SRR 120 Doug Wilson Nails His Coffin

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I do a podcast. I'm not interested in your podcast. The anathema of God was for those who denied justification by faith alone.
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When that is at stake, we need to be on the battlefield, exposing the error and combating the error.
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We are unabashedly, unashamedly Clarkian. And so, the next few statements that I'm going to make,
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I'm probably going to step on all of the Vantillian toes at the same time. And this is what we do at Simple Riff around the radio, you know.
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We are polemical and polarizing Jesus style. I would first say that to characterize what we do as bashing is itself bashing.
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It's not hate. It's history. It's not bashing. It's the Bible. Jesus said,
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Woe to you when men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way, as opposed to,
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Blessed are you when you have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness. It is on.
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We're taking the gloves off. It's time to battle. Welcome to Simple Riff around the radio, where the
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Bible alone and the Bible in its entirety is applied to all of life. So, we've got some really important things to talk about today.
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And unfortunately, Tim wasn't able to join us today. It's me, Carlos, and Hiram joining us to talk about Wilson and some
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Piper, continuing the fatal flaws of Piper's view of final salvation. But maybe
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Tim will be able to join us later on. Hopefully. I think his daughter was sick or something like that.
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And so, we'll see how that turns out. But anyway, Hiram, welcome back to the show. How's everything going on your end?
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Good. Good to be here. Yeah, yeah. I've been looking forward to this, to talking about this.
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So, let's jump right in. I wanted to start out by talking about Doug Wilson.
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And that was what our previous episode was about. So, if you didn't get a chance to listen to that, go ahead and check it out, because we called out
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Doug Wilson and James White in that interview, because there was some pretty bad stuff going on there.
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And so, I wanted to recap a few of those criticisms and add some clarification and detail to that from the previous episode.
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So, the first thing is that there was major issues with that interview, that Wilson kind of exposed himself in an attempt to defend himself.
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And so, one of the big issues is that he was perverting the covenant of works by confusing condescension with grace.
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So, just because God condescends to man doesn't necessarily mean that he's giving him grace, because grace implies that you've done something wrong.
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And so, it's interesting because in that interview, Doug said that works is bad.
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Works is always bad in the Bible. And so, he's basically giving a completely 100 % negative connotation to the term works.
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And so, that creates a big problem, obviously, because works are not always bad in the Bible. I mean, duh, you know.
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It's like works are necessary in order for us to be saved, because that's exactly what
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Christ did. And as the last Adam, he fulfilled the covenant of works by keeping the law perfectly.
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So, works are, there's a very clear principle that Romans 4 talks about.
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Let me jump to that. This is where Paul says that if you receive something after having done something, it's not a gift, but wages earned.
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Right. Yeah. So, there's, well, there's this issue of works, this issue, this whole notion of works being bad in the
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Bible. They are not bad. They're not bad even for Christians, because Christians do good works, because we've been regenerated by the
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Spirit of God through faith. And so, we do good works as Christians, as believers.
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And now, he was, I think, referring to specifically to salvation, earning works for salvation. But again, the whole point of the covenant of works was not to earn salvation.
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It was to earn glorification. It was to earn eternal life. So, it's not a bad thing for God to promise you something, namely eternal life, and then say, well, keep my law perfectly, and you'll earn it.
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There's nothing wrong with saying that. Those are the stipulations that God put forth in the covenant of works. That is the covenant of works.
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And Wilson claimed to affirm it, but then he blatantly contradicted himself by saying, oh, well, works are a bad thing.
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And so, I believe that God dealt graciously even with Adam. So, he's actually talking about works in that context.
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And so, he's screwing it all up. I mean, he's totally messing this up. And that's a denial of the covenant of works.
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Yeah, exactly. He's saying he affirms the covenant of works, but by saying works are a bad thing, and the original covenant situation was such that it was a gracious situation in which the works contributed no part, only a small part, or played a part in addition to the grace.
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He's denying the covenant of works. A gracious covenant of works is not a covenant of works. Yeah, exactly.
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He was denying mono -covenantalism. And ironically, that's him saying that God dealt graciously with Adam is exactly what mono -covenantalists say.
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And so, because they believe in a unilateral covenant of grace, an overarching covenant of grace without any covenant of works.
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And so, that's a big problem right there. And another reason this is a big problem is because another thing
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Wilson said was, he was using the term faith univocally. He was using it in the same sense without distinguishing how it completely differs before and after the fall.
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And he was saying, well, Adam believed. And so, God was gracious to him.
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And it's like, dude, he didn't believe in order to be forgiven for his sins that he hadn't committed yet.
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The terms of the covenant of works were obedience to gain eternal life. It's like, yeah, obviously, he believed
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God that he would do that. But faith in that sense is not the same sense of after the fall.
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Because previously, what I was calling him out for is that he equivocated on a term. He actually didn't equivocate. He univocated, which means he used this term faith as if it applied in the same exact sense after the fall as it does before the fall, before the fall as it does after the fall.
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And so, that's a problem. That, again, shows that he's a mono -covenantalist because it's not making these vital distinctions that happen as a result of the covenant of works being broken and then a new covenant of grace being ushered in as a result of that.
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And so, the conditions are radically different now because we cannot gain eternal life after the fall.
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Hypothetically speaking, Adam was given the opportunity and he failed. Of course, it was predestined for him to fail.
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But hypothetically speaking, he was given the opportunity to do it. We don't even stand a chance because now we're born condemned, guilty in Adam.
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And so, he totally univocated on the term making it seem like, oh yeah, you know,
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I believe that God was gracious to Adam and even if he had kept it perfectly, like dude, you could not be, how much more do you need to pervert the covenant of works than what, that's exactly what mono -covenantalists basically say.
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So, this is one thing that's very frustrating about Wilson because he'll affirm the right thing and he'll start explaining things correctly.
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But when he starts explaining his own particulars, like his own view of things, his own idiosyncratic particularities of his perspective, he starts totally contradicting the
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Orthodox in the Reformed scriptural position that he's claiming. And so,
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Piper does something very similar too. That's why they're very similar in this sense because they affirm the right view or the right doctrine and then they start talking about final salvation or saying that God was gracious to Adam and it's like before the fall or even if he had kept it perfectly and it's like, well, you're totally perverting the definitions.
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That's not what those terms or what those doctrines mean or teach. And so, that's a huge problem.
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And the way he's treating faith, the univocalization of faith, if you want to put it that way, it's reminiscent of how, let's say an
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Arminian will approach the issue of faith as well. Faith is something that naturally everybody has.
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And so, of course, it's not that big of a leap to go from, for the Arminian, to go from having a general faith that you can kind of muster up on your own to having faith in the gospel.
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You see what I'm saying? And I've even heard Arminians say this before. You know, like the distinction is one of degrees, not of kinds, right?
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But that's the same kind of reason that you have with somebody. When someone like Wilson says, well,
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Adam always had faith. Well, of course, Adam always had faith. Everyone who's created has faith.
