> We have all had to deal with the theological Euclidians, who can slice metaphysical hairs with precision, and when they are done, nobody can tell any difference. They can take the midges of truth, dissect them, and tie off the intestines of those midges into a little braid, and all while the rest of us don't even know yet whether or not midges even have intestines. I mean, think about it.

> Marriage is a political act, and not an individual choice. How you marry is a way of testifying to what city you belong to. Who defines marriage? The difficulty we are having in our generation in answering this question shows how theology shapes and drives everything.

> One other item of Christian theology has to be taken into account, and that is the reality of the fall into sin. The Christian approach to marriage in the context of mere Christendom deals with both of these realities -- the creational given of male and female, and the sinful propensity we have to hump the world. Creational sexuality and sinful sexuality are both factors.

> the standard mistake of confusing an attack on effeminacy (inappropriate softness) with an attack on femininity (glorified responsiveness).

> We think because the university we went to has different "departments," where the different "majors" hang out, that these are all different enterprises -- like the manufacture of jet engines differs from training horses for future dressage tournaments. But politics and philosophy and education are all part of the same essential project. We will not successfully deal with any one of them without dealing with them all.

> Across our fair Republic, a vast army 60-watt intellectuals have now banded together to flicker dimly in the gathering twilight, having mistaken themselves for the dawn.

> women can’t compensate for father hunger by being more motherly. Women are gravity, and men are centrifugal force. Women cluster, and men escape. Women overcommit and men under commit. Women are soft and men are hard. This is why we don’t have a comparable phenomenon like “mother hunger.” We have mother troubles—frequently—but it is a different ball game.

> The goal was not to destroy holiness, but to get it out of the monasteries. The goal was not to destroy beauty, but to get it out of places where it was being falsely worshiped, and move it to places where it could be innocently enjoyed.

> [Adam and Eve] sinned because they did not treat that enemy as an enemy. So fighting did not bring in sin. A lack of fighting brought in sin.

And every war since has its root in Adam's abdicating pacifism.

I still can't affirm the infant baptism, but so much still applies to disciple making and worship.

> After baptism has taken place, everything else is part of Christian discipleship -- teaching the baptized to obey all that Christ commanded. Discipleship is foundationally, irreducably, a matter of obedience, not theological test-passing. It is an ethical response, not a cognitive one.

> We are treating little children as disciples, and the first lesson of every disciple is joy. "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD" (Ps. 122:1). If the children are not glad to be there, then everything after that is counterproductive.

> ...you have the Ironic Spectacle of "evangelical" Calvinists making their kids score 90% or above on the grace portion of their theology exams before they give them some grace as a reward. But the solution to that appalling business is not to reject or set aside the authority of grace to shape our lives in joy.

> The principle of new life must therefore be active and present before we can be entrusted with any element of public worship, whether high, low, or middle. The Spirit creates the church, *not the other way around*, and when that Spirit-created living water is there, we must find a cistern for it. But finding a cistern is not the same thing as finding the water.

> Liturgy is inescapable.

> without that true evangelical faith, all religious activity is just so many drowning swimmers clutching at their anvils.

> Neither is the point blunted by those who (in the name of the truth I am advocating) have turned themselves into evangelical mystic ghosts, in no need of the external world. But even they have their rudimentary rituals, and the plain teaching of Scripture goes on to silence them. Regeneration enables us to use biblical ordinances rightly; it does not eliminate the need for them. It only eliminates the spiritually stupid use of them.

> The purist is incapable of seeing the possibility of good men within corrupt systems and corrupt empires.

> ...the political equivalent of primitive baptists. They want to get back to the pristine days of the early church so they can figure out some kind of way to split that one too.

> it should be pointed out to somebody that fresh converts are often a cause's worst liabilities. New converts often do a great deal of damage. Do you really love liberty all that much? Then learn how important it is to cool it.

> Whatever it is you are using to cause your sense of indignation to grow so big, trying using some of that fertilizer on your sense of proportion.

> These ghouls have somehow gotten control of a narrative which they like to call social justice and as far as I am concerned, they can take it to Hell with them.

> you can adopt a position that won't rip it with all the conservatives in the church you few up in

"If you must give up something else, why not the fussing" from @douglaswils Or, Sausage Indulgences for the Reformed.

4 of 5 stars to Classical Education and the Homeschool by Douglas Wilson

> [Unbelievers, per Romans 1:21] refuse to render thanks to him.

