So here are some true facts in a skewed narrative. The author of this report, Stephen Welch, is lamenting