×

Christmas at the Castle Q&A

Listen as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Old Testament studies in this address from The Gospel Coalition sermon library.


Male: Don, I want to talk about an issue that is slightly related to what you said. You talked about the essentials, and you also talked about the historicity of the essentials. Some Christians in Northern Ireland would hold to the view that it’s an essential to hold to the historic truth of six-day creation. It’s a debate that is raging in our newspapers, letters, pages, and so on, and they want it taught in schools. How would you respond to that?

Don Carson: In my view, the wisdom of Francis Schaeffer 35 years ago in his little book Genesis in Space and Time cannot be bested. What he argues is that it is wise in initial approach to Genesis 1–11 to ask yourself the question, “What is the least these chapters must be saying in order for the rest of the Bible, including the gospel, to be true?”

Now that’s not asking all that those chapters say or all that could be inferred or acknowledging the diversity of interpretations. It is saying, for those who have a high view of Scripture and who understand how the Bible coheres and issues in the gospel, what is absolutely nonnegotiable is what is the least that those chapters must be saying for the rest of the Bible, and from our talk tonight, including the truth of the gospel, to be true.

Now there are many contexts in which it is right to probe further and ask what else should be said, but that is, in my judgment, the nonnegotiable bit. That’s where you draw a line even in terms of fellowship. Nowhere else.

Male: For Joe Public on the street, what is our pulpit and where do we proclaim this gospel?

Don: That is really a question of what might be called evangelistic strategy. We are increasingly, even in Northern Ireland, where there is a residue of cultural conservatism.… Even in Northern Ireland there is less and less likelihood of the churchified but the unconverted coming into our churches in order to be converted. I mean, it does happen, but it’s less and less so. In many parts of the Anglo-Saxon world it just never happens or as good as never happens.

In Yorkshire, only 0.9 of 1 percent, less than 1 percent, attend church of any description. In the Pacific Northwest of the US and the New England states, the figures are very, very similar. The figures are very similar in parts of Australia. Other parts of Australia have church attendance at about 4 or 5 percent. You realize suddenly that you cannot assume all of your evangelism is going to be done inside a church building in your regular corporate services. Some will go on there, of course, but that’s not reaching out.

That almost requires another address. Let me just throw out three or four things quickly, because different things are done in different times and places, depending on the subculture and so on. I’ve known workers, for example, in factories or in research institutions and the like, where the establishment itself actually encourages workers if they want to start noon-hour clubs, so there might be a club on philately, stamp collecting, and another club on discussing homosexuality. Who knows what clubs?

I’ve known workers in such contexts who start Bible study clubs for complete unbelievers. Not for the pious and the Christians and so on, but evangelistic Bible studies. Invite somebody in who’s good at it, who can talk for 20 minutes, answer questions for 20 minutes while people are munching on their sandwiches, and it becomes a context for talking about, “Hey, would you like to know what the Bible is about? It’s casual. Come. We’ll do it for five weeks and see how it goes.” I’ve seen people do that sort of thing.

There is nothing more important than Christians who develop friendships in contexts outside the context of the local church. If they’re trusted in their work and they’re mates and they go to a pub or have a cup of tea, depending on social predilections, or they might go fishing together or watch a movie or whatever. Then within this context to invite them, for example, to an eight-week series where they’re going through something interesting from the Bible around a meal and conversation with seven or eight others.

That becomes the context in which all kinds of Bible studies are used nowadays, like Christianity Explained, for example, out of St Helen’s Bishopsgate, and many other sorts of tools of that sort. When a church begins to get going and has a reputation for good Bible teaching that is pitched in vocabulary and tone for outsiders, it increasingly becomes the kind of place where Christians feel comfortable inviting their non-Christian friends.

Very often, the reason Christians, sincere, devout, pious, godly Christians, don’t invite their friends is that, quite frankly, they know their friends well enough to know they’re going to be horrified by what goes on inside our buildings. So at some point, we need to think through how to make some services at least so user-friendly that even if people don’t understand what’s going on, they have a certain kind of respect for its authenticity and so on as well.

Now there are a lot more things of that sort that could be named, but sooner or later, we must find context, especially in an increasingly biblically-illiterate world, to explain the whole counsel of God. Explaining the gospel nowadays often means explaining more of the Bible’s storyline, and there are tools to do that well, from Two Ways to Live to.… Well, there are many of them nowadays.

