Aldo Leon Dissects Doug Wilson (Part 2)

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, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and today is part two of an extended interview I had with Pastor Aldo Leon to talk about Doug Wilson, Federal Vision, and things of Moscow Canon Press.

So, if you haven�t listened to today�s show, go ahead and listen to yesterday�s show, and I think that it will flow better. We didn�t do two complete shows, but one show, and then now with a second introduction.

Don�t forget Gospel Assurance, the new book that I compiled, is out on Amazon. I think it will really encourage you. Stay tuned for Aldo Leon. About this soteriological subject, because the plagiarism, it�s bad.

The cases there, the legal scandals, bad. The husband, how do you talk about women, and the words he uses, bad, and the list could go on and on and on, but that to me isn�t the main issue. The main issue is, this is, you know, the standing or falling issue, and how hard would it be for him to say something like this, because this is what I believe.

I, personally, Mike Abendroth, believe in the act of obedience of Christ, the covenant of works of grace, of covenant of redemption. I believe in a law gospel paradigm. I believe in all these things as taught by the Reformation and the Reformed Confessions, Calva Basa Olivianus, Senate of Newark, defined by those terms.

How hard would that be to say, but you�ll never hear him say that, because he�s going to be wishy-washy. Aldo, tell me about this. You said something really good on your show. You think that the Wilson movement is kind of the opposite of woke.

What do you mean by that? Yeah, go ahead.

Federal Vision as a Socialized View of the Trinity

Yeah. Yeah. So, if you listen to the woke folks and the anti-woke folks, which is the Moscow folks, they both have a social view of the Trinity. The woke folks will say this differently, but in Moscow, the eternal functional subordination thing.

So, Doug believes that the Son eternally subordinates to the Father. Now, why does he say that? He says that because he sees everything in the universe in light of his hierarchy position, like submission and submitted to.

So, he has this view of society, of patriarchy, this vision for society, and he reads back that patriarchal vision of society into the Trinity, and so he has a socialized view of the Trinity that you�ll see, like if you want to see someone unpack this really well, it�s Matthew Barrett and his books on the Trinity and the Sonship of Christ.

And so, that socialized view of God filters into the way they see creation, covenant, fall, redemption, and sacraments, and that�s kind of like how the dominoes flow. So, you have this view of human society that you want.

So, in the woke world, it�s the egalitarian utopia, everyone being the same, economically the same, gender the same, you know, like there�s this oneness and sameness that is like the paradigm for society.

And then you go back to the Gospel, and you see the Gospel through the grid of this egalitarian utopia. And then you go back to the Doctrine of God, and you see the Doctrine of God in this egalitarian utopia.

And somehow you begin to talk about the Trinity in these egalitarian terms. Doug has this patriarchal utopia, right? The reason why he�s always talking about men submitting, it�s not because he�s like me, looking at Ephesians 5, and looking at 1 Timothy 2, and looking at Genesis, you know, 2, and just exegeting that and saying, �Yes.

He has a utopic view of society built on this hierarchy, okay? And so he sees the Gospel through that social grid, and he sees the Trinity through that social grid. And so here�s how it gets flushed out, you know, the woke person says, �We�re going to transform society in this egalitarian, neo-Marxist oneness.

And as we transform and take over society with this egalitarian ideology, then we�re going to see transformation. The Wilsonite says, �We�re going to transform society with this patriarchal, hierarchical, conservative ideology, right?

And as we transform society and take over society, we will then transform people. So they both, you know, Tim Keller, he�s going to transform the city to bring about the Gospel, right? But he�s going to transform the city by this egalitarian, you know, progressive ideology.

The Moscow guy, �We�re going to take over Idaho, we�re going to take over Moscow, not through the ideologies that are humanistic of Keller, but through the ideologies of, you know, other things, right?

Like the patriarchal utopia, you know, the conservatism, kind of like, you know, Christian nationalism can collapse in confusing civil and sacred fear. But they�re both social transformationists seeking to bring about God�s purposes through sociological, political, spatial, human, institutional means.

They simply do so with different paradigms. And that�s why they hate each other so much, because they�re the same person competing for that same stage of, you know, social transformationalism. But you know, to be fair, like, the reason why a lot of them like Doug is because a lot of his values in his, you know, patriarchal utopia have some correspondence with our values.

