Douglas Wilson Collection (17 vols.)

by Douglas Jones; Douglas Wilson

Publisher:

Canon Press

, 1989–2006

Overview

The 17-volume Douglas Wilson Collection addresses the critical issues at the intersection of faith and culture, with the insight of a scholar and the heart of a pastor. A prolific author, Douglas Wilson writes on a number of subjects, including theology and philosophy, marriage and family issues, and history; he is also known for his pointed satire.

This collection includes seven books on marriage and family issues, in which Wilson ardently defends the institution of Christian marriage. Establishing faithful Christian culture begins in the home—with healthy marriages, strong relationships, and Christian education of children. Wilson is unafraid of theological controversy, and confronts open theism, racism, and philosophical problems, such as sovereignty and foreknowledge. Most importantly, Wilson demonstrates the viability of Christian teaching in an increasingly secular culture. These simple and practical books serve as a fresh antidote for a skeptical culture and a weary church.

Key Features

• Simple and practical guides for important social and cultural issues
• Subject indexes included in many volumes
• Appendixes and bibliographies included in many volumes for further reading and research
• All Scripture texts linked to your favorite version of the Bible

Product Details

• Title: Douglas Wilson Collection
• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Volumes: 17
• Pages: 2,645

Persuasions: A Dream of Reason Meeting Unbelief

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 1989
• Pages: 96

Sample Pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Persuasions follows Evangelist, one of the Master’s servants who walks along the road of life and talks to those he meets. Along the way he reasons with fellow travelers about a variety of questions—including atheism, marriage, and hypocrisy in the church. This story contains thought-provoking arguments which are not easily forgotten.

To a Thousand Generations: Infant Baptism—Covenant Mercy to the Children of God

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 1996
• Pages: 128

Sample Pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

In arguing for biblical infant baptism, it is not sufficient for us to say that infant baptism is merely consistent with the Scriptures, or that a biblical case can be made for it. In order for us to be satisfied that we are being biblical Christians, we must be content with nothing less than a clear biblical case requiring infant baptism.

Black and Tan: Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 128
• Pages: 2005

Sample Pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

If we want to understand contemporary American culture wars, we must first come to grips with the culture wars of the nineteenth century. That our nation did not remove slavery in a biblical way helps explain many of our contemporary social evils. But who is qualified to talk about such things? What is a biblical view of racism? Why do the biblical answers to such questions so infuriate the radical left and the radical right? This collection of essays lays out some of the answers from a view unafraid of historic biblical orthodoxy.

The Reverend Douglas Wilson may not be a professional historian, as his detractors say, but he has a strong grasp of the essentials of the history of slavery and its relation to Christian doctrine. Indeed, sad to say, his grasp is a great deal stronger than that of most professors of American history, whose distortions and trivializations disgrace our collection classrooms. And the Rev. Mr. Wilson is a fighter, especially effective in defense of Christianity against those who try to turn Jesus’ way of salvation into pseudo-moralistic drivel.

—Eugene Genovese, author of nine books, taught at Rutgers, University of Rochester, Yale, and Cambridge, and winner of the Bancroft Prize in American History

Bound Only Once: The Failure of Open Theism

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 2001
• Pages: 232

Sample Pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Open theists like to picture the God of classical Christian theism as a distant, despotic, micromanaging sovereign. The god of Open theism, on the other hand, is ready to enter into new experiences and to become deeply involved in helping us cope as we, with him, face things we simply did not know would happen. They insist that God has knowledge, but not all knowledge, certainly not knowledge of the future acts of free beings. Such Open theistic inferences reveal a deep-seated devotion to Enlightenment categories and narrow unpoetic imaginations.

Ideas have destinations, and one of the consequences of our trying to read the Scriptures without any poetry in our souls will be the eventual destruction of any possibility of ministering to souls. Just imaging the hymn writer trying to lift up the downcast—“I know not what the future holds, but I know who also doesn’t know much about it either.”

Bound Only Once is a useful, original, and helpful entry into this growing debate. It includes philosophical, biblical, and theological critique. . . . I commend it to those who are taking their first look at Open theism as well as those who are already deeply immersed in this profoundly important debate.

—John Armstrong

Federal Husband

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 1999
• Pages: 112

Sample Pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Federal thinking is foreign to the modern mind. “Federal” has come to mean nothing more than centralized or big. Because our federal government has become so uncovenantal, it is not surprising that the original meaning of the word is lost. But federal thinking is the backbone of historic Protestant theology, and the Church needs to recover the covenantal understanding of federal headship. Husbands are to lead their families, taking responsibility for them as covenant heads—as federal husbands.

Reforming Marriage, by this same author, began the discussion of covenant headship. This collection of essays, the Federal Husband, continues that discussion in greater depth, dealing with more specifics of federal husbandry.