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Do you understand what I'm saying? Romans 1 is very clear about this. We all know that there's a God. We all know that we're morally accountable to him.
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We all know that, you know, his law, et cetera, and so forth, right? And we know these things by faith.
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God has revealed these things to us. So, I don't know. I just see it along the same lines, the same sort of dangerous, wrongheaded thinking, that failure to make those distinctions that are there because, like you said, faith after the fall is different than faith before the fall.
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The faith of the natural man of meaning, not in the strict theological sense of natural man, meaning the fallen man, right?
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But the faith of all men in that general sense, like there's a God who created us and we're accountable to him, that's different than saving faith.
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You know what I mean? And you can't blur the two together. They're different. Saving faith is a gift, and it's just different.
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But yeah, he makes a mess out of a whole bunch of stuff. And it's hard for me to say that this is done accidentally.
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I don't believe that it's done accidentally. For someone who obviously knows theology, he's doing it on purpose.
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He says one thing, then he backtracks through cute -sounding sound bites and re -injects his former statement of orthodoxy with heresy.
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I mean, this is something that false teachers always do. Yeah. He'll even state it correctly, and then he'll start talking about his own view as if it was perfectly in line with what he stated earlier that was orthodox.
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And it's like, no, you're totally contradicting yourself now. And so that's why he's so dangerous.
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That's why people need to be very careful with him because he's one of the worst ones at doing this.
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Well, the best ones in that sense, that he's good at doing it. And it's similar to Piper, because he tries to affirm the right view and then totally pervert it with his own particular understanding of it, which completely changes the terms and the doctrines that it originally means.
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And so, yeah, that's kind of a problem. It's not something that we can just be friendly with on an interview and not bring it up and not correct him on it.
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And just act like it's not a big deal. And I want to say this too, if you don't mind.
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Something that drives me nuts is, okay, even if you're a Doug Wilson fan and you don't want to go the route of saying that he's an unregenerate heretic, okay, fine, you want to take precaution in saying that even though there's over decades worth of material proving that's the case.
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At the very least, could you not just admit that the man is completely unqualified to teach?
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Yeah, he's not reliable. That's one of the things that drives me nuts. He cannot teach. He is unqualified to teach.
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And the reason why is because he is unclear. If you want to give the most excessively over -the -top charitable reading of what he's saying, he is unclear about what he's saying.
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He's confused about what he's saying. Like I said, this is mystical, mythical, unicorn land interpretation, charitability here, right?
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Because I don't believe this is the case at all. But if you want to be as quote -unquote nice as possible, Doug Wilson is confused about what he's saying.
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He doesn't know exactly what he's saying and he is leading other people into confusion and he's misleading a whole bunch of other people and he's unqualified in that sense.
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But not only that, here's the big thing that drives me nuts as well. If the man has been corrected year after year after year after year, if he's been called out to clarify what it is that he teaches year after year after year after year and he gets upset about it, like he obviously does, and he refuses to be even clearer than he was before and he refuses to go back and fix his errors so that people aren't confused because obviously people are confused, then doesn't that bespeak like a giant issue of pride to the man's heart?
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Yeah, I think it obviously does. And if a man is that proud that he does not want to change his teaching, and even in terms of just clarifying what he's saying, and he doesn't want to acknowledge that he is the source of the confusion, not all of his critics, because this is something that always comes up with Wilson.
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It's always the other people who don't understand him. Woe is me for no one understands me. It drives me nuts because this is something heretics have always said and they will always say.
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Oh, you just don't understand me. You haven't read this thing that I wrote over here. You haven't read that thing over there that I wrote.
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Well, it's your job to be clear. It's your job to be abundant and clear in what you're teaching.
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And if you refuse to be, then that's on you. And you have an issue of pride that needs to be dealt with and you have no business standing in front of God's people claiming to be a teacher because you're not.
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But what does Scripture say about the elder? Right? He has to be the elder. One of the qualifications for being an elder is humility.
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One of the qualifications is, yeah, exactly, apt to teach. And also he has to be able to be corrected as well.
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You see what I'm saying? So even on just a practical level without going into the specifics of monocovinentalism and the subtle denial of justification by faith alone, the idea of baptismal regeneration, the idea of union with Christ through baptism, all these things that were part of the federal provision that he denies were part of it.
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Even without going into that, the man is unqualified to be a teacher. He's confusing and he's proud and he refuses to repent of his pride.
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He refuses to fix his teaching from the past and he puts all of the blame on anyone who listens to him.
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That's wicked. That's wrong. Yeah, there's a big problem with... He has a big problem because...
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So one of the other things that I had mentioned in the previous episode was that, and that we had talked about was, you know, he was claiming that federal vision is not a problem because Robbins, John Robbins was just trigger happy at the
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Auburn Avenue Conference because according to him, pretty much all of the federal visionists are sound.
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Even the oatmeal stout guys who may deny regeneration and ignoring the fact that pretty much just about every major reform denomination officially condemned federal vision.
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Some even specifically warned against Doug Wilson himself. And so this is what's so...
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And what's even stranger is that, like you were alluding to the whole thing about him being arrogant and prideful.
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So I have a copy of Not Reformed At All by John Robbins and Sean Garrity.
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So this is Not Reformed At All, Medievalism and Reformed Churches. It's basically a critique of Doug Wilson. And this is interesting because they point out the fact that the reason that Wilson wrote
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Not Reformed Enough was basically a response to somebody trying to call this conference out, this federal vision movement out.
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So I'm going to read a part of that book. I'm on page 13 here. And I'm going to read a few paragraphs here.
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So, Norman Shepard is but the tip of the neolegalist iceberg floating in the reformed sea. Because there was no disciplinary judgment against Shepard by any ecclesiastical body, and because the ground had been prepared for his confusion concerning covenant and justification by the
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Vantillian confusion about God and Revelation, Shepard's teaching attracted more and more followers. Once again, a few recognized the error and spoke out.
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In the summer of 1999, Ileana Presbytery and the Presbyterian Church in America tried and deposed the man from the
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Ministry for Sacerdotalism. He was a protege of Reconstructionist writer James Jordan, a student and supporter of Norman Shepard.
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Despite being deposed from the ministry in the PCA, Berkshade was recognized and accepted as a minister in good standing by Douglas Wilson's new denomination, the
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Confederation of Reformed Evangelicals, which I think the acronym is
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CREC, or I think it's CREC. And yeah. And so in June 2002, another pocket of resistance to the revolution appeared.
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This is important. Covenant Presbytery of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States, the
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RPCUS, denounced a number of old heresies and new frocks and issued a call to repentance to the speakers at the 2002
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Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church Pastors Conference sponsored by the Presbyterian Church in America, PCA congregation in Monroe, Louisiana.
