"'Finally,' Burtchaell notes, 'in 1910 a loyalty oath against Modernism was imposed on all clerics whenever they received holy orders, applied for professional faculties, took papal degrees, began office as religious superiors, or taught in a seminary or pontifically approved faculty.' The real tragedy of such a pogrom is that nothing is really solved--the problems are merely postponed. 'The catastrophe of the Modernist purge was,' according to Burtcheall, 'that the exploration of this whole constellation of associated and perplexing problems was for half a century paralyzed. However irresponsible the discussion had become, one is tempted to think that it might have been dealt with more deftly.'" (Dewey Beegle, Scripture, Tradition and Infallibility, 293-294.)
Enns might be going, Taylor might be gone, but the issues are still there. These guys were trying to work through them. Maybe WTS thinks it can paralyze them, but the issues won't go away. They're bound to be raised again, and likely sooner than later.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
What happened in America?
"Nevertheless, British evangelicals manifest a greater flexibility in their approach to inerrancy...While American formulations vary in their insistence upon scientific and historical inerrancy, they generally reflect a greater anxiety over factual accuracy than has ever been present in the British evangelical heritage." (Harriet A. Harris, Fundamentalism and Evangelicals. [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998], 87.) Why this specifically American evangelical anxiety? Is it because American evangelical theology became democratically decided and every person can see for themselves that the Bible is obviously and indeed the perfect word of God?
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Damage control
It feels like a scary time in evangelicalism. Inerrancy is seemingly under attack again. But this time it's not the liberals, it's the evangelical scholars themselves! They are suggesting to each other that they take another look at the doctrine and talk about why it now seems wanting. Yet in some ways not much seems to have changed in the last thirty years: Older conservative leadership is alarmed by change and wants to secure the fortress at all costs, controlling the damage that might be done by the younger believers. Thirty years later and it's the same old thing:
"Looking at the inerrancy debate sociologically we can see it as one manifestation of Fundamentalism in the process of change. Even conservative Protestantism is not a static phenomenon, and it is now having to face the question how it will respond to the pluralism of ideas, to the existence of fresh and novel insights. The process is a painful one, especially for Fundamentalism, because of its fortress mentality, its inability historically to view change in terms of creative possibility, while remaining serene and composed in the face of it. Although my wish may not be fulfilled, I sincerely hope evangelicalism will find room for a diversity of human opinion on the nature of biblical inspiration and discover rich and productive theological renewal as a result.
On the darker side, it is not unreasonable to conjecture that the struggle over a code-word like inerrancy has political implications as well. Pentecostal Old Testament scholar, Gerald T. Sheppard of Union Theological Seminary, sees the debate as an attempt by the northern evangelical establishment to impose technical language upon the evangelical coalition and maintain control and social cohesiveness by means of it. The older conservative leadership of evangelical institutions, alarmed at the uncertainties involved in the theological and social change visible in the movement, are moving to clamp down on unpredictable elements by means of inerrancy terminology, which, if strictly interpreted, is certain to ensure that evangelicalism will remain within fairly strict fundamentalist limits. There is surely truth in this analysis, though it omits some genuinely theological fears and focuses too exclusively on issues of power and control." (Clark Pinnock, "Evangelicals and Inerrancy: The Current Debate," Theology Today 35 [1978]: http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1978/v35-1-tabletalk1.htm#3)
Sure there's theology involved, but without acknowledging the instinct toward damage control by those presently in power, discussions will frequently seem to have gone nowhere--especially to those who suddenly find themselves institutionally disenfranchised, perpetually without a place to lay their heads.
"Looking at the inerrancy debate sociologically we can see it as one manifestation of Fundamentalism in the process of change. Even conservative Protestantism is not a static phenomenon, and it is now having to face the question how it will respond to the pluralism of ideas, to the existence of fresh and novel insights. The process is a painful one, especially for Fundamentalism, because of its fortress mentality, its inability historically to view change in terms of creative possibility, while remaining serene and composed in the face of it. Although my wish may not be fulfilled, I sincerely hope evangelicalism will find room for a diversity of human opinion on the nature of biblical inspiration and discover rich and productive theological renewal as a result.
On the darker side, it is not unreasonable to conjecture that the struggle over a code-word like inerrancy has political implications as well. Pentecostal Old Testament scholar, Gerald T. Sheppard of Union Theological Seminary, sees the debate as an attempt by the northern evangelical establishment to impose technical language upon the evangelical coalition and maintain control and social cohesiveness by means of it. The older conservative leadership of evangelical institutions, alarmed at the uncertainties involved in the theological and social change visible in the movement, are moving to clamp down on unpredictable elements by means of inerrancy terminology, which, if strictly interpreted, is certain to ensure that evangelicalism will remain within fairly strict fundamentalist limits. There is surely truth in this analysis, though it omits some genuinely theological fears and focuses too exclusively on issues of power and control." (Clark Pinnock, "Evangelicals and Inerrancy: The Current Debate," Theology Today 35 [1978]: http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1978/v35-1-tabletalk1.htm#3)
Sure there's theology involved, but without acknowledging the instinct toward damage control by those presently in power, discussions will frequently seem to have gone nowhere--especially to those who suddenly find themselves institutionally disenfranchised, perpetually without a place to lay their heads.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Not just WTS, save our seminary part 3
I tried to lay out some arguments in my last post for the importance of emphasizing the political aspect of recent developments at WTS. Since the matter seems already to be beyond the point of argument, I thought it might be helpful to draw attention to an analogous case involving another denominational seminary.
I found a blog post reminiscent of the last few posts that I've made here. The post deals with a "theological" controversy involving a faculty member at SBTS (see http://www.abpnews.com/1646.article). A relevant excerpt from the blog (not the article) appears below. Do you think the situation mentioned in it is comparable to the one we've been discussing? Might it shed light on the current discussion?
"Sheri Klouda was given a tenure-track position to teach Hebrew in Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s school of theology when she received her doctor of philosophy at the Fort Worth, Texas, campus in 2002. In 2004, she was told that, because she was a female, she was no longer on the tenure track because, according to Van McClain, chairman of Southwestern’s board of trustees, the seminary had returned to its “traditional, confessional and biblical position” that a woman should not instruct men in theology courses or in biblical languages.
Granted, the seminary allowed her to continue to teach a full 2 years after she was told that she would never make tenure and they supported her financially after they made her quit teaching, but their decision was wrong, both morally and Biblically...
The Real Issue in the “Conservative” Takeover was Power, not TheologyOf course, the real issue was not theology, as the conservatives claimed, but pure raw power. Anyone who dared call them on their power grab was immediately labeled a liberal. At a convention meeting, the “conservatives” kept “moderates” out of a meeting by enlisting the aid of guards with guns. They took over the Baptist Standard, the weekly Baptist magazine, and fired everyone on the staff suspected of having sympathy for the “moderates.” When they took over the seminary, all of my professor friends had their careers trashed and were fired while my friends were encouraged to attend another seminary — all because they attended a “moderate” church. It was a bloodbath.
