Covenant Seminary

Under the post Campus Outreach NOT joining the rainbow..., one reader ask about the difference between the two primary campus parachurch organizations that serve the sons and daughters of the PCA, Campus Outreach and Reformed University Fellowship. A reader responded with this comment: "I believe Campus Outreach operates under the authority of a local church's Session, while Reformed University Fellowship is under the authority of the Presbytery."

In this all-important matter, Campus Outreach has it right.

Having served on Ohio Valley Presbytery's RUF committee and watched RUF through the years (including personal contact and meeting with RUF's CEO as well as son Joseph being active in RUF's chapter at Vandy), it's my observation that, despite what's on paper, RUF is not normally under the authority of presbyteries in any organic way.

RUF has the money and tells presbyteries what to do, where, when, and with whom—even down to the planting of churches and the selection of those churches' pastors when they have an RUF campus nearby. They are the donkey that wags the tail (presbytery). It's just another example of the guy that has the money getting to call the tune.

I encouraged Joseph to be involved in RUF when he went to Vandy and am grateful for the ministry they provided during his years there. Now though... 

Is he clueless to our cultural context? Honestly, although it seems incomprehensible, Covenant Theological Seminary grad and PCA pastor Scott Sauls (channelling Wesley Hills) claims David and Jonathan as Biblical support for his project to bring gay men into the mainstream of the Church—as gay men. Speaking of the tender Biblical account of love between David and Jonathan, Pastor Sauls has the audacity to hold it up as a pattern of "covenantal" and "for the rest of life" friendships of "gays" within the Church of Jesus Christ:

"I think that message cannot be missed, it cannot be forgotten when we leave here, that friendship is the answer, true friendship, covenantal like David and Jonathan, 'I commit to you for the rest of my life.' Or like Julie Rodgers, another—you know, a woman with same-sex attraction, has said that—and who has fallen where you have on the ethics of it, and the vision for what that means for her."

[This post is fifth in a series (the first, second, third, fourth, and sixth) working through Pastor Scott Sauls and Christ Presbyterian Church's "Same-Sex Attraction Forum." More will follow.]

King David was light in the loafers. He liked men better than women. Yes, in that way.

Are you surprised? You shouldn't be. Jesus was like this, too...

A Wall Street Journal assistant editor who attends Redeemer did a piece on Tim Keller, yesterday. Her presentation of Pastor Keller reminded me a lot of Peggy Noonan's presentation of Ronald Reagan; genial, kind, and self-effacing in a splendid sort of way. Nothing new($) including this:

Mr. Keller talks about a few problems for evangelicals, and one of them is politics. “A significant percentage of evangelical churches have been too aligned with certain political movements,” he says. He doesn’t go into detail, but it’s no secret that white evangelicals in the Bible Belt tend to vote with the GOP. ...In this sense Redeemer is unusual: The congregation splits about 50-50 for both parties in the straw polls the church has conducted, Mr. Keller says.

He can’t always avoid the intersection of religion and politics, however.

For decades, when I stopped to read a newspaper, it was the New York Times, and I always noted the Times never ever did a political piece that didn't lay out the candidate's position on (or the implication of the policy for) abortion before the piece ended. I don't read newspapers any more, but now the online news has replaced abortion with sodomite marriage. So, for three decades the intersection of religion and politics has been the wholesale slaughter of our unborn children—and African American babies out of all proportion to white or Hispanic babies—and the wholesale perversion of God's precious gift of sexuality.

The woman who wrote the piece starts by identifying Pastor Keller's audience...

One of the more troubling elements of my education at the PCA's Covenant Theological Seminary (2001-2004) was the lack of Biblical witness in our required counseling classes. The "Marriage and Family Counseling" class used secular counseling sources almost to the exclusion of Scripture's teaching on those topics. One resource we were asked to read and review was The Couple's Survival Workbook: What You Can Do to Reconnect with Your Partner and Make Your Marriage Work by counselors David Olson and Douglas Stephens. Here's a review of that work I wrote for the class along with the comments made by the counseling professor (in bold italics). What you will see in his comments is a man who is uncomfortable with the words of the Holy Spirit, and, therefore, who shuffles away from the sufficiency of Scripture and a Biblical view of sexuality. My review...

"From my viewpoint, there is something lacking in the book. First as a Christian the author does not address the importance of the inspiration and authority of scripture. For the most part the author stands over the Bible rather than under the Bible." - from an Amazon review of Did Adam and Eve Really Exist by Jack Collins

C. John "Jack" Collins is an Old Testament prof at Covenant Theological Seminary who served as the Old Testament "chair" of the English Standard Version's Translation Committee. Collins did his undergrad work at MIT, his doctoral work at Liverpool, and has been given money by the Center for Science and Culture and the John Templeton Foundation to write on "faith and science."

Recently, Dr. Collins issued a book Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? enlarging upon a paper he wrote titled, "Adam and Eve as Historical People, and Why It Matters." It's that compressed version of Collins's book critiqued below and this is the second in a series. The first is found here.