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One of the errors the RPCUS denounced was belittling revealed propositional truth. The list of those charged and urged to repent included
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PCA Pastor Stephen Wilkins of the Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church, Pastor Stephen Schlissel of Messiah's Congregation in Brooklyn, New York, United Reformed Church of North America, Pastor John Barich, and Douglas Wilson, pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and leader of an ecclesiastical educational complex that includes
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Credenda Agenda, St. Andrew's College, Logos School, Canon Press, and the Confederation of Reformed Evangelicals.
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So, the book also points out that Wilson evidently wrote his book,
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Not Reformed Enough, as a response to this call to repent. So, as you can see here, Robbins had nothing to do with this.
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In 2002, he was already being called out by a number of elders and pastors from the
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Covenant Presbytery of the RPCUS denounced the conference and issued a call to repentance.
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So, this was before Robbins did anything. That's the reason he wrote the book, apparently, as well.
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So, why are you whitewashing all this history? It doesn't make any sense.
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Do you know why he's referencing Robbins in particular? I wonder. Because he did that with James White, right?
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Yeah. Well, if you go back in the Dividing Line episodes with James White, something that I've heard him say more than once, not like a bunch of times, more than once is he talks poorly about John Robbins.
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And the reason why is because for him, John Robbins was this sort of fundamentalist who said, if you in any way, the way he characterized it is, and I have to go back and find the episode where he says it, but he characterized
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John Robbins as a person who would condemn you if you didn't automatically just write off all
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Roman Catholics as the most vile despicable people on the face of the earth, right? And this is James White.
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He said something along these lines. That was his criticism of John Robbins. So, James White, his attitude toward John Robbins is critical in understanding why
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Doug Wilson is bringing up John Robbins, right? You're using John Robbins as a way of deflecting criticism away from yourself.
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It's kind of like with J .D. Hall, right? In Pulpit and Pen.
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Okay. J .D. Hall can be acerbic sometimes in the way he says things. He's very straightforward. He's very blunt, right?
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And people don't like that. Now, J .D. Hall says something true, and person X over here doesn't like the way he says it.
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Person Y over here doesn't like the way he says it. They come together, and they say, oh, you know that J .D. Hall, he overstates things.
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You know what I'm saying? And this happens all the time. And basically what I'm saying here is that's what's going on in the situation with John Robbins, with Doug Wilson, and James White when they're, you know, when
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Doug Wilson brings him up, that's the whole reason why John Robbins is brought up. This is a typical deflection tactic as well.
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You know, something that you learn when, at least how can
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I put it? I've been in situations where I've been with, I had people that have claimed to be my friends that are like literally sociopaths, right?
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These people who have quote -unquote no conscience. They have a conscience, obviously, but the moral commitment that they have is first and foremost and only to themselves, and they will do everything under the sun to make it appear as if they're on your side.
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And that's how they function. And the heretics are the same way. You know what I mean? They do the same exact thing.
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Oh, you're against this? Well, I'm against that too. Oh, you're for this? I'm for this too. And they will find the one place which is most, they'll find the one place where it really sticks.
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You know what I'm saying? They'll find the one place where they can really like latch on to you as it were and make it seem as if they're on your side.
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It's the same thing a sociopath does. You know what I mean? And in my opinion, that's what Doug Wilson is doing by bringing up John Robbins.
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He knows it's not about John Robbins. He knows that John Robbins is not the only person critiquing him. He knows that.
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Yeah. But this is the way that he presents it because people are gonna look at John Robbins and be like, oh, well, he's, you know, he has a tendency to be acerbic.
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He has a tendency to be a little quote -unquote not nuanced enough, right?
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He's a little too straightforward. Well, it's easy to dislike somebody who's in your face with the truth.
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It's easy to like someone like Wilson who is basically flattering you.
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I mean, because that's what's going on, right? By saying, I share the same opinion that you have. Your opinion is good and I agree with you.
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But you're flattering that person indirectly. And again, this is another thing scripture talks about when it talks about false teachers.
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It's not just the content. It's the matter in which the false teacher cozies up to people who are sound in order to deceive, if possible, the elect.
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And that's kind of what I see happening with Doug Wilson when he says, Oh, well, John Robbins, you know, that guy.
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It's the same sort of thing. You know what I mean? Cozying up and then inserting himself in there as if he's on the same side as somebody who is sound when he's not.
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Yeah, he, he's, you know, and he said that and I'm glad you brought that up because I wasn't,
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I wasn't familiar with what James White had said on Robbins, but he said that on the Iron Sharpens Iron radio interview with Chris Harns and Stu.
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So he keeps, he keeps repeating this, like that's his go to, that's his standard recounting of the story.
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And it's amazing how like it's so flat out wrong.
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And even just on like a basic chronological historical basis, it's kind of like, what is this guy's problem?
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You know, he's, he's dishonest. It's totally dishonest. Yeah, I mean, it's a flat out. Yeah, it's a flat out lie and he needs to be called out for it.
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and along those same lines, if you look at one of the criticisms that you will constantly hear from Wilson against those who oppose him, right, he will always go to R.
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Scott Clark. He won't go to Dewey Roberts. He won't go to John Otis, right?
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He won't go to Guy Prentice Waters. Yeah, he won't go to J. V. Fesco. He won't go to the whole staff at Westminster, California, basically, and other people all over the place, even people that I would disagree with, like David Engelsma, right, who himself, if I'm not mistaken, denies the covenant of works as well, but he's sound on the doctrine of salvation.
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He won't go to any of those people. He'll go to R. Scott Clark. And why does he do that? Well, because R. Scott Clark, again, is another point of deflection from any real criticism, right?
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Because basically what you want to do is set your opponents up as what you're saying is, well, they're just fanboys of John Robbins.
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They're the Clarkians. If you want to look at the broader picture, right, Doug Wilson knows that his fans are primarily going to be, what,
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Vantillians, right? Because he's along the same lines as other Vantillians, like James White, like, more importantly,
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Greg Monson, and, of course, Cornelius Vantill. They come along in that stream of Vantillians, right,
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Westminster, Philly, or whatever. But he sets up John Robbins as one of the whipping boys, okay?
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If you disagree with him, it's because you've been deceived by John Robbins, or you're following his diatribe against Doug Wilson that's completely unjustified.
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That's how the narrative goes, at least. Or you've been deceived by R. Scott Clark who doesn't know anything about Covenantal theology.
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This is the portrayal that I find amongst Federal Visionists. They'll say, R. Scott Clark doesn't really know history, even though the man has a doctorate in history, right?
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He knows historical theology. Or they'll say, oh, well, that's his unique portrayal of Covenant theology, or his unique portrayal of Reformed theology.
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And for some reason, he has it in for me, all right? So you have these two whipping boys that are set up. The first one is
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John Robbins who was a Clarkian who obviously was not a Vantillian who had issues with Vantill.
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And that's playing to, and I'm sorry if I'm getting too into the psychology of this, but this is something
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I really wish people would pick up on, right? These are strategies that false teachers use. They are manipulative.
