“This kind of controversy gives me opportunity to hold up A Justice Primer and say, ‘Did you know that we have this new book out?’ Have I already mentioned the book? I forget.” Douglas Wilson

A rule among academics is that plagiarists never do it once. Where there’s one, there’s more. Mr. Wilson proved this rule with Southern Slavery As It Was and A Justice Primer. Steve Wilkins proved the rule with his published works and I am confident that Mr. Booth shall prove it too. After his resignation, he began scrubbing his blog (destroying evidence) but plenty remains.

Mr. Wilson may argue that his role in this plagiarism incident is an unlucky coincidence, which may be true. However, as a professing Calvinist he knows that providence ordains coincidences. Whether theft defiles two of his books or two child rapists simultaneously strike the Kirk — God decreed it. “If a calamity occurs in a city has not the Lord done it?” (Amos 3:6)

And this is a calamity for Mr. Wilson because no matter how he spins it, he is the common denominator in this trio of plagiarists. Similarly, he is the sole denominator who urged the court to unleash two predators against Kirk & community. Neither scandal would exist if you remove Mr. Wilson from the equation: No plagiarism, no freed predators, no CREC Review Committee.

Further, members of the CREC should note that scandal clings to Mr. Wilson like flies on stink. He made the front page of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News three times this year and the News published two editorials questioning his influence on the community. This in addition to numerous letters to the editor criticizing him for his ungodly behavior. Mr. Wilson treats his neighbors the same way he treats rape victims. He has no gospel for Moscow.

So far no one has called attention to the ironies in this difficult chapter of Mr. Wilson’s history. For example, he used his two sex-abuse scandals to promote A Justice Primer:

Those who believe themselves to be hep to my tricksy ways might have surmised that I orchestrated this entire recent flap about Steven Sitler because Randy Booth and I recently put out a book entitled A Justice Primer. But whether you are disposed to believe me or not, that was a total coincidence. In this book we address biblical principles for evaluating charges that are brought against someone, anyone. The book is, I believe, quite a necessary resource for good-hearted Christians everywhere — who regularly see defamatory information scrolling by in their Facebook feed. There is even a chapter entitled “Trial by Internet,” which concludes with this sage advice: “Never get into a braying contest with donkeys” (p. 160). (The High Mountain Air of Public Calumny)

Mr. Wilson posted these words on the internet before Rachel Miller discovered his plagiarism, which is ironic. Then he prosecuted his point, asking, “Coincidence? Or a masterpiece of publishing guile and cunning? You decide.”

Okay, since he insists, I decide “a masterpiece of publishing guile and cunning.” With equal measures of hubris and shamelessness. After all, the subject matter of this deceitful publication is an aggravating circumstance. Messieurs Wilson & Booth plagiarized for a book on justice and marketed it as the genuine article. They stole a page from the Pharisees’ playbook; posed as experts on righteousness and truth; and made an ostentatious display of their preening sanctimony. They wrote the textbook on hypocrisy. And Mr. Wilson assures his readers that the CREC Review Committee intends to deliver the kind of justice that he and Mr. Booth advocated in their phony book. I am sure the irony is lost on him.

How appropriate that both men sat in the highest offices of the CREC when they published this fraud — the Presiding Minister of the CREC Council and the Presiding Minister pro tempore. It’s even more appropriate that the former recused himself so the latter could appoint and chair a committee to review his fellow-plagiarist’s pastoral misconduct. These poseurs unknowingly framed a perfect picture of justice in the CREC and ironically no one in the CREC sees it. It’s business as usual.

This same truth applies to New Saint Andrews College. Both Mr. Wilson & Mr. Booth held permanent seats on the NSA Board of Directors even though neither man has the credentials to obtain employment at a legitimate institution of higher learning. This is not just ironic but telling. It reveals the character and intelligence of those surrounding Mr. Wilson and indicates the caliber of education New St. Andrews College offers. It’s a faux school wrapped in pretentious garb and after you peel away the silly robes you see a parody.

And let’s not forget the theology of those whom they plagiarized. They pinched liberally from Tim Challies, but not from his post on false teacher Ellen G. White, whom they also pinched: Theonomists pilfering from Greg Bahnsen makes sense, however regrettable it may be. But patriarchalists cribbing the words of Ellen G. White — a woman, a dreamer, the matriarch of fundamentalism — now that’s satire.

Speaking of women, some may have noticed that Mr. Wilson takes special pleasure in belittling the opposite sex simply because of their sex, which makes this ironic because a woman delivered the coup de grâce in this execution of justice. Rachel Miller demonstrated that she swings a hammer better than Mr. Wilson swings his bat, after she drove a well-placed tent peg through Sisera’s melon with one perfect stroke. Randy Booth courageously took the nail on behalf of Mr. Wilson and Mr. Wilson valiantly let him. Perhaps he could memorialize this historic event with a video or cartoon.

Mr. Wilson’s latest plagiarism eruption is true “poetic justice,” which the plagiarized words of A Justice Primer define as “The rewarding of virtue and the punishment of vice, often in an especially appropriate manner.” A pair of hucksters who lord their arrogated authority over others churned out a bogus primer to vaunt themselves higher, and an ordinary blogger — a woman — exposed their cheap hypocrisy. All the imaginary intoleristas in all the world could never have contrived such irony against Mr. Wilson. And perhaps the biggest irony of all is that he remains unhumbled.