REFORMED WITNESS
Volume I, June 1993, Number 6
Heard Anything New Lately?
From the Protestant Reformed Theological Journal, Volume XXVI, Number 2, April 1993
by David J. Engelsma
Introduction
The question, "Heard anything new lately?", is addressed directly, not to the faculty and students of the Seminary, but to the members of the congregations served by this Seminary.
Have you been hearing anything new from your pulpits, in your catechism rooms, and in your private conversations with your ministers? Have you heard teachings either about your beliefs or your behavior that are different from the teachings that were heard from the churches thirty or forty or fifty years ago? Have you heard teaching that are different from the teachings set forth in the Reformed confessions? Have you heard teachings that are different from the teachings of the Bible? Have you had reason to say to your pastor what the Athenian philosophers said to Paul in Acts 17:20: "For you bring certain strange things to our ears"?
This question reflects on your Seminary. If you have heard new things lately, it is probable, indeed well-nigh certain, that this is because the Seminary is teaching new things to the aspiring pastors and teachers. If you have not heard anything new lately, but only the same old thing, this is because your Seminary is teaching the same old thing.
There are exceptions, of course, as our own history as churches illustrates. In the early 1950s ministers taught a conditional covenant and a conditional covenant promise in spite of their training in the Seminary. But the rule is that what the people hear in the churches originates in the Seminary. This is the law of church life. This law necessitated our own Seminary from the very beginning of the history of the Protestant Reformed Churches. Our fathers did not want the coming pastors to teach the doctrines espoused in the other, already existing seminaries, particularly the doctrines of a general love and universal grace of God.
A denomination's seminary is the source of the teaching that prevails in the congregations.
This is also clearly implied in the text that bears directly on the seminary in the New Testament church, II Timothy 2:2: "And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also."
My question probes for more, however, than an answer of simple fact, "No, we have not heard new things," or, "Yes, we have heard new things." What should be the attitude of the members of the congregations toward hearing new things? Accordingly, what should be their attitude toward the Seminary's teaching new things? If you have not heard anything new lately, are you disappointed, perhaps even disgusted? Do you want the Seminary to teach your future pastors some new things?
Indirectly, the question bears on the task of our faculty and on the expectation of our students. Must the professors prepare themselves to teach new things? new things in theology? new things regarding the interpretation of Scripture? new things regarding the theory and manner of preaching and catechizing? indeed, new things regarding the fundamental calling itself of a minister?
Should the seminarians expect to learn new things? Is this the purpose and value of a seminary education?
This is a searching question: "Heard Anything New Lately?"
A Modern Areopagus: The Reformed Seminary Today"Heard anything new lately?" is not an idle question. It is characteristic of seminaries today that they teach new things. Teaching new things is their avowed intention and proud claim. I restrict myself to Reformed seminaries although the same holds for other Protestant seminaries, evangelical as well as liberal.
With some exceptions, the Reformed seminary today is a modern Areopagus where professors and students spend their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear something, as Paul writes of the Athenian philosophers in Acts 17:21. Inevitably, this pursuit of new things and the new things themselves have appeared in the congregations as the seminarians have become the churches' pastors. The result is that the believers have become deeply concerned. They are concerned for nothing less than the Christian faith itself in their fellowship and in their generations.
In his book, A Half Century of Theology, reflecting on the past fifty years of his life and work as a theologian, G. C. Berkouwer candidly acknowledges this "concern for the faith" on the part of the people:
People have a feeling that theologians are taking a critical attitude toward the church's past, that they are breaking continuity with the church of all ages and its universal and undoubted Christian faith.
The reason for this concern, Berkouwer admits, is that "theology has embarked on many new directions. There is tension in theology as new ways of interpreting the old dogmas conflict with traditional ways" (A Half Century of Theology, Eerdmans, 1977, pp. 215, 216).
