Our speaker tonight is Donald A. Carson, Research Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He is speaking on Biblical Authority: The Exclusive Authority of Scripture for Faith and Practice.
Our Senior and Assistant Worship Pastors Ron Clark and Andy Frew led us off. Pastor John Neufeld then proceeded to introduce Dr. Carson by sharing the following story.
There was a woman who was struggling with life as a non-believer. One day, at a party, she heard the voice of Jesus saying, "I love you, and I'm calling you to be my own." She didn't know what to make of that, but ended up in a Christian bookstore, to buy a Bible. She began to read. Not knowing where to begin, she opened the Bible at random, and the pages fell open to John 1. At the very same time, providentially, Pastor Neufeld had finished reading Dr. Carson's commentary on the Gospel According to John, and was so moved, that he decided to begin a sermon series on John's Gospel. Meanwhile, the woman prayed to God for guidance, and one Sunday morning came into Willingdon Church for the first time. That very weekend, Pastor Neufeld was starting his sermon series on John. Well, that's just the way God works, she concluded; and she is, needless to say, now a saved believer. Therefore, it was partly through Dr. Carson's work (albeit indirectly) that this lady came to faith.
Introduction
Dr. Carson is speaking tonight on 2 Timothy 3:10-17. He began by reading that passage in context, from 3:1 to 4:8. What does Paul think is the picture of the last days? He paints a pretty depressing picture. People will be lovers of self (3:2): violators of the First Commandment (as we all are whenever we commit any kind of sin). Lovers of money, the love of money being "a root of all kinds of evils," as Paul writes to Timothy in his first letter (1 Timothy 4:10). Pride and arrogance; abuse and disobedience to parents. Four negative attributes: ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable. And so on through the rest of Paul's list.
It is one thing to deal with someone who was anti-God from the beginning; but what about someone who started out well in the Gospel way, but gradually drifted incrementally towards error and false doctrine (3:5)? The common response from such a person's defenders is, "What about all the good things so-and-so does? Why are you criticizing him? That's so un-Christian!" It may take 20 or 30 years for a false teacher's true nature to become completely clear, but like Jannes and Jambres (3:8-9), the truth will eventually out.
Have nothing to do with any of these people, Paul writes. And whenever we see this pattern of behaviour, we may be in the last days.
But any of this stuff can happen to any of us. Dr. Carson has been around long enough to have seen a few ministers fall due to sins of lust (3:6), but often it involves so much more than merely physical indulgence. There's a whole emotional vortex that both parties get wrapped up in.
Not all false teachers will exhibit all these behaviours, of course, but there is a general pattern here to be aware of. In light of all this, what does Paul write to Timothy? There are four points Paul enumerates:
- Hold the right mentors in high regard;
- Hold few illusions about the world;
- Hold on to the Bible;
- Hold out the Bible to others.
Paul tells Timothy, it is your obligation to find the right mentors and hold them in high regard (3:10). There will always be siren voices; the question is, will you listen? Now, directly addressing pastors, he asked them, when someone in your congregation asks you what does it mean to be a Christian, do you answer "Watch me?" Why not? Isn't it biblical? Paul writes, "Be imitators of me, even as I am an imitator of Christ."
Dr. Carson related a story from his university days (before he began down the path to ministry) when he organized a Bible study group with one other believer. On the first night, a dozen non-believers showed up. Dr. Carson was quickly out of his depth. Finally, another believer, David, joined the group. The first night David was there, he sat down and gruffly asked the first non-believer, "Why are you here?" The non-believer responded, "Well, I'm interested in different religions. I'm exploring Buddhism...." The believer replied, "I don't have time for this. If you want to learn about other religions, I'll recommend some books, or you should take a philosophy class, but you shouldn't be here."
