Andy Naselli

Thoughts on Theology

D. A. Carson

D. A. Carson MP3s Now Hosted by TGC

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My blog’s most popular post has been “D. A. Carson MP3s” (December 17, 2006). It’s a compilation of links to about 200 Carson MP3s. I updated it diligently through the beginning of 2008, but I stopped because I knew that it would soon become obsolete.

For about the last six months, I’ve attempted to compile a comprehensive collection of Carson MP3s so that TGC could host them. So far I’ve uploaded 443 MP3s (and some MV4s, too), and the plan is to add more as they become available. You can browse most of them in the “sermons” category.

Here are some advantages to the Carson MP3s now hosted by TGC:

  1. Price: They are all free. Previously ChristWay Media sold dozens of Carson MP3s for $1.50 each. Now those same MP3s are available at no charge from TGC site.
  2. Number: Never before have so many Carson MP3s been available online. Many of them have not been available online previously. For example, I obtained CDs from Carson with his talks on them from conferences all over the world (including several in French).
  3. Convenience: Never before have so many Carson MP3s been available online at a single website, and no user name or password is needed to download them.
  4. Continuity: The MP3s are hosted by the same website. Maintaining my previous list of Carson MP3s was challenging because links would constantly change when websites were updated.
  5. Labels: The MP3s are uniformly tagged with as much information as I could find (e.g., title, Scripture text, series, topic, date), and the format of the names of the MP3s themselves are also consistent (e.g., “20020619_Eph_2.11-22_community_and_the_cross.mp3”).

I’d highly recommend that you redeem the time and systematically and thoughtfully listen to these MP3s. I have profited immensely from them. Carson’s manner of speaking is just as articulate, thoughtful, and engaging as his publications. He exalts Christ by exegeting his words, tracing themes through the Bible’s salvation-historical storyline, addressing hot topics with clarity and nuance, and engaging and confronting bad theology as well as the culture.

Related:

  1. D. A. Carson Publications
  2. D. A. Carson’s Theological Method

Challenges for 21st-Century Preaching

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I just noticed that the following article is available online:

D. A. Carson. “Challenges for 21st-Century Preaching.” Preaching 23:6 (May–June 2008): 20–24.

Introduction

I have visited many parts of the world in which the challenges to the 21st-century pulpit look rather different. So part of the purpose of the rest of this essay is modest: to stimulate thinking that will help others flesh out this list and modify it for different cultural locations.

Six challenges that DAC fleshes out

  1. Multiculturalism
  2. Rising Biblical Illiteracy
  3. Shifting Epistemology
  4. Integration
  5. Pace of Change
  6. Modeling and Mentoring

Concluding Reflections

Preachers cannot responsibly ignore these things, for they stand between the speaking God and the listening people—people who are not empty ciphers but culturally located men and women who must be addressed where they are, even if our hope and prayer is that they will not remain where they are, but begin by God’s grace the march down the King’s highway, the narrow road that leads to life.

Our motivation to understand and address people in the 21st century is not to domesticate the gospel by constant appeal to cultural analysis, but to prove effective ambassadors of the Sovereign whose Word we announce. For one day the kingdom of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He will reign for ever and ever (Rev. 11:15). It is precisely because we are anchored in eternity that we are so utterly resolved, like Paul, to address lost men and women who must one day meet their God.

Read the whole thing.

On Emperors and Clothes

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I don’t recall hearing this twist to the textile-imperial metaphor before (D. A. Carson, review of David Rensberger, Overcoming the World: Politics and Community in the Gospel of John, Themelios 17:1 [October–November 1991]: 27–28):

Somewhere along the line, the text has been left behind. Not only have too many speculations been built on other speculations, but the obvious features of the text, such as its Christology, its claims to bring witness, its insistence on the uniqueness and exclusiveness of Jesus the Messiah, its remarkable ability to distinguish between what happened ‘back there’ during Jesus’ ministry and what was discerned only later, are all lost. Many scholars doubt that John 3:3, 5 is primarily about baptism, and that John 6 is primarily about the eucharist; but at very least, the point must be argued, and not assumed on the basis of a doubtful assumption as to how easy it is to read the ecclesiastical realities of the end of the first century off the surface of the text. And how can the Johannine emphasis on the uniqueness of Jesus as the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, as the one who dies so that the nation may be saved, as the shepherd who gives his life for his sheep, be so quickly transmuted into a call that we in our turn take away the sin of the world by opposing injustice? I am not for a moment suggesting we should ignore injustice; I am merely saying that this is an extraordinary reading of John’s gospel.

Indeed, I have gradually come to the conclusion the Fourth Gospel was not written primarily for church consumption anyway, but as an evangelistic booklet. I realize this point is debatable; but the very fact that it is debatable but is not, by and large, being debated, is profoundly troubling and indicative of what is going wrong in Johannine scholarship. The hesitant suggestions of earlier scholars have now become the ‘givens’ of this generation of scholars, who feel free to build fresh, hesitant suggestions on top of them. I am tempted to say that the emperor has no clothes—or, more conservatively, he is down to his underwear.

