He’s one of the leading Christian thinkers of our time. He has written over 45 books, ranging from popular works on prayer (A Call to Spiritual Reformation), post-modernism (The Gagging of God) and suffering (How Long, O Lord), to such tongue-twisting titles as the recent Justification and Variegated Nomism.
He is a regular speaker at conferences all around the world, probably helped by the fact that he is multilingual. He’s lectured at one of the world’s leading seminaries for 25 years, and has even penned an album of modern-day Christian hymns.
For all of this, Don Carson is still learning.
Despite his impressive list of human achievements, it doesn’t take too long to work out that Dr Carson retains the deepest reverence and humility when it comes to his area of expertise – the word of God.
“The more you know, the more you find out what you don’t know,” he says quickly, sounding like he’s had to remind many people of the fact over the years. “The Bible is not so much a book to be mastered, as a book that should master you.”
There is much more to Don Carson, research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Illinois, than his resume. He quickly puts others at ease with a friendly smile, a genuine interest in them, and a sharp wit that often takes the form of quoting his favourite movie one-liners.
While he could comfortably debate the finest details of topics like penal substitutionary atonement, he showed another side at last month’s CMS Summer School. At a moment’s notice, he deftly explained the gospel of Jesus in simple language to young teenagers, being filmed by a couple of slightly over-zealous Steve Irwin impersonators – while taking great delight in making them break into fits of laughter.
Born and raised as the son of a Baptist minister in an English-French speaking home in Canada, Dr Carson studied chemistry and mathematics at McGill University and was headed towards a career in genetic research. “But the Lord had other plans,” he says simply.
Working on a project for the Canadian government, he observed that for most of his colleagues, ‘chemistry was either their god or their abomination’. “It was neither for me,” he says. “I was enjoying what I was doing. But at the same time, what was capturing more of my attention was helping another chap up the valley plant a Sunday School.”
After being challenged by an offer to work with a local pastor, he eventually left chemistry and headed to theological seminary, with a view to being involved in church planting. Having done this for a number of years, he was offered a teaching position, prompting him to start his PhD, though at the time he intended to continue in pastoral ministry.
The study not only opened the way for him to eventually start teaching at Trinity. It was during this time that he met his wife, Joy. The couple now have two children, Tiffany, 21, and Nicholas, 18. Today, despite his hectic schedule, Dr Carson is very much a family man, almost always taking the last flight in and the first flight out of any country he visits, to spend as much time as possible with his family.
Between first coming to Australia in 1985 and his visit last month to deliver the Bible studies at Summer School, Dr Carson has been to Australia ‘around’ 45 times (he’s lost count). He’s planning to be back at least once more, for Katoomba Easter Convention next year.
Not surprisingly, he says secularisation has had an increased impact here, as in all Western countries, over that time. While he sees lots of room for expansion and outreach, he also sees some encouraging signs.
One of those positive signs is the Mission adopted by the Diocese of Sydney. While emphasising the primary importance of the mission of Jesus Christ, he believes the Diocesan Mission will ‘serve to energise the Diocese and give it a certain sense of direction and priorities’.
“If you aim for nothing, you’ll almost certainly hit it. The strength of it is precisely that you’re aiming for something. That does not mean that if you come to year ten and you’ve only attracted three per cent or five per cent, that therefore you must conclude that you are a failure. At the end of the day, it’s God who adds to the church; people are converted by God’s grace, through faith.
“But if you don’t aim to do anything, inevitably what happens is that churches and denominational leaders begin to think in terms of the immediate crisis, and do not think strategically. What this is doing is helping the entire Diocese think in terms of biblically mandated priorities. That has to be a good thing.”
Only a few years ago, his writing and speaking commitments came to a halt when his wife became seriously ill with a ‘vicious’ form of cancer, requiring radical surgery and treatment that ‘almost killed her’. Having written a seminal work on suffering and evil a decade earlier, Dr Carson has spoken frankly about how he and his wife handled the ordeal. Primarily, he says they were able to persevere by continuing to trust in God at all times.
“When I was writing [How Long, O Lord], I came down with sarcoidosis. I could have died, and I had no energy for about two-and-a-half years. My wife told me this was the Lord’s way of teaching me the book profoundly, and please would I next time choose to write a book on joy instead,” he laughs.
“When my wife’s illness came along a decade later, it didn’t change a single thing. If you are realistic, as a Christian you expect sooner or later to get kicked in the teeth. Just because you’re a Christian doesn’t mean you’re not going to get sacked or lose a loved one, or get cancer, or whatever.
“We’re realistic. Most of the women in her family had cancer and died from it in their 50s. We weren’t surprised when Joy got cancer. In her case it was a pretty vicious kind, and involved radical surgery and treatment that almost killed her. But on the other hand, we’re all terminal cases, aren’t we? It’s just that a lot of us are in denial.”
This is typical of the earthy, uncompromising and yet humble attitude that Dr Carson constantly displays towards life and theology. The same attitude is evident when he talks about his personal relationship with God. Asked how one of the world’s leading biblical scholars continues to grow in his own Christian life, he replies bluntly, ‘there are no formulaic answers’.
“Any Christian – myself included – has to keep reading the Bible, has to continue thinking, has to keep reading, has to keep praying, has to keep evangelising. How that works out in any particular person’s life varies enormously,” he says.
“There’s not a formula where, if you do the following six things you will guarantee spiritual vitality. It doesn’t work like that. What is needed for spiritual vitality, it seems to me, is a good grasp of the gospel, worked out in every area of life, which means that there are certain priorities – the priority of the word in your own life and your own ministry, the right kinds of relationships, the right balance between taking in and giving out – all those kinds of things.”
Dr Carson’s hectic speaking schedule takes him all around the world, including four to six trips to Europe annually. Amid teaching Christians and training future leaders, he ensures that at least a couple of his series each year are evangelistic talks, usually on university campuses. His last such engagement was at Yale, and later this year he will undertake a joint English-French Mission in Canada.
“None of that do I find comfortable,” he admits, “but for me it’s not only part of obeying the Lord’s commandment to mission for myself, but also keeping myself abreast of what’s going on. There’s no way I could have written The Gagging of God if I weren’t involved in university missions.
“Part of spiritual health demands not only what is going in, but what is going out; it demands that you get enough rest, that you have the right relationships. It demands a certain kind of humility which, probably, in the Lord’s provi-dence means that you’re going to get kicked in the teeth a few times, because it’s good for you.”
Read the full transcript of Anglican Media’s interview with Don Carson here.
