Exegetical Fallacies by D.A. Carson

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Here is my latest review I've written. This one is about a book by D.A. Carson called Exegetical Fallacies. If you've ever heard someone teach that Agape is one kind of love in Greek...Phileo is another kind...and that Agape is God's unconditional love...and that Phileo is brotherly love...then you need to read this review...and Dr. Carson's book.

Here it is.


I've been pastoring for about 10 yrs...do sermon prep in the Greek text and try to bring the text in a relevant way to my congregation. This book has a ton of great error checkers for those who work with any Greek at all.

For example, the Root Word fallacy section...Carson deals with issues that have bothered me for a long time. One of the most famous is the AGAPE is a special kind of God's love...that is different from PHILEO. Think with me on this for a minute...if the devil could get pastors to miss the biblical definition on the most important virtue in the bible...then he has shifted their entire ministry off base to a degree. That is what has happened in America today with so many bible teachers/preachers appealing to the Greek meaning of Agape as different from Phileo...

Carson calls the approach a root fallacy...in other words the root meaning of the word reveals the true meaning of the word.
One of his illustrations is "Good-bye" which originally was 'God be with ye'. He points out that no one is thinking today 'God be with ye' when they are saying Good-bye....it is a similar thing to probe for the root meaning of the Greek word and then try to bring a revelation out that 'changes' the translation to something deeper, more spiritual. It's really a twisting of the text into a wrong definition.

Agape is frequently used to describe lots of feelings outside of God's love. The popular teaching that Agape is God's love...that it means unconditional love...whereas Phileo means brotherly love doesn't stand up if you do a basic word study in the bible of the two words. When I was first in the ministry I was stunned to find that word studies in the LXX & GNT did not back up this very popular teaching-that Agape is God's unconditional love...and Phileo is human love...of a lower grade. Almost everyone in my congregation had heard that popular teaching somewhere...either on Christian radio, books, magazines, or TV. But in fact, it seemed that the two words for love were used interchangeably a lot. Not only that...agape is used in one place to describe a rapists feelings for his victim!!!! How could that be God's unconditional love? Something is very wrong with the popular teachings on love today.

To my delight, Carson shows why this is so...and how to identify these sorts of errors. The book is a little hard to understand in some places because he packs so much into each paragraph, but if you find the issue you are working on and read his stuff slowly, it should alter the way you approach God's word (if your approach is flawed).

One really cannot get to a more important issue than dealing with a definition of love...can we?

Some of the criticism about negativity in this book is probably fair...but there is so much linguistic nonsense out there being taught in the name of spirituality, it's tough to deal with it all in a 'positive' way. I just think all pastors should read and more importantly learn to apply this book when doing exegesis for sermons.

Hope you get two copies and give an extra one to a pastor friend.