When they tried to take over my alma mater, Baylor University, they managed to fire several professors who were not deemed appropriate, including a Spanish professor I had who happened to be a Mormon. Fortunately, the “moderates” retained control over Baylor and they rehired the Spanish professor and ultimately made him chairman of the department. Never once did the professor try to proselytize us. If my faith were so weak that it could be damaged by having a Mormon Spanish professor, then how would my faith withstand the real world?" http://www.mcculloughsite.net/stingray/2007/01/25/female-professor-at-baptist-seminary-fired-for-being-female.php
Is this what is happening behind closed doors at WTS? Has there been a regime change? Is that part of what gave impetus to this? Is there a pattern that might be discerned in these conservative executive tendencies from which all parties involved might learn something useful?
I found a blog post reminiscent of the last few posts that I've made here. The post deals with a "theological" controversy involving a faculty member at SBTS (see http://www.abpnews.com/1646.article). A relevant excerpt from the blog (not the article) appears below. Do you think the situation mentioned in it is comparable to the one we've been discussing? Might it shed light on the current discussion?
"Sheri Klouda was given a tenure-track position to teach Hebrew in Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s school of theology when she received her doctor of philosophy at the Fort Worth, Texas, campus in 2002. In 2004, she was told that, because she was a female, she was no longer on the tenure track because, according to Van McClain, chairman of Southwestern’s board of trustees, the seminary had returned to its “traditional, confessional and biblical position” that a woman should not instruct men in theology courses or in biblical languages.
Granted, the seminary allowed her to continue to teach a full 2 years after she was told that she would never make tenure and they supported her financially after they made her quit teaching, but their decision was wrong, both morally and Biblically...
The Real Issue in the “Conservative” Takeover was Power, not TheologyOf course, the real issue was not theology, as the conservatives claimed, but pure raw power. Anyone who dared call them on their power grab was immediately labeled a liberal. At a convention meeting, the “conservatives” kept “moderates” out of a meeting by enlisting the aid of guards with guns. They took over the Baptist Standard, the weekly Baptist magazine, and fired everyone on the staff suspected of having sympathy for the “moderates.” When they took over the seminary, all of my professor friends had their careers trashed and were fired while my friends were encouraged to attend another seminary — all because they attended a “moderate” church. It was a bloodbath.
When they tried to take over my alma mater, Baylor University, they managed to fire several professors who were not deemed appropriate, including a Spanish professor I had who happened to be a Mormon. Fortunately, the “moderates” retained control over Baylor and they rehired the Spanish professor and ultimately made him chairman of the department. Never once did the professor try to proselytize us. If my faith were so weak that it could be damaged by having a Mormon Spanish professor, then how would my faith withstand the real world?" http://www.mcculloughsite.net/stingray/2007/01/25/female-professor-at-baptist-seminary-fired-for-being-female.php
Is this what is happening behind closed doors at WTS? Has there been a regime change? Is that part of what gave impetus to this? Is there a pattern that might be discerned in these conservative executive tendencies from which all parties involved might learn something useful?
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Power or theology? Save our seminary, part 2
In an eariler post regarding the saveourseminary petition, I suggested that power and money are factors contributing to the political unrest at WTS and that a petition indicating a measure of disapproval from the wider WTS community would not accomplish much in terms of actually affecting what happens at the seminary. A discussion ensued in the comment section centering around whether the political developments at WTS is about power/money or theology. My intent in the earlier post was to point out that there is a bigger picture to assess. My contention is that although one can interpret the restructuring of the biblical studies department at WTS as a theological matter, there is also room for interpreting a forced change in faculty as a power play and that this may be a helpful perspective to consider.
For starters, it is not clear that the faculty members in question have (may) left (leave) of their own accord. It is not typical of theology alone to force faculty members to leave their place of employment against their will. That force is an external one to the faculty members in question; the force acting upon them is not theological, it is political and administrative (=power).
Second, the question of what theology will be allowed at WTS and what theology will not be allowed is not the only question on the table. There seems to also be the questions of who decides what theology will be allowed, how does WTS decide if a faculty member is not promoting that theology, what will WTS do with those faculty members who appear to challenge that theology and how to convince those who decide what theology is acceptable at WTS to take appropriate action against those who do not appear within bounds. These are not only (or even primarily) theological questions. I think they can be categorized as political and sociological. In fact, I struggle to understand the question of what kind of theology will be tolerated at WTS as a strictly theological question in the first place. It is at the very least meta-theological and might be reframed: In what ways will WTS relate the theologies of the faculty and the scholarship produced by the faculty to the official theology adopted by the institution? These seem to me to be politics of theological education issues.
Third, I have a relatively naive ideal when it comes to how theological matters are to be researched and discussed. I do not necessarily think that theology is a democratic undertaking yet I do have the expectation that there will be some measure of open academic discourse about a matter, including debates in journals and symposiums before scholars and other interested parties. Now these forums may have been provided and I remain ignorant of them, but the word on the streets is that no series of open deliberative forums has been granted to the theological issues under consideration. The situation has rather developed in such a way that POOF! one day one reads on the website that Steve Taylor is leaving WTS after a sabbatical and that (is this how it's going to happen?) POOF! hey, look, Pete Enns is leaving WTS.
Fourth, fighting for a sense of denominational identity at WTS is not the same as fighting for a sense of theological identity. Although theology might helpfully be thought of as a major part of denominational identity, there are also culural and sociological components. Perhaps there is an issue here, too, about what the relationship should be between a seminary and "the church," and, more specifically, between a seminary and "the denomination." My perspective on this is that in reality it is a complex cluster of relationships between the school and the churches, the school and the denominations. Theology by itself is not a big enough umbrella to encapsulate all of these. And "the denomination is not just "the denomination," but also "the supporting denomination(s)." Surely, this is an important factor.
I agree that the administration has a right to be the administration and has no obligation to pander to every constituency, but there's a sense among some within the extended WTS community that there are some clandestine operations being orchestrated in a concerted effort to halt progressive tendencies within the seminary. In these perons' opinion, the measures taken toward this end are inexplicably extreme. Whether desired or not, there are political aspects to this: WTS does not desire a progressive image and they will go to great lengths to prevent one from developing--that's one observation that is being made. Even if it's WTS's prerogative to decide what image it prefers and what lengths it will go to manage its public theological face perhaps WTS might help itself by stating up front that so-and-so was asked to leave because of such-and-such and that so-and-so is now under investigation because of such-and-such instead of letting people infer on their own what's going on (and what will happen) by reading blogs and emailing people they think are in the know, 0r even by being more of a tyrant, so to speak, WTS might better help itself by telling people that there are changes in the works that WTS has deemed beneficial to the work and mission of the seminary, end of discussion. As it stands, there is a perception of secrecy that seems to bother people to no end.
