I started reading someone’s book review blog because we share an interest in forgotten popular novels of the past (there aren’t many resources out there about this and I’m always excited to find them), and then I notice that she’s a pretty serious Christian and I’m like okay, whatever, and then it becomes clear that she’s a hardcore complementarian traditionalist, and then I notice that’s she’s a huge Doug Wilson fan
I am haunted
In this year’s Fall Conference, The Institutes of Awesome, Douglas Wilson, Nathan Wilson, Toby Sumpter, and Ben Merkle will be speaking on “keeping Calvinism Sassy for the next 500 years.”
I’m working and shouldn’t be on tumblr after this but I am just dropping in to say: we live in a world in which Doug Wilson has written a 36-page, chapter-by-chapter review of Twilight
(I got it as a “free ebook” by signing up for his Canon Press mailing list with a spam email, so should probably not post the link bc I don’t want Doug Wilson on my case, but in any case it exists and there is a way to obtain it for free)
I’ve now read some of it and so far Wilson’s main beef against Twilight is “it romanticizes abuse”
Which a lot better than some of the alternatives I could imagine, but is also, well, a bit rich coming from him
(If you want to know the context for the previous statement, do a Google search for Natalie Greenfield – but first make sure you really do want to read about the sort of thing would serve as context for the previous statement)
I’m working and shouldn’t be on tumblr after this but I am just dropping in to say: we live in a world in which Doug Wilson has written a 36-page, chapter-by-chapter review of Twilight
(I got it as a “free ebook” by signing up for his Canon Press mailing list with a spam email, so should probably not post the link bc I don’t want Doug Wilson on my case, but in any case it exists and there is a way to obtain it for free)
3dspacejesus replied to your post: I checked in with Noted Terrible Man Doug Wilson…
“Blog and Mablog” is a fantastic blog title, though
Indeed
Douglas Wilson is an interesting figure in that he combines, on the one hand, an urbanity and (at least superficial) erudition much more commonly associated with Catholic intellectuals, and on the other, Protestant views (evangelical, Calvinist) and a very brash “I run my church according to my own views, I bow to no higher authority except scripture (on my very specific reading of it), I am traditionalist to the point of being a theocrat but that doesn’t mean following my actual forefathers” attitude
ETA: this is a pretty good introduction for those not familiar with him
I checked in with Noted Terrible Man Doug Wilson after several months spent hatereading at other pastures (or sometimes, blessedly, not hatereading at all). And the first nontrivial blog post I find (i.e. the first one that isn’t just him quoting one of his own books, or the like) is about some sort of spiraling internet argument over the Trinity that is really amusingly reminiscent of the sorts of argumentative kerfuffles I see all the time on tumblr (“necrobestialitygate,” etc.)
As many of you know, a controversy with two layers erupted within the last month, having to do with Trinitarian theology and complementarianism. I have provided some links to all this at the bottom of the post here. Theologians like Wayne Grudem have taught that within the Godhead there is an eternal functional subordination, which provides a model for a complementarian approach to marriage. Critics like Mark Jones have maintained that this necessitates three wills within the Godhead and that the orthodox position has always maintained that there is only a single divine will, and that to say anything otherwise is to mess with the divine simplicity. A third set of critics like Tim and David Bayly agree with Grudem as far as it goes, but emphasize that the complementarian world needs to be a lot more robust in its opposition to egalitarianism.
It’s fun to see what these sorts of events look like from the outside. In particular, it ties into something I was thinking about the other day about tumblr arguments – specifically that they’re often about “important things,” things that in principle have to do with how I conduct my IRL life, yet at the same time the marginal choice to “continue discoursing” as opposed to “stepping away from the keyboard” tends to have negligible effect on my everyday life. My views might get pushed here or pulled there by internet arguments, a little bit, but ultimately there’s just so much else that determines them – everything I know that doesn’t come from internet interlocutors, everything I’ve internalized from the moment-to-moment texture of experience – that the effect of the arguments barely registers. Like, there are a lot of arguments in my tumblr sphere about how to relate to other people who are different from you, or about “practical epistemology” (where do you get your information, what kinds of beliefs should you form from it), and this stuff is actually important, but my IRL decisions just follow their own path regardless, mostly.
In this case, the issues (as far as I can make out) is “actually important,” in that its about fundamental issues in these people’s faiths (which are very important to them), and have to do with complementarianism, which is something with direct IRL implications. Yet I don’t imagine that anyone’s religious or marital practice will shift more than negligibly as a result of this argument.
It’s easy to get sucked into internet arguments by saying to yourself “it’s not like I can just ignore these issues, they really matter for my life, I need to figure them out,” conveniently forgetting that you also have to establish a link between “having the internet argument” and “figuring them out,” when there may well be no such link
Much as I hate to mention that word again, the ironic twist on the original concept is just too good not to mention – what word? what twist? Well, see, I keep running into people who could be described, with some justice, as neotenous traditionalists
People who see old-fashioned upright Christian living, even with the scary bits left in, as a cozy sparkly whimsical thing, the only last place remaining for silly, innocent souls. John C. Wright is one, of course. (”He presently works (successfully) as a writer in Virginia, where he lives in fairy-tale-like happiness with his wife, the authoress L. Jagi Lamplighter, and their four children: Pingping, Orville, Wilbur, and Just Wright.”)
But there’s also N. D. Wilson, son of Douglas Wilson (who is all about the “scary bits” of Christian tradition). NDW’s book “Notes From The Tilt-A-Whirl: Wide-Eyed Wonder in God’s Spoken World” is, among many other things, written in a voice too cutesy even for me, which is saying something:
What is the world? A large (compared to most malls), moist, inhabited, spinning ball. What kind of place is it? The round kind. The spinning kind. The moist kind. The inhabited kind. The kind with flamingos (real and artificial). The kind where water in the sky turns into beautifully symmetrical crystal flakes sculpted by artists unable to stop themselves (in both design and quantity). The kind of place with tiny, powerfully jawed mites assigned to the carpets to eat my dead skin as it flakes off. The kind with sharks, and nose leeches, and slithery parasitic things (with barbs) that will swim up you like a urinary catheter if only you oblige by peeing in a South American river. The kind with people who kill and people who love and people who do both. The kind with people who think water from the Ganges is good for them and people who think eating the heart of their enemy will ward off death, and other who think they can cure their own failing brains if only they harvest enough uncommitted cells from human young.
This world is beautiful but badly broken. St. Paul said that it groans, but I love it even in its groaning. I love this round stage where we act out the tragedies and the comedies of history. I love it with all of its villains and petty liars and self-righteous pompers. I love the ants and the laughter of wide-eyed children encountering their first butterfly. I love it as it is, because it is a story, and it isn’t stuck in one place. It is full of conflict and darkness like every good story. I love the world as it is, because I love what it will be.
Suffering is not here – it is far away, and it exists to entertain us, as part of the cool exciting drama we watch from this cozy place, under our warm blankets, our faces locked in expressions of permanent stoned wonder. We look at thousands of years of history, at billions of years of biology, at everything that has ever captivated or uplifted or eroded or crushed a human soul, and we respond: it’s all sort of … cute, and quirky, isn’t it? Sooooo random. I like it.