Deceitful Theology Part 1

“The issue is God’s law. Those who won’t deceive when God’s law requires it are likely to be the same ones who will lie when His law forbids it.” Douglas Wilson

We have been considering Doug Wilson’s quest to “take” Moscow & Pullman. He has affirmed numerous times his reliance on the principles of war to achieve his objective, which includes inflicting “a significant loss” on “the enemy.” These principles of war as understood by Mr. Wilson culminate in the chief principle of war as well as the cornerstone of his theology — deception.

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Pastor Douglas Wilson of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, has developed a comprehensive systematic on the subject of deception, or deceit. That is, he has documented and classified every useful instance of deceit recorded in Scripture and categorized them as good or bad. From this list he has distilled a practical theology of false witness, which controls (rationalizes) his day-to-day behavior. I appended some expository examples below (not all), to demonstrate the amount of thought he has given to the subject. But to be clear, Mr. Wilson has not published an exhaustive treatise on false witness such as his written justification for abusing others — A Serrated Edge. Instead, the patient reader may deduce Doug Wilson’s system from his corpus. Accordingly, Douglas Wilson has identified in writing three reasons for Christians to lawfully bear false witness:

  1. Deception Against an Enemy During Wartime
  2. Deception Against an Enemy in Culture War
  3. An Overarching Exception

Let’s consider these one at a time.

  1. Deception Against an Enemy During Wartime
    Douglas Wilson predicates this argument on the assumption of a just war and postulates two types of scenarios:

    1. Deception on the Battlefield
      Armies may deceive the enemy:

      In a condition of war, deception is not the kind of lying we just noted. It is not a sin to paint your tank to look like a bush when it is in fact not a bush. But you are deceiving the enemy pilots. . . God told Joshua to deceive the soldiers of Ai with a fake retreat (Josh. 8:1–2). We could make a very long list if we wished. . . . (Blog & Mablog, Deception and War, November 13, 2010)

      This is true. During WWII the Allies would have invited defeat if they had given the Axis their military plans in advance. Deception in the form of concealment & misdirection was crucial to victory.

    1. Deception at the Home Front
      In wartime, citizens may deceive the enemy on the home front:

      We see godly deception as an act of honorable war throughout Scripture. God blessed the Hebrew midwives for lying to Pharaoh (Ex. 1:15–21); He justified Rahab through her deception concerning the Hebrew spies (Jas. 2:25). . . . (Blog & Mablog, False Witness, February 7, 2005)

      These are no-brainers. In each instance deception kept the deceiver from helping wicked men shed innocent blood. If the Gestapo raids your home looking for Jews and you have a family living in your attic, then you tell the Nazis, “No Jews here.” And you say it without compunction, because if you do not bear false witness you would be an accessory to a horrible violation of the Sixth.

  1. Deception Against an Enemy in Culture War
    The second kind of false witness that Douglas Wilson declares lawful is the use of deceit in culture war. In the following excerpt Mr. Wilson frames his argument by drawing two false analogies from Scripture to rationalize his position:

    So if we have accepted the notion of a culture war, as we should have, how much comes with it? The ancient Chinese strategist, Sun Tzu, said this: “All warfare is based on deception” (The Art of War, p. 66). For those who accept the lawfulness of warfare, this is not controversial. . . . So then, what we have is a duty to scrupulous truth-telling in a time of peace, and the liberty to use deception after the shooting starts. What about those ambiguous in-between times, times of heightened tension, with the stakes very high, but with no actual bloodshed yet?

    Here are several scriptural examples. When Nathan the prophet came to rebuke David for his sin with Bathsheba, he did it by trapping him. He told King David a false story about a man who had his sheep taken by a wealthy neighbor (2 Sam. 12:3–4). David was angry and pronounced judgment on the man, not knowing that he had been deceived into pronouncing judgment on himself. This was a good and godly deception. Nathan was not in a state of open war with David, but when he came to tell this “lie,” he was taking his life in his hands. David had already killed one man to keep this particular sin secret.

    Another example is similar. One of the sons of the prophets deceived Ahab into pronouncing a sentence on himself (1 Kings 20:38–43). He had let Benhadad go free, even though God had delivered him into Ahab’s hands. The prophet told a parallel story, only on an individual level. In that form, the king knew what justice was, and delivered the verdict. He was highly displeased to discover that the verdict circled back and landed on him.