I myself am not interested in signing the petition. To be honest, I am not all that interested in what happens at WTS. I have uprooted myself from the place. I do think it's too bad that Steve Taylor had to move on and that Pete Enns might eventually do the same. I also understand that WTS has to do what WTS has to do. I am, however, interested in how this thing is falling out, faculty being booted behind closed doors--or at least this is how it is being recounted to me. There are some who are very upset about it. WTS is not adminstratively structured on a model that lets students have a say in these affairs. Still, there is a sense of betrayal in the air. I myself ponder why this has become so acute.
To sum up, I think to insist that theology is the primary issue is misleading. The implications are somewhat grander and seem to have broader ramifications for the direction of the seminary in general, not only theologically. I close this reflection with a quote from Anthony Diekema's Academic Freedom and Christian Scholarship:
Nothing is more destructive to the mainenance of morale in a faculty than the "chilling effect" that comes with the use of college authority to restrain or censor. Indeed, I believe that the most devastating threats to academic freedom come not from outside or from blatant tyranny but rather from well-meaning persons who have little or no understanding of the long-range negative effect of their actions to inhibit the essential freedoms of the academy. Well-meant but misguided concerns for the fact that the academy's freedom can or may offend some group or individual can have lethal effects on the long-term health of a college or university. When offensiveness is used as grounds for suppression, it opens the road to widespread censorship and restraint because almost everything of consequence in the life of the mind will be offensive to someone. (cited in Sparks, God's Word in Human Words, 367)
For starters, it is not clear that the faculty members in question have (may) left (leave) of their own accord. It is not typical of theology alone to force faculty members to leave their place of employment against their will. That force is an external one to the faculty members in question; the force acting upon them is not theological, it is political and administrative (=power).
Second, the question of what theology will be allowed at WTS and what theology will not be allowed is not the only question on the table. There seems to also be the questions of who decides what theology will be allowed, how does WTS decide if a faculty member is not promoting that theology, what will WTS do with those faculty members who appear to challenge that theology and how to convince those who decide what theology is acceptable at WTS to take appropriate action against those who do not appear within bounds. These are not only (or even primarily) theological questions. I think they can be categorized as political and sociological. In fact, I struggle to understand the question of what kind of theology will be tolerated at WTS as a strictly theological question in the first place. It is at the very least meta-theological and might be reframed: In what ways will WTS relate the theologies of the faculty and the scholarship produced by the faculty to the official theology adopted by the institution? These seem to me to be politics of theological education issues.
Third, I have a relatively naive ideal when it comes to how theological matters are to be researched and discussed. I do not necessarily think that theology is a democratic undertaking yet I do have the expectation that there will be some measure of open academic discourse about a matter, including debates in journals and symposiums before scholars and other interested parties. Now these forums may have been provided and I remain ignorant of them, but the word on the streets is that no series of open deliberative forums has been granted to the theological issues under consideration. The situation has rather developed in such a way that POOF! one day one reads on the website that Steve Taylor is leaving WTS after a sabbatical and that (is this how it's going to happen?) POOF! hey, look, Pete Enns is leaving WTS.
Fourth, fighting for a sense of denominational identity at WTS is not the same as fighting for a sense of theological identity. Although theology might helpfully be thought of as a major part of denominational identity, there are also culural and sociological components. Perhaps there is an issue here, too, about what the relationship should be between a seminary and "the church," and, more specifically, between a seminary and "the denomination." My perspective on this is that in reality it is a complex cluster of relationships between the school and the churches, the school and the denominations. Theology by itself is not a big enough umbrella to encapsulate all of these. And "the denomination is not just "the denomination," but also "the supporting denomination(s)." Surely, this is an important factor.
I agree that the administration has a right to be the administration and has no obligation to pander to every constituency, but there's a sense among some within the extended WTS community that there are some clandestine operations being orchestrated in a concerted effort to halt progressive tendencies within the seminary. In these perons' opinion, the measures taken toward this end are inexplicably extreme. Whether desired or not, there are political aspects to this: WTS does not desire a progressive image and they will go to great lengths to prevent one from developing--that's one observation that is being made. Even if it's WTS's prerogative to decide what image it prefers and what lengths it will go to manage its public theological face perhaps WTS might help itself by stating up front that so-and-so was asked to leave because of such-and-such and that so-and-so is now under investigation because of such-and-such instead of letting people infer on their own what's going on (and what will happen) by reading blogs and emailing people they think are in the know, 0r even by being more of a tyrant, so to speak, WTS might better help itself by telling people that there are changes in the works that WTS has deemed beneficial to the work and mission of the seminary, end of discussion. As it stands, there is a perception of secrecy that seems to bother people to no end.
I myself am not interested in signing the petition. To be honest, I am not all that interested in what happens at WTS. I have uprooted myself from the place. I do think it's too bad that Steve Taylor had to move on and that Pete Enns might eventually do the same. I also understand that WTS has to do what WTS has to do. I am, however, interested in how this thing is falling out, faculty being booted behind closed doors--or at least this is how it is being recounted to me. There are some who are very upset about it. WTS is not adminstratively structured on a model that lets students have a say in these affairs. Still, there is a sense of betrayal in the air. I myself ponder why this has become so acute.
To sum up, I think to insist that theology is the primary issue is misleading. The implications are somewhat grander and seem to have broader ramifications for the direction of the seminary in general, not only theologically. I close this reflection with a quote from Anthony Diekema's Academic Freedom and Christian Scholarship:
Nothing is more destructive to the mainenance of morale in a faculty than the "chilling effect" that comes with the use of college authority to restrain or censor. Indeed, I believe that the most devastating threats to academic freedom come not from outside or from blatant tyranny but rather from well-meaning persons who have little or no understanding of the long-range negative effect of their actions to inhibit the essential freedoms of the academy. Well-meant but misguided concerns for the fact that the academy's freedom can or may offend some group or individual can have lethal effects on the long-term health of a college or university. When offensiveness is used as grounds for suppression, it opens the road to widespread censorship and restraint because almost everything of consequence in the life of the mind will be offensive to someone. (cited in Sparks, God's Word in Human Words, 367)
Monday, March 17, 2008
Scholarship makes church impossible
"Even though it deeply damages the missionary credibility of the church, all the important themes of faith and of Christian ethics are watered down until two mutually opposed things are held to be true at once. Jesus was the preexistent son of God, was born of the virgin Mary and claimed to be the Messiah, and yet he certainly was not. He went to the cross on a mission from God for the sins of the many, and yet his own understanding of his death remains historically in the dark. Jesus rose from the dead on the third day and was exalted to the right hand of God, and yet the entire Easter tradition is only a projection of Christian faith. Christ is the Lord, Savior and Judge, whose message and ministry are necessary for the salvation of Jews and Gentiles, and yet there are considerable concessions to me bade today regarding the sole claims of Christ, while the contemporary missionary witness to Christ among Jews and Gentiles must be conceived entirely differently from how it was in NT times. Christ is coming to judge the living and the dead, and yet he will no longer come after two thousand years of church history, and Christianity can do without the whole notion of a final judgment. Jesus and the apostles called the church to sanctification, and their commands are to be obeyed, and yet the ethical standards laid down in the NT are hardly specifically Christian and are so antiquated that today's church must learn to exercise tolerance toward all possible lifestyles and behaviors of Christians and non-Christians alike. Finally...the Holy Scripture is the only rule and guiding principle for faith, doctrine and the life of the church, and yet it is about time to free ourselves from this outmoded and authoritarian Scripture principle." (P. Stuhlmacher, "My Experience with Biblical Theology" in Biblical Theology: Retrospect and Prospect. ed. S. J. Hafemann [InterVarsity Press, 2002], 190-191.)
