Perhaps the thread has gone too far for such small amounts of oil to calm the troubled waters, but a helpful read for clarifying the way different styles of discourse can function is James Ault's Spirit and Flesh: Life in a Fundamentalist Baptist Church. Of course, I think a similar point could be derived from a due consideration of anthropomorphic language in Scripture.
The upshot is, that there are different, non-contradictory but complementary ways to speak, and knowing how to adapt your speech to your audience's condition is something highly commended in Proverbs.
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Ruben
Moderator
F.P.C.I.
Indiana
Vanities and disguises have covered us, and thereby we are naked; licenciousness hath inflam'd us, and thereby we are frozen; voluptuousness hath fed us, and thereby we are sterved, the fancies and traditions of men have taught and instructed us, and thereby we are ignorant. John Donne
Perhaps you could heed you own advice about Charity and allow for a dissenting opinion on the matter.
I would note that the one place where Christ answered the question about why He spoke in Parables was to confuse hypocrites and leave them condemned but He likewise noted that He explained the meaning for His disciples and did not leave them guessing.
One of the fundamental objections to Continuationism, in fact, is the clarity of inspired Revelation in the fullness of Redemptive History in contrast to its lack of clarity that some Charismatic practioners insist upon with their "Words" from the Lord.
We infract here for egregious 9th Commandment violations. We simply cannot infract for all excesses in rhetoric or even other minor violations of the 9th Commandment (which, in the eyes of God, are not minor at all). In my estimation, for instance, you are demonstrating a "party spirit" in this thread or you would not have immediately assumed that a Pastor noting the need for ST to inform pastoral teaching as arguing for a strictly systematic presentation. It was not advocacy for catechetical preaching or anything of the sort but a note that if our ST does not inform our exhortation then it can cause problems elsewhere.
On the issue of whether or not Wilson teaches a false Gospel - I believe he leaves himself open to the charge either way. I respect those who believe he does not and my own earlier post was intended to tamp down some of the party spirit that doesn't see what the FV arose out of. In other words, a few of us have given minor moderating correctives or posts to keep the rhetoric in check because nobody had violated the 9th Commandment in an egregious manner.
As I noted in another thread, I think it is dangerous to take a minimalistic approch to whether a man teaches a false Gospel. The Sacraments are not called Gospel ordinances for no reason and there are significant questions raised when a person starts equating baptism of every person a type of union with Christ (even for the unregenerate) or that a person has some kind of forgiveness of sins even though they are not Elect. There is a narrow and a broad understanding of the Gospel. Paul even includes a person's understanding of Sanctification under the header of what he condemns as a false Gospel in Galatians 3:
Folks here think we're committing libel when we allow for people to accuse Arminians of preaching a false Gospel because, in some folks' estimation, Arminians hold to salvation by faith. Others note that what they pour into that makes it problematic and open to the charge that faith itself is viewed as a meritorious work and is no Gospel at all in the final analysis.
Thus, I will not be able to satisfy your request that everybody here who calls Wilson a proponent of a false Gospel to be guilty of an egregious 9th Commandment violation. Does excessive rhetoric exist on this thread? Yes (yours included). When a person makes such an accusation they need to clarify where there concern lies and it is wise to ask for clarifying remarks to ascertain whether they are speaking of the Gospel in a narrow or broad sense.
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I'm genuinely surprised that I'm alone on this thread. It is disheartening that men will put libel onto a board dedicated to Christian discussion without batting an eye and no one will call them out on it.
Pastor Keister, I would hope your much fairer opinion of Doug Wilson would be considered by the moderators who disagree. I would hope that concern for Christian charity and guarding our strokes on the keypad will be taken more seriously.
If the Mods are okay with members declaring that Doug Wilson preaches a false gospel (contrary to obvious statements from Wilson himself affirming the true gospel), then please make my membership an "inactive" one. I can't participate on this board in good conscience if this will be tolerated.
I am no authority on this board, but two comments need to be made.
