Don Carson discusses various topics concerning the church and modern-day culture. He covers complex theological issues like the different approaches to evangelicalism, the interpretation of Biblical texts, and the ‘new perspective’ on Paul’s teachings. Additionally, Carson examines the changing perspectives within church practices and the role of reading the Bible in evangelical communities. His insights delve into the nuances of Christian theology, church history, and the challenges facing contemporary faith communities.
Gracious God, thank you just for the freedom to meet like this, to fire our questions, to think over issues of concern to us at so many different levels as we seek to live for you in today’s world and today’s church. We pray for this next hour. We ask that you’ll give Don clarity of mind and great wisdom as he speaks and you’ll give us discerning ears as we listen. For your name’s sake, amen.
Male: Should evangelicals secede from the Church of England?
Don Carson: It’s not impossible that in years to come there will be no Church of England as a national state church, and all the questions are going to have to be changed again. It’s a complicated matter, isn’t it? That’s what’s called a punt.
Male: What do you think might be the inconvenient messages from God that today evangelicals might be avoiding as individuals or as churches?
Don: I think that depends on which group of evangelicals. Evangelicalism, even when it’s defined theologically, is a pretty broad grouping. So some, for example, who are from a more Arminian heritage are more likely to be tempted by openness of God theology. None of the Reformed types are tempted by that. Conversely, those who are more tied to the Reform camp, they might be more attracted to some forms of Kuyperianism, a certain brand of the theology of Abraham Kuyper, the Federal Vision, and so on.
Some who are really socially active might be tempted to confuse the gospel with their social activism. Others who are really afraid of doing anything but preaching the Word might be a bit slow on the uptake and be tempted by a kind of withdrawal from doing genuine good. It’s just so hard to generalize along those fronts.
If you ask what trends are right across the board, one of the things that is most disturbing (but this manifests itself in different ways) is that we are increasingly a generation of evangelicals who do not read their Bibles regularly, do not have family devotions regularly, do not catechize our children quite regularly.
That, on the long haul, has got to make us nervous because the church reforms itself by the Word. If we have a greater and greater ignorance of the Word, then we’re distancing ourselves from that which God has ordained as the ordaining agents. “Sanctify them through your truth; your Word is truth.” Apart from that, there’s so much diversity, I’m reluctant to overspecify.
Male: What are we to make of the so-called new perspective on Paul?
Don: In one sense there’s not simply a new perspective on Paul, there are a variety of positions that are collectively labeled the new perspective on Paul. In fact, it’s a whole battery of perspectives.
It was really triggered, with some antecedent stuff, in 1977 with a book by E.P. Sanders, whose argument was first-century Judaism was not a legalistic religion, was not a religion of merit theology or the like, and what the church has done since Luther and Calvin has been to read Galatians and Romans and books like that against the background, not of the first century where legalism and merit theology were not the issues, but against the background of the medieval church of Rome.
As a result we’ve gotten into a terrible pattern of making an antithesis between grace and merit theology that were really not the issues they were writing about. What this did was trigger off endless discussion on how to read the Pauline letters, especially Romans and Galatians, but also Corinthians and elsewhere. It produced new definitions of justification, new definitions of works, and so forth. These dominated the English-speaking world Pauline studies for quite a long time.
To be frank, they no longer do in academic circles because there have been enough really stiff thoughtful responses to these things that now this is one of the little positions that are out there, and some of the voices are pretty vociferous, but it no longer controls the discussion today the way it did a bare 15 years ago. Unfortunately, however, the church comes along 15 years later and picks it up, and it’s a really big issue in some denominations and in some churches.
There are different approaches to this whole thing, but one of them that’s strongest says something like this: Justification is that act of God by which you are declared just, because of Christ’s death, and in the covenant. You are in the covenant and belong to a certain kind of people. All the emphasis is put on the people identity rather than on the declaration of justice because of what Christ has done. The other is not quite denied; it’s simply not central in setting out the whole structure of thought.
Then to that is added the further statement that there is a second justification, as it were, that takes place on the last day when Christians are justified “on the basis of the whole life lived,” not because there’s attestation of the whole life lived of what Christ has done but on the ground of the whole life lived. That is their expression, amply defended.
That means, at the end of the day, it’s impossible to ground your confidence and salvation in acceptance before God, finally and exclusively in the utterly sufficient work of Christ. It changes how you preach. It changes how you emphasize. It changes your understanding in some pretty fundamental ways, in my judgment, of what the gospel is.