Fidelity: What it Means to be a One-Woman Man

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 1999
• Pages: 176

Sample Pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

We live in a time when marital fidelity is under assault. Driven by forces of relativism, our society assaults sexual fidelity on numerous fronts. The push for homosexual marriages, for example, comes at the end of the fall into perversion, not the beginning. Faithless husbands began the fall long ago, and our culture, with all its washed-out self-help books, fails to address the real problem—sin.

Addressed to men, Fidelity hits hard, using clear language, focusing on specific sins with specific solutions: adultery, divorce, polygamy, celibacy, pornography, and more. But in the end, the antidote to all sexual temptation is simple—the godly honoring of the marriage bed.

For a Glory and Covering: A Practical Theology of Marriage

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 2006
• Pages: 176

Sample Pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

"Lord, here am I. Change him."

"God, I’m trying. She started it."

Common claims, but they’re so far from Trinitarian life. We invoke Christ at the wedding, but then seem to default to an alien theology afterward.

In this simple and practical book, Doug Wilson offers a richer and more comprehensive theology of marriage than in his prior works. Here he grounds marriage in the life of the Trinity and in the life of the church. Marriage is intended to be a glorious picture of the Gospel, and marriages grounded elsewhere regularly create a small hell on earth. Don’t miss the riches of marriage.

Future Men

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 2001
• Pages: 208

Sample Pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

As much as it may distress us, our boys are future men. When Theodore Roosevelt taught Sunday school for a time, a boy showed up one Sunday with a black eye. He admitted he had been fighting and on a Sunday, too. He told the future president that a bigger boy had been pinching his sister, and so he fought him. Roosevelt told him that he had done perfectly right and gave him a dollar. The stodgy vestrymen thought this was a bit much, and so they let their exuberant Sunday school teacher go. What a loss.

Unbelief cannot look past surfaces. Unbelief squashes, but faith teaches. Faith takes a boy aside and tells him that this part of what he did was good, while that other part of what he did got in the way. “And this is how to do it better next time.”

As we look to Scripture for patterns of masculinity for our sons, we find them manifested perfectly in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who set the ultimate pattern for friendship, for courage, for faithfulness, and integrity.

Joy at the End of the Tether: The Inscrutable Wisdom of Ecclesiastes

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 1999
• Pages: 128

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Most Christians view the book of Ecclesiastes as an enigma, a puzzle from which we might draw a few aphorisms but little else. Douglas Wilson’s fresh, lucid treatment of this wonderful book enables us to see that its message is not a confused riddle but an incisive indictment of “the wisdom of the world.” We learn that what we call “modernity” is simply a term for men sinning in old ways with new toys and tools. There is truly nothing new “under the sun,” and man’s problems today are exactly what they have been since the Fall. And the answer to man’s problem is just as old, yet forever new—“the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

Knowledge, Foreknowledge and the Gospel

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 1997
• Pages: 54

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We may be baffled by all this, but God is the foundation of all reason and order, and the problem does not perplex him. But a man attempting to determine what the everlasting God may or may not do in history as he inhabits eternity is like a June bug trying to do quantum physics. If God were to come down and explain, as Job wanted him to, none of us could follow his arguments. In this book, Douglas Wilson outlines God’s knowledge and our inability to fully understand it.

My Life for Yours: A Walk through the Christian Home

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 2004
• Pages: 174

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How does life in each room of your home manifest the Gospel? The Christian Gospel isn’t just a spiritual reality. The Word became flesh and bone, and the Gospel becomes our porch, dining room, bedroom, and kitchen.

The driving desire of the Gospel is “my life for yours.” Our desire should be to have this love transform everything we do, room by room. This book works its way through every part of the house, examining each part in light of Scripture. The claims of God are always total, and this is evident on the doorposts and in a sink full of dishes.

Self-centeredness destroys in monotonously similar ways. Giving up life for another produces a harvest of kindness and mercy. Household questions should always begin with, “is this my life for yours?”

A Serrated Edge: A Brief Defense of Biblical Satire and Trinitarian Skylarking

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 2003
• Pages: 121

Sample Pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Satire is a kind of preaching. Satire pervades Scripture. Satire treats the foibles of sinners with a less than perfect tenderness. But if a Christian employs satire today, he is almost immediately called to account for his unbiblical behavior.

Yet Scripture shows that the central point of some religious controversies is to give offense. When Christ was confronted with ecclesiastical obstinacy and other forms of arrogance, he showed us a godly pattern for giving offense.

In every controversy, godliness and wisdom (or the lack of them) are to be determined by careful appeal to the Scriptures and not to the fact of people having taken offense. Perhaps they ought to have taken offense, and perhaps someone ought to have endeavored to give it.

