– NB Last week when I began writing this post, the names of Peter Leithart and John Armstrong appeared on the Adjunct Faculty page of Knox Theological Seminary. Since that time, perhaps in response to public outcry, these names have been scrubbed from the Knox website. It seems that erratic administrative behavior is one of the few constants at Knox. For during the 2007 controversy involving Warren Gage, the school was treated to the absurd spectacle of the firing/suspending/and rehiring of Dr. Gage in a whirlwind of activity that was nearly impossible to follow. In another context the Keystone Kops routine might have been funny. But there was nothing funny about what happened at Knox. For a seminary died, and the institution doing business under the same name is a grotesque parody of Dr. Kennedy’s dream of a new Princeton Seminary in south Florida. Given Knox’s spastic history, I have decided to publish this post under the assumption that Leithart and Armstrong will be teaching at the school. I could be wrong, but even if I am, Knox has tipped it hand regarding its vision for the future. And that vision is Federal.
Stephen Welch did us all a favor with his article Knox Theological Seminary: A New Haven for Federal Visionists. As a former KTS student, I’m thankful that there are discerning graduates of the school who care about the truth and are willing to state their objections to the ongoing disaster that is Knox Seminary. But the article wasn’t the end of it. Wes White posted it on his Johannes Weslianus blog, and this resulted in a number of interesting comments. One in particular stood out. Lauren wrote.
I think the FV got their foot in the door of Knox when they held the colloquium in 2004. Remember, Jesus tells us to beware of the “yeast” of the Pharisees. Paul in Galatians gives a strong warning against those who would preach another gospel. Inviting false teachers to the table and giving them a venue to spew their poison is a recipe for disaster.
The colloquium to which she refered was The Knox Theological Seminary Colloquium on the Federal Vision held in Ft. Lauderdale in August 2003. And although Lauren made a factual error by stating that the event was held in 2004, the rest of her statement is excellent and shows a genuine insight regarding what the Bible says about the dangers of associating with false teachers and false teaching. But not everyone sees it that way. Dr. Calvin Beisner, who organized the colloquium and edited the book produced from the colloquium sessions titled The Auburn Avenue Theology, Pros & Cons Debating the Federal Vision, replied to Lauren,
I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the colloquium was the FV’s first step into Knox–other than that it was there that Gage and Leithart met [this is a reference to Warren Gage, current Dean of Faculty at KTS and Peter Leithart, noted Federal Visionist and new KTS employee]. Rather, the colloquium was where FV proponents really got called out, had to let their true colors fly, and the resulting book has provided many scholars with some of the most important primary data as to what the FVers say, as well as what some of their toughest critics were saying at that early stage.
Now this is a remarkable thing for Dr. Beisner to say, for it amounts to an admission of Lauren’s point couched in the form of a denial, “it was there that Gage and Leithart met.” But there’s more to it than that. It wasn’t as though Gage, who’s now Dean of Faculty at Knox, just happened to show up at the colloquium and run into Peter Leithart. No, Gage himself was an active participant in the program, presumably with the blessing of Dr. Beisner. Not as a one of the session contributors as was Leithart, who was there explicitly to promote the Federal Vision, but as worship leader – court jester would be more accurate – preaching at services held between colloquium sessions. Dr. Beisner described Gage’s activities in these words,
Warren Gage conducted three worship services that ministered to all of us and helped us remember, in the midst of our debate, that there are many other and exciting things in God’s Word for us to explore and feast upon. – The Auburn Avenue Theology, Pros & Cons Debating the Federal Vision, p.iii
And what did Gage teach at these services? Dr. Beisner tells us,
Certainly a spirit of personal respect, charity, and trust prevailed, the men clearly enjoying not only the formal discussion sessions but also their meals, breaks, and three worship services, at which Knox Seminary professor Warren Gage presented his work on the literary and theological unity of the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation and the theme of the loving Father’s provision of a wife for His Son by the transformation of a harlot into a virgin bride. Several participants remarked that his sermons, with their profound insights into Biblical typology, were more than worth the time and trouble of attending even without anything else, and most expressed deep appreciation for his contribution to the meeting. Dr. Gage helped immeasurably by providing for the men a break from their controversy during which they could focus on the glory, grace, and beauty of God, thus being refreshed and strengthened for their work. – The Auburn Avenue Theology Pros & Cons, pp.12-13
This material, lauded by Dr. Beisner, is substantially the same as that found in Gage’s incompetent 2001 University of Dallas doctoral dissertation, in which Gage set forth his absurd and unbiblical ideas about interpretation and typology. Ideas that Gage repackaged and would, in a few short months, unfurl for all the world to see at the January 2004 Unlocking Revelation conference sponsored by KTS and held just across Federal (Vision) Highway at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church. Put another way, Gage presented the basic content of his putrid John-Revelation Project at the Federal Vision colloquium to – at least in he opinion of Dr. Beisner – a largely sympathetic audience. Peter Leithart certainly liked it. Writing in a blog post dated August 15, 2003 – this was immediately after the colloquium which was held August 11-13, 2003 – Leithart commented,
I had the opportunity this week to listen to a series of sermons by Warren Gage of Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale. Gage is an Assistant Professor of OT, but he did his doctoral work at the University of Dallas on the politics of John and Revelation, and did a lot of structural analysis of the two books in the process. The talks I heard concentrated on the structure of John and Revelation…
This only scratches the surface of Gage’s rich treatment of John’s writings. A number of his studies are available at the Knox web site, and I trust he will someday have a more complete treatment in print. I await it eagerly.