But, I mean, if you want to think through that a little bit more deeply, well, Jesus did share a lot of values with the Pharisees, okay, more so than the Sadducees. But Jesus did not take kindly to their, and corruption of sociology, simply because there was more of a correlation to ethics.

It�s another, one of the things I was saying is that wokeism is not a strand of Christianity. It�s another religion. It�s another religion. And to go to the other side, Wilson-Moscow spirituality is not a strand of Christianity.

It�s another religion. Just because you can find more correlations in ethics, I mean, I can listen to Ben Shapiro and find a whole lot of things that I would agree with, but we�re not on the same team.

We�re not talking about the same God and same redemption and same Christology, you know. But I think, let�s just be honest, brother, a lot of these folks have a Judaistic view of Christianity. What I mean by that is Christianity can be reduced to homeschooling.

It can be reduced to male headship. It can be reduced to being anti-woke. It can be reduced to, you know, believing in, like, you know, a limited government. And when Christianity can be comprehensively reduced to those things, then I guess you don�t really care to know too much about, like, all the other things that Doug would believe, you know?

That is so true. Thank you for that. Have you gotten a lot of pushback on your show so far? People after you do, they�re at you, emails. What�s the response been so far on those monster shows in length?

Well, I�ve gotten a ton of feedback, a lot of, like, yes, I�ve been seeing this, I�ve been saying this, thank you, I�ve gotten some, like, I was on the Moscow train, and I�m off the train. You know, in my own, you know, and some people were like, �Hey, man, like, why are you going so hard on Doug

Like, and, you know, so there was, like, a few of that. I had some people, like, it�s funny how, one of the things that motivated me to do this content is I realized, I don�t really want to go too deep into this, but Doug has a bunch of fans of his, like, fake accounts on Twitter and Facebook that, like, kind of, like, promoted stuff, and you can tell when someone�s doing a fake account and stuff.

And so there�s, like, a lot of those people that were, like, telling me, like, if you�re a PCA guy, and if you�re about what you�re about, you can�t oppose someone like Doug because Doug is, you know, he�s doing things that the PCA�s not doing, and he�s speaking in ways that, like, you know, other people aren�t speaking.

So, like, I�ve gotten, like, you know, a lot of good responses. Some, like, �Hey, why are you being so mean to that guy �Is he really that bad And others, like, you know, �How dare you You know, but at the end of the day, like, it hasn�t been, it hasn�t been excruciatingly complicated.

You know, it�s just stuff like that.

Canon Press, Trojan Horses, and the Problem of a Counter-Christian Worldview

Okay, good. Well, let�s see, what else do I have here? The rest of Canon Press, do you see a lot of, I think it�s Doug�s daughter, Rachel�s influence in churches? How would you assess that?

Well, in light of system, you know, it�s an integrated, in light of it being a whole integrated system with this counter-Christian worldview posing as Christianity, I see Canon Press not as a good thing.

You know, it�s funny, I watched this with my family, and one of the things I saw in that Eve�s Hope documentary, I was watching it with my family, and I was like, �Let�s watch this. They said that the women�s suffrage movement was a Trojan horse in order to bring about all this, you know, egalitarian, you know, self-feminism and stuff.

So, like, the genuine concern in society was simply a Trojan horse for all anti-God people to bring their ideology. And at the end of that podcast, at the end of that documentary, I told my wife, I said, �It�s interesting they said that, because I see this exactly the same.

This recapturing, you know, the biblical woman, championing the traditional household. The Trojan horse is capturing people, but on the inside of this Trojan horse, there is a rot, there is a toxicity of aberrant doctrine that will destroy the whole city that accepts the horse.

And I feel like it�s the gateway drug, it�s I�ll switch you with that. So, I believe that, look, here�s what�s important to understand. I�m not telling Christians that you can�t learn from unbelievers.

You can�t learn from, like, a Jordan Peterson. You can�t learn something from, you know, some person who is not, like, saved. Like, I�m not like some Anabaptist, you know, no common grace. You can�t learn anything from anyone.