As Berkouwer recognizes, the theologians of the Reformed churches (and this means the Seminaries) are teaching new things about "issues (that) touch the heart of the church." The result is that the congregations are hearing new things about basic doctrines.
They are hearing that the Bible is a human book with the weaknesses of all things human. As a human book, it is subject to historical criticism.
They are hearing that the origin of all the world with all it contains, including man, was evolutionary development over billions of years.
They are hearing concerning the Savior that Jesus is a human person and that He must be a human person to be truly human.
They are hearing concerning salvation that God loves and desires to save all men; that Christ died for all men; that God has reprobated no man by an eternal, unconditional decree. In this connection, they are hearing that the Reformed creed, the Canons of Dordt, is a scholastic document and that its theology is out-dated and erroneous. The people are hearing the message of universalism. They are hearing universalism, not faintly but loudly, not by implication but explicitly, not with any hesitancy but boldly.
Reformed and Presbyterian congregations are hearing new things in theology proper -- in theology as the doctrine of God. God suffers. God is helpless with regard to the evils in human life. God is Himself in the process of developing along with the world. God is feminine: a "she," a "mother," a "goddess."
Reformed and Presbyterian congregations are hearing new things in ethics. They are hearing new things regarding family ethics. The wife is an equal in marriage, not subject to her husband's authority as head. She has no calling to bear children. If she chooses to have children, she has no calling to devote herself to the work of raising them and caring for her family as a worker at home.
They are hearing new things in sexual ethics: virtually unrestricted divorce and remarriage and the sanctioning of homosexuality both as a condition and as a practice.
They are hearing new things concerning the Sabbath. The Sabbath of the fourth commandment was exclusively a law for the people of the old covenant; it was Jewish. Sunday is merely church ordinance and, therefore, may be used as church members please. The church is satisfied with attendance at one brief worship in the morning, if this is convenient.
Nor are the new things limited to theology and ethics. New things are introduced in worship, all kinds of new things, new things every Sunday.
New things are heard in the area of church government and church order: The insignificance of office and ordination; the significance if charisma and gift; the right of women to teach and rule; the evil of church order as such, since church order infringes on the liberty of the Holy Spirit.
Ask Reformed people like yourselves, "Heard anything new lately?," and their answer will be, "We hear nothing else!"
In large part, the cause is the seminary and the theologians. Recently, Rev. A. M. Lindeboom, minister of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands (GKN), published a book that he describes as a "simple account of the dismantling of the Reformed Churches." He writes:
We know indeed that this (the dismantling of the GKN - DJE) is now completed. The Reformed Churches are transformed into another kind of Churches, which, in the strict sense of the word, can no longer rightly claim the name "Reformed,"... It has become dark (De theologen gingen voorop, Kok, 1987, p. 13; my translation of the Dutch)
Lindeboom asks, "How has all of this happened?" The answer is found in the book's title, De theologen gingen voorop ("The theologians led the way").
This raises the further question, what motivates the theologians? What accounts for the seminaries' giving themselves to the propagation of new things?
Among the causes are these three. First, the theologians have abandoned, or lost, the faith that Scripture is the inspired Word of God. They are no longer confident that the Bible is a divine, holy book by the wonder of the "out-breathing" of God, as Paul teaches in II Timothy 3:16. This is true of their attitude toward the first eleven chapters of Genesis with their account of origins. As a rule, this is where the theologians first indicate their unbelief regarding Scripture. But this is true also of their attitude toward the entire Bible.
When a Seminary first loses its faith concerning Scripture, or is first discovered losing its faith by concerned members of the denomination, it will claim that its doubts are limited only to the first eleven chapters. But this is neither true nor possible. As Scripture is one, so is faith concerning Scripture one. If Genesis 1-11 is a human description of origins, so are the gospels a human account of Jesus of Nazareth; I Timothy 2 and 3, a human description of office; and Romans 1:18ff., a human description of the wickedness of homosexuality.
