Fuller takes a stand?

[arapahoepark]

Found this on the Aquila Report. I wonder what McFadden thinks....
http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/09/fuller-seminary-takes-a-stand

Fuller Seminary decided not to offer tenure to a New Testament professor, J. R. Daniel Kirk, whose view of marriage does not comport with Jesus’s view.

Although a decision such as this is never made happily or easily, I am grateful for the courage of senior faculty at Fuller Seminary in asserting the importance of a stance on sexual ethics that Jesus clearly regarded as foundational: a male-female requirement for sexual relations (Mark 10:2-12; Matt 19:3-9). Had Fuller set a precedent of embracing faculty whose position toward sexual ethics was so at odds with Jesus’s own, it would soon have ceased to be an evangelical institution.

 

[bookslover]

Kirk also has a low view of Jesus, considering him to be "an idealized human figure."

Just when you think Fuller has finally gone over the cliff, theologically, it surprises you....

 

[DMcFadden]

I wrote a thread on this a couple of weeks ago. I was surprised. In 1975 Paul Jewett argued that Paul was "wrong" on women in 1 Tim 2. He was cheered for advocating the direction the broader culture was moving at the time. Now, a guy comes along who says that Jesus was wrong and he gets denied tenure. Go figure. Maybe the issue is that even in the wake of decades of heterodoxy, Jesus is still granted a semi-privileged status in the academy? Also, Kirk was not a much beloved pioneer of the institution like Jewett.

It is interesting that the president of FTS previously wrote a blurb for Kirk's book praising it, even with respect to his views of homosexuality. From afar, only knowing what has been written about the affair, it was a "senior" faculty member who felt constrained to oppose (i.e., blackball?) the nontenured prof. Much like the function of the U.S. Senate where senators are granted wide authority to block any number of actions, an influential prof in the academy can sometimes put a hold on a promotion. Members of the club sometimes have a lot of pull on who does or does NOT get invited to join the club.