Dr. Peter Enns suspended from WTS

[Gryphonette]

Ah. Then it's "independent seminary" as a class that you're against.

That clears up a lot.

It was puzzling, for you seemed to be arguing against an independent seminary behaving as one would expect an independent seminary to behave, but without making plain that in your opinion WTS/P ought not to have been set up as an independent seminary in the first place.

If I may be so bold, it'd probably have been best to have framed your objection like this in the first place, rather than criticizing the seminary for behaving precisely as one would expect an independent seminary to behave.

"In my opinion, "self-professed Reformed denominations" are far better off than self-professed yet independent Reformed seminaries."

Hmmm. It seems to me the PCUSA and quite a few other denominations would act as effective arguments against this.

But there....that's what makes a horse race, eh? ;^)

 

[DMcFadden]

From whence cometh the seminary's parallel authority? I can’t find anything in the Bible to instruct an independent seminary in this regard?

Or is this just a business proposition? It can make rules for its employees same as Penn State or Pizza Hut.

Is it merely de facto authority and I should just get over it?

Tom, I am perhaps too uncomprehending (as a baptist) to speak on the issue. However, whether we should have independent seminaries or not, we certainly do. Are you asking from whence their authority derives since they do not have the keys to the kingdom? This is really a problem of independent modalities within presbyterian polity . While it would still be a practical problem for a baptist it would not be an ecclesiastical one.

It would seem to me that whether one has ecclesiastical authority or not one ought not reduce it the description to "just a business proposition." From a legal perspective the trustees are the stewards of the mission, vision, and values of an organization. While Penn State and Pizza Hut have a mission that is "just a business proposition," para-church ministries aspire to more than than. Again, the irony of the whole "para church" thing is not lost on me, particularly from a confessionally Reformed perspective. But, we are not debating whether they should exist, but how they have a right to control the theological outcomes.

Since attempting to serve some niche within the Christian community, in this case providing trained pastors for Reformed churches, involves theological boundaries, the seminary has every right to insure that the institution continues to stay within that mission. Allowing professors to graze outside the fence will defeat the ability of the institution to fulfill its mission, vision, and values.

In one of my previous posts, I suggested that Dr. Enns is accountable to the trustees for his employment and to the presbytery for his ministerial standing. The two are separate. As an employment matter, the trustees have a right to determine if teaching will likely produce the outcomes that the school wants to achieve in order to continue its particular mission. If they decide that it will not, it is imperative that the trustees act in accordance with the mission, vision, and values of the school since they are, after all, the "trustees" of that reality.

If an independent (there is that strange irony for presbyterian polity again; most of you would not allow such a situation to take place) publishing house hired seminary graduates to write Sunday school curriculua, it would have a responsibility to be sure that the products of that writing conform to the doctrinal and ecclesiastical expectations of the churches its mission calls it to serve. One would not need ecclesiastical authority to judge whether a CEO of a publishing house could/should fire a writer who had gone off the reservation. A publishing house serving charismatic churches would not want someone dissing that point of view. Similarly, someone preparing Calvinist materials would not tolerate one of its writers promoting Open Theism.

Absent the ecclesiastical authority (which you have to accept will be absent if you allow independent seminariesn to exist at all), the controlling principle must be conformity to the mission. The decision here is intellectually separate from the question of what a presbytery would determine. The school has no right to determine what is or is not "confessional" for the churches. It merely acts to decide if its teachers are fulfilling its mission of training pastors who can satisfy the requirements and expectations of the churches it has determined to serve.

 

[tcalbrecht]

Ah. Then it's "independent seminary" as a class that you're against.

That clears up a lot.

Actually, if you go back and read my opening comments here you’ll see that I was not speaking against WTS per se. WTS was just the instance to illustrate the problem with the class.

It was puzzling, for you seemed to be arguing against an independent seminary behaving as one would expect an independent seminary to behave, but without making plain that in your opinion WTS/P ought not to have been set up as an independent seminary in the first place.

I do not expect any seminary to act independently of the courts of the church in determining the fate of their faculty or staff. Any seminary that does is, in my opinion, fundamentally at odds with the only divinely-instituted body for making such a call.

If I may be so bold, it'd probably have been best to have framed your objection like this in the first place, rather than criticizing the seminary for behaving precisely as one would expect an independent seminary to behave.

Again, I do not expect any seminary that is training man in the Reformed faith to not respect the oversight role of the presbytery for its officers. WTS does not train independent, non-confessional men for pastoral roles. It trains men who are expected to live and work within a connectional ecclesiastical sphere. It trains students who are expected to respect church courts in the definition of what it means to be confessional. I expect the teacher to play by the same rules.

In this particular case, my sincere hope is that the WTS committee that has been tasked with determining the appropriate process wrt Dr. Enns will come back and say that Dr. Enns confessional standing ought to be decided by his presbytery and that we, the seminary, will respect the will of the church.

But I suspect that you will feel the spirit of the PCUSA makes that unwise if not impossible.

Hmmm. It seems to me the PCUSA and quite a few other denominations would act as effective arguments against this.

