Pervert Pastor Makes Vice News
The cult leader of a mock “Christian” church, Doug Wilson, has been featured in a new exposé at Vice. You can read it here. Some of what is uncovered might be new to readers of God’s Hammer, although everyone by now should be familiar with Wilson’s critical departures from the historic Christian faith, even justification by belief alone. Admittedly, sites like mine exposing the theological perversions of Wilson are pretty limited in their scope. However, for those who have spent time at some of the other sites linked on my sidebar, some of the more tawdry practices of Wilson’s “Kirk” (as he and his fellow cultist call their church), have been covered in graphic detail over at the Foedero Schism. But even there Wilson’s exposure was relegated to a relatively narrow readership. So, it’s encouraging to see that the more scandalous, if not salacious, aspects of Wilson’s cult have finally spilled over to the secular press and deservedly so.
And, for those silly enough to claim Wilson has repented of his Federal Vision heresy and that I’m a nasty guy for continuing to attack the boob, please save yourself the time and don’t comment. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, Wilson has never repented of anything and was just concerned that the label –“Federal Vision” — was preventing Reformed suckers from sending their wide-eyed cherubs to Wilson’s cult academy, New Saint Andrews College. But, don’t take my word for it, see Scott Clark’s Heidelblog where he writes:
In the “No Mas” post he qualifies how he [Wilson] wants to affirm the Federal Vision but this is what he has always done. He has always suggested that almost no one outside the FV movement really understands its complexities. This, of course, is what the Remonstrants said too. The confessional Reformed Churches, e.g., the URCNA, the OPC, the PCA, the RCUS and others spent considerable time reading and analyzing the Federal Visionists. They have produced surveys and drawn conclusions that are publicly available . . . .
Of course, this was always nothing but a rhetorical trick. The intended effect of the headline was to create the impression in the minds of the uninformed that his theology has substantially changed even as he affirms, in the body of the post, that it has not. He still affirms a conditional, temporary baptismal union with Christ that confers upon the baptized a temporary election, a temporary justification, a temporary adoption, and a temporary union with Christ. He still affirms that those who do not sufficiently cooperate will lose those temporary benefits. As he confesses, apostasy remains a “terrifying reality for many baptized Christians.” For Wilson and the rest of the Federal Visionists, it is not enough to acknowledge the greatness of our sin and misery, to trust in Christ alone for our complete salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, and seek to live under his gracious reign out of gratitude by daily seeking to put to death the old man and to be made alive in the new. The point of the Federal Vision theology, as with the Remonstrants, was to turn the covenant of grace into a covenant of works and to put the believer back under the law for his salvation.
https://heidelblog.net/2019/07/has-doug-wilson-really-changed-his-mind-about-the-federal-vision/
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God's Hammer 
September 29, 2021 at 8:57 pm
Thx Sean.
When I read the Vice article it also reminded me of the “heavy shepherding” churches which destroy people’s lives. In both situations the people follow the cult of personality. Like the frog in the pot, very hard to get out of once you are in.
But the Scriptures are clear:
“To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”
September 30, 2021 at 9:55 am
I’ve never heard of “heavy shepherding” before, but there’s nothing shepherd-like asking teenage girls to share graphic details about their sex lives or thinking it’s biblical for husbands to rape their wives. Must have missed those verses? The guy sounds like a creeper and sleazeball.
July 6, 2022 at 12:55 am
“The ground of our justification before God is necessarily the obedience of Jesus Christ, the perfect man. This obedience is imputed to the individual believer, and the sole instrument for receiving this imputation is the faith that God grants to the believer in question. The righteousness of Christ that is imputed by sheer grace can be considered from two perspectives. The first is the obedience of Christ throughout the course of His life. The second is the obedience of Christ in His suffering on the cross. The former satisfies our need to have lived perfectly before God, and the second satisfies our need to pay the just penalty for having lived so imperfectly.” – Doug Wilson (https://dougwils.com/critical-questions)
That doesn’t sound like a man who has departed “from the historic Christian faith, even justification by belief alone” to me. That sounds like a man who openly professes justification by belief alone in as clear of terms as it can be expressed – to include affirming the active and passive obedience of Christ being imputed by the “sole instrument” of a God given belieif/faith in the gospel. Wilson may have many shortcomings, but his profession of justification by grace alone through faith alone doesn’t appear to be one of them. What am I missing?
July 6, 2022 at 11:42 am
Hi Roger. You are right and that does sound orthodox. The problem lies in what these very orthodox-sounding words mean within Doug’s theological system which he’s spelled out in books like Reformed Is Not Enough, the Federal Vision statement of faith, in his year-long discussion/debate with Lane Keister that appeared on the pages of Lane’s blog, and elsewhere. And, just to head you off should you suggest Wilson is no longer FV, in his feigned mea culpa blog post, Federal Vision No Mas, he writes:
Yep, Wilson is still the leading heretic in the anti-Christian Federal Vision movement. Consequently, you should understand seemingly orthodox-sounding statements within the broader context of his system. For example, in Wilson’s theology “evangelical obedience” is a condition that must first be met before the promises of the covenant (which both the reprobate and the elect receive in baptism) can be fulfilled. This explains why most of Wilson’s chapter in RINE on “The Greatness of Justification by Faith” discusses the role of good works in sanctification.
Wilson’s conditional objective covenant turns the Biblical and Reformed doctrine of justification on its head: “The end of the tale is eternal life,” Wilson writes. But eternal life is not the end result of a life of covenantal faithfulness; it is a gift God gives to believers at the beginning, from the moment of first belief, and based completely on the covenantal faithfulness of their Savior: “There is therefore now no condemnation” and “whosoever believes in him shall not perish” but “has already passed from death to life.” In Christian theology, Jesus Christ is the complete Savior of his people, not merely a good example. Their good works can be done only because they already and irrevocably possess eternal life.
To clarify this point, In RINE Wilson favorably quotes Randy Booth; “Only faithful covenant membership (i.e., those full of faith in the Savior), receive the covenant blessings,** including the blessings of imputed righteousness” **(175). Pay close attention, Roger. The imputation of Christ’s righteousness is the result of being a faithful covenant member. Wilson immediately adds, “This is fundamental to the central point of this book. Election is one thing and covenant membership is another.” For Wilson it is the conditions of salvation that God sets at baptism that become the dividing line between salvation and damnation: “Those who obligate themselves under the terms of the covenant law to live by faith but then defiantly refuse to believe are cut away” (134). In Wilson’s scheme, “breaking covenant occurs because of unbelief, lack of faith, and because of lack of good works” (134), and fulfilling the conditions of the covenant occurs by faith and good works. Wilson rejects the historic Reformed and Biblical view of the Covenant of Grace in which Christ is the Mediator of the covenant and the Savior of his people. The imputation of Christ’s righteousness is not contingent upon our “faithful covenant membership,” but solely upon Christ’s obedience to the will of the Father.
Wilson thinks that one must be baptized in order to break the covenant. He writes: “When you baptize an unrepentant pagan, what you actually get is a covenant breaker. His baptism now obligates him to live a life of repentance, love and trust, which he is refusing to do” (99). This is nonsense. The pagan was obligated to repent and obey before he was baptized. He was already a covenant breaker. Christian baptism does not make men covenant breakers; the immediate imputation of Adam’s sin does. Imputation seems to play no role in Wilson’s theology.
And, finally, you’re right and Wilson has never departed from the “from the historic Christian faith” probably because he has never affirmed it.