I remember J. P Moreland writing that Christians should not be expected to leave their brains at the door. Well, this kind of contradictory juggling act that students are expected to carry out in varying degrees makes going to church an impossibility--no matter where one decides to leave their brains! The more one accepts the philosophical judgments that tend to accompany critical scholarship the more impossible church appears to become. Critical scholarship prompts one to reconsider the philosophical baggage that usually goes with inerrancy and has the potential to alter one's sense of church in an uncannily profound way.
I remember J. P Moreland writing that Christians should not be expected to leave their brains at the door. Well, this kind of contradictory juggling act that students are expected to carry out in varying degrees makes going to church an impossibility--no matter where one decides to leave their brains! The more one accepts the philosophical judgments that tend to accompany critical scholarship the more impossible church appears to become. Critical scholarship prompts one to reconsider the philosophical baggage that usually goes with inerrancy and has the potential to alter one's sense of church in an uncannily profound way.
Friday, March 14, 2008
ETS/EPS regional meeting
I was able to give a paper today at the regional ETS/EPS meeting that suggested that Kuhn's theoretical proposals help show that inerrancy is a paradigm in crisis. Fittingly enough, this year's meeting was held at WTS. It seemed to me that the topic of my paper elicited a good deal of interest. In my session, every chair was occupied and some participants were sitting on the floor in order to listen. A recurring concern during the q&a seemed to me to be What are we supposed to tell the church while the younger evangelical scholars go about their business of doing extraordinary science? Everyone seemed to me to feel some measure of paralysis in regard to this predicament. I think there are plenty of cultural factors that play into this overwhelming sense of paralysis.
For starters, I think the metaphor of "no errors" contributes conceptually to the problem, especially given our postmodern condition. The Bible can never be wrong. No, never! Unhappily, a socially constructed belief is masquerading as if it were revealed eternally by God. God is saying Scripture is inerrant; God is saying that Scripture has to be perfectly right or the whole faith suffers. If it ever appears otherwise, that means the believer is off his spiritual rocker. The inerrantist culture promulgates beliefs such as these and drives home the meta-belief that God is allegedly saying all this. My observation is that a lot of people want to go back and talk about this with a critical eye, but the culture does not allow such talk, or if it does, the talk predetermines that the results of such conversation must land one back of the ETS/EPS side of the issue. My hope is that more scholars and students will find the strength to break through this sense of paralysis and help work toward the invention of a more progressive metaphor for the authoritative quality of scripture. "Having no errors," I believe, has lost (or is very, very close to losing) its anagogical staying power.
For starters, I think the metaphor of "no errors" contributes conceptually to the problem, especially given our postmodern condition. The Bible can never be wrong. No, never! Unhappily, a socially constructed belief is masquerading as if it were revealed eternally by God. God is saying Scripture is inerrant; God is saying that Scripture has to be perfectly right or the whole faith suffers. If it ever appears otherwise, that means the believer is off his spiritual rocker. The inerrantist culture promulgates beliefs such as these and drives home the meta-belief that God is allegedly saying all this. My observation is that a lot of people want to go back and talk about this with a critical eye, but the culture does not allow such talk, or if it does, the talk predetermines that the results of such conversation must land one back of the ETS/EPS side of the issue. My hope is that more scholars and students will find the strength to break through this sense of paralysis and help work toward the invention of a more progressive metaphor for the authoritative quality of scripture. "Having no errors," I believe, has lost (or is very, very close to losing) its anagogical staying power.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Save our seminary
Some have drawn my attention to http://www.saveourseminary.com. Although at some level I empathize with what these believers would like to see happen in conservative seminaries across the United States and especially in the one they graduated from, I'd be understating the matter if I said I think it's too little too late. The time for this might have been 8-10 years ago or at least before the decision was made to expand the library. That date would put me still in college (not in a position to save much of anything, much less an 80 year old theological seminary), which suggests to me again that this may very well be a generational affair.
Inerrancy debates may seem like they are primarily about doctrine, but many times they are just as much about finances, finances that the older generation crucially depends on, battles that the older generation has financial interests in. If WTS's chief donors happen to be inerrantists and the school is almost entirely dependent on its donors for cash flow, then WTS would be foolish not to do what it is that they're doing to the faculty presently, especially if they want to keep its doors open: make sure that everyone on faculty understands inerrancy in the same terms that WTS's donors understand it (and it doesn't hurt to call that perspective the perspective of the WCF for rhetorical leverage). Perhaps then we should not petition to "save our seminary" but rather to "change the perspectives of the donors." (And good luck doing that!) I'm not sure the public will ever fully know just how many hands are tied at WTS, helpless to do anything at all. It's rarely about petition or no petition, it's more about paycheck or no paycheck.
If the petitioners are really interested in saving their seminary, they ought rather to set out to literally buy it back ($$$).
Inerrancy debates may seem like they are primarily about doctrine, but many times they are just as much about finances, finances that the older generation crucially depends on, battles that the older generation has financial interests in. If WTS's chief donors happen to be inerrantists and the school is almost entirely dependent on its donors for cash flow, then WTS would be foolish not to do what it is that they're doing to the faculty presently, especially if they want to keep its doors open: make sure that everyone on faculty understands inerrancy in the same terms that WTS's donors understand it (and it doesn't hurt to call that perspective the perspective of the WCF for rhetorical leverage). Perhaps then we should not petition to "save our seminary" but rather to "change the perspectives of the donors." (And good luck doing that!) I'm not sure the public will ever fully know just how many hands are tied at WTS, helpless to do anything at all. It's rarely about petition or no petition, it's more about paycheck or no paycheck.
If the petitioners are really interested in saving their seminary, they ought rather to set out to literally buy it back ($$$).
