While I didn’t necessarily disagree with the spirit of your original article I do take exception with this particular response. You offer some quality debate over MacArthur’s understanding of textual criticism and hermeneutics but I don’t think it is fair to label him as a commodifier of the Word. Maybe you are not intending to, but that response made it seem to me like you view him as an antagonist who needs to be overcome.

Today, biblically sound expository preaching is very much against the grain. It seems like every day that more and more churches seek a larger audience or desire to make themselves more culturally palatable. In those instances the last thing they would do is actually teach the Word in a simple, straight forward expository manner.

It’s getting harder and harder to find a church that actually teaches the Word of God here in Southern California. My (soon to be former?) church has recently made an unfortunate shift to a teaching style that offers very little biblical nourishment. The pastor is a great guy, talks a good game about Jesus and tells funny stories but we no longer go into the Word of God in any detail. I don’t even need to bring my Bible on Sunday anymore. “We” even quit having Bibles in the pews because it apparently made non-believing guests uncomfortable.
It’s like that with many Evangelical churches in this town. Sensitivity to current social issues, accommodation to the perceived needs of non-believers and relativistic ideals have replaced the actual teaching of the Word in any depth.

In comparison, last summer, Grace Church celebrated Mac Arthur’s 40th year of ministry. Over the years, I have listened to him speak on various occasions and am fairly familiar with his teaching methodology. Even though I don’t always agree with him theologically (or possibly hermeneutically & on textual criticism), I very much appreciate the fact that he teaches the Word of God in a straight forward manner. He usually gives his audience lots to insight to chew on. He also doesn’t use any spin to address difficult issues. He just teaches what he believes the Bible says. The longer I live in L.A. the more I find his actual teaching to be a breath of fresh air. It’s in that light that I would judge his teaching.

Again, maybe I misunderstood your article/response. I think you make some astute observations with regards to his understanding of textual criticism and hermeneutics but at the end of the day I would not let that make me view him in an overall negative light. I thank God for the presence of teachers like him in this world.

sincerely,
JR

I had tried to warn him against the danger his rationalist and narrow approach to Scriptures and inspiration presented. To no avail. It’s a way of looking at things his denomination is just soaked with.

I suppose that what I have witnessed is no isolated incident. There is probably a terrible onslought going on out there, as thousands of young and bright people, out a desire to be coherent, feel they have to renounce Christianity because Scriptures is seemingly being found guilty as the tribunal set up by what they have been lead to see as the real source of authority: a self-agrandized reason requiring nothing less then total factuality and absolute accuracy.

All this is very very sad.

Someone who does this quite well is Charles Price from Canada: http://www.livingtruth.ca/.

I would disagree that MacArthur does this. While he does use “textual criticism” a bit more than say, a John Piper who plainly does much of his work out of his developed Biblical and Systematic theology, I don’t think MacArthur allows it to shade his preaching to the point of it superseding Scripture.

Might I suggest that one reason that MacArthur does this to such an extent is that he’s a dispensationalist – and as such he doesn’t have a grand redemptive narrative to hook his sermons onto, so he goes into detail of the text instead.

If you want to look at the opposite pole of Expository Preaching, consider someone like Tim Keller. In fact, a number of preachers would improve their sermons no end if they simply picked on his habit of not thinking that preaching expositorialy meant preaching through the text sequentially.