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Thursday, December 04, 2003

I wish that my favorite Jewish writer would follow what he has learned to its conclusion: faith in Jesus Christ, who is the wisdom of God, the One personified in Proverbs 8. Fear of God leads to an understanding of sin and the displeasure of God which must lead to God's remedy for sin in Jesus Christ. But what Prager has said is immensely wise as far as it goes.

Dennis Prager: How I found God at Columbia: "Very few people can say that they found God or religion at college or graduate school. The university, after all, is a radically secular institution that either ignores or disparages religious belief in God."

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Wednesday, December 03, 2003

The following is from the LA Times, and speaks for itself. Good reason to keep women from seminary positions. As one of my college professors put it, "If a man has said it, a woman does need to say it. If a man hasn't said it, a woman has no right to say it." A woman is not to teach men in the church nor teach men who will teach in the church [except their mothers when they are little.]

EVANGELICALISM
"Jesus With a Genius Grant" by Alan Rifkin -- sees Fuller
Theological Seminary in Pasadena as perhaps the leading influence of
modernity on traditional evangelical thinking. Opens by profiling
Nancey Murphy, a professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller. "Once
at a San Diego event, Murphy plugged a book by the acclaimed
neuroscientist Paul Churchland - half of a team with wife Patricia
Churchland who assert that religious experience is all a pack of
neurons." Rifkin continues by saying that "if science wanted a token
Christian ambassador it could wrap its brain around, Murphy was a
pretty good choice. She was vaguely postmodern. ...

"She had been known to argue that God and Darwin were compatible
- just the sort of utterance that makes biblical watchdogs groan:
What next? As if to answer, she later told Reason magazine that
cloning was inevitable, and that Christians should start thinking
about how to use it. ...

"For a while now, Murphy and her peers at Fuller Theological
Seminary have been advancing a Christian philosophy that reconciles
science and Bible, body and soul; opposes both war and abortion;
goes to Hollywood parties and even hosts them; and leapfrogs the
two-party political divide. All while refusing to renounce its
conservative-evangelical tag.

"Significantly, this philosophy has begun attracting a vocal
vanguard of younger Christians who call themselves
'Post-Evangelicals.' Many of them Fuller graduates, many of them
Murphy-trained, they have tasted the peyote of postmodern ambiguity
and been steadily coming on. Now they want their intellectual heroes
to seize the moment and stick flowers in the gunstocks of the
evangelical Christian establishment. ('The Chuck Colsons of the
world,' says San Francisco neuropsychologist Kate Rankin, a former
Murphy disciple, 'will not be postmodernists in about 15 to 20
years, but the Christian world will.')

"Biblical inerrancy to this crowd is not so much right or wrong
as a divine waste of time. 'It's not where we're going to land the
plane,' says Tony Jones, a Fuller alumnus who is a leader of The
Emergent Coalition, an international post-evangelistic group, and a
doctoral candidate at Princeton. 'My money is on a post-evangelical
future. And Fuller is uniquely poised to be the one seminary that
ushers in this epistomological shift.'

"Not only is Fuller the largest evangelical seminary in North
America - and arguably the most influential, by number of pastors
and educators trained - but its philosophy is gaining pivotal play
both in Christian and secular arenas."

Rifkin speaks of "three crucial bites" from the "apple" of
modernity which have marked Fuller's distinctiveness. The first by
"the school's second president, Edward Carnell [was seen as being]
potentially too soft on historical criticisms of the Bible." The
second bite is seen in "a change in Fuller's official Statement of
Faith. The Bible, though still 'infallible,' was no longer 'inerrant
on all matters of science and history....'" And last, "a third bite
began surfacing only recently. In 1995, historian Roger Olson wrote
about a 'new mood, if not movement' in theology called
'Post-Conservatism.' Almost no one at Fuller publicly embraces the
term (Nancey Murphy likes 'postmodern evangelical' - it's early
yet), but Olson linked Fuller faculty to its tenets." Later Rifkin
explains that "Fuller graduates like to see themselves as mavericks,
and when they infiltrate the culture, a certain air of
self-invention goes with them."

In the middle of a much longer profile of Richard Mouw, Fuller's
current president, is the following description of the school: "Of
the three graduate programs at Fuller - Theology, Psychology and
Intercultural Studies (formerly called World Mission) - Psychology
is the most conformed to beer-drinking. Its students quaff Newcastle
ales and debate theology, or they hike in the hills above Foothill
Boulevard. And although all three schools hew to the same code of
conduct (acceptable sex is married or none, and divorced faculty
have to explain their marital breakdowns to a committee), alumni say
that Psych students like to push the envelope.

"The theologians are the eggheads. The world missionaries are the
zealots. A few years back, a mentally ill man wandered on campus
from the streets of Pasadena, touching off an interdisciplinary turf
war that sounds like legend but is fact. The School of Psychology
wanted to arrange for professional counseling; two faculty in the
School of World Mission attempted an exorcism; and the School of
Theology, mortified, tried to debrief him. Exorcism, they declared,
really wasn't scriptural. The World Missionaries stood firm. In
fact, they were moving to produce, in the manner of Caltech's map of
earthquake faults, a district census of L.A.'s demonic strongholds,
identifying mid-level demons reporting to a Demon Prince who reigned
above them."

Regarding Mouw, one observer remarks: "Mouw is stretching at the
seams. 'Here he was standing in a room in the Midwest with a bunch
of pastors with really bad ties. And they're ripping him just for
talking to liberals.' ...

"'I don't side with those who see Fuller's conservatism
deteriorating, but I won't say it couldn't happen,' says John
Huffman of Christianity Today [2]. 'That's the risk of theology. Any
institution is only one generation away from going in the wrong
direction by trying to accommodate the culture.'

"To others, the risk is calculated and worthwhile. Fuller
professor Glen Stassen says other seminaries have been consciously
attempting to clone both the Fuller charter and its mystique. He
names them, like electoral states: Northern Baptist Theological
Seminary in Chicago, The International Seminary in Prague, Asbury
Theological Seminary in Kentucky." Lengthy cover story. Los Angeles
Times Magazine, Nov 23 '03, n.p.

PDF

For another look at how Christian educational institutions are
changing (and expanding their influence), see "Evangelical Colleges
Make Marks in a Secular World" by Stuart Silverstein and Andy Olsen,
Los Angeles Times, Nov 30 '03, ppA1, A32-33.

Evangelicals (Requires free registration)

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