Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson answers questions on the topic of Biblical Interpretation in this address from The Gospel Coalition Sermon Library
I have about a dozen questions here that have been texted in. That’s enough to keep us going till midnight if I get really loquacious. So let me pick a few from those to answer first before we go to audience questions.
Question: “In your discussion, have you shown that reason is more authoritative than the written Word because we need to use our minds carefully in exegesis and interpretation? Can you speak to this dynamic?”
Don Carson: No, I have not shown that reason is more authoritative than the written Word. Reason is the part of our mental apparatus by which we try to understand that Word, but reason by itself is not authoritative. It’s the text itself. It’s what God himself has disclosed. Reason can be seduced. Reason can be twisted. Reason can be corrupted. In fact, in 1 Corinthians, chapter 2, we’re told that the natural man (that is, the person without the Spirit) cannot understand the things of God, for they’re spiritually discerned. Yet they have reason.
I would love to tell you some stories of my own experience in universities where I’ve known many, many, many great biblical scholars who really cannot see what the Bible is actually saying when it comes to things like the cross and so on. It’s an astonishing blindness that surfaces again and again and again. If I have given anyone the illusion that I have raised reason above the authority of Scripture, then believe me, I did not mean to do so, and it’s not what I hold to be true.
In terms of authority structure, the authority ultimately is with God and what God has disclosed of himself. But he has given us reasoning capacities, however twisted they are by sin and our own blindnesses and so on, to think through what Scripture says. There are many, many devices in Scripture so we can be corrected by reading Scripture, what Scripture says again and again and again.
Then as Christians discuss in the church and sit under the authority and teaching of good pastors and then answer back and then test things again by Scripture and so on, we discover again and again and again that God makes his will and way clear. Now I was really not talking at the epistemological level of such things tonight. I was talking about those places where the Bible is not quite so clear, but that’s a slightly different matter. Then more generically along the same line:
Question: “How unclear or silent does the Bible need to be before pragmatics or even culture takes precedence over what should be done?”
Don: Thirty-seven point three six percent. No, I’m not trying to mock anybody. I just don’t know how to answer that kind of question. I mean, how unclear or silent? I mean, by what scale? I don’t know how to answer that, but in any case, I would say it’s not that the Bible becomes unclear or silent before pragmatics or culture takes precedence. At no point am I saying they take precedence. At no point! So all of my principles were how to balance off what’s there. Or if the Bible is really silent, then it’s not that culture takes precedence. It doesn’t take precedence.
It’s just that there’s no competition with the Bible, because the Bible hasn’t spoken. It’s not that an avionics manual takes precedence over the Bible when it comes to the Garmin 1000. I mean, taking precedence presupposes that there’s competition of some sort. But the Bible doesn’t pretend to teach you anything about the Garmin.
In these other domains where the Bible does speak about matters like divorce and remarriage again and again and again, it’s not that culture takes precedence over the Bible or our biases or pragmatics take precedence over the Bible, it’s a question of how we fit those pieces together, and what the steps are we take to get there. I would want to reword this question somewhat.
Question: “What is the long-term outcome of indecision on theological matters?”
Don: The first long-term outcome is theological leukemia. That is, to say there is a sense in which a thicker theology leads you to more connections and to more connections and to more connections so you see how more and more and more of the Bible is put together.
But if you don’t make up your mind at how the covenants fit together and you don’t make up your mind on how baptism or circumcision or whatever it is is a sign of the covenant and you don’t make up your mind on church government, then there are all kinds of things you don’t see in the Bible. You actually cut yourself off so the bloodline of Scripture becomes thinner and thinner and thinner.
It’s a kind of theological lowest common denominator. It’s a kind of theological leukemia. One of the things Jim Packer likes to say is that systematic theology properly done.… Although at the end of the day systematic theology has to be corrected by Scripture, systematic theology when it’s well done is also in part a help and a guide to teach us to read Scripture better.
Now it’s not a straight line. There’s a sense in which the authority runs from Scripture through exegesis and biblical theology to systematic theology. But, in fact, to use computer terminology, there are back loops all the time. When you’re reading that Scripture in the first place, it’s not as if you have an absolutely blank mind. You already have some assumed systematic theology you’ve picked up, however good, bad, or indifferent it is.
You never read Scripture with a blank mind. Even somebody who is totally untaught nevertheless has some notion of God when he first reads the first verse of Genesis. “In the beginning God created …” He already has some notion of God. Even if he is an atheist, then it’s the God he disbelieves in. But there’s some notion of God that’s there.
One of the effects of a good systematic theology is it actually helps you to read the Bible itself and do your exegesis in a better way so you pick up more things and more connections than you would have picked up if you were trying to do your exegesis with no connections whatsoever. So in my view, the worst outcome then of indecision and theological matters is a thinning out of theological reflection until you come to a lowest common denominator, a kind of theological anemia that actually helps nobody long haul.
Male: Thanks for sharing tonight. I know you’ve been to Australia about 65 to 70 times now? Is that right?
