This is my 2nd post rebutting Wilson in three days. In my defense I don’t go looking for his material. I have friends that shoot me emails with links saying breathlessly… “You’ve got to listen to this. You won’t believe what he has said this time.” Sometimes those friends ask me to respond. Sometimes they know that the Wilsonian “wisdom” will be so over the top that they know me well enough to know that I can’t help but to respond.
If it was anybody else but Wilson I probably wouldn’t respond but when Wilson goes off the reservation (as he does with alarming regularity) he is taking much of the putatively conservative team with him. You see nobody with a conservative impulse really believes someone like Kevin DeYoung or Joe Carter or Al Mohler or T. Ligon Duncan are conservative. However, Wilson has positioned himself nicely as the lone conservative voice howling into the wilderness and as such Wilson needs to be taken more seriously then most of the other Evangelical Yahoos precisely because Wilson is seen as the “true blue conservative.” “Why…. he’s one of us. He’s a guy wearing a white hat.” And sometimes that is so.
And many other times it is not so.
This is another one of those times. In a recent plodcast the Pope of Moscow offered;
“I want to talk about anti-Semitism. This go round I want to begin with my basic argument against the anti-Semitic impulse…. So when I see people talking about the Jews in a snarky and critical way it is impossible for me, as a pastor, to not hear the crackle of envy in this. Now in order to believe that the Jews are, you know, the International conspirators, who are wrecking everything and destroying civilization and bringing us all down — doing awful things.
Basically it is one thing to say I have identified these people as my enemy and I love my enemy but I am going to oppose them as opposed to the kind of envious crackle I see — and it is not a matter of detecting minor traces of it (giggle) it is just all over. And I think this is about the most anti-Gospel frame of mind possible for this reason.”
Doug Wilson
Plodcast
This is wrong on so many levels it is hard to know where to start.
First, there is the issue of whether the modern “Jew” has any genetic relation to the Judeans of Jesus day. People like Arthur Koestler in his book, “The 13th Tribe” has brought up the very real possibility that those Wilson refers to as “Jews” are indeed Khazars from the Black Sea area of the world. Others believe that they are genetically related to the Edomites. If Wilson’s Jews don’t bear any relation to the Jews of the NT era then Wilson’s invoking of Romans 11 he does later in this plodcast doesn’t make much sense.
Second, it is obviously true that I can’t know the kind of blatantly envious anti-Semitism that Doug is running into. He’s in Idaho and I’m in Michigan. Might as well be two different planets. However, I have conversations with folks as Doug does and I have to say that the last thing I see in these conversations is envy. Remember, envy is more than just jealousy. Envy is wanting what the other person has and not being happy with what the other person has unless the other person is utterly destroyed at the same time. I meet any number of people who are as aware of the Jew as our Christian Fathers were and I seldom find myself looking at envy. What I find myself looking at are people who understand the natures of mega- Banks, mega-Corporations, Hollywood, Lugenpresse, Corporate-Medicine, Government etc. One who doesn’t like rattle snakes because they and their kin have been repeatedly bit is not one who should be characterized as envious — and that no matter how many possessions the rattle snake has squirreled away in his nest.
Third, one wonders if Doug is familiar with any of the recent works on this subject? Has he read E. Michael Jones material? Has he read Michael Hoffman’s “Judaism’s Strange Gods?” Does Doug know the history of Christian and Jewish interaction? Has he read Maurice Pinay? Has Doug read Luther? Calvin? Chrysostom? Is he familiar with the 4th Church Council of Toledo? If Doug has read these works does Doug think all these chaps are or were also envious? After reading some of this well documented material it becomes pretty evident it is at least possible that the folks that Doug hears are hardly envious.
Fourth, we are glad to concede that there are Semites who have contributed to the formation of civilization. We are also glad to concede that the vision of the Jews for civilization is a very different vision than the vision of the Biblical Christian. I can make these generalizations because I know what the voting patterns are of Jews in America vis-a-vis the voting patterns of Biblical Christians. Another reason I can make these generalizations is because I know the history of Hollywood and the conflict that once existed there between Jews and the Church (Hays code anyone?). Obviously, different visions exist. Are we to think, following Wilson logic, that Republicans whom Biblical Christians (unfortunately) generally vote for oppose Democrats whom Jews generally vote for because Republicans are envious of Democrats?
Fifth, there is the simple reality of history. Were the Jews cast out of so many countries so many times over the millennium because the Christian peoples and monarchs were so envious of them every single time?
Sixthly, there is the Talmud. Does Doug know what counsel the Talmud gives to the Jews in relation to their understanding of the goyim? Here, Doug would profit by reading Michael Hoffman. Is Doug aware, for example, of how the Talmud deals with the rodef (pursuer) and how the in-utero baby can be justly tortured and murdered (aborted) because Jewish Talmudic law teaches the baby is a rodef?
One frustrating thing about the Wilson piece is that he has framed it in such a way that any disagreement with him from the right automatically means that one is an anti-Semite. Well, as long as we understand that an anti-Semite is defined as someone who doesn’t love the Jews no matter what they do or say then color me Anti-Semitic.
I hope I have examined this Wilson quote without any “cackle” in my voice. I am one of those who pray along with Doug that all peoples including those we call the Jews would repent and bow the knee to Christ and so cease with the ways that they have become rightly infamous for as those who pursue Biblical Christians. However, until that postmillennial day arrives I will continue to believe my Christian Fathers about the envy of the Jews.
Wow!
Loved your article, so refreshing to see someone else who takes the Great Saints of the past serious in their condemnation of Talmudic Judaism!
Here is an article I wrote that I would love for you to read. Send me back an email and God Bless.
https://www.menofthewest.net/true-religion-and-the-real-problem/
https://www.menofthewest.net/apostolic-thought-vs-talmudic-thought-part-1-making-money-vs-getting-money/