D. A. Carson is
research professor of New Testament at
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School,
Deerfield, Illinois. Some of his other
books are: The Gagging of God,
Becoming Conversant with the Emerging
Church, The God Who Is There, Christ
and Culture Revisited.
What others are
saying about this book:
“Thoughtfully shows
how tolerance has morphed into a
pervasive insistence that no one
should hold firm convictions. . .. Not
to hear and heed Carson is to enter a
nightmarish world in which zeal to
discern truth is replaced by zeal to
keep anyone from claiming anything is
really true.” -Bryan Chapell,
President, Covenant Theological
Seminary
“Carson shows the
structural flaws and inconsistency of
modern tolerance and its fixation on
opposing traditional Christianity. .
.. The Intolerance of Tolerance is not
a political jeremiad so much as a call
for Christians to fight for the value
of truth.” - Christianity Today
To call this book a
must read is an understatement! In
this book, Dr. Carson helps the reader
to understand the insanity we are
watching coming from colleges campuses
and the culture at large.
Carson does an
extraordinary job surveying
philosophical ideas with special
attention to postmodernism and its
failure to account for absolutes.
Chapter One deals with The Changing
Face of Tolerance. There is a historic
or older form of tolerance that has
worked quite well in society, keeping
disagreements from spinning out of
control, resulting in violence. An
older form of tolerance would be the
Jewish prohibition of eating pork. A
Jewish person, while not eating pork,
would not try and stop others from
eating pork as is the case with
Muslims and their demands that
everyone conforms to their practices.
Chapter Two deals
with examples of the new tolerance and
its adherents demanding the removal of
Christian clubs from college campuses
because the Christian club will not
allow non-Christians to hold
leadership positions or refusing to
change their doctrinal standards.
Carson provides many examples of this
that spans many organizations such as
banks, cities, schools. Thankfully,
most of the examples cited are
eventually overturned in the courts.
Carson documents what
is unique to the new tolerance is the
enforcers of this so-called tolerance
is that the enforcers do not believe
in absolutes except the absolute that
there are no absolutes. This
self-refuting contradiction held by
the enforces does not bother them. The
new tolerance that has permeated most
sections of society. In Chapter Four,
Worse Than Inconsistency, Carson deals
with extreme accusations leveled
people holding unpopular positions.
Chapter Five, The
Church and Christian Truth-Claims is
particularly important for
contemporary Christians. With the
state and federal courts abandoning
their commitment to fidelity to the
Constitution, Christian businesses are
being attacked for not violating their
beliefs by making cakes for
homosexuals. Churches are now in the
crosshairs of the new watchers and
enforcers. The new watchers and
enforcers are governed by nothing but
their own feelings and what they take
as self-evident without proof is
right.
As the Scriptures
declare: “There is a way which seemeth
right unto a man, but the end thereof
are the ways of death.” (Proverbs
14:12)
Chapter Seven,
Tolerance, Democracy, and
Majoritarianism is particularly
instructive. In short, Democracy and
majoritarian schemes have never
provided much protection for
minorities.
A few quotes are in
order:
“A democracy is
nothing more than mob rule, where
fifty-one percent of the people may
take away the rights of the other
forty-nine.” - Thomas Jefferson
“Pure democracy
cannot subsist long nor be carried far
into the departments of state – it is
very subject to caprice and the
madness of popular rage.” - John
Witherspoon
“It is a logical
absurdity to equate democracy with
freedom in the way that mainstream
political philosophers and
commentators typically do. A system
where individuals and minorities are
at the mercy of unconstrained
majorities hardly constitutes freedom
in any meaningful sense.” - Keith
Preston
“One-man-one-vote
combined with “free entry” into
government-democracy--implies that
every person and his personal property
comes within reach of-and is up for
grabs by everyone else: a 'tragedy of
the commons” is created.” -
Hans-Hermann Hoppe
The Heresy of
Democracy with God by Rousas John
Rushdoony [From Chalcedon Position
Paper No.6] is an excellent and
complements Dr. Carson’s insights into
the dangers of majoritarianism.
In conclusion, Dr.
Carson leaves the reader with Ways
Ahead: Ten Words in the final chapter
with strategies to defend ourselves
and respond to the new tolerance which
in reality is extremely intolerant.
This extreme new intolerance and its
adherents are capable of all manner of
evil. The wicked fruits of these are
being increasingly seen throughout all
of society.
I highly recommend
this book and it should be in every
concerned Christian’s library.