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Announcing Traditional Model Seminary; Article up at Ref21

January 18, 2022 · by Cameron Shaffer · in Uncategorized

I have an article up at Ref21. It begins,

How I wish seminaries described themselves in press releases (let the reader understand):

Our approach to pastoral preparation is time-tested, rich, and rigorous.

The university has been the handmaiden of the church for over a thousand years. The model of pastoral preparation of devoting years of one’s life to study under specialized masters has produced generations of competent and faithful ministers who have lovingly shepherded Christ’s church. Here at Traditional Model Seminary (TMS), we are committed to continuing this great tradition of pastoral preparation with a successful track record literally millennia long…

This was a fun one to write.

Fundamentalism, Evangelicalism, and Modernity in the EPC

January 17, 2022 · by Cameron Shaffer · in Uncategorized

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Henry Fosdick’s “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” The past century, and especially the years since the founding of Westminster Seminary and the OPC, has seen an almost cyclical effect.

Beginning with the Portland Deliverance in 1890, the PCUSA no longer regarded the Westminster Standards as a necessary summation of biblical teaching, but instead pushed for a reduced set of 5 “fundamentals of the faith.” Following Fosdick’s sermon of 1922, a number of pastors in 1924 issued the Auburn Affirmation in which they argued that requiring conformity to the fundamentals violated their liberty of conscience. These modernists argued that this was imposing an interpretation of the confessional standards on the church, instead of the standards themselves, which went beyond the power of the church’s courts.

So a doctrinal system was reduced to a smaller set of foundational beliefs, whose authority in turn was rejected as violating liberty of conscience. As Lefferts Loetscher documents in The Broadening Church (1954), his history of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy centered on Princeton, the modernists themselves were a tiny proportion of the PCUSA. It was the moderates, who agreed with the fundamentalists in doctrine but disliked their militancy, who set the course for the church. The argument for conscience made by the modernists was also persuasive to the moderates, but only because the Standards were no longer the standards…

Top 10 Most Influential Protestants

January 10, 2022 · by Cameron Shaffer · in Uncategorized

A prompt has been making the rounds asking people who the 10 most influential Protestants were for their lives. This seemed like a self-indulgent, fun exercise. So, with all the usual caveats (my parents & pastors, seminary professors, “What does influential even mean?”, influential as far as I notice, does influential equal most read?, influential vs. favorite, etc.), here they are in chronological order. I’ve also included written works for the different figures that have been particularly instrumental in communicating their influence.

I. Martin Bucer (1491-1551). His Ground and Reason is the best and most practical distillation of the Reformed doctrine of worship. De Regeno Christi and Concerning the True Care of Souls are fantastic applied theologies of the Reformation to pastoral ministry and care for the poor. His Strasbourg liturgies and Letters are also insightful in terms of theological method and Protestant ecumenicism.

II. John Calvin (1509-1564). Calvin is deservedly most famous for his Institutes of the Christian Religion, but I have also found his Commentaries (and sermons) to be most insightful…

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