A few months later on December 10, 2003, Leithart gushed,
Warren Gage of Knox Seminary in Ft Lauderdale is a treasure. In a very rich and as-yet unpublished paper on the typology of Samson, Gage points out a number of very striking typologies.
And the feelings – Gage is big on feelings – were mutual, for Gage assigned Leithart’s A House for My Name to my 2006 OT class and spoke highly of him to the students. At that time, Gage held the position Associate Professor of Old Testament at Knox and was a relative newcomer to the school, but already he wielded substantially more influence than his job title suggested. This was due in part to his ability to attract a crowd – Gage, who can go head-to-head with NT Wright when it comes to being winsome, taught a very large Sunday school class at Coral Ridge and lectured to rooms packed with both regular and part-time students at the seminary – and in part to the lawyerly shrewdness he honed during his years as a practicing attorney. Taken together with the boldness he demonstrated in presenting his false ideas in both the classroom and to the general public, these same traits also helped Gage win the 2007 street fight at Knox and go on the become the school’s Dean of Faculty. In a perverse way this is an impressive feat, for Gage is now in a position of significant power at an institution that three short years ago came within a whisker of giving him the bum’s rush. Not just anyone could pull this off. So while I have no respect at all for Gage as a theologian, I must admit that when it comes to manipulating people and institutions to get his way, the man’s got serious game.
And this being the case, is it all that surprising that Gage would work to consolidate his power by surrounding himself with an intellectual posse to his liking? Enter Peter Leithart, the perfect man for the job. Think about it. At this point, Gage and Leithart are old buddies with a history going back to the 2003 Federal Vision colloquium. They share many ideas in common including a similar approach to interpreting Scripture. Over they years Leithart has praised Gage, and Gage has promoted Leithart. Further, South Florida is a refreshingly long distance from the Pacific Northwest Presbytery where Leithart is facing charges, thus giving Leithart a chance to get out of Dodge in the physical sense and, more importantly, in the ecclesiastical sense as well. For KTS 2.0 is a far different institution from the original version that was still largely intact when I went there in 2006
When I look at my copy of Knox’s 2006-2007 Academic Catalog under the section heading Denominational Affiliation, I find the following statement,
Knox Seminary is governed by a board of directors which reports to the session of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. – Knox Academic Catalog, p.5
But according to the current KTS website the school is now,
an independent evangelical seminary, within the reformed tradition.
What, no session looking over his shoulder? No stodgy Standing Judicial Commission out there ready to enforce dead orthodoxy and spoil all his fun? For a man on the run like Leithart, this must be music to his ears. But it gets better.
The 2006 Academic Catalog said this about the seminary under the heading Statement of Purpose,
The theological perspective from which training is offered is that of historic Reformed theology as expressed in the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms and in the principles of Presbyterian church government. – 2006 – 2007 Knox Theological Seminary Academic Catalog, p.5
Now compare the Westminster Confession to the current KTS Statement of Faith and you’ll find they’re not exactly the same. Rather than using the extensive, detailed Westminster Confession as its doctrinal basis, Knox now has a truncated, nine-point Statement of Faith that leaves lots of gaps for imaginative types like Gage and Leithart to exploit. For example, the new statement of faith says this about the Scriptures,
The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments (excluding those books commonly called the Apocrypha) are the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.
This sounds good at first blush, but it contains loopholes big enough to drive a truck through. Unlike the Westminster Confession, which carefully defines the Old and New Testaments by listing the 66 canonical books of the Bible, this statement tells us nothing about what or how many books are in the Bible. All we’re told about this undefined canon is that it excludes, “those books commonly called the Apocrypha.” But what does this statement really mean? Which books? Commonly called by whom? The Bible of the Roman Catholic Church-State contains 73 books. These additional seven books – and some fragments – are commonly called “the Apocrypha” by Protestants, but to the papists they’re Holy Scripture. And given that there are about one billion Roman Catholics in the world and that 65 million of them live in the United States – many times the number of Presbyterians on both counts – this can mean only one thing: all you KTS students out there had better start saving your shekels for a Douay-Rheims or New Jerusalem Bible. Better yet, if you’d like extra credit from the big man himself, consider brining a copy of the Vulgate to class.
