SIXTEEN DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CONSERVATIVE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY AND WILSONIAN CHRISTIANITY

SIXTEEN DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CONSERVATIVE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY AND WILSONIAN CHRISTIANITY

Orthodox and many conservative Presbyterians are now asking for Wilson 's excommunication. Wilson appears to be as free and easy with his theology as some Unitarians I know.

2. No CEC pastor I know would sanction an April Fool’s stunt, complete with stealing UI letterhead and using some else’s FAX line, to announce an alleged UI sponsored lecture entitled “Topless and Proud.” He tells us how proud he was of his son-in-law’s actions:

“By the time you receive this, our local police will probably have forgotten all about it, so a little bragging is now safe, and perhaps it is even in order. But first some background. Our local city council, through a series of ridiculous circumstances, decided to quit restricting female toplessness. The noble senior editor of this journal [ Wilson ’s son-in-law], encouraged by some winks and nudges from me, not that he needed any, made up a flyer which announced a topless and proud lecture series by topless feminist scholars.” See the full text at http://www.credenda.org/issues/11-3meander.php and the police report at http://dougsplotch.com/looter.htm at the bottom of the page.

DW: Gier takes umbrage at my sanctioning of an April's Fool's joke of some years ago, in which flyers were distributed all over the UI campus, announcing a series of lectures by top feminist scholars. In the advertisment, the top feminist scholars were to deliver said lectures while topless, making them top topless scholars. The lectures were on things like "breasts as embodied intuitions," and other such post modern hoohah. Anyhow, because these are difficult times to be a satirist in, a bunch of people thought the lectures were for real, and it caused quite a commotion for a day. Gier is quite right that I thought it was a hoot, and even aided and abetted somewhat. But he is wrong that the main perpetrator was my son-in-law. The senior editor of Credenda at the time was Doug Jones, and he was the evil genius behind the real time reductio.

NG: Wilson condemns himself out of his own mouth. I repeat my original claim: no self-respecting CEC minister would sanction such an act against the major university in her town. Doug: that was university letterhead that Jones used and a departmental FAX machine!

3. While most CEC ministers believe that homosexuality is a sin, very few join Wilson & Co. in calling for their execution. The Daily News caught Wilson in a generous moment when he admitted that the Bible would also sanction exile rather than death. Two articles in Wilson ’s Credenda Agenda (vol. 3: nos. 9, 11) supported capital punishment for “kidnapping, sorcery, bestiality, adultery, homosexuality, and cursing one's parents.”

DW: Gier maintains that I support capital punishment for any number of things, including bestiality, adultery, cursing one's parents, and homosexuality. The fundamental mistake that Gier makes here is in failing to distinguish a refusal to apologize for those things being capital offenses in the Bible, and wanting to impose such legislation now in the modern world, across the board. I will not do the former, and I don't want to do the latter. Because those things are in the Scriptures, and because we are called to be biblical absolutists, there is clearly no inherent injustice in such sanctions. At the same time, Christ came to save sinners from their sins, and from the consequences of their sins. This includes the sin of homosexuality, and the consequences of homosexuality. Christ is the Savior of the world; He came to bring mercy to the world. As a minister of this gospel, I preach forgiveness of sins, including homosexual sins, and invite everyone to come to the mercies of God in Christ. I do not want to send homosexuals to their deaths. I want them to turn from their sins, turn from death, and come to Jesus Christ. But does their sin deserve death? You bet. But so do my sins deserve death. The prophet Ezekiel put it well -- the soul that sins shall die. There are no exceptions to this reality, for all have sinned, and Christ is the only Savior.

NG: Presumably with the sanction of Wilson himself, Greg Dickison (Credenda Agenda vol. 3: nos. 9, 11) states that "if we could have it our way” (my emphasis), then there would be capital punishment for “kidnapping, sorcery, bestiality, adultery, homosexuality, and cursing one's parents.” Dickison also quotes biblical passages (without qualification) that support slavery as "ordained and regulated by God," death for apostasy (Deut. 13.6-9), and cutting off a woman’s hand for touching a strange man's genitals (Deut. 25.11,12). When Christianity rules Moscow , the USA , or the world, then these will be the laws.