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And this is something that's being done, you know, to point to one figurehead and say, he's the issue. When in reality, in history, there's a ton of other people who disagree with that person, that false teacher.
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That's a way of deflecting criticism. And Doug Wilson has done that with John Robbins. And when you look at threads in which
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Doug Wilson has mentioned alongside other contemporary people, the one person that's always brought up as the whipping boy is
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R. Scott Clark. And the reason why is because people have issues with R. Scott Clark for other reasons.
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And I think one of the reasons why is because he's vocal about his opposition to the federal revision.
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But there are tons of other people who are vocal about their opposition to the federal revision as well. Entire denominations. Like we mentioned the last time, five denominations, right?
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Why isn't Wilson referencing anybody else from there? Why is he going after Brian Schwartley, for instance, a theonomist of all, who was also a
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Vantillion if I'm not mistaken, right? And that man bitterly opposes Doug Wilson and everything federal revision.
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So it's a deflection tactic. Yeah, it's a total mess. He is not reliable and he should not be trusted.
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He is not reliable for doctrine. He's not reliable to teach on or to talk about federal revision.
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Nothing he says is reliable because it's a total twisting to make himself and his movement look good and to make his enemies look like foolish or confused when in reality he's the one who's foolish and confused.
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And so, yeah, we definitely want to sound the alarm against him.
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And so there was another point that I wanted to touch with Wilson. And this was interesting because I hadn't noticed,
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I hadn't really noticed anybody else making this connection. And I thought it was kind of alarming.
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I thought it was kind of surprising. Well, I mean, maybe not surprising once you see what he teaches, but so there we brought up the point last time in the last episode about the fact that he was denying sola fide by claiming that you can be saved regardless of what you believe, even
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Romanism, because you're not saved by doctrinal works or accuracy. So I'm going to play,
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I'm going to play a clip from a video that he published through his media of Canon Press.
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And so this video is called Chesterton and Tolkien Saved? Ask Doug. So he does these little segments where he talks about theology and questions that people want to ask him.
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And so I'm going to go ahead and play a clip from there and then we can talk about it.
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All right, here we go. Number one. Do you think that J .R .R. Tolkien and Chesterton were saved?
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Well, let's just put it this way. If they were not, then I'm in a lot of trouble. Okay. All right.
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I assume there's a follow -up question on that, because you're talking about their
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Catholicism, right? Okay. So there's actually a very important point here.
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Some people, some Protestants, rock -ribbed Protestants, think if you start allowing
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Catholics to be saved, you know, Chesterton and Tolkien and people like that, that you're going soft in your
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Protestantism. Right. Okay, you're sort of trying to do the rapprochement thing.
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Right. But the reason I believe that Roman Catholics can be saved is because we're not saved by works.
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Protestants are right. In other words, I think a lot of the die -hard Protestants who say, no, we're saved by faith, by grace, through faith, not of works, lest any man should boast, then turn around immediately and then say, and you
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Catholics over there, you are saved by works. Because there's something you're not doing. Yeah, or there's something you are doing that's wrong.
31:51
Okay. Right. That's a sin. Right. Well, of course, I'm not, I'm as Protestant as you get.
31:59
I believe that Chesterton and Tolkien were wrong. And if the Protestants are wrong about salvation being only of grace, then people who pray to pictures are in trouble.
32:12
Right. You're in big trouble. It's idolatry. I think that there are a number of things that the
32:19
Roman Catholics do that encourage people to stumble over essential parts of the gospel.
32:26
Unfortunately, a bunch of Protestants stumble over the same thing. Right. We're not saved by works.
32:33
We're not saved by doctrinal works. You know, suppose I get up to the pearly gates and God says, okay,
32:39
Wilson, before we let you in, we're going to sit you down and give you a justification by faith alone test. Right.
32:44
These are your comprehensives. Right. And you've got to get 100 % on justification by faith test administered by St.
32:53
Peter here to get into heaven. Who... Is this the PCA, or is this heaven? Heaven.
32:59
Oh, sorry. I got confused. Who is going to get 100 %
33:06
Right. on any doctrinal test administered by the celestials or by God?
33:12
You know, I believe if you go through any vibrant, healthy, evangelical church where the people are manifestly saved, and sit them, get them all taking a pop quiz or a pop test.
33:23
Okay, let's... I believe you could turn over enough flat rocks to come up with any number of heresies, bad heresies, or problematic ways.
33:33
You could say the Trinity and you'd probably have every nice Sunday school teacher do the egg analogy. Illustration. Do the egg and they'd be wrong and it's a heresy.
33:41
Or ice, water, steam. There's all kinds of sweet Christian people Right. who've got...
33:47
Teaching heresy every Sunday. Right. Now, that doesn't make teaching heresy okay. Right. That doesn't mean that I approve of it.
33:54
Doesn't make it not sinful. Doesn't make it not a problem. It is a problem. But it's not the kind of thing that we...
34:01
I'll just boil it down. I'm a Protestant. We're not saved by works. We're not saved by our doctrinal works. We're not saved by our ethical works.
34:07
We're saved by the grace of God. Period. Now, because that's true, because the
34:13
Protestants are right, Catholics can be saved. Right. Right. Does that make sense?
34:19
So, this is not a split the difference or sort of a creeping ecumenical. Let's just call it all good.
34:26
Now, I think the issues of the Protestant Reformation were essential for powerful preaching.
34:33
But justification by faith does not mean believing in justification by faith. Justification by faith means that Jesus saves us.
34:42
And here's how we explain what he's doing from the scripture. Another illustration
34:48
I used, it's like electricity. Justification by faith is like electricity.
34:55
I want, any two -year -old child can turn on the lights in a room. Right. But I wouldn't let the two -year -old wire the house.
35:03
Okay? So, I want men who are being examined at Presbytery for the ministry.
35:10
I want them to understand Sola Fide. I want them to understand upwards and downwards, backwards and forwards, because they're the electricians.
35:20
Right. They're the ones showing up and running wire on all the houses. And if they don't do it right, you're going to burn the house down.
35:25
Right. So, it's very important. But it's very important for ordination. Right?
35:31
But if you stop a five -year -old and say, is the righteousness of Jesus Christ imputed or infused?
35:39
Right. Okay. I bet you could get a bunch of saved five -year -olds to answer that question wrong.
35:46
Right? Well, okay. Great. Don't ordain them. Right. But someone's hearing this right now and saying,
35:53
Pastor Wilson, that's the five -year -old. Right. If you ask that question to Chesterton, if you ask that question to Tolkien, Right.
36:02
What level are you going to hold them at? Well, I'm going to hold them. Basically, what I want to know is, is the grace of God present in their life?
36:12
Is the Spirit of God active in their life? Now, if they say, well, how could that be when they sinned over here or when they're sinning doctrinally?
36:21
Chesterton exasperates me. Especially whenever he edifies me and exasperates me at the same time. Whenever he gets on to Calvinists, he just talks nonsense.
36:29
He hates them. He talks nonsense. But the reason that's so glorious is because we're not saved by works.
