Letters! Incoming!

Erasmus said of Luther, “God has sent in this latter age a violent physician on account of the magnitude of the existing disorders.”

We still celebrate Luther, that invective-laced anti-semite. We say the Lord gave him to us . . . because he got something very right about justification.

We still celebrate MLK, that adulterous womanizer. We say the Lord gave him to us . . . because he got something very right about racial injustice.

Well, time to be consistent all you reformed, and all you social justice warriors. I do believe you should be able to say with gratitude in your heart that the Lord gave President Trump to us, despite his exceptional shortcomings . . . because he got something very right about life.

Joe

You’re no religious person. Donald Trump PAID FOR & FORCED multiple women to have ABORTIONS. You fake Christians are seriously twisted. The Bible says to beware of false prophets and boy oh boy, uneducated people like you have taken Satan’s bait. You’re truly sick. But why is anyone surprised when you quiverfull fools keep your kids uneducated, girls are only used as broodmares and your “pro life” stance is a joke. Can’t wait for that afterlife because none of us will give you fake Christians a drop of water when you’re sitting in Hell

Donald

Regarding the Fifty Ways series . . . so what -are- the right reasons for leaving a church?

Last year my wife and I joined a church closer to home, predicated mainly on her pregnancy and our family dynamics changing (our first!). Going to a place 5 minutes away suddenly seemed much better than 30 in order to develop community and adequately serve. But the place we moved to, let’s just say that we’ve been slowly realizing that there are more unhealthy dynamics than we’d realized. I don’t see a point in listing them out, because that’s not exactly the point. Difficult for me to see a way to straddle my call to be submissive and obedient to elders and church authority, my responsibility to provide a good place for my family to be, and also the desire to really be rooted down to a local body for the long-haul.

Alex

My two favorite cultural commentators are you and Mark Steyn. Steyn is a Christian and, though my guess is that y’all might have some theological differences, it seems to me that the two most astute Christian commentators of these days should share a stage or some other platform. Any chance this might happen?

Bill

In your commentary on 1 Corinthians, Partakers of Grace, you make some claims that, candidly, I find hard to believe and for which I would request that you provide further substantiation. In your expository remarks on Ch. 11:13-16, you say, “When our kids were little, I had short hair (shoulder length) and Nancy had long hair (down to her waist).” Can you provide photographic evidence of you having shoulder length hair? Because, to be frank, if this point goes unproven, I’d submit that your entire argument in that passage falls apart. I’d appreciate further support for this proposition.

Joe

I reside with my wife and family in Arlington, VA, which will decidedly not be one of the lesser magistrate levels in the Commonwealth to declare non-compliance with any abridgment of self defense rights as recognized by the US Constitution and even more forcefully in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Will I be in sin for not, in the future, say, registering my hypothetical M14 and it’s 20 round magazines (I presume for the state to return them to me should I misplace them somewhere) if Virginia law would mandate such registration, because my local magistrate in Arlington is in the minority of Virginia counties by not declaring non-compliance? (And would be probably the most likely of Virginia local authorities to prosecute, and a random assortment of neighbors most likely to convict).

Thank you for your thoughtful response,

Preston

I recently read Brandon Adam’s response article to your dialogue with James White. Are you planning to respond to his article, or as he suggests, do a podcast with him as follow-up?

I’ve really enjoyed the discussion thus far. And though I think the work done on FV at the Calvinist International has been great, I think that a podcast fleshing out your views (as well as Brandon’s views & his response to your views) would go a long way. (Probably not possible, but I’d love to see it in person then on Skype)

And I know that after all these many years of being slandered by those in the “Truly Reformed” crowd, you’re probably less inclined to care about the dishonest whims and words of those who misrepresent you.

But as a Postmillennial Reformed Baptist who has been greatly blessed by your writings and work, and someone who is in regular conversation with many in the P&R and RB circles, I want to see the good work you do and have done made as accessible as possible to those who (not knowing you) are more likely to side with R Scott Clark (and his faulty assumptions) because of “name recognition” or “respectability”.

Anyway, thank you again for your work.

Blessings,

Greyson

“The third and final stage is to take up arms defensively…”

How does this square with Peter’s command in 1 Peter 2:13-17, particularly when the emperor whom Peter commanded be given submission and honor was dousing Christians in pitch and lighting them on fire for street light?

Guymon

Recovering from Aimee Byrd’s Promotional Video

A critical review by Christian McShaffrey [OPC]

Aimee Byrd seems to have a lot of questions on her mind about anthropology, hermeneutics, ecclesiology, apologetics, and ethics.

You can listen to her raise some of these questions in a recently released advertisement for a video curriculum she produced through Zondervan Academic: “Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood Video Study How the Church Needs to Rediscover Her Purpose”.

The purpose of this article is to remind the church that not all questions are edifying (1 Timothy 1:4, 6:4; 2 Timothy 2:23; Titus 3:9) by showing that most of Aimee’s questions can be easily and unambiguously answered from Scripture and do not, therefore, need to be reconsidered or “rediscovered” by the church….