It has to be admitted that there are different perspectives on the new perspective. If you’re a good reader who can read solid theological stuff but you don’t want something that’s too technical, in my view, one of the better summaries of the whole thing is a book by Stephen Westerholm called Perspectives Old and New on Paul. It’s more information than you want, but it’s pretty accurate, it’s pretty careful, and I heartily recommend it.
Male: Let me follow up on one particular perspective then. With the publication of Tom Wright’s new book on justification, available in Christian bookshops, how do you see his views affecting and shaping both pastors and the lay Christian reader’s view of the gospel and how to proclaim it?
Don: Let me begin by saying Tom is an old friend. We were exact contemporaries; he at Oxford, I at Cambridge. When we were doing our research, we used to meet up in the summer at Tyndale House. I’ve known him for a long time, and we’ve engaged on all kinds of fronts … good, bad, and indifferent. Then he eventually taught for quite a number of years in my old alma mater, McGill University. So I want you to understand that what I’m going to say, I say out of a context of several decades of friendship and personal knowledge.
Moreover, I would also be quick to say that some of the stuff he’s written over the years has been superb. There is simply not a better book in the last hundred years on the resurrection than The Resurrection of the Son of God. I don’t agree with every jot and tittle in it, but it is first-class work. When I was doing university missions in this country 20 years ago, and there were some really screwball figures around who were taking up a lot of space, I often gave away his little book, Who Was Jesus?
So there are lots of things for which all us stand indebted to Tom. On the current debate, that is now narrowed down in some ways to John Piper versus Tom and so on, John wrote a draft of his manuscript and gave the whole thing to Tom to critique. He wrote an 11,000-word response to John. John tried to take it all into account and was about as faithful and as careful in presenting Tom’s view as he could be in trying to refute it. John Piper is a dear friend, and when Tom gave the response, he didn’t sort of run it by John’s eyes, either.
If you know the men and the history of the debate well, what you discover is very often what Tom, in his book, is getting on his high horse about and saying, “Yeah but what we really believe is this and this and this,” many of those in John’s camp, and in my camp, will say, “So do we.” But it’s presented as if he’s the only one that’s saying those kinds of things. I have to say, I find that form of argumentation annoying, because it’s a misrepresentation of what opponents’ arguments are. The first responsibility of any arguer is to make sure you rightly characterize the opponent’s position.
So their respective followers, who often don’t understand the issues as well as their mentors, often polarize over these things and say, “Boy oh boy, Piper sure handled Wright.” Or alternatively, “Well, now Wright has really finally squashed Piper.” That’s not the way these things work. I have to tell you, this response to Piper I don’t find particularly convincing. At numerous points, I don’t think Piper is being well-represented in Wright’s attempt to answer it, either. It is a complicated issue.
We could easily spend an hour or two just on this one, but in terms of who’s being influenced by what.… It used to be that virtually all the young theologians were siding up with Tom, partly because Tom’s a great lecturer. He’s superb. He’s a terrific debater. He’s a wonderful writer. Nowadays the camp is much more divided, and there are just as many young people, maybe even more young pastors and so on, who are saying, “Enough already.”
I want to know how you’re going to preach the gospel out of all of this, and if what you’re preaching in the gospel is, “Well, Jesus places you by his death in a community of victory over sin, and now, provided there’s the whole life lived, you’ll be able to be finally justified on the last day …” That’s not the gospel. It just isn’t. So there’s a line I want to draw in the sand, despite the fact that I care for Tom deeply and I’m very grateful to stand on his shoulder on all kinds of issues. There is, in my judgment, a gospel issue here that has to be addressed.
Male: I have a friend who thinks she is, and says she is, a Christian. She’s extremely charismatic, to the point where she often faints in so-called “Holy Spirit ecstasy” and talks of speaking to God face-to-face, as well as focusing majorly on desired miracles of healing and signs and wonders. Is this of God? If not, how do I reach out to her?
Don: At the risk of sounding like a peddler, I have written on this sort of subject at some length. If you want to read the book, it’s called Showing the Spirit, where I try to work through some of the relevant passages. I’m not a cessationist who argues there is no supernatural display of the Spirit’s power today. I don’t want to get into that camp; I think it’s pretty hard to justify exegetically and biblically.
At the same time, there are enough warnings within Scripture itself against those who want to make miracles the test of everything and who don’t actually listen to the Word very well. Certainly, I am always extremely suspicious of any putative phenomenon from God that finds no central place in Scripture and sometimes no place whatsoever.