But the problems don’t stop there. The Statement continues by telling us the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments – whatever KTS means by this – “are the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.” Again, this sounds good if you don’t read it carefully. But closer examination reveals something is amiss. Doesn’t it seem odd that the word “only” modifies just “infallible” but not “inspired” or “authoritative”? It appears that KTS is saying that it is possible for there to be writings that are both inspired and authoritative – that is, contain the Word of God the same sense old-school liberals claimed for the 66 canonical books – but that infallibility attaches only to the undefined KTS canon. Hmm. Now that I think about it, maybe KTS students should add a copy of the Kama Sutra to their book buying list…or perhaps the Koran. It would be such a shame if their theological education were stunted by not reading these inspired and authoritative – though not infallible – texts.
And another thing, the current Knox Statement, unlike the Confession, says nothing about how to interpret Scripture. This is noteworthy in light of the fact that the 2007 controversy at the school involved this very thing. For Warren Gage was accused – rightly I should add – of advancing an interpretive scheme at odds with the Confession of Faith. The school had a choice in 2007: either uphold the Bible and the Confession of Faith, or stick by Warren Gage and his creative theology. Knox made a poor choice. And the Statement of Faith is proof of this.
Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve certainly been inspired by my study the KTS Statement of Faith. So inspired, in fact, that I’d like to beg the readers indulgence for a moment while I do my best Ann Landers impersonation and offer a some inspired – though not infallible – advice to the addled folks in Ft. Lauderdale.
To the administration of Knox seminary I’m inspired to say this: give it up, guys. Your silver has become dross, your wine mixed with water. Dr. Kennedy’s dream of a new Princeton Seminary in Florida went on life support the day the old KTS Board backed off its resolution to fire Gage. It flatlined when the Coral Ridge PC Session overturned his slap-on-the-wrist-suspension. As it stands, all you’re doing is dancing with the rotting corpse of what once was a faithful seminary. There’s no soundness left in it. Nothing but wounds, bruises and putrefying sores. So please, please stop slandering the good names Dr. Kennedy and John Knox with your foolish charade of pretending to be a Reformed seminary when you clearly are not. Your act was lame from the beginning and it certainly hasn’t gotten any better with age. So come on, have done with the matter and just bury the thing already.
And Dr. Gage…I’m almost at a loss for words. Nevertheless, I have some inspired advice for you as well, a modest proposal if you will: first, close your eyes real tight so you can put that vast comedic imagination of yours to its best use; then envision, intuit and imagine yourself with ruby-red slippers on your feet, your body wrapped in a gorgeous scarlet robe, a beautiful crosier in your hand, and, to top it all off, a magnificent shining mitre upon your head; next, click your heels together three times while repeating, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home”; finally – and this really is the most important step – open your eyes, remove your sheep’s clothing – you won’t be needing it anymore – and then run, run, run like Scott Hahn, run home, I say, to your big daddy in Rome, fall at his feet, kiss his ring and beg him to absolve you of your sins. I’ve no doubt he’ll be happy to accommodate you – is he not merciful? – and welcome you into his flock. Once there, I’m sure Il Papa can help secure you a good job in some exciting, exotic, far off locale such as…Steubenville Ohio. Yes, Steubenville – now please don’t be put off by the thought of living in Ohio, I know it’s not very glamorous, but I’ve lived here nearly my whole life and met lots of nice people; trust me, after a few cold, dreary winters the place’ll start to grow on you – where you can join good Dr. Scott at Franciscan University and assist him in his valiant attempt to overthrow the Reformation and deceive, if possible, even the elect. And that, Dr. Gage, is a fairy tale we can all believe in. I’m sure you feel better just thinking about it. Now why not do the honest thing and follow through?
That’s enough of Ann Landers. I kindly thank the readers for their time and patient indulgence. Now let us get back to the business at hand.
What about John Armstrong? In truth, I really don’t have much to say about him. I’m not that familiar with his work and am unaware of any past connection between him and the school or Warren Gage, so I think the best policy at this point is to remain silent. But as Stephen Welch pointed out in his original article, Armstrong has openly defended noted false brethren Norman Shepherd and NT Wright, so I imagine he’ll feel right at home on Federal (Vision) Highway.