The Simple Gospel

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Perhaps the most important truth that Jenni and I have especially internalized in the last couple of years is that the gospel is central to our Christian life—not simply step one. We immediately identified with the following paragraph when we read it recently:

For complex reasons many in the Western church came to speak of ‘the simple gospel’, by which they at one time meant the gospel summarized in convenient and simple form, usually for evangelistic purposes. The result is that for many today ‘the gospel’ or ‘gospel preaching’ refers not to the glorious, comprehensive good news disclosed in scripture but to a very simple (some would say simplistic) reduction of it. Some churches distinguished between ‘worship services’ and ‘gospel services’: one wonders which term, ‘worship’ or ‘gospel’, has been more seriously abused. Doubtless the motives behind these developments were often excellent. But the fact remains that a variety of serious problems were thereby introduced. For many, evangelistic preaching became identified with simplistic preaching. Worse, ‘the gospel’ came to be associated in their minds exclusively with the initial steps of faith rather than with God’s comprehensive good news that not only initiates salvation but orders all our life in this world and the next.

–D. A. Carson, “The Biblical Gospel,” in For Such a Time as This: Perspectives on Evangelicalism, Past, Present and Future (ed. Steve Brady and Harold Rowdon; London: Evangelical Alliance, 1996), 82.

Related: My review of Milton Vincent, A Gospel Primer for Christians: Learning to See the Glories of God’s Love (Themelios 33:1 [2008]: 102–3).

Carson on the Cross at Mars Hill

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In the first weekend of December 2008, D. A. Carson preached five sermons in Seattle:

  1. “The Center of the Whole Bible” (Romans 3:21-26): audio | video
  2. “The Strange Triumph of a Slaughtered Lamb” (Revelation 12): audio | video
  3. “A Miracle Full of Surprises” (John 11): audio | video
  4. “Why Doubt the Resurrection of Jesus” (John 20:24-31): audio | video
  5. “The Ironies of the Cross” (Matthew 27:27-51): audio | video

The videos are embedded below:

1. “The Center of the Whole Bible” (Romans 3:21-26)

2. “The Strange Triumph of a Slaughtered Lamb” (Revelation 12)

3. “A Miracle Full of Surprises” (John 11)

4. “Why Doubt the Resurrection of Jesus” (John 20:24-31)

5. “The Ironies of the Cross” (Matthew 27:27-51)

Carson: “Mystery and Fulfillment”

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I just read s-l-o-w-l-y through a 44-page article for the third time. (The last time I read it was fall 2006.) In my view this is the most brilliant academic article that D. A. Carson has written:

D. A. Carson. “Mystery and Fulfillment: Toward a More Comprehensive Paradigm of Paul’s Understanding of the Old and New.” Pages 393–436 in The Paradoxes of Paul. Vol. 2 of Justification and Variegated Nomism. Edited by D. A. Carson, Peter T. O’Brien, and Mark A. Seifrid. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 181. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2004.

It richly repays repeated, thorough readings. But be warned: it’s dense. What follows is an uneven summary that doesn’t do it justice. (Read the whole thing. It’s worth the price of the book, which amount to a little less than $1 per page.) Understanding this article will help one make connections between the OT and the NT more richly.

Note: Italics in quotations are in the original. [Read more…] about Carson: “Mystery and Fulfillment”

Carson and Moo’s Dates for the NT Books

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The below list does not reproduce a particular chart from D. A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo’s Introduction to the New Testament (2d ed.; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), but it is based on the text. They roughly date the twenty-seven New Testament books as follows (though the exact order of the twenty-seven books is fuzzy, e.g., re the prison epistles):

  1. James: around 46–48 (just before the Jerusalem Council)
  2. Galatians: 48 (just prior to the Jerusalem Council)
  3. 1 Thessalonians: 50
  4. 2 Thessalonians: either in late 50 or early 51
  5. 1 Corinthians: probably early in 55
  6. 2 Corinthians: 56 (i.e., within the next year or so of 1 Corinthians)
  7. Romans: 57
  8. Philippians: mid–50s to early 60s if written from Ephesus (61–62 if written from Rome)
  9. Mark: sometime in the late 50s or the 60s
  10. Philemon: probably Rome in the early 60s
  11. Colossians: early 60s, probably 61
  12. Ephesians: the early 60s
  13. 1 Peter: almost surely in 62–63
  14. Titus: probably not later than the mid-60s
  15. 1 Timothy: early to mid-60s
  16. 2 Timothy: early or mid-60s (about 64 or 65)
  17. 2 Peter: likely shortly before 65
  18. Acts: mid-60s
  19. Jude: middle-to-late 60s
  20. Luke: mid or late 60s
  21. Hebrews: before 70
  22. Matthew: not long before 70
  23. John: tentatively 80–85
  24. 1 John: early 90s
  25. 2 John: early 90s
  26. 3 John: early 90s
  27. Revelation: 95–96 (at the end of the Emperor Domitian’s reign)