Don: Give or take.
Male: Yeah, give or take. So just picking up on point 11, to learn to think theologically about cultural phenomena and just looking at the type of audience here tonight, what are your comments about the homogenous unit versus the kind of multi-ethnic unit into the church planting? Any comments?
Don: Yeah. In case those categories are not known to everybody, about 40 years ago, Donald McGavran especially pushed the theory of the homogeneous unit principle as the way of doing world mission. So the idea was you go into India, let’s say, and you do something with the untouchables all by themselves, but you don’t try to run across classes because people are going to take offense.
In any particular multi-cultural city like Sydney, then you do something in the Greek community, you do something in the Italian community, and you do something in the Muslim community, though you break down the Muslim community into the Muslim community from the Arab world, the Muslim community from the Iranian world, and so on.
So you work at the lowest homogenous unit level, because that’s where you’re most likely to pull people together and have Bible studies with common associations and common assumptions and so on. It’s pragmatic in the first instance. He had seen some fruitfulness along those lines himself in India, but then he tried to justify it by appealing to Scripture.
So make disciples of all nations. The phrase is panta ta ethne in Greek, which he rendered, “Make disciples of all tribes,” or, “Make disciples of all ethnicities.” You’re supposed to go tribe by tribe, tribe by tribe. He tried to ground the whole theory, in other words, in Scripture. Well, I won’t bore you with the details, but that’s a really bad translation of the Greek for start.
The alternative view is, at the end of the day, the church is pictured in the Bible as being made up of Jew and Gentile and, in principle (according to Revelation 5 and 7), men and women from every tongue and tribe and people and nation. So to have separate churches (a little Greek church here and a little Lebanese church there and so on) instead of a church that actually speaks volumes to the world around because it is multi-ethnic is succumbing to the worst of pragmatism instead of understanding that, in one sense, the church is to be an outpost of heaven even now.
That means it should reflect the diversity of your own community. Do you see? That’s the alternative view. So what does that mean for our church planting? Well, clearly if you are in a largely white-bread culture like the Central Coast, you don’t face the problem nearly as much as you face it in many, many suburbs of Sydney. There I confess I see two competing principles that have to be held in a certain kind of tension.
There is no doubt in my mind that the church of God in the new heaven and the new earth will be made up of men and women from every tongue and tribe and people and nation. In substantial measure, we ought to be trying to build that kind of thing here. There’s no question in my mind at all.
On the other hand, the apostle Paul can say in 1 Corinthians 9 that he is prepared to become all things to all men so that by all means, he might win some. “To the Jew I became like a Jew. To those not of the law, I became like one not having the law,” though he himself was not lawless. He is still under the law of Christ, he says, which shows that he himself was prepared to adjust culturally in order to evangelize more effectively.
I would want to argue that in a well-developed church.… Now it’s harder when you’re first beginning. But in a well-developed church where you do have a nice reflection of converted men and women from the neighborhood.… I’m thinking of a church in Toronto. Toronto is now considered the most multi-cultural city in the world according to the UN. It’s a wonderful place if you like restaurants.
One of my favorite churches there is called Morningstar Church. It probably runs about 1,200. They have something like 22 or 24 elders. Not more than two are from any one country. It’s really a very interesting church. I enjoy being there. It’s been awhile since I’ve been there.
At the same time, I would still argue that a church that is so located, so led, and so characterized nevertheless for evangelistic purposes may run small groups for the Greeks or small groups for the Italians or whatever in order to evangelize them, but then ideally try to funnel them back into the larger church. That way you are recognizing Pauline flexibility to adjust to other people’s culture while at the same time ultimately trying to create the heaven-on-earth culture of the church, the culture of the New Jerusalem in some measure already inaugurated down here.
Now that’s messy. It’s just desperately messy. If you could just do one or the other and condemn the other one, it would be a lot simpler. But I think there are competing contributing values the Bible itself is encouraging in this regard. I’m reluctant to throw either one of them out entirely.
Male: Hello. This is going back to the question you answered just before. I’m probably one of the people from the world of possibilities and lack of commitment and indecision.
Don: Only probably so?
Male: Yeah, probably.
Don: Sorry. I couldn’t resist.
Male: Regarding the question you answered just before about the long-term consequences of indecision, in terms of systematic theology, can it sometimes be better to have a good understanding of both sides of the argument on, say, baptism and be reading Scripture from that perspective and, on the more obscure things, not necessarily have made up your mind? Can you just maybe flesh out why it’s important to make a call on those things rather than just have a well-rounded understanding of the arguments and the Scripture around those more obscure topics?
Don: Well, let’s take baptism just to take a hard case. Eventually, you have to decide on whether you actually apply water to a baby’s forehead or dunk them when they’re a little older and confess Christ personally. You might even want to do both if you really are very confused. But on the other hand, pragmatically in the local church, you really have to do one or the other.
