Tuesday, January 26, 2016

On the Strength of Seminaries

"What I have seen operating in seminaries that were once bulwarks of orthodoxy is a hunger to have the approval of the wider scholarly world, and to do that, you have to be doing something new all the time.  We need to keep up to date with what’s happening with scholarship outside of our circles, and we try to do that, but the Athenian disease of wanting always to hear something new and to be highly regarded by professional theologians who do not hold to the Scripture I think is a snare even to seminaries that have been strongly orthodox in the past.  We’ll not get the approval of the unbelieving world if we hold to the offense of the Gospel, [but] we have to stay faithful to the Scripture … to the Gospel."

Wayne R. Spear, “RPTS Oral History Video, Pt. 2” (Pittsburgh: Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary, 2010) , https://vimeo.com/5823103.