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Generational differences
"I believe that divisive inerrancy is being pushed on us by an older generation of evangelicals. Inerrancy is a doctrine whose attractiveness we can perhaps understand in the context of the battles these people once had to fight against modernism, but I feel no need to fight these battles again...I honor their commitment to God's word, but I feel no need to listen when they try to tell me what I must believe and the dire consequences that will follow if I don't." (Stephen T. Davis, The Debate about the Bible. [Westminster Press: Philadelphia, 1977], 135.)
"At the moment I began to doubt that evangelical scholars were really giving me the whole story when it came to the Bible and biblical scholarship. Looking back on those events some years later, I can only say with regret that my early suspicioins have often been confirmed...Only now are we witnessing the emergence of a new generation of evangelical scholars who are willing to admit that the standard critical arguments are often much better than the ill-advised apologetic that evangelicals have aimed at them. If one cares at all about the truth, then this is a welcome development." (Kenton Sparks, God's Word in Human Words. [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008], 12.)
Inerrancy and the spiritual formation of younger evangelicals, that's what I'm talking about!
"At the moment I began to doubt that evangelical scholars were really giving me the whole story when it came to the Bible and biblical scholarship. Looking back on those events some years later, I can only say with regret that my early suspicioins have often been confirmed...Only now are we witnessing the emergence of a new generation of evangelical scholars who are willing to admit that the standard critical arguments are often much better than the ill-advised apologetic that evangelicals have aimed at them. If one cares at all about the truth, then this is a welcome development." (Kenton Sparks, God's Word in Human Words. [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008], 12.)
Inerrancy and the spiritual formation of younger evangelicals, that's what I'm talking about!
Regarding the darkness
I thought it might help to say more about the darkness that I mentioned at the end of yesterday's post. There are many students who feel it quite acutely. It's for these Christians that I keep writing the posts. We don't need any more Edward Carnells.
"Although there is seldom a single, simple cause for psychological difficulties, a careful examination of the facts suggests that an important element of the problem was cognitive dissonance. Carnell's intensive and meticulous study of philosophy, theology, and Scripture had gradually uncovered problems that seemed incompatible with conventional evangelical ideas about the Bible, especially with the doctrine of inerrancy. This presented Carnell with obvious difficulties, since his entire life and identity were firmly situated within an evangelical world that was not very enthused about his new ideas. Although Carnell's public persona continued to reflect an evangelical identity, inside he struggled with the cognitive dissonance between the evangelical he wanted to preserve and his private, theological perspectives...[Fuller's Seminary's board chairman] Ockenga's message was clear: although he privately supported Carnell, he also wanted Carnell to avoid publishing materials that were a threat to the more conservative, fundamentalist elements of fuller's constituency....[Carnell] was often angry at the rigidity of creedal and moral codes in which he was trapped by his connection with Fuller Theological Seminary." (K. Sparks, God's Word in Human Words. [Baker, 2008], 368-369, containing a quote from Nelson's The Making and Unmaking of an Evangelical Mind.)
Trapped by the darkness--no thank you. God bless the non-inerrantists who still maneuver in these circles; I don't know how they do it. The fundamentalist and evangelical darkness of which I speak infiltrates the core of one's person and strangulates the soul.
"Although there is seldom a single, simple cause for psychological difficulties, a careful examination of the facts suggests that an important element of the problem was cognitive dissonance. Carnell's intensive and meticulous study of philosophy, theology, and Scripture had gradually uncovered problems that seemed incompatible with conventional evangelical ideas about the Bible, especially with the doctrine of inerrancy. This presented Carnell with obvious difficulties, since his entire life and identity were firmly situated within an evangelical world that was not very enthused about his new ideas. Although Carnell's public persona continued to reflect an evangelical identity, inside he struggled with the cognitive dissonance between the evangelical he wanted to preserve and his private, theological perspectives...[Fuller's Seminary's board chairman] Ockenga's message was clear: although he privately supported Carnell, he also wanted Carnell to avoid publishing materials that were a threat to the more conservative, fundamentalist elements of fuller's constituency....[Carnell] was often angry at the rigidity of creedal and moral codes in which he was trapped by his connection with Fuller Theological Seminary." (K. Sparks, God's Word in Human Words. [Baker, 2008], 368-369, containing a quote from Nelson's The Making and Unmaking of an Evangelical Mind.)
Trapped by the darkness--no thank you. God bless the non-inerrantists who still maneuver in these circles; I don't know how they do it. The fundamentalist and evangelical darkness of which I speak infiltrates the core of one's person and strangulates the soul.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
A WTS graduate?
I originally began this blog at the behest of others. I've become too busy to maintain it properly, but I will post as frequently as I can for the sake of those who might be benefitting from it. I have come across discussions where people are surpised to learn I'm a WTS grad and are wondering about who my main influence might have been at WTS. Well, that second question is a very easy question to answer: Prof. Oliphint.
I came to WTS after attending Liberty for a semester. There I took a semester of languages and apologetics. Before attending Liberty my apologetics diet was more or less restricted to healthy doses of Moreland and Craig. At Liberty, my teacher was Gary Habermas who knew these guys personally; we hit it off from the start. I did well in my classes, but after a semester of being down there, for a number of reasons (including to pursue the beautiful blonde who is the love of my life) I decided to move back to NJ.
An intense religious experience some years before initiated in me an awareness of Jesus Christ that I had not experienced before, after which I felt an irresistable compulsion to constantly read and memorize scripture and also to attend services regularly. The churches that I attended at the time emphasized inerrancy and used the doctrine to help distinguish themselves from the liberals. They weren't as interested in distinguishing themselves from non-Christians as they were in distinguishing themselves from other persons who called themselves Christians but were in spite of themselves working against the kingdom. [They were especially eager to distinguish themselves from the Catholics, many of them being ex-Catholics themselves.] The easiest way to identify these types of pseudo-Christians was to determine in each case how strongly they believed in God's Word, the Bible [preferrably the KJV of the Bible]. So anything that even smelled like evolution was a big deal, as was anything really that ever questioned the Bible in slightest detail. Emotionally and culturally I ate all this up, but intellectually I always had some reservations about it. Either way, door-knocking, tracts, homilies, teaching, the whole kit and kaboodle, whatever the church needed, I volunteered (I even wrote songs for junior church). The culmination of this very intense phase of my life was the time when I, at the advice of a mentoring pastor, gathered everything I owned (which wasn't much) in a small U-haul truck and drove down to Lynchburg to find a place to live while I learned to study God's Word in the original languages.
