Customer Reviews

Gagging of God, The

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How can biblical Christianity speak about the reality, person, nature and will of God to a pluralistic society? Does Christianity have any hope of authoritatively addressing a society in which postmodern thought has cast doubt not only on the truth of the claims of Christianity, but also on the possibility of the existence of such a thing as objective, knowable truth? This is the challenge taken up by D.A. Carson in The Gagging of God; Christianity Confronts Pluralism.

Our world and more immediately the United States, contains a vast diversity of races, values, heritages, languages, cultures, and religions. D.A. Carson has observed not only this fact in The Gagging of God, but also that the people of the United States are viewing this diversity with increasing favorability. Carson, as an evangelical Christian, has no quarrel with either of these phenomenon, which he terms "empirical pluralism" - the fact that there is considerable diversity within our culture, and "cherished pluralism" - the growing belief among Americans that this diversity is good and positive. His quarrel is with what he terms philosophical or hemeneutical pluralism: "...the notion that a particular ideological or religious claim is intrinsically superior to another is necessarily wrong" (19). This is the stripe of pluralism that gags God, because it robs him of the ability to make truth claims about himself or anything else. Likewise, it robs Christians of the ability to make similar truth claims, regardless of their basis, because to do so would be to elevate their beliefs to a "true" status, superior to the claims of others, thereby violating philosophical pluralism.

The popularity of philosophical pluralism cannot be denied as sixty-four percent of recently surveyed Americans believe that "there is no such thing as absolute truth" (23). Philosophical pluralism in our society has naturally given rise to religious pluralism wherein it is believed that all religions are really saying the same thing. The contemporary, bible believing church has no choice but to confront philosophical pluralism.

The Gagging of God has something for everyone approaching the challenge of pluralism. For the philosopher there is a treasure trove of philosophical discussion. For the Bible student there is keen insight into the plot line of God's revelation and its relationship to contemporary pluralism. For the student of modern culture there is clear discussion and description of our pluralistic society. For the Christian missionary, foreign or domestic, there is good practical help with the challenge of contextualization. For the contemporary Christian there are good answers to the questions and challenges of pluralism we continually face. The drawback in this volume may be found in Carson's handling of other literature. While Carson addresses our contemporary culture well and provides material that equips Christians for confronting pluralism, much good insight is somewhat camouflaged in a forest of scholarly argument. Carson obviously has a strong interest in engaging the published ideas of others, but he does this to distraction. Carson's bibliography contains over 1,000 works he either quotes or refers to in this volume. While he may be complimented on his thoroughness, his citation-and-response approach to other scholars is overdone and detracts from the readability of the book. A more concise, less argumentative approach would have been more effective in accomplishing his goals.

Carson states that he was drawn to the subject of pluralism as a Christian teacher of hermeneutics and a Christian preacher. The "ever present need to understand one's own culture" (9) is key to both of these vocations and, in fact, any service to the contemporary church. Thus, this volume immediately appeals to anyone who can see that to effectively communicate with and minister to our culture, we must understand our culture. The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism makes a tremendous contribution toward that end and is highly recommended to anyone who genuinely believes that the gospel holds the solution to the dilemma of contemporary culture and genuine desires to intelligibly communicate that gospel to this generation.

This book is a must read for the serious student of the Bible, whatever one's theological bent is. Carson as a conservative exegete wraps all of his understanding up in heremeneutics, which is a great place for any of us to begin. Of course, most lay Christians will not understand where this is coming from, but I don't think this is the audience Carson has in mind.

Most productive from my reading were the number of instances where Carson actually engaged in dialogue with people who believed there are many paths to God outside of Christ.

Good command of many topics, including history, philosophy, etc. I find this volume useful in also returning to it as reference when dealing with pluralism in the modern church.

When D.A.Carson speaks, it's prudent to listen closely as his cogent,thorough exegesis and research lead to compelling conclusions. One of the most prominent is an echo from his other writings(see essay in Still Sovereign - Reflections on Assurance) which masterfully states: methodology is the mother of meaning. Scripture presupposes or explicitly teaches COMPATIBILISM, where apparently contradictory texts are instead mutually compatible. Examples include: God is Sovereign and Man is responsible agent;God loves the world yet only some are saved; Assurance is secure and Christian Perseverence is necessary to endure;Future is settled(on God's Divine, Infinite plane) and the Future is not closed (on Human, Finite plane), etc. When COMPATIBILISM is neglected in Biblical interpretation, incomplete methodologies are then applied to texts yielding asymmetrical, polar distortion of Scriptural truth, theology and application. Such is the fatal flaw in Postmodernism and its stepchildren neotheism, neo-Arminianism and Process Thought(almost not worthy to be labeled 'theology'). This book is must reading to keep current in contemporary theological dialog.