This loss of faith in Scripture as the Word of God explains the new interpretation of the Bible through which the new things are introduced into the churches. Seldom do Reformed seminaries simply break with the old. Almost always, they do away with the old and bring in the new by means of the "new interpretation." The new interpretation contradicts what Scripture clearly says. But this is acceptable because the Bible is a human book. As a human word on religious subjects, the Bible is imperfect, subject to criticism, developing, and open to revised interpretation. The theologians think, and teach in the seminaries, that the meaning of the Bible in any particular passage is given to it by the modern interpreter. The interpreter gets this "meaning" from the age and culture in which he lives. Thus the age and the culture, that is, the world, determine the meaning of the Bible.
This loss of faith on the part of the theologians is dreadful. The teachers of the teachers of the people of God are themselves uncertain. They are uncertain about the Word of God and everything it contains. In his almost classic, and certainly authoritative, analysis of Protestantism today, The Question of God: Protestant Theology in the Twentieth Century (Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc. 1969), Heinz Zahrnt writes, "The most persistent problem in contemporary theology is the end of all certainty" (p. 27).
Berkouwer agrees. In his A Half Century of Theology, the Dutch Reformed theologian observes:
I have the sense that many, including theologians, feel themselves caught in a web of uncertainties, what with questions posed from the corners of modern biblical studies, consciousness of the relativity of human thought, the problems of modern science, and the broad question of the limits of our horizon (p. 226).
This uncertainty, however, is regarded by many as a virtue, as the ideal in theology. This is the view of another influential Reformed theologian in the Netherlands, Hendrikus Berkhof, in his book, Two Hundred Years of Theology (Eerdmans, 1989):
The truth of the gospel is a very different one from the truths of the natural sciences because in them people start at the point where their predecessors left off. In contrast, the truth of the gospel is a road everyone must travel by himself. This road is itself the truth. One does not "stand" in the truth but "walks" in it on the way toward the goal that is not attainable this side of eternity (p. 306; emphasis added).
For Hendrikus Berkhof, that which the apostle charged against false teachers and silly women is the ideal for theology: "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (II Tim. 3:7). We are reminded of the notorious assertion by Lessing that, if he had a choice between knowing the truth and pursuing truth without ever finding it, he would choose the latter.
A second cause of the openness to, and advocacy of, new things is that the seminaries are determined to conform to the world in which we live, to adapt to the culture, and to cave in to the pressure of the opinion of the learned. It is one of the main marks of modern Protestant theology that it is concerned to accommodate the world, to find common ground with the world, to be open to the world. This is clearly evident in the seminaries' conforming their view of origins to evolution and in their accommodating the world's present positions on women and homosexuality. But this also explains the rejection of predestination and of particular grace. The thinking of our world is universalistic. There may be no discrimination on the part of God.
Third, the seminaries have little appreciation of their responsibility before God to train ministers of the Word to edify the saints and shepherd the church bought with God's own blood. Seminaries are not spiritual. The ministry is merely a profession. Theology is only an academic discipline. Since theology is not a life-and-death matter, a matter of eternal life and eternal death, seminaries, like the Areopagites, can dabble in new things. Why not?
Source of the Same Old Thing: The PR Seminary
In contrast to what goes on widely in Reformed, Presbyterian, and evangelical churches today, nothing new is heard in the Protestant Reformed congregations. The saints are hearing nothing strange, nothing different. The reason in large part is that the Seminary is the source of the "same old thing."
I am certain that all our people answer the question, "Heard anything new lately?," in the negative. Some may be happy about this state of affairs, while others may regret it, but all agree that they are not hearing new things.
They hear the same thing about Scripture; about creation; about salvation; about Christ; about God; about marriage, divorce, and remarriage; about women; about church order; and about worship, that Protestant Reformed people have always heard.
This "same thing" is old. It was taught seventy years ago at the beginning of the separate existence of the Protestant Reformed Churches. In the main, what we hear today dates back at least to the 16th century, It is, therefore, at the very least almost five hundred years old.
