"When this article speaks of them being ‘worse’ it speaks, in part, as if they didn’t reach a standard that was higher than the entire rest of the world."
Yes, that is the standard God set for them - they were more privileged in revelation than the rest of the world, and they did not meet it. This is standard Bible doctrine. Pastor Wilson speaks of "antisemitism" as the act of the heart or mouth whereby one attributes to the Jews a more profound evil effect in the world through their sins than anyone else. My argument was in part that the Bible itself says that about them. This cannot be the definition of antisemitism. I am not arguing, believing, or propounding any extremely specific tropes about blood drinking, nor do I need to in order to make my point, which is simply that to receive much light and then turn away from it is to become deeply evil, as the converse to having been deep in the light. Think Lucifer here.
"And thus much will be required of the Jews.
But not by us. It is God who will require of the Jews, and of others, in accordance to what they have been given. It is not our job. So to the extent that someone wishes to promote their anti-semitism under the ‘higher standard’ theory, it won’t wash."
Actually, justice requires all of us to recognize things for what they are, so it is indeed our duty to see evil, say what it is, and prescribe what is right to rectify the wrong. God demands this of us. That's why we talk so much about hypocrisy and double standards - these are the hallmarks of unjust behavior that we rightly hate, because God hates injustice the most. And, not to mention, evangelism demands a right judgment about a person or people or nation, so that we might give the law in its right application. I do not hammer my children over the law against adultery. I do not require of Muslims to be more modest. I do not treat the Jews like any other sinner - their core identity as Christ deniers calls for a specific sort of preaching and admonishment that we must do if we love them and wish to see them restored to the covenant.
"So now we come to J. Adam making out that Jews are the worst sinners on the planet. That they are uniquely evil." I did not mean to make the former claim, and it does not necessitate the latter, "that they are uniquely evil." They are certainly *as* evil in their unbelief as a tribe or religion can be, but apostate Christians can transcend a Jew's sin, or Jewish sin writ large.
The difference here is that Jews are a unique type of sinner, which no one else can be. Their sin is spoken to very directly and harshly in the Scriptures, to the degree that Paul says " What then? Israel has not obtained what it seeks; but the elect have obtained it, and the rest were blinded. Just as it is written:
“God has given them a spirit of stupor,
Eyes that they should not see
And ears that they should not hear,
To this very day.”
And David says:
“Let their table become a snare and a trap,
A stumbling block and a recompense to them.
Let their eyes be darkened, so that they do not see,
And bow down their back always" (Rom 11:7-10 NKJV).
They incur literal curses from the mouths of their own fathers due to the nature of their unbelief and rebellion.
You also impute to me the notion that the Jews have done worse than any other religion. Have I never heard of Islam and Nazis and Communists? What Muslims do is not done with the same high-handed rebellion as the Jews. The Nazis were just another pagan blood cult like the Communists, but they never could quite match the number of murders of the Kings of Blood, the Communist/Socialist cultists. In fact, who was at the headwaters of Communist theory, revolution, and propaganda almost in every case around the world? Jewish academics. Men rebelling against the Christian order, attempting to bring an antichristian revolution of blood to cover the world and erase Jesus from every land. Yes, I would say there is a strong case to be made that Jews have a particular magnetic attraction to violent ideologies that create untold suffering and mayhem. That's the result of being explicitly anti-Logos, anti-Jesus, anti-Church.
On your point re: what about the Scriptures condemning Gentiles too? Yes, of course. huge swaths of OT Scripture are railings against the nations. Their practical evils can be just as vile as the worst Israel has ever produced. My point, again, is not to compare crimes and see who has done worse. It is the theological assessment that to be Jewish in unbelief is a more aggravating form of rebellion and unbelief that almost any other in history. It is conscious rebellion against the light. Jews, with their higher intelligence and shrewdness, tend to punch above their weight class in the annals of evil, but this does not ignore or preclude Gentile evil. We are all in Adam and there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile in how badly we need the Savior, or in how to have Him through confession and faith.