> Therefore, one of our central apologetic tasks is to bring such unbelievers into the presence of Christians who glorify God as God, and who are overtly grateful to him.

at the Resurgence

from Doug Wilson on Vimeo

conversation between John Piper and Doug Wilson

Desiring God 2012 Conference for Pastors God, Manhood & Ministry: Building Men for the Body of Christ - Desiring God

> If you are going to rescue a lost race, one of the most important things you can do is deal with their know-it-alls who like being lost, just so long as they can write books about it.

5 of 5 stars to Wordsmithy by Douglas Wilson

> Children have their unique challenges in their walk with Christ, as we all do, but an additional challenge is that as a class they are routinely treated as spiritual “outsiders.”

But is it possible not to treat them as outsiders *and* not baptize or commune them prior to profession of faith?

> The progression toward adultery moves like this -- simmering discontent, open discontent, open desire in other directions, which is lust, and then the lust is acted out, with infidelity as the result. Now a man might be able to convince himself that he is not being unfaithful in the first two stages -- he is not being aroused, and he is not actively seeking that kind of gratification. His problem doesn't appear to him to be overtly sexual at all. But it is a set up. Don't feed the kind of discontent that will, later on, feed something else.

> Celebrate the stuff. Use fudge and eggnog and wine and roast beef. Use presents and wrapping paper. Embedded in many of the common complaints you hear about the holidays (consumerism, shopping, gluttony, etc.) are false assumptions about the point of the celebration. You do not prepare for a real celebration of the Incarnation through 30 days of Advent Gnosticism.

> At the same time, remembering your Puritan fathers, you must hate the sin while loving the stuff. Sin is not resident in the stuff. Sin is found in the human heart—in the hearts of both true gluttons and true scrooges—both those who drink much wine and those who drink much prune juice. If you are called up to the front of the class, and you get the problem all wrong, it would be bad form to blame the blackboard. That is just where you registered your error. In the same way, we register our sin on the stuff. But—because Jesus was born in this material world, that is where we register our piety as well. If your godliness won’t imprint on fudge, then it is not true godliness.

> He has given us the world—and it is precisely for this reason that we are not to be worldly.

> The world does not contain the principles for its own organization, and whenever it tries to organize itself, the results are worldliness, carnality, earthly-mindedness. But when the world surrenders to Heaven, the Lord of Heaven gives us the world.

> Scripture teaches that music sets the mood. A particular kind of music is for mourning, and another is for dancing (Luke 7:32). When the prodigal son returned, and the elder brother came in from the field, he was able to hear the music of the jazz quartet his father had hired way out in the driveway (Luke 15:25). When Saul was afflicted, a particular kind of music was able to lighten his spirits (1 Sam. 16:16). Music in Scripture is supposed to set the tone. It does not just “go along with” a particular demeanor; it is one of the principal means of creating it.

5 of 5 stars to The Case for Classical Christian Educ... by Douglas Wilson

> fathers have been excluded, by law, by peer pressure, and by their own selfishness. It has been done by law in that the pattern established by Roe v. Wade has made everyone think that a decision to abort is to be made by a woman "and her doctor." Fathers are removed from the decision by law. It is irrelevant to our ruling class whether or not the father in question has bound himself with a solemn oath to provide for his children, and to protect them. There is nothing a man can do under our current legal system to take full *legal* responsibility. The *family* has been aborted.

> Peer pressure is applied by means of the sneer. Countless songs, sitcoms, romantic comedies, teen sex comedies, and more, have provided the general populace with catechetical material for the truly effective sneer. Any man who thinks that a wonderful time in bed must be necessarily linked to a lifetime of responsibility is written off as a hopeless dweeb. Faced with a choice between not being mocked and having a backbone, far too many men choose the option of not being mocked. But fathers who wilt in the face of such sneers and mockery are just sperm-delivery fathers. They have all the backbone of a wet napkin. They deserve the mockery, certainly, but from the other direction.

> Of course, there is the problem of old-fashioned selfishness. Convincing men to take the sexual pleasure, and to not feel responsible for any resultant child, has therefore not been a difficult argument. It has been a downhill argument. The moral authority of Western civilization spent a number of centuries persuading and convincing males that they should take up responsibility for their progeny. That was the uphill part of the argument, and it was made possible by the growing influence of the gospel. Unfortunately, we have decided to all head back downhill again, and us with no brakes now.

> So whatever else we do, let's frame the question of abortion correctly. Abortion is the most drastic form of fatherlessness possible.

> There is one more point worth emphasizing. The wine we use in communion should be like the gospel—and that is potent. As with anything potent, abuses are possible (e.g. “shall we sin that grace may abound?”), but the possibility of abuse should not be allowed to replace the authority of Scripture. We want in the first place to be biblical people. This means we do not want a grape juice gospel, but rather a gospel with a kick.