David turned to the next person, who replied that he was a liberal Christian who didn't take the Resurrection literally, etc. "How different is it for you born again Christians?" David replied, "Watch me." "What do you mean," came the reply. "Move in with me. It's three months till the end of term. Watch what I do." Watch how I live out my faith in practice. The non-believer didn't take him up on his offer, but he kept coming back to the Bible study group week after week, and was eventually saved, going on to become a medical missionary.
Paul writes to Timothy in 3:10, effectively, "Watch me." We know Timothy grew up ina Christian household, but what about new believers who are coming into our churches and being saved, but who didn't grow up with any exposure to Christian conduct at all—no family devotions, Bible reading, or the like? Who do they look for, for mentors? Mature Christians should be building up mentoring relationships with new Christians. We have young men who don't know how to make decisions for themselves. Shouldn't we teach them how to be Christian men? And similarly for women.
2. Hold few illusions about the world
Moving on to 3:12, there have been more Christian martyrs in the last 150 years than the preceding 1800 years. 8500 believers have died in Indonesia just in the last seven years, for example. If the rate of martyrdom continues at the current rate for the next century, one in every twenty believers worldwide will die for their faith. Shouldn't that resonate with us?
For Christians who desire to establish families and relationships, carry out work projects ethically, etc....suddenly the world doesn't seem like such a nice place. If we feel that the world ought to be really good, we're going to be in for a rude surprise. Christians should always be horrified at evil, but should never be surprised by it. We have just come out of the bloodiest century in human history. Do we really think the 21st century is going to be any better?
And it can happen even in Canada. Baptist ministers in Quebec were jailed between 1950 and 1952. Now Quebec [a traditionally Roman Catholic society] is the most secular place in North America, with the highest abortion rate and the lowest birthrate.
The particular challenges in society vary, of course. One of the challenges we face today is the redefinition of tolerance and intolerance. Over the last 200 years or so, but up until about 25 years ago, we were shaped by an principle attributed to Voltaire, that though he may detest what someone said, he would defend to the death his right to say it. But today, increasingly, tolerance is being described as the refusal to say that anyone is wrong. Voltaire would have said, "You're wrong, but you have the right to be wrong." Now, you don't even have the right to say that someone is wrong.
But this new definition is unworkable. How can we have careful and honest conversation if we refuse to disagree with each other? We have to disagree with them in order to have something to tolerate. This new definition is not merely unrealistic, but also morally bankrupt. There is one group of people toward whom the new tolerance is intolerant: those who are perceived as being intolerant.
But we as Christians have to stand up for the truth that Jesus Christ is the sole means to salvation, and stand on the word of God.
3. Hold on to the Bible
Verses 3:14 and following. The importance of God's word runs right through God's word. For example, in Psalm 1, there are two patterns: the mind of the ungodly person is described in 1:1, who walks in the counsel of the wicked; but in verse 2, we see the pattern for a believer, who meditates on the law of the Lord day and night.
There was an old professor at Trinity when Dr. Carson started there, who was known for his bons mots. One is, "You aren't what you think you are; but what you think, you are." Isn't this what the Proverbs say? As a man thinks in is heart, so he is?
All scripture is God-breathed, as Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:16. Three clarifications. First, the text says all Scripture, but not all Scripture of every provenance (i.e., from outside of Judeo-Christianity). From the context, it mean the Hebrew Scriptures: the Old Testament. And it doesn't refer to the gnostic gospels. Saying that orthodoxy squeezed out heterodoxy in the early church—as if it were a late interloper—is standing history on its head. Even in Galatians in the earliest strata of Christian history, Paul wrote in 1:8 that "even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed"—so there were already different gospels being preached in the early apostolic period, and an orthodox reaction to them, long before the earliest dated gnostic gospels were even written.
