Also, Vol. 2 is by Nance alone. Perhaps he’s good leaven for these works? Dunno.

INTRODUCTORY LOGIC: STUDENT (4TH EDITION)

Description: Logic is the art of reasoning well–of learning to think God’s thoughts after Him. In this book, directed toward junior-high students, Douglas Wilson and James Nance lay the proper foundation of reasoning in the truth of God, and go on to train students in the crucial skills of defining terms, recognizing basic types of statements, arguing with syllogisms, arguing in ordinary language, and identifying informal fallacies.

This text, together with Intermediate Logic by James Nance, provides students with a rigorous course in logic that will help them excel in every other subject they will study, from math and science to rhetoric and the humanities. Extensively revised and updated, with additional review questions and exercises for each unit, this book is an essential part of every Christian school or home school curriculum. 39 lessons; consumable.

About the Authors
James B. Nance has taught at Logos School since 1990, where he currently teaches logic, rhetoric, calculus, physics, and Christian doctrine. He and his wife Giselle have four children.
Douglas Wilson is the pastor of Christ Church, Moscow, Idaho, and editor of Credenda/Agenda magazine. He is the author of many books, including Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, Reforming Marriage, and A Primer on Worship and Reformation. He is also co-author with Christopher Hitchens of Is Christianity Good for the World? A voracious reader (with a sweet tooth for Wodehouse), Douglas blogs prolifically at http://www.dougwils.com. He and his wife Nancy have three children and fifteen grandchildren.

Monergism Note: Carrying this book is not an endorsement of all of Douglas Wilson’s theology.

Someone should explain to Monergism how Wilson’s logic relates to his heresy. I’m getting pretty tired of hearing Wilson’s books praised and recommended everywhere (like his new book “Wordsmithy”)

Thanks for taking the time to respond. My house is littered with Trinity Foundation books. My favorites that I have read cover to cover at least once are: God’s Hammer, Logic, Thales to Dewey and the Johannine Logos. The collections of essays are also great (not at my fingertips so I may misquote the titles): Economics and Freedom, Against the Churches and The Church Effiminate.

I am also rereading Not Reformed at All.

Today I will probably see another 35 minutes of the Christopher Hitchens vs. Douglas Wilson movie in Adult Sunday School.

One insidious aspect of Wilson is that he seems to defend the Scriptures in that movie, but as is clear from pgs. 79 and 80 of Not Reformed at All — he disparages the solas — “sola-mongering”.

Sola-mongering is definitely not a problem in my PCA church. Instead, I see the lines between worldly ethics, Roman Catholic ethics and Reformed theology being blurred or relegated to being non-essential. Do all PCA churches recite the Apostle’s Creed regularly? In my view that recitation reinforces the idea that Roman Catholic and Reformed Christianity are part of one big kind of happy family.

I’m not sure how familiar you are with Clark’s apologetics. In regards to your question about circularity, you would benefit from studying Clark’s discussion of arguing from an axiom. This is a good place to start:
http://trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=276

Tho’ not directed to me, to use an old analogy, Doug Wilson is like a broken clock: He’s right twice a day.

Or, to shamelessly steal a line from John Robbins* (re: Chuck Colson):

> Doug Wilson is a bright and clever fellow. One does not get to be a large church pastor/ writer/ school & college & denomination co-founder/ or publisher by being stupid or ignorant. One might conclude that Wilson knows exactly what he is doing in writing his books, and perhaps he does. But my experience has been that bright and clever fellows in one area can be stupid and ignorant in others. That is the best and most charitable interpretation one can put on the matter. But that does not excuse the mortal errors that Wilson is teaching in his books. <

To quote Wilson late in 'Collision' ~ "Sh*t happens." Thanks, Doug. Nice summation, that.

* "The Counterfeit Gospel of Charles Colson," 1994,
http://www.trinityfoundation.org/journal.php?id=187

My PCA adult Sunday School is reviewing the Debate Film between Peter Hitchens and Douglas Wilson on the topic “Christianity is Good for the World”. One of our Pastor’s is a big fan of Wilson’s classical education philosophy and a copies of Wilson’s “Letter froma a Christian Citizen” are prominently displayed and are free to all visitors.

In the Debate Film Wilson defends sola scriptura and claims using scripture to support scripture is “circular” only in the sense that someone defending “reason” would appeal to rational arguments to defend the proposition that reason is useful.

If you had any thoughts on any of the above. I’d be happy to read it here.

Will 15 intelligent thoughts in the mind of Doug Wilson plus 20 intelligent thoughts in the mind of Doug Wilson get 35 intelligent thoughts in the mind of Doug Wilson, try as you may?

LJ

Wilson comments:
“”Ah, but there is more. In that essay, I went on to say (in the very next sentence) that “15 unicorns plus 20 unicorns will not get 35 unicorns, try as you may. Of course, on the other hand, 15 turnips plus 20 turnips will result in 35 turnips, and it will do so every time. The structure of the addition table is sound, and the “argument” is valid. And if unicorns existed, we would wind up with 35 of them. But this means the argument is valid, not true” [emphasis added]. I was talking about truth and validity (an elementary distinction in logic, one we teach to our 8th graders), not truth and falsity, or truth and relativism.

From this distance, it is impossible to say if the Robbins/Gerety problem is one of paradigm-induced incompetence, paradigm-induced dishonesty, ordinary incompetence, ordinary dishonesty, or some mixture of the four. And so I do not presume to say. But I can say that Robbins/Gerety are not to be trusted in representing to their reading public anything about what I have to say. Somebody is struggling with the concept of truth, all right.”"

LJ