D.A. Carson on Seminary, Theology, and The Gospel Coalition - Pastor Well | Episode 11

[Music] hello and welcome to the pasture well podcast this is Herschel York the Dean of the school of theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville Kentucky I'm also the senior pastor of the buck Run Baptist Church in Frankfort the pastor well podcast is a podcast dedicated to helping those who serve the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ be faithful in their ministry and today we are especially honored delighted privileged to have dr. DEA Carson with us and we're going to be talking about preaching theology and the ministry that he said that has helped so many pastor well dr. Carson it is a joy to have you welcome to the campus of Southern Seminary to the pastor well podcast it's my privilege and honor to be with you well I approach this with fear and trembling you have no idea how large you loom in my own thinking and heart and mind round walk with the Lord I'm ashamed to say that I have the gift of intimidation well it is because you have been used so greatly of the Lord and you really are a spiritual giant in so many ways God has used you greatly so I've got to tell you my I have to da Carson stories basically that I want to relate to you the first one is doesn't involve meeting you personally in any way but you your book I bet you would be shocked to know which of your books I would put in the top five most formative books in my lifetime of all the books that have influenced me I doubt you would guess which one of yours it would be but it is you ready for it exegetical fallacies yeah now you wrote that late 80s Early 90s so a long time ago yeah I see me late 70s early 80s wrong decade there because I was in my early 20s when I read it I had grown up in a an Independent Baptist background and there we were very biblical I mean I was taught the Bible my dad was a pastor a lot of the preaching that I heard in the circle I grew up in was what I call nifty lifti preaching they they would find a line that was sort of poetic a turn of phrase and lifted out of its context and then used that line really as a window to pour in their own systematic theology and that's what I had grown up with and it was it was often very true what was said but it was not very textual I also had grown up on so-called word study sermons you know hearing hoop a ray chase under rower you know the Timothy was Paul's under rower and the gospel was the dynamite of salvation and all those things so I'd grown up with this when I read exegetical fallacies coupled with around the same time I read stocks between two worlds oh yes those two books revolutionized my understanding of preaching about the same time somewhere there I also read Walt kaiser's toward an exegetical theology and these three books truly transformed my understanding of the scripture they made me want to know the scripture more it was largely through exegetical fallacies that I decided I wanted to pursue the study of Greek I did four years of undergraduate Greek at the University of Kentucky and did a master's in Greek at the University of Kentucky in classical Greek but it was exegetical fallacies that really inspired me so I just want to say thank you you that that little book showed me the importance of the text God used it greatly in my life it's still in print it's still transforming preaching I believe and I just want to say thank you well thank you it's very kind of you all of us stand in the shoulders of others in one fashion or another and I'm profoundly grateful to God if that book was a step in your own pilgrimage it was a truly important step and I remember you even corrected yourself in that book you in the second edition yeah it you well you you showed how I believe some graduate student if I believe in the discussion of the water in the and being born of the water in the spirit challenged on three and you shown you showed how you had been wrong and I believe a graduate student of yours yes Linda Belleville yeah corrected you and that was noteworthy to me on so many levels I mean this many years later I still remember that very distinctly my other story that involves you was so when my boys have two sons when they turned eleven I told each other I'll take you anywhere in the United States you want to go for trip was just you and Dad when there were sixteen it was anywhere in the world my oldest son Michael who's now pastor in Missouri when he was eleven where do you want to go Michael Michael wanted to go to Chicago he wanted to see Wheaton College he wanted to see Trinity Evangelical Divinity School he want to go to the Shedd Aquarium and the Natural History Museum and so we did in 1994 we went to Chicago for his eleven-year-old trip the two of us we made our way to Trinity seminary where my erstwhile professor later would be my colleague here at seven seminary Tom nettles was on faxes yes yes great man and and I went to see Tom Michael I went there and I said can you introduce me to da Carson and he did so that's the first time I met you along with my 11 year old son who's now almost 36 years old and the pastor and it was it was a luminary moment for both of us I have to ask what kind of input went into an 11-year old boy who wanted to see a seminary at that age well he he was always focused he had trusted the Lord at a very young age and he read widely he's very much still to this day theologian he thinks a lot about the scriptures and he's read most of your books I've failed to say that when we talk about the number of your books it's it's rather large I'm gonna ask you do you know how many books you've written not exactly it depends on how you count it does books where I'm either the author or the primary editor is something