The Kevin DeYoung critique of Doug Wilson set off a controversy that DeYoung has no intention of finishing. Nonetheless, his attempt to halt the rise of what he calls the “Moscow Mood” will rather hasten it due to the inadequacies and hypocrisy of DeYoung. Doug Wilson responded on Monday with a lengthy column responding to DeYoung. Wilson writes:
In contrast to this, my desire, when confronted by the world’s rebellious and insane folly, is to speak when I ought to speak, and to laugh when they forbid laughter.
There are ways that this can go wrong—because this is a fallen world—but our temptation here in Moscow is not that of caring too much what the respectability-mongers are selling this season. Too many Christian leaders believe that our witness and testimony depends upon buying up the world’s fall line. Next spring it will be the spring line. Our temptations here in Moscow lie elsewhere. I would tell you what those temptations are, but there are people out there who would weaponize it right off the bat.
The temptation to ache for worldly respectability is, however, rampant throughout the evangelical world. Vast sections of our evangelical establishment have gone down before this alluring temptation, like dry meadow grass before a sharpened scythe. This article by Kevin is a marvelous case in point. He is not going to lose any respectability points from the cool kids over this, is he?
Doug Wilson critiques Big Eva for chasing world acclaim and says that Moscow is built differently and that its temptations will be to fail in different areas. Wilson makes clear that chasing worldliness leads to compromise and that his way is far more countercultural.
With regard to the ERLC, this is simply not true. The increasingly progressive tilt of the ERLC has been a matter of public controversy in the Southern Baptist Convention, and the fact that Kevin is not aware of how far left they have drifted on a number of issues is itself an indicator of how bad the situation has gotten.
G3 really is a conservative group, but one that brings us back to the theme of this section, which is catholicity and “who is actually the standoffish one?” CrossPolitic was invited to participate in a G3 conference a few years ago, but then they were told they could not have me on as a guest on their show while there. I would have been happy to participate, and pleased to associate with G3. It didn’t go the other way. Perhaps Kevin should admonish G3, telling them that Wilson is a conservative, and that he would be on their side in “almost every important cultural battle.” See if that works.
Wilson treats charitably DeYoung’s defense of the ERLC, which in truth is malicious ignorance at best on DeYoung’s part. Wilson further elaborates that G3 is a much more standoffish organization with a personal anecdote. Doug Wilson further elaborates on how Team Moscow is far more accommodating of disagreements than their critics.
Kevin really ought to know how willing we are to link arms with people who are outside our native orbit. We have certainly invited him to come work with us enough times. Kevin does good work, and we support it. I have appreciated reading his stuff. We would be willing to work with him despite the fact that there are men with him on the TGC council that we believe to be badly compromised. But if Kevin were ever to accept an invitation from us, do you think that he would get any fierce pressure from them? Just a thought experiment, and we already know the answer. In short, we are not the ones thinking ourselves “better than other folks.”
On Hot Sauce Words
Doug Wilson doubles down on his approach, which DeYoung claimed would get him defrocked as a pastor.
There is an informal fallacy in reasoning which is called the tu quoque fallacy. This is Latin for “oh, yeah? well, you do it too.” But a man who is charged with stealing something cannot defend himself appropriately by saying that his accuser stole something earlier. This is a fallacy of deflection, an attempt to change the subject. If you are a thief, then you are a thief, regardless of whether there are others who are also in the same category.
So Kevin is a council member for The Gospel Coalition. When I point to the standard for language set by the TGC approach to movie reviews, I need to explain how this is not the tu quoque in action. Rather, this is a straightforward inconsistency pointed to in the link to Tom Buck’s tweet linked above. The tu quoque retort happens when it is assumed and acknowledged that both sides are doing the same thing—both stealing, as in the example above.
But my use of hot sauce language is completely different than the use commended by multiple TGC movie reviews. The thing I am accused of, I am not doing, and the thing the accuser attempts to throw at me, the accuser is doing. And so for me to be the one to point that out is not a fallacy of distraction at all.
He then doubles down on perhaps his most controversial example.
Just before writing this paragraph, I went back and reread the famous piece where I used the c-word. I would be willing to write every syllable of it again today, and moreover to defend it as a stand for righteousness—because that is exactly what it was. That article was filled to the brim with arguments, and had one stark word in it. Everyone wants to gasp and point to the word because they think they can score some easy points that way, and they refuse to engage with any of the arguments because they know they can’t engage with them. No one answers the arguments.
He follows this up by referencing The Gospel Coalition’s affinity for Taylor Swift.
You can support movie reviewers finding “gospel themes” in a secular movie with over a hundred F-bombs in it? But you can’t find gospel themes in a blog post that had overt and hot gospel in it because there was one crude word there? And that one word was aimed at the heart of a particular sin for which the blood of Christ would bring true forgiveness?
What this boils down to is that the camel is all gone, and we still can’t find the gnat.
Just know that in some of my hardest-hitting posts, I have routinely made a point of concluding with a jet fuel gospel presentation. That doesn’t happen by accident. I am a minister of this gospel. And if you can’t find the gospel themes in that kind of direct gospel presentation, but you can find them in a Taylor Swift tour, then something is seriously off.
Sucker Punch
Doug Wilson admonishes Kevin DeYoung for being unwilling to debate his critiques after making them.
You don’t get to launch a critique like this one, designed to make a lot of good-hearted people think twice about their attraction to the Moscow Mood, and then with a flourish refuse to take questions, or to be too busy for replies. You can’t launch an attack and then call for a cease fire.
This is particularly the case when your critique failed as a knock-out blow. If there were no possible answers, and we defenders of the Moscow Mood were all just sitting around shamefacedly, you could easily afford to take questions, because there wouldn’t be any. But if turns out that this was a swing and a miss, and there are consequently a host of questions, many of which would be very awkward for Kevin to try to answer, you cannot just say that this would “take a lot of time.” Yes, it does. It takes up a lot of our time as well. Why did you start this then?
Doug Wilson is correct in pointing out that the Moscow Mood if anything, was made more resolute by DeYoung’s article. Wilson stops short of saying that DeYoung’s article was a cowardly sucker punch. He concludes with a plea for more dialog.
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