Aldo Leon Dissects Doug Wilson (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, I'm in the stream, my name is

Mike Abendroth, and I regularly tell people that my favorite No Compromise Day is

Wednesday, and that's because we have guests on. We have theologians, pastors, authors, and I get to hear from other parts of the country and the world and see what the

Lord is doing through different people, and today's no different. Today we have a guest on, and I heard this guest on another podcast, and I thought to myself when

I was listening at 1 .5 speed, I was in the gym doing squats, and I thought, this guy is right up NoCo's alley.

This guy is so excited, enthusiastic, hyped up, and straight to the point blunt that he's going to make me look sweet, so I'm going to have this guest on today for lots of reasons, including those.

Although, Leon, welcome to No Compromise Radio. Hey, it's good to be on here.

I've been listening on and off. I go on and off a lot of podcasts, but I've been listening on and off to NoCo for a while, and I thought some of the similar things that you said as you heard me is, yeah, he's a straight shooter, to the point guy, and he's talking about gospel and grace in a courageous way, so yeah, man.

When you said, come on, I was like, yeah, sure, no problem, man. Great. Well, we have similar backgrounds in the sense that we both went to Master Seminary, and then after that, we both went to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Did you know that? Oh, I didn't know the southern part. That's interesting. I know.

So, then you're now a PCA pastor, ReconcileChurchMiami .org.

Tell us a little bit about the church there, Aldo. Okay, so Reconciled Church was,

I planted in the SPC, I became a Presbyterian in the middle of my second year of church planting.

Reconciled Church came under the oversight of Pilate's Presbyterian Church. They lost their pastor.

They called me as their pastor, and I brought my church plant into Pilate's Presbyterian Church. So, I went from being a church planter to pastoring the oldest

PCA church in Miami, and it's been about, I've been there two years, but I planted the church in 2015, so I've been pastoring in Miami since 2015, so it's kind of like, yeah, that's a little short story of how the church thing went.

Okay, great. And when I was listening to you on PresbyCast, you guys were talking about federal vision and how it contradicts

Sola Fide and the folks up in Moscow and Doug Wilson, and I think some of, especially

Baptists, maybe some Presbyterians too, but I think Baptists are especially drawn to Canon Press and Moscow and Doug Wilson, and just give me your pastoral take about what do you think what's going on up there?

Is it good? Is it bad? How do you shepherd your people? This is basically, here's a springboard, go ahead and launch.

Okay. Yeah, well, I've been watching Canon Press, Moscow, Doug Wilson, very closely, not very closely, on and off, closely sometimes, less closely for about six years.

I saw all the content from Heidelblog about him and federal vision way back, but I slowly watched and listened and read.

And recently, I had a few families in our church talk about Moscow and one of them thinking about moving to Moscow, and then his popularity surging in the

NAPARC world, the confessional PCA churches, and also the

Reformed Baptists world, and just pretty much everywhere. The last two years was a ripe soil for a false hero to step in, and he did step in.

And so I was like, I need to get my hand around this person because he's very influential, very growingly influential, and now it's stepped into my backyard.

So I looked into a few things. Number one, what is federal vision?

Number two, is Doug a federal visionist? And when I looked into federal vision,

I mean, I looked more into it. I came to the conclusion that federal vision is not a version of the

Reformed faith. It is medieval Catholicism in Protestant clothes.

It is new perspective for the working class person. They have a different view of covenant.

They have a different view of election. They have a different view of justification. They have a different view of law and gospel.

They have a different view of ecclesiology. They have a different view of the sacraments. They have a different view of what a

Christian is. They have a different view of pretty much everything important that a Christian should believe.

And Doug Wilson is indeed a federal visionist. A lot of people disassociate the heretical federal vision movement, which has a synergistic view of justification, a denial of the act of obedience of Christ as a basis of your justification, a view of faith that is instrumentally a mixture of my faithfulness and my receptivity in Christ.

I mean, like, it's a spider web where wherever you touch it, it is toxic and it will kill you.

So it's not like some people like Lutherans will have some weird stuff here and other places, you know, like it'll be okay.

But everywhere you touch the federal vision system, it is a black hole that will suck the spiritual life out of you.

So a lot of people feel positive about Doug because he has distanced himself from federal vision.

And then I looked into that and I noticed that he said he would no longer call himself a federal visionist, but he never renounced the theology of federal vision.

He never renounced the statements that he authored and he signed about federal vision. He didn't remove himself from the denomination that he started full of federal visionists.

