D.G. Hart on "Save our Seminary"

Josiah · #1 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 02:49 PM

Westminster’s Warrior Children | De Regno Christi

I know this blog entry is a few weeks old, but i found it to be an insightful opinion on the current situation at WTS PA. Enjoy!

elnwood · #2 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 07:20 PM

"I have a great love for the school to say the least. I like to say that there is no institution I love as much as Westminster Seminary. However one of the reasons why I left in 1998 was my perception that the seminary was beginning to change from the deeply Reformed but outward facing institution that it was from the time that I first knew it in the 1970’s to a more inward defensive institution. I remember talking to one colleague, for instance, who told me that if I felt the Bible taught something that the Confession did not that I had to side with the Confession. That’s not the Reformed approach to the study of the Bible that I know and love. However it is a perspective that I think has only grown with time." -- Tremper Longman

Yikes! That type of Confessionalism needs to be subdued and crushed.

Ivan · #3 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 07:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by elnwood

"I have a great love for the school to say the least. I like to say that there is no institution I love as much as Westminster Seminary. However one of the reasons why I left in 1998 was my perception that the seminary was beginning to change from the deeply Reformed but outward facing institution that it was from the time that I first knew it in the 1970’s to a more inward defensive institution. I remember talking to one colleague, for instance, who told me that if I felt the Bible taught something that the Confession did not that I had to side with the Confession. That’s not the Reformed approach to the study of the Bible that I know and love. However it is a perspective that I think has only grown with time." -- Tremper Longman

Yikes! That type of Confessionalism needs to be subdued and crushed.

Frankly, it sounds like something that would come out of Rome.

R. Scott Clark · #4 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 11:17 PM

It's a little more complicated than Tremper's quotation lets on.

As I've noted here many times (and as I note in the forthcoming book -- November, Dv), Recovering the Reformed Confession, everyone thinks that their theology is biblical. In that case the question becomes whose reading of the bible is going to be normative in a Presbyterian seminary that has an established and constitutional confession?

Is Tremper allowed to teach Presbyterian seminary students that the Bible teaches credobaptism? No, of course not. I'm not saying that Tremper was teaching credobaptism but just using this as an example. In this case there is no doubt that the confession trumps what a given prof may think the bible to teach if that conclusion contradicts what the Reformed churches hold the bible to teach.

The question here is not whether the bible is normative. The question is whether one person's reading of Scripture is normative for everyone else.

When Tremper became a prof at WTS he swore an oath before God, the board, and the faculty that he believed the Westminster Standards ex animo - from the soul. If he came to believe that some language or chapter in the standards was unbiblical he was duty bound to take that concern to his colleagues on the faculty and failing to find satisfaction, to take it to the board.

We should not be disturbed to read that someone at WTS thought that the teaching of Presbyterian seminary professors should reflect the Presbyterian reading of the bible. We should rather be disturbed by the fact that a Presbyterian seminary professor thought it odd that someone should expect him to teach like a Presbyterian.

**DMcFadden** · #5 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 11:26 PM

Scott,

Amen! This is one of the gripes I have had with broad evangelicalism for some time. It is no accident that Dr. Longman is the "Robert H. Gundry" professor of New Testament at Westmont. I took about 32 units of NT and Greek under Bob Gundry (who officiated at my wedding 34 years ago). As he followed the no-boundaries evangelical tradition, this dear and pious man eventually went from dispensational fundamentalist roots to view Matthew as Midrash (the star and magi were a non-historical gentilization of the shepherd motif, etc.), get himself kicked out of the ETS, and eventually take his stand against imputation in Paul. Yikes! I am one life-long evangelical who is moving rapidly toward confessional Christianity. While it is no easy cure solution, everything else is too dangerous to my soul.

IMHO, you nailed it with the line: "The question here is not whether the Bible is normative. The question is whether one person's reading of Scripture is normative for everyone else." Over the decades, I have watched dear friends crash and burn because they followed the individualism of evangelicalism (the "me and Jesus" route). Now we have the McLaren nonsense of "generous orthodoxy" which, truth be told, is neither.

***Semper Fidelis*** · #6 (**permalink**) 02-28-2008, 11:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by R. Scott Clark

It's a little more complicated than Tremper's quotation lets on.

As I've noted here many times (and as I note in the forthcoming book -- November, Dv), Recovering the Reformed Confession, everyone thinks that their theology is biblical. In that case the question becomes whose reading of the bible is going to be normative in a Presbyterian seminary that has an established and constitutional confession?

Is Tremper allowed to teach Presbyterian seminary students that the Bible teaches credobaptism? No, of course not. 'm not saying that Tremper was teaching credobaptism but just using this as an example. In this case there is no doubt that the confession trumps what a given prof may think the bible to teach if that conclusion contradicts what the Reformed churches hold the bible to teach.

The question here is not whether the bible is normative. The question is whether one person's reading of Scripture is normative for everyone else.

When Tremper became a prof at WTS he swore an oath before God, the board, and the faculty that he believed the Westminster Standards ex animo - from the soul. If he came to believe that some language or chapter in the standards was unbiblical he was duty bound to take that concern to his colleagues on the faculty and failing to find satisfaction, to take it to the board.

We should not be disturbed to read that someone at WTS thought that the teaching of Presbyterian seminary professors should reflect the Presbyterian reading of the bible. We should rather be disturbed by the fact that a Presbyterian seminary professor thought it odd that someone should expect him to teach like a Presbyterian.

Scott,

Don't you know it's only acceptable to say "We're only teaching what the Bible teaches..." if someone like Chuck Smith says it.

The minute that a group of men get together to try to confess a set of beliefs that a whole Church agrees upon then that is human tradition.

It is quite elementary.

**DMcFadden** · #7 (**permalink**) 02-29-2008, 12:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SemperFideles

Scott,

Don't you know it's only acceptable to say "We're only teaching what the Bible teaches..." if someone like Chuck Smith says it.

The minute that a group of men get together to try to confess a set of beliefs that a whole Church agrees upon then that is human tradition.

It is quite elementary.

Rich,

Go back to Okinawa. You are getting way too sarcastic during this stay in California!

***Semper Fidelis*** · #8 (**permalink**) 02-29-2008, 12:04 AM

Tomorrow AM I fly back!!