Reformed Is Not Enough: Recovering the Objectivity of the Covenant

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 2002
• Pages: 208

Sample Pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

Suppose a husband is committing adultery. Is he still a husband? Being a husband is not just a state of mind; it’s not just a private decision. Being a husband is a public relationship made from a public exchange of vows, and objective covenant. An adulterous husband is a covenant-breaking husband but still a husband. Being a husband is what makes his infidelity so horrendous.

In the same way, when people are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they are ushered into an objective, visible, covenant relationship. Regardless of the state of their heart, regardless of any hypocrisy, regardless of whether or not they mean it, such people are now visible saints, Christians. Membership in the Christian faith is objective—it can be photographed and fingerprinted. In baptism, God names us and imposes gracious obligations upon us.

Multitudes of faithless, corrupt Christians show that they do not believe what God said at their baptism. They live like adulterous husbands. But the tragedy is that many conscientious conservative Christians also do not believe what God said at their baptism.

Reforming Marriage

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 1995, 2005
• Pages: 144

Sample Pages 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

How would you describe the spiritual aroma of your home? The source of this aroma is the relationship between husband and wife. Many can fake an attempt at keeping God’s standards in some external way. What we cannot fake is resulting, distinctive aroma of pleasure to God. Most marriage books address the mere externals of marriage, without seeking to understand the heart issues. Godly marriages proceed from an obedient heart, and the greatest desire of an obedient heart is the glory of God, not the happiness of the household.

Standing On the Promises: A Handbook of Biblical Childrearing

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 1997
• Pages: 176

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God has designed each family to be a culture—with a language, customs, traditions, and countless unspoken assumptions. The culture of the family intimately shapes the children who grow up in it. It is the duty of the father to ensure that the shaping takes place according to biblical wisdom.

Some fathers establish a rebellious culture for their children and bring upon their children the wrath of God, sometimes for generations. Other fathers fail to establish any distinct culture, and outside cultures rush to fill the void.

Through the Messiah, God promised blessings to his people, “their children, and their children’s children forever.” The norm for faithful members of the covenant is that their children will follow them in their faithfulness. The oddity should be children who fall away. Unless we reestablish faithful Christian culture in countless homes, we will never reestablish it anywhere else.

The Paideia of God: And Other Essays on Education

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 1999
• Pages: 160

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In Ephesians 6:4, Paul writes, “And, you fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” In this passage, Paul requires Christian fathers to provide their children with a “paideia of the Lord.” To the ancient world, the boundaries of paideia were much wider than the boundaries of what we understand as education. Far more is involved in paideia than taking the kids to church, having an occasional time of devotions in the home, or even providing the kids with a Christian curriculum.

In the ancient world, the paideia was all-encompassing and involved nothing less than the enculturation of the future citizen. He was enculturated when he was instructed in the classroom, but the process was also occurring when he walked along the streets of his city to and from school. The idea of paideia was central to the ancient classical mind, and Paul’s instruction here consequently had profound ramifications.

Angels in The Architecture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth

• Author: Douglas Wilson
• Publisher: Canon Press
• Publication Date: 1998
• Pages: 224

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Christianity presents a glorious vision for culture, a vision overflowing with truth, beauty, and goodness. It’s a vision that stands in stark contrast with the anemic modern (and postmodern) perspectives that dominate contemporary life. Medieval Christianity began telling a beautiful story about the good life, but it was silenced mid-sentence. The Reformation rescued truth, but its modern grandchildren have often ignored the importance of a medieval grasp of the good life. This book sketches a vision of “Medieval Protestantism,” a personal and cultural vision that embraces the fullness of Christian truth, beauty, and goodness.

Angels in the Architecture is a unique contribution, bringing back to a somewhat desiccated and feeble Protestantism a full flagon of the rich wine of God’s bountiful creation. The answer to the crass sensuality and self-indulgence of materialism is not to be found only, or chiefly, in the austerity of a hermit’s cave and a diet of dry bread and stale water, but in a legitimate and joyful appropriation of beauty, bounty, and covenant love.

—Harold O. J. Brown, Professor, Reformed Theological Seminary, and contributing editor for Christianity Today

In the midst of a world seemingly gone made, Angels in the Architecture demonstrates that peculiarly biblical worldview has actually been lived out before, however imperfectly, by the medievals who have gone before us. It simultaneously holds out the promise that it may actually be lived out once again.

—George Grant

About Douglas Wilson

Douglas Wilson graduated from the University of Idaho with a B.A. in classical studies and an M.A. in philosophy. He is pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, and Senior Fellow in Theology at New Saint Andrews College. He is also the founder and editor of Credenda/Agenda magazine.