Read full article at the following link (it is too long to post in this box).

Christian

I’m always appreciative of you giving me more insight into what I already know.

Melody

I appreciate your writing very much. It resonates meaningfully with many other streams of reading and input, and I feel blessed at the sheer enormity of wise teaching and reflection so readily available.

I’ve especially been challenged by your example of and exhortations to courage. This is spot on, especially as the term “evangelical” becomes ever more splattered in the MSM. In my small circles in the Midwest there is a very strong temptation to avoid being associated with the term, because of fear of being misunderstood and mistakenly taken for the exaggerated caricatures of evangelicals, the vast majority of which are rooted in lies and unbelief. I have a long way to go to be like Christ and like saints like Daniel in courageously bearing the reproach of false witness without an outraged and vociferous stream of self-defensive argument. God helping me, courage will yet become a fruit of His Spirit in my life, and my desire to be well-thought of will be rooted out.

It has seemed, positively, that there is some fruitful self-examination going on in the evangelical movement. I appreciated Ken Myers’ interviews about evangelicalism on the last MHAJ with both Bruce Hindmarsh and John Fea, and was especially interested in Fea’s observation that the low ecclesiology of the American evangelical movement, as broad a denominational swath as that cuts, has left a void that can be traced for a long ways back in Christians (increasingly) turning to the secular state as the necessary ingredient in forming a virtuous citizenry. Our more fervent struggle turns into the struggle to define what it is to be American, to the neglect of the primary struggle to live as faithful Christians in our neighborhoods and cities. This seems backwards, don’t you think? Shouldn’t it flow the other way, faithful Christian communities pointing the way to a better practice of citizenship? (Victor Davis Hanson’s idea of “a monastery of the mind,” adopted communally as God’s people has a great deal to commend it in this regard.)

I am also currently seriously studying Ezekiel, and am getting a great deal of spiritual sustenance from his faithful preaching to an unfaithful people of God who are quite justly being made to endure tyranny and exile. His vision of resurrection and restoration is all the more brilliant for the intense backdrop in the people’s failure. Any thought to favorite Ezekiel resources?

Sorry for the long email. I write infrequently, but read often. Many thanks,

Michelle

I was watching the video of you and James White on Patriarchy and the Trinity, and I had a few comments and questions regarding ESS and the like. It’s been a hobby of mine for the past 6 months or so to be thinking and reading about the Trinity and I had the following thoughts when I watched the video.

Firstly, you said that you don’t know what authority and submission look like within the same being just like you don’t know what love looks like within the same being. Well my thought is, that older theologians and scholastics such as Aquinas taught that the love between the Father and the Son is the third Person, the Spirit. Am I wrong about that? If it’s true then I’m not sure there is a parallel. Also, can there be a separation of authority and power? I don’t see how there could be, but since God is simple and undivided, the power of the Father is the same power of the Son which is their one shared essence.

Caleb

I sat down to rewatch An Evening of Eschatology – Premillennialism, Amillennialism, Postmillennialism, on Youtube, and thought to look up the participates. I soon discovered the plethora of pastor Wilson’s material and have since dug in with coffee in hand.

At the end of October through the beginning of December I burned through 120 Plodcasts, or however many there were at the time.

I have certainly enjoyed Wilson’s word usage and use of colloquial phrases. Not that this is what this letter is about, though I thought I’d share a few I jotted down:

(I’m an engineer. My ability with English in all forms is poor. I math do well though.)

Manifestly apparent, Umbridge, I’m on a Jag, bought a pot boiler book, a group organized day dream, erudite urban voice, thunder lightning and blue ruin, pithy, hermeneutical structural device that is more or less opaque tome, circumlocutions, that’s a bug bear, high flueten, unto lasciviousness, mutatis mutandis, slow belly, leaders dictators autocrats kings potentates… grand poobah, the layers of bureaucracy are not oil for the engine but are a dead weight in the back of the truck that the engine is trying to pull, intoleristas, tawdry, winsomely, the queen mum, vitriol, in the first instance, recalcitrant, there is such a thing as putting too many eggs in a the pudding, we need to respond to some of these claims with something like a horse laugh, red in tooth and claw, to render general by induction, get a bigger hammer culture, ad intra, paleo-con, iconoclastic, ribald, cadre of priests, barmy, pontrune, perpetuity, and rhubarb.

Anyways, I wanted to ask few questions and stuff related mostly to Plodcast:

Wilson says in, Undragoned: C.S. Lewis on the Gift of Salvation, “ Am I reformed? Am I a Calvinist? This is a point upon which I understand there has been some discussion. Well in brief let picture it this way. In brief i wish there were seven points, I could hold to Calvinist extras. You may count me as a devote of crawl over broken glass Calvinism, jet fuel Calvinism, black coffee Calvinism, or as my friend Peter Hitchens had it, ‘ weapons grade Calvinism’. No yellow cake semi-pelagian for me. I buy my Calvinism in 50 gallons drums with skull and crossbones stenciled on the side, with little dribbles on the side of paint running down from the corners.”

