Carson brilliantly analyses the 'isms' of modernism thru post-modernism. In the exposition of faulty worldviews, Carson crosses swords with all who have blurred the lines of vital Christianity as the task of the Church, and all those who dare blemish the Bride of Christ with spots and wrinkles.

A praiseworthy and timely defense against the academia of modernism, relativism, humanism, consumerism, liberalism, feminism and post-modernism.

'God creates snowflakes, we produce ice cubes.' pg 97

'In the 3rd Century, Origen moved in this direction (universalism), tho on this and many other points the Church departed from him.' pg 142

'The Enlightenment tried to make man the measure of everything; Rationalism elevated human reason to godlike status.' pg 134

'Having elevated self to the place where God is no longer needed, self now proclaims that language is inadequate to talk about objective reality, God included. Having damned interpretation for being manipulative, God, if He were to speak, becomes the arch manipulator. The gagging of God is complete.' pg 134

'...where He alone ought to be acknowledged as both the source and the end of all His creatures, not least those made in His image, our deep self-centeredness is rebellion - it is sin.' pg133

I read this book for a seminary class. I found it to be wordy and and not an easy read. This is a book a person could get bogged down in and quit readying. That said, I believe it is a book worth putting forth some extra effort to read. This book is not intended for the lay person. This is a scholarly work and I believe it is intended for professors, pastors, and graduate students. I would and have recommended this book to others and I believe it can serve an important function for those involved in leading other believers.

This book is thick, scholarly and a far from easy read. Must be boring? NOPE! This is one of the most interesting books I've ever read. It engages my mind like no other book has (to my memory) ever done. Carson combines his deep learning and his writing acumen in such a way as to grip one's mental facility and threatens to never let go.

This is an extremely important book. The back cover does the book disservice by saying that "Professor D. A. Carson helps evangelicals respond to the question, 'Is Jesus the only way to God?'" because the book covers a far wider scope than that. The Gagging of God identifies possibly close to all the compromises that evangelicals could get entrapped by in this age and suggests the way to evade them. Sadly I believe most evangelicals will never read this book as self-help books make up their "devotional" reading diet.

With J. I. Packer having sold off to ECT, Carson now gets my vote for Pope of Confessing Evangelicals. It'll be interesting to see his reaction later this year when he comes to Kuala Lumpur and I prostrate myself before him as the newly crowned pope. Go ahead - dare me! ;-)

I read this book with a great deal of interest. I came away from it with contrasting feelings; I was unsure whether to give the book two stars or three.

The Good: If you are looking for a cogent primer on the most destructive elements of postmodernism and philosophical pluralism, this is a good book. Carson definitely demonstrates a solid understanding of philosophy, although as some reviewers have noted, he waves some philosophers/theologians off without giving them enough thought.

The Bad: Like many modern conservative theologians (Francis Schaffer, Charles Colson, etc), Carson displays a dangerously reductionistic view of culture. To put it most simply, this book is based on the idea that this country can be basically divided between Christendom (which is basically good) and the "enemies of Christendom" (who are basically destructive). The book, then, espouses more or less an "our camp" versus "their camp" worldview. I find this far too simplistic, although I realize that anyone who agrees with Carson's worldview will undoubtedly be unconvinced by this review, and will surely see this book as spot-on in its cultural analysis.

Also, in his effort to promote this "us versus them" ideology, Carson greatly overstates the influence of pluralism and postmodernism in American culture. His assessments of certain postmodernist philosophers is basically correct, but he is wrong in assuming that these philosophers have had a widespread influence, especially in the area of relativism. Likewise, Carson greatly exaggerates the degree to which Christians have been "gagged" in the public square; he claims, for instance, that religion is basically banned from politics and that talk of God has little influence in public discourse or academia. Anyone who has spent much time studying politics in America, though, knows that religion--or, at least, civil religion--plays a prominent role. As some reviewers have said, this makes Carson come across as an alarmist, which of course undermines the credibility of his work. This is very unfortunate, for there is much that we could learn from him.

D.A. Carson is a Canadian missionary and scholar working in Christian higher education in the U.S. He has been a lecturer in New Testament at Trinity International University for a number of years. He now serves as research professor of the divinity school. The Gagging of God, subtitled, "Christianity Confronts Pluralism", may be considered Carson's twentieth century magnum opus, not so much because of the book's size, but on account of the substantive challenge with which it deals. The writer is seriously concerned about what he perceives to be the inroads pluralism is making within the ranks of Christianity.
Pluralism, Carson acknowledges, is an extraordinarily difficult topic to define, therefore the first task he sets himself is to clarify his understanding of the term. In the writer's opinion there are essentially three phenomena that embrace the concept today: "Empirical pluralism, cherished pluralism and philosophical or hermeneutical pluralism." The first variety may be seen as "the sheer diversity of race, value system, heritage, language, culture and religion in many Western and some other nations". By itself this growing variety is innocent enough, but does provide the climate for syncretism and the "virulent variety," which is taken up later on the book. "Cherished pluralism" is not so much a different kind of pluralism as it is a positive attitude towards the reality of empirical pluralism. The "giant" which Carson attempts to slay in his book, or at least expose, is philosophical pluralism, which is the posture, which asserts that "any notion that a particular ideological or religious claim is intrinsically superior to another is necessarily wrong".
This, according to Carson, has been the philosophical underpinning of post-modernism and the recent approach to hermeneutics called deconstruction. A major concern of the author is to help Christians understand the impact of philosophical pluralism on our culture. He observes that in just twenty-five years this new way of viewing reality has gripped Western intelligentsia for the most part and has wielded no little influence on the man in the street as well, providing both strata with a convenient basis for their relativistic approach to life. Further impact of philosophical pluralism is to be seen in politics and law, which "trivialize all values [and] all religious devotion," as well as in the print and electronic media. The influence is so pervasive that it appears that no stratum of society is left untouched. In this regard, pluralism's influence in the religious arena is perhaps the most worrying.

The book is well organized and documented and, apart from a few untransliterated Greek words in text and notes, it is generally user-friendly. However, the subject index does not include "Apologetics", which is dealt with on pp. 184-189, and there are typos on p. 494. The date for Longenecker's article cited on p. 243 is also wrong.