    Consequently, Lila Rose taking hidden cameras into abortion clinics is the Lord’s work. It is deceptive, and God bless all of it. The hidden cameras that were used to bring down the utterly corrupt ACORN were in the same category. This is deception, but it is not self-serving deception. (Blog & Mablog, Deception and the Culture War, July 12, 2013)

    The slippery slope begins here: “if we have accepted the notion of a culture war. . .” Douglas Wilson did not cite biblical warrant for “the notion of a culture war” — because none exists. Scripture does not reveal a process for believers to declare war against culture because Scripture does not instruct believers to declare culture war. At this point Mr. Wilson embarks on popular but uncharted waters without the compass he claims guides him. The self-described “biblical absolutist” goes beyond the Bible in violation of his “absolute standard.”1

    Next Doug Wilson does not define “culture war.” Instead, he blurs the distinction between a nation at war and a so-called “culture war,” which is the fallacy of equivocation. A nation at war with another nation is not analogous to domestic policy disputes between left & right. There is no comparison between a soldier in harm’s way defending his nation and James O’Keefe dressing like a pimp to expose ACORN. But Mr. Wilson equivocates to slide in deception: “All warfare is based on deception,” and all warfare includes culture warfare. He argues that if you accept culture war, then you must accept deception because according to Sun Tzu they go hand in hand.

    Doug Wilson uses two proof texts to support the use of deception in culture war:

    1. 2 Samuel 12:3–4

      When Nathan the prophet came to rebuke David for his sin with Bathsheba, he did it by trapping him. He told King David a false story about a man who had his sheep taken by a wealthy neighbor (2 Sam. 12:3–4). David was angry and pronounced judgment on the man, not knowing that he had been deceived into pronouncing judgment on himself. This was a good and godly deception. Nathan was not in a state of open war with David, but when he came to tell this “lie,” he was taking his life in his hands. David had already killed one man to keep this particular sin secret. (Deception and the Culture War)

      However, in 2 Samuel 12 Nathan the prophet did not conduct a sting operation to “trap” King David. Nathan approached the King to rebuke him for his sin. He did this with a parable that he knew would appeal to David’s sense of justice.2 And the prophet felt comfortable approaching the king because they were friends. He didn’t sneak into the court under a false flag wearing a wire. Most importantly, Nathan acted under divine inspiration, which is a point that Doug Wilson omitted. Notice how he cited 2 Sam. 12:3–4 but he skipped past verse 1, which states: “Then the Lord sent Nathan to David. . . .” Douglas Wilson ignored this text to describe it this way: “Nathan . . . came to tell this ‘lie.’” Scare quotes original. Mr. Wilson projected his deceitfulness onto the prophet.

      Further, if Nathan told a “lie” when he uttered this parable to David, then the Lord Jesus was a serial liar because he predicated his teaching ministry on parables — or what Mr. Wilson called “good and godly deception.”

    1. 1 Kings 20:38–43

      Another example is similar. One of the sons of the prophets deceived Ahab into pronouncing a sentence on himself (1 Kings 20:38–43). He had let Benhadad go free, even though God had delivered him into Ahab’s hands. The prophet told a parallel story, only on an individual level. In that form, the king knew what justice was, and delivered the verdict. He was highly displeased to discover that the verdict circled back and landed on him. (Deception and the Culture War)

      Douglas Wilson cited 1 Kings 20:38–43 as another example of what he called entrapment to justify sting operations in culture war. And as with Nathan’s parable, Mr. Wilson misrepresented Scripture to make his case: “One of the sons of the prophets deceived Ahab. . .” Space does not permit me to exhaust the text, so suffice to say that the unnamed prophet delivered a parable to Ahab, just as Nathan did to David. The parable told the story of Ahab’s sin and, like King David before him, King Ahab pronounced judgment on himself: “So shall your judgment be; you yourself have decided it” (1 Kings 20:41).

      Parables, riddles, and reenactments played a significant role in OT prophetic culture and Douglas Wilson knows this: “God Himself chose to write in passionate poetry and narrative and parables rather than in the bureaucratic style of a systematic theology.”3 To be sure, he dedicated a whole chapter of his so-called “Protestant Vision” to Poetic Knowledge. But here he ditched prose for mendacity because he needed to defend the use of deception in culture war.