Whether people admire this or ridicule it, all must admit that, in its aversion to change and newness, the Protestant Reformed Seminary distinguishes itself as standing firmly it the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition.
The Reformation insisted that it was not introducing novelties, but only restoring the old truth of the apostles and the early church.
John Calvin vehemently resisted, and warned against, changing the doctrine and order of the Reformed faith and church. In a sermon on I Corinthians 11:11-16, Calvin said:
Now this is tantamount to the Holy Spirit declaring from the skies that this constancy is approved by God, when men keep in line, and when, after having been taught sacred doctrine... they keep it without changing, and continue in it, and give no occasion to become upset, and do not provoke quarrels or disputes among themselves to destroy what has been well-received and appointed. And let us note that this is said not only regarding the principal thing: that is, doctrine; but also regarding what belongs to policy. It is true that it would be an abominable thing to even think of changing anything which belongs to religion, and the substance of our salvation; what belongs to the law of divine service and all the articles of our faith. For that would be tantamount to our desiring a new god. Yet our Lord further desires not only that religion remain always intact, and that we remain firm in what we have learned from the Holy Scripture, and that our faith never be shaken, but He also wills that we be peaceable as to outward order, and that we not be as shifting sand, as many have had foolish dreams of changing this and that at every turn (Men, Women and Order in the Church, Presbyterian Heritage Publications, 1992, pp. 10, 11).
Calvin's deathbed admonition to the ministers of Geneva is well known:
I pray you make no change, no innovation. People often ask for novelties. Not that I desire for my own sake out of ambition that what I have established should remain, and that people should retain it without wishing for something better, but because all changes are dangerous and sometimes hurtful (Jules Bonnet, Letters of John Calvin, Burt Franklin, 1972, Vol. IV, p. 376).
Old Princeton, the Presbyterian seminary, prided itself on faithfully teaching the same old thing. At the centennial of Princeton in 1912, President Francis Lindy Patton could say, as though it were the highest praise of the school, that for 100 years Princeton had "simply taught the old Calvinistic theology without modification." Twice in public addresses, Charles Hodge stated, as though it were a crowning virtue, that Princeton Seminary "had never brought forward a single original thought"; "a new idea never originated at Princeton" (cf. Reformed Theology in America, ed. David F. Wells, Eermans, 1985, pp. 17, 61).
It borders on the amusing that the Wheaton evangelical, Mark A. Noll, criticizes the great Princetonians because they "regarded theology as a static entity not effected to any appreciable degree by historical development" (Reformed Theology in America, p. 19). This was the power of old Princeton as its theologians both new and advertised. I wonder whether the Wheaton evangelical has ever considered the fortunes of Princeton since it adopted the position that theology is affected to an appreciable degree by historical development.
In its adherence to the same old thing, the Protestant Reformed Seminary is in good company, whereas those seminaries that love to tell new things are not.
We have reasons for conserving the same old thing and for our antipathy toward the progressiveness that desires the new and different. The first reason is our view of Scripture. We reverence Scripture as an inspired book, God's Word written. It is not human and fallible; it is not weakened by historical conditioning. Its interpretation is not subject to the authority of general revelation; of the thinking of the church; of modern culture; of science; or of any other authority. Scripture is truth, the truth, God's unchanging and unchangeable truth. It is truth that has been given, once and for all, as the revelation of Jesus Christ in Whom God has spoken finally and decisively. The truth does not change. In the truth of Scripture, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever (Heb. 13:8).
With this reverence for Scripture goes a respect for the work of the Holy Spirit in the history of the church: He has guided the church into all the truth. This is a second reason why the Protestant Reformed Seminary adheres to the same old thing. Particularly, the Seminary respects the work of the Spirit in the church's formulations of biblical truth in the ecumenical and Reformed confessions. The creeds are the systematic expression of God's permanent, unchanging truth. Significantly, our Reformed "Form for the Installation of Professors of Theology" states that the church has a "divine mission... to collect from the Word of God her standards of faith (and) to study theology according to these words." Where theology is studied according to the words of the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dordt and where this is done as a "divine mission," there you will find the same old thing.
