Tuesday, February 11, 2014

I stipulate that most likely most of us on this blog wouldn’t agree with some of “traditional Methodist doctrine”—I’m Reformed, for one thing, and Methodism has been long associated with Arminianism. And there are other theological disagreements. But just as I cheered on Pope Benedict in his reform and return to Roman Catholic teaching [most particularly in his excellent purging of various deconstructionists and revisionists in the US], so I will cheer on a Methodist seminary’s proclamation of the Gospel along with various other returns to sanity, including a historic Christian tradition in Methodism.

Before all of us can return to the good times of our former traditional interdenominational fights and disagreements over comparatively less momentous differences, we must first at least return to Jesus, to the authority of Holy Scripture, to an acknowledgement of sin and its consequences, as well as the need for repentance, and to an understanding that there is absolute truth, and it is our responsibility to at minimum seek that truth out and then defend it and proclaim it to a secular world.

From Juicy Ecumenism, where there is much more:
God has clearly been blessing this new direction under the leadership of President Deichmann. A recent headline from the Dayton Daily News summed up the seminary’s new situation: “Rebounding from Crisis, United is Among Fastest-Growing Theological Schools in U.S.” United’s tripling of its enrollment in the last four years, with now over 600 students, along with the rapid expansion of its faculty, is all the more remarkable in light of the decline at other official United Methodist seminaries.

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