Quotes from Douglas Wilson

We tend to assume that if the existing authorities tell us to do anything short of swearing an oath to worship Satan, then we have to do it. This does not exhibit a mature theology of resistance.

Objectivity is a false god, and the worship of this idol is particularly pernicious in disciplines like journalism and history. It is not possible to be objective----although of course it is possible to be honest. By pretending to attain to objectivity, a writer's fundamental faith commitments are not eliminated, but rather submerged----and they then come out in interesting and intellectually dishonest ways.

Collections do not leave the collector unaffected. The art of collecting results in a certain turn of mind.

Americanism has become a religion, and he accurately identifies how and where it happened. Where we should part company with him is to be found in his (religious) conviction that this development was a good thing. Faithful Christians will necessarily see it as a tragic fall into idolatry—and into one of the easiest forms of idolatry for conservative Christians to be tempted by.

The brain is more like a muscle and less like a storage area. If you really want to be a writer, you should want to write a lot. If you want to write a lot, then you need to be in training. You are preparing to run marathons, not emptying a suitcase. Learning new languages, acquiring new vocabulary, keeping yourself in various forms of constant logocentric discipline is one of the best things you can do. And language acquisition is nothing if not logocentric discipline.

The first lesson that a healthy Christian theocracy would have to learn is to be deeply suspicious of their own lofty pretensions.

Husbandry is the careful management of resources - It is stewardship. And when someone undertakes to husband a woman, he must understand that it cannot be done unless he acts with authority.

When the Bible was written, society was agrarian. There were no smartphones. No helicopters. "You can't expect us to find answers for these, our postmodern times, in that glaringly pre-modern book." But that is precisely what we should expect. The Scriptures speak to our condition, and because we are wealthy, they speak to it very directly. But we have to be prepared to listen.

under the Levitical administration the people of God lived in servitude—and it was a yoke that was impossible for them to bear (Acts 15:10). The people of God under the New Covenant are free—they have come into their promised inheritance. Although we have not received it fully (not having seen the redemption of the body), we have received enough of it to be free.

But a man who has not been the head of his home must confess his abdication as sin - He must treat it the same way he would treat theft, or adultery. It is disobedience.

Pain concentrates the mind. Pain tethers you to this world, and the rope is a stout one. But at the same time, the grace of God enables you to look along the pain, to look down the entire length of the trial, and to see the purpose and point of it all.

The word translated sober here is nepho, and it means to "be self-possessed under all circumstances.

The need of the hour is for the Church to help establish a defined counterculture. This requires much more than defined denominational boundaries, or sectarian carve-outs. There needs to be a defined center (the Church), a defined staging area (the kingdom), and a defined mission field (the world).

There is no virtue or vice in a transitive verb, everything depends on the direct object. 'I LOVE' could be virtuous or not - you could love ice cream, Jesus, child porn, my country, hurting people, the lust of the flesh. Love is not an automatic virtue. Hatred is not an automatic vice. What's the direct object? from Debate In The Age Of The Glitter-Bomb in The City, Fall 2013.

The writer must know something about the world outside books—whether his or the books of the others. At the same time, he must also be thoroughly acquainted with the world inside books. Words on a page are part of real life. They cannot be substituted for the whole, but they cannot be taken from it either.

likemindedness is a function of humility. It is not necessarily a function of high intellectual attainment. If that is accompanied by pride (as it often is—1 Cor. 8:1), then the opposite of likemindedness will occur. Never forget that the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace—which necessarily includes this likemindedness—is in fact a work of the Spirit.

A father must beware the false dichotomy between individualism and "patriarchalism." The individualist says to each person in the family that responsibility begins and ends with him. Only one person can be responsible for one thing. The "patriarchalist" approach would agree and then say that the only person responsible in the family is the Boss Man. If he is responsible, then no one else can ever do anything freely. Both approaches are erroneous.

True submission never grovels, and true authority never accepts flattery.

If you have a smartphone, you have more wealth in your pocket than Nebuchadnezzar accumulated over the course of his lifetime. We have a responsibility to turn a profit on these astounding resources.

This is one of the oldest tricks in the book for sinful leaders: once you get into power, take whatever you can from the people, but all in the name of a higher good. This higher good may be God, or patriotism, or humanistic brotherhood, or democracy, but what all such power-abusers really want is more power for themselves.

Not only has Jesus destroyed the overt works of the devil, He has also thrown down the devil's philosophy, which maintains that we are all to be very, very "spiritual." But in the face of this false doctrine, God was made flesh. This means that we may build, sew, pick up a knife and fork, make love, spank our kids, shovel the walk, and do all to the glory of God. Earthiness is not the gospel, but the gospel did come to earth. Earthiness is no savior, but earthiness is saved.

the most contagious form of teaching is when an instructor loves his material in the presence of others—whom he also loves.

When you write a page and delete the whole thing, there is a sense in which it is not deleted. The better writer who remained behind is still there.

May it not be said of us that the millennium is a thousand years of peace that Christians love to fight about.