In the Toronto Blessing, for example, where people were falling down and yapping like dogs, it’s really hard to find, in the New Testament, the gift of yapping like dogs. It just is very difficult, regardless of whether or not it’s seen as a criterion of anything or not. Moreover, there is amongst so many of us a love of the display of power that is frightening, that I am intrinsically suspicious. I don’t trust myself, and I don’t trust them.
I remember what Paul says, writing to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians, chapter 12, where, apparently, there are some people who are claiming to have had many displays of power, many experiences of God through the Spirit. Probably they’re saying something like, “Oh yes, Paul had the Damascus road experience, but that was a long time ago. Yesterday’s grace isn’t enough for today. We’ve been talking with God recently ourselves.” It sounds as if it’s that kind of phenomenon.
Paul doesn’t want to brag back, “I’ve had more experiences than you have.” He doesn’t want to do that. He’s so embarrassed by being put into this position of defending himself, he actually starts talking about himself in the third person. He said, “I knew this bloke 14 years ago. Whether he was in the body or out of the body, I don’t know. He was actually caught up to heaven.” It becomes very clear as you read on that he’s talking about himself. “He was caught up to Paradise, and he heard things you can’t lawfully utter. It’s beyond human capacity.”
He says, “I’ll boast about a guy like that, but I won’t boast about myself, even though I could …” Because, of course, it really did happen to him. “But I will only talk about what is seen and observed.” That is, he is afraid of being judged by the esoteric. He’s afraid of being judged by what others cannot assess. He wants to be assessed only in the public arena of his actions, not in some claim to something putative, private, and non-assessable. Then he actually goes so far as to say he is afraid people will think too highly of him. Isn’t that stunning?
Most of us go through life fearing people will think too little of us. Paul is afraid of so talking about his spiritual experiences that people will think too highly of him. So until I see that kind of spirit in those who claim such experiences, I don’t find what they’re saying very Pauline. Usually when they’re telling me these things, you can tell they really want me to think very highly of them. Just be very careful. Be very careful. Stick with the center and don’t be too gullible.
Male: How do I reach out to a friend like that?
Don: If the person is really interested in Bible study, start with some good Bible studies. Work through the passages in 1 and 2 Corinthians and in Acts. See what they actually say. That’s one of the reasons why I wrote that book.
If, on the other hand, they’re not interested, in any way, in being shaped by the Word of God, if the answer coming back is, “You just have the dead letter of the Book; I’ve got the Spirit,” you’re now already so cut loose from the Word that Jesus says endures forever, as stable as the heavens and the earth, and by which all human beings will be judged on the last day …
“To this man will I look, he who is of a contrite spirit and who trembles at my Word.” It is elevating above that which is universal and binding that which is, at best, personal, subjective, and not always very testable. It’s reversing something so fundamental that it just cannot be allowed to stand.
Male: What constitutes a call to the ministry?
Don: That’s a great question. At the risk of caricature, two men whom I revere take exactly opposite positions on this one. One says, “Unless you have a sense of God’s impress on your mind and heart, specifically called, don’t go into the ministry. ‘Do not be many teachers, knowing that you’ll receive that greater condemnation.’ This has to be stamped by God on your soul. Unless you have this call, you’re not qualified. Sit around and do something else but don’t enter the ministry.”
The other one says, “Hey, the Great Commission is there. Get off your duff. Go. What more do you need? Jesus has said, ‘Go and make disciples.’ You have to have a jolly good reason not to go. If you meet the qualifications for going, then you should go unless you’ve got formidable reasons for not going, like you’re not adequately qualified.”
You think, “Boy, with polarities like that, where do you even start to enter into the discussion?” The way to enter into the discussion is by reading through the New Testament to discover the diversity of calls that take place in the New Testament. You can’t do a study of the word call in this respect, because the word call itself is not a technical expression that always has the same value.
For example, in the Synoptic Gospels, call means invitation. “Many are called, but few are chosen,” and it’s not called to vocational ministry but called to follow Jesus. In Paul, dominantly, the verb call means something like God’s effectual call. If you’re called, you’re saved. Then it has very little to do with being called to ministry.
So you can’t do this sort of study by looking up a word in a concordance and looking up the passages. You’ve got to look at all the passages where anybody is called to do anything in service, and then start trying to figure out the diversity. Let me mention two or three.
In Acts 13, the Spirit, through the prophetic leaders in the church in Antioch of Syria, actually sets aside Paul and Barnabas for the particular work to which God himself has called them, namely what we call today the first missionary journey, which runs into the second, the third, and so forth, in due course. That’s one.