    Douglas Wilson concludes his exposition with a non-sequitur; his “consequently” does not follow from his examples:

    Consequently, Lila Rose taking hidden cameras into abortion clinics is the Lord’s work. It is deceptive, and God bless all of it. The hidden cameras that were used to bring down the utterly corrupt ACORN were in the same category. This is deception, but it is not self-serving deception. (Deception and the Culture War)

    Doug Wilson asserted a state of “culture war” where none existed; he replaced inspiration with a “lie”; and he arrived at a conclusion that is unrelated to Scripture. Strip the rhetoric and this is the argument: Two prophets told parables to their respective kings, therefore culture warriors may deceive. But first you have to accept “the notion of a culture war.” If you bite this, then you swallow the whole camel.

Deception can be an act of war and Scripture gives examples of saints deceiving the enemy in wartime. But Scripture does not permit violations of the Ninth for “culture war” and the Bible does not give examples of culture warriors bearing false witness to achieve cultural victory, whatever that is. Douglas Wilson cannot arrive at his conclusion without bearing false witness against Scripture.

Next we shall consider Doug Wilson’s third reason to bear false witness — his overarching exception.

1 Pick any blog post or newspaper interview — Douglas Wilson insists that he is a “biblical absolutist”:

“I care, of course, but I have this absolute standard that I appeal to. But why do you care? About anything?” (Moscow Vision 2020, August 2, 2002)

“Seriously, a Christian absolutist is not someone who claims to know absolutely, but rather someone who claims within bounded limits to know the absolute.” (Moscow Vision 2020, August 12, 2002)

“As a Christian who believes the Bible, I have an obligation to be a Bible absolutist.” (Moscow-Pullman Daily News, October 23, 2003)

“And what response did the apostle teach with regard to those pagan Roman laws? If we are biblical absolutists, then we must not apologize for what the apostles told us to do. And what the apostle Paul told first-century Christian slaves and slaveowners to do (both of them in the church together) is the instruction that Christians in our nation two centuries ago should have followed.” (Blog & Mablog, Biblical Absolutism, April 29, 2005)

“With regard to the slavery fracas, I have said that the only issue is that of biblical absolutism. We must be resolved, as Christians, to have absolutely no problem passages. What this means is that, once the exegesis is done, and we know what the passage actually teaches, we will have no problem with it. Further, we must not flinch at the possible problems for us if the exegesis goes off in an unpalatable direction, and consequently take care to “steer” the exegesis in order to keep ourselves academically respectable. We may have a problem passage if what is meant by this is that we don’t know what the passage teaches. But once we know, because we are Christians, we should simply accept the teaching of the Bible.” (Blog & Mablog, The Coming Glory, May 2, 2005)

“However, I do confess that my views on biblical absolutism have caused a certain amount of disharmony with the Intoleristas — but that is not really a bad thing.” (Blog & Mablog, Headed South Again, May 26, 2005)

“We are trinitarian Christians, and our absolute trust is in the Word of God. We are biblical absolutists. So the egalitarians are outraged because we say it was possible for a godly man to be a slave owner — because that is what the Bible says.” (Lewiston Morning Tribune, August 25, 2005)

Doug Wilson’s definition of “absolute” is relative. He is an absolute moral relativist.
2 No deceit. Nathan made a circumstantial legal argument to the highest court in Israel.
3 Douglas Wilson & Douglas Jones, Angels in the Architecture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 1998), 124.

 

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ADDENDUM

The following quotations represent some of Douglas Wilson’s expository statements in which he affirms false witness. Contradictions abound in this list — so many that they deserve their own post. One moment he vigorously defends the Ninth, the next he vigorously defends violating it.

2005

This commandment strikes at the heart of falsehood and lies, which in their turn are the native language of the devil. Without truth and trust, biblical culture is an impossibility. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Ex. 20:16).

First, what is the context of false witness? The commandment prohibits lying against one’s neighbor. Paul tells the Colossians not to lie to one another, because they had put off the old man with his deeds (3:9). Trust is essential to all community, and false witness makes trust impossible. False witness can exist in such a society, but if it is not punished severely that society will not be a society long. At its base, deception is an act of war. . . . Bearing false witness is therefore civil war — warfare against one’s neighbor, one’s brother. It is an act of violence directed against someone with whom you should be at peace.