The third reason why our Seminary does not specialize in teaching new things is that we are, in principle and quite consciously, freed from the madness that supposes that the church must listen, and accommodate herself, to the current, always changing wisdom of the unbelieving world. We are antithetical in our thinking. The mind of the world is hostile to the gospel and commandments of God. God has made foolish the wisdom of this world (I Cor. 1:20). Our mind is hostile to the wisdom of the world. The wisdom of the world crucified the Lord of glory (I Cor. 2:8). The wisdom that Reformed pastors must teach the people of God is not all "the words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Ghost teaches" in Scripture (I Cor. 2:13). This, therefore, is the wisdom that a Reformed seminary may and must teach.
The Seminary's antithetical stance is a benefit of the Protestant Reformed repudiation of the theory of common grace. The theory of common grace has accomplished in Reformed, Presbyterian, and evangelical churches that which liberal Protestantism has set as its main goal ever since Schleiermacher, namely, to build a bridge from the church to the world. Hendrikus Berkhof candidly acknowledges this purpose of modern Protestantism in his Two Hundred Years of Theology:
What these thinkers have in common, positively, is their attempt to bring about a reconciliation between the gospel and the spirit of modernity; negatively, their deviation, to a greater degree or lesser degree, from the classic or traditional teachings of the church (p. 131).
Most of these thinkers tried more or less deliberately to build a bridge between the gospel and their secularized cultural environment (p. xiii).
(Regarding) not only... the liberal theologians but also... the more conservative, one gets the impression that the majority of theologians, speaking to Christianity's leading "cultured despisers," never really accepted their radical no to the gospel. It would appear that the theologians refused to accept the antithesis (p. xii).
The bridge between the Reformed churches and the world is the theory of common grace. The great bridge-builders were the Dutch Reformed theologians at the turn of the century, Abraham Kuyper and Herman Bavinck. Their purpose with common grace was to enable the Reformed church to cooperate with and influence the unregenerate world in its development of creation and in its formation of history (cf. Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, Eedermans, 1953; Bavinck, De Algemeene Grenade, Eerdmens-Sevensma, n.d.). What has actually happened, however, is that the bridge has enabled the world to get into, influence, and shape Reformed theology. Over the bridge have come specific views and doctrines that are peculiarly worldly, e.g., universalism, evolution, historicism, naturalism, feminism, and approval of homosexuality.
Worse still, the bridge itself is founded on an assumption that subjects all of theology to the world's thinking and that results in never-ending revision of the church's doctrinal and ethical teachings. This is the assumption that Scripture ought to be interpreted in accordance with the insights and wisdom of the unregenerate world. For the theory of common grace - great bridge between world and church - holds that the Spirit of truth and goodness is working in the world. The current wisdom of the world, therefore, whether regarding origins, the place of the woman in home and society, homosexuality, or Scripture itself, must be reckoned with as the authoritative testimony of the Holy Spirit. The advocates of common grace call this wisdom of the world "general revelation."
Where common grace holds sway in the Reformed churches, not only is this "general revelation" of equal authority with Scripture, but also it is decisive in the interpretation of Scripture.
Thus the world outside of Christ call the shots as regards the theology of Christ's church.
In a book published in 1989, Vrijheid van dwang (Freedom from Constraint), Dutch Reformed theologian Harry Kuitert boldly denies the authority of Scripture; all certain knowledge of God; any difference in principle between God and man; the Deity of Jesus Christ; and every ethical absolute. In this connection, Kuitert expresses his high regard for Abraham Kuyper's doctrine of common grace. What Kuitert particularly appreciates in Kuyper's doctrine of common grace is that it gives all men positive knowledge of God from creation, history, and the cultural development of mankind.
