The Jury’s Still Out | (Ep. 417)

In this episode, Douglas Wilson argues that the jury is still out on Trump’s tariffs, and the predicted instantaneous ruin did not materialize. He continues his hamartiological curriculum on miaino, or defilement, tracing its use from ceremonial uncleanness to moral corruption, bitterness, and false teaching, before closing with a review of Augustine and the Jews by Paula Fredrickson.

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What is Plodcast?

In the Plodcast, pastor Douglas Wilson covers anything related to theology and culture with his usual entertaining style. Whether it involves talking about Chestertonian Calvinism (not an oxymoron), the benefits of a Classical Christian education (not in that order), or the latest pomosexuality farce, the plodcast aims to apply all of Christ to all of life, for all the world. Douglas Wilson is an evangelical, postmill, Calvinist, Reformed, and Presbyterian (pretty much in that order) and is politically to the right of Jeb Stuart.

Yeah, it's gone. Welcome to the podcast. My name is Douglas Wilson. This is episode 417, 417 for those of you keeping track. So I want to talk a little bit about tariffs. Trump's tariffs. And the line I want to take years, as I believe, the jury is still out on Trump's tariffs, but I would put a dash there and say mostly the jury's still out mostly, but there's some areas in the debate over in the debate over tariffs. There's some areas where the debate is settled when Trump was first rattling a saber when he was first implementing all these tariffs and applied them all over, you know, all the different countries. And when it was a front page story every night when there was a lot of hubbub and ruckus about it, much of the opposition to Trump's tariffs was opposition that predicted instantaneous ruin. So if Trump applied these tariffs to all these other countries, then we were going to go over the cliff. There was going to be, you know, whether it was stock market crash or runaway inflation, ruin relationship with other countries, you know, it was going to be according to these people, there was going to be a conflagration. And it was going to be a conflagration right away. They weren't saying things like, you know, these tariffs are bad policy and it's going to light a slow fuse and we're really going to be sorry 50 years from now. No, that's not what they were saying. What they were doing was shrieking hysterically, trying to head off the implementation of these tariffs. And in order to scare people, you've got to scare people in the present. You can't frighten people by saying, if you do this thing, your great, great, great grandchildren will suffer dearly. Now you might, if you've run into someone who's really altruistic or someone with time on their hands and they want to debate someone like you, you might get a rise out of them. You might get some sort of discussion. But that's very different than coming into someone's living room and saying your addicts on fire, get everybody out. So that kind of thing is looking for action now, reaction now. We need to deal with it now. And so consequently, the opponents of Trump's tariffs, most of them, I think there were some judicious observers who don't think much of them, but they're not the ones who are breathing into a paper bag hysterically. And so we know that whether or not Trump's tariffs put a bunch of money in the bank, whether or not there will be massive dividends to the average American, whether or not we're going to deal with the national debt by this means, whether or not any of those positive claims for the tariffs are true. The negative we know for a fact that the negative threats are not true. Now if the Wall Street Journal or other people came out and said if Trump applies these tariffs, there will be really deleterious effects in the next two to five years. That claim of opposition, I would say, will the jury still out on that? Why? Because we're just a year or so in. And the prediction was made outside that time frame. I want to ask you all to remember how frantic everybody was trying to keep those tariffs from being applied. And they apparently would say pretty much anything. And so hear me carefully, whether or not the tariffs are good policy, whether or not they will fulfill all the promises made for them. Those promises that were made for the tariffs were promises that were down the road, down stream. The promises of disaster were not down the road, down stream threats. They were saying this is going to happen right now. We do this thing. We're done. But low. We're not done. So we're continuing to work our way through our homeratological curriculum. And we've now come to me, I know, me, I know, M-I-A-I-N-O, me, I know, which means to defile, to defile. And this word is used four times in the New Testament. And only one of them has to do with ceremonial defilement as opposed to moral defilement. So three out of four, talking about moral defilement, one out of four is talking about ceremonial defilement. So let's start with that one. John 1828. When led the Jesus from Caiaphas, under the Hall of Judgment, and it was early, and they themselves went not into the Judgment Hall, lest they should be defiled, there's our word, but that they might eat the Passover. So they go from Caiaphas over to Pilate's house. And it says here in John 18 that it was very early. The Palm Sunday crowd is all home in bed. When Jesus was tried, they arrested him the way they did at night because they were afraid of the crowds. They tried him at night because they were afraid of the crowds. And they showed up at Pilate's house first thing in the morning, very early. It was early. And that indicates perhaps this was by pre-arrangement, like we're going to come early, you better be ready. And they brought their own mob with them. And they brought a safe mob with them. And then they wouldn't go into Pilate's house because they didn't want to be defiled so that they could eat the Passover. So look at them. They are right in the middle of perpetuating the most grotesque crime that has ever been committed on this planet, which is saying something, right? And they are being fastidious about not going into Pilate's house. That would be bad and God might not like it. We're trying to kill his son. But God might not like it if we go into Pilate's house. You know, Jesus tells the parable of the keepers of the vineyard, how the owner of the vineyard goes away and he sends different messengers and they rough them up and beat him up and kill some. And finally, the owner of the vineyard sends his son. And the keepers of the vineyard say, look, here's the heir. Let's kill him. And then the vineyard will be ours. And let's say they're going to