Fidelity: What It Means to be a One-Woman Man [Paperback]

Douglas Wilson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 6, 1999

We live in a time when marital fidelity is under assault. Driven by the forces of relativism, our society attacks sexual faithfulness 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 and 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: "Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge" (Heb. 13:4).

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Douglas Wilson is pastor of Christ Church, Moscow, Idaho, and editor of Credenda/Agenda magazine. He is the author of Recovering the Lost Tools of Learning, Reforming Marriage, and Federal Husband.

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Canon Press (December 6, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1885767641
• ISBN-13: 978-1885767646
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #364,042 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Douglas Wilson is the minister of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, which is a member of the Confederation of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). After his stint in the submarine service of the U.S. Navy, he attended the University of Idaho, where he obtained an MA in philosophy.

As one of its founders, he has served on the board of Logos School, a classical and Christian school (K-12), since its inception. He is also a Senior Fellow of theology at New St. Andrews College. He is the author of numerous books, including Reforming Marriage, The Case for Classical Christian Education, Letter from a Christian Citizen, and Blackthorn Winter. He is also the general editor for the Omnibus textbook series. His blog can be found at www.dougwils.com.

All his favorite authors begin their names with initials--C.S. Lewis, G.K. Chesterton, H.L. Mencken, J.R.R. Tolkien, N.D. Wilson, and P.G. Wodehouse. The one exception is Nancy Wilson, a favorite author to whom he has been married for over thirty-four years. They have three children and fifteen grandchildren.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quick Review, August 9, 2000

By 

Reformed Library "Reformed Library" (Vancouver, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Fidelity: What It Means to be a One-Woman Man (Paperback)

This book is disturbing and should never have been written. It's all about sex. Sex, sex, sex. Oh, and more sex.

Why, you ask? It's disturbing to know the severity of unfaithfulness toward one's wife and it should have never been written because it's not easy owning up to dishonoring one's spouse.

This book is excellently written. The style is smooth and the outline is fluid. Doug Wilson once again writes in a style that is easy to digest, follow and research his points by referring back to the authoritative standard from which he argues, namely, the Bible.

The chapters: lust and pornography, fornication, adultery, divorce, prostitution, rape, polygamy, sodomy, masturbation, celibacy, sexual solutions, questions and answers and sexual glory.

This book is really not intended for women. It is much too directly addressing shameful areas of a man's life that fall short that dishonor his wife.

I really can't even get into the subject matter of the book other than to say that Wilson makes points in this book that every Christian man should seriously consider and contemplate.

Please don't misunderstand...this book is not crude or indecent. It is Biblical. It is instructional. But it does handle many topics which only Dr. Ruth has dared to tread. And that's a point Doug Wilson brings up: The Christian must take pleasure in his wife, with his wife, not according to society's standard of fulfillment, but of the Scriptural instruction on true enjoyment.

It's about avoiding the problem areas of dishonoring one's wife and sinning against her. It's about the glory of the bed. It's about the gifts of God and how to enjoy them more, Biblically.

Wow. Good stuff.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great and much needed biblical perspective!, April 27, 2004

By 

Larry D. Hughes "Larry Hughes" (Kentucky) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fidelity: What It Means to be a One-Woman Man (Paperback)

Fidelity by Douglas Wilson is a welcome sound biblical teaching about many sexual issues. One of which is men and women as husband and wife and their call to be co-helpers with each others Christian walk and salvation (as in growth in grace). My wife actually purchased this book and we both read it, and found it wonderfully encouraging and helpful for the two of us. Douglas Wilson speaks directly and frankly to the issues that are overwhelming to a much uninformed church today in American.

This book is NOT a treatise on the man getting his way with the woman nor is it the contrary. Someone reading that into this book would have much difficulty intellectually digesting a Sunday comic strip. Among many of the issues it addresses is the struggle with fidelity and temptation from Satan, flesh and the world that both husbands and wives struggle with, and for which BOTH are protectors of the others weakness. Furthermore, IF you love your wife or IF you love your husband, and do not protect the other by the marriage bed (yes that means sex under the God given covenant of marriage for all the medieval dinosaurs out there) then you should examine yourself and your love toward your spouse.

Those who read this and think it is about women giving in to "their ape of a husband's sex drive", are grossly ignorant of what Scriptures say to the issue and this book. And men who would read this and think that it is about "their wives being slave like concubines to them" are equally grossly ignorant of what Scriptures say to the issue and this book. If spouses love the other and are Christian one will 1) love them enough to protect them and their souls for in marriage God has given one to the other as a gift, no less from Christ Himself; 2) and it is manifestly obvious that if one spouse despises the other so much as not to desire to be close to them in the marriage bed and otherwise...I would question that kind of so called love in the first place as more likely infantile at best and selfish at worst. I love my wife so much that I would literally die for her and she does me, and we found this book to be uplifting and encouraging. Far from some of the witless diatribes to the contrary that I've read on here to date.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Remove the "No Girls Allowed" Sign, April 21, 2006

By 

Valerie (Kyriosity) (Baltimore, Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fidelity: What It Means to be a One-Woman Man (Paperback)

As I was working my way through the Canon Press family series I went ahead and read Fidelity. Although it's written for men, I think many (though not all) Christian women will find, as I did, that it is a useful corrective to the misinformation they've been assaulted with all their lives. It's not that I learned anything new or surprising about sex in this book; it was more that, especially in the last chapter, Mr. Wilson creates a picture of godly sexuality that puts all the old information into the right context and in the right proportions -- like reassembling a Picasso into a Rembrandt.

I wasn't sure if I should read this book -- it might as well have a "No Girls Allowed" sign on it -- but I am glad I did. Someone needs to write a version that women aren't afraid to buy or read. (Yes, I've read Elisabeth Elliot's books, but they aren't quite on the same level.) Ironically, it may be the very desire to protect the purity of Christian women that tends to keep such a purifying book out of the hands of those whom it might benefit. Granted, women who were lovingly shielded from exposure to what the world has to say (and show and tell) about sex probably don't need it, so Fidelity might do them more harm than good. But for women to whom the harm has already been done -- by their own sin or others', by misinformation or abuse, by media or "education" -- it should be considered as a possible curative. For me, reading Fidelity was like giving my soul a long-needed bath.

(Adapted from a post on my blog.)