DTS, not conservative

For some reason there is a wide perception that Dallas Theological Seminary is a bastion of evangelical conservatism. I believe it has been quite some time since they were even close enough to reach out and still touch conservatism. Regardless, I recently ran across this rank representation of how bad it has gotten, taken from a chapel message at DTS.

“Dr. Frank Glover, a regent at Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS…touted the story of Kimpa Vita, a Congolese woman who claimed to be possessed by ‘Saint Anthony,’ who she claimed was equal to God in Heaven. She claimed to die each weekend and travel to Heaven, sharing extrabiblical, direct revelations. She commanded celibacy from her cult members but fornicated with a follower and successfully aborted two of the three resulting pregnancies. When I highlighted this promotion of heterodox figures, DTS scrubbed the chapel from its archives but made no public statement. Glover remains on its Board Of Regents today.”

“The ‘Racial Reconciliation’ Movement Is Over,” Center for Baptist Leadership

The value of studying Greek and Hebrew

From The Berean Call:

Question: You seem to discount the value of studying Greek and Hebrew in order to be able to understand the Bible better. A friend of mine is trying to persuade me to go to seminary in order to learn the original biblical languages. Why shouldn’t I?

Answer: If the Lord leads you to seminary, by all means go. But let’s be practical. How many years of study and experience do you think the translators of the King James Bible had in order to qualify them for that job? How long would it take a beginner to learn Greek and Hebrew well enough to discover where these men made a poor translation (if they did) and to improve it? Does your friend, or do you, intend to reach that level of expertise? Is that remote possibility worth the time and effort?

If you say that Greek is a richer language than English, and that knowing it would give you a deeper understanding, I won’t argue. But wouldn’t the time you’d have to spend learning Greek to any beneficial level be better spent in studying the Bible itself on your knees, seeking understanding from the Holy Spirit, and getting to know Him and His Word? Comparing scripture with scripture, and using a good concordance, you can see how the same Greek or Hebrew words and expressions are used in different passages. The Bible interprets itself.

I have been told lately by several Calvinists that I can’t understand the Bible—not even John:3:16—because I don’t know the original languages. If so, then neither does the average Christian, but must look to experts to interpret it for him—experts who therefore stand between him and God. Far from biblical, this is elitism similar to Roman Catholicism, which discourages ordinary members from studying the Bible because only the magisterium (bishops in concert with the Pope) can interpret it.

Saying this doesn’t make me popular and offends some of my dearest friends. But a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew has been elevated so highly that one must conclude that the Wycliffe Bible translators have wasted their time all these years. Why translate the Bible into native languages if these people still couldn’t understand it because they don’t know Greek and Hebrew? Wouldn’t it be more efficient and less time consuming to teach Greek and Hebrew to native peoples so they could read the Bible in those languages instead of translating it into their native tongues? May the Lord give you wisdom in coming to your own conclusions.

The Berean Call Staff (Dave Hunt, T. A. McMahon, et. al), September 1, 2003 [Note: I have some minor disagreements with the quote—for example, rather than “go” to seminary, I advocate the church taking back the education of its ministers—but I agree with the general tenor of it regarding the use, misuse, and abuse of language studies to create an elite class among (above) our churches.]

Was A. T. Robertson a conservative Baptist?

The name of A. T. Robertson is probably almost immediately recognized by older Baptist preachers, and probably most seminary Greek students and scholars. He was a great Greek scholar, but I do not see his theology as thorough-going conservatism (or even thorough-going Baptist). Robertson taught for nearly 40 years at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Concerning creation and evolution, he said the following to his students.