In 1 Timothy, chapter 3, “If anyone desires to do the work of an overseer, he desires a good thing. Now here are the qualifications …” In this case, it’s coming from the impetus of somebody who wants to do this. Maybe they see others doing it in the church and think, “I love the gospel, and I see what they’re doing. I’d like to do that too.” Okay then, here are the criteria. Let’s start there.
In 2 Timothy, chapter 2, verse 2, there’s another one. There we’re told that Timothy, and in principle other leaders in the church later on, should be looking around for young men to whom they can pass on the gospel in a way such that they are qualified, then, to pass it on to others. In that sense, then, the call might begin by some pastor or other tapping you on the shoulder and saying, “You know, you’re a medical doctor. Bully for you. Give up your small ambitions. I think you should be considering vocational ministry.” That’s another kind of call, isn’t it?
Eventually there are other kinds of things with church criteria, church-based authority, that recognize these things. There are a half a dozen of these things, so I think that functionally, however these things work out in terms of the Spirit’s impress in our mind and heart, however universal the command to proclaim the gospel, there is huge diversity in the mechanics of getting there, as far as I can see from the New Testament. Huge diversity.
What there must be is a gospel passion, not simply a desire to be number one in the local church. The things must be tested by the local church itself. In my own case, I was doing chemistry and mathematics. I was working for the government in the field of air pollution in Canada. My life was mapped out. I was heading to Cornell next to do organic synthesis.
The first tap on the door was when the minister of my church in Montreal pulled me aside and said, “I want you to intern with me this summer.” I smiled sweetly and said, “There are a lot of young people in this church, and you’ve got me confused. There are some who are heading into the ministry; I’m doing chemistry. Let me give you a list of 10 names who are maybe thinking about the ministry.” Then we had a two-hour fight, and I won. I didn’t go as an intern, but it was the first step in forcing me to think about these kinds of things.
Then there were other things. Eventually I got a job, as I said, in air pollution. I found, in the lab, some people who absolutely hated their jobs and were panting for retirement and others for whom chemistry was god. I didn’t fit into either camp. I had a blast. I enjoyed the job. It was government funded, a great research project. I was having a blast. I was enjoying it, but I was enjoying even more working with another chap to help start a church up the valley. He was a minister; I was just helping him out. I remembered a chorus I sang as a child:
By and by when I look on his face,
Beautiful face, thorn-shadowed face;
By and by when I look on his face,
I’ll wish I had given him more.
I couldn’t get rid of the tune. Dumb song. I just couldn’t get rid of the tune. I could just see approaching the throne on the last day, “Here, God. Here’s my chemistry.” Now I’m not denying that some people might be called of God to chemistry, but for me that became an issue I couldn’t duck.
Then just when I was getting over it and settling down again, I heard a preacher. He was a missionary to Haiti and preached a sermon on Ezekiel 22. “I sought for a man to stand in the gap before me, but I found none.” It was as if God, through his Word, had just hit me between the eyes. I mean, it was all over at that point.
Now what was my call? There was already a gospel interest; I was helping to plant a church. There was a minister who was tapping me on the shoulder, setting me off-center. There was the training of a church that had tried to make me think in terms of eternity. There was a message from the Word. There was whatever the Spirit was doing in my own life.
I think, actually, when you analyze the calls of a lot of people, they are complex things that turn on a lot of similar kinds of things. It’s rarely just one issue. It’s been a lot of things. I know some people who have gone into the ministry with one slam-dunk call somewhere along the line, but I don’t think that’s all that common.
I think these matters are pretty complex, and those of us who are in positions of leadership ought to be doing more of 2 Timothy 2. A lot more of it. We ought to be intrusively invading people’s lives and saying, “What’s your holdup? I think you ought to be considering this,” not waiting around for just God to speak to them out of the blue. When Paul tells Timothy, that’s God’s Word. That’s his responsibility to tap people on the shoulder. God is a God of means. All of these things, I think, work together to constitute a pretty complex doctrine of vocational call.
Moreover, there’s a danger, too, when you talk about these things, of viewing so-called secular work, that is, non-Christian vocational work, as somehow intrinsically second-class. You really want to avoid that, because there’s a sense in which all work is offered up to God. People need to be trained to think of their CPA job of keeping the accounts running as offered, cheerfully, up to God, because we are made in his image. We are creative. We are responsible creatures. Work begins in the garden of Eden even before the fall, and it continues after the fall.
