 It's a terribly sad spectacle.
Doug Wilson's Credena Agenda site was one of the ones from which I learned quite a bit about the doctrines of sovereign grace, after having been blindsided by a sermon on predestination at Christ Chapel.
I've got Reformed Marriage, Federal Husband, Fruit of Her Hands, and a couple of other books by him and his wife.
His ability to debate atheists is matchless. I've learned so much reading him over the years.
So it's painful to watch him implode in the way he is. Gives me a sense of deja vu, AAMOF, taking me back to the days of Watergate. I wasn't any big fan of Nixon, but still, lots of good people were adamant supporters of his and I couldn't believe he'd be so stupidly arrogant (arrogantly stupid?) as to pull the stunts of which he was being accused.
Turned out, of course, that he had become exactly that stupid and arrogant. Many of his fervent fans, who'd worked for years to get him into the White House, were shattered by the Watergate revelations.
ISTM Wilson's mirroring Nixon, with a similarly unpleasant end looming up in front of him.
Not that he'd be capable of seeing it coming. Nixon sure couldn't.
I daresay I'm going to be alone in my belief that rather than publicizing Wilson & Co. unchristian, uncharitable, unwise bletherings, it'd be most prudent and God-honoring to simply ignore them.
First, because we mimic our Savior most closely when we suffer as He did.....in silence, making no attempt to return fire.
Second, because if we'd step back and look at the situation logically, Wilson's doing a dandy job of self-destructing. He doesn't need our help. He's insulted the entire hierarchy of the PCA, and that denomination's judicial system. He's hardly on good terms with the OPC. Thinking about it, I'm wondering if there's a single Reformed denomination with which he's currently getting along, outside of his own CREC.
He's no longer published in TableTalk or any other Reformed literary vehicle, is he?
His church and college are unable to get along with the community in which they reside. From what I can tell, Wilson's ministry is enormously dependent upon the internet, especially now that he's positioned himself to take on all comers.
His New Saint Andrews' College, once one cuts through the verbiage about how they've limited the number of students they accept, is a tiny, podunk college that can't manage to scrape together more than 170 f/t and p/t students, and at that they have to rely upon the internet, since it's a cinch they don't get many students from their natural market, i.e. Idaho. Instead NSA has to draw from 32 states and a handful of foreign countries to be able to cobble together 170 students. When one's enrollment is that minuscule, drawing from so many states and nations is actually not a positive. Of course, NSA isn't going to point that out, and I don't blame them. Were I a part of a college that had to scramble for students, I would try my best to put a shiny gloss on it too.
My point is that he's doing a fine job of marginalizing himself by first alienating the community in which he lives, and now alienating a large part of the nation's Reformed world. Increasingly he's reminding me of those strange new converts to Eastern/Western/Russian Orthodoxy, who do not actually live in an area that has an Orthodox church. They discovered it via the internet, learned about it from the internet, and the only Orthodox people they know are those on the internet.
John MacArthur and R.C. Sproul have been significant forces in the Reformed world, as I understand it, for decades. They have never been dependent upon the internet for their respective ministries' existence, and were the internet to suddenly crash for the long-term, they'd keep right on being significant forces. I don't see the same being true for Wilson. Were the internet to crash and burn, there he'd be, stuck in a town that dislikes him, dependent upon pricey postage to communicate with his supporters, and finding it hard to garner new ones.
I think he'd drop off the radar startlingly fast.
If people would quit promoting and advertising him by spreading word of his misdeeds via the internet, he'll probably drop off the radar anyway, though not so rapidly. He's alienated his geographical market. He's busily alienating his Reformed market by attacking every Reformed denomination save his own. He's not being invited to participate in nearly as many conferences, etc. as he once was.
Gentlemen, I assure you, if y'all will ignore him and his minions, stop visiting their websites and blogs, and generally act as if they aren't there, before too long they most likely won't be there.
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Originally Posted by NaphtaliPress  |
__________________ Anne Ivy
Christ Chapel Bible Church
Fort Worth, Texas
Widowed mother of six, grandmother of eight.
The Ivy Vine (my blog)
Last edited by NaphtaliPress; 11-29-2007 at 09:19 AM.
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