If the reader will permit, I’d like to take one last digression before drawing this post to a close. As I’ve looked at the KTS website over the past week, I noticed that one other significant change has taken place since I was there, and I would be remiss in my duties were I to ignore it: the presence of women teachers on the faculty. Check out the Adjunct Faculty page – the same one from which the names Peter Leithart and John Armstrong were removed – and you’ll see that there are two women listed: Heather Clark Adjunct Professor of Counseling and Karen Van Til Gushta Adjunct Professor of Christianity and Culture. So while the school apparently feels some embarrassment over the discovery of its FV leanings, it proudly proclaims its feminist ones. Scripture prohibits women from teaching or exercising authority over men; this clearly implies that women may not serve as seminary professors. But then again, this is Knox Seminary we’re talking about, and Gage and company would rather be cast into the sea with millstones about their necks than obey the logical implications of the Bible. Currently the M.Div. program is open to men only, but, really, there’s no good reason to expect it to remain that way.
Now back to what Lauren said, is it true that the FV first got its foot in the door at Knox as a result of the colloquium? Not exactly, but she’s very close and definitely on the right track. For if you follow the chain of events at Knox, you’ll see that a good argument can be made that the FV first came to Knox when in 2002 the school decided to bring Gage and his FV friendly ideas to KTS. Gage’s hiring was a terrible mistake and represents a gross failure of discernment and due diligence on the part of the school. How is it that Knox Seminary, a supposedly conservative, reformed, Presbyterian school, could be so foolish as to hire a man with his Ph.D. from the University of Dallas, an institution of the Gospel-hating Roman Catholic Church-State? Was not Gage’s Romanist degree prima facie evidence that he lacked the spiritual discernment necessary for teaching in a Christian seminary? And what of the contents of his bizarre 2001 dissertation St. John’s Vision of the Heavenly City? There’s little evidence that anyone at Knox paid it much heed. In the course of researching my book on the 2007 collapse of Knox Seminary, I could find only one person who for certain had read Gage’s work, and that was Dr. R. Fowler White. And did Dr. White spot the obvious flaws in Gage’s work. He did not. In fact he gave Gage’s dissertation a rave review the March 2003 Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society where he wrote,
To date, the most thorough application of literary intertextuality and typological hermeneutic to the interpretation of Revelation is Warren A. Gage’s groundbreaking study, St. John’s Vision of the Heavenly City…Gage identifies a pervasive lexical concordance between Revelation and, of all things, the Gospel of John, which in turn exposes an astounding array of consecutive and chiastic correspondences between the books. Not only does this concordance establish common authorship; it also compels the necessity of a lectionary reading of the two books as companion volumes (much like Luke and Acts), the one hermeneutical to the other. – R. Fowler White, “Revelation,” JETS, March 2008, 138.
Time does not permit a full discussion of the unbiblical interpretive scheme Gage set forth in his dissertation, but I can summarize it thus: imaginative doctrine drawn from literary patterns good, logical inference from the propositions of Scripture bad. The Westminster Confession tells us that the whole counsel of God is either expressly set down in Scripture or may be deduced from it by necessary inference. But Warren Gage does not care for such constraints on his thinking. No, he much prefers to use his vain imagination to conjure up things so clearly at odds with sound, Biblical teaching that there is simply no excuse for the school not to have noticed his shortcomings as a theologian and to have rejected his application.
What shall I say to all this? While the colloquium does not bear full responsibility for brining the Federal Vision to Knox, it did serve as a link in the chain of events that led to this happening by giving false teachers Warren Gage and Peter Leithart an opportunity to network at a KTS sponsored event. I know that Dr. Beisner had good intentions when he planned the colloquium and certainly did not mean for it to serve as a vehicle for advancing the FV cause, but that’s exactly what happened. False teaching is a sin. All of it. And this goes double for false teaching regarding the Gospel. Far from encouraging meetings such as the FV colloquium – the event featured not one but two sets of compatible false ideas: the FV and Gage’s imaginitive typology – the Scriptures repeatedly warn Christians about the leaven of false teaching and the importance of marking separating from those who spread it. Christians are not to give false brethren platforms from which to speak. Lauren understands this critical point very well. Unfortunately, many seminary professors do not. One of the great lessons from the Old Testament is that unless you fight the Lord’s battles in the Lord’s way, you’re going to lose. And until Christians stop trying to deal with false teachers and false teaching by doing what’s right in their own eyes – Dr. Beisner to my knowledge has never attempted to defend the FV colloquium on Biblical grounds – and learn to handle heretics according to the example set down for us in Scripture – see John Robbins’ remarkable Why Heretics Win Battles, a blistering critique of the colloquium and The Auburn Avenue Theology Pros & Cons -perverters of the Gospel will continue to gain ground in what once were Bible believing Presbyterian and Reformed churches.
[…] written at some lenght about Knox in the past (see, here, here, here, here, here, and here). For those unfamiliar with Knox, the history of the school falls into […]
[…] Review I wrote at the time Gage retired, I have on occasion published blog posts on KTS (see here, here and here). But until last week’s interview, admittedly it’s been a while since […]
Quite a story! Thx Steve.
The little foxes poke their heads in and destroy the whole vineyard.
They certainly do.