Two distinct conceptions of a seminary are found in the Reformed churches: a modern Arepagus, and the source of the same old thing. Now we must let Scripture judge. What does Scripture say about the nature and purpose of the seminary in the churches?
Scripture in Judgement on the Seminaries
Scripture everywhere and insistently calls the church, and thus the seminary, to hold fast to and hand on the truth that has been given her by revelation. The church must hold the traditions (II Thess. 2:15). In Revelation 2 and 3 Christ repeatedly praises the churches that have kept and held fast His Word. Similarly, Paul praises the Corinthians for keeping the ordinances, just as the apostle delivered these ordinances to them (I Cor. 11:2). Bishops are called to hold fast the faithful Word, as they have been taught (Tit. 1:9).
The apostle goes so far as to command the preacher to hold fast the form of sound words, which he heard from the apostle (II Tim. 1:13). The "form" is the expression itself by which the truth is taught. Calvin's explanation is correct: "Paul commands Timothy to hold fast the doctrine which he has learned, not only as to substance, but as to the very form of expression." The reason, Calvin adds, is that "Paul knew how ready men are to depart or fall off from pure doctrine" (commentary on II Tim. 1:13).
The professor of theology is not supposed to create new theologies, but rather to hand over apostolic doctrine to faithful men, who then teach it to the people of God. (II Tim. 2:2).
With this charge to the church to preserve and pass on the truth go related duties: not letting anything of the truth slip (Heb. 2:11ff); not allowing the Word to be corrupted (Tit. 1:14); not allowing heresies to be introduced (II Pet. 1:11ff.); and contending for the faith once delivered (Jude 3).
Nowhere does the Bible call the church to create new doctrines; to decree new ways of Christian behavior; to invent new forms of worship; or to legislate a new church polity. Only heretics in the seminary and on the pulpit and itching ears in the pews love novelties in religion. It is a damning indictment of the Athenians that they wasted their time and energy in telling and hearing new things.
If you have not heard anything new lately in the teaching of the church, if you only hear the "same old thing," count your blessings!
In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis has senior devil Screwtape advise junior devil Wormwood that, in order to seduce Christians, Wormwood must
Work on their horror of the Same Old Thing. The horror of the Same Old Thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart - an endless source of heresies in religion, folly in counsel, infidelity in marriage, and inconstancy in friendship (Macmillian, rev. ed., 1982, p. 116).
True Newness
That our people hear the same old truth because our Seminary teaches the same old thing in no way implies that the message heard is stale, boring, and lifeless, or that the work of the Seminary is, or ever may be, stagnant. A little later in The Screwtape Letters, Screwtape says, "For the descriptive adjective 'unchanged' we have substituted the emotional adjective 'stagnant'" (p. 119). To disparage God's unchanging truth as "stagnant" is demonic.
I repeat: The Word that comes out of our Seminary is old. It is not merely seventy years old or even five hundred years old. As the same message that Paul preached in Athens - creation, providence, repentance, judgement, resurrection, Jesus the only Savior, the one true and living God - it is almost two thousand years old. Indeed, this Word is six thousand years old, for it is the Word of covenant promise in Christ first announced by God in paradise after the fall in Genesis 3:15.
It is not simply old; it is ancient. It is the gospel that God conceived and willed in His eternal counsel. Commenting on "the old commandment" in I John 2:7, Calvin wrote, "The gospel ought not to be received as a doctrine lately born, but what has proceeded from God, and is His eternal truth." Psalm 119:89 states, "For ever, O Lord, thy Word is settled in heaven," where "for ever" is "to eternity."
Just for this reason, the Reformed faith is new, genuinely new. It is new, not with a faddish newness of novelty, but with freshness, the timeliness, the liveliness of the living, renewing, up-to-date Word of God in the power of the Spirit.
Continuing his commentary on I John 2, specifically the description of the "old commandment" as also a "new commandment" in verse 8, Calvin wrote:
new, because God, as it were, renews it by daily suggesting it... (The truth does not) grow old with time, but... is perpetually in force, so that it is no less the highest perfection than (at) the very beginning.