One more comment: "But let me also point out that much of what goes on in his post is, literally, none of our business. Are the Jews sinners? Well, then, our job is to preach the gospel… not to call them out as uniquely evil. Britain and the United States sent missionaries to Darkest Africa… and right now Darkest Africa is considering sending missionaries back.
I believe that a huge portion of the problem of anti-semitism is people who are building a case against people who are not in their court, not under their jurisdiction."
Flatly reject. If a specific type of person keeps coming into my neighborhood committing heinous crimes, and the police ask me for a description, I need to know who I am dealing with in order to begin the process of justice. There will be little progress in calling on Jewish unbelievers to repent and believe in Christ if we do not know (refuse to see) what their sin is like and how they are fighting against God. Simple as that. Paul knew this. The verses you cite about Gentile wickedness point to this. We must know who is who, and how to deal with any given type of people.
And so, for Pastor Wilson to basically bar good Christian men from criticizing Jewish sin *as* Jewish sin, like you are seeming to do, is to mute our preaching to them. I cannot abide this.
I believe we actually all have the same goals in mind, to be fair. The glory of God and the rescuing of sinners, the Jew first and also the Greek.
>>Flatly reject. If a specific type of person keeps coming into my neighborhood committing heinous crimes, and the police ask me for a description,
There are several things wrong with this answer:
1) They don' t 'keep coming into your neighborhood'. At least I know of nowhere in the world where the Jews 'keep coming in' to commit crimes. In general they stay where they are, and when they move it is usually because they were forced out.
2) Committing heinous crimes. That is literally one of the issues we are discussing, and a review of your comment above shows that what you accuse them of is 'being strangely attracted to... ideologies'... not as being the ones that commit the crimes. It was not, by and large, Jewish soldiers in the Holdomor, it was Christians, or lapsed Christians. The Armenian Genocide was not largely Jewish.
3) 'The police come and ask you'... what police have come and asked you? You responded to a post by Doug Wilson... not a request for information by the FBI.
Thank you. Allow me some quote replies.
"When this article speaks of them being ‘worse’ it speaks, in part, as if they didn’t reach a standard that was higher than the entire rest of the world."
Yes, that is the standard God set for them - they were more privileged in revelation than the rest of the world, and they did not meet it. This is standard Bible doctrine. Pastor Wilson speaks of "antisemitism" as the act of the heart or mouth whereby one attributes to the Jews a more profound evil effect in the world through their sins than anyone else. My argument was in part that the Bible itself says that about them. This cannot be the definition of antisemitism. I am not arguing, believing, or propounding any extremely specific tropes about blood drinking, nor do I need to in order to make my point, which is simply that to receive much light and then turn away from it is to become deeply evil, as the converse to having been deep in the light. Think Lucifer here.
"And thus much will be required of the Jews.
But not by us. It is God who will require of the Jews, and of others, in accordance to what they have been given. It is not our job. So to the extent that someone wishes to promote their anti-semitism under the ‘higher standard’ theory, it won’t wash."
Actually, justice requires all of us to recognize things for what they are, so it is indeed our duty to see evil, say what it is, and prescribe what is right to rectify the wrong. God demands this of us. That's why we talk so much about hypocrisy and double standards - these are the hallmarks of unjust behavior that we rightly hate, because God hates injustice the most. And, not to mention, evangelism demands a right judgment about a person or people or nation, so that we might give the law in its right application. I do not hammer my children over the law against adultery. I do not require of Muslims to be more modest. I do not treat the Jews like any other sinner - their core identity as Christ deniers calls for a specific sort of preaching and admonishment that we must do if we love them and wish to see them restored to the covenant.
"So now we come to J. Adam making out that Jews are the worst sinners on the planet. That they are uniquely evil." I did not mean to make the former claim, and it does not necessitate the latter, "that they are uniquely evil." They are certainly *as* evil in their unbelief as a tribe or religion can be, but apostate Christians can transcend a Jew's sin, or Jewish sin writ large.
