D.A. Carson

Don Carson: How to Destroy Evangelism with Political Animosity

Tony Reinke D.A. Carson, Politics

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From Don Carson’s eighteenth lecture on Revelation (June 17, 2005):

There is a great deal of anger on the American right at the moment. Let me just say a little bit about it, because it is troubling. It’s hard to know what to do. If you want to make a lot of money with a Christian book in this country, write a book that says what’s wrong with America listing all the bad things that you possibly can on the left. Demonize the left. It’ll sell like hotcakes on the right.

Do you want to raise money for Focus on the Family, or a whole lot of other institutions that are really good institutions in many ways? If they really want to raise a lot of money in a hurry, let them tell you the worst horror stories of the month. The money flows in. The reason it does is because there is so much in this society that feels, with a certain amount of justification, that “All those nasties on the left are taking away our heritage. They’re perverting our schools. They’re overthrowing principles of jurisprudence. They’re making the city unsafe.”

There is anger. There is anger seething through the whole land. Contrast that with the first Christians taking the gospel in the Roman Empire. They were nobodies. They didn’t have anybody taking away their heritage. They were out to take over the heritage. They looked around and saw an extremely pluralistic empire, and they said with Caleb, in effect, “Give us this mountain.”

They kept witnessing, kept getting martyred, and so on, and it was a revolution, finally, a spiritual revolution. We can’t do that today, at least we find it very difficult, because we’re so busy being angry all the time that at the end of the day not only do we lose our credibility with people on the left, they start demonizing us back, but we have no energy or compassion left to evangelize.

When you’re busy hating everybody and denouncing everybody and seeking political solutions to everything it’s very difficult to evangelize, isn’t it? It’s very hard to be compassionate, to look on the crowds as though they’re sheep without a shepherd, very hard to look on them like that when they’re taking away my heritage.

Yet, at the same time, because it is a democracy, there are things we ought to be doing to draw the line here and there, even if you understand the laws don’t finally engender justice. They might preserve it for awhile, but finally they’re all broken and you have to change the laws. There are things we ought to be doing. There are faithful things we ought to be doing.

But at the end of the day if you can’t do it with compassion, and gently, and leave the doors open for evangelism, boy, you destroy everything. I think one of the Devil’s tactics with respect to the church on the right today is to make them so hate everybody else that at the end of the day they can’t be believed anywhere, not even in the proclamation of the gospel.

What to do with Karl Barth?

Tony Reinke D.A. Carson, Karl Barth, Scripture

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Don Carson edited one of 2016’s essential books: The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Eerdmans). It releases this week.

The enormous 1,200-page book is the product of a pangraphic team of 37 scholars who address various pressing questions on biblical authority. And the book ends with an absorbing quick-hit FAQ where Carson himself briefly tackles a catalog of common questions on Scripture’s authority. There he briefly addresses Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886–1968) in a format resembling this:

Q: How come Karl Barth’s views of Scripture have come back to be the focus of so much attention today?

There are at least three reasons. First, Barth was certainly the most prolific and perhaps creative theologian of the twentieth century, so it is no wonder that people study his writings. Second, Barth’s thought is profoundly God-centered, profoundly Christ-centered, profoundly grace-centered. And third, his view of Scripture, though not quite in line with traditional confessionalism, is reverent, subtle, and complex, so scholars keep debating exactly what he was saying. (1,162)

The mention of Barth made me wonder, more broadly, what should discerning Evangelicals do with the writings of Barth? I recently asked Carson, and this is what he said (5-minute outtake):

Read the full transcript here.

My Favorite Version of the Christmas Story

Tony Reinke Christmas, Christmas and the cross, D.A. Carson

… is of course the version with the dragon in it — Revelation 12:1–6.

I discuss this passage in my book Lit! to show the spiritual value of dragons (see pages 85–86). But here’s the gist of Revelation 12:1–6 in the words of D. A. Carson in his outstanding book Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus (Crossway, 2010):

The scene is grotesque. The dragon stands in front of the woman. She is lying there in labor. Her feet are in the stirrups, writhing as she pushes to give birth, and this disgusting dragon is waiting to grab the baby as it comes out of the birth canal and then eat it (12:4). The scene is meant to be grotesque: it reflects the implacable rage of Satan against the arriving Messiah.

Do we not know how this works out in historical terms? The first bloodbath in the time of Jesus takes place in the little village of Bethlehem — in the slaughter of the innocents as Herod tries to squash this baby’s perceived threat to his throne.

