Theology Central
Theology Central exists as a place of conversation and information for faculty and friends of Central Baptist Theological Seminary. Posts include seminary news, information, and opinion pieces about ministry, theology, and scholarship.Central Seminary Begins Distance Ed
A degree online that’s not an online degree
Many pastors and missionaries desire to further their theological training and attend a seminary but cannot take time to leave their churches or mission fields. Because of this, some feel like they must settle for an online degree that is less than desirable. Central Seminary believes that pastors, missionaries, and students should not have to settle. We believe there are no shortcuts in ministry. Effective ministry often comes from effective preparation.
Central Seminary has designed a distance education program that is different from most. It puts the distance student in the classroom during the class. Through multiple high definition cameras and monitors, advanced sound equipment, and the best conference software available, distance students will be able to interact live with each class.
Central Seminary’s distance education program is not a separate program – it’s only a medium. None of our academic programs have been lessened and every requirement is the same. The only difference between resident students and distance students is just that…distance. All of our graduate programs (MAT in either Biblical Studies or Biblical Counseling and MDiv) are offered in their entirety through this medium.
- Learn theology from theologians.
- Learn history from historians.
- Learn Greek and Hebrew from people that know it.
- Learn ministry from pastors, not programs.
- Be a student, not a consumer.
How does it work?
Each classroom has:
- 2 high definition cameras (one facing the professor and one facing the students)
- Large, high definition monitors
- Microphones
- Dedicated computers
- Advanced conferencing software
By using Zoom software, distance students will have the ability to see and hear both resident students and other distance students, professors, and any and all presented media (which includes PowerPoint, writing on the board, etc.). In addition, the resident students and professor can fully interact with the distance students enabling complete and simultaneous interaction.
Be in the class without being in the classroom.
For more information or if you’d like to see a demonstration of how it works, contact Dan Johnson in our recruitment office: djohnson@centralseminary.edu
Haddon Robinson Has Died
Haddon Robinson passed away on July 22. He was not a fundamentalist; in fact, he once presided over one of the nations leading neoevangelical seminaries. Nevertheless, he profoundly influenced the way many fundamentalists preach. That influence, whether direct or indirect, was very good.
Douglas Wilson to the Wife Beaters
Because sometimes Wilson’s explanations are even better than his original propositions. I won’t expand on that remark. Just go read the essay.
Al Mohler on Eugene Peterson
As usual, what Mohler writes is worth reading. His purpose is not to trounce Peterson. In fact, he incorporates a definite pastoral twist.
. . . [Y]ou had better have your answer ready. Evasive, wandering, and inconclusive answers will be seen for what they are. Those who have fled for security to the house of evasion must know that the structure has crumbled. It always does.
Central Seminary Begins Distance Ed
A DEGREE ONLINE THAT’S NOT AN ONLINE DEGREE
Many pastors and missionaries desire to further their theological training and attend a seminary but cannot take time to leave their churches or mission fields. Because of this, some feel like they must settle for an online degree that is less than desirable. Central Seminary believes that pastors, missionaries, and students should not have to settle. We believe there are no shortcuts in ministry. Effective ministry often comes from effective preparation.
Central Seminary has designed a distance education program that is different from most. It puts the distance student in the classroom during the class. Through multiple high definition cameras and monitors, advanced sound equipment, and the best conference software available, distance students will be able to interact live with each class.
Central Seminary’s distance education program is not a separate program – it’s only a medium. None of our academic programs have been lessened and every requirement is the same. The only difference between resident students and distance students is just that…distance. All of our graduate programs (MAT in either Biblical Studies or Biblical Counseling and MDiv) are offered in their entirety through this medium.
Learn theology from theologians.
Learn history from historians.
Learn Greek and Hebrew from people that know it.
Learn ministry from pastors, not programs.
Be a student, not a consumer.
How does it work?
Each classroom has:
- 2 high definition cameras (one facing the professor and one facing the students)
- Large, high definition monitors
- Microphones
- Dedicated computers
- Advanced conferencing software
By using Zoom software, distance students will have the ability to see and hear both resident students and other distance students, professors, and any and all presented media (which includes PowerPoint, writing on the board, etc.). In addition, the resident students and professor can fully interact with the distance students enabling complete and simultaneous interaction.
Be in the class without being in the classroom.
For more information or if you’d like to see a demonstration of how it works, contact Dan Johnson in our recruitment office: djohnson@centralseminary.edu
Rolland McCune on Pastoral Authority
The local church which elects its pastor is the source of his ecclesiastical authority. He carries no inherent authority as a person and does not rule the local church by any native rights or gifts. This type of authority is bestowed by the local church and may be withdrawn by the local church.
Rolland McCune, A Systematic Theology of Biblical Christianity, Vol. 3, p. 250.
