Love Tim Keller. He tries to get in on the conversation but timidly, as one who knows it's best to stay out of it.

Two of my heroes. Period. I have been reading and learning from Carson for 20 years now and I'm so grateful for him. If the dude published his grocery list, I'd read it.

Anyway, I want to get into the discussion. I wish I was at the table. :-) I think that Piper is being "argumentative" needlessly. Here's why. To take the hypothetical pastor that Piper is concerned about: If that guy spends "10 hours in the text" as Piper put it, he's reading commentaries. And if he's reading commentaries, he's getting relevant cultural and historical info needed on word usage, cultural practices, idioms, historical background etc... Because that's what commentaries do. Commentary authors do a lot of the work for you. They've already spent hours and hours learning all about Corinth, so that they can find that one nugget that's pertinent to your exegesis of that passage. (That's what Carson does for example.) So the Pastor is not "wasting his time" reading dusty archaelogical tomes, because the commentary will bring out the pertinent stuff...and then point you to their sources in footnotes if you want to go learn more for yourself.

So Piper is chasing a false argument. Good commentaries, will balance textual stuff that Piper's concerned about, with historical stuff that Carson's concerned about. There's a reason Carson wrote "NT commentary Survey." (Every pastor ought to have that book.) In the video, Carson keeps trying to tell Piper that he's jumping on unnecessary extremes (historical research vs. textual research) but Piper won't listen. In reality, a pastor spending 10 hours "in the text" will get both unless he isn't consulting any commentaries at all. And if that's the sort of thing Piper is talking about, I'd tell him that he's going to scare Pastor's off that way too. The "average pastor" will say, "What? You mean to do good hermeneutics, I have to do it all on my own without any help for 10 hours before I can consult a commentary?"

So what I'm saying is, this "argument" that Piper keeps sustaining here is made unnecessary by good commentaries.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad they had the argument though. Fun to watch, and these are healthy things to be thinking about.

If that guy spends "10 hours in the text" as Piper put it, he's reading commentaries.

You might be right, Shrode. I assumed 10 hours in the text meant 10 hours in the Bible, maybe not in that same passage but in cross references, prayer, etc. Again, you might be right.