Until Another Comes and Examines Him

Jesus commands righteous judgment.

“Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment” (John 7:24 LSB).

He said this to men condemning His work on the Sabbath. They claimed to defend God’s law while mishandling the law before them. Christ called them to judge the matter truthfully. His command governs the Christian who brings an accusation and the Christian who answers it.

“The first to plead his case seems right, Until another comes and examines him” (Proverbs 18:17 LSB).

I applied this teaching to household disputes in You Are Not Your Own. The same duty governs public controversy. Hear the charge, examine the evidence, and name the sin that the evidence establishes. Every participant remains answerable to Christ, whose authority extends to our public speech (Matthew 28:18-20).

The dispute surrounding Will Spencer’s appearance at New Saint Andrews College puts that duty before us. Erick Erickson made serious accusations about men and institutions on the political right in “The Midwestern Führerbunker Driving the Right Off the Cliff.” Spencer promoted the article. Doug Wilson answered in “Thoughts on the Eric Erickson Imbroglio.” The New Christian Right published an account of students questioning Spencer, “Moscow’s Mutiny: Doug Wilson’s Iron Curtain is Falling.” The Antioch Declaration supplies part of the theological setting.

I have read the free preview of The New Christian Right’s article. I have not seen the paid remainder or a recording of the Q&A. I read Erickson’s article in full without auditing every source behind it. What follows judges what was published, and if the recording shows otherwise, I will correct it.

Wilson’s September 23 response confirms Spencer’s appearance the preceding Friday and reports Ben Merkle’s defense of American Moment and Scott Yenor. Wilson praised the lecture while objecting to Erickson’s broad accusations.

The New Christian Right calls the encounter a mutiny. Its account shows students challenging a guest. A claim that those students represent a revolt against Wilson needs evidence about their purposes and the extent of that revolt. The article does not establish it.

God’s law makes the accuser responsible for his testimony. Deuteronomy 19:15-20 requires corroborating witnesses and diligent inquiry in Israel’s courts. A malicious witness faces judgment for the injury he intended. The judges must examine the charge and the man bringing it.

A writer holds a different office from Israel’s judges. He still owes his neighbor truthful testimony. Repeating an allegation spreads it; corroboration supplies additional grounds for believing it. Ten accounts copied from one report still depend on that report. A recording must be examined for authenticity and context.

First Timothy 5:19-21 carries the concern into church discipline. Paul requires witnesses for an accusation against an elder, commands reproof of those continuing in sin, and charges Timothy to act impartially. Church officers must protect the innocent and confront established sin. A writer can expose an error in a published argument while respecting the church’s authority to adjudicate disciplinary charges.

Leviticus 19:15-18 joins impartial judgment, truthful treatment, rebuke, and neighbor-love. God commands the man bringing correction to treat his neighbor justly. The man receiving correction owes God a truthful answer.

The Westminster Larger Catechism (Orthodox Presbyterian Church edition) applies this duty directly to speech. Question 144 calls for “unwillingness to admit of an evil report.” Question 145 condemns “receiving and countenancing evil reports,” “stopping our ears against just defense,” “misconstructing intentions, words, and actions,” and “scornful contempt.”

The Catechism judges how a man handles a report, hears an answer, assigns motives, and treats an opponent. Its biblical requirements bind every Christian in this dispute, including its readers.

I am sympathetic toward men calling Christians to exercise strength and conviction in public life. I hold without hesitation what Scripture says of the Jews, set out below from Romans 11. I am testing, one at a time and by that same standard, the claims about race and about Jewish influence in American life now circulating among men I otherwise stand with. My sympathies answer to the same commands as everyone else’s.

Erickson’s opening places a group under grave accusations involving racial grievance, white nationalism, antisemitism, and Nazi sympathies. Later, he describes Scott Yenor’s role in an organization and American Moment’s funding. Even if Erickson reports those relationships accurately, they prove far less than his opening charges. He does not show that the man or the institution holds or advances the beliefs he condemns.

Wilson identifies the same defect in transferring a donor’s views to people associated with recipients of his money. Merkle’s defense raises two disputed cases. That defense deserves examination; his friendship supplies no automatic acquittal. A finding of complicity must show what the accused knew, endorsed, or helped accomplish. The inference from a donor relationship alone to ideological guilt is unjust.