Carson is one of evangelicalism's premier NT scholars and commentary writers, but his effort here leaves me feeling ambivalent. Carson wants the reader (presumedly a very patient evangelical laymen) to wade through 600 pages of his various musings on topics which concern him all lumped under the rubric of pluralism (much of the book is drawn from prior articles and its patchwork structure shows through). Much is helpful, and Carson is always insightful and careful in his analysis. However, his prose not too clean, and he tries to interact with far too much material for just one book (it could have been 3 or 4 books!). Carson's basic premise is that Christians must resist pluralism by emphasizing biblical theology (the story of the authoritative Scripture from creation to consummation). He covers so much ground, often in some depth, that one is bogged down by many needless tangents (and footnotes). Much of the detail is not necessary for his purpose. In fact, most of the material in part 2 of the book could be summarized in a single 50 pages chapter, rather than rambling on for nearly 300 pages! If this book is ever revised, I suggest that it be reduced at least by 1/2, that his prose be cleaned up, and that he change the horrible title. It is hardly helpful to begin dialogue with a non-Christian pluralist by accusing them of gagging God! Where exactly does he think the conversation will go from there?

D.A. Carson is a Canadian missionary and scholar working in Christian higher education in the U.S. He has been a lecturer in New Testament at Trinity International University for a number of years. He now serves as research professor of the divinity school. The Gagging of God, subtitled, "Christianity Confronts Pluralism", may be considered Carson's twentieth century magnum opus, not so much because of the book's size, but on account of the substantive challenge with which it deals. The writer is seriously concerned about what he perceives to be the inroads pluralism is making within the ranks of Christianity.
Pluralism, Carson acknowledges, is an extraordinarily difficult topic to define, therefore the first task he sets himself is to clarify his understanding of the term. In the writer's opinion there are essentially three phenomena that embrace the concept today: "Empirical pluralism, cherished pluralism and philosophical or hermeneutical pluralism." The first variety may be seen as "the sheer diversity of race, value system, heritage, language, culture and religion in many Western and some other nations". By itself this growing variety is innocent enough, but does provide the climate for syncretism and the "virulent variety," which is taken up later on the book. "Cherished pluralism" is not so much a different kind of pluralism as it is a positive attitude towards the reality of empirical pluralism. The "giant" which Carson attempts to slay in his book, or at least expose, is philosophical pluralism, which is the posture, which asserts that "any notion that a particular ideological or religious claim is intrinsically superior to another is necessarily wrong".
This, according to Carson, has been the philosophical underpinning of post-modernism and the recent approach to hermeneutics called deconstruction. A major concern of the author is to help Christians understand the impact of philosophical pluralism on our culture. He observes that in just twenty-five years this new way of viewing reality has gripped Western intelligentsia for the most part and has wielded no little influence on the man in the street as well, providing both strata with a convenient basis for their relativistic approach to life. Further impact of philosophical pluralism is to be seen in politics and law, which "trivialize all values [and] all religious devotion," as well as in the print and electronic media. The influence is so pervasive that it appears that no stratum of society is left untouched. In this regard, pluralism's influence in the religious arena is perhaps the most worrying.

The book is well organized and documented and, apart from a few untransliterated Greek words in text and notes, it is generally user-friendly. However, the subject index does not include "Apologetics", which is dealt with on pp. 184-189, and there are typos on p. 494. The date for Longenecker's article cited on p. 243 is also wrong.

Carson brilliantly analyses the 'isms' of modernism through post-modernism. In the explosion of faulty worldviews, Carson crosses swords with all who have blurred the lines of vital Christianity as the task of the church, and all those who dare blemish the bride of Christ with spots and wrinkles.

A praiseworthy and timely defense against the academia of modernism, relativism, humanism, consumerism, liberalism, feminism and post-modernism.

'God creates snowflakes, we produce ice cubes.' p 97

'In the 3rd century, Origen moved in this direction (universalism), though on this and many other points the Church departed from him.' p 142

'The Enlightenment tried to make man the measure of everything; Rationalism elevated human reason to godlike status.' p 134

'Having elevated self to the place where God is no longer needed, self now proclaims that language is inadequate to talk about objective reality, God included. Having damned interpretation for being manipulative, God, if He were to speak, becomes the arch manipulator. The gagging of God is complete.' p 134

'...where He alone ought to be acknowledged as both the source and the end of all His creatures, not least those made in His image, our deep self-centeredness is rebellion - it is sin.' p 133

Don Carson is a very gifted Biblical scholar, but I fear his ability as a philosopher and theologian is not at the same level. This rambling and undisciplined book fails to do very much at all, and what it does do could be done in a book of about a third of the length. Carson is concerned about pluralism and the challenge it provides for the Christian faith, and attempts to critique postmodern thinkers (both philosophers and theologians) and provide an alternative vision of a postmodern theology based on the Bible.

