Exegetical Fallacies

Baptists still insist that the gifts of the Holy Spirit for Christ's Church are not for today. They can't find support for this teaching anywhere in Scripture without taking verses out of context and twisting them to say what it clearly doesn't say, but they insist that the Holy Spirit no longer works in and through the Church the way He did in the first century. Sad. This is how denominational teaching blinds people.

This book is a must read for any Christian preacher, teacher, or student. At this book's heart is the necessity of correctly handling the Word of God. Scripture declares that those who become teachers have a greater judgment (James 3:1). In other words, those who seek to handle the Word of God must do so carefully and correctly. Carson writes, "we cannot lightly accept ... laxity in the interpretation of Scripture. We are dealing with God's thoughts: we are obligated to take the greatest pains to understand them truly and to explain them clearly" (p. 15). This book calls us to careful, clear, and correct preaching and teaching of God's most holy Word.Carson begins by looking at various "word-study fallacies." With words we preach, teach, communicate, and oftentimes confuse, mislead, and destroy. How we use words matters. One of the most common word-study fallacies is what Carson calls "semantic anachronism." This occurs when one takes a modern day use of a word and reads it back into earlier literature. How many preachers have read the meaning of the English word dynamite back into the Greek word dynamis? Such word-study fallacies are all too common in preaching.Carson continues by examining various "grammatical fallacies." This involves such problems as the ever-abused Aorist tense in biblical Greek. The Aorist refers to an undefined event, which is often misconstrued to refer to an exact moment of time in the past. The meaning and usage of the word must be determined by its usage within the context not through preset categories. As a side note, this chapter is the most Greek intensive. One could follow Carson's thought but much of it would not be extremely helpful unless one knew Greek.The third chapter looks at common "logical fallacies." He begins by arguing for the universality of logic (something which is hotly disputed today) and then proceeds to list various logical fallacies. While this list is helpful it remains incomplete. For an excellent guide to logical fallacies one should reference S. Morris Engel's "With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies." Throughout this chapter (and all chapters) Carson offers examples from Christian scholarship, which both violate and uphold the rules of logic. The poem "Why Are Fire Engines Red?" is worth the price of the book.Next, Carson highlights various "presuppositional and historical fallacies." Everyone has baggage (both good and bad) when they approach the Biblical text. These are our presuppositions, which are unavoidable - everyone has them and can't get rid of them. The best thing to do is to recognize one's presuppositions and see how they color one's reading of Scripture. Carson argues that we must seek to distance ourselves from our recognized presuppositions in order to approach the biblical text afresh (a difficult task!). It is just as much a fallacy to read our theology into the text, as it is to assume that we are neutral. Carson also lists a fe

Many people are keen to be able to read the bible in the original languages, but do not understand how to apply their new-found knowledge.There are some excellent books to assist in this regard, including Moises Silva's Biblical Words and Their Meaning, Cotterell and Turner's Linguistics and Biblical Interpretation and David Alan Black's Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek, It's Still Greek To Me and Using New Testament Greek in Ministry.But Don Carson's Exegetical Fallacies is a great start. It is reasonably easy to understand, and shows how language works and how we can easily get tripped up in our efforts to interpret it, in a stimulating and entertaining manner. His book is short, and definitely worth reading a few times. If you find yourself disagreeing with his conclusions, think carefully about what yours are based on. Is it a great sermon or a cherished theory, or is it based on careful biblical study?Other thought-provoking books by Carson which give examples of his exegetical method include his "Inclusive Language Debate: a plea for realism,""The Difficult Doctrine of the Love of God" and "Showing the Spirit," which is an exposition of 1 Corinthians 12-14.Carson is bilingual, having been brought up in Canada where he and his father preached in both English and French. He shows how this has helped in his study of language and of the Bible in his book on the inclusive language debate. The insights he has discovered make him well worth reading.Highly recommended.

An outstanding, practical guide to proper Biblical interpretation with vivid, real life examples (including, humbly a few of his own which receive dishonorable burial) of how not to practice exegesis. Unknowingly almost every interpreter of Scripture is doing eisegesis under the guise of exegesis. It is too easy and natural to seek what one is prone to find, rather than just find what one may not be prone to seek. The author makes the excellent observation that God discloses on the basis of our need to know, not out need to want to know. The Bible's purpose is to sanctify the honest inquirer, not satisfy the curious. Should be required reading for all serious Bible students. Hopefully a follow-up volume, updated over the past ten years with many more contemporary examples, can be produced.

Carson designed this work to be a textbook for seminarians and to serve as an introduction for budding exegetes. Anyone with a basic knowledge of the Bible and the biblical languages has probably found himself wincing on Sunday morning as a deacon or Sunday School teacher, or even the pastor, takes a verse out of context or mangles the original intent of the author. Such mistakes are simply inexcusable, for teachers of the Word ought to take utmost care in handling the text. Souls are in the balance. Carson's Exegetical Fallacies, though only 150 pages long, fires a powerful volley in the battle against exegetical imprecision.Carson covers word-study fallacies, grammatical fallacies, logical fallacies, and presuppositional fallacies, giving examples of each and demonstrating the errors of each.This book serves its purpose well and is excellent for both trained ministers and laymen. Read it and you will never listen to a sermon in the same way again.