But there....that's what makes a horse race, eh? ;^)

Like I was saying above …

BTW, I have yet to see anyone tackle this question: who gave Machen the right to start WTS? Or is that question akin to asking who gave Dave Thomas the right to start Wendy’s?

 

[Scott]

I think I would agree to some extent with Enns on this, though there need to be boundaries set. I do think that ancient history writing differs from modern history writing in some significant ways. However, what Enns does not do justice to is the fact that the biblical writing was always polemical against the ANE. I get the feeling with Enns that there is way too much continuity between ANE writing and the Bible. I remember having a conversation with him at GA last year in which I was commenting on Poole's Synopsis Criticorum. Enns seemed a bit neutral with regard to the work. But he did comment about how we now have the Dead Sea Scrolls. The comment seemed to assume that whole paradigms have shifted in biblical interpretation since the Reformation, by means of discovering such scrolls as these. Now, far be it from me to denigrate using the DSS in seeking to understand the first-century world. I have no doubt that many good insights have come from that. However, the main interpreter of Scripture is Scripture, not outside texts. I wonder how much he would affirm that.

It seems to me that if we need the DSS to understand the Bible, then the scriptures would be of little value to anyone but speculative scholars.

Right. However, there is a difference between those passages of Scripture that are so clear that a normal person, aided by the Holy Spirit, can come into a correct understanding of them for salvation. And indeed, even the other parts of Scripture would not be misunderstood as to their general content, even if we had no extra-biblical texts available to us. However, I would not be willing to say that extra-biblical sources have never helped us to understand better any passages of Scripture.

I agree.

 

[Scott]

Is it merely de facto authority and I should just get over it?

It is fundamentally a question of whether a private institution can govern its own employment practices. WTS is not making an ecclesial judgment and is not exercising the power of the keys in church discipline. WTS is exercising its own discretion to determine whether WTS should continue to spend its money to employee this man. The Board has a fiduciary obligation to the institution to exercise its discretion and act as a good steward of its limited resources. If the Board believes that Enns is no longer the best employee, the Board should get rid of him rather than keep spending money on a person that does not advance the institution's goals as well as other men could.

 

[tcalbrecht]

Is it merely de facto authority and I should just get over it?

It is fundamentally a question of whether a private institution can govern its own employment practices. WTS is not making an ecclesial judgment and is not exercising the power of the keys in church discipline. WTS is exercising its own discretion to determine whether WTS should continue to spend its money to employee this man. The Board has a fiduciary obligation to the institution to exercise its discretion and act as a good steward of its limited resources. If the Board believes that Enns is no longer the best employee, the Board should get rid of him rather than keep spending money on a person that does not advance the institution's goals as well as other men could.

However, we're not discussing whether the man can make a decent batch of fries. So it doesn’t sound like any regular employment situation. The man is being judged, and his future employability decided, either directly or indirectly by his confessional credentials. In my Reformed circles, confessionality, or lack thereof, is the concern of the Church, not the parachurch.

If Wendy’s (a private institution) made adherence to the Reformed confessions a term of employment, folks would wake up and take notice. Folks would (righty) question whether Wendy’s management has both the right and ability to make such a call.

But, we don’t seem to notice when it is (private institution) WTS.

BTW, having spouted off on this for the last several days, I do realize that WTS has not said how it will decide whether or not to retain Dr. Enns. There is still hope that it will make the right call on process as well as outcome. We also do not know what if any action his presbytery will take. Both are items for prayer.

 

[Zenas]

I have all of the answers, and that being true, I also know all of the problems.

Here's the problem: People aren't brought up to think critically. I wasn't, I had to learn it. I'm the bane of any professor's existence because I dismantle what they say in order to determine just what exactly they're trying to get me to believe. No one else does this that I know. I just get funny looks when I break down what someone said into presuppositions and worldview assertions.

This sounds like one problem that was mentioned in an earlier post. Professors would espouse damning heresey, leaving students wondering why in the world they should believe in Christ, to which the professors made a weak emotional appeal to just believe anyway.

I know that's not THE problem, but it sounds like a problem. Please, bring your children up with discerning hearts and minds.

Something else that could be rectified in these seminaries is the nonfeasance that's going on. People supporting WTS because they're under the dillusion that it's still Machen's baby needs to stop. If it's full of heretical liberals and Scripture-haters, then they need to know that and adjust their donation accordingly. It reveals much that's on the hearts of these men when they all but lie to their benefactors in order to get them to donate money to an organization that no longer is what is was, by its own admission. You can't convince me that the faculty and administration of WTS PA is earnestly on the path to seek out truth and godliness when they're doing everything short of lying through their teeth to keep money flowing in so that they can continue to produce apostates.

That's my

 

[Scott]

Is it merely de facto authority and I should just get over it?

It is fundamentally a question of whether a private institution can govern its own employment practices. WTS is not making an ecclesial judgment and is not exercising the power of the keys in church discipline. WTS is exercising its own discretion to determine whether WTS should continue to spend its money to employee this man. The Board has a fiduciary obligation to the institution to exercise its discretion and act as a good steward of its limited resources. If the Board believes that Enns is no longer the best employee, the Board should get rid of him rather than keep spending money on a person that does not advance the institution's goals as well as other men could.