“Give Haeckel a primordial germ and let it be charged with potency to make the universe and he will do the rest. Give them a God to start with, only don’t call it God. Evolution, I am willing to believe in it, I rather think I do, but not in atheistic evolution. I take not a primordial germ, but God and start with Romans I, that the things around me are enough to prove God. They can not prove God was not before matter. I can not prove that he was. Lincoln at Hampton Roads Conference said: ‘Write ‘Union’ at the top, and I don’t care what you write under it.’ I say write God at the top, and what if he did use evolution? I can stand it if the monkeys can. They thing that differentiates you from a monkey is that you have a soul. If he did do it that way, he still did it.” (pp. 76-77)

…

“The Bible opened with the picture of a Garden. However man got in it, – evolution, I don’t know – they had fellowship with God.” (p. 175)

Changing the biblical statement that God put or placed man in the Garden to a weak and watery “however he got in” is not conservative (nor even Baptist in my understanding of the orthodox beliefs of true Baptists). A man who does not know how man got in the Garden may be qualified to teach Greek, but he is not qualified to teach the Bible. 

• And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul...And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. Genesis 2:7, 15
• And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. 2 Timothy 2:2

New Testament Interpretation (Matthew – Revelation) Notes on Lectures of Dr. A. T. Robertson, 1931

Jeremiah Louis Guthrie, Baptist educator

Jeremiah Louis Guthrie is, or at least was, a well-known name in Missionary Baptist and American Baptist Association circles. Guthrie helped organize and served as President of the Missionary Baptist Seminary in Little Rock, Arkansas from 1934 to 1945. Before that he taught at Union University, Jackson, Tennessee, 1911-13; was President of Laneview College, Laneview, Gibson County, Tennessee, 1913-15; taught at Oklahoma Baptist University, Shawnee, Oklahoma, 1915-1926; and was President of Caledonia Baptist Academy, Caledonia, Union County Arkansas, 1926-28.

Click the following link for a short biography of J. Louis Guthrie:

Biography of J. Louis Guthrie, Baptist educator.

Sheri Klouda, Wade Burleson, SWBTS

Old Southern Baptist news, which I had saved, and decided to save here rather than delete.

Oral and Videotaped Deposition of Dr. Sheri L. Klouda February 26, 2008

Q. All right. Have you talked to Wade Burleson? ... 

A. He called me, I think, in January of 2007 and asked me about the truth with regard to what he had heard about my leaving Southwestern and I told him some of the story, not knowing that he was going to post it on his blog. When he told me that he was in fact going to do that, I objected.

Q. And did he publish any of the stories that you told him that you objected to?

A. He did. That was the first one or that was the one -- that was the one that he -- that told -- he posted it -- he put it on his blog and I’d objected to it and I even told Dr. Patterson about it.

Sheri Klouda: Gender Discrimination, Federal Law and the Law of Christ in the SBC and SWBTS

Dr. Sheri Klouda about Her Time at SWBTS under Dr. Paige Patterson

God’s seminary

The church is God’s “seminary.” 

“upon this rock I will build my church … teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway …”

“Our hearers...think it enough for them, if at best they can hear with some profit to themselves. But this was not the state of things in primitive times. Every church was then a seminary, in which provision and preparation was made, not only for the continuation of the gospel in itself [Gospel preaching], but for the calling, gathering, and teaching of the churches also… And this course, namely, that teachers of the church should be educated thereunto in the church, continued inviolate until the public school at Alexandria, which became a precedent unto other places for a mixed learning of philosophy and religion, which after a while corrupted both, and at length the whole church itself.” 

(John Owen 1616-1683, An Exposition of the Epistle of Hebrews, Vol. III, London: Thomas Tegg, 1840, pp. 114-115)

“We are well aware that we shall be complained of when we say these things…Mere scholars, those who know more of books than of men, and more of theological halls than the pulpit, ought not be invested with the trust of educating a whole generation of young men for the Christian ministry. The fact may no longer be dissembled, that the tendency, if not the design of our theological seminaries themselves, is to fill the most important chairs with purely literary men; men who neither have, nor expect to have, any relation to the pastoral office; men ordained, not to the work of the ministry, but to their professorship. It is easy to see that such arrangements once entered upon, are apt to be progressive and to perpetuate themselves. Age and experience sleep in the tomb; and those only become the teachers of ministers, who have themselves never been teachers of the people, and never served the Church of God in the ministry of his Son.”