Jesus is saved by Joseph, who is warned by God in a dream and flees to Egypt. Herod, in a rage, “gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under” (Matt. 2:16). Satan later manifests his rage against Jesus in the temptation, and he manifests his rage against the church in every temptation. Satan’s rage manifests itself when some people try to push Jesus over a cliff, and others take up stones to stone him. Satan is after Jesus and wants to destroy him by any means possible.

Behind all these attempts to destroy Jesus is the red dragon, and behind the red dragon is God himself, bringing to pass his purposes even in the death of his Son to bring about our redemption.

But the text does not go on to talk about Jesus’ triumph here, not because this book has no interest in him but because the triumph of Jesus has already been spectacularly introduced in Revelation 4–5. The great vision of Revelation 4–5 controls the entire book. There we learn that Christ, this male child, is the only one who is fit to open the scroll in God’s right hand to bring about all of God’s purposes for judgment and blessing. He is the Lion and the Lamb, the reigning king and the bloody sacrifice, the heir to David’s throne yet the one who appears from God’s throne. Because of his struggle, men and women from every tongue and tribe and people and nation are redeemed. Countless millions gather around him who sits on the throne and the Lamb and sing a new song of adoring, grateful, praise.

But here in Revelation 12 we move from Jesus’ birth to his ascension; we run through his entire life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension in two lines: he “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter” and “was snatched up to God and to his throne” (v. 5). The male child, Jesus, is born and snatched to heaven. In other words, this passage focuses not on Christ’s triumph — that is presupposed — but on what happens to the woman and her children, the ones left behind. And that is us: the messianic community, the people of God, the blood-bought church of Jesus Christ. This side of the cross they are described as “those who obey God’s commands and hold the testimony of Jesus” (v. 17). The woman (the messianic community) is the focus of the passage.

Our Greatest Need

Tony Reinke Cross of Christ, D.A. Carson

D.A. Carson, A Call to Spiritual Reformation (Baker, 1992), page 109:

If God had perceived that our greatest need was economic, he would have sent an economist. If he had perceived that our greatest need was entertainment, he would have sent us a comedian or an artist. If God had perceived that our greatest need was political stability, he would have sent us a politician. If he had perceived that our greatest need was health, he would have sent us a doctor. But he perceived that our greatest need involved our sin, our alienation from him, our profound rebellion, our death; and he sent us a Savior.

ht: OFI

Ordinary Churches

Tony Reinke D.A. Carson, Local church

The following was written by D. A. Carson and John Woodbridge in the form of a fictional letter to a young pastor published in the book Letters Along the Way: A Novel of the Christian Life, pages 226–227:

Feed people the Word of God, pray for them, love them, convey the reality of God’s presence to them by word and deed.

What is important at the end of the day is the church–ordinary churches trying to live faithfully in a rapidly changing society. Ordinary churches pastored by ordinary people like you and me, knowing that we cannot do everything, but trying to do what we can and seeking God’s face for His presence and blessing so that His dear Son might be honored and His people strengthened.

How Do You Preserve the Gospel?

Tony Reinke Church growth, D.A. Carson, Gospel

In a recent message delivered in London, titled “Preserving the Gospel and Gospel Churches,” Don Carson expounded the meaning and context of 2 Timothy 1:14 and 2:2 …

By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you. … and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

… and then he said the following:

How do you preserve the gospel? You give it away.

It’s the only thing in the world that you guard by giving away.

You do not finally guard the gospel by raising the mote, circling the wagons, going into defensive mode alone, so as not to be contaminated by the interaction with the world. You preserve the gospel by gospelizing. That’s why any form of apologetics that becomes primarily defensive is finally spelling its own demise. At the end of the day we must be about the business of training others. …

The initiative is not coming from a person who volunteers, nor is it coming from a Damascus road experience, nor is it coming in some sort of crisis of faith, nor is it coming from some young stockbroker or medical student who is wondering what to do with their life. No, it’s coming from a senior Christian who is tapping the shoulder of a junior Christian and saying, “Receive these things from me.” That means we ought to be taking initiative in our own congregations, in our own frames of reference, looking for people with the ability to do this sort of work, disrupting their lives, tapping them on the shoulder. … [Telling them,] “I would like to pour my life into you and entrust to you the things the Apostle has given to me.” That’s how you preserve the gospel, by passing it on. …

A church that never passes things on to another generation—reliably, faithfully, with training, with instruction, with understanding, with an eagerness to evangelize—that church is doomed to obsolescence, shrinking ranks, and finally, irrelevance.