The issue with someone saying, �I like Eve Hope and Canon Press and all this stuff� is that this person, at the head of this movement, is presenting himself to you as one of you, and he�s not one of you.

So, I don�t have a problem saying, �Hey, watch Ben Shapiro, you know, say this about, you know, the Ukraine, and, you know, watch this person talk about, you know, like, federal overreach or whatever.

Because he�s not presenting himself as a confessionally Reformed Christian. But when you have this guy who is telling everyone that, �I am a confessionally Reformed Christian. And by the way, you know all those guys who are in the PCA and the OPC, they�re not actually confessionally Reformed.

They lost the Reformed faith. And then you�re listening to their Christian ethics. To me, it becomes more of a problem. And again, like, I would challenge a person who says to me, �Well, I don�t buy into his theology, but I do buy into, you know, I do buy into, like, his view of, like, family.

I�m like, �Where on earth do you read in the Bible that you can separate Ephesians 1 and 3 from 4, 5, and 6? You can�t unhinge those Christological Orthodox doctrines in Ephesians 1 and 3 with God�s view for the family.

Like, if you get the gospel wrong, then your view of family is wrong. And if you listen very closely, if you listen very closely to Doug, I would make a case that he�s not right on soteriology, and he�s also not right on ethics either.

He�s not. When I hear Doug talk about families and women, what I don�t hear is a working out of the gospel into the paradigm of marriage. What I hear is the categories of submission being understood in a legalistic, tyrannical, sociological system of, you know, the worst righteous as Christian.

That�s what I hear. And I think, here�s one of the things that I said to people, is that when a society is really unraveled, an overcompensating, exaggerated hero who gets things done is always going to grip you in a way you probably don�t realize.

So Castro comes in in the midst of Bautista. So we have a lot of, I genuinely believe we have a lot of egalitarian, soft egalitarian, or hard egalitarian, you know, weak, impotent guys, spiritually speaking, in the church world.

And I think we have a lot of softness about biblical categories and masculinity in the church world. And it�s left this vacuum for someone like Doug to swoop in and be the kind of overcompensating hero that people cling to inappropriately.

So whenever things are complicated and crazy, we immediately gravitate towards an oversimplified, overly extensive kind of solution. So my long answer is that the acceptance of all of the programs and things, it�s a Trojan horse to get you to buy into the whole system.

And the very fact that you are having difficulty with me saying he has heretical theology, based upon what you like about what he says about these things, proves that you�re already hooked by the Trojan horse, right?

It�s hard for you to hear me even say this, you know? And it�s because the very thing that I�m saying has already done its work on you.

Although, thank you for that. As you were talking, I thought to myself, I feel like I�m at the gym listening to your podcast, and I just am enjoying it so. And then I realized, oh, I have to ask another question.

Justification by Faith Alone and Federal Vision Confusions

Let me give you a few quotes from Doug Wilson, and you can see how slippery this is. These are all quotes. Life and obedience are essential characteristics of the instrumentality of faith. Here�s another one.

It is indisputable that works is the animating principle of faith. Thirdly, I am treating obedient faith and living faith as synonymous. It is obedient in its life, and in that condition, it is the instrument of our justification.

Lastly, does obedience, he�s talking about justifying faith, mean works, or does it mean life? If the former, then mixing it into justifying faith is death warmed over. If the latter, then leaving it out is death stone cold.

And all this instrumentality, you don�t hear typical Reformed language, knowledge, assent, and trust. You don�t hear resting and receiving. You don�t hear any of that. The OPC Report on Justification said this, �Though not ordinarily challenging the terminology of justification by faith alone, they have changed the definition of faith and have therefore changed the meaning of faith alone.

Yep. Yep. That�s another area where he takes a category and he impregnates it with all of his federal vision baggage. So when he says living faith, working faith, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That�s like the whole concept of it is not alone, but it works.

All true faith works. So he takes the fact that the Reformers say that faith works, and then he says living faith, working faith, covenant faithfulness, to basically take the category that the Reform says that saving faith always causes work.