Ok, so now I'm admitted to WTS and they won't accept Habermas' apologetics course. I email Gary and ask him about it and he said that he was surprised to hear it because if the tables were turned he would certainly accept WTS's apologetics course from a WTS student transfering to Liberty. So I decided to investigate why WTS would not accept Habermas' course. (Gary has given approximately 1600 lectures at about 100 universities, colleges and seminaries in the States and abroad. Why in the world won't WTS accept one of his courses, especially a standard one like intro to apologetics?) So I looked around online and found at first that everyone who didn't think about the Christian faith the WTS did is an Arminian, or at least acting like one. As I searched around a little more, I found that it seems also to be the case that anyone who does not think about Christianity in the way that WTS does is an unbeliever, or at least acting like an unbeliever. Now the thing is, it is not so much that the rest of Christianity from its inception til now has gotten it all wrong that bothered me--I mean that would not have been so hard to swallow, for, interestingly enough, my fundamentalist surroundings had already opened me up to the idea. It was rather the spirit with which these claims were being made that troubled me--and the lengths to which some in the WTS crowd would go to argue on behalf of the presuppositionalist position.
Some WTS writers would claim that non-WTS believers were all acting like unbelievers. Not only that, but they seemed more than willing to go to the lengths of destroying one's faith to show they were right. For example, Greg Bahnsen had no problem pointing out to Christians that "Under cross-examination most of the considerations brought forth by evidentialists can be dismissed as overstated, gratuitous, or inconclusive." (See his "The Impropriety of Evidentially Arguing for the Resurrection.") The irony really, really bothered me. I found it very curious at the time that there were Christians here at this school, Christians who claimed that every other kind of Christian is a functional non-Christian, doing exactly what non-Christians really and actually do, what anti-Christians, especially, like to do: deliberately set out to tear down the arguments of the most prominent defenders of the faith regarding the existence of God and the resurrection. As far as I could see, these guys were not merely attempting to show flaws in arguments for some matter of tangential importance, either for the purpose of reconstructing it or for showing that the matter should be re-conceived. These guys were matter-of-factly declaring that the arguments for the resurrection of Christ do not hold water, period. They were essentially bullying people, almost exclusively fellow believers (who else would bother reading these guys except interested Christian inquirers?), into deciding between WTS presuppositionalism or no faith at all. "Ok," I thought to myself: "antithesis or no, now I know for myself, these WTS guys are not pastorally minded." Off to class I went.
So at WTS I was taking the standard fare of classes and I was especially excited to sign up as an audit for "Philosophy for Theologians," a ThM/PhD course that happened to be taught by Scot Oliphint. Louis P. Pojman's anthology was the text. One by one we discussed at length why the writer in question paled in comparison with van Til. I was disappointed to say the least. I stopped attending after the class where I complained about why we should content ourselves with doing each of the readings and hearing each of the presentations and have the main objective be, "Show how the writer in question does not meet the standard set by van Til." Who cares about van Til? Here we have the greatest minds to have ever written on these topics and we're going to keep going on and on about van Til? After all, Van Til didn't make it into the anthology, these guys did, and it seemed to me that the van Til argument as I understand it is a cosmological argument in disguise anyway. Well, the PhD students were intrigued by all that I said (not because they agreed, but because, ah! finally a different viewpoint!), but an animated Prof Oliphint turned to me and asked: "Do you believe in God?" I was taken by surprise and remained silent, not understanding the purpose of the question. "Do you believe in God?" he boomed again. "Yes...I cannot say no [I wanted to at this point, being extremely bothered by the class], something inside me prevents me." He then turned to the board and began an explanation to the effect that Aquinas' cosmological argument requires that God was not free to create, but rather that God had to create and that's not the kind of God we want.
I protested that the argument itself does not force such a position upon us and that he was importing other assumptions in. Furthermore, Van Til was pointing back to something to explain some facet of the universe, I argued. That's a cosmological argument he's groping for. He raised his voice and said that the cosmological argument is fallacious. If the cosmological argument is sound then God had to create and God did not have to create, so the argument is no good. I objected again that that did not follow. He told me that he had been teaching for many years and that logically the cosmological argument implies that God had to create and that heh could not not create. I deferred to him, saying that he was the expert and that he would know better than I whether what he was saying was logically necessary. I held my peace, but "Do I believe in God?" What kind of school is this?
I did not return to class the following week, but for the rest of my time there the PhD apologetics students--who always seemed to come out of the woodwork at the bookstore to see who they might proselytize for the mighty van Til--frequently wanted to strike up conversations with me, to practice their apologetic method. Every now and then, when they would make some argumentative mistake, they would say, you should talk with Oliphint, he is really good at this. At first, I tried to engage the PhD apologetics students. Lane, for example, had just gotten there from California and was trying to finish up his degree. [He was not in the class. The other students introduced me to him in the bookstore.] I remember citing Frame to Lane and he encouraged me to read Bahnsen instead, saying Bahnsen had a better grasp of van Til than Frame. [That was one thing that helped lose me as a conversation partner, any time I tried to reference van Til myself or even invoke an authority on him, they would say that I am misinterpreting him.]
Now during the course of the conversations with these other guys, I would often be called an unbeliever. One time to one of the bookstore workers I laughed and said, "So you sitting over there can somehow spiritually come over here into my soul and see whether I am saved or not. Don't you think that's a little arrogant?" He said that that's what Paul did and that that's what they can do. [Ironically enough, there was another group of students--and these guys had no relation (to my knowledge) with these PhD guys I'm talking about now, nor did they know of our conversations--who were very into Jonathan Edwards. One of them was insisting upon annointing me with the spirit of assurance of salvation that Jonathan Edwards talked about and said that once he did, I should be sure not to abuse it, because once I was annointed, I would never be able to doubt my eternal salvation. I remember this guy being very persistent, but I still refused. He approached me two more times during my time at WTS.] Another time, two PhD apologetics students were disagreeing with a point I was making and I decided to say to them that they were only disagreeing with me because they were unwilling to let go of their sin. Their eyes opened wide--and the look they gave me! I said, "How do you like it? It doesn't feel so good, does it, when someone all of a sudden says to you that the reason you disagree with him is because you're in rebellion against God and because you don't want to confess your sin!" Ah, those were the days; I'm glad they are behind me now. [You can imagine the impression that gave me of Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven when I moved on to ICS...]
In any event, the whole experience of those few weeks in Oliphint's class in the context of my cultural shock between two apologetic cultures gave me a brand new lease on the faith: Christians deny (and sometimes attack) what other Christians hold dearest--that's the way it's always been and that's the way it'll always be. As the semesters went by, my intellectual doubts were raging with regard to inerrancy while my cultural and emotional commitment to the doctrine and the communities that helped hold that doctrine together had all but eroded. Yet to my consternation, the same was happening to some of my friends at the seminary. While I was busy moving along on my own journey, they were moving along on theirs and began noticing an acute, spiritual dissonance between their expectations of scripture and the phenomena of scripture. The practice of reading scripture in Greek and Hebrew while still trying to theorize about scripture in terms of inerrancy and all the rest was proving more than difficult. When one experiences the phenomena first hand, they said, one cannot ignore the details they encounter. What's more, the theories were not encountered first hand in a similar manner, so the students were very interested in reexamining the theory in their classes in light of the scriptural phenomena.