over 60 but I don't know how many but then I've edited in three series about another 80 books the new studies and biblical theology the piller series and studies in biblical Greek so those begin to accumulate as well that's astounding do you find it hard to edit the work of others is it easier to write things yourself and it is to edit the work of others well what what's the difference yeah it depends who the others are there's some things I edit that are extremely well done and it's a privilege to edit them and I'm learning from them all the time and there are others that basically have to be rewritten it would have been easier just to write it myself so it varies across the spectrum we're not gonna ask you to name any nah I won't according to tim chalice he counted 62 books 257 articles a hundred and fifteen reviews that's that's a lot of output now I want to you've spent 40 years at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and I just ask as you look back over that has it been hard to stay at one place for all that time no in the life of any institution there are challenges that come along that make the grass on the other side of the fence look greener but whether in the local church or in an institution I'm biased toward long ministries mm-hmm i I think that they produce more good on the long haul every time you make a major move you lose six months of your life in any just in the logistics and if you're teaching at a really good seminary and Trinity is a good seminary what precisely is the the sense of strategy or wisdom and going to another seminary unless you were going to one that is really quite poor where you thought you could help it out or something of that order right the the only exception is I have sometimes wondered if I should leave this seminary and return to pastoral ministry I began in church planting and in pastoral ministry in Canada and and there is a part of me that would have liked to return but some revered friends warned me off they told me that they thought that my ministry was really properly bound up with training more ministers and and so I didn't want to become the sort of faculty member who is busy training people to become faculty members if I was going to be a faculty member at a graduate seminary I wanted to be the kind of faculty member who's training people to think highly of local church ministry and what has pleased me as much as anything in the last few years is the number of PhD students who are pastoring churches or doing ministry of that sort today rather than opting for the teaching slots that most of them could have found and the untold number of pastors that you never had in a classroom and you will never meet but who have read your works of exegesis and encouragement and have taken what you've done and put it in the pulpit into the lives of countless faces you'll only see in heaven that's got to be a remarkable feeling it is encouraging but at the same time I'm I'm realistic to Rhian of to remember that I myself am the product of people that I've read calvin is still influencing me Jim Packer still influencing me John Stott still influencing me and and many many many others and and at a personal level if the Lord tarries 200 years nobody's going to be talking about Don Carson literally they're going to be talking about Jesus Christ but it's important to put those things in a certain kind of perspective and not pat ourselves on the back it's it's been a privilege to do the little bit that God has given me to do and you grew up in a pastor's home yes dad was a church planter he was born in Northern Ireland my mother was born in England they met in Canada and both of them had this English background but dad felt constrained to plant churches in French Canada which at the time meant largely the province of Quebec which was a strong majority French some parts all French and very very strongly and traditionally Catholic and there had been 70 or 80 evangelical churches in a population of six or six and a half million but they had died out because of liberalism there weren't more than five or six really Baptist churches and another half dozen Brethren churches that was it when my dad and another chap from Switzerland started going in in the in the 1930s and and late 30s and and eventually dad got a theological training in Toronto and then took an English language church in a part of Montreal Immanuel Baptist Church and have ever done with the understanding that he'd be there for five years while he was learning the language learning the French language it was one of the few English churches so he was pastoring an English Church while learning the French language better and then he planted a church in Montreal in French after that really and that was in the 40s and I was born in 46 and in 48 then dad moved to another city and was working in another church that one bilingual so all his life he served small churches the situation in French Canada was hard then Baptist ministers along between 50 and 52 spent a total of eight years in jail in oh yeah people don't know that history no I was totally unaware yeah for disturbing the peace the charges were or inciting to riot or whatever because of the influence of Catholicism in evil and my dad was a missionary in Brazil and it was much the same yeah yeah and we kids were sometimes beaten up because we were Modi Protestant damn Protestants now it's not like that today Quebec in those days was so many evil in its outlook in its form of Catholicism that the average family had eight kids and a priest spoke of that of Australia a lot of hours to Bill so the the Revenge of the cradle by which they meant will will overpopulate you and and gain back control of Canada it had the highest birth rate and the