lynch the son of the owner of the vineyard. And one of them is so excited at the prospect of killing the son. He lights up a cigar because he does that whenever he gets excited. And one of the other keepers of the vineyard taps the sign on the side of the building that the owner of the vineyard put up, no smoking. He says, no smoking. You know, this is a strain at the Nat swallow the camel situation. They do something comparable when Judas threw the blood money down on the temple and they were hyper scrupulous about which account they put it in. They've got to be above reproach. They were thinking, you know, we don't want to be embarrassed at the next audit. We want to make sure that this blood money that we paid in order to kill God's son is in the right column, you know, jeepers. So that's them being worried about not being defiled by pilots house. The other three uses have to do with moral development. This verse in Titus uses the word twice, okay, Titus 115. Under the pure, all things are pure, but under them that are defiled and unbelieving, there's nothing pure, but even their mind and conscience is defiled. So when it comes to what you eat and drink, Paul teaches that defiled men bring their defilement with them. Defiled men bring their defilement with them. So if you defile yourself with food and drink, there's nothing wrong with the food and drink. There's something wrong with you. So if you are defiled with food and drink, the thing that defiled you was the thing you brought in your heart, not the thing you put in your mouth. And Jesus teaches this explicitly, if not what goes into a man's mouth that makes him unclean, what comes out of his mouth that makes him unclean? When it comes to in Hebrews, we are taught that when bitterness finally grows up, it causes defilement all around, right? So when bitterness springs up, it causes defilement. And there's our word, Hebrews 12.15. Looking diligently, less than any man fail of the grace of God, less than any root of bitterness, springing up trouble you and thereby many be defiled. Okay? Now notice that bitterness is described here as a root. It's lurk underground, gathering nutrition. If anybody, if any of you have ever had the happy task of trying to dig up a stump, you know that when you get at the stump and you try to get the roots up, the roots go everywhere in the front yard and pretty soon you dug up the whole front yard. And that's because roots seek out nutrition. They gather, they gather nutrition. What kind of nutrition would the root of bitterness be looking for? Well, it looks for offenses. It looks for sins. It looks for foibles. It looks for things to accuse. And then the roots grow bigger and bigger and bigger. And finally, the root of bitterness springs up. When the plant springs up, it's a poisonous one. And so it is that many are defiled. So it's out as a root of bitterness, it's out of sight for a long time. Okay? And then go years and the root grows bigger and bigger and bigger. And then finally, there's an explosion. Finally the plant that has been growing, erupts, breaks the surface of the soil and then everybody gets the poison. Many are defiled. And then not surprisingly, the false teachers that are being dealt with in the book of Jude are those who hate authority and use their liberty in order to defile the flesh. So likewise, also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh. There's our word defile the flesh. Dispised dominion and speak evil of dignities. So they've got an authority problem. They despised dominion and they speak evil of dignities. They are trash talk. They're superiors, including celestial and geolic superiors. But right along with this, they are filthy dreamers. They want to have sex with everything. And they defile and consequently they defile the flesh. All right. So my book review this time around is a book I'm currently enjoying called Augustine and the Jews. Augustine and the Jews. By a woman scholar Paula Fredrickson. Paula Fredrickson. She's it's hard to tell, but she's an academic writer and good accessible prose, but she's clearly writing from within the liberal academy. I wouldn't go so far as to call her a liberal, although there are tingees of that here and there. But she's a competent historian, competent writer. And she is basically telling the story of the interrelationships of Augustine in particular. And Augustine's growth, she's she describes Augustine being converted out of the manicism. Augustine's mother Monica was a Christian, his father, a pagan of some sort. And he grew up a group of the Christian education, but went off into manicism and which is a dualistic good and evil are equally ultimate. Right. And the problem with that is how do you know how to pick up pick sides? So why is why is evil evil then? Why is good good if they're both equal and opposite? But he was that for many years. And he she describes his conversion under the Ministry of Ambrose of Milan and Augustine and there's some really interesting tidbits in this book about the relationship of the early Christian church and Jews. And one of the things that is surprising is some of the fathers were really vitriolic when it came to the Jews. They would really go after them. And Augustine is in a different category, which is he belongs to the leave them alone school. But some of the other fathers are very strong in their denunciations of the Jews. But she points out and this is something that's really striking. The reason these fathers had to be so vocal and so pointed in their preaching against the Jews is there was a lot of fraternization between Christians and Jews at the level of regular life up to and including Christians participating in Jewish festivals and you know hanging out together and doing a bunch of stuff together going to one another's parties. So if you have a bunch of sermons denouncing people who go to Jews parties, one of the things you can infer from that is there are people going to Jews parties. So at the end of first John when John says my little children, keep yourselves from idols, the reason John says that is that Christians might not be keeping themselves from idols. So there was a lot of interaction, a lot of cross pollination, a lot of fraternization between Christians and Jews in the early centuries of the church. There was also outbreaks of hostility and not just one way. We are accustomed to here of Christian persecution of Jews, but there was also and not just in the first century, there was also Jewish persecution of Christians, but there were also interludes between those times when a lot more was going on. So Frederiksen, Augustine and the Jews, if you're interested in intellectual theological history this is a good one. God, don't never change his God.