This must be offered up cheerfully to God, not something that is put up with until you can get back to church on Sunday again when you can sing some choruses and be really spiritual. This is really a very bad view of spirituality. So when we talk about these things, we must also include a sense of what the Middle Ages called vocātiō, a sense of vocation in all that we do, so that all of our work is offered up to God in gratitude and thanksgiving.
Male: Here’s a question that goes one step further on from that; this is about starting to get involved in leadership at the local church. What would be your advice to a young man starting to get involved in the leadership of the local church as a lay elder or as a pastor?
Don: Ideally, you’d like to come under the care of a more senior pastor who is going to mentor you. If you start out on this line with nobody mentoring you, then I’m happy to tell you some things to do, but ideally a person just coming onto the elders’ board, still young, needs to start asking questions. “What book should I be reading? Where should I be improving my knowledge of Scripture?”
In addition to the biblically-mandated criteria that are laid out for elders/pastors/overseers in passages like 1 Timothy 3; 1 Peter 5; and passages like that, where you can actually list them one by one, think your way through them, and read commentaries about them, there are a whole lot of things that might be called prudential wisdom.
For example, any elder should have a good working knowledge of the essentials of the Christian faith and be able to defend and articulate them. Second, any Christian pastor/elder ought to be able to know and defend the secondary issues that are important to that particular denomination and be able to defend them. In other words, you can’t be a devout and devoted Presbyterian and become an elder in a Baptist church without some trouble, or vice versa. You’ve got to be convinced within that heritage and be able to defend those things as part of the responsibility of the job.
Third, you have to be devoted to people. It can’t just be an intellectual thing. A sermon is not an art form to be admired; it is a means of communicating God’s Word to shape people. Unless you’re really committed to people, to serving them and loving them and nurturing them, you can’t be an elder. It can’t be just an intellectual challenge. So you need to be working on those kinds of things.
Fourth, any of this sort of work demands time. If you’ve got the sort of job where you can’t devote any significant time to it, you’re not qualified. You’ve got to arrange your life so there is some time you devote. It might not be 40 hours a week. I know you’ve got a job and you might have a family and all, but unless there is some time you can devote to it, you can’t simply be an elder, have the title of being an elder, show up to an elders’ meeting once every three months, and call yourself an elder.
In the New Testament, an elder is, by definition, someone who actually does teach. So it might not be preaching before the crowd of 200 or whatever, but one-on-one, in small groups, somewhere, you’ve got to be exercising and developing the gift of being able to communicate the Word of God, the whole counsel of God, to other kinds of people. That’s going to demand some time and care, whether it’s a one-on-one counselor or evangelism, you’ve got to be doing something along those kinds of lines.
Now within that sort of framework, then, there are reading lists. I would go further and say, ideally, this sort of person should begin to know what the cultural pressures are that put pressure on Christians, and what sort of biblical responses should be coming out of that. These might be social pressures, doctrinal pressures, moral pressures, all the way from handling porn to complex issues of doctrine.
You’ve got to have at least some awareness of what’s going on and be thinking through how to respond. That’s part of what it means to be an elder, to be caring for the flock of God. That means if you begin to see that’s the case, to take care of the flock of God, to pastor, to be a shepherd of the flock of God, then you can start thinking through, with the advice of others, what kind of reading lists you should be getting.
Wesley used to give a preliminary list of 49 books that all of his traveling preachers had to learn well. That was the first step. You keep growing and learning things. Unless you’re committed to being that kind of person, you probably really shouldn’t take the job, but within that framework you need some mentoring.
Male: Last question on this sort of stream of things and a slightly different spin, perhaps. What kind of leaders do you think the next generation of UK evangelicals should be? Here are some examples: entrenched stick-in-the-muds, all guns blazing, or bridge builders?
Don: Would you say there was a bias in the question, perhaps? Let me take the last two, all guns blazing or bridge builders. Now let me recast those two. Those who will defend the truth with knowledge, sobriety, courage, and humility or those who wimp out and have lots of social connections but don’t really understand the gospel. It’s the same two poles but put in slightly different ways.
If you set up the question so that you have only positive associations with one and only negative associations with the other, I don’t think you understand the Bible very well, to be quite frank. That is to say, there is lots of place in the Bible for leadership that is courageous and that tackles some of these things. Read through the Pastoral Epistles. Read through 2 Peter and Jude. Those are things that are there.
On the other hand, read the Pastoral Epistles again and think of all the places where gentleness is stressed, meekness, humility of mind.… Philippians, chapter 1, where Paul is quite happy to make common cause with those who preach the gospel, even if he thinks some of their motives are pretty screwball, because he understands what the big picture is and the centrality of the gospel. He’s building bridges instead of breaking them down.