Only In Minnesota . . .
The Como Park Zoo and Conservatory, free to the public (donations accepted).
The Shoe Is On the Other Foot
For years, the Left has used the “outrage machine” of the Internet to harass and pillory conservatives. In fact, it’s been used to harass anybody who transgresses the norms that the Left finds acceptable. When a dentist was being persecuted for shooting a lion, nobody cared. When a kid dressed in the wrong Halloween costume, he was expelled from university and subjected to death threats. Now that some on the Right are determined to hold them accountable, however, liberal professors don’t like it one little bit. They want “an organized response” to the “organized outrage machine.” Read about it at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The Eternal Generation of the Son
The Eternal Generation of the Son
Frederick William Faber
Amid the eternal silences
God’s endless Word was spoken
None heard but He who always spake,
And the silence was unbroken.
Chorus:
Oh marvellous! Oh Worshipful!
No song or sound is heard,
But everywhere and every hour,
In love, in wisdom, and in power,
The Father speaks His dear Eternal Word.
For ever in the eternal land
The glorious day is dawning;
For ever is the Father’s Light
Like an endless outspread morning.
From the Father’s vast tranquillity,
In light coequal glowing
The kingly consubstantial Word
Is unutterably flowing.
For ever climbs that Morning Star
Without ascent or motion;
For ever is its daybreak
On the Spirit’s boundless ocean.
O Word! who fitly can adore
Thy Birth and Thy Relation,
Lost in the impenetrable light
Of Thine awful Generation?
Thy Father clasps Thee evermore
In unspeakable embraces,
While angels tremble as thy praise,
And shroud their dazzled faces.
And oh! in what abyss of love,
So fiery yet so tender,
The Holy Ghost encircles Thee
With His uncreated splendour!
O Word! O dear and gentle Word!
Thy creatures kneel before Thee,
And in ecstasies of timid love
Delightedly adore Thee.
Hail choicest mystery of God!
Hail wondrous Generation!
The Father’s self-sufficient rest!
The Spirit’s jubilation!
Dear Person! dear beyond all words,
Glorious beyond all telling!
Oh with what songs of silent love
Our ravished hearts are swelling!
Chorus:
Oh marvellous! Oh Worshipful!
No song or sound is heard,
But everywhere and every hour,
In love, in wisdom, and in power,
The Father speaks His dear Eternal Word.
In the Nick of Time
Continuing history on the New Testament Association of Independent Baptist Churches and the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship.
This Is Worth Remembering:
“Governments Don’t Give People Rights,” by Donald J. Boudreaux at the Foundation for Economic Education.
Rights pre-exist government. Therefore, even if – as most people believe – government is necessary to help to secure individuals’ rights, government does not create that which it itself is created to help to secure. Your real-estate agent might be necessary to sell your home, but this fact does not thereby make her the source of your home’s value or the owner of your home.
Anancephalic Children and Zombies
Maureen Condic’s essay at the Witherspoon Institute is a combination of philosophy, bioethics, and science fiction. It’s worth a read. Here is her conclusion:
Stated in more philosophical terms, “rational animal” is the essential definition of a human being, and “developing human” is the essential definition of a human being at embryonic stages. Therefore, if an entity is developing and of human origin it is a human being by definition, regardless of any defect it may exhibit in brain formation. Thus, if a human embryo infected by the zombie pathogen subsequently died and was resurrected, the nature of the resulting entity would depend entirely on what happened next. If the entity proceeded through embryonic development (an unlikely scenario), it would be, in virtue of this fact alone, a human being. And just as is the case for anencephaly, any impact the pathogen had on subsequent formation of the brain would reflect a defect in a part, not an alteration in the nature of the entity. Given that human beings at embryonic stages of life are defined by their capacity to undergo development, it is not possible, by definition, to engineer a developing human zombie; i.e., an embryo of human origin that utterly lacks the capacity to produce a brain capable of rational thought.
McCune on Landmarkism
Some Baptists (e.g., Landmark Baptists) insist that the only ekklesia in the New Testament is a local church. Every usage, according to them, refers to the local church, individually or collectively. However, this view runs up against serious problems.
For instance, it cannot successfully interpret each usage of ekklesia, such as Ephesians 3:21: “To Him be the glory in the church … forever and ever.” Since there will be no local church life in any meaningful biblical sense in heaven, it is difficult to see how this usage can refer to the local church.
Rolland McCune, A Systematic Theology of Biblical Christianity, Vol. 3, p. 210
Straub on Building a Theological Library
A Requiem for Friendship
Anthony Esolen writes eloquently for Touchstone Magazine about pansexualism, philosophy of language, and how contemporary sexual openness has brought an end to serious male friendships. This essay is a bit longer to read, but its implications are profound.