This was an enjoyable opening, harkened back to a plodcast or two. Though I could find the plodcast number, Wilson said that he was slowly brought out of Arminianism, kicking and screaming, over some twenty years; that he fought tooth and nail on each individual point and verse to a Calvin/Reformed view over time.

Would we be able to hear that story in detail? What were your objections at first? What overrode them? Could a Youtube be presented where this is unpacked? Or could a series be given walking back through every strawman and ironman in the argument to slowly and systematically show this?James White argues for it well, but is so far back in the academic camp of the reformed that I can’t see the whole “ battle” from his frame of reference. (That is not to say I don’t enjoy White or his ST:TNG reference to man as ugly giant bags of mostly water) But I am walking through much of this in bouts myself and trying to find the right harbor in the storm. Like many, I am just about convinced that neither harbor is a good port and that my ship should just sit at sea and wait out the storm.

Please go back and fill out the show notes for all your podcasts like you did on EP.88 – Jury Nullification , C.S. Lewis On Politics and Natural Law, Anasios in the Apple podcast app. I don’t know what all platforms this airs on, but these details have been invaluable to me a resource to go back and look up information. Additionally, If you could paste all these show notes with their subject, book, harmartiology and respective verses on a Blog and Mablog, page or easily linkable series of pages that would be amazing. I am constantly trying to run back through old podcast to find one would discuss and it’s reference verses and can’t very well as the apple podcast app is clunky and arduous for this type of searchability. At very least can you place the harmartiology word and book recommendation back in the episode title? You stopped doing it around episode 104. I makes the new episodes harder to search.

Could you reference the bible version you are using when you for the harmartiology in the notes for the Plodcast? Additionally could you explain where in the English version of the verse the word is hanging out at? Is the whole phrase or is it a one for one word? Does is hearken back to a hebraiac word in the Old Testament or is it also written in the Greek septuagint of the Old Testament? Things like that. I really love the work coming from this whole Canon Press world.

Doug Wilson has said on several occasions, sorry I don’t have the podcast numbers, that the malakoi, malakos and arsenokoites are the words used in 1 Cor 6:9. And that not only do they mean, to pitch and catch, but also that they tie even further where it is used in other places in the NT. Wilson said, I believe, that Jesus uses the word Malakia for the soft rich and again in another verse something akin to soft. I was under the understanding that Wilson takes the position that effeminacy in men is a sin and the whole bag is tied together. I have heard several other pastors say that other new testament words for “soft men” is not what is being referenced in 1 Cor 6:9 and that that verse is only referring to the sex acts and not the whole effeminacy issue. I know that Wilson likes to take “off the beaten track opinions… or are not taken with universal acclaim”, as in Ep 71 and Ep 73. Could Wilson or someone explain the reasoning for tying effeminacy/soft words used in NT or by Jesus to the homosexual issue issue in 1 Cor 6:9? I think he talks about this in several of his NQN podcasts.

Related to the whole issue above, Could Canon put together a series of systematic arguments defending and attacking all the arguments trying to cloud the whole issue of sexual issues as sin in society? I tried searching malakoi as I wrote this letter practically all that came up was LGBTQ+ defenses of this issue. James White wrote a book in 02’ called The Same Sex Controvery, and has said that is is quite out of date for the times and that he needs to write an updated one as he is constantly fighting a miasma of new terms, arguments, and postulates for this issue. (note: I understand that White is not a part of Canon, but I discovered him shortly after Wilson this year and they share overlap in many of these social issues)

Could you also put together a series of systematic arguments defending and attacking all the arguments trying to cloud the whole issue of women in leadership? Wilson tackled some of this in NQN. MacArthur has stepped up to this issue in recent times here, but a single sermon on the subject doesn’t tackle the strongman arguments out there. I Youtubed debates on this issue hoping to find several pro and con debates that would enlighten me to this current social justice issue making it’s way into the church, but found nothing really aside from Tom Ascol and Dwight Mckissic. How does a regular joe handle this? Where do I definitely stand my Christian ground vs where do I not care? Anyways, I appreciate any more Canon/Wilson insight on this matter.

Thanks for all you guys do over there in Idaho! Keep up the good work!

P.S. – Please thank Toby for his gumption is delivering his sermon and actually keeping a title as triggering as “Do not give your strength to women”. Thanks Doug Wilson for Winsome Tartness. Thank N.D. Wilson for his sermon,”When the World is Rated R’’. Thank Wilson and Dr. Merkle for Education and Kingmaking in Man Rampant. And thank Rachel Jankovic for Two Qualifications for Women Preachers. These are all reasons why Canon Press is the Clint Eastwood of Christian Publication. A regular spaghetti western of in world of the Christian film and media.

P.S.S.- Well-written, fair-minded letters may be interacted with in featured posts. Also, please mention the title of the post which you are addressing. – This was a tall glass for me so I apologize if it was not to standard.

E.G.

In these Letters to the Editor, you say that you believe the headcovering is still in force today. Could you explain in a little more detail just how you see this being practiced faithfully?

Kyle