36:39
Right? He's failing. He's sinning. He's stumbling at that point. And I don't approve of that at all.
36:45
But, is the grace of God, is the Spirit of God evident in his life and his demeanor and his work and his insight?
36:51
You bet. If that's not the Spirit of God, then, like I began with, we're in a lot of trouble.
37:00
Wow. Where to even start? Yeah. That was so bad.
37:07
He said so many bad, just horrendous things in that couple of minutes.
37:14
Oh, man. That was horrible. So, here's the thing.
37:20
He's saying, we're not saved. So, notice that he said,
37:26
Catholics stumble on essential parts of the Gospel, yet, they can still be saved.
37:34
And then he said, but Protestants stumble over the same thing because they presume that you have to be saved by a right understanding of the
37:43
Gospel, which is a work, according to him. He calls it a doctrinal work. And so, this is total perversion and confusion.
37:54
I mean, it is as bad as it can get. And it's like, okay, and we already talked about in the previous episode, you know, the one thing you better get right, whether you're a pastor or a layperson, it doesn't matter if you're a layperson or a pastor.
38:14
If you have, if you don't have a solid understanding of the Gospel in a basic sense, even a basic sense, you are not saved.
38:24
If you believe a perverted Gospel or a different Gospel, like Paul says in Galatians, which is what
38:31
Rome teaches, which is what Wilson himself even admitted, saying that they are confused and stumble over essential parts of the
38:40
Gospel. And it's like, okay, so then, that's why, that's why
38:45
I said, he's basically denying Sola Fide, because what you believe doesn't really matter. And so,
38:51
I mean, what's funny, here's the thing, in the James White interview, he affirmed that we're Sola Fide, he affirmed that we're saved by justification by faith alone, that it happens at the moment that we believe, that we have faith.
39:04
And it's like, you, in this video was released in February 12th of this year.
39:09
So, it was a little earlier, but notice this complete forked tongue double -talking that he's doing.
39:16
He's totally contradicting himself. Like, it does matter, that's what
39:22
Sola Fide means. It matters that you affirm the right Gospel, because Rome affirms a false
39:29
Gospel of justification of faith and works, and so, they are a condemned institution.
39:38
They condemn themselves, and they condemn the Biblical Gospel of the Council of Trent, and thereafter.
39:45
And so, he's so, he's just a complete mess at this point.
39:51
And so, people need to see this, because he was also saying this issue of, we're saved by grace.
40:01
See, we're not saved by doctrinal works. We're not saved by a right understanding of the Gospel. That's not what saved us, even though Paul said, this is the
40:09
Gospel by which you are being saved. This is the Gospel that you better have a grasp on, because if you don't, you are anathema.
40:20
And so, are we saying that you have to have every single intricate detail of theology correctly?
40:26
No, but you should have a basic understanding of God, man, and salvation.
40:33
I mean, it's a basic understanding you're a wretched sinner. God is perfectly and holy and righteous.
40:39
You deserve hell. You're condemned because of your sins. Christ died in your place.
40:45
He satisfied the wrath of God, and if you believe in Him by faith alone, you can be justified and saved.
40:51
And so, he's so off base here, that he himself said, you can affirm a false
41:02
Gospel. Well, you can be confused and have false notions of the
41:10
Gospel and still be saved because the Protestants are correct, because we're not saved by works, and he includes doctrinal accuracy as a work.
41:18
And so, I wanted to bring this up for a very specific reason, because something, notice he was treating doctrinal accuracy as a work.
41:36
And so, this has a very similar ring in church history, that, to my knowledge,
41:45
I haven't seen anybody else bring this up or make the connection or point it out, and I wonder, it's probably because he contradicts himself so much.
41:53
He'll affirm Sola Fide, and then he'll deny it, like, in the same interview, under the same breath, in a different video in the same year, like, it's just such a mess.
42:04
But, so I want to, I've got a book here, called, it's the
42:11
TNT Clark Companion to Reformation Theology. And, yeah. Can I say something before you go into that?
42:18
Just one thing that I want to say real quick is that, for everyone listening, something that you'll hear from all sorts of false teachers is, well, we're saved by grace, aren't we?
42:30
When the issue of doctrine comes up, right, they'll always say that, we're saved by grace. I was in a church, a
42:36
Pentecostal, a happy, clappy church, right, where, where that's something they would say all the time, like, well, you know, you can't be perfect about everything, every point of doctrine, which, first of all, that's a straw man, nobody's saying that.
42:48
Secondly, the fact of the matter is Scripture promises us that those who are born again of the
42:53
Spirit of God will have sound theology when it comes to the most essential thing, which is what?
42:59
The gospel, like you were saying, and Scripture promises us that the Holy Spirit will teach us, he will illuminate our minds, he will teach us what sound doctrine is, right, that's all throughout the
43:08
New Testament, it's even in the Old Testament, go to Psalm 25, and David says this, he says, good and upright is the Lord, therefore he instructs sinners in the way, he leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humblest way, and then he says, who is the man who fears the
43:20
Lord, him will he instruct in the way that he should choose, right, the friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant, these are promises from God, and if you claim that Christians can live their entire life being complete doctrinal error when it comes to the foundational thing, which is the person and work of Christ, the gospel, and not only that, but everything else after that, then you are flatly contradicting what scripture says, you're calling
43:42
God a liar, but not only that, the thing about grace, salvation by grace, is that when we say sola gratia, we don't mean just this random, this random act of kindness that has no, let's say no foundation to it whatsoever, right, we say we are saved by grace alone through faith alone, and faith is what, it's assent to propositions, right, it is understanding and assent.
44:06
Of the correct gospel. Exactly, yeah. If you don't have the, if you have grace, but you don't have that, that through way, let's put it that way, right, that through way of the faith in those particular propositions, which are the sound gospel, the real gospel, you don't have salvation.
44:22
It's nonsense to say we're saved by grace alone, and then deny, and then try to say that you believe in sola fide when you flat out deny that you need to believe in the correct gospel.
44:33
Sola fide, sola gratia does not come alongside by itself, and then sola fide come alongside next to it and say hey let's be buddies.
44:40
You don't have the grace of God unless you have that sound theology that is grasped by the empty hand of faith.
44:48
See what I'm saying? That grace is granted to us. We're saved through that grace, through faith, in the sound gospel that the
44:55
Bible teaches. Not through some other gospel, not through false understandings of who Christ is, not through Unitarianism or what is
45:03
Pentecostalism or Federal Visionism, but through what the scriptures teach. That's a big canard that's always brought up.
45:09
Oh you're saved by grace alone, it's doctrinal works. Well no, it's not doctrinal works. This is what scripture teaches. The grace is given to us, and we believe in particular things that are true, not in falsehoods.
45:21
Yeah, it's a total perverted mess, and the thing about this, so, that is fundamentally denying the very material, material principle of the
45:35
Reformation itself. Faith is the instrumental cause of justification, and he just denied it.