The difference here is that Jews are a unique type of sinner, which no one else can be. Their sin is spoken to very directly and harshly in the Scriptures, to the degree that Paul says " What then? Israel has not obtained what it seeks; but the elect have obtained it, and the rest were blinded. Just as it is written:
“God has given them a spirit of stupor,
Eyes that they should not see
And ears that they should not hear,
To this very day.”
And David says:
“Let their table become a snare and a trap,
A stumbling block and a recompense to them.
Let their eyes be darkened, so that they do not see,
And bow down their back always" (Rom 11:7-10 NKJV).
They incur literal curses from the mouths of their own fathers due to the nature of their unbelief and rebellion.
You also impute to me the notion that the Jews have done worse than any other religion. Have I never heard of Islam and Nazis and Communists? What Muslims do is not done with the same high-handed rebellion as the Jews. The Nazis were just another pagan blood cult like the Communists, but they never could quite match the number of murders of the Kings of Blood, the Communist/Socialist cultists. In fact, who was at the headwaters of Communist theory, revolution, and propaganda almost in every case around the world? Jewish academics. Men rebelling against the Christian order, attempting to bring an antichristian revolution of blood to cover the world and erase Jesus from every land. Yes, I would say there is a strong case to be made that Jews have a particular magnetic attraction to violent ideologies that create untold suffering and mayhem. That's the result of being explicitly anti-Logos, anti-Jesus, anti-Church.
On your point re: what about the Scriptures condemning Gentiles too? Yes, of course. huge swaths of OT Scripture are railings against the nations. Their practical evils can be just as vile as the worst Israel has ever produced. My point, again, is not to compare crimes and see who has done worse. It is the theological assessment that to be Jewish in unbelief is a more aggravating form of rebellion and unbelief that almost any other in history. It is conscious rebellion against the light. Jews, with their higher intelligence and shrewdness, tend to punch above their weight class in the annals of evil, but this does not ignore or preclude Gentile evil. We are all in Adam and there is no distinction between Jew and Gentile in how badly we need the Savior, or in how to have Him through confession and faith.
One more comment: "But let me also point out that much of what goes on in his post is, literally, none of our business. Are the Jews sinners? Well, then, our job is to preach the gospel… not to call them out as uniquely evil. Britain and the United States sent missionaries to Darkest Africa… and right now Darkest Africa is considering sending missionaries back.
I believe that a huge portion of the problem of anti-semitism is people who are building a case against people who are not in their court, not under their jurisdiction."
Flatly reject. If a specific type of person keeps coming into my neighborhood committing heinous crimes, and the police ask me for a description, I need to know who I am dealing with in order to begin the process of justice. There will be little progress in calling on Jewish unbelievers to repent and believe in Christ if we do not know (refuse to see) what their sin is like and how they are fighting against God. Simple as that. Paul knew this. The verses you cite about Gentile wickedness point to this. We must know who is who, and how to deal with any given type of people.
And so, for Pastor Wilson to basically bar good Christian men from criticizing Jewish sin *as* Jewish sin, like you are seeming to do, is to mute our preaching to them. I cannot abide this.
I believe we actually all have the same goals in mind, to be fair. The glory of God and the rescuing of sinners, the Jew first and also the Greek.
>>Flatly reject. If a specific type of person keeps coming into my neighborhood committing heinous crimes, and the police ask me for a description,
There are several things wrong with this answer:
1) They don' t 'keep coming into your neighborhood'. At least I know of nowhere in the world where the Jews 'keep coming in' to commit crimes. In general they stay where they are, and when they move it is usually because they were forced out.
2) Committing heinous crimes. That is literally one of the issues we are discussing, and a review of your comment above shows that what you accuse them of is 'being strangely attracted to... ideologies'... not as being the ones that commit the crimes. It was not, by and large, Jewish soldiers in the Holdomor, it was Christians, or lapsed Christians. The Armenian Genocide was not largely Jewish.
3) 'The police come and ask you'... what police have come and asked you? You responded to a post by Doug Wilson... not a request for information by the FBI.