“Not that many centuries ago, my ancestors were engaged in idolatry, human sacrifice, and mindless superstitions… [but] their descendants would be building cathedrals and writing symphonies. The gospel is the issue—grace, not race.”
Doug Wilson
Wilson exposes his Gnosticism with this quote. However there is some truth in what Wilson writes here as seen in I Peter 1:18
Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers;
I Peter 1:18
However, Wilson tries to make these kinds of texts prove too much. Wilson’s problem here is that he wants to insist that culture is only a product of what occurs in the thinking that goes on between people’s ears without taking into consideration that men in their variegated existence are composite beings whose genetic inheritance impacts the way that thinking they do is processed.
Wilson’s naked fathers once visited w/ the Gospel are not going to build cultures that look the same as the culture that Mongolians or Hutus build who are visited by the Gospel. History has demonstrated that white people visited with the Gospel build superior cultures compared to non-white people who have been visited with the Gospel. By God’s grace alone White people have been the civilizational carriers of Christianity. This explains why white people are so hated. They are so hated because they are perfumed with the perfume of Christ on a civilizational basis that has never been true of other races.
Herein we find the Gnosticism in Wilson’s (and others) thinking. They refuse to take the manishness of man in his diversity seriously. They think that if all men think all the same way (if they all think Gospel thoughts) they will be all the same building all the same exact cultures.
THAT is both GNOSTIC & IDIOTIC.
Yes, Wilson’s later ancestors (well, the non-Jewish ones … Doug likes to boast of his Jewish admixture) were building Cathedrals and writing symphonies and yes that was all of God’s grace. However, God’s grace was not only found in their regeneration and so change of thinking patterns. That grace was also found in the genetic inheritance (race) that God in creation and in His providential ordering determined they would have. To deny this is Gnostic, and frankly, on this subject, Doug is Gnostic.