lowest abortion rate and of anywhere in North America today Quebec is so secular it's got the highest abortion rate and the lowest birth rate of any place in North America so it's a different animal today from when I I grew up but but but that was the shape of things so all of his life dad never served a church with more than about 40 people toward the end of his life is a movement of God really came through and he would sometimes speak to 50 60 70 80 people but that that was it he he was not a conference speaker he was he was not a writer all of his ministry was faithfulness in small context where there was a lot of opposition you you grew up here in his preaching primary yes and you came to know Christ at what age well that's a good question that is hard to answer understand it was either when I was just to hear your answer yeah it was either when I was eight almost nine at a Baptist conference in Muskoka in Ontario where there was a preacher by the name of Sam Michalowski who who set out the gospel and even though I was very young convinced me I was a sinner and needed forgiveness and and I knelt down by my bed and ask Christ into my life and it might well be that that's when I was converted but it's it's also possible that I was being socialized into the faith of my parents without being genuinely converted so I don't know if it was then or in the second year at university at McGill University when I was studying chemistry that I was converted so I have a mental checklist of things to ask God and one of them is where did you save me at what point did regeneration occur that's right yeah and if I ask him more generically when did you save me he will probably smile and say from before the foundation of the world my son well that is a good answer so did was it your father's preaching that shaped you were you listening to other preachers not really until I left home at 16 to go to university and so then it was other preachers but but up to that point the only preacher I heard in English and French was my dad dad was was a textual expositor who stayed rigorously close to the biblical text and an artist conservative but he was not a a systemic thinker he he was not a system ax Titian he would sometimes be persuaded by what he read about some new movement coming through but he was so textually picky that he would self correct he would self correct not because he had access to really excellent educational things in Quebec but because he just kept reading his Bible I have his journals and they're full of Bible quotations in English in French in Greek and sometimes in Hebrew which which he kept up all the days of his life so he he knew Greek in Hebrew oh he went to seminary he did and so his Greek was better than his Hebrew but yes and he kept them up all his life well this is astounding to me because basically what you you did continued the trajectory of your own father yes and you just became deeper in the Greek in the Hebrew and seminary training and yes but in all fairness I wasn't a straight line when I went to university I studied chemistry and mathematics and almost studied English instead but I was state on the chemistry side and I intended to do a PhD in organic synthesis I had hoped to go to Cornell believe it or not and and then through a number of things the Lord called me to the Ministry instead and so I left that side of things and went to a small seminary in Toronto and started theological training did an m.div and and then pastored planted a church or two and pastored another on the west coast of Canada before going to Cambridge for doctoral studies so it wasn't that I had wanted to be like dad alright like understand I I was virtually finished four years away from home in a science degree before the Lord began shovelling me toward toward pastoral ministry but how precious that the seeds that were planted there oh that's true what what bore fruit later in life that was in a sense my story too I it wasn't a straight line but my dad's influence on my life is massive and just a faithful preaching of the word and pointing me to Christ giving me a love for the Scriptures above all else that's the thing that I've carried with me a life that I really got from my dad and also in all fairness my father's prayer life was remarkable I can't remember a day when he didn't spend at least 45 minutes kneeling before his office chair praying he was an old-fashioned intercessor and and in all fairness I don't want to put it all on my dad my mum who's to say these things but my mum went was a nurse but she also went to seminary and and she was probably a better student than dad was and a dad exemplified things in public but mum was a very wise head in private I can remember many many times talking things over with her when I was a kid or a teenager so it was the two of them together yeah the lines are fallen to you and pleasant that's correct what a blessing well how did you develop your view of what preaching is like you you you would you would say that you believe expository preaching is is the correct form of preaching yes do you have a definition of expository preaching yes but it's a bit sophisticated okay I'm not is exactly the opposite it's very very simple well the simple form is it's unpacking what's actually there in the text as simple as that that's expository preaching but it that isn't differentiable from faithful textual preaching or from even faithful topical preaching so I eventually I want to say some other things about it it's it's the kind of verbal exposition of what is there in the Word of God in such a way that and then I fill in a number of things and one of the things that I like to fill in that is sometimes missing from expository definitions is is that ideally it's the kind of