[In November of 2014, Douglas Wilson posted a series of responses to Gregory Boyd. As I read through this series of posts, I could not help but recall some of Dougy’s past comments found HERE. So I put pen to paper and asked this jolly Chestertonian Calvinist a little something about consistency. This post details how that went.]
Hello, Doug Wilson. In your initial Scissors and Library Paste post, you wrote:
“Stare at those words, and wonder mildly to yourself why fire from Heaven has not come down upon Woodland Hills — no, no, you mistake me. I am not falling into the trap the disciples fell into when they did not know what spirit they were of (Luke 9:55). I want fire to fall upon Woodland Hills the same way it happened at Pentecost. You know, to turn them into Christians” (Douglas Wilson).
What needs to happen to Woodland Hills (which necessarily includes the particular and peculiar Greg Boyd)? Fire needs to fall. To what purpose? To “turn them into Christians.” If they need to be turned into Christians then that must mean they are what? Presently not Christians. Now if they are presently not Christians, that necessarily means that they are presently not saved, right? Of course (The blind leadeth the blind and both fall into the ditch.)
In No Servants with Flamethrowers, you write:
“Jesus does not tell the Pharisees that they have committed this sin, but at the very least He is warning them about their trajectory. That same trajectory is on display in Greg Boyd’s recent article” (Douglas Wilson).
Okay so you say that Boyd is on a “trajectory” regarding blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. But assuming your initial post still holds, then it still remains that, according to you, regenerating fire needs to fall. So unless you are backing off from that initial judgment, you are judging Greg Boyd to be presently unregenerate.
In this post (Greg Boyd’s Demons) you write:
“But we cannot object to this response of mine as an unwarranted reading of Boyd out of the faith. No, actually, Boyd is the one who is reading people out of the faith on this issue. ‘For Jesus, embodying enemy-loving non-violence was the precondition for being considered a child of God’” (Douglas Wilson).
Are you willing to say “out loud, into the microphone” that Greg Boyd is unregenerate? And if so, would it be accurate to infer that in your “[pneumatology or soteriology], theological perfection in sanctification is necessary for salvation”? Or, rather, is a “theological perfection” inference here both a non sequitur and a canard? Equal weights and measures (cf. http://www.credenda.org/archive/issues/13-1adullam.php and http://www.outsidethecamp.org/credenda.htm and http://www.credenda.org/archive/issues/14-3sharpeningiron.php). Not whether, but which. It is not whether we will judge saved and lost, but which STANDARD will we judge by (see: https://agrammatos.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/gospel-atonement.pdf)
“If [a ‘Marcionite’] is elect and chosen, then his election is not imperiled through his failure to understand the [Bible]. Paul did not say, at the end of the eighth chapter, that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ except for shoddy exegesis.” (Douglas Wilson, Mother Kirk, p. 87).
The above “Marcionite” and “Bible” brackets were supplied by me in answering the phony-headed fool according to his folly. Here is the fallacious reasoning of Douglas Wilson in its original glory:
“If an ‘Arminian’ is elect and chosen, then his election is not imperiled through his failure to understand the ninth chapter of Romans. Paul did not say, at the end of the eighth chapter, that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ except for shoddy exegesis” (Douglas Wilson, Mother Kirk, p. 87).
Another fellow applied the Wilsonian illogic this way:
“If a Mormon is elect and chosen, then his election is not imperiled through his failure to understand the Bible. Paul did not say, at the end of the eighth chapter, that nothing can separate us from the love of Christ except for ignorance of the Bible.”
Doug replied to me thusly:
“Chris, thanks for an insightful question, and for the way you put all that together. Yes, I am willing to say that into a microphone, but I would approach it a little differently. If Greg Boyd were a member of our congregation, and were writing things like this, and refused to stop it despite appeals, he would be in the Matthew 18 process of discipline. When that process is completed, the church says that such an individual is outside the faith. In order for such a process to be initiated, somebody has to say that this is likely to be the case (indictment before conviction). Equal weights and measures is essential” (Douglas Wilson).
One observant fellow said this:
“There you go. Wilson cannot, as a private person, judge Boyd unregenerate. According to Wilson, Boyd must be confronted first by the assembly, and if he repents, he was a regenerate person all along. Wilson cannot judge any professing Christian who is not in his assembly to be unregenerate, because they have not gone through the church discipline process. We have seen this before. I remember writing about this, but I don’t remember when or where. Wilson can talk about the ‘fire of salvation’ or whatever, but he’s not judging Boyd to be unregenerate. What a fraud Wilson is.”
Agrammatos 