Theoblogy highly recommends D.A Carson, for he is a fine exegete, scholar and preacher. He is Reformed, Baptistic and above all very passionate about being gospel-centered in all things. God be praised for gifting the church with such a blessed leader.
However Carson’s exegesis of Matthew 5:17-48 is considered by many as undermining the traditional Reformed view of the passage, and then the fact that most New Covenant Theologians appeal to Carson’s exegesis as the exegetical basis for their teachings have made things only worse.
It is important to note here that Carson does not belong to the NCT camp. Two aspects of Carson as an exegete may tempt his listeners to think he is promoting NCT. They are :
1. When it comes to exegetical discussions, Carson is critical of using the tripartite division of the Law as Moral, Civil and Ceremonial, as a textually warranted division.
This however does not mean he does not believe in this classification. He rather wants to consider the historic development of this thought and calls it as rightly developed by Thomas Aquinas. In his lecture on the OT use in NT, he does say that the classification of Law like this and especially the category of Moral Law, is an important one and to be considered, especially in discussions after we have done our exegesis. He says, ‘that part of revelation of God which undergoes minimum change over the plain of redemptive history can be a posteriori defined as Moral Law.' Carson is however hesitant to consider moral law as an a priori category in his exegetical discussions.
2. His exegesis of "fulfillment" language in Matthew 5:17-48
When it comes to understanding the word “fulfill” (πληρόω, plēroō), Carson makes a case in showing that Jesus is speaking of Him being the eschatological fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. Carson feels that the reading of Scripture in classic Reformed exegesis, where you see the command to not hate embedded in the command to not murder is a bit flat. He rather opts for a prophetical overshadowing of the teachings of Christ, where the command to not murder did envision an eschatological abolition of hatred too.
Now the noteworthy thing is, Carson himself admits that in terms of moral and ethical consequences, there is little difference between the two readings. In other words he is not denying the use of moral law for Christians. He does not do that. He rather feels he is making some cases for a more textually faithful reading of scriptures within the framework of redemptive historical trajectory model. Unlike an NCT guy, Carson does not criticize the use of Decalogue for the Christian or promote any Law-of-Christ alone for Christians.
In spite of these reasons, Carson’s exegesis of Matthew 5 is still the intellectual and exegetical foundation for the NCT movement. This alarming reality calls for a response from exegetes who favor the traditional Reformed view.
Dr. Greg Welty, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, has written a very thorough and fair response to Carson, where he shows how Carson’s exegesis can only be considered as a “conceptual innovation”, and thus defends the classic Reformed exegesis of the passage. After critiquing Carson, Welty closes by providing a positive account of Mt 5:17-48 which both incorporates one of Carson’s key insights from v. 17, and yet retains the traditionally Reformed interpretation of the antitheses. He argues that it is precisely because Jesus is the eschatological fulfillment of the law and the prophets, that we would expect Him to confirm the Mosaic laws He treats in the antitheses, and to defend such laws from Pharisaic distortion and misinterpretation. The paper has an Appendix which then addresses the slightly different view of NCT exegete Fred Zaspel, in light of the preceding discussion.
Eschatological Fulfillment and the Confirmation of Mosaic Law Read
