I don't understand why Doug Wilson is still considered relevant within Reformed circles, but the echoes of what he says still resonate in articles I've read. Keep in mind that Wilson's "Federal Vision" theology has been declared heretical (i.e. people who subscribe to FV cannot simultaneously hold the early creeds that defined Christianity)
RPs should also understand that Wilson has called them 'haters of the Word of God':
the drums of war were being beaten by the abolitionists, [RPCNA is historically abolitionist] who were in turn driven by a zealous hatred of the Word of God.
Maybe that line of Wilson's reasoning hasn't been spread throughout western Evangelicalism, but this line certainly has:
There are at least three things to be taken away from this. The first is that Paul is not offering Christian sexlessness over against pagan sexuality. He says that Christians must learn how to possess their own bodies in this way, not in that way. The way we are to avoid is the sexuality of atheism.
Second, we are to know what we are rejecting—i.e. the passion of lust as exhibited by those who do not know God. That means we need to know the contrast. Now the world’s approach to sex is demented, but it is a demented caricature of certain creational realities. This means that men and women are convex and concave in their desires. Men want to possess and women want to be possessed. Men want to want and women want to be wanted. Men want baubles and women want to be baubles.
The third point is that to reject God’s pattern here is not to despise men, but rather to despise God. You might defraud your brother in this, but it God you are despising. (source)
Also:
When we quarrel with the way the world is, we find that the world has ways of getting back at us. In other words, however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts. This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage. This means that we have sought to suppress the concepts of authority and submission as they relate to the marriage bed.
But we cannot make gravity disappear just because we dislike it, and in the same way we find that our banished authority and submission comes back to us in pathological forms. This is what lies behind sexual "bondage and submission games," along with very common rape fantasies. Men dream of being rapists, and women find themselves wistfully reading novels in which someone ravishes the "soon to be made willing" heroine. (source)
Part of understanding our culture within a Christian worldview is understanding that creation has been subjected to corruption and futility. Just because my natural response to offense is to get revenge doesn't make revenge right. Revenge is not gravity in the sense that God built revenge into the fabric of his good creation. Justice, yes, but revenge is potentially a sinful distortion of justice.
In the same way, even if I concede that Wilson's argument correctly acknowledges the current state of affairs, he is extrapolating the heart of God from the created reality. It's hard to make a parallel argument to point out the logical flaws, but it would go something like this:
Godly discipline MUST be spanking. We can't pretend that instruction, natural consequences, or other discipline techniques can possibly work, because children self-discipline through self-harm - hair pulling, cutting, banging their head against a wall. Men dream of being violent against their children, and children read books where the hero learns resilience through abusive parenting.
The fallacy in both arguments is first assuming that what we desire in entertainment has some underlying wholesome basis. Do people watch MMA because some aspect of MMA is holy and good? I doubt it. Wilson would likely this by arguing Total Depravity, but it's core to his argument. Second does the fact that women read romance novels involving rape mean that the rape is essential or core to their desires? Not at all! I don't think women read romance novels because they contain rape. That's Wilson reading his own pornified view of women into some statistic. I didn't watch Captain America because I wanted to see a teenage twerp get beaten and abused by his army peers. I watched it because I wanted to see how his true character survived through evil and adversity. Maybe women read romance novels with rape because they want to see how strong women react to and rise above the evil and adversity. I'm not sure that Wilson is even correct that women are drawn to romance novels where a woman is raped by her future romantic partner. It's very much like him (and James Dobson*, for that matter) to create his theory out of whole cloth by projecting what he wants women to be like into his accounts. I guess one way to promote rape culture is to imagine that women naturally want to be ravaged by some alpha male and then put that to pen and paper with a couple of verses and a pastor's sheepskin to make it appear Biblical and authentic.
(* The oft-repeated idea that men 'need' sex at least every 72 hours has been meticulously traced to a statement James Dobson made, and it appears that his statement had no scientific backing: https://baremarriage.com/2024/03/72-hour-rule-isnt-real-evangelicals-convinced-women-have-sex/)
Wilson's argument is truly evil, though. Women want to be possessed? Really? Women want to be baubles? (i.e. Women want to be objectified) Really?
I think this is in line with his arguments about slavery. Somehow he portrays the slavery of the south as a magnanimous system. Slaves were "taken care of" and owners were good, charitable Christians. That's why they hired taskmasters with whips and raped their slaves, because that's what black people want - to be whipped and raped.
Wilson needs to get his head out of porn and slave rape literature.
Women today operate in a patriarchal culture. That is the point of Genesis 3. "He will rule over you". The male rule in Genesis 3 is not a benevolent rule. We see soon that Lamech takes two wives. Why? Benevolence, or sexual gratification? Thomas Jefferson raped his slaves. Benevolence or sexual gratification? So, the pornified, objectified view of women in our culture is not God-created gravity, but a sinful distortion.
So, how do women respond to this culture? I think there are two basic approaches, fight, or accept and profit. Women who fight this culture have a lifetime of suffering ahead of them. Aimee Byrd and Beth Moore come to mind. These women at first, accepted the patriarchal Evangelical culture, but in their journey at some point, they realized that Evangelical patriarchy was sinful and fought it. They were abused and sidelined by their churches. The other approach is what I would call the cheerleader approach. Women accept some level of the pornified culture because they can use it to their advantage. I know cheerleaders, and they see cheerleading as a sport, just like band members see marching band as a way to compete in music. However, society looks at a football game, and the cheerleaders and band are just a side-show to the important thing, which is a competition of alpha males.
Madonna / Britney Spears / Lady Gaga also are figureheads for this approach. In their prime, they encouraged and profited from a pornified view of women. I doubt these women wanted to be raped. This was not fantasy of theirs, but a way to make a good living off of patriarchy. Porn stars are the same. I doubt their hearts desire is to engage in sex acts so that men can gratify themselves, but they can profit from the sinful desire of men.
Circling back to Wilson, he paints a sickening view of God, and those who want to portray women in the same light also paint a sickening view of God. Women don't want men to "rule over" them. Male rule is not the created order, but a result of the Fall. God does not respect patriarchy. If God respected patriarchy, then why did God talk with Manoah's wife first before Manoah, and why did Gabriel talk with Mary first before Joseph?
5 comments:
There is in Wilson, the RPCNA and so much of American evangelicalism an unholy desire to dominate. That's so not Jesus.
It's so characteristic, but I'm trying to look back to see where it was actually taught. For example, I was taught that a godly husband sacrificed for his wife as Christ died for the church. There wasn't a theme of domineering. On the other hand, politically, I think we were taught that Christian Nationalism was the only way to redeem the United States, by political power or by force, if necessary. Maybe the domineering view of women came in through the unholy alliance with mainstream Christian Nationalists who are just power hungry.
That said, someone commented here that Phil Pockras said, at a youth retreat, that his wife's health issues were due to her "lack of submission". So it may just be that I had a different theological line of pastors than the norm.
Of course, it's also seen in their view of church leadership: their response to any challenge is to assert their authority rather than self-examination. I think the root of it all is pride: the RPC is the best, most orthodox and faithful denomination in the world, and they are its leaders, so they are the bestest Christians and everyone else is less, to varying degrees.
Infuriating. On one hand, it is "how dare you question us, we are God-equipped, God-called, God-inspired servant leaders" and when they are caught with their pants down, it's "We're just fallible humans, you can't expect us to know what we're doing in this difficult situation!"
Generally, when I had an issue with something they were doing, it was, "It's not us, it's you!"
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