So guns blazing is nasty; bridge building is positive. I would want to say if guns blazing means there are places for saying there are certain things that damn you, there are certain teachings that are false, at some point they have to be confronted. Now if your whole self-identity is with a shoot-em’ down defensiveness, build up a citadel, and so on, you’re already yesterday’s person. You’re not evangelizing. It’s not healthy.
On the other hand, if you’re constantly building bridges, but you haven’t figured out where it’s a bridge to or who really is a Christian, then it merely is a social religious club, too. What I would say is don’t take your cues of what kind of leaders we need in the next generation from sloganeering or from contemporary labels.
Take it from the Word of God. Go back to the Word of God and see how all of these things are supposed to cohere and work together. Think through, humbly, out of Scripture itself, what kinds of leaders we need rather than building shibboleths for our categories.
Male: Any hope for the entrenched stick-in-the-muds? How do you recast them?
Don: Entrenched stick-in-the-muds. If they’re just cultural stick-in-the-muds, they’ve never read a book by anybody who lived after 1800, they’re always addressing yesterday’s problems, and so on, clearly they’re not going to be the future.
On the other hand, it is really important to have Christian leaders who are addressing questions of today and tomorrow who are themselves rooted in history and understand that the gospel wasn’t invented in the twenty-first century or that the problems of sin weren’t invented in the twenty-first century. It’s important to see there is a rootage and a heritage and a sense of indebtedness to the shoulders on which we stand as we read earlier generations. Again, just be very careful of the stereotypes.
Male: Change of subject again. Here are two questions. I think they are in similar area, so you can either take the general or the specific.
Question #1: What would you say to someone who said the Reformation was over? Can we, therefore, join together with the Roman Catholic Church for evangelism in our cities?
Question #2: Could you please give me some thoughts on what I should say to my brother who was brought up an evangelical but is now going to a Roman Catholic church, thinks we believe the same gospel (which I believe a local Roman Catholic church could), and is on the Catholic Society Committee at university. How can I prove we don’t believe the same?
Don: That’s a good question. I don’t know the questioner, of course, but the questioner may actually be referring to a particular book written by Mark Knoll and Carolyn Nystrom called Is the Reformation Over? The basic thesis of that book is “Yes, the Reformation is over.”
If you are interested in such things, there is an excellent review of it, respectful but very careful with the history, by Scott Manetsch. He teaches church history at Trinity. It was first published in Trinity Journal, if you have access to a good theological library, and then it was published online as well. You can download it for free on reformation21.org. It’s a pretty penetrating review if you’re interested in pursuing that one further.
When you ask a question like “Is the Reformation over?” you could be asking one of two or three quite different things. You could be asking, “Was the Reformation a mistake?” so now it’s over, in which case you’ve really got to be convinced the whole thing was a mistake in the first place. That’s what you have to say. Or “Is it over because the issues they were dealing with now have all been resolved?” so now we’re all saying the same thing.
For example, Catholicism does believe we are saved by grace alone through faith alone. Anyone who knows the literature on this subject knows how complex the issues are. For example, there is a recently deceased cardinal from North America whom I’ve sat on various discussion things with. He was brilliant. He wrote a very crucial essay about 15 years ago which argued how Catholics could defend the view that people are saved by grace alone through faith alone. Basically, it was by a redefinition of faith that incorporated a whole lot of works within faith.
He chose the biblical phrase, “Faith working itself out through love” and filled it with a whole lot of Catholic perspective. Then you could say, on that basis, we could join in a common confession that said, “By grace alone through faith alone.” So some of the discussions that have gone on have actually achieved a certain kind of signed commitment from two parties, where both parties are using the same words but mean quite different things. That’s just such a complex issue nowadays.
What is a better test, I think, is to look at the published official documents of the catechetical movements on both sides. I strongly urge you to buy the latest English edition of the Catholic catechism. Look in the index for all the places that talk of justification. You can look up all the places that talk about Mary, the infallibility of the pope, and all those sorts of things if you want as well, but just start with justification.
You read through those, carefully, respectfully, listening as respectfully as you possibly can. I don’t see how you can have anything like a Pauline view of justification and sign onto it. I really don’t see how you can. I just don’t see how you can. Go ahead and try. It is essentially a Tridentine view, a Council of Trent view, that is unreformed in any respect whatsoever, and those are the official doctrines of the Catholic Church.