But, unfortunately, the theorists were not budging and were quite unwilling to stand for any talk about phenomena. Their focus was on the tradition, the WCF tradition, that is, conjoined with van Til. I had some very painful conversations with students about how in the world they were ever going to get ordained, and once ordained, how were they to get along in that world. That's when I decided to approach the dean of students at WTS in order to gain permission to speak at chapel to try to encourage some of the students I had gotten to know. The dean of students informed me that you need to be ordained to speak at chapel and also did not think that a talk during chapel would be all that effective. So I did the only thing that came to mind as an alternative: I wrote an open letter to the faculty and administration at WTS and mailed it to the top three administrators at the school. I pinpointed van Til and inerrancy as the source of my acquaintances' troubles and asked if they were even aware that a number of students were experiencing such existential crises. My letter was suggesting that the seminary's foundational principles were askew. I even enumerated how many of the WTS faculty had been trained at WTS, an unhelpful pattern of spiritual incest, I said. In retrospect, I muse: Even on the off chance that some of them thought I was right (which is, of course, unlikely), who could ever publicly admit it? [What can one say publicly in conservative evangelicalism?] After ICS, I thought to publish a book on the subject of how inerrancy might be setting students up for a fall. [I bet those people who ask "How can he be a WTS grad?" and "Who was his main influence there at WTS?" have not bothered to read the book.] There's got to be more students out there wrestling with this stuff. As long as there are, I'll try to keep blogging.
In any event, I hope this helps answer the question, "Who was my main influence at WTS?" which I interpret to mean, "What happened to this guy at WTS?" To some, it may seem I have fallen to the dark side. They might be thinking, "It's nothing less than a shame that that guy graduated from WTS." I, of course, am persuaded that I have seen the light. Now, I had to give up my hope's of doing some kind of ministry in an official capacity and of teaching theology and scripture professionally in order to get to the point where I am now, but it's certainly much brighter here in terms of being able to ask honest questions and in terms of being able to look myself in the mirror. No dark clouds following me around. No fundamentalist enforcers itching to turn me in. I'll take that kind of light over darkness any day. Hell, even if it's darkness, I much prefer it to the light:
I came to WTS after attending Liberty for a semester. There I took a semester of languages and apologetics. Before attending Liberty my apologetics diet was more or less restricted to healthy doses of Moreland and Craig. At Liberty, my teacher was Gary Habermas who knew these guys personally; we hit it off from the start. I did well in my classes, but after a semester of being down there, for a number of reasons (including to pursue the beautiful blonde who is the love of my life) I decided to move back to NJ.
An intense religious experience some years before initiated in me an awareness of Jesus Christ that I had not experienced before, after which I felt an irresistable compulsion to constantly read and memorize scripture and also to attend services regularly. The churches that I attended at the time emphasized inerrancy and used the doctrine to help distinguish themselves from the liberals. They weren't as interested in distinguishing themselves from non-Christians as they were in distinguishing themselves from other persons who called themselves Christians but were in spite of themselves working against the kingdom. [They were especially eager to distinguish themselves from the Catholics, many of them being ex-Catholics themselves.] The easiest way to identify these types of pseudo-Christians was to determine in each case how strongly they believed in God's Word, the Bible [preferrably the KJV of the Bible]. So anything that even smelled like evolution was a big deal, as was anything really that ever questioned the Bible in slightest detail. Emotionally and culturally I ate all this up, but intellectually I always had some reservations about it. Either way, door-knocking, tracts, homilies, teaching, the whole kit and kaboodle, whatever the church needed, I volunteered (I even wrote songs for junior church). The culmination of this very intense phase of my life was the time when I, at the advice of a mentoring pastor, gathered everything I owned (which wasn't much) in a small U-haul truck and drove down to Lynchburg to find a place to live while I learned to study God's Word in the original languages.
Ok, so now I'm admitted to WTS and they won't accept Habermas' apologetics course. I email Gary and ask him about it and he said that he was surprised to hear it because if the tables were turned he would certainly accept WTS's apologetics course from a WTS student transfering to Liberty. So I decided to investigate why WTS would not accept Habermas' course. (Gary has given approximately 1600 lectures at about 100 universities, colleges and seminaries in the States and abroad. Why in the world won't WTS accept one of his courses, especially a standard one like intro to apologetics?) So I looked around online and found at first that everyone who didn't think about the Christian faith the WTS did is an Arminian, or at least acting like one. As I searched around a little more, I found that it seems also to be the case that anyone who does not think about Christianity in the way that WTS does is an unbeliever, or at least acting like an unbeliever. Now the thing is, it is not so much that the rest of Christianity from its inception til now has gotten it all wrong that bothered me--I mean that would not have been so hard to swallow, for, interestingly enough, my fundamentalist surroundings had already opened me up to the idea. It was rather the spirit with which these claims were being made that troubled me--and the lengths to which some in the WTS crowd would go to argue on behalf of the presuppositionalist position.
Some WTS writers would claim that non-WTS believers were all acting like unbelievers. Not only that, but they seemed more than willing to go to the lengths of destroying one's faith to show they were right. For example, Greg Bahnsen had no problem pointing out to Christians that "Under cross-examination most of the considerations brought forth by evidentialists can be dismissed as overstated, gratuitous, or inconclusive." (See his "The Impropriety of Evidentially Arguing for the Resurrection.") The irony really, really bothered me. I found it very curious at the time that there were Christians here at this school, Christians who claimed that every other kind of Christian is a functional non-Christian, doing exactly what non-Christians really and actually do, what anti-Christians, especially, like to do: deliberately set out to tear down the arguments of the most prominent defenders of the faith regarding the existence of God and the resurrection. As far as I could see, these guys were not merely attempting to show flaws in arguments for some matter of tangential importance, either for the purpose of reconstructing it or for showing that the matter should be re-conceived. These guys were matter-of-factly declaring that the arguments for the resurrection of Christ do not hold water, period. They were essentially bullying people, almost exclusively fellow believers (who else would bother reading these guys except interested Christian inquirers?), into deciding between WTS presuppositionalism or no faith at all. "Ok," I thought to myself: "antithesis or no, now I know for myself, these WTS guys are not pastorally minded." Off to class I went.
