Several months ago now, popular reformed evangelical leader Kevin DeYoung wrote an article warning his proponents against Douglas Wilson and its “Moscow Mood.” Evangelicals in general would call “mood” a tertiary or secondary issue and let it slide. Apparently Wilson, his enterprise in Idaho, and supporters across the United States, don’t qualify for the same pass given for non-essentials. Evangelicals for certain have not historically punished the mood of institutions or figures.

Mood matters, but DeYoung and those agreeing with him are veering out of their normal belief and practice to punch at Wilson and his people. For that reason, it reads as a kind of “correctness” in the spirit of “political correctness” to modulate their norms in such a manner. Maybe it’s because Wilson strikes a popular note among a growing segment of evangelicals who are tired of leaning further left in capitulation to a declining culture.

Douglas Wilson takes stronger stands on cultural issues than popular evangelicalism, what some call, “Big Eva,” and lays down firm boundaries in ways that most evangelicals do not. He especially makes men feel more welcome in his orbit, speaking up on issues that rank-and-file evangelicals care about.

As DeYoung, I don’t want the influence of Wilson either, but for different and what should be obvious reasons that miss or avoid DeYoung and his constituency. I wouldn’t be writing this if Wilson wasn’t making headway. Folks like myself at least need to have an answer as we reach out to our areas for the Lord. Is Wilson style professing Christianity acceptable? Is it true? I contend in the main ways of discerning such questions, the answer is “No.” It isn’t. Why not though? Wilson and Moscow have a mood, but their mood is not the main issue.

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM IN MOSCOW AND THE WILSONIANS?

A biblical position will completely reject Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism represents total apostasy.  Some Roman Catholics genuinely received Jesus Christ and have not left that ungodly institution.  The institution though is absolutely apostate.  Biblical Christianity does not trace itself through Roman Catholicism.

Neither is the Roman Catholic Church even a church. It has no authority. Whatever such authority it projects through its historical record also is faux authority. The trail of truth does not traverse through Roman Catholicism and yet for Douglas Wilson and the Moscowites, it does. Wilson takes his trajectory through Roman Catholicism.

Douglas Wilson calls himself a small “c” Catholic. He would distinguish himself from Roman Catholicism with his small “c.” What Wilson understands is that if you call yourself a Protestant, you are taking a line and trajectory through Roman Catholicism, so he embraces Roman Catholicism. That is easy to see. One Roman Catholic, who agrees with this assessment, calls him a “crypto-Catholic.”

Wilson wants to be consistent. He’s Catholic, but he’s reformed Catholic. He attempts to thread that needle as much as anyone out there. This depends then on a form of Roman Catholic and Protestant tradition, a unique hybrid of the two.

SACRAMENTS AND THE GOSPEL

Nothing illustrates Wilson’s Catholicism and its strain on the gospel and sola scriptura than his position on the sacraments. Moscow sprinkles infants and then welcomes children to the Lord’s Table. This bleeds over into the thinking on the gospel, because what’s the point of these sacraments for children? A recent trouble for Wilson was a decade or more controversy called “Federal Vision” and “Auburn Avenue” that looked very much like works salvation. Wilson since attempted to extricate himself from these theological movements he helped found and brought confusion on the gospel.

Wilson, since the federal vision fiasco, in public voiced a few times his loyalty to salvation by grace alone through faith alone.  However, his own teaching had confused the gospel in a much greater way than Peter not eating meat with the Gentiles in Galatians 2:11-13. Wilson’s doctrine and practice continues to lead people astray on the gospel. He doesn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt on it. The gospel is far too important to obfuscate it. Many of his positions give strong association with Roman Catholicism and he considers himself a Catholic theologically and historically.

Don’t get me wrong, Wilson rejects many present components of Roman Catholicism and says so.  However, his Roman Catholic-light takes a form of Catholicism before Roman Catholicism went even further off the rails. He doesn’t reject it wholesale. In that way, Moscow kowtows to Roman Catholicism.

VERSUS PERPETUITY OF TRUE CHURCHES

As part of the mood of Moscow, Wilson and his followers would mock Baptists in exactly what I’m addressing here. He would argue against a true line of separatist churches since the time of Christ, separate from the state church. He embraces the Roman Catholic Church as his mother church with a form of either evidentialism or historicism.  Rome tells its own story of its own history that Rome preserved. The satire and mockery he uses very often becomes the substance of what he says.

Roman Catholics trace their lineage a long ways with a very visible history. They especially point to the “church fathers.”  Those like myself, who see the true church through history in complete separation from the state church, possess less visible evidence for that line. Still, New Testament churches separate from the state church do have visible evidence, only less than Roman Catholicism.  Those rejecting perpetuity of true churches point to examples of traceable error among those autonomous churches, separate from Roman Catholicism.

Christ’s Church Is Not a State Church

The primary basis for the true church, which is separate from the state church, is presuppositional.  No one is neutral.  Everyone has presuppositions from which he views history.  The biblical presupposition is that, first, Christ’s church is not a state church. Wilson may deny that his church is a state church, but he takes his lineage through a state church. His eschatology and ecclesiology depend on state church doctrine.

The Gates of Hell Would Not Prevail Against True, New Testament Churches

Second, the Lord Jesus Christ Himself said that the gates of Hell would not prevail against His assembly [ekklesia means “assembly”] (Matthew 16:18). An assembly is not Catholic, but local. Jesus’ churches were and always would be local churches, not a Roman Catholic (universal) one. The truth was not preserved by the state church, but by Christ’s churches, which were always separate from the state church.

If the Roman Catholic Church was the true church, as Wilson believes, then where was the gospel for centuries? Jesus said He would build His church on the gospel profession or declaration: Jesus is the Christ the Son of the living God. The “Christ” of Roman Catholicism does not save to the uttermost. He does not provide full forgiveness of sins throughout all eternity. It is not a true church.

The presupposition from scripture, from the promise of Jesus Christ of the perpetuity of the true church, is the evidence. That church is not Roman Catholic, which is a false church.

INFANT SPRINKLING, THE WESTMINSTER CONFESSION, AND THE GOSPEL

Douglas Wilson wrote an entire book defending infant sprinkling, so he pushes that unbiblical doctrine on the world, treating it like it’s in the Bible. I know he would say he does not attribute salvation to infant sprinkling like Roman Catholicism, but where did he get infant sprinkling? He got it from Roman Catholicism. He didn’t get it from the Bible. It’s not in there.

More to Come