Now if you ask, “Are there local Catholic priests, and so on, who really do buy into, what I would judge to be, a more biblically-sound view?” Yes, of course, of course, but the issue is, in part, one of how institutions affect each other.
Whether by sidling on to say there is no distinction, now, between Catholicism, let’s say, and Westminster Confession, you’re either historically naÔve, you fail to see how people are sometimes using the same expressions to mean very different things, or you haven’t really looked at the foundation documents that are still in print today that are being published by both sides. They are quite different worlds.
This is a harder thing to say when, on some fronts, we are co-belligerents. We are Trinitarian. We do believe in creation. Catholics have done a whole lot of social theory that’s really quite helpful. On all kinds of ethical issues we might find ourselves on the same side, like abortion. We might not be on the same side on some other ethical issues, like gambling.
Nevertheless, co-belligerency on certain fronts may be useful, but that doesn’t mean we have exactly the same understanding of what the gospel itself is. I’m not defensive about this. I’ve sat on councils of evangelicals dialoguing with Catholics, and I work in academic circles where we talk about these things bluntly in front of each other. Believe me, we are in many respects in different universes.
I think there is, finally, more respect, more care for one another, more honesty in debate, more candor, when we acknowledge the differences and then argue them out, than when we pretend there are no differences and bury them all under the carpet. I think, on the long haul, that does not increase mutual understanding or respect. I think, on the long haul, it’s in danger of burying the gospel itself.
Sometimes those who have been evangelical and have become Catholics.… Every time that happens, it hits the press. It’s a biggie, although statistically (at least in North America, I don’t know what the figures are here), there are about three times as many Catholics who become Protestants as the other way around. You make what you like of it, but it is the case. That almost never hits the press.
Statistically, what sometimes happens is an evangelical comes out of an evangelical church without a really robust grasp of the gospel and is really somewhat embarrassed by the hokey public worship and slightly cheesy approach to God. It’s aesthetically boring, and then they come into the magnificence of a liturgical structure that is thought through, stable, and has some aesthetic value to it, and it feels more honoring to God. That becomes part of the movement in. I understand that.
So sometimes we have created our own problems by being pretty cheesy in the way we do things. It has to be said. Having said that, the gospel is still the gospel, and I’d rather work with cheesy forms of public worship with the gospel than magnificent forms of corporate structure without the gospel. You have to make some choices, while you’re still trying to reform things, in line with God’s most Holy Word.
Male: If John Piper, Tim Keller, Mark Dever, and Don Carson went into a winner-takes-all wrestle-off, who would win?
Don: The questioner has clearly never met the four of us, because one of us is 6’4” or 6’5” and outweighs any of us by at least 50 to 100 pounds, and he’s younger than the rest of us as well. There’s your answer.
Male: Given that demographically the Federal Vision is more significant in the UK than the United States, what are its strengths and what should we watch out for?
Don: Let me ask a question here. How many of you know what the Federal Vision is? I’m not trying to embarrass anybody; I just want to know. Let me tell you something.… Maybe 20 people. This room was equally filled two or three nights ago, but there was a much higher percentage of students. Maybe 150 hands went up. Isn’t that interesting? For most of the people in here, Federal Vision is not a really hot topic, but for another younger generation coming along, it can be a really hot topic.
Again, it’s something that’s really quite complex. There are a lot of different planks in it, but at the risk of simplifying, it’s a sub-branch of Presbyterian theology in which there is a lot of emphasis on objectifying the sacraments, such that baptism, for example, now becomes more than just a covenant sign but something that is so objectified in the mind of God that there is something much more powerfully accomplished there than we actually think of.
In most high Presbyterian theology, infant baptism is tied to marking out the person as belonging to the covenant community, a bit like circumcision in the Old Testament, but that doesn’t say anything definite about whether the person is actually regenerate or one of the elect or something. There has to be personal faith at some juncture that confirms all of this.
Under the Federal Vision, there is much more of an objectifying of all of this, God making covenant promise to do all of this, and so on, so that unless the person actually eventually grows self-consciously to become apostate and reject everything, the person should be presumed to be saved all the way along the line. There are a lot of other elements to the whole thing, but that is a substantial part of it.
Out of this, then, have come some expressions such as presumptive regeneration, which is pretty strong in the Dutch Reformed heritage. In North America it’s often associated with what’s sometimes called the Auburn Avenue Theology, because Auburn Avenue is the location of a church in Louisiana where a lot of the conferences for this stuff have been held.