Now there are some denominations.… There’s a denomination called Evangelical Free Church in North America which has a very interesting pedigree. It’s made up in its heritage of Swedish Baptist immigrants and Norwegian Free Lutherans. By Free Lutherans, that is they’re Lutherans who were non-state church Lutherans in Norway.
Somewhere along the line a hundred years or so ago, they decided Scandinavian blood is thicker than baptismal water and they formed the Free Church of America. What that meant was they allowed Norwegian Free Lutheran pastors to preach what they wanted to preach, and they allowed Swedish Baptist pastors to preach what they wanted to preach, but they would accept members from either church.
Well, that sounds wonderfully catholic, doesn’t it? On the long haul, however, what has happened in the Free Church is you’re now getting a whole new generation of young men coming along who have no theology of baptism at all. None! They’ve headed for the lowest common denominator. That means those churches are often very susceptible to massive influence or take-over from the Christian church.
Now that denomination goes in under a lot of different names, but they insist baptism is as essential for salvation as faith is. They can point to texts. “Repent and be baptized for the remission of your sins,” And you guys don’t even care! So there have been not a few Free Churches that have been attacked by this sort of heritage because they themselves don’t have a biblically informed, well-justified theology of baptism.
Wherever the church remains really silent in some doctrinal area, almost always there is a sting in the tail that comes around a little later. You show me a church that is evangelical when it comes to substitutionary atonement and that is rich on Trinitarianism and is great on Christology and all the rest but has really no theology of the Spirit, and I will show you that within a generation they’re ripe for being taken over by a church in the charismatic tradition.
In other words, where you have silence, you open up a hole which is easily filled. Nature abhors a vacuum. So does theology. It’s easily filled by someone who is coming in from a more extreme position elsewhere. There are entailments in all of these decisions. Moreover, it’s not a case of, “Well, I don’t want to compromise my flexibility, so I’ll just have to take a running jump and op for one of them. Flip a coin.”
I’m not suggesting that. What I am suggesting is if you haven’t decided to some degree of reasonable possibility, of reasonable plausibility, of reasonable defensibility so that you think on balance of probabilities, “This is the way the Scripture really does run,” if you can’t say that about baptism, then you can’t be a pastor of a Presbyterian church or a Baptist church. You can’t!
If, in fact, you then have a church where you can do one way or the other way, “Who cares? No way. It doesn’t really matter,” then somewhere along the line, you’re going to face these other kinds of problems. Wherever you leave a hole in your theology, there will be a bite-back later. At the end of the day, baptism is not an optional extra. It’s part of the Great Commission. Okay?
Male: I have a very specific one for you and maybe a bit controversial. I heard a speaker several years ago at Katoomba talking to a bunch of young people saying that the issue of masturbation is not covered at all in Scripture, that Scripture is completely silent; therefore, we don’t need to be that worried about it.
I was wondering what your thoughts are on this. I mean, as far as I know, the possible two passages on this.… Somewhere in Deuteronomy it talks about nocturnal emissions, and I guess we talk a lot about lust as well. I just wondered if I could get your thoughts on how much we can speak to something like masturbation.
Don: Well, the passages on nocturnal emissions.… There are two or three kinds of them, in fact, in Deuteronomy. None of them actually directly address the question of masturbation, full stop. On the other hand, the question of lust is a pretty profound one, for those who engage happily in masturbation are rarely doing it merely to have a physical release. They are playing images in their minds to get there and enjoy them and tease themselves.
So even if Scripture does not speak directly to masturbation, to detach it entirely from questions of lust is just ridiculous. They can’t be detached. That doesn’t make it any easier, but we shouldn’t play games in order to make it easier either.
Don: Okay, the final question is, “Are there any situations where a boundary-bounded set is a better option than a center-bounded set?” See, for those of us who come from what’s often called the Believers Church tradition like Baptist churches that do hold to a certain kind of church discipline, then you are either a member of the church or you’re not. Church discipline means removing people from the church.
Now there are other churches with a de facto center-bounded set, and to discipline someone, what they do is they bar them from the Lord’s Table without talking about whether they’re in or out as members. The churches that belong to the Believers Church tradition, you can’t really exercise discipline and have someone outside the church unless there’s also an inside the church.
I would argue pretty strongly that in the New Testament, there is an ocean of who’s in and who’s out. Otherwise, you can’t make sense of an awful lot of texts. First John 2. “They went out from us in order that it might be made clear that they were not of us. If they had been of us, they would have remained with us. But their going showed they were not of us.”
So here’s someone who was a member on the books but wasn’t to be considered after all after the fact as a real Christian, or else they would have remained with us. But the very fact you can speak of going out and coming in and being recognized, it all presupposes some kind of membership. Do you see? That’s a boundary-bounded set. But that’s so for membership in the church.
If you’re looking for who are the elders, pastors, overseers in the church, then you’re looking for the thickest, fattest theological richness possible, not just for somebody who can scrape by because he can sign his name to a statement of faith or the like.
Male: Thank you, Don.
