Addendum:See an insightful post on this by Cal, here.

I know nothing of Jared Wilson. But I do know that he has gotten himself into some hot water with many a blogger out there. Wilson is part of The Gospel Coalition (which I do know of, in fact they are popularizers of 5-Point Calvinism in America today, and very effective at it through their on-line presence), but I don’t really want to get into what The Gospel Coalition is about so much, except for the fact that they are known for being prime advocates of what many consider to be conservative theological complementarianism (relative to gender roles V. something like egalitarianism, if you are unaware). Let me share the post in full, that got Jared Wilson (and by default, Douglas Wilson, whom Jared quotes) in the pickle he is in currently. Here is Jared’s post:

This passage from Douglas Wilson’s book Fidelity: What it Means to be a One-Woman Man was written 13 years ago, but I found it especially relevant in the wake of the success of 50 Shades of Grey and other modern celebrations of perverted sexual authority/submission. It is found in the chapter in the book on Rape, and Wilson argues that this sort of sexual pathology is a perverted version of good, God-honoring, and body-protecting authority and submission between husbands and wives.

A final aspect of rape that should be briefly mentioned is perhaps closer to home. Because we have forgotten the biblical concepts of true authority and submission, or more accurately, have rebelled against them, we have created a climate in which caricatures of authority and submission intrude upon our lives with violence.

When we quarrel with the way the world is, we find that the world has ways of getting back at us. In other words, however we try, the sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts. This is of course offensive to all egalitarians, and so our culture has rebelled against the concept of authority and submission in marriage. This means that we have sought to suppress the concepts of authority and submission as they relate to the marriage bed.

But we cannot make gravity disappear just because we dislike it, and in the same way we find that our banished authority and submission comes back to us in pathological forms. This is what lies behind sexual “bondage and submission games,” along with very common rape fantasies. Men dream of being rapists, and women find themselves wistfully reading novels in which someone ravishes the “soon to be made willing” heroine. Those who deny they have any need for water at all will soon find themselves lusting after polluted water, but water nonetheless.

True authority and true submission are therefore an erotic necessity. When authority is honored according to the word of God it serves and protects — and gives enormous pleasure. When it is denied, the result is not “no authority,” but an authority which devours.

– Douglas Wilson, Fidelity: What it Means to be a One-Woman Man(Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 1999), 86-87.

Update: Please read the follow-up to this post. [See Jared Wilson’s original post here] ht: Brian LePort

Okay, so you got that? The Douglas Wilson quote in Jared’s post is obviously the controversial bit. As you can see, Jared was trying to offer a corrective to that grotesquely popular book in our culture about sex entitled 50 Shades of Grey. I suppose the irony is that the Douglas Wilson quote emotes pictures and images that are equally, if not more offensive than what is offered in ’50 Shades of Grey’ (I have not read this book, and don’t plan on it). It almost seems as if Douglas Wilson’s words simply make what is offered in ’50 Shades of Grey’ its “secular” parody or something.

Jared and Douglas Wilson are seeking to honor woman, somehow, by putting them in their proper position or role. And D. Wilson seeks to illustrate this “proper position” by providing the kind of picturesque language that he does in the quote above. I think his military-conquest language is what is most offensive; the man being the conqueror, and his female counter-part being the conquered. And this somehow is supposed to be a picture of the husband and wife relationship — that reflects the bride/bridegroom language in something like Paul’s Ephesians 5 context — say what?!

I don’t care what D. Wilson’s point originally was intended to be; the imagery he used to try and convey his point is simply repulsive and nothing like what we might find in the Song of Solomon — which is what D. Wilson has tried to claim in his self-defense — does the Song of Solomon really talk about a hierarchical relationship between the man and woman using explicit sexual-agrarian-military imagery? Nein!