And so he's very much a federal visionist. He just doesn't talk about it anymore, because when he talks about his weird stuff, about how

Baptists saved you, about how you're temporarily elect and you're temporarily justified, when you start saying that stuff, your good old

Baptist friends, your good old Presbyterian friends will be like, oh, that's a false teacher. He stopped talking about those things.

And now he just talks about masculinity and changing the culture and smashing the quote, unquote, very, very, very tactically.

So because when he tried to I'm rambling for a long time and I'll stop him when when he came out with his federal vision, it's like way back in the day.

And he was making a case for a federal vision and saying, well, I'm a federal vision because of Calvin, I'm a federal vision because the

West has to buy. When he came out with his views, the NAPOC world smacked him in the face like a thousand times.

And we chased these guys out of the nominations. And so he realized that, well, the reform world broadly, they don't like our our system.

So he became very quiet about it. He falsely disassociated himself with the movement, though he never renounced the movement.

And he started talking purely and mostly about, you know, his ethical views about this and that and family and women.

So when I talk to people in my church about his aberrant, heretical views that damn people to hell, he said, well,

I don't hear him saying that. And I was like, yeah, because he doesn't say it anymore because he knows that that'll get him.

It won't get him. He wants to be like the pope of like the new

Christendom in the United States with Moscow is like the epicenter. That's not going to happen if he actually tells you what he believes.

So that's me jumping into the conversation. No, I'm glad for that.

And, you know, it started off with, for you, I think, and for me, it's a pastoral issue, right?

We look around, we see what our folks are doing, and some might say, well, why do you ever criticize the

Gospel Coalition? Well, because through the Internet and other means, they're in the church, the local churches that we pastor.

And it's the same thing with Wilson, right? He's a smart guy. He's a prolific writer. I used to read

Credenda Agenda back at master seminary classes for New Testament survey class in 1992 because I needed something to do, funny stuff and all that.

And when I heard you talking on Presbycast, there definitely seems to be let's not talk about baptismal regeneration.

Let's not talk about covenant nomism. Let's not talk about pato communion. Let's not talk about losing some of these benefits that we have in Christ if we don't obey.

Let's put that all on the side and talk about, oh, the government's overreaching. Oh, masks are bad.

We don't close our churches. Masculinity. Like you said, homeschool.

I mean, how many people buy Doug Wilson stuff because of the homeschool movement?

And so I think you hit the nail on the head, Aldo, when you said he's been very quiet about this main issue of federal vision because he knew he had to, right?

Yeah, yeah. And also another thing about if you think about this very carefully, if you are arguing for ethics, not strongly advocating for the foundation of your ethics, if you are promoting like a renewal of society and the church ethically doing the home, but you're not regularly articulating your categories that ground your ethics.

Like, so if you're, if you're very much doing Ephesians four to six conversations without Ephesians one to three conversations, you're talking about Romans 12 to 16 stuff and not

Romans one to 11 stuff. Um, you're saying something very profound without saying it.

And what you're saying is we don't need, um, clear sociological

Christological categories to be transformational and ethical. Um, you know, how could you regularly be talking about being ethical, being renewed, um, without a very clear articulation of, you know, what is the

Christological redemptive things that ground them. And that those things don't matter to Moscow because at the end of the day, like sociology, um, definitive biblical sociology is, is not the gospel.

If you listen to the Moscow guys and the Moscow loving guys, the gospel is everything.

The gospel is free. Wherever something happens, wherever something changes, wherever something is renewed, it's gospel.

So if gospel is very moralized, right. And imperatival, um, and not indicative and forensic, if that's, you don't really need to talk about it too much, you know what

I'm saying? And, and so the reason why they want to, you know, his, uh, his theologian was interesting is that people need to not just look at Doug who are into Doug, but look at his circle.

So one of the chief federal vision theologians, uh, who was his, uh, in house at St.

Andrew's theologian, um, was Peter Lightheart. Peter Lightheart has written a book about going, ending the

Protestant, ending Protestantism and going back to Rome. Now, Peter Lightheart doesn't like, uh,

Mary worship. He doesn't like, you know, their view of the sacraments, but he has no problem with the soteriology of Rome.

So in the Moscow world, you can join, you know, all of these people that have a range of soteriology, this workspace, because at the end of the day, like their gospel is very much moralized.

One of the things I said about them is, is think about Moscow as the social justice, the social gospel for the conservative, uh, working man.

Um, but it's the same thing. The gospel is pretty much the effects and consequences that the

Christian brings about in a society simply from a conservative perspective, while the woke guy says the gospel is all these things

I'm doing, um, that echo reverberate, um, kind of like, you know, leftist transformationalism.