Adam and Eve as Historical People, and Why It Matters

by C. John (Jack) Collins

(Summary) The best way to account for both the biblical presentation of human life and our own experience in the world is to suppose that Adam and Eve were real persons, and the forebears of all other human beings. The biblical presentation concerns not simply the story in Genesis and the biblical passages that refer to it, but also the larger biblical storyline, which deals with God’s good creation invaded by sin, for which God has a redemptive plan; Israel’s calling to be a light to the nations; and the church’s prospect of successfully bringing God’s light to the whole world. The biblical presentation further concerns the unique role and dignity of the human race, which is a matter of daily experience for everyone: all people yearn for God and need him, depend on him to deal with their sinfulness, and crave a wholesome community for their lives to flourish.

Baylyblog has a post category or tag titled "Gelded discourse." The tag comes from something C. S. Lewis said in his The Abolition of Man:

We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

Among Reformed men who enter the ministry, the castration Lewis mentions is usually accomplished in the three years prior to ordination by their seminary professors. The summary paragraph above is a perfect example of how seminary profs accomplish their nasty task...

C. John "Jack" Collins is a prof at the Presbyterian Church in America's Covenant Theological Seminary. Recently, Jack published a book and article purporting to defend the historicity of Adam. Jack's work is dangerous because he is carefully wrong in a very soft and seductive way. Happily, though, if we follow the first rule of journalism—follow the numbers—we will not be misled. The numbers don't lie.

Collins writes:

The story of Adam and Eve, and their first disobedience, explains how sin, the alien intruder, first came into human experience, though it hardly pretends to explain how rebellion against God (as expressed in the serpent’s speech) originated to begin with.

Note that Collins speaks of the Fall as the responsibility of both "Adam and Eve." He uses the plural: "their first disobedience." This is directly contrary to the Word of God which explicitly declares the Fall and Original Sin to be solely the responsibility of...

As expected, Brian Chapell will be leaving Covenant Seminary. This coming Lord's Day he plans to be voted on as the new pastor at Grace Presbyterian Church in Peoria. Grace is one of the few tall-steeple PCA churches north of the Mason-Dixon line and Brian's roots are deep in Illinois, so this seems a good fit.

Much like Cedar Springs Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, historically Grace has been a mainline Evangelical church with roots deep in the sort of Reformed dispensationalism popularized by Wheaton, Moody, and Campus Crusade. For forty years Grace was served by Wheaton grad Bruce Dunn who spoke regularly at Winona Lake, Bibletown (Boca Raton), Cannon Beach (Oregon), Moody Founders Week, Moody Keswick, and prophecy conferences.

Which brings us to the subject of dead and dying institutions...

Close to ten years ago, I was speaking with a brother much respected across the PCA to express my concerns over Covenant Seminary's toxic influence. What I saw of Covenant grads, I said, had convinced me Covenant would preside over the death of the PCA, and the only way to turn it around...

How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, Which yields its fruit in its season And its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers.

The wicked are not so, But they are like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, Nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the LORD knows the way of the righteous, But the way of the wicked will perish. (Psalm 1)

Everyone who knows anything will tell you global warming is true; or at least likely enough to be true to justify a plate-tectonic shift in all the world's economies. Everyone agrees. Science doesn't lie.

Everyone who knows anything will tell you literalists are embarrassing to the young, restless, and Reformed entrepreneurial enterprise. It's time to climb on Jack Collins' and Tim Keller's bandwagon. It's time to join all the brilliant genomists and brilliant exegetes and embrace evolution. Everyone agrees. The high priests of the Human Genome Project and scientific exegetes don't lie.

Everyone who knows anything will tell you Scripture is stupid--an ancient collection of myths. Take, for instance, that very old myth that man was created first, then woman; and that the meaning of this fact is that woman is not to teach or exercise authority over man. Also, that same-sex intimacy is an abomination before God and that God abandons men and women to receive in their own bodies the fair or just penalty of their perversion. Everyone agrees this is not true. God's Word is a lie.

Everyone who knows anything will tell you gay parenthood is good for the children; or at least good enough to justify a plate-tectonic shift in artificial insemination, adoption, and family law. Everyone agrees. Science doesn't lie.

Then a social scientist does a study of the emotional and mental health of adult children of same-sex parents...

Concerning the preaching of the Church Fathers, in one of his lectures Princeton biographer and Covenant Seminary church history prof David Calhoun says this:

The Church Fathers are difficult to read, not only because they are long-winded, but also because they tend to go into all kinds of digressions. They really do not stick to the point. Gregory the Great, toward the end of the period of the Church Fathers, said:

“This is how a preacher should preach. A preacher of the sacred Word should imitate the manner of a river. For if a river as it flows through its channels comes upon valleys upon its banks it immediately flows with full force into them, and when it has filled them up it at once returns to its course. This is exactly the way the preacher of the divine Word should be so that when he is discussing something, if perhaps he finds an occasion near at hand to be edifying, he should, as it were, force the streams of his tongue to the neighboring valley, and when he has filled up the plain with his instruction he may return to the course of his main topic.”

Now, you will not be taught that manner of preaching at Covenant Seminary--or any place else, as far as I know. Homileticians tell us to have a point and stick to it. But the Church Fathers did not like to do that. One topic will raise another topic and they will follow all those ideas. 

If a man's preaching is bad in the sense of being timid and suggestive, only rarely moving out to the bold frontier of the indicative (and never to the imperative), then two or three points and you're done is a kindness and should be cultivated. And if that's the sort of preaching you want, Professor Calhoun says that Covenant Theological Seminary is the sort of academic institution that will work for you.

But brothers...