However, we're not discussing whether the man can make a decent batch of fries. So it doesn’t sound like any regular employment situation. The man is being judged, and his future employability decided, either directly or indirectly by his confessional credentials. In my Reformed circles, confessionality, or lack thereof, is the concern of the Church, not the parachurch.

If Wendy’s (a private institution) made adherence to the Reformed confessions a term of employment, folks would wake up and take notice. Folks would (righty) question whether Wendy’s management has both the right and ability to make such a call.

But, we don’t seem to notice when it is (private institution) WTS.

BTW, having spouted off on this for the last several days, I do realize that WTS has not said how it will decide whether or not to retain Dr. Enns. There is still hope that it will make the right call on process as well as outcome. We also do not know what if any action his presbytery will take. Both are items for prayer.

I think it would be more correct to say that only the church can make ecclesial judgments about individuals. IN other words, only the church can determine whether an individual should be subject to ecclesial discipline (barred from the Lord's Supper, excommunicated, etc.). That monopoly power of the church does not prohibit others from making non-ecclesial judgments or evaluations. For example, if a suitor were to come to court a man's daughter, it would be right and proper for the father to inquire into the depth and understanding of the suitor's doctrine. The fact that the church is tasked with making ecclesial judgments does not rob the father of the right to evaluate the scope of the suitor's understanding of reformed doctrine.

Likewise, nothing prohibits an insitution from making similar evaluations. WTS has a limited amount of money and can employee only a limited number of people. It has a duty to employee only those people who best advance the institution's mission. Part of that inquiry involves ascertaining the person's understanding of relevant doctrines. If that area was closed off, then they would not be able to fulfill their fiduciary duty.

 

[A5pointer]

I have all of the answers, and that being true, I also know all of the problems.

Here's the problem: People aren't brought up to think critically. I wasn't, I had to learn it. I'm the bane of any professor's existence because I dismantle what they say in order to determine just what exactly they're trying to get me to believe. No one else does this that I know. I just get funny looks when I break down what someone said into presuppositions and worldview assertions.

This sounds like one problem that was mentioned in an earlier post. Professors would espouse damning heresey, leaving students wondering why in the world they should believe in Christ, to which the professors made a weak emotional appeal to just believe anyway.

I know that's not THE problem, but it sounds like a problem. Please, bring your children up with discerning hearts and minds.

Something else that could be rectified in these seminaries is the nonfeasance that's going on. People supporting WTS because they're under the dillusion that it's still Machen's baby needs to stop. If it's full of heretical liberals and Scripture-haters, then they need to know that and adjust their donation accordingly. It reveals much that's on the hearts of these men when they all but lie to their benefactors in order to get them to donate money to an organization that no longer is what is was, by its own admission. You can't convince me that the faculty and administration of WTS PA is earnestly on the path to seek out truth and godliness when they're doing everything short of lying through their teeth to keep money flowing in so that they can continue to produce apostates.

That's my

I agree with your premise of being willing to question. But these comments clearly show your unfamiliararity with what is going on at WTS.

 

[HaigLaw]

BTW, I have yet to see anyone tackle this question: who gave Machen the right to start WTS? Or is that question akin to asking who gave Dave Thomas the right to start Wendy’s?

I don't know whether this gave him the right, but it helps to remember that he'd gone through years of having the northern Presbyterian church telling him to abandon the independent mission board, and defrocking him for refusing.

 

[LadyFlynt]

Anyone want to take up the other issues of WTS-PA? Such as M.Divs for women?

 

[TimV]

BTW, I have yet to see anyone tackle this question: who gave Machen the right to start WTS? Or is that question akin to asking who gave Dave Thomas the right to start Wendy’s?

Sometimes the OT can be a good place to ask questions like that. The OT church was run by Levites, but prophets could be from any tribe, like Daniel from Judah and so on. We have the example of the School of the Prophets spoken of in 2Kings 2 and other places that could serve as an approved pattern of a teaching institution under the authority of the church and at the same time independent.

So you could have an teaching institution independent of the church, but at the same time bound by rules of the church. For instance, a professor at a Bible college who taught heresey or was caught up in a serious sin would still be under the discipline of his church of membership, and on the positive side a local church could divert tithe money to that institution.

 

[HaigLaw]

I think I would agree to some extent with Enns on this, though there need to be boundaries set. I do think that ancient history writing differs from modern history writing in some significant ways. However, what Enns does not do justice to is the fact that the biblical writing was always polemical against the ANE....

I'm sorry, but what's ANE?

 

[HaigLaw]

Anyone want to take up the other issues of WTS-PA? Such as M.Divs for women?

Sure; what about it?

 

[Davidius]

I think I would agree to some extent with Enns on this, though there need to be boundaries set. I do think that ancient history writing differs from modern history writing in some significant ways. However, what Enns does not do justice to is the fact that the biblical writing was always polemical against the ANE....

I'm sorry, but what's ANE?

Ancient Near East

 

[HaigLaw]

Thanks!