Um, but yeah, they don't, they don't need to talk about definitive sociological categories, uh, because that's their, their, their, their movement is not a sociological one.

Um, at all. Here, let me give you a quote, a quote. Um, well, a sociological one from a biblical sense.

Let me quote something to show you like the way Doug fees, um, salvation and gospel.

Uh, okay. Here you go. I want you to, this, this is from his, uh, uh, reform is not enough.

Page 45. I want to begin by saying that when we first started talking about the objectivity of the covenant and it starts to sink in, in what we are saying, you mean that you're saying that a lesbian

Eskimo Bishop lady is a Christian. She's not a Buddhist. She's not a Muslim.

Yes. In the new Testament sense, she is a new Testament Christian. Close quote. There's your, there's your sociology of Doug.

If you're in the church, you know, if you're not a Muslim. You're a

Christian as long as you're baptized, as long as you're baptized. Right. Yes.

Yes. Yes. Um, yeah, he believes that, uh, not that baptism is a science field of saving grace, uh, you know, as, as the

West mentor divine to define it, but baptism confers and creates saving grace.

And if you listen to him and all of his, um, circle and all the federal business that are all housed in his denomination, um, baptism gives you all the benefits of Christ, justification, regeneration, um, you know, definitive sanctification.

You have all the benefits of Christ given to you by the administration of the water, um, because they have a sacerdotal medieval

Catholic view of the sacrament, which Doug Wilson says he got from the Westminster divine.

I mean, here's a quote that he says. It's really interesting. Um, he says, uh, where am

I at? Raise your hand. This is a quote from it. If you knew that the

Westminster confession taught baptism with generation, and then he says, quote, worthy receivers are saved by these effectual means.

So when the Westminster confession says that, uh, the Holy spirit through the word, through faith makes baptism and effectual me, he then reads that to be like baptism actually confers salvation.

Um, one of the things that like, I'm trying to help people understand is that Doug is not reformed.

He could, he was never reformed in a reformed denomination. His denomination was created around him.

Um, and, and it wouldn't be considered to be reformed by any of the NAPARC denominations that have historical roots with presbyterians.

Historically, he created his own idea of reform. Um, and he used the terms and terminology.

Um, but he doesn't have a reform view of election or reform view of baptism or reform view of anything, but, but he's reformed.

And it's funny because he said, um, quote, uh, Jared Longshore said, quote, uh,

Matt, the, the, I'm not quote, let me paraphrase the reformation was lost across the pond of England and United States.

And there was recovered in Moscow. Okay. So the RPCNA, the

OPC, the PCA, the, uh, RCUS, uh, the

ARP, all of them looked at the federal vision circle and all of their documents and said, this is not reformed orthodoxy.

Um, but Doug and his, uh, circle of fans have discovered something that, uh, almost a million,

I'm trying to think about how many people are like in the NAPARC denominations. Almost a million NAPARC reform people don't know.

And that's the issue with Doug is he is, he's a self -made guy, a self -styled guy, um, who's organized a whole movement around himself.

And, you know, we tend to, and, and big Eva and evangelicalism, we like these kinds of figures.

We keep falling for these kinds of figures, right? These, uh, astronomical personalities that create, um, theological movements around themselves, um, where they become the standard.

And it's like, how many times do we have to see this narrative play itself out in a catastrophe before we realize that it's probably, uh, it's probably not a good one, you know?

Although, thank you for that. We're talking to Aldo Leon today on No Compromise Radio. Uh, you can go listen to his four or five hour, uh, shows on Gospel on Tap.

You're going to rechange the, you're going to change the name, right? What's it called now? Not Gospel on Tap. It will be, it will be called a rebranded

Kingdom Polemics. Yes, sir. Okay. One of the things I was thinking about Aldo was, uh, confusion of categories.

Uh, Doug Wilson's smart and he knows how to write and he knows how to be very, very specific when he wants to.

And if he wants to say, uh, that the husband, uh, will be dominant over the wife and that's exactly how a loving relationship should be and that wives need to be led with a firm hand and, uh, all these other things, he's, he's very specific when it comes to that.

But when it comes to sola fide, uh, that's where the blurring occurs. And I think

I have to say from my opinion, he does that on purpose. It's not like he can't say something specific.

He won't because he's trying to keep everything muddled. So the untaught and, uh, uninitiated will buy into it.

Do you think that's a fair assessment? Yes. Yes. If, if you're always confusing and confused, uh, then you're this enigma that can never be really nailed down.

And then you could kind of like, I guess, advance whatever agenda you, you, you like, because no one,

I would, I said in the podcast, uh, you know, Doug Wilson reminds me of the, of the millennial who no one understands him.

