is the simple meaning of the suffix ness in faithfulness. In doing so,

Wilson has shifted the means by which we appropriate the work of Christ from the exercise of faith to a change in the quality of one's character.

This can be understood in no other way than salvation being contingent on something in or of a person other than Christ.

That's exactly right. Our salvation is not contingent upon our works, upon our fruit, upon our covenant faithfulness or anything like that.

Our salvation is secured by Jesus Christ alone, and it's always secured by Jesus Christ alone.

And we receive that by belief alone, not by working. In contrast to Hines, James White believes

Wilson is within the realm of orthodoxy. White has interviewed Wilson to seek to clarify exactly what

Wilson believes. The primary thing, the primary focus of that is always going back to the issue of the federal vision and specifically

R. Scott Clarke's criticisms and the repetition of those criticisms ad nauseam over and over again.

The trolls come out and one of the things they say over and over and over is federal vision, he denies justification by faith alone.

But I don't deny justification by faith alone. I affirm it stoutly from beginning to end.

I don't deny the imputation of the act of obedience of Christ. I don't deny the imputation of the passive obedience of Christ as a forensic act that God performs at the point of an individual's true conversion.

That happens and I've maintained that now, maintained it all the way through. Where do

I stand concerning Wilson's theology? To be honest, I'm conflicted.

On the one hand, I respect and trust James White, and White has a personal relationship with Wilson.

If White believes Wilson is within the realm of orthodoxy, I'm inclined to trust

White's judgment. At the same time, Heinz's arguments are also very compelling.

What's my conclusion about Douglas Wilson in general? I certainly have significant concerns about Wilson's theology, as well as about his view of Southern chattel slavery.

At the same time, like with MacArthur, I see Wilson as a fearless man who does not let cultural or governmental pressure silence him.

He fights for many things I am fully aligned with, and he does so articulately, effectively, and boldly.

I believe we need more Christians with Wilson's fighting spirit and fearlessness.

Of course, it would certainly be better if their theology wasn't so controversial.