Norman Shepherd's New Book

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My friend Wes White (one of the most knowledgeable people on planet earth concerning Shepherd) has read the book already. He said it is pretty much more of the same. He will be writing a blog post about it soon. He says that Shepherd does not interact with any of his critics. There are approximately 2 footnotes in the entire book. It is a sign of his position that he has to self-publish, because P&R probably refused to publish him. Wes says it is the same old confusion of justification and sanctification that he has always advocated.

Lane, I take a pretty good set of jibes about my seminary of origin (many of them fully deserved). However, other than friendship and the inevitable pressures of cognitive dissonance, why did YOUR seminary tolerate the Shepherd mess so long and give him so much support??? Frankly, much of the backstory is lost to me as an outsider.

Paybacks!
 
My friend Wes White (one of the most knowledgeable people on planet earth concerning Shepherd) has read the book already. He said it is pretty much more of the same. He will be writing a blog post about it soon. He says that Shepherd does not interact with any of his critics. There are approximately 2 footnotes in the entire book. It is a sign of his position that he has to self-publish, because P&R probably refused to publish him. Wes says it is the same old confusion of justification and sanctification that he has always advocated.

Lane, I take a pretty good set of jibes about my seminary of origin (many of them fully deserved). However, other than friendship and the inevitable pressures of cognitive dissonance, why did YOUR seminary tolerate the Shepherd mess so long and give him so much support??? Frankly, much of the backstory is lost to me as an outsider.

There are a lot of reasons why this happened. There were also a fair number of professors who opposed Shepherd adamantly. Knudson, Robertson, and Reid among others vehemently opposed him. Shepherd's theology was not as developed then as it is now, and was inherently more ambiguous. It was extremely difficult to nail down exactly what Shepherd was teaching.

Personal friendship is why Gaffin supported him (and he wanted to give the ambiguity the benefit of the doubt; he would not support Shepherd now). I have it on personal testimony that Van Til, who was quite elderly by that time (and therefore not quite as theologically on top of things as he might otherwise have been), only supported Shepherd "because Bill Bright was wrong." It is rather questionable that Van Til could see where Shepherd's theology was headed. He saw it as a correction of Campus Crusade, not the over-correction it was.

It is very difficult to see things as the seminary saw it at that time. We have the benefit of hindsight, and see how dangerous Shepherd's teaching is. At the same time, I do think they could have moved faster and more decisively than they did. So I do not overly defend their actions. I think the Robertson book that Trinity Foundation put out is an extremely helpful little book that will give you all the info you need.
 
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