The same distinction exists with this sin as we see with the distinction between murder and just killing. We see godly deception as an act of honorable war throughout Scripture. God blessed the Hebrew midwives for lying to Pharaoh (Ex. 1:15–21); He justified Rahab through her deception concerning the Hebrew spies (Jas. 2:25); David feigned madness to get away from Achish the king of Gath (1 Sam. 21:13–15). Such examples can be multiplied in Scripture many times over. The key is covenant — unless a covenant is assaulted or betrayed, the duty of believers is to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). False witness destroys amity. (Blog & Mablog, False Witness, February 7, 2005, emphasis original)

2006

Deception is an act of war, and the same distinctions that we make between murder and killing must be made between lying and lawful deception. The sinful forms of deception are those which introduce a state of civil war and animosity into communities that ought to be at peace. The ninth commandment is primarily about perjury (although other forms of deception outside of court are certainly subsumed under it). When someone bears false witness against his neighbor, he is introducing a state of settled animosity where there ought to be peace. Paul tells the Colossians that they are not to lie to one another, seeing how they have put off the old man with its evil practices. . . . But in the course of a just war, deception is not a problem at all. When the Israelites pretended to retreat in the second battle of Ai, this was not a violation of the ninth commandment. When Moses told Pharaoh that he wanted him to let the people go, the request was to let them go for a three-day festival. Neither was this a violation of the ninth commandment. When David pretended to be mad in a foreign court, he was deceiving the king but not breaking the ninth commandment. In addition to that, his action brought us one of the great comebacks in the Bible. “What’s this guy doing here? Did you think I needed more madmen in my entourage? Did you think I had a shortage?” Rahab went over to the Israelites, and the Israelites were at war with Jericho. Her deception concerning the spies was not a violation of the ninth commandment, and, as James teaches us, it was the point of her justification. And when the Hebrew midwives misled Pharaoh on why they were not committing infanticide, neither were they breaking the ninth commandment. In fact, God expressly blessed them for what they did. (Blog & Mablog, Lying, Warfare, and Peace, January 14, 2006, emphasis original)4

2010

But in warfare, and in life, there is a little matter called the truth. And there is also an important question about whether or not there is a condition of war. Deception is in war what killing is in war.

DECEPTION AND WAR:
Saul sinned by believing lies about David. The wicked men who sought David’s life in this incident were characterized by their lies (v. 12). So how was it God’s deliverance that enabled David to get away by means of deception and trickery?

In a state of peace, lying is a great evil. The lake of fire is reserved for liars (Rev. 21:8). We are told not to lie to one another (Col. 3:9). We are commanded not to bear false witness against our neighbor (Ex. 20:16). But in this fallen world, some people so behave (by their lies) as to forfeit their right to the truth.

In a condition of war, deception is not the kind of lying we just noted. It is not a sin to paint your tank to look like a bush when it is in fact not a bush. But you are deceiving the enemy pilots. . . The Hebrew midwives lied to Pharaoh, and so God greatly blessed them (Ex. 1:17–19). Rahab hid the spies, sent them out another way than she said she did, and James tells us that this deception was what vindicated her faith as true and living faith (Jas. 2:25). In her case, faith without such a deception would have been dead. David pretended to be mad when he was not (1 Sam. 21:15). God told Joshua to deceive the soldiers of Ai with a fake retreat (Josh. 8:1–2). We could make a very long list if we wished. We want to be righteous, not over-scrupulous.

The issue is God’s law. Those who won’t deceive when God’s law requires it are likely to be the same ones who will lie when His law forbids it. (Blog & Mablog, Deception and War, November 13, 2010)

2013

So if we have accepted the notion of a culture war, as we should have, how much comes with it? The ancient Chinese strategist, Sun Tzu, said this: “All warfare is based on deception” (The Art of War, p. 66). For those who accept the lawfulness of warfare, this is not controversial. . . . A man who paints his tank to look like a bush is telling enemy pilots that his tank is a bush when in fact — let us be frank — it is not a bush. God Himself gave the Israelites a strategy that depended upon deception at the second battle of Ai (Josh. 8:2). Sun Tzu was right — warfare is deception. A good general wants the enemy to believe the opposite of what is actually the case, in as many instances as possible. He wants him to believe he is far away when he is close, and to believe he is close when he is far away. He wants him to believe he is strong when he is weak, and weak when he is strong.

So in our culture war, what is permitted and what is not? This is something we have to work through carefully because we are under constraints that the progressives are not under at all. They do not answer to God, and so they behave accordingly. But we are people who serve the Lord, one whose very name is the truth (John 14:6).

The ninth commandment strikes at the heart of falsehood and lies, which in their turn are the native language of the devil. Without truth and trust, biblical culture is an impossibility. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Ex. 20:16).