45:42
He just denied that faith is a necessary instrument, that it's the instrumental cause of your justification.
45:48
Like you said, it's saved by grace through faith. Faith in what? In the gospel.
45:54
In the biblical gospel that the Protestant Reformation affirmed of justification by faith alone and not works.
46:01
And so, the way he perverts these categories of works and doctrine and grace and what you believe, he's perverting what you believe as a work, and it's like, you're totally perverting the biblical categories because in the
46:15
Bible, what you believe is contrasted with works. Faith and belief is contrasted with works.
46:22
It's not considered a work. It's an instrumental means of your justification because it's not a work.
46:27
It's what you believe. And so, it's such a mess. And it's like, have you read the
46:34
New Testament? I mean, 1 Corinthians 15 says, Moreover, brethren,
46:40
I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you which also you received and in which you stand by which also you are saved if you hold fast to the word which
46:49
I preached to you unless you believed in vain. So he goes on to say, Christ died for our sins according to the
46:55
Scriptures. He was buried. He rose again. He was seen by Cephas and the
47:01
Twelve. So, he, it's affirming those basic truths about the gospel, about what
47:07
God has done for your wretched condition as a sinner. And so, you know, it's, this man, this man is, he is so unstable, confusing, and inconsistent, and contradictory.
47:22
It's just mind -boggling how you can, we have no business.
47:30
No Christian has any business listening to this guy. he is not reliable, like at all.
47:36
And so, and this is what I was getting, what I was leading to. Because, so,
47:44
I'm going to read from that book, The Companion to Reformation Theology. It says, Most mainstream
47:49
Reformed authors simply asserted that any construal of faith as a replacement work was essentially a form of legalism or gnomism.
47:57
And so, this is interesting because you see history repeating itself. The Arminianism, historic
48:05
Arminianism, believed that faith was a work. So, this was also condemned in the
48:11
Dutch Reformed Standards. The Council of, the Synod of Dort condemned this, that faith, the
48:19
Reformed Confessions, and I quote this in the article on Piper as well. The Reformed Confessions are emphatic that faith itself is not a work attributed to your justification.
48:30
It's the instrumental cause. It's the instrumental copula, as I explain it in the article, of your justification.
48:37
It contributes nothing. It's not a work. And so, notice that that is what the
48:44
Reformed historically have affirmed and they rejected the concept of faith as a work, which is what
48:49
Arminians believed historically. And so, they continue. In order to protect the complete monergism of the decrees in the
48:57
Doctrine of Salvation, these so -called antinomians posited an intentional justification in eternity instead of an actual justification in the lifetime of the person justified.
49:09
Significantly, in this construction, the role of faith is not genuinely instrumental in justification. Saving faith simply recognizes an existing justification.
49:19
It looks not at the cross, but at God's decree to justification of the elect. Thus, redemption is so tightly locked up in eternity that no events in time can touch it, including the
49:29
Arminians' faith work. So, notice the phrasing here, because the
49:34
Arminians believed that faith itself was a work. And so, this concept of eternal justification developed, which even evidently
49:43
John Gil held to. The Baptist John Gil, he held to a form of this as well.
49:50
This concept of eternal justification basically leads to a denial of faith as the instrumental means of your justification.
49:59
And there is a there's a section in the
50:04
Confession that specifically addresses this. And I can't remember, do you remember that section there?
50:10
That it's not actually applied, that our justification is not actually applied until we believe.
50:16
Not off the top of my head, I don't, sorry. Yeah, let me see if I can find it real quick here.
50:22
Yeah, I know that the the Westminster Confession and the LBC 1689 both talk about how salvation or justification is not by any any evangelical obedience.
50:36
Any active evangelical obedience, gospel obedience as it were. And so that that itself also basically is saying the same thing that we're saying right now.
50:45
Faith, believing in the gospel, when someone says believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved, that's not an active obedience in the sense that it's the means whereby you are being justified.
50:56
You know what I mean? Yeah. It's not faith as a work as the Armenians would teach it. So the the reform documents are clear.
51:05
You know, the best summary I think or the best way to put it is faith is an empty hand. Yeah, exactly.
51:10
It's the, like you said, it's instrumental copulates. It's a passive reception of what God has given.
51:16
And those who are born again by the Spirit of God have that faith already. It's been given to them. Yeah, exactly.
51:23
And God God grants you the gift of faith and repentance to believe in the true gospel.
51:29
He opens your heart. He opens your mind to the truth of the word. and so I found the section here in Westminster Confession chapter 11 which is of justification section 4 says this,
51:44
God did from all eternity decree to justify all the elect and Christ did in the fullness of time die for their sins and rise again for their well, that should be because of their justification nevertheless they are not justified so catch this nevertheless they are not justified until the
52:03
Holy Spirit Holy Spirit doth in due time actually apply Christ unto them and that is by faith and so decreeing to justify you is not the same thing as actually justifying you and Wilson here appears to be appears to be committing the error of eternal justification it's a very similar problem and people it's it's one thing because it's a little tricky because he's affirming well this justification this justification justification happens at the time you believe it happens when you're converted that's what he was affirming with James White in the
52:42
James White interview but look at what he's saying here you see what he's saying here you see he's just basically saying he's unhinging faith alone from grace alone and saying we're saved by grace alone it doesn't matter what you believe you can believe false things about the gospel and still be okay like a
52:57
Roman Catholic and so he's basically holding to a form of eternal justification denying the very material principle of the
53:06
Reformation a point of irony here too is that that's exactly what Rome teaches isn't it? alright when you talk to a
53:12
Roman Catholic you say yeah we don't believe in salvation by faith alone we believe in salvation by grace alone right and they'll explain that grace comes through various means right it comes through the sacraments etc right it's being it's being infused into the sinner by the different means that the
53:28
Roman Catholic Church has set up but something that you hear from them is that is that that grace is distinct it's so distinct from what you believe and what you do that you can have that grace and it can come in different degrees you see what
53:41
I'm saying? and I know that's not what Wilson is saying specifically but the point of similarity here that I'm trying to draw is the idea that that grace is this thing that saves you apart from these apart from faith and the specific contents of faith because that's essentially what you have in Romanism as well there's a reason why you can have baptismal justification because and this is a reason why you can have what the
54:05
Reformers railed against which is implicit faith right because you can't just believe whatever the Church tells you to believe even if you don't understand it yeah exactly it's a form of like man you nailed it it's a form of implicit faith and it doesn't really matter what you believe that's what the
54:20
Roman Catholic Church teaches they teach implicit faith you don't have to worry about what to believe you don't have to you just have to basically give blind allegiance to the
54:30
Magisterium of Rome and you'll be okay and do what they tell you and you'll be okay and this is a form of implicit faith and eternal justification and it is at the this is the conflict with Rome and this is at the core of the
54:49
Protestant Reformation and he's fundamentally denying it and contradicting it with this nonsense that he spouted in just a few minutes in this interview and so it's just it's incredibly perverse how he does this and well even in Vatican 2 also right