Or it’s often connected with Moscow, Idaho. Yes, there is a Moscow, Idaho, and it’s almost as cold as the other Moscow. There are a number of Presbyterians there (there are not many of them) who are articulate. They write a lot of stuff that’s appealing. Some of the stuff they write is brilliant and really, really helpful and good, but these voices have become strong in putting together the Federal Vision. In some tracks of it, the Federal Vision begins to overlap the new perspective on Paul.
They’re distinguishable, but they become overlapping because of the influence of a man called Norman Shepherd and some others who have started putting together saving faith into a kind of built-in obedience into the faith such that the works are not merely the entailment but are somehow bound up with the very definition of faith. That has caused endless discussions within Presbyterian circles on the nature of faith, and so forth.
In the North American context of Presbyterianism, this has caused a whole lot of debates in the PCA (the Presbyterian Church in America) and lines are now being drawn. It’s the sort of debate that just about doesn’t affect Reformed Baptists because we don’t see the same significance to baptism as marking you in the covenant apart from personal faith. The two are tied.
As a result, the Federal Vision is not a threat to Reformed Baptists. In fact, the Federal Vision, rightly understood within Reformed Baptist circles, can actually strengthen our cause just a wee bit because we do see faith as tied up with conversion in a powerful way, which is also God’s covenant promise to what he’s doing in us.
Whereas within a paedo-baptist framework, unless you have a very clear and unambiguous paedo-baptist theology that stands over against it, it suddenly becomes very appealing to a new generation of young men who think this is more robust. I guess what I’d say is there are really two issues.
One is whether this particular view is right or wrong, and in my view, it’s not right, partly because I come out of Reformed Baptist camps. I don’t think it’s right for that reason, but even within the paedo-baptist high Presbyterian view, I don’t think it can be justified. I don’t think it can. On the other hand, I understand how those who justify it do attempt to justify it. That’s one set of issues.
The other set of issues is how central something becomes. That’s a much harder one to handle because, on a number of theological issues, not just this one but issues that are entirely unrelated, you occasionally get somebody who fixates on one point of theology where they might be right or they might be wrong. I might think they’re right or I might think they’re wrong, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it so long as it’s something that remains on the periphery and is not constantly being pushed.
If, on the other hand, it is the sort of thing that becomes, for someone, the defining moment, the defining factor in theology, such that the camp is being divided.… You’re either with them or against them, that’s what you’re preaching all the time in the local church, so that somehow the glory of the gospel and the connections you have with other brothers and sisters in Christ, it’s all getting washed away in a kind of “You either have the inside track special knowledge or you don’t,” then you’ve suddenly got two issues.
One is the issue itself: is it right or wrong? And I might think it’s right or wrong. In this case I think it’s wrong, but I could live with it so long as it’s not becoming divisive. If I think it’s wrong and it’s becoming divisive, then sooner or later there is more impetus to try to do something about it so that this is not becoming the defining issue of what we’re about. It’s the wrong place to draw the line.
If you think it is the right place to draw the line, then it seems to me you’re getting the hierarchy of Christian doctrine slightly screwball. That is another kind of danger, but it is, in my judgment, a danger on the long haul.
Male: How serious do you think Steve Chalke’s comments on the cross are and how would you respond to him?
Don: I presume that now what people mean by Steve Chalke’s view on the cross is the one statement about how the notion of substitutionary atonement is “cosmic child abuse.” That wasn’t original with him. There are some flat-out liberals who had argued that for years, but it’s been made popular. Then because his book was pushed by Tom Wright it got into those circles as well.
It’s not just the offensiveness of the slogan. There is an underlying issue that we need to understand. Let me back off and offer you a presentation of the gospel I heard by a well-known British preacher. If I mentioned his name, most of you would know it. He’s a brilliant communicator, and he gave a summary of the Bible’s whole storyline and gospel along these lines.… This is as fair as I can make his summary.
In the beginning, God made everything, and it was good. But it in our rebellion, in the fall of Genesis 3, we defied God and we rebelled so grievously that we fell under sin and death. We destroy our relationships. We destroy our relationship with God. We destroy our relationship with each other. We destroy our relationship with the created order. We’re not good stewards of his creation. We’re not good stewards of friendship. Our marriages break down.
There is sin and war and hate, all because we have rebelled, but the glorious thing is that, despite our sin, God, who is rich in mercy, has pursued us across the eons in so many ways. He pursues us in his covenant with Abraham that promises, ultimately, that in him and in his seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed. He shows his grace in giving us … [Audio cuts off]
