A seminary can't make ecclesiastical judgments but it can and must make judgments relative to its own commitment to the standards. WSC profs do swear an oath to God and the board not to teach anything contrary to the system of doctrine (which IS the Reformed confessions).
We have a disciplinary procedure etc that is roughly parallel to the sort of thing a session/presbytery would do.
At the same time our MDiv faculty are ministers and accountable to consistories/sessions and to presbyteries/classes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tcalbrecht  Quote:
Originally Posted by R. Scott Clark DM,
Our faculty handbook discusses this. We balance the two all the time. The short story is that academic freedom ends where the confession begins.
| Does an unaffiliated seminary, such as Westminster East or West, have the biblical prerogative to determine whether a position is confessional or not? Assuming all these men are members of confessional denominations, are not their individual views subject to the Church alone, and not an unaffiliated seminary?
The bottom line is that the first line of defense for the Church is the local presbytery/classis which has the duty before God to examine and ordain men faithful to Scripture as summarized in their confession.
Any presbytery/classis which cannot overcome bad seminary training, esp. the occasional aberration from a single professor, doesn’t seem to me to be doing their job very well. |
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R. Scott Clark, D.Phil
Professor of Church History and Historical Theology
"For Christ, His Gospel, and His Church"
Associate Pastor
Oceanside URC The Heidelblog