The instrument of faith causes work. And then he takes those two concepts and he morphs them into one and he says, basically, the instrument is a faith that is obeyed. And that�s, I don�t know how you feel about this, but that�s where sometimes MacArthur muddles the instrumentality of faith, where it�s not faith that receives and rests upon Christ alone for righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, but it�s faith and obedience are kind of like the instrument.

You know, Piper does faith and affection as the instrument. And the good thing about Piper and MacArthur is they�re not consistent with like, you know, kind of like confusing these categories. But when Doug says living faith, he�s basically echoing the new perspective, covenant faithfulness concept, which says the means by which you are justified is through the instrument of your work out righteousness.

So God is justifying you through the instrument of how you, in a contingent sense, live your life. So basically, it�s the instrument of your action, not the instrument of faith alone. The reason why Doug says that, Doug literally has said in a podcast or a YouTube video that Rome has not apostatized from the sola yet.

Doug, on a video of Peter Lightheart, the other Romanist, you know, guy in the CREC, he�s in the CREC with Doug still, he says that Catholics are a part of the new covenant. They�re a part of the new covenant.

They�re brothers in Christ. He�s quoting somebody from church history, they�re brothers in Christ. So, Catholics and I full of Peter, they say it through faith and affection, right? The instrumentality of God working love in my heart, you know.

Doug says that Rome is not apostatized from the sola. Doug says Rome is a part of the new covenant community. Doug says they�re brothers in Christ. Doug has a Roman Catholic view of faith. I mean, it�s like it�s not complicated, you know.

And that�s not what the Christian has. But, you know, again, like I think, again, I think all these things that people don�t seem to understand, I think they say more about how moralized and diluted the Reformed world broadly really is because we don�t even know what sola fide sounds like anymore.

We don�t know what sola gratia actually sounds like anymore. You know, when everything sounds the same, that is, Roman and Westminsterian, if that�s even a word, when it all sounds exactly the same, it�s very likely that we just don�t have our, we don�t know what we�re talking about anymore if you can�t tell the.

Difference, you know. So true. I tell people all the time, Aldo, that we need to make sure we understand justification properly, and so every person, laypeople as well, I suggest that they read Calvin on justification, Turretin, Buchanan, Fesco, and Horton.

And if you get that down, you�ll easily be able to hear things like Doug Wilson saying, quote, �I believe that a man is justified by faith, through faith, to faith, under faith, and over faith. And I�m thinking, what is he doing there?

But if you understand what the Bible teaches, it�ll be very, very clear. And so, I guess in summary, A, thanks for coming on and standing up for the truth, I really appreciate what you�re doing because most people are shying away from Moscow and Canon Press and critiquing Doug Wilson because I don�t know what the reasons are.

Secondly, if the folks want, go ahead, do you want to say something?

Why Doug Wilson’s Teaching on Families and Women Is Not Gospel-Shaped

Well, and not to sound repetitive, but one of the things that, one of the things that I believe is the reason why people have issues with doing this with Doug is there�s not enough people like me and you that are speaking about Doug this way.

I read, I saw the things that were said about Doug throughout the years. I read the blogs that were critiquing him. And it�s a lot of, apart, with the exception of Scott. Scott was, you know, one person that was, I think, it was like, this is wrong, but let me pat him on the back.

This is incorrect, but not like false teacher, heretic, damnation, you know, like none of that stuff. It�s, there�s been like this, I don�t know, kind of like, yeah, he�s wrong about this and yeah, I don�t agree with this.

I don�t think we have enough people that have given like a very precise, clear definition of how aberrant he is. There�s been, let�s put it this way, in the evangelical world, like right now we have a real issue with confrontation, clarity, conviction, and boldness to people that are dangerous.

You know, like, look, I know this is like hard for people to hear, but like people like Tim Keller and the things they say are very dangerous. Now I would put, I wouldn�t put Keller in a Doug Wilson conversation.

Okay. But you know, people that are well-known are saying very dangerous things, some on the spectrum of heretical and some on the spectrum of progressive. And we just have this tendency, we have this piety, this false piety of, of winsomeness and understanding and, and, and I don�t know, like, I think that there, there, there just needs to be more people that when they see things like this, they will love people enough to say what it really is.

You know, and, and, and what, what Doug�s issue really is, is not that he is a post-millennial.