By now the reader must see the point. I might say that of all human actions there is nothing more powerfully public than what two consenting adults do with their bodies behind (we hope) closed doors. Open homosexuality, loudly and defiantly celebrated, changes the language for everyone. If a man throws his arm around another man’s waist, it is now a sign—whether he is on the political right or the left, whether he believes in biblical proscriptions of homosexuality or not.
Jacques Barzun on Toleration
Toleration–allowing freedom of expression–has no logical limits. In religion it includes ritual, which is action as well as words. But does it include burning the country’s flag? Law in the United States says yes. What of behavior onstage that many consider obscene? Or sacrificing animals for a ritual purpose? Facing such questions, reason shrinks back and is mute. Nor is this all. The facts compel us to make a distinction between Toleration, a public policy useful to the secular nation, and tolerance, the very rare individual state of mind that “lives and lets live.” When found it is decried as “lukewarm,” “latitudinarian,” “Laodicean,” “lacking in principle.” Words beginning with l seem indicated for the charge; the human intellect is imperialist. In spite of the occasional, perfunctory “I may be wrong,” all assertors defend their position like wolverines their cubs. And they can defend the defense by saying that all social progress depends on the aggressive promotion of right ideas, theirs.
Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence, 273.
It is also interesting to read Barzun’s treatment of Oliver Cromwell, which is far more charitable than that of, say, Winston Churchill.
21 Theses . . .
. . . on submission in Marriage. From Doug Wilson. Since Wilson labels these as “theses,” we assume that they are intended as propositons for debate. Here’s a sample:
The Bible does not require a universal submission of women to men, or the necessary submission of any given woman to any given man. The Bible requires women to be submissive to their own husbands, which is a protection against having to submit to men generally. Further, because no one can serve more than one authority, this scriptural teaching amounts to a prohibition of a woman submitting to other men. Nor does Scripture require a new absolute submission to her husband. No authority in this fallen world is absolute, and includes the authority of a husband. When the authority of a husband turns rancid, a wife should receive the help of fathers, brothers, friends, and/or elders to help her stand up against it.
Jeff Sessions: Full Text
The text of the attorney general’s speech to the Alliance Defending Freedom has been reprinted by The Federalist. Read it here.
America has never thought itself to be a theocracy. Our founders, at least the most articulate of them, believed our government existed as a protector of religious rights of Americans that were essential to being a created human being.
The government did not exist to promote religious doctrine nor to take sides in religious disputes that had, as they well knew, caused wars and death in Europe. Nor was it the government’s role to immanetize the eschaton, as Bill Buckley reminded us. The government’s role was to provide the great secular structure that would protect the rights of all citizens to fulfill their duty to relate to God as their conscience dictated and to guarantee the citizen’s right to exercise that faith.
The government would not take sides, and would not get between God and man. Religious rights were natural rights, not subject to government infringement, as the Virginia Assembly once eloquently declared.
Richard Weaver on “Humanism in an Age of Science”
Richard Weaver was one of the three or four most important founders of modern conservatism. His Ideas Have Consequences is probably the most important work in defining a conservative outlook. His notion of “metaphysical dream” is priceless.
The Imaginative Conservative reprints an address by Weaver, “Humanism in an Age of Science,” delivered to the Newman Club at the University of Chicago. Weaver died in April of 1963. Like most of his work, however, this address remains as vital today as it was when he delivered it.
As one looks over the scene and tries to decide his policy, two alternatives are almost certain to suggest themselves. Either one can immerse himself in the element and strive to be just as brutal as it is; or he can detach himself, cutting down to the minimum his point of contact with it. That is to say, he can try to fight it by its own means, or he can run from the fight.
I think a little reflection is needed to show, that both of these have unacceptable or certainly undesirable consequences. By trying to compete in brutality, you make yourself a brute, and this man is commanded not to do. Brutality is in its essence a lack of discrimination, a lack of regard for distinctions and susceptibilities and rights. It is the action that smashes or levels or obliterates while remaining contemptuous of qualifying circumstances. This is the bestial attitude and the antithesis of humanity. On the cultural level, it is fatal to what we respect as the humanities. But detachment too, while it seems to preserve intellect, draws bad things in its train. It results in isolation, a decrease of sympathy, eventual loss perhaps of any vital idea of brotherhood; and it is certainly likely to engender pride. The man who is self-consciously perched above the fray comes to have a sort of disdain for those who are wrestling with the world’s intractability, and that too tends to be inhumane in the way that it divides us off. We are all here to be proved, and it seems that a man should not try to save himself by individual withdrawal.
The Closing of the Muslim Mind
Joel Zartman reviews the book by Robert R. Reilly. The discussion ranges from Al Ghazali’s Incoherence of the Philosophers to Christian Presuppositionalism.
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