The doctrine of the Christian faith as confessed by the Reformed creeds, although old, is the at the same time new. It is the one new thing under the sun. Hid from the ages, the truth of the Christian faith is now, at the end of the ages, revealed to the church through the apostles and prophets by the Spirit (Eph. 3:5ff.). It is new.
Whenever it is heard by the congregation in faith, it is new in the sense that Jesus Christ Himself is speaking it from heaven at that very moment (Rom. 10:14; Heb. 12:25).
It is new also in that it is refreshing , invigorating, exciting, and quickening. By it old things pass away, and all things become new.
In contrast to the Reformed faith of Scripture and the confessions, all the novelties being introduced by the seminaries into the Reformed churches are old. They are old heresies and errors that the church rejected long ago: a suffering God; a God Who is sovereign neither as regards evil nor as regards salvation; a revolutionary Jesus of human person; universalism; feminism; and all the rest. There is nothing new in any of this.
The old faith is experienced as new by the congregation. The Word of gracious pardon is new to the sinner who is crushed by his guilt and shame. The Word about almighty providence is new to the mother weeping at the coffin of her dead child. The Word of the resurrection of the dead is new to every believer going through the deep darkness of the shadow of death.
To the preacher who bears these ageless good tidings, the people of God at the end of the 20th century say what the Athenian philosophers said to the apostle (although with an entirely different meaning): "May we know... this new doctrine, whereof you speakest?"
Besides, there is discovery of new facets of the infinitely rich Word of God. There are still new treasures in Scripture to be discovered by theologians who reverence Scripture as the very Word of God. This makes the ministry even more exciting.
Also, there is development of the church's understanding and systematic formulations of the truth. Development, I say. Not repudiation of all that has gone before, in order to begin all over again, but development. Development builds on the theological work of the church through the ages, especially the theological work that has come out of the Reformation. I make bold to say that there has been much development - solid, significant development - of Reformed truth in the Protestant Reformed Churches over the past seventy years as anywhere, by the grace of God. The work of Herman Hoeksema, George Ophoff, and Homer Hoeksema in the Seminary has not only faithfully carried on the Reformed tradition but has also developed Reformed truth significantly.
Esteemed colleagues and dear students, this makes plain our task in the Seminary. The calling of the professors is faithfully to teach the same old thing in a fresh, living way.
The task of the seminaries is to take hold of the old thing; to make it your own; to discover it anew; to enter into it with heart, mind, and affections. Your purpose must be to teach the same old thing to the congregations. You must not, however, teach in a boring, lifeless, rote, cliche-ridden fashion. This, in fact, is the curse of God upon a ministry that does not work with the Word in the power of the Spirit, in prayer, in faith, and in obedience to Christ. But you must teach the same old thing in demonstration of the Spirit and of power (I Cor. 2:4).
To do this, we must have the support of the congregations. I do not refer now to money and encouragement, with which our churches are generous. But I refer to the view itself that the people take of the Seminary and what goes on in it.
If ever our people come to desire that the Seminary be a theological Areopagus - on the cutting edge of contemporary thinking - where professors and students spend their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new theological thing, we are lost.
Our congregations must continue to view the Seminary as the Reformed pastors viewed the Academy in Geneva in 1637:
It is not good that our students should be vain disputants, or that they should be learned in a theory without savour or strength. The true aim which we should set before ourselves... is to provide a holy nursery-garden of devout pastors, pure in their faith, strong in their zeal to teach, well conducted and sober, keeping guard with a clear conscience over the grand mystery of piety, and administering with justice the Word of Truth (quoted in International Calvinism, 1541-1715, ed. Menna Prestwich, Oxford University Press, 1985, p69).
This is the churches' view of their Seminary and if the teachers and students devote themselves to this calling, under God's blessing our people will never hear new things.
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