So at WTS I was taking the standard fare of classes and I was especially excited to sign up as an audit for "Philosophy for Theologians," a ThM/PhD course that happened to be taught by Scot Oliphint. Louis P. Pojman's anthology was the text. One by one we discussed at length why the writer in question paled in comparison with van Til. I was disappointed to say the least. I stopped attending after the class where I complained about why we should content ourselves with doing each of the readings and hearing each of the presentations and have the main objective be, "Show how the writer in question does not meet the standard set by van Til." Who cares about van Til? Here we have the greatest minds to have ever written on these topics and we're going to keep going on and on about van Til? After all, Van Til didn't make it into the anthology, these guys did, and it seemed to me that the van Til argument as I understand it is a cosmological argument in disguise anyway. Well, the PhD students were intrigued by all that I said (not because they agreed, but because, ah! finally a different viewpoint!), but an animated Prof Oliphint turned to me and asked: "Do you believe in God?" I was taken by surprise and remained silent, not understanding the purpose of the question. "Do you believe in God?" he boomed again. "Yes...I cannot say no [I wanted to at this point, being extremely bothered by the class], something inside me prevents me." He then turned to the board and began an explanation to the effect that Aquinas' cosmological argument requires that God was not free to create, but rather that God had to create and that's not the kind of God we want.
I protested that the argument itself does not force such a position upon us and that he was importing other assumptions in. Furthermore, Van Til was pointing back to something to explain some facet of the universe, I argued. That's a cosmological argument he's groping for. He raised his voice and said that the cosmological argument is fallacious. If the cosmological argument is sound then God had to create and God did not have to create, so the argument is no good. I objected again that that did not follow. He told me that he had been teaching for many years and that logically the cosmological argument implies that God had to create and that heh could not not create. I deferred to him, saying that he was the expert and that he would know better than I whether what he was saying was logically necessary. I held my peace, but "Do I believe in God?" What kind of school is this?
I did not return to class the following week, but for the rest of my time there the PhD apologetics students--who always seemed to come out of the woodwork at the bookstore to see who they might proselytize for the mighty van Til--frequently wanted to strike up conversations with me, to practice their apologetic method. Every now and then, when they would make some argumentative mistake, they would say, you should talk with Oliphint, he is really good at this. At first, I tried to engage the PhD apologetics students. Lane, for example, had just gotten there from California and was trying to finish up his degree. [He was not in the class. The other students introduced me to him in the bookstore.] I remember citing Frame to Lane and he encouraged me to read Bahnsen instead, saying Bahnsen had a better grasp of van Til than Frame. [That was one thing that helped lose me as a conversation partner, any time I tried to reference van Til myself or even invoke an authority on him, they would say that I am misinterpreting him.]
Now during the course of the conversations with these other guys, I would often be called an unbeliever. One time to one of the bookstore workers I laughed and said, "So you sitting over there can somehow spiritually come over here into my soul and see whether I am saved or not. Don't you think that's a little arrogant?" He said that that's what Paul did and that that's what they can do. [Ironically enough, there was another group of students--and these guys had no relation (to my knowledge) with these PhD guys I'm talking about now, nor did they know of our conversations--who were very into Jonathan Edwards. One of them was insisting upon annointing me with the spirit of assurance of salvation that Jonathan Edwards talked about and said that once he did, I should be sure not to abuse it, because once I was annointed, I would never be able to doubt my eternal salvation. I remember this guy being very persistent, but I still refused. He approached me two more times during my time at WTS.] Another time, two PhD apologetics students were disagreeing with a point I was making and I decided to say to them that they were only disagreeing with me because they were unwilling to let go of their sin. Their eyes opened wide--and the look they gave me! I said, "How do you like it? It doesn't feel so good, does it, when someone all of a sudden says to you that the reason you disagree with him is because you're in rebellion against God and because you don't want to confess your sin!" Ah, those were the days; I'm glad they are behind me now. [You can imagine the impression that gave me of Dooyeweerd and Vollenhoven when I moved on to ICS...]
In any event, the whole experience of those few weeks in Oliphint's class in the context of my cultural shock between two apologetic cultures gave me a brand new lease on the faith: Christians deny (and sometimes attack) what other Christians hold dearest--that's the way it's always been and that's the way it'll always be. As the semesters went by, my intellectual doubts were raging with regard to inerrancy while my cultural and emotional commitment to the doctrine and the communities that helped hold that doctrine together had all but eroded. Yet to my consternation, the same was happening to some of my friends at the seminary. While I was busy moving along on my own journey, they were moving along on theirs and began noticing an acute, spiritual dissonance between their expectations of scripture and the phenomena of scripture. The practice of reading scripture in Greek and Hebrew while still trying to theorize about scripture in terms of inerrancy and all the rest was proving more than difficult. When one experiences the phenomena first hand, they said, one cannot ignore the details they encounter. What's more, the theories were not encountered first hand in a similar manner, so the students were very interested in reexamining the theory in their classes in light of the scriptural phenomena.
But, unfortunately, the theorists were not budging and were quite unwilling to stand for any talk about phenomena. Their focus was on the tradition, the WCF tradition, that is, conjoined with van Til. I had some very painful conversations with students about how in the world they were ever going to get ordained, and once ordained, how were they to get along in that world. That's when I decided to approach the dean of students at WTS in order to gain permission to speak at chapel to try to encourage some of the students I had gotten to know. The dean of students informed me that you need to be ordained to speak at chapel and also did not think that a talk during chapel would be all that effective. So I did the only thing that came to mind as an alternative: I wrote an open letter to the faculty and administration at WTS and mailed it to the top three administrators at the school. I pinpointed van Til and inerrancy as the source of my acquaintances' troubles and asked if they were even aware that a number of students were experiencing such existential crises. My letter was suggesting that the seminary's foundational principles were askew. I even enumerated how many of the WTS faculty had been trained at WTS, an unhelpful pattern of spiritual incest, I said. In retrospect, I muse: Even on the off chance that some of them thought I was right (which is, of course, unlikely), who could ever publicly admit it? [What can one say publicly in conservative evangelicalism?] After ICS, I thought to publish a book on the subject of how inerrancy might be setting students up for a fall. [I bet those people who ask "How can he be a WTS grad?" and "Who was his main influence there at WTS?" have not bothered to read the book.] There's got to be more students out there wrestling with this stuff. As long as there are, I'll try to keep blogging.
In any event, I hope this helps answer the question, "Who was my main influence at WTS?" which I interpret to mean, "What happened to this guy at WTS?" To some, it may seem I have fallen to the dark side. They might be thinking, "It's nothing less than a shame that that guy graduated from WTS." I, of course, am persuaded that I have seen the light. Now, I had to give up my hope's of doing some kind of ministry in an official capacity and of teaching theology and scripture professionally in order to get to the point where I am now, but it's certainly much brighter here in terms of being able to ask honest questions and in terms of being able to look myself in the mirror. No dark clouds following me around. No fundamentalist enforcers itching to turn me in. I'll take that kind of light over darkness any day. Hell, even if it's darkness, I much prefer it to the light:
If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
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