According to The New Christian Right’s account, he answered the challenge partly by observing that people with objectionable politics can report true facts. That observation is sound. The student had raised a different obligation: justify the recommendation of an article making these accusations. If the account is fair, Spencer never justified recommending the article. The full exchange is needed before judging everything Spencer said or his manner in saying it.

The student’s reported demand for repentance has a burden of its own. The same account says he charged Spencer with slandering men he defended as patriots and allies. A man’s service and friendships matter when describing him. A charge of slander still needs the false allegation identified and its falsity demonstrated. The student owes Spencer the same fair hearing he seeks for the men he defends.

The New Christian Right’s claim that the Antioch Declaration is a “personal grudge document” assigns a motive to its authors. The article fails to establish that motive. Its claim that Wilson abandoned his convictions needs a comparison of his actual teaching over time. Former allies can disagree sharply about the application of principles they continue to share. A writer must show the doctrinal change he alleges.

The declaration itself permits criticism of destructive acts by particular Jews, affirms national affection, and confesses salvation through Christ for Jew and Gentile. It also denies that Judaism represents an exceptional threat to Christian peoples. I will examine that proposition with the hard texts open.

First Thessalonians 2:14-16 describes the suffering of the Judean churches and condemns the Jewish persecutors who killed the Lord and the prophets, drove out the apostles, and hindered preaching to the Gentiles. Paul speaks of their hostility in severe, collective terms. He identifies the acts that bear the charge.

Acts gives repeated accounts of such opposition. Jewish opponents contradict Paul’s preaching and stir up persecution in Pisidian Antioch (Acts 13:45, 50). Unbelieving Jews turn Gentiles against the brothers at Iconium; Jews from Pisidian Antioch and Iconium later win over the crowds at Lystra and stone Paul (Acts 14:2, 19). The Jews of Thessalonica form a mob and then pursue the work into Berea (Acts 17:5, 13). These passages describe concerted opposition to the gospel. They also distinguish the opponents from Jews who believed (Acts 13:43; 14:1; 17:4, 12).

The Judaizing teachers in Galatians threaten the church from within. Paul confronts the demand for circumcision and the attempt to seek justification through law (Galatians 2:3-5; 5:2-12). In Revelation 2:9 and 3:9, Christ calls the assemblies opposing His churches a “synagogue of Satan” (LSB). He judges their blasphemy and false claim to covenant standing. These texts authorize severe judgment of actual religious evil and organized hostility.

Any reading of the declaration that excludes such judgments contradicts Scripture. Christians must be free to identify a particular religious body as a grave threat where its teaching and conduct establish that judgment. Equal guilt under sin, taught in Romans 3:9, leaves the relative power of particular institutions to be examined on the evidence. The declaration’s authors owe readers clarity about the scope of their denial.

The same texts bind the declaration’s critics to the people, acts, and circumstances God identifies. Paul can condemn persecutors together because they share in the persecution. Extending that charge to present-day persons requires evidence about those persons. Jewish ancestry supplies no proof that a man took part in another man’s wrongdoing. Claims about a continuing institution or coordinated campaign must establish that continuity and cooperation.

Romans 11 governs the church’s speech about Israel:

“From the standpoint of the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God’s choice they are beloved for the sake of the fathers” (Romans 11:28 LSB).

Paul holds gospel enmity and God’s electing purpose before the same Gentile readers. He warns them against boasting over the branches and commands them to fear God (Romans 11:17-22). Romans 11:25-26 speaks of the fullness of the Gentiles and the salvation of Israel through the Deliverer. The postmillennial hope confessed here expects the gospel to bring the nations to Christ, and Jews with them. Paul says those broken off will be grafted in again if they do not continue in unbelief (Romans 11:23). The Larger Catechism teaches the church to pray for “the Jews called” (WLC 191).

That hope gives Christian witness its purpose. Rabbinic Judaism’s denial of Jesus as Messiah must be judged under 1 John 2:22-23. Jewish people must hear the gospel of justification through Christ, as Gentiles must (Romans 3:22-30). The church prays for their salvation and opposes teaching that keeps them from Christ. Believing Jews and Gentiles have access to the Father through Him (Ephesians 2:13-18).

