How Do You Choose the Books?

So some crazy student calling himself "curiously questioning carson," who I can only assume is an Emerjerk, wrote in today wanting to know how the professors at TEDS choose which books we use for our texts during the course of a given semester.

I was just about to fire back my standard response notifying him about the part of my TEDS contract that states "all professors must use D. A. Carson books if at all possible" when I realized that's not exactly what he wanted.  Turns out he had a problem with at least two specific subjects.

Last semester, this particular TEDS student had classes that touched on Open Theism and the New Perspective on Paul.

Turns out that instead of reading books by theologians who are actually proponents of these topics, the class was only given books refuting them, and "curiously questioning carson" (hereafter referred to as "CQC") wants to know why.

Well, let me explain a few things to you.  Sure, it's better to read proponents of these heretical views if you want to truly understand all of their strengths and weaknesses.  But we don't always want you to understand them.  Sometimes we just want you to know they're really, really bad.

Perhaps an illustration will help.  You probably know what a wood chipper is, but you don't really know exactly how it works.  Sure, you could walk up to one, stick your hand or arm in it and really try to understand all the ins and outs of it.  Or you could just watch this scene from Fargo and realize that you shouldn't have anything to do with a wood chipper.  Understanding all the intricacies of a wood chipper doesn't help keep your hand from getting torn off when you stick it in.

So in answer to your question, CQC, Open Theism and the New Perspective are just like wood chippers.

Except different.

Kind of.