Can Carson Be Co-opted?

In recent interviews Dr. Michael Licona has invoked the name of D. A. Carson, giving the strong impression that Carson shared/shares Licona's own views of the Gospel of John--views which are surprising and controversial coming from a conservative scholar. These include the idea that John invented the sayings "I thirst" and "It is finished" from the cross and the claim that it is impossible to know whether the historical Jesus recognizably uttered the fairly explicit claims to be God that we find in John, and more. If Carson and all the others Licona lists really hold such views of John's Gospel, a Christian conservative audience is more likely to feel that the arguments for these views must be very strong and that they have no choice but to accept them. I have argued directly that these views are false, so regardless of what "big name" holds them, that doesn't mean that we're epistemically required to believe them. But further: The attempt to co-opt Carson is completely illicit, based upon his published writings. Carson *has not* endorsed the views that I have criticized in Licona. Licona uses a quotation from Carson's commentary on John in which Carson says, "John has rewritten the whole" to defend his attempt to co-opt Carson. But the context makes it clear that there Carson is *only* talking about trivial matters of style which need not compromise the *recognizable* historicity, in the very contexts reported, of any of Jesus' teachings. Moreover, on every single one of the other issues where Licona takes a view that would be considered non-conservative (e.g., the day of the crucifixion, the recognizable historicity of the "I am" sayings, and many more), Carson takes the conservative view instead and argues for traditional harmonizing. Even more striking: Carson shows himself well aware of the tendency to slide from discussions of John's style and the way Jesus sounds in John to questioning the recognizable historicity of Jesus' teaching, and he explicitly blocks this slide in passage after passage of his writings, defending instead the view that Jesus recognizably taught and said what John reports on the occasions where John places him. This is as far as possible from the view of John that Licona is endorsing. Here is Carson's commentary on John, available in Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Gospel-according-Pillar-Testament-Commentary-ebook/dp/B09151YFSY/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2I984OE95ZVM9&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.AmOevBpNCC5z9NrvEvhJsy4vFbwSRZEk_vqv3KHhAJirYtrCG9XGqkI9q-KYSojdTgPFzbrNqPE7XeHuf2xjG68h_22r7E1-jQY_beAbuEcizFigWOB7Z0mf862276nYtxrCaax6E-0Hh9mNHW5Kb3AeYd8JLk8zYcHUdnbo4J8VOcYaSG8RFRQ9CtJBSwtdFVUx2-teDiaSFCNpBP3b-fRQG2v_h-lmRsdAQKEd_zk.HFzIjtn85T8JMzdSJBuDnZSGNKcF1Yij5WnF0YDEYqg&dib_tag=se&keywords=carson+john+commentary&qid=1721312510&sprefix=%2Caps%2C170&sr=8-1 Here is an important article in which Carson discusses these issues: https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/gp/gp2_tradition_carson.pdf Here is one interview where Licona speaks as if Carson agrees with his controversial views: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNUCCeTwCaI Here is the interview where Licona explicitly cites the isolated sentence, "John has rewritten the whole" to co-opt Carson: https://www.youtube.com/live/N5N5snM1PSQ?si=MmflT4Jf_7f-TLJ3&t=7900