But what is the context of false witness? The commandment prohibits lying against one’s neighbor. Paul tells the Colossians not to lie to one another, because they had put off the old man with his deeds (3:9). Trust is essential to all community, and false witness makes trust impossible. False witness can exist in such a society, but if it is not punished severely that society will not be a society long. At its base, overt deception is an act of war — “A man who bears false witness against his neighbor is like a club, a sword, and a sharp arrow (Prov. 25:18; cf. 12:17–18). The psalmist recognizes this — “false witnesses have risen against me, and such as breathe out violence” (Ps. 27:12).

Bearing false witness is therefore civil war — warfare against one’s neighbor, one’s brother. It is an act of violence directed against someone with whom you should be at peace. Conversely, if it is lawful to deceive him directly and straight up, it is plainly time for a war that has moved beyond metaphor.

The same distinction exists with this sin as we see with the distinction between murder and just killing. We see godly deception as an act of honorable war, or in a time that was equivalent to war, throughout Scripture. God blessed the Hebrew midwives for lying to Pharaoh (Ex. 1:15–21); He justified Rahab through her deception concerning the Hebrew spies (Jas. 2:25); David feigned madness to get away from Achish the king of Gath (1 Sam. 21:13–15). Such examples can be multiplied in Scripture many times over. The key is covenant — unless a covenant is assaulted or betrayed, the duty of believers is to speak the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). False witness destroys amity. If the amity is already destroyed on other grounds, or if the amity needs to be destroyed, then deception is lawful. . . .

So then, what we have is a duty to scrupulous truth-telling in a time of peace, and the liberty to use deception after the shooting starts. What about those ambiguous in-between times, times of heightened tension, with the stakes very high, but with no actual bloodshed yet?

Here are several scriptural examples. When Nathan the prophet came to rebuke David for his sin with Bathsheba, he did it by trapping him. He told King David a false story about a man who had his sheep taken by a wealthy neighbor (2 Sam. 12:3–4). David was angry and pronounced judgment on the man, not knowing that he had been deceived into pronouncing judgment on himself. This was a good and godly deception. Nathan was not in a state of open war with David, but when he came to tell this “lie,” he was taking his life in his hands. David had already killed one man to keep this particular sin secret.

Another example is similar. One of the sons of the prophets deceived Ahab into pronouncing a sentence on himself (1 Kings 20:38–43). He had let Benhadad go free, even though God had delivered him into Ahab’s hands. The prophet told a parallel story, only on an individual level. In that form, the king knew what justice was, and delivered the verdict. He was highly displeased to discover that the verdict circled back and landed on him.

Consequently, Lila Rose taking hidden cameras into abortion clinics is the Lord’s work. It is deceptive, and God bless all of it. The hidden cameras that were used to bring down the utterly corrupt ACORN were in the same category. This is deception, but it is not self-serving deception. (Blog & Mablog, Deception and the Culture War, July 12, 2013, emphasis original)

2014

To prevail in conflict is not possible without deception. Where you are weak, he should think you are strong. Where you are strong, he should believe you are weak.

Where you are present, he should believe you to be absent. Where you are absent, he should believe you to be present. When you are distant, he should believe you to be near. When you are near, he should believe you are distant.

When you have no plan, he should believe you do. When you are executing a plan, he should believe you are doing nothing.

Your strength is not measured by how strong you are. Your strength is measured by how strong your adversary believes you are. (Douglas Wilson, Rules for Reformers [Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2014], 196)

2015

The ninth commandment says not to bear false witness against your neighbor (Ex. 20:16). The Colossians are told not to lie to one another, seeing that they have put off the old man with its evil practices (Col. 3:9). The Israelites are told not to be false with one another (Lev. 19:11). And in Scripture, whenever deception is honored it is honored as an act of war — lying to the enemies of God who have forfeited their right to the truth. The midwives to Pharaoh would be one example, and Rahab protecting the spies is another. In time of war, you are not trying to develop unity with the enemy. (Blog & Mablog, True Glue, September 12, 2015, emphasis original)

4 Douglas Wilson filed this blog entry in the category called “A Justice Primer,” which became the title of a book he co-authored with fellow-CREC minister Randy Booth (published by Canon Press). The authors stuffed the book with plagiarized text, which is both theft and false witness. Randy Booth owned 100% of the blame; his co-author walked.

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