Well, he's very intelligent and he intentionally doesn't want to be understood so that, you know, no one is the wiser about who he is, but, you know, so he's a master at doing a few things to confuse people.

Number one, he's a master of double talk. So he will say justification is all of grace based upon Christ's obedience.

And then he will sign a federal vision statement, which says like, actually, you know, let me read what the joint federal vision statement that he coauthored and co -signed says about justification on active obedience.

He says, we deny that faithfulness to the gospel message requires any particular doctrine or formulation of the invitation of the active obedience of Christ.

What matters is we confess our salvation is all of Christ and not so much. So he'll make a statement that appeals to someone who is

Orthodox and then he'll make a statement totally different. So people will come up to me and I'll be like, yo, did you hear what

Doug said? And I said, yes, but he said this over here. And then you guys know this is just from a psychological standpoint.

When you have a person in a church or you have a person in a family that is saying one thing to somebody and something entirely different to somebody else, it's because they're intentionally manipulating the situation with a double talk or what

Doug will do is he'll use a word that he has defined entirely different.

So when you, when he says it, he's saying something from his own dictionary that he invented with his circle of, of, you know, of a quasi

Catholic. So for example, when Doug, when Doug said, when Doug says justification, um, by grace, you

Christian immediately say, oh, okay, you're speaking my language, but he means corporate justification.

He means temporary justification. God temporarily justifies the whole church that will be finally justified.

So he says, just when he says election, election by grace, according to God's decree, well, when

Doug says election, he doesn't mean God's decree, uh, before time that secures a

Christian, irrespective of anything, um, that the Christian could undo in time when he's in the election, he means he means historic election, he means covenant election that is temporary and corporate.

So Doug Wilson, actually, when he explains Romans nine, he explains

Roman, not Romans nine, the way remonstrance would. So Romans nine would say, when, when, when Paul says, uh,

Jacob, not Esau, I wasn't talking about individuals being elect talking about people groups, um, being elect and amongst these people, groups that are elect, some of those can be temporary elect, and some of those can be finally elect.

So he says one statement, and then he says another statement to keep everybody confused, and then he uses some terms and statements that mean entirely different things.

Now, if you want to quote, when you talk to the antinomian about grace, they're not talking about the grace of God that teaches us to renounce of Godliness.

They're talking about the grace of God that perpetuates ungodliness. They use a term, but they mean something very different.

So we need to understand not just what he uses, but how he speaks about the conversation holistically.

And also what dictionary are these terms coming from that?

And he, when you do that kind of stuff, um, it's because you have an agenda and you're being intentionally evasive.

You're either really, you're either a new convert who is confused, or you're a con man who is confusing people intentionally for some of your own end.

And in addition to whom is he speaking? So when he talks to certain people, I remember, uh,

Rick Warren, when he was interviewed by the White Horse Inn folks and Horton asked him about something and Rick Warren said on the

White Horse Inn, I'm a monergist and I subscribe to the Five Solas of the Reformation. And I'm thinking that's what you say to them, but that's not what you say to the congregation.

So I can imagine, I haven't watched the James White, Doug Wilson interview, but I imagine Doug has one answer for James and then he has the other answers for everybody else.

Yeah, yep. Yeah. He, he knows, he knows what the people in the room want him to say.

Um, and, and he works the room and here's, and here's one of the things that I said about Doug Wilson, as I think his popularity is more an indictment upon us than upon him, because we have bought into, um, this

YouTube hashtag Twitter, um, you know, um, little bits and pieces of, of, of kind of like a credibility.

Like we, we will listen to somebody based upon like these tidbits and these little tweets and things and whatnot.

And like, we won't consider somebody in the totality of all of their life, all of their writing, all of their, their ministry.

We just look at people in a very surfacey sense. And if you really want something personally in your life, um, you'll just listen to someone based upon like the superficial, uh, statements that they make.

Now we're talking about esoteriology in this conversation. Um, but there's like a whole more, a whole lot of other things that you could bring out.

Um, but yeah, being a gospel guy is not in a four minute

YouTube video, making a few statements about grace based on Christ.

Like being a gospel guy is you holistically, consistently, um, regularly in every sphere you find yourself in, you're regularly conveying, um, the, you know,

Christological orthodoxy. But, you know, we, we listened to one guy, you know, say one phrase, one thing here, all of a sudden, like, yeah, we're like, oh, he's fine.

And, um, I don't know, I think we're, we're, we're, we're very, um, we're very superficial, I think, in the way we, we, we look at, um, someone like Doug or anybody else.

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