That becomes part of the framework of our outlook, to find venues and ways in which people are connected to us, whether in the building, outside the building, in our homes, in regional Bible studies, or whatever, in order to explain what the gospel is. Then there are things that are farther out. I know quite a number of professors and lecturers in universities in various parts of the world where they run film evenings. They will show a recent film, and then have a group of Christians and non-Christians …

This is done at the faculty level, at the undergraduate level, or at the graduate level, depending on the particular instructor. They’ll have a group of both Christians and non-Christians look at the film and talk about it. Inevitably, if they’re well-chosen films, that brings the Christians and the non-Christians into dialogue with each other and may get some beginning to ask questions that can be answered in the course of an ongoing inductive Bible study or something. There are always ways if people have a real heart for evangelism.

A number of years ago at Trinity.… Trinity, where I teach, is on the far north side of Chicago. It’s part of what the French call the banlieue, the surrounding suburbs, where people get on trains early in the morning in order to go into the city. If you know how those commuter trains work, almost inevitably, those who go in regularly stand in the same place on the platform, they carry the same bag and maybe the same umbrella, and they get on the train and sit on the same seat. It becomes a whole subculture.

They were given the challenge in one of these classes at Trinity of finding how to evangelize this lot. They go in early morning, and they’re busy all day, and because of the long commute they often don’t come home until 7:00 or 8:00 at night, and then the last thing they want you to do is go knocking on their door at 8:30.

So they came up with the pattern of taking the same train in from the same platform every day, two or three of them. They plunked themselves down. Sort of displaced a few people, but nevertheless, they chose the same seats every day. Pretty soon they had struck up a conversation. Pretty soon they were having evangelistic Bible studies on the train. There are ways of doing things. As long as you have a heart for people, love will find its way.

Male: I’m sorry I haven’t read your book about the emerging church yet, but I was wondering how would they define the gospel in comparison to what you’ve just explained?

Don: Well, it’s a bit complicated, actually, precisely because of the label emerging or emergent. These labels are now so amorphous they cover a huge variety of beliefs and unbelief. There are some people who call themselves emerging, where they’re basically gospel people who have added a few candles and a bit more liturgy and a corner somewhere in the building for journaling, and nobody wears a tie, and they’ve added something or taken away something, and now they call themselves emerging.

There are others who have really adopted a kind of 1920s liberal theology, plus a bit of postmodern epistemology, and they call themselves emerging too, and they really worry me. But the people, perhaps, who worry me the most are those whose interest is not quite the gospel, whose beliefs are, but they’re part of “the gospel is assumed” crowd.

If I say to some of them, “You know, I listened to this series you did on tape, and you talk about changing culture, and you talk about problems of epistemology, and you talk about the importance of relationships, and so on. You go on and on about that, but what about the cross and the resurrection?” They can respond with indignation. “I believe that just as much as you. How come you always accuse me of unbelief? It’s not really fair. You’re being very judgmental. I believe that as strongly as you do.”

That’s not my question. The question is, “What are you excited about? What do you make central?” If you start assuming the gospel and are really far more important on the emerging culture, you’re excited about the emerging culture, then you start training the next generation to de-center the central. That’s the problem.

Christians ought to be able to read their culture and understand what’s going on and learn how to communicate. I’m not saying you shouldn’t know those things. I am saying that must be worked out in the framework of passion for the gospel all the time or you do far more damage sometimes than unbelief itself.

That’s why the best models of this sort of thing, it seems to me, are precisely churches that understand that. Redeemer Presbyterian, for example, in New York City and Capitol Hill Baptist in DC. (Forgive me for giving American examples; I live there.) But, of course, there are a lot of examples elsewhere, too, in their own corners. A church like All Souls knows how to evangelize in its own patch, and there are examples here in this country that I shall refrain from mentioning, lest others will feel offended because I haven’t mentioned them.

Male: Is it possible that on the two views of the atonement it can impress both views, or is there a dichotomy there?

Don: I’m not even sure what you mean by two views of the atonement. There are a lot of views of the atonement.

Male: All right, I would add if it’s the universalism or …

Don: You’re talking about definite atonement versus indefinite or unlimited atonement?

Male: Yes.

Don: For those who embrace definite atonement.… And I do provide it. It’s carefully worded, because often it’s not carefully worded. If you want to see how I would defend it, it’s in my little book The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God. The crucial issue those who espouse definite atonement are worried about is defending substitution.

