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Douglas Wilson

Douglas Wilson Books

Pastor

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“The ground for the necessity of Christian schools lies in this very thing, that no fact can be known unless it be known in its relationship to God. And once this point is clearly seen, the doubt as to the value of teaching arithmetic in Christian schools falls out of the picture. Of course arithmetic must be taught in a Christian school. It cannot be taught anywhere else.”

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Book:The Case for Classical Christian Education
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“Now it makes sense, for example, if the children are taking a vocabulary test of 100 words, and one of the kids misses thirteen of them, to give him an 87 percent. But we go far beyond this. A student writes an essay on a sunset, let us say, and the teacher writes 87 percent at the top of that paper. What he is saying, in effect, is that there is a mathematical metaphor operative here. The figure of 87 is to 100 what this submitted essay is . . . to what? What on earth is this supposed to mean?”

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Book:The Case for Classical Christian Education
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“So it is a grace and a gift from God to excel in your work. It is another gift from God to reap the benefits of excelling in your work. Though they usually go together (but not always), the two must not be confused, and the order of the two must never be reversed. Doing this will enable us to keep our priorities right where they are supposed to be: "A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold" (Prov. 22:1).”

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Book:Gashmu Saith It: How to Build Christian Communities that Save the World
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“One of the great accomplishments of the Reformation was the restoration of the idea of calling or vocation in every lawful endeavor. This abolished the old sacred/secular hierarchy, where it was assumed that if you were really sold out for Jesus you would be in a nunnery, or some other place that was equally high-minded. Being a merchant was kind of a tragic necessity, but somebody had to bring in the tithes. Unfortunately, this medieval mistake is creeping back in, having made great inroads in the evangelical world. What do people who are "sold out for Jesus" do now? We now call it "full time Christian work." But what other kind is there?”

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Book:Gashmu Saith It: How to Build Christian Communities that Save the World
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“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.”

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Book:Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life
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“You all are in a hopeless bind here. Standards are inescapable. Imposed standards are inescapable. You want to pretend that this is not the case, all the while vigorously telling us how you would impose them. The funniest thing about this is that you cannot see (or will not admit) what you are doing. We (conservative Christians) have a standard, we know the basis for it, and we are willing to live by it and defend it. You [progressives] have a standard, you are willing to impose it on the rest of us, but when called upon to defend or explain your standard (and why it is authoritative over all of us), you surround yourselves with a cloud of clichés. But no society can exist unless the adherents of the worldview in power are willing to act via the law as though the adherents of various minority views are just flat wrong. Just admit that this is what you are currently doing to us. The rest of your day will be sunny and filled with epistemic relief.”

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Book:Apologetics in the Void: Hometown Hurly-Burly
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“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.”

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Book:Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life
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“The blessing has been so significatn that we have continued our satiric tact [sic] with an additional objective in mind -- keeping the suits and haircuts away. Whenever a promising movement of the Holy Spirit begins nowadays, one of the first things that happens is that the agents, businessmen, and other assorted handlers move in so that they might straighten out certain unmarketable "blemishes" in order to take the show on the road. And when a promising ministry hits the big time, the unfortunate people in it are made twice as much sons of hell as their promoters. It is therefore our resolve to stay as unmarketable as we can. If we ever get invited to the Great Black Tie Banquet of Evangelicalism, we want everyone there to be braced for the moment when we, on a prearranged signal, throw our dinner rolls at Pat Robertson”

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Book:A Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire and Trinitarian Skylarking
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“If you are writing for an educated audience and, to take an example, you use the phrase mutatis mutandis, you are not showing off—you are communicating. You are using words to do what words are supposed to do. It reminds me of the time that someone complained to William F. Buckley about all the unusual words that he would employ. His reply was that the words were not unusual to him. Words are there for a reason, and foreign phrases can often do the trick that more homey phrases cannot. But if you are blogging about your adventures as a shopping mom, and you write about your purchase of a 48-pack of corn dogs at Costco, and you describe them as de provenance étrangère, it had better be a joke. Unusual words or phrases (foreign and domestic) are a barrier to understanding, unless the point is to communicate to the reader that you know something they don't. Then they understand what you are doing quite well.”

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Book:Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life
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“Modernity has abandoned the household gods, not because we have rejected the idolatry as all Christians must, but because we have rejected the very idea of the household. We no longer worship Vesta, but have only turned away from her because our homes no longer have any hearths. Now we worship Motor Oil. If our rejection of the old idols were Christian repentance, God would bless it, but what is actually happening is that we are sinking below the level of the ancient pagans. But when we turn to Christ in truth, we find that He has ordained every day of marriage as a proclamation of his covenant with the church. A man who embraces what is expected of him will find a good wife and a welcoming hearth. He who loves his wife loves himself.”

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Book:Angels in the Architecture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth
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“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.”

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Book:Black and Tan: Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America
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“Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.' (Prov. 27:17) In a similar way that conversation sharpens a man's countenance, conversation with men throughout history sharpens a man's mind... If this is the case, and it is, then a point should be made to seek out profitable companions in a disciplined fashion throughout your life with books.”

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Book:Wordsmithy: Hot Tips for the Writing Life
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“If anyone seriously thinks by going natural, he will be escaping The Establishment, finally getting away from The Man and from the clutches of the good corporations, I have a bit of bad news. The corporations are way ahead of you. There are high-powered boards sitting around half-an-acre mahogany tables on the thirty-third floors of skyscrapers in New York City, and they are meeting right this minute, and they are making decisions on the marketing of the ponderosa pine bark chips, lightly salted. If you slice them thin enough, they approach being edible”

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Book:Confessions of a Food Catholic
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“Many modern young men approach a girl, and they are quite serious as far as their intentions go, but they are afraid of interfering with her life. (…) But the whole point of courtship is to disrupt a young lady’s plans. A godly young woman is not going to stand around waiting for marriage. Rather, she will be preparing herself for marriage. This means she will be heading in some particular direction, and not just marking time. A young man should not be afraid of disrupting, because marriage is by it’s very nature a disruption of her previous way of life.”

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Author:Douglas Wilson
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