Monday, October 31, 2005
Stuff That Will Make You Want To Bathe
WolrdNetDaily is looking at a recent Bible Symposium at Florida Southern College. It talks about two of the presenters.
If a seminary discards the authority of Scripture, all boundaries disappear. We have got to find a way to get this under control. I think it should be understated as well. Maybe we lobby places like Duke to rename their schools, or change the degrees they grant? Maybe instead of MDivs, we lobby them to grants MA's in Divinity. Maybe we get them to stop calling themselves Divinity Schools and call themselves something more innocuous like "School of Religion." My point is that in our religiously pluralistic society, we can't censor them. I think we should; however, work to draw as much a distinction as possible between what they think and espouse and genuine Christianity as possible.
James L. Crenshaw, professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School, questioned Scripture's authority to govern matters of sexuality....We have got to get our seminaries and divinty schools under control. That these ideas come from the homosexual community, seeking legitimization, I can understand, but that it comes from institutions, the charter of which is to train people to minister in Christ's name, is abhorent to me.
....The second speaker, L. William Countryman, professor of biblical studies at The Church Divinity School of the Pacific, is an ordained priest in the Episcopal Church and has been outspoken in debates over homosexuality in the clergy of that denomination. For Countryman, it is the gospel, ? "the good news that God made us all alike and loves us all equally" ? that has primacy.
If a seminary discards the authority of Scripture, all boundaries disappear. We have got to find a way to get this under control. I think it should be understated as well. Maybe we lobby places like Duke to rename their schools, or change the degrees they grant? Maybe instead of MDivs, we lobby them to grants MA's in Divinity. Maybe we get them to stop calling themselves Divinity Schools and call themselves something more innocuous like "School of Religion." My point is that in our religiously pluralistic society, we can't censor them. I think we should; however, work to draw as much a distinction as possible between what they think and espouse and genuine Christianity as possible.