explanation of texts that when you butt up against one of the inner canonical trajectories the biblical theological lines it's it's it's milles up and down that line to show you where it comes from and how it ends up with Jesus so temple covenant priesthood kingdom about 20-25 of the biggies 70 or so smaller ones that I I think that good expository preaching when it butts up against these things takes time not every time but often and I to draw the canonical tendons the ligaments to show how the biblical story line hangs together because to do that teaches people how to read the Bible as a whole that's that's the thing right there you're not only explaining the text you're teaching people how to handle corrects themselves correct your de cycling them to read and understand the bus and primarily the text at hand but in such a way that you're teaching people how the text at hand relates to the broader can you're giving them a lens yeah that's right that's exactly correct now you're not saying that a preacher must do this in every sermon it would get very boring right but that he's hanging this frame correct well thou are not far from the kingdom I agree with you wholeheartedly one of the things that I've heard you say before in another conversation is like in difficult the text say in the Old Testament let's take Joshua 8 which is the the Joshua's attack on the city of AI or AI and God here is after they've been defeated and now God gives them a military strategy they put rear guard behind and then the attack from the front the inhabitants come out and pursue the army and then they're there they catch them between the two Israeli divisions and crush them go into the town kill everybody then bring out the king kill him hang him on a tree till evening and put him under a pile of rocks now moderate the modern mind looks at that and says what kind of a God is this who who would order they'll use the word genocide this here's the genocide at AI and a lot of Christians would be afraid to go near a text like that you say we should not run from it but we should run toward the wrath of God is that right yeah let me put it in a broader framework first it is always a mistake to preach the Bible apologetically in the modern sense of apologetically that is to say something like in this text Jesus talks about Hell quite frankly I don't like the topic I'd rather do without it but you know we're going through the book of Matthew and it's the next text so I have to say something about it and so we'll do what we can right did you say that sort of thing is basically to say I'm gentler and kinder than Jesus that's right I'm sitting in a judgment I got correct so so there's a sense in which the preachers job is to understand the text and then make God's point of view as convincing as possible not to apologize for it but to unpack it in such a way that it makes sense within the Canon it's coherent it's it's it's it's reasonable and even on the long-haul canonically winsome and so so on on things like roth passages and genocide passages yeah I I want to fight against the the common misperception that the picture of God in the Old Testament is of a pretty harsh boogeyman and when you get to Jesus it's gentle Jesus meek and mild look upon a little child it's wrong textually because in the Old Testament there are many many passages that say things like he's slow to anger abounding in mercy he will not always chide and and and things of that order and in the New Testament you you you get all of these passages on hell most of which come from Jesus lips right and horrific depictions of of Hell at the end of Rome of Revelation 14 and passages of that is correct and so far from saying that when you move from the Old Testament to the new you move from Roth to grace I think it's truer to say that when you move from the Old Testament to the new you ratchet up the pictures of God's love so that the high point of the depiction of God's love is is what happens at the cross but you also ratchet up the depictions of God's ruff and the high point of the depiction of God's wrath happens at the cross so it's a both of these themes are pummeling through Scripture and they ratchet up and they ratchet up and they ratchet up and there's no resolution whatsoever until you get to the cross and and what flows out of the cross in heaven and hell is is merely a reflection of the outflow of what Christ achieved on the cross and so a you you don't want to sound condemned condemnatory or angry when you deal with a passage like joshua 8 but you've got to put it within the canonical sweep and and and bring the congregation to join or do you want to feel like it sound like you're sitting in judgment on God yes that's right and isn't it true that I think the modern mind is much more preoccupied with the mode of death and we are with what happens after death that's true now whether those people an AI die at the end of it Israeli and Israelites fear or dying of old age at home in bed if hell is what awaits the other side that's that is the real issue yes and then on eclis that's right that's that's correct and so we we point to what God does with his son if you have a problem with Joshua 8 you're gonna have a real problem with what God does with Jesus when he takes him outside of the city wall and it has a bearing on how we see how we help people it has a bearing on Oh Christians have always been at the forefront of let's say medical help in in Africa or digging wells in the Sahara and so on I remember reading a learned atheist who said that Africa would be in a far far far worse state that the if it had not been for the Christian missionaries who who built most of the hospitals in the first place and still in many cases staff them one Ebola expert said