1) As I understand the matter, not being fully up to speed on either FV nor Wilson's relation to it, what we are seeing is a contemporary recurrence of an old problem: people say they agree with postulate A but then make statements that make it look like they disagree with that postulate. For example, Roman Catholics say they believe in justification by faith, but they have made other statements which fairly raise the question of whether or not believe in JbF in the way the bible teaches it. In the same way, it seems that Doug Wilson has not only made obvious statements affirming the true gospel, but has also made statements that apparently contradict it. You seem to be aware of the former group of Wilson's statements: are you aware of Wilson's other statements (which are the ones that have created the controversy) and do you understand why people have so strongly reacted to them?
2) I suggest that part of the reason for frustration is that charges were publically made without adequate support. When we must speak disparagingly about another person in any way, it is incumbent on us to provide the grounds for doing so. If, in a context ruled by the Westminster Standards, person X wants to make the claim that " minister Y preaches a false gospel" it is incumbent on X to show the differences between Y's gospel and Scripture. The quotes provided in the OP, while enough to show that Wilson would have serious differences with much of the Reformed church, do not, in themselves, get to the heart of whether he is or is not on the biblical side of those differences.
And since Wilson's stance is already a matter of controversy in the churches, it is required by the Standards that he be proven in error by Scripture or by GNC therefrom. Now if someone has already done that work by fairly representing the totality of Wilson's teaching, showing it to be in contradiction to Scripture by exegesis and GNC, then to avoid the charge of libel in subsequent discussions, including on this board, all one needs to do is to point to the document where Wilson's position is shown to be unbiblical.
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In Christ's love and service
Mr. Tim Cunningham,
BMus. (Trombone Performance), University of Toronto
Dip. CS, Regent College, Vancouver
Member, First Baptist Church
Vancouver, BC
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"I once sat in darkness, and waited for the moon to rise.
I once sat in darkness, and waited for the sun to shine.
I once sat in darkness, when all the light I'd waited for was gone.
Then Jesus came, and now the only true light, ever, shines in me."
– John Deacon -
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Excellent post. For the record, I have never accused specific men of teaching a false Gospel.
One of the things I've appreciated about the Confessions as I've studied them is how they are full orbed in tying together the preaching and reading of the Word as converting ordinances with how one would view Sanctification and the Sacraments. On the latter issue, I believe a case can be made by looking at a corruption of the Sacraments and raising significant concerns about how a Sacramental practice takes away with one hand what is given in another area of theology.
One of the more helpful articles I've read on the issue of faith vs. faithfulness that I've read was John Brown of Wamphray, Richard Baxter and the Justification
Controversy By Bruce R. Backensto in the 2007 edition of The Confessional Presbyterian Journal.
I find this to be an example of how much labor it takes to make the case that a minister's presentation of the nature of faith ends up doing severe damage to the nature of the Gospel in a way that many would never notice.
In the Piper thread, one of the problems I have with Piper's analysis that Wilson's examination was a slam dunk is that he doesn't seem to take the time to analyze the answers and make the kind of distinguishing analysis that separates one paedobaptism view from another.
This gets to be a pretty complicated procedure because it is possible to find all sorts of quotes from Reformed forebears. In some cases the quotes are taken out of context where they are qualified later or the quotes might be from Puritan luminaries that the Reformed themselves critiqued in their own times. Add to that my previous note about how some are coming at the problem from their own un-Confessional postures and critiques along those veins.
The bottom line is that I believe this thread had its share of excesses but was not unique in that regard given the excesses that occur all over this board that we cannot always control and infracting people left and right for those excesses proves to have its own problems. I think the specific charge of supporting libel is hard to sustain. The thread was started given a pretty good list of quotes that can be checked against our Confessional standards and shown to openly contradict core theological principles within the Westminster standards. It is certainly not impossible from those quotes to draw some conclusions about their relative dangers to the Gospel in its broadest sense. Convicting a man in an examination or study is one thing while opining about the dangers is another. I think Lane noted it the best when he stated that he would never vote to ordain a person that held to such views whether such a person stands under the condemnation of the Word for spreading a false Gospel.
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