I�m a post-millennial. We�re going to have to stop this. We have to stop the show right now.

You know, it�s, it�s, it�s not that he, you know, believes in male headship. It�s, it�s, the guy is a false teacher and he has to be addressed as such. And the more you call the guy, the more you gaze at the guy, the more you kind of like softly give him a spanking.

I feel like it�s, it�s, it�s hard for the sheep to really understand. Like, you know, so my, my hope is that I would just, uh, one of a few people like yourself that would be very clear about how someone like this is supposed to be, um, you know, but anyway.

Well, what happens is, uh, you look at R .C. Sproul in his life. I just read Nate Pickowitz�s, um, theological biography of Sproul, and it hurts Sproul so much, but he had to do it to confront his friends, Chuck Colson and J .I. Packer.

And I�m not equating J .I. Packer with Wilson, uh, but he had to confront them and say, �This is wrong. We can�t do this. You can�t snuggle up to Roman Catholics. Now, how much more essentially what Doug is teaching, it�s got that same flavor of Roman Catholicism and it just blends everything.

And so we, we need to have folks that will stand up and say, �This is not good. If you want good culture warrior stuff or analysis of America, listen to Victor Davis Hanson or something like that. But once you, and I think you�re right, once people start saying, �I love all the stuff he does about culture then into the church he comes with his aberrant view of sola fide.

He does not teach justification by faith alone in any way, shape, or form from Westminster, 1689, Savoy, etc. And so we have to reject that. And if you don�t teach salvation correctly, you�re a false teacher.

So if you�re good in other areas... Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. And here�s, I know.

We�ve got to end, but here�s just something. When you get that wrong, you know, Paul says, if we�re just about at work in Christ�s side for nothing and you�re falling from grace, but like, listen to this for a second.

Listen to this. Look what Doug says about women over here. Listen to this. �In other words, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes. A woman receives authority and true submission are therefore the erotic necessity.

Listen to that for a second and then listen to this. This is Doug describing slavery in his book with Steve Wilson. �Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity because of its dominant patriarchal character.

It was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There was never a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world. Owning somebody as property is loving and effectual because though you own them and dehumanize them, you�re nice to them and they like you.

He talks about sex with a woman. I�ve been in jail a lot of times and I do jail ministry. He talks about sex with a woman like a rapist in jail. So if you listen to Doug�s ethics very closely, it�s not like the leadership of Christ and the way he lays himself down for the bride and the way he leads her, the way he gives to her, the way he provides for her, the way she nurtures her, that paradigm that informs the way a man is ahead over his wife.

He doesn�t have that. He talks about these paradigms in the home in a way that is nothing at all of the gospel, and why is that? Because he doesn�t know the gospel. So to all these folks that want Doug to help them out to be healthy families and healthy homes and healthy marriages, you need to have the paradigm of the true gospel of grace to know what it looks like for a family to be in order with a husband at the head.

Because that guy, what he�s talking about, that�s talking about brute power and force and cold dominance, which is that�s what you get when you think of God, not in light of the worldview of grace that we believe in, right?

That�s so true. And you think about, okay, husbands love your wives like Christ loved the. And in the federal vision view, Christ loves the church initially through baptism, and they get all the benefits of being the bride of the husband as long as they�re obedient in the covenant, and if they�re not, then they�re out.

And so even that, I think, this is wrong. It�s wrong at the core, right? This is not the love of Christ. And so I think that�s a good tie-in, probably we should end here, Aldo, the tie-in to Christ and his selfless, sacrificial love for his bride.

I hope men are not interested in Moscow because somehow they want to be dominating their wives. I hope that�s not the case, but nonetheless, I�m thankful for your ministry, thankful for your stand for truth.

If they want to go to Gospel on Tap, they can. Are the other shows called Kingdom...what�s it called again?

Kingdom Polemic. So Gospel on Tap and Kingdom Polemic are the same thing. I�m just rebranding it Kingdom Polemic. So Gospel on Tap is where you go, and if you don�t see Gospel on Tap, it�s because it�s Kingdom Polemic.

So just search both of those, it�s the same podcast.

Thanks for being on the show, Aldo, I appreciate it. My pleasure, my pleasure. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God�s Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We�re right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.