Just Goes to Show

The happy fallout from the NYT article continues. Here is my former undergraduate advisor, Nick Gier, telling the sorry tale of how I squandered the legacy of my UI philosophy degree.

First, Gier has clearly opted for a different strategy in his response to this article — some of his fellow Intoleristas have been fit to be tied over it. Instead of this, Gier decided to pay Molly Worthen the compliment of writing “an excellent and balanced analysis,” which Gier simply wants to supplement with some additional info. This is necessary because the additional info is the kind which fact-checking organizations won’t publish. So for those interested in further research on my nefarious doings around these parts, I am sure you can get a research grant which will make it possible for you to go through all the shoeboxes that the Intoleristas have arrayed against me, chock full of documentation. Shoebox 17F contains some material that is particularly damaging, about how I once pushed another kid on the playground when we were in fourth grade. But still, Gier had better be careful in complimenting the Times for this article — that’s that kind of thing that gets you accused of racism by the Southern Poverty Lubrication Center. The lubricant is the money donors supply to the world’s richest civil rights organization, and the lubricated are those who make quite a good living fighting discrimination and poverty. Better make sure that cash cow never goes dry.

Gier then says this:

I am pleased that Worthen was able to get Wilson to come clean on his relationship with R. J. Rushdoony, the founder of Christian Reconstructionism, a movement with a very explicit political agenda. Both Wilson and Rushdoony are postmillennialists, which means that Christians must first, on their own initiative, set up godly governments before Christ will come.

“Both Wilson and Rushdoony are postmillennialists . . .” Yes, and cats and dogs both have four legs. My relationship with Rushdoony is that I read a bunch of his books, agreed with much and disagreed with much, and moved on. And I won’t back away from the parts I agreed with. And, as it turns out, there is no need to back away from the parts I didn’t. Funny how that works.

Gier never misses a chance to recycle his threadbare charge against me that I want draconian penalties for homosexuals, and he does that again here. He just announces my duplicity, rather than demonstrating it. But Worthen got it right. I am not advancing or urging any penalties for homosexual behavior at all. I have other things to do. So why does this keep coming up? Because there are instances in the Bible where adultery and homosexual behavior are dealt with using the death penalty, and I refuse to apologize for those passages. Why do I refuse to apologize for these portions of the Bible? Because I am a Christian. Hope that’s still okay.

And last, Gier says this:

In a debate that I had with Wilson in January, 2007, I tried to get him to clarify his position on “covenantal” lying, which allows the use of deception to advance the Gospel. Wilson responded that this was permissible only if he and his congregations were in fact at war.

Gier shifts definitions in the middle of his argument here. War can mean spiritual war, culture war, war on drugs, war on poverty, and so on, but it can also mean physical war, the kind with guns and bullets. It can be a metaphor, and it can be the reality that the metaphor is drawn from.

When I answered Gier in that “debate” (it was actually a Q &A session), the example I used of lying legitimately in warfare was this: I said that if the Gestapo came to my house and asked if I had any Jews hidden in the basement, and I did in fact have Jews hidden in the basement, I would say, “No, no, wrong house. No Jews here,” and I hope that I would be persuasive. I would pray to God that I would be a good liar. I would lie through my teeth about it — just as the Hebrew midwives lied to Pharaoh about his required infanticide — and I would do so with a clear conscience before God. I made it plain to Gier (as plain as it is possible to make something plain to Gier) that I denied that lying can be used to “advance the Gospel,” if by that you mean lying to non-believers simply “because we’re in a culture war.” But if you mean advancing the Gospel by being the kind of righteous Gentile who would risk his own life for the sake of persecuted Jews, you bet. I hope that I would be good enough to be that kind of liar. Corrie ten Boom, a friend to both my parents, belonged to a family that did exactly that kind of thing. Her family’s behavior in that war adorns the gospel to this day, and I am not going to apologize for that kind of thing either — no matter how much Gier wants me to.

But notice what this means. I told Gier that I would lie to protect the lives of Jews, and I did this in front of multiple witnesses. He is now objecting to this, and is publicly attacking me for taking this stand. I can’t believe that a retired philosophy professor at the University of Idaho would possibly object to this kind of protection, graciously extended to Jews in time of war. But that is exactly what he is doing. Just goes to show.