These distinctions expose a defect in The New Christian Right’s own wording. It calls its subject “the Jew Lobby” and alleges coordination “by the head of a foreign state, contrary to U.S. law.” The foreign-direction allegation is unsupported in the free preview. So is its accompanying legal charge. A writer making either claim must document the direction, identify the actors, and establish the legal basis.

The ethnic label makes the charge broader and less exact. The article moves among a named lobbying organization, religious teaching, Israeli policy, and Jews as a people. Each has a different membership and different responsibilities. Using “the Jew Lobby” to carry that movement conflates ancestry with the political agency that the argument must prove. Its description of the “Jewishizing of the political right” likewise leaves the supposed change undefined. A criticism of particular doctrines or policies should identify those doctrines or policies. These formulations invite suspicion of a people while leaving the actual charge imprecise.

The same account reports Spencer invoking Yoram Hazony, a Jewish supporter of public Christianity. If the report is accurate, Hazony answers the claim that all Jews oppose public Christianity. He settles nothing about the particular actors the student had in view.

Scripture gives us severe names for serious evil. Jesus says, “You fools and blind men!” (Matthew 23:17 LSB). He also condemns contemptuous abuse in Matthew 5:22. Colossians 3:8 commands Christians to put away abusive speech. Peter forbids “reviling for reviling” (1 Peter 3:9 LSB). Righteous rebuke serves truth, repentance, protection, and justice.

Four questions govern the use of a severe name. Is it true? Does Scripture warrant the moral category? Does the evidence support the scope of the judgment? What is the speech doing to the hearer and the person accused? One act may establish a fault in that act. A judgment of a man’s settled character needs evidence of that character. First Corinthians 4:5 reserves the disclosure of hidden motives to the Lord.

The New Christian Right says Spencer was “clearly taken aback by multi-syllabic words and full sentences when pointed in his direction.” This presents supposed intellectual incapacity as the explanation for a difficult answer. Nothing in the article establishes such incapacity. The sentence invites the reader to despise the speaker. That is scornful contempt. It also says that “anyone capable of attacking the Christian Nationalists and sounding only slightly less than retarded will get a plane ticket and a tour of Moscow, Idaho.” There “retarded” functions as an insult, with no demonstrated moral category or argument for the asserted defect. These are sinful uses of speech. The writer must retract them and answer the argument he opposes.

Erickson must likewise establish the scope of his grave labels. He classifies men by their associations, and the facts he gives do not carry that weight. His conclusion turns the imagery of the last judgment on present opponents: “Some of the goats have empowered themselves to separate neighbor from neighbor, Christian from Christian, and people from their own families, all to advance a perverted utopia where they can rule in their own image.” A writer using that category bears responsibility for identifying the conduct and showing the warrant for applying it. The charge receives the same examination as the men it condemns.

The declaration’s authors use the language of wolves. Scripture warrants that category for teachers who prey on Christ’s flock. Applying it to a particular contemporary teacher demands evidence of the destructive teaching and conduct. Wilson’s endorsement of a speaker carries responsibility for what he commends, just as Spencer’s endorsement of an article does. Their reputations leave that duty intact.

The students must support the accusations within their questions. Spencer must answer the substance of a substantiated objection. The recording remains necessary for a complete judgment of those exchanges. Each has a duty to hear an answer that may correct him.

I bear the same burden. I have judged quoted words and named inferences. Calling a sentence contemptuous judges what that sentence does in context. Claiming knowledge of its author’s hidden heart or entire character would exceed the evidence presented here. If I have misquoted or misread anyone, I will correct it plainly.

James 3:1 places teachers under stricter judgment. Second Timothy 2:24-26 commands patient correction directed toward repentance. Sinful irritation uses another man’s humiliation to discharge anger. Faithful leadership brings the charge into the light and allows it to be tested. Intellectual dominance pressures a hearer to submit to the speaker. Love seeks the offender’s restoration before God; control seeks compliance with the person exercising it.

A false public accusation calls for a public correction that identifies the error. Contempt calls for confession and a truthful acknowledgment to the person wronged. The men who received the first report should be able to learn what was retracted and why. Repentance bears fruit in the treatment of the injured neighbor.

Christ reigns now, and He commands the work of reformation. The church must speak against established evil and receive correction for its own sins. Her hope rests in the Savior who brings the nations under His Word, calls His people out of unbelief, and grants repentance through His sovereign grace.