They’re afraid that if you take an unlimited view or an Amyraldian view, then the definiteness of substitution is lost, but for better or for worse, there are all kinds of people who believe passionately in substitution who don’t have, in my judgment, definite atonement worked out. I may think they’re inconsistent. I may have long discussions with them off camera. I may give them some books to read.

But it seems to me that all of us have inconsistencies and problems in putting theology together on occasion, and we need to distinguish between what people believe and the possible, but not necessary, entailments of what they believe. So it’s possible, in other words, that because you don’t believe in definite atonement you actually undo substitution. Then I have a problem. On the other hand, I know many, many fine believers who really do passionately believe in substitution.

That is nonnegotiable. It’s taught so clearly and repeatedly everywhere, and if they don’t have the niceties put together to justify it in a way I think is biblically mandated, okay, there are some things I don’t handle very well in Scripture too, and I want to be very careful so as to distinguish between the core of the gospel itself (that is, Christ dies in our place; he bears our sin in his own body on the tree and so on) and the best ways of defending that from Scripture.

At the end of the day, I eventually begin to worry about those who are very keen to draw a line over against those who really do hold to substitution but don’t have it worked out in the way I think they should, but who aren’t doing a whole lot of evangelism themselves. It really is important to proclaim the gospel, and ideally to proclaim it richly and widely and wisely and coherently, systemically, from the whole counsel of God.

So in working with them, I want to help them, and I hope they will shed some light on what I’m trying to do too. At the same time, when I see genuine brothers and sisters articulating the gospel but not very consistently, I’m a lot happier than if I see people who may have the gospel more sophisticatedly defended but who aren’t proclaiming it to anybody.

Let me add a footnote to that one, if I may. You see, part of the problem, I think, is that when some Christians work together across lines, denominational, you know, baptism, paedobaptism, definite atonement, unlimited atonement, whatever, then they start developing the philosophy that the only way they can work together, if they’re going to work together, is by not talking about certain things. It’s a union based on silence.

To me, that’s always a mistake, because if you have a unity based on silence, pretty soon you’re sliding toward the lowest-common-denominator theology. That’s the problem. But there are rising numbers of groups, and I’m associated with two or three of them.… One of them is the Gospel Coalition. You can visit thegospelcoalition.org. But there are others, Together for the Gospel and elsewhere, where our aim is to get the gospel core right but to be theologically robust everywhere and to be prepared to discuss everything among ourselves.

Everything is on the table all the time under the authority of the Word. We never rule out what we cannot talk about in order to preserve unity. I could tell you some startling stories of people disagreeing and then praying together, passionately committed to the gospel and working together and evangelizing together, even though they come from remarkably different ecclesiologies and so on.

That, it seems to me, has a far better likelihood of preserving both unity and robustness while nevertheless allowing for some distinctions. It’s important to remember that Paul himself hierarchizes things. He says, “As a matter of first importance, this is what I declare,” which recognizes that he does himself recognize there are some matters that are important but are of second importance.

Male: Someone is a Christian or they become a Christian, and out of thankfulness for what God has done for them, they want to obey God. So how do you, in practical everyday terms, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength? For instance, how can you be sure that the green light is always on against that commandment?

Don: Well, that’s a conundrum that is part of our existence as Christians until the consummation, for the Bible insists that the power of the gospel releases us from our chains but that, nevertheless, we will still sin on occasion until the consummation, and we will live with that tension and go back to the cross again and again and again for forgiveness, even while we acknowledge we’re not what we used to be.

I still love the little quatrain by John Newton, the former slave master. He knew that he had transported about 20,000 slaves across the Atlantic. Then he was saved eventually and became pastor in Olney in England. He was a friend of William Cooper and wrote the great hymn, “Amazing Grace.” He said, “I am not what I want to be. I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I one day will be, but I am not what I was, and by the grace of God I am what I am.”

Christians inevitably wrestle with the fact that they fall short of obeying the first two commandments perfectly, and they will fall short until the new heaven and the new earth. Yet they are growing in grace, so that even a man like Paul himself can say, “I do not consider myself to have arrived, but I press on toward the prize of the goal of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus,” and he wants to know Christ better, to be made conformable to his death. That’s all part of Christian growth and sanctification. To pit obedience to trusting Christ is a classic and huge mistake.

Well, despite my conviction that the Bible does teach a well-articulated view of definite atonement, am I allowed to quote Billy Graham? “The Lord bless y’all real good.”

 

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.
To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.