55:08
I believe it's Vatican 2 they explicitly say that there are people who are going to be saved despite their what is it called invincible ignorance right of doctrine and again that's implicit faith but that's taking to a whole another level right or it's taking to a whole other level saying basically again even more so not only do you not have to believe explicit propositions of the scripture not only can you just merely be mistaken about them you can live your whole life in in contradiction to the clear teaching of scripture and because you're quote unquote invincibly ignorant you will still find salvation right that's that's straight up Romanism that's
55:52
Roman Catholicism and that's something Protestantism does not teach but that's what Doug Wilson is embracing it seems the same sort of idea there you know you can be an invincibly ignorant
56:01
Roman Catholic but because you have found grace by what means I don't know but he believes in he believes in union with Christ at least externally quote unquote through baptism so I don't see how that's any different from what the
56:18
Church of Rome teaches right you can be baptized and if you're baptized even if you remain invincibly ignorant for the rest of your life you have been united to the
56:25
Church you have salvation you can have salvation because it doesn't matter what you believe it matters whether or not you've received grace through the means of grace in the
56:34
Roman Catholic sense through sacraments and through you know the seven sacraments baptism the
56:40
Lord's you know the the Eucharist etc you see what I'm saying I don't see this is one of the things like people don't see that they don't see how clearly
56:49
Doug Wilson what he's saying what he's embracing lines up with what the Roman Catholic Church teaches grace comes to you through whatever means it's dissociated from what you actually believe the content of what you believe and you can actually remain ignorant of what the truth is and still be saved that's not that's not
57:06
Christianity that's not what the Bible teaches that's what the Church of Rome teaches specifically if I'm not mistaken again in Vatican 2 they say something about those lines that ain't
57:15
Christianity it's not the Bible yeah it's just it is it's so it hurts my pains me to have to listen to the nonsense this is two clips you know this was a 55 minute interview and an 8 minute clip and just from that alone you see the mass of confusion and perversion that this man is spewing from his mouth and it is not something that should be recognized as sound as Biblical as Reformed as Protestant even
57:52
Christian like it's it is so it's just such it's nonsense it's utter nonsense the way that he's speaking out of both sides of his mouth and with a forked tongue and it's just not something that it really is it's very frustrating because you see people you know
58:14
I was seeing some other interviews some other people talking about this about Doug Wilson and they were trying kind of hinting they were sort of hinting at what you said earlier about Clark that R.
58:27
Scott Clark is the he's portrayed as the elite the elite academic who has the credentials and so he should be listened to and he's upset with Wilson because Wilson isn't credentialed and he's not he didn't go to seminary apparently but yet he has his own little church network that he started and he's got all these books and people are listening to him and they flock to him and they like him because he's a witty writer or whatever and it's like okay and they're portraying it as a sort of David and Goliath situation where it's this academic elites versus you know the untrained uneducated you know super star that that conquers the the the elites at their own game and it's like man this this is trash like it's and it's it's not
59:19
I mean it I can see how it could throw people off because it's very the way he does it is so devilish because he affirms and then he contradicts right after but if you don't understand the definitions well enough if you don't understand the terminology or the doctrine or the definitions well enough it could throw you off and it could you could easily be misled by by Wilson's ramblings and and heretical ramblings and so it's it's just it's it's unnerving to to to to witness this and see people you know it's just very frustrating and and I'm glad that we
59:58
I think it was important for us to talk about this again because this needs to be brought out this needs to be brought to light and people need to recognize that this is so often the case with false teachers and it it is also the case with men like John Piper and so I think something that maybe if you want to take add this in or not or whatever something
01:00:23
I was going to tell you is that one of the reasons why R. Scott Clark is attacked also is be why he's being raised up as the arch nemesis of Doug Wilson right and the only one who opposes him one of the reasons why is and R.
01:00:40
Scott Clark is the guy who wrote the book called Recovering the Reform Confessions right and he is mocked as somebody he's often mocked as somebody who who believes himself to be part of the
01:00:52
TR group the truly reformed right so much so that he doesn't he doesn't believe reform
01:00:57
Baptists are reformed right and I understand the reason why he believes that I get his reasoning behind it's not because he's a player hater right which is one of the more annoying things too when you enter theological discussions if your if your favorite theologian reduces the opposition he's facing to player hater interaction you know that that's basically the theological equivalent of saying okay boomer you don't mean like there's no substance to it but that's what
01:01:24
Doug Wilson is doing and R. Scott Clark I'm convinced is chosen specifically by Doug Wilson because R.
01:01:32
Scott Clark will tell Doug Wilson he's not reformed and he'll also tell the reformed Baptists they're not reformed and he's telling us these things for two different reasons you know
01:01:41
I'm saying for Doug Wilson's case there there's a whole reason why he's saying you're not reformed it's because you are flat -out in contradiction of the reformed confessions in places
01:01:50
X Y and Z and for the reformed Baptists he'll say you're not reformed because you're in contradiction of covenantal theology as articulated by the reformed tradition right and I get that I understand that there's a there's a distinction to be made there but when you are playing a personality off of other people in order to appeal to their egos in order to flatter them what you have is what you have one guy who has this position where he says he knows who's reformed who's not right that's the that's the caricature of Oscar R.
01:02:21
Scott Clark that he's the sole determiner of who's reformed and then you you say he's saying
01:02:27
Doug Wilson's not reformed in the same way that he's saying reformed Baptists are not reformed that's not the case though right that's definitely not the case with with R.
01:02:36
Scott Clark I met R. Scott Clark years ago I went to where is it Westminster California for they have this this day where you go and you visit and you go to classes and stuff like that you have lunch with with academic who forget who it was
01:02:53
I think it was academic dean I'm not sure but it was David Van Droon had lunch with him and I met R. Scott Clark in in chapel and he's a cool dude you know
01:03:00
I mean it wasn't he wasn't like foaming at the mouth when I told him I was reformed Baptist he didn't even say I wasn't reformed didn't I mean he didn't even bring it up but the fact of the matter is he does bring it up when it comes to lectures when it comes to talking about these things academically and ecclesiologically ecclesiologically because he has reasons for saying reform
01:03:19
Baptist aren't reformed and those reasons are distinct from the reasons why he will say Doug Wilson and the federal revisionists are not reformed there might be some overlap here and there but the reasons are distinct
01:03:30
I believe that R. Scott Clark will readily affirm any reform Baptist who sound in his soteriology as a brother but when it comes to the the
01:03:38
Wilsonites the federal revisionists I don't see the same sort of response coming from him toward them and for right reasons right because they got the gospel wrong you know what
01:03:48
I mean so yeah I think that's one I think that's one of the reasons why R. Scott Clark is chosen is because you know reform
01:03:54
Baptist can be because we're a small group you can have somebody say well look at R.