(Gardiner Spring 1785-1873, The Power of the Pulpit: Or, Thoughts Addressed to Christian Ministers, New York, NY: Baker and Scribner, 1848, pp. 382-383)

“Whether seminaries and theological schools are the proper places to educate the ministry, I know not. It is a matter of experiment in our day, and time alone can decide it. Their tendency is to raise intellectual above spiritual qualifications, and such it has thus far proven. Of old, they have I think proved to be, after a generation or two, schools of heresy.”

(Francis Wayland 1796-1865, a letter by Wayland, long-time president of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island to James Petigru Boyce, first president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, January 26, 1857)

“The local church is itself a school. If believers are also disciples, then they are students, and the local church is a place for the study of the Gospel. If these local churches under their constituted teachers are schools for the training of God’s people, why cannot these schools also train future ministers? Why must these schools be set aside and higher schools be established by men in their superior wisdom for the training of ministers? It is true that the local church has but one text book – the Bible – but what need do we have for schools where Barth and Bultmann are also studied? Do we need these higher schools for the clergy where men finish their education and have completion of their education certified? Can men ever finish their study of the Bible and receive their diploma of having mastered the Gospel? In this school called the local church we never finish our education and receive our degree. We are always learning and studying here, ever fascinated by the knowledge of God and His way of salvation.”

(Elmo Wayne Johnson 1914-2001, “Extra-Biblical Ecclesiastical Systems,” Baptist Reformation Review, Summer - 1978, Vol. 7:2, pp.15-16)

“In the early days of American Protestantism, the training of ministerial candidates was carried on by pastors of churches. A young man feeling a call of God to the ministry would associate himself with a church pastor, receive training from him, participate in the work of the parish, perhaps even live in the pastor’s home. I’m not sure why, but eventually this system was felt to be inadequate… Seminaries not only frequently ‘refuse to do the work of the church,’ they also tend to undo it.”

(John M. Frame, “A Proposal for a New Seminary,” The Journal of Pastoral Practice: Volume 2, Number 1, Winter 1978, pp. 10-11)

“The best structure for equipping every Christian is already in place. It predates the seminary and the weekend seminar and will outlast both. In the New Testament no other nurturing and equipping is offered than the local church. In the New Testament church, as in the ministry of Jesus, people learned in the furnace of life, in a relational living, working and ministering context.” 

(R. Paul Stevens, Liberating the Laity: Equipping All the Saints for Ministry, Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1985, p.46).

“Modern training is primarily intellectual; New Testament training is primarily spiritual and practical. Modern training emphasizes the classroom; New Testament training emphasizes life and experience.”

(Clay Sterrett, Myths of the Ministry, Staunton, VA: CFC Literature, 1990, p. 18)

“Most church leaders would agree that developing new leaders is a critical responsibility of the local church, yet very few churches actually have an intentional leadership development process…During the Renaissance, also known as the Age of Enlightenment, great emphasis was placed on learning through the rise of universities. Any person who felt called to serve God was directed to attend a university…From the universities grew extended knowledge centers of specialization and thus was born the seminaries. Anyone who believed God was calling them to full time Christian service was directed to attend seminary for proper preparation. Churches, desiring to have the best educated ministers possible, have been outsourcing the responsibility for training church leadership ever since.” 

(Brian Keith Moss, “Leadership Development in the Local Church: A Seven Step Process for Developing Leaders at Every Level,” Doctor’s Thesis, Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, Lynchburg, Virginia, 2014, pp. v, 116)

In 21st-century Western Christianity, folks who feel a calling for Christian ministry think (through years of teaching and tradition) that going to seminary is naturally the first step to take. Biblically, theological education is an aspect of discipleship. It is not (at least should not be) a pathway to a professional degree. Churches to the Front!