Over at Gentle Reformation, President York of RPTS Seminaryresponds to Carl Trueman’s lecture about “Follow the Money” given at a
convocation at Westminster Seminary California.
Trueman lists some problems, but he states them as descriptions as
well. Ultimately, Trueman is trying to
argue for a greater Catholicity among the Reformed Seminaries, and I think this
is where both York and Trueman fail to completely understand the basic nature
of the seminary as a business. Trueman
openly admits that it is a business, but also says it is a “spiritual
organization”. He offers no proof for
that nor does he state how the two interact other than occasionally saying that
the business part militates against the spiritual part.
York doesn’t outright deny the business nature of the
seminary, but does seem to think seminaries can operate against the unwritten
rules of business. He argues that
non-hostile competition is healthy. York’s
point is that one can learn from the other seminaries good points and
benefit. But is business competition
ever really “non-hostile”?
The answer is no.
There is a small pool of reformed students, and they are going to choose
one seminary above another. The minor
difference marketing that Dr. Trueman opposes or feels unfortunate (and York
agrees) is simply a fact of life. It
must happen or the seminary will not thrive.
Trueman’s main application to read more broadly including journals from
other seminaries is really not an answer to the problem, but a symptom of
it. Seminaries have journals IN ORDER TO
promote the minor difference, to communicate the ethos of the seminary. It is the seminary’s version of “publish or
die” from the secular academic word.
York’s response to this with a call to build collegiality
among seminaries and promoting the strengths of other seminaries is
pie-in-the-sky fantasy. After all if you
have a pool of 10 students and you tell them all how great the other seminary
is, then you should expect to lose all 10 students. Trueman may be right that businesses don’t ‘rubbish’
the competition, but they don’t talk up the competition either. Can anyone imagine Wendy’s talking about how
great Burger King’s fries are? Bud Light
doesn’t talk about how Miller Light makes beer with corn syrup so that lovers
of corn can see where to go to get a different beer, but to take away Miller
Light’s buyers. There can be no real
collegiality between those in competition.
And competition is healthy, but not really non-hostile since the stakes
are always going out of business and fading away.
The complaints about seminary are good to hear from someone
like Dr. Trueman. The call to follow the
confessions rather than the teaching of the seminaries is laudable. But, as Trueman admits seminaries shape the
student much more than denominations do.
And there in is the problem. The
denomination is the church, but has little influence. The seminary is a business, and ends up
shaping the future of the church. So, it
was disappointing that Trueman, as a historian, stopped so short and fail to
take that next obvious step. It is time
to end seminaries.
The church after all existed and thrived for centuries prior
to seminaries. Pastors trained future
pastors, and denominations examined them, sometimes sent them to other pastors,
and the church carried on. In this way,
the need to meet the payroll is removed.
The business aspect is gone. The
denomination is back in control. Why do
we bother merge business with a spiritual mission? Why is the church handing off training to
businesses?
The Parsonage Model answers all the problems Dr. Trueman
raises. It avoids the inbreeding
thinking that has helped create divisions from insiders (he mentions Enns and Shepherd). It protects the local church. It places the Confessions back in the center
and minimizes the minor difference. It
forces prospective pastors to serve in the local church. It avoids the problem of debt and of mission
creep into the realm of church (York sees this as a positive, but I agree with
Trueman it is a negative). It is in the
business of the kingdom of Christ. All
of the problems go away.
It is time to see seminaries for what they are . . . businesses. And it is time to stop using businesses to
train pastors.