01:04:01
Scott Clark he doesn't even consider you guys to be reformed you're gonna trust him he doesn't think anybody's reformed except for him and it's like dude that's not the case at all you know it's just not the case yeah so so Doug Wilson wrote an article called
01:04:19
Heidel Fog basically taking a jab at R. Scott Clark's Heidel blog and he was also critiquing
01:04:28
Brandon Adams Brandon Adams article Federal Vision Baptist and so it's really interesting because Brandon and Wilson were going back and forth in the comment section and so so get this this is interesting too because you see the shifting he's kind of you know
01:04:49
Wilson is kind of like a what do you call those shapeshifters those those it's like a vampire those the shape -shifting doppelganger he's like a doppelganger
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Brendan Adams in the comment section asked him this or do you believe it would have been both a gracious gift received through faith alone and a reward earned for perfect obedience to the law and he's specifically talking about Adam in the garden and the covenant of works so Wilson responds and he says
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Brandon sorry for the delay in responding once God made a promise upon certain conditions being fulfilled if those conditions were then fulfilled then providing what was promised would be a matter of justice but because God was under a compulsion note under no compulsion to make such a promise in the first place that the fact that he did so was gracious indeed and had
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Adam obeyed he would have done so by continuing to trust God and his word over and against the serpents lies and if and if he had continued to trust in that way it would have been with God it would have been what
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God had ordained for him and Adam would have thank the Lord afterward so to answer your question had
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Adam obeyed he would have had every right to turn God in the expectation that he would deliver on his promise if he were if the if the going rate for long mowing in my neighborhood is $10 and I tell my son that if he mows it today
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I will give him $100 and he goes out and does it when he comes back into the living room I owe him $100 so there you see how he's contradicting himself once again because he's affirming the works principle he's affirming the works principle now in the covenant of works and he's trying to make it so it's like gracious in the sense that well
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Adam believe God and God had no God had no did not have to do that to Adam and it's like well placing a conditional covenant of works is not a gracious thing
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I mean it's it's a condescension you can call it a condescension if you want but that's that's still a total confusion of condescension and grace and law and gospel and so Brandon it's really interesting because Brandon responded with this if I've understood you correctly what you have said here is what is what is denied by the joint federal vision statement this is what the statement says we affirm that Adam was in a covenant of life with the triune
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God in the cart in the Garden of Eden in which arrangement Adam was required to obey God completely from the heart we hold further that all such obedience had it occurred would have been rendered from a heart of faith alone in a spirit of loving trust
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Adam was created to progress from immature glory to mature glory but that glorification too would have been a gift of grace received by faith alone we deny that continuance in this covenant and the garden was in any way a payment for work rendered so what
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Doug Wilson just affirmed in the comment is a denial of this very article in the joint federal vision with which he still claims to hold to and so he could the statement continues
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Adam could forfeit or demerit the gift of glorification by disobedience but the gift continued the the gift or continued possession of that gift was not offered by God to Adam conditioned upon Adams moral exertions or achievements in line with this we affirm that until the expulsion from the garden
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Adam was free to eat from the tree of life we deny that Adam had to earn or merit righteousness life glorification or anything else so this is the joint federal vision statement itself is a massive confusion because it
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Doug is basically trying he's trying to he's trying to elaborate this and it's it's a total mess it's a total confusion of law and gospel of grace and condescension of work and and faith and it's just a total mess and you can see how in this very comment
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Wilson contradicts himself yet again with what he said with James White so it's it's just this is not something that you need to be wasting time over with constantly trying to see what he said here and what he said there and him repackaging stuff and reaffirming and then contradicting once again it's like a constant cycle of error you know he he affirms the right thing and then he contradicts it later on and then he contradicts it earlier on and then he contradicts it later on and it's just it's a dizzying massive confusion like this is this is not somebody that you should be relying on for for pretty much anything at this point
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I mean it's just how can you trust somebody like this so I get I basically wanted to close out with that and just but yeah go ahead
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I was gonna say just just to recall something said earlier about you know sociopathy or sociopaths like heretics another way that you can look at is like a guy in an abusive relationship with a woman right he'll say the right things and then he'll contradict it and then he'll put the confusion on the woman in the relationship it's your fault if you don't understand where I'm coming from because obviously
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I love you so much that blah blah blah blah blah and then turn around and begin to be abusive it's the same sort of thing the same sort of gaslighting technique where this is the reason why people run around chasing after him and they fall in love with the personality rather than what he's actually teaching is because it's gaslighting you know
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I mean it's kind of like with Al Moeller and the Southern Baptist Convention and all the stuff that's going on with white privilege and all that out of one side of his mouth he's saying this on the other side of mouth is saying this other thing and he's appealing to two different groups and in the midst of all the fog that he's throwing up you know the irony with Wilson's article being called
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Heidel fog he's the one that's causing the fog not the Heidel block you know R. Scott Clarke is incredibly clear
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Doug Wilson is a source of perpetual confusion the same thing is happening with you know people like like I mentioned
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Al Moeller in the Southern Baptist Convention like where does he stand is he for us is he against us is he for critical race theory is he against it
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I don't know let's look back at some of the things he said before let's look at the stuff he's saying right now and if you ask him he'll deny it but then he'll say something behind your back that confirms it you know what
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I mean well that what does that do that leaves you in a perpetual state of dependence on him right and it's a great way of getting people on your side yeah on his every word yeah it's all about the person it's all about the personality involved it's not about the truth you know and that's what
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I see exactly with Doug Wilson as well the same sort of gaslighting I'm gonna say this here I'm gonna say this somewhere else and I'm not gonna bother to put two and two together for you even though it is the ministers expressed duty to do so according to Scripture right you don't have the liberty of being a forked tongue serpent as a minister of the gospel it is your duty to speak the truth to be forgotten to die and to be forgotten right like it like the statement goes preach the gospel die and be forgotten that's your job you're a voice on the wilderness of John the
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Baptist the greatest of all the Old Testament prophets was you know identified himself as a voice preaching in the wilderness pointing everyone to Christ then why is this one person
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Doug Wilson or any other teacher who's in the limelight who's contradicting himself desiring for people to hang on their every word it is their job to be clear about the teaching yeah and if they're not being clear we need to not listen to them until they get their act together yeah that's a great point to to end to end with because that is exactly the problem he's developing a cult of a cult of personality starting with his own denomination and being the leader of it and this really shows the problems with that he's all about he's a one -man show and everything just basically hinges on the last statement that he makes and so this is dangerous stuff folks this is this is the very definition of false teaching and false teachers you're seeing it at play with with with with a man like Wilson so I'm glad that we brought this up again
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I think we needed to flesh this out a little bit more and kind of clarify some of the things that we had that I had made that I had stated earlier in the previous episode and so I think hopefully this was helpful to people and unfortunately we didn't get a chance to jump into the the article on Piper but I think next week we'll get a chance to do or next time we'll get a chance to cover that hopefully
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Lord willing and so thank you for tuning in and until next time