To boil it down, what Carson is arguing for is a critical realist epistemology and the use of Biblical theology as the key for the way Christians should engage with other worldviews and cultures. A journal article could have contained this argument, and saved the reader 640 pages. I was for a while perplexed as to what caused this lack of brevity - I mean, the main plank of the first part of the book is to defend 'objective truth', but he does not define the concept until page 120! And when he does, it is such a brief and imprecise definition as to raise questions as to whether he has grappled with the issues involved.

I realised after a while that the weakness of this book is that it does not reflect a mature scholarly position. The huge bibliography and mass of footnotes are signs that Carson has 'read up' on pluralism immediately prior to writing 'The Gagging of God', and wants to make sure he tells us everything he knows. So he does not engage in an integrated way with the field, rather he fires off the first objections that occur to him about any position he doesn't agree with. And he has not paused to prune his material, eg. scattered through the book there are no less than six quotations from the 'Father Brown' novels by G.K. Chesterton.

It should become obvious to those who make it to the end of 'The Gagging of God' that the real purpose of the book is not to provide an introduction to pluralism from a Christian point of view, but to position Carson's particular theological views and approach as the centre and standard of Christian orthodoxy. Someone who can hold that ground can have a great deal of influence in the contemporary church. You could lift out literally hundreds of occasions when Carson mentions a scholar of a different view from his own with the sole purpose of then dismissing them as liberal or compromised, or when we are told that the exegesis engaged in by this person is so bad as to be unbelievable. He wastes no opportunity to explore in detail every issue within the modern theological scene that annoys him. Part Four is entirely made up of in-group sniping about other evangelicals and how they have failed. This underground agenda destroys the helpfulness of the book from an intellectual point of view. Also, Carson just does not present himself in a very attractive light at all. For instance, I cringed at the description he gives of how he humiliated a woman who attended one of his seminars.

And in the end, what does this all achieve? The fundamental problem with 'The Gagging of God' is that Carson fails to see that postmodernism is at home in the world of texts, of interpretation. Pointing to the text of the Bible as the sure source of 'objective truth' and its story as the master story does not overturn pluralism or engage with it. Sure, a sense of theological identity is part of the answer. But it is the issue that he puts in only as an appendix, the issue of spiritual experience, where fruitful ground for living in a pluralistic context is found. Spiritual experience should intertwine with our theology and our reading of Scripture to ground us in real, 'objective' understandings of what it means to be Christian in a pluralistic society. I read this book in parallel with 'Christophany' by Raimon Panikkar, who provides a brilliant reflection on the specifically Christian mystical experience and how it relates to other religious systems. That is how this should be done, not in paranoid narratives of cultural decline and theological compromise.

For evangelicals interested in an introduction to postmodernism, a better place to go might be 'A Primer on Postmodernism' by Stanley Grenz.

D.A Carson's book, and overall I think that it is an important book for a thinking Christian to be familiar with.

Overall, I would say that Carson brings forth some great points and thoughts about how the church should react in a post-modern pluralistic world.

The book itself is not exactly bedtime reading, nor does it claim to be. I agree that some of his chapters do tend to go into tangents and some of them could have been written in a LOT fewer words.

I don't know it it was Carson's intent or the fact that my classmates and I discussed the book extensively in class, but Gagging is a book that will at least make the reader ponder a vast range of topics. I've used some of Carson's ideas to start conversations with Christians and non-Christians and as catalyst for some of my thought process regarding ministry.

It is not an evangelistic book per se, but it provides a good framework and mindset for evangelism in a pluralistic age.

Overall, I would recommend the book with few reservations, knowing that Carson's style and writing may not be for everybody.

This book is probably the best discussion of Christianity and culture that I could recommend. Carson discusses extensively how Christians should confront pluralism and post-modernism. Most importantly, he helps readers understand how Scripture should shape the way we think and interact with modern ideas. This book is well written and throughly researched. I highly recommend it!

An earlier reviewer claims that Carson should change the so-called offensive title of this book. It is intended to offend, but the reviewer who said this doesn't seem to have bothered to read the preface to know what the title really is getting at.

The title has a two-fold meaning. On one level, it is talking about how contemporary pluralistic thinking gags God. If truth is impossible to communicate, how can God speak? I'm not sure this should be offensive to a postmodernist. Their whole goal is to deconstruct religious thinking so God can't be said to speak to us anymore.

However, the truly offensive aspect of the title is the more profound meaning. Much of what Carson does in this book is to show how Christians have been gagging God by reacting to pluralism in wholly inappropriate and unbiblical ways. Someone who has digested his analysis in a self-evaluating way cannot miss that. The title is supposed to be offensive to Christians because Christians are the people who should know better. Because of that, the title is not quite a very clever pun but something in that area.