Reading D A Carsons dissertation, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspective in Tension. Very badly written. How did he even get a Ph.D. for that? Anyway, underlining his whole theology is this concept of irreconciliable paradox (which is nothing more than a since way of saying logical contradiction). He insists on reading each biblical text isolated on its own, yet in claiming to do that, he does not do justice to what the text actually says. Worse still, he refuses to let other verses shed light on the verse he is dealing with, criticizing those who apparently systematize various passages into a theology and then interpret difficult passages within that framework. How that is not a rejection of using scripture to interpret scripture, I do not know. Moreover, he often does what he attempts to criticize. He uses the framework of an irreconcilable tension between sovereignty and responsibility, to dismiss anyone attempting to reconcile verses on sovereignty and irresponsibility. i.e. he is using a systematic framework of paradoxical theology, as the lens to to interpret difficult passages -- the very thing he accuses his opponents off. More often than not, the only reason why he has contradictory conclusions he give up trying to explain is because he exegetes those passages so badly! He create problems in the text when there are none. In reality, far from being logically paradoxical (i.e. a contradiction), the concept of responsibility and free will are easy to explain. Once it is understood that responsibility has nothing to do with free will, D A Carsons entire thesis collapses, and many writers since his original thesis have demonstrated that. This book by D. A. Carson is an updated and edited version of his Ph.D. thesis. Yet, he does not interact with these scholars. We should understand responsibility as being founded upon a sovereign God who will hold man accountable for his sins; and God has also placed his knowledge in all humans so that they are without excuse. What Carson is holding to, is not even consistently Calvinistic, but more like Neo-Amyraldianism. I will probably go crazy again the next time someone calls him a Calvinist. There are fundamental concerns about D A Carsons theological method that are of great concern. They often borderline on Neo--orthodoxy at times due to his embrace of logical paradoxes, though he is probably closer to the Van Tillian School theologically rather than Classical Neo-orthodoxy. When faced with two apparent contradictions (which I would say is only because his exegesis of both texts are so badly done), rather than explaining it, he simply dismisses them as being paradoxical and therefore cannot be resolved. He pretty much ends his thesis that way, with a logical paradox that he claims cannot be resolved. So much for a Ph.D. thesis. Certainly not the best book on the subject -- or should I say... one of the more poorly written thesis I have come across. Now I know why he did such a horrendous job in his book on the difficult doctrine on the love of God... it is based on this sorry state of a thesis. .
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 08:09:52 +0000
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