> Get a map of the world, and look at it from halfway across the room. Grant that I am about to make a *generalization*, and that I cheerfully grant a host of variables that I am not mentioning here. That said, look at every nation that came into the Reformed faith at the Reformation, or was planted by heirs of the Reformed faith. You are looking at the First World. Look at those nations that remained pagan, at least up to the last generation. You are looking at the Third World. Ask yourself, when we have taken account of all the other contributing factors like language, climate, natural resources and so on, should the religious faith of the populace be considered a significant contributing factor as well?

> "Faithful children" in Titus 1:6 can be rendered that way, or also as "believing children." I am content to see it rendered either way, because either way it amounts to the same thing. "Believing children" refers to the children explicitly coming to faith in Christ, which assumes that fathers have something to do with it. And  "faithful children" refers to children who obey their father. But why would a faithful father not require his children to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? If he does not, then why not? "But as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD" (Josh. 24:15). And if he does, then how could "faithful children" disobey him at that point? To think that would put us in the odd position of saying that his children were faithful to him, except at those places where it was really, really important.

> To place the salvation of an elder’s children outside his influence says nothing about this particular requirement.

Or, he *must* be a believer.

> Temper tantrums are always aimed at the gut. They are not an invitation to "come, let us reason together."

> The task given to the Church by Jesus before He ascended into Heaven was the task of discipling the nations, and this was to consist of inaugurating them into that discipleship by means of baptism, and then to teach them obedience to everything that Jesus taught us (Matt. 28:18-20). This means that the assigned mission of the Church consists of two components—birth and growth. The Church is not supposed to take mission on as a side operation; the Church is mission.

> There are two basic ways to miss the point here. One is to abandon or minimize the task of worshiping the triune God on the Lord’s Day in order to “get out there” to evangelize and influence the world in the name of Jesus. This is like taking the engine out so that the car can go faster. The other way is to grant how important the engine is, and to keep it in fine operating order, but mounted on cinder blocks in your garage. In the former error, the engine is not central, and it should be. With the latter error, the engine is central, but the wrong kind of central. An engine that runs must be connected to the car, and a car without an engine is useless.

> This meal is one we partake of every week, because we need to learn the discipline of loving sinners, and the even deeper discipline of doing so while being a sinner. Every week you sit down at this meal with people who are dear to you, and who are exasperating to you. And things get complicated fast.

> So Thanksgiving is not what we fight for. Thanksgiving is what we fight *with*. Take your celebration of Thanksgiving out of the scabbard.

Doug Wilson on Why Christians must write, and what they must write about.

> [I]n a fight a man needs a large heart and a narrow sword. We have jumbled everything, and now have narrow hearts, and our swords are clumsily made from two by fours. (*A Primer on Worship and Reformation*, 23)

> [O]ur time of confession ought not to be about a list of items, kept or broken. We are in the process of becoming a certain kind of person. Everything we confess is that which interfered with that process. If it did not interfere with it, then there is nothing to confess. But the rules are not floating above our heads, independently autonomous. No, God’s rules are simply a description of what He is like, and what we would like to become like.

> All cultures are the incarnational outworking of a religion or combination of religions. When you deny a transcendent God, this does not eliminate the need for a god at the top to make the system coherent. It just means that the applicants for the position of deity are all, to use one of Hitchen's favorite words, mammals...If there is no God above the system, then the system *is* god. All societies are religious organisms, not just the ones with a religious exoskeleton...All human societies are theocracies. The only issue that confronts us is which *theos* we will serve. The atrocious cultures are the ones who serve atrocious gods. (*God Is*, 95-96)

5 of 5 stars to Repairing The Ruins by Douglas Wilson

Doug Wilson on What worship does to the citadels of unbelief?

"We do not invite Jesus into our lives--down here in the boneyard. Jesus invites us into His life." @douglaswils

Fruitful plodding, or, how to grow big and tasty tomatoes.

"Not only is it true that you become what you eat (in one sense), but what you eat becomes you."

> Nature is not the only thing that abhors a vacuum. Religion abhors a vacuum. If you banish all religious trappings from the public square, all you have done is swept and garnished the room in preparation for the new, seven-fold religion that is now on your doorstep, with the creepy music playing in the background.

video by Doug Wilson. Applies anywhere culture is created, including the church.

by Doug Wilson, on treating our children as our children and not as our enemies.

At Bethlehem Baptist for An Evening on Eschatology--a different sort of ride.

[Mo and I attended this *in person* after the 2009 DGNC.]