Tagged “A Serrated Edge”

“A beast is a persecutor; an antichrist is a false teacher”

Never Open Up Constructive Theological Dialogue With An Antichrist

Topic: Chrestomathy

“At the same time, precisely because the Church is the household of the faithful, the enemy outside hates it. One of the ways he expresses that hatred is by various attempts at subversion, corrupting the Church from within. It is simply naive to maintain that all assaults on the faith come from persecuting tyrants. Most of the threats to biblical integrity come from men who went to seminary. The beast in Scripture is a civil ruler, persecuting from outside. There have been many such beasts in the history of the Church, from Nero to Stalin. But the antichrist in Scripture is a spirit of corruption from within the body. Who is the antichrist but the one who denies that Jesus came in the flesh? (1 Jn. 4:3). A beast is a persecutor; an antichrist is a false teacher. In the scriptural categories, Hitler was a beast, but to find our modern antichrists we have to look for liberal Methodist bishops and the lesbians who love them. Now the Bible requires that the Word be brought against both kinds of threats, which is just what the apostle John did. He brought the Word against the beast in Revelation and against the antichrist in 1 John. And when that Word comes, it does not do so as an invitation to dialogue” (A Serrated Edge, pp. 99–100).

Posted by Douglas Wilson — 12/28/2005 12:45:29 PM
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“It’s not right . . . to give perfectly good white folk food to niggers”

Jesus was not above using ethnic humor to make His point either. . . . My understanding of this encounter is that Jesus was pulling his disciples’ chain. This woman was not a Jew, and the Jews had problems dealing with such people, considering them beneath contempt — in a word, dogs. Put in terms that we might be more familiar with, Jesus was white, and the disciples were white, and this black woman comes up seeking healing, for her daughter. She gets ignored. The disciples ask Jesus to send her off. She comes up and beseeches Christ for healing. It’s not right, He says, to give perfectly good white folk food to “niggers.” Disciples mentally cheer. But she sees the look in His eye, and the inverted commas around the epithet, and answers in kind. He relents, which was His intent all along, and heals the woman’s daughter. If this understanding is right, then Jesus was using a racial insult to make a point. If it is not correct, then He was simply using a racial insult. In either case, His language is more than a little rough.
Douglas Wilson

“It is not necessary to take someone aside privately after they have just done something publicly.”

This is as good a place as any to make note of the fact that public controversy is not bound by the rules of confrontation laid out for us in Matthew 18. When Peter sinned at Antioch, Paul rebuked him publicly, face to face (Gal. 2:11), and he did this on the spot. It is not necessary to take someone aside privately after they have just done something publicly. I do not know how many times I have been asked about this. Let’s say I have written critically of a recently published book — ‘Did you contact Tony Campolo privately before you wrote the book review?’
Douglas Wilson