How to Ward off Despair | D. A. Carson

The Henry Center Archive

Lecture Title - A Firm Foundation: Six Pillars of Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Death Without exception, human beings come face to face with suffering and evil. We may entertain only the vaguest and most cliché-driven grasp of such matters until we ourselves suffer, or until we ourselves recognize the sheer malignity of evil in ourselves or others—and then suddenly we swirl around and gradually sink into faith-devouring despair. Far better is it to build the mental and emotional structures, generated by Scripture itself, that train us how to think about suffering and evil before the evil day comes. This lecture seeks to establish six major pillars that together support a way of thinking about such matters—or, to change the metaphor, a kind of prophylactic medicine to ward off the most debilitating elements of despair. D. A. Carson (PhD University of Cambridge) is Emeritus Professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He is author, co-author, and editor of over 45 books, including the Gold Medallion Award-winning book The Gagging of God: Christianity Confronts Pluralism (Zondervan Academic, 1996), An Introduction to the New Testament (2nd edition) (Zondervan Academic, 2005), and The Enduring Authority of the Christian Scriptures (Eerdmans, 2016). The Henry Center for Theological Understanding provides theological resources that help bridge the gap between the academy and the church. It houses a cluster of initiatives, each of which is aimed at applying practical Christian wisdom to important kingdom issues—for the good of the church, for the soul of the theological academy, for the sake of the world, and ultimately for the glory of God. The HCTU seeks to ground each of these initiatives in Scripture, and it pursues these goals collaboratively, in order to train a new generation of wise interpreters of the Word—lay persons and scholars alike—for the sake of tomorrow’s church, academy, and world. Visit the HCTU website: https://henrycenter.tiu.edu/ Subscribe to the HCTU Newsletter: https://bit.ly/326pRL5 Connect with us! https://twitter.com/henry_center https://www.facebook.com/henrycenter/ https://www.instagram.com/thehenrycenter/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/thehenrycenter