that Ebola would have escaped the bounds that constrained it were not for medical missionaries and things of that order we it is right that we should remember those things but on the other hand it is also easy to talk about bringing bread to the hungry and clean water to those who don't have it and and and medicine to those who need it and so on it's it's right that we should do those things but if you do those things and do not warn people of the wrath to come and present the good news of Jesus I like what John Piper says it's because you don't love them very much that is you love them enough to help them for for a few decades here and in time you don't love them enough to care for them for all eternity that's right and and and that's that's really sad Wagner and Rogers used to say you're just making the earth a better place to go to hell from yeah that's right that's exactly right you know you've helped in pastors and others in so many ways but one thing you you were instrumental in the creation of the gospel coalition yeah which is I think a certainly a major force in evangelicalism now is it true that you and Tim Keller came up with this idea where did it come from it began in a walk in Manhattan in 2002 I loved a lot of stories like this yeah we take through the moment into place what an idea begins Tim Tim and I had not met until fairly late we'd worked together on a couple of projects the the book worship by the book for example I'd conscripted him but we hadn't met face to face we first met at an EMA conference evangelical ministers assembly in London and we were both on the speaking docket and we clicked you know something to do and sort of sit around and sort out all the world's problems and look around for another world and then who was that kind of friendship so I was in Princeton doing something or rather and took the train into New York City and both of us had been thinking independently about the the desirability of having a central institution or organ or the like that encapsulated the best of confessional broadly Reformed biblically based Christianity and there had been other attempts to do that sort of thing ace the Alliance of confessing evangelicals had tried right but for various reasons it didn't work out too well and which is not a criticism of the the men at the time it was part of the time partly the place but we we we weren't convinced it was doable and we weren't sure it needed to be done but we thought it should be explored so we began by talking to our friends and our various circles and say saying who should be invited to a consideration of these things and we looked for senior pastors we wanted pastors not not scholars because they asked a different set of questions so pastor scholars find might have to be pastors number two they had to be expositors number two three they had to be broadly reformed number four they had to be committed to evangelism with something of a track record in that regard I don't mean a track record necessarily in terms of numbers but in terms of being committed to it under unpacking what the gospel really is number five had to be from different parts of the country and different denominations and number six they had to be from different races it couldn't be just a white man's club so those are the criteria that we had to begin with and we invited 40 pastors none of us in the room knew all 40 we first met on the Trinity campus in 2005 and going in there was a lot of suspicion but we were already convinced this was of God we invited 40 people and every single one of the 40 came Wow that just doesn't happen no that doesn't and that included you know people like John Piper and marked ever and in people whose names you would you would know and League Duncan and others and we spent half to two-thirds of our time that first time listening to one another learning one another stories and praying for one another that's how we did we listened and prayed there were only two formal presentations one by Jim one by me one outlining where we'd come from a number two outlining possible ways ahead that's all we did then we brainstorm for a while and got no farther after three days than agreeing that one of us would write a statement of faith and the other a theological vision of ministry and we'd come back the next year and see if we were in agreement on enough points to actually put an organization together and they all came back the next year and we argued about those things paragraph by paragraph line by line gradually whip them into shape and by 2007 we ran our first conference and just on Trinity's Chapel word of mouth a bit of a bit of internet advertising and the chapel held him 600 and was packed out but we noticed that about 75 or 80 percent were under the age of forty something was happening where something was happening when when did the web start begin web site began in the wake of the 2007 thing we appointed our first staff member and started the site it began in a primitive way to 2007-2008 I'm not sure which and by this time we had some idea of what we would like to do but to talk about all the things that we're doing today and the worldwide impact and the regionalization and the literature and and all the stuff that's free and the current budget and so on we hadn't got that far what we wanted to do was to strengthen churches in handling the Word of God encouraging expository material really good books and articles and podcasts and so on they would model things well and all of it free to the end-user which which which decision meant that we our business model had to had to accommodate that yeah and and and the Lord raised up the money yeah free stuff is a hard business model it is a hard business mom yeah but you you've done amazing is it safe to say that it's it's gone beyond what you yes we our sites are visited today by about thirty five million different people per annum that's amazing and we have sites correspondingly in French and German and Chinese and and other other languages and they're all linked in one fashion or another the Spanish site is growing 30 or 40 percent a year and he continues to have a major impact it does say I am so grateful for it this time of you has been wonderful at the here to round out our conversation I'd like to you engage you in what I call the twinkling of an eye round and just ask some quick questions and and then we will be done is that all right sure all right what preacher most influenced you might be a quick answer but I don't know how to do these which is the best of these of them okay because different preachers influenced me at different times there was a time when I listened assiduously to John stock and so he influenced me but I listened to Lloyd Jones I mean I got to know him pretty well there was a time when I listened to Steven Alford he was a dear friend of mine yeah Gemma Barnhouse much now recordings but I didn't really know him but Steven Alford actually preached at the seminary that I studied at on my graduation and and I I I quickly became exposed to a lot of preachers and I've come to the conclusion that if you listen to one preacher for 50 or 60 sermons you become a bad clone you listen to two preachers twenty-five sermons each and you become confused you listen to 50 preachers five or ten sermons each and you learn different good things from all of them and I become your own voice I believe so too so I I'm not simply in the footsteps of one person it's just not the way I think I understand I appreciate that what what's your favorite work of fiction you read in fiction I read quite a lot of fiction you have a favorite no I what is what is something you've recently or so do you like fiction some some historical fiction things that are grounded if things that are either history or something a historical novel that is not too far from the truth in in World War two there's certain periods of history that interest me I read some whodunits but I also read some Shakespeare I like poetry I have a favorite poet or a favorite category of poet poetry period there's some poetry I just don't like I I can only take blank verse and small doses and then by real masters like Robert Frost for the 1800s Elizabeth Barrett Browning is superb her her poem Cooper's grave is outstanding and and her her poem on her poems of her love poems on on the Portuguese fire are simply brilliant I agree do you write with music plane or in silence silence do you do you watch much you watch Netflix Amazon Prime anything a streaming video we don't have Netflix I've watched maybe one thing on Amazon Prime I have it but I I don't use it I was curious about that I've just seen how much you would use technology and like personal viewing habits no the technology I use is bound up with gospel coalition work or if you it's bound up with Greek Testament work he's nota bene and I helped to develop Graham chord and it's so so the Mac version of it accordance comes out of that so it's nothing I'm technologically understand completely clueless but on the other hand you're very focused I'm I'm more focused you know so I don't like to be entertained do you do you go do you have a favorite vacation spot several my wife and I have six or seven times gone to the Lake District in England and walked Hill walking on the Lake District we love the geography with of the walking so we've done other things but for our 40th anniversary the notion of taking a cruise in the Caribbean turns both of us off we don't like the heat and just stuck on a boat that doesn't turn us on at all but for our 40th anniversary four or five years ago we we we took an Alaska cruise and with pauses to see bear and whales and and wildlife and the flowers of Australia we of Alaska and so on and you been married how many years now we were married in 75 so this is our 43 44 to do do you discuss your sermons with your wife after you preached them literally no if if she doesn't like something she'll tell me no is she gentle or is she is she straight to the point she straight to the point huh temperamentally she you what-you-see-is-what-you-get which i just as soon have in any case I understand what would you advise your 20 year old self curl up well I think you've done I think you've succeeded in that I think your Twitter itself has listened to you I can't thank you enough for what you've meant to me personally for what you've meant to a generation of Christians and seminary students and professors and preachers the God has richly blessed us with you I'm grateful for your life and ministry dr. Carson and thank you for being with me here today I'm pastor well thank you dr. York I'm profoundly grateful to you and your leadership I want to thank you for tuning in to Pastor well you've made our first season very successful thank you for listening thank you for telling others about it I hope you'll continue to share it and look forward to season 2 we've got a lot of great guests coming up and that'll be coming out in a few weeks but in the meantime if you would like to know more about studying at Southern Seminary why don't you come to our preview day on October the 18th you can find out more about it by going to SBTs dot edu forward slash preview register there you can come stay in the legacy meet professors and toured the campus sit in a classroom see what God is doing here at Southern Seminary that will equip you to pastor well

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Length: 41min 53sec (2513 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 09 2019