Secondly, what's important is not the mode of inspiration, but the product of inspiration. Remember Jeremiah? What Jeremiah wrote was torn up and thrown in the fire, so under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Jeremiah just wrote it down again. God didn't have short-term memory and forget what He had inspired Jeremiah to write. Or consider David. Was he mechanically taking dictation on Psalm 23? No, it was what he was going through in his heart at the time he wrote it. And yet it was inspired, just as are all the psalms, genealogies, aphorisms, prophecies, and so on that were written under the inspiritation of the Holy Spirit. The form, style, and vocubulary may differ, but it's still God-breathed.
Thirdly, the point is that Scripture itself is from God. Therefore, it is authoritative precisely because it has God's authority. Scripture does not have any independent authority. Systematic theology sometimes starts as if that were the case, but that's all backwards. We start with God, and if Scripture is God-breathed, then we can attribute to it qualities that God possesses. When Paul writes in Galations 3:8 that Scripture foresaw the God would justify the Gentiles by faith, of course he didn't mean that the actual words on the physical page foresaw this, but that the Holy Spirit foreknew that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and imparted this knowledge in Scripture.
With God, because all authority is His and all power is His, it is hard to separate the two. As the one with all authority and power, he metes it out to rulers and leaders of churches, and all the rest; and we corrupt it over and over again, but ultimately the authority is still God's. Likewise for Scripture. Jesus taught this so explicitly. "The Scripture cannot be broken," he said in John 10:35.
And in Peter writes in 2 Peter 3:16 that there are some things [pertaining to the last days] in Paul's letters that are difficult to understand, "which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures." Therefore, already in the apostolic period, Paul's letters [and not just the Old Testament] were being viewed as part of Scripture.
1 Timothy 3:15. We know that Timothy was raised by his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice, who were both believers (2 Timothy 1:5). Dr. Carson related growing up under his parents' instruction, and then in turn teaching his daughter. He started with 1 Corinthians 13 when she was two years old, and moved on from there. Even now, as an adult, when in a sermon, someone preaches on one of the passages she learned as a child, they resonate particularly with her.
Paul is not talking about knowing Scripture in some abstract, intellectual sense, as mere data. It's so that one is "able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus." All Scripture points to Christ.
Dr. Carson spoke of C.H. Dodd, who vehemently opposed the doctrine of substitutionary atonement. He was asked on his 90th birthday, if every copy, every manuscript of the Greek New Testament were lost, how much of it could he transcribe from memory? "Well, all of it," he replied*; but in his case, merely knowing Scripture even exceptionally well is no guarantee of salvation.
(* "All of it!?" came the reply. "Well, it's a short book..." Dodd replied—presumably in comparison to the 39 books of the Old Testament!)
For all these reasons, being raised in godly households by parents who revered the word of God, those who were raised in Christian households should glory in it. And for those who were not, they should make sure they raise up the next generation in a godly manner.
Jonathan Edwards wrote, "The mind ascends to the truth of the gospel but by one step, and that is its divine glory" (Works, vol. 1, section 5). Mere theological knowledge is not the key to salvation, but actually perceiving the glory of God in Christ Jesus. And we are made wise in salvation and say, "Yes indeed, this is the word of the Lord."
Finally, Paul writes in 2 Timothy 3:16b-17 that as a consequence of Scripture's being breathed out by God, therefore it is "profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God [2] may be competent, equipped for every good work." This is not merely a pragmatic inference. This statement and its antecedent are inherently linked. Because Scripture is so God-centred, therefore it is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.
Because God discloses Himself in Scripture, when we preach on Scripture, God is disclosing Himself again. What we are looking for is the re-revelation of God. Yes, that takes the work of the Holy Spirit. And this compels us to treat God's holy word carefully. And it is God's self-disclosure of His glory that makes this book—the Bible—so useful in training us and transforming us.
4. Hold out the Bible to others
This is what R. Kent Hughes will speak on tomorrow.
Conclusion
Teach with boldness and humility God's holy, God-breathed word, for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness, so that we may be equipped for every good work.
Dr. Carson closed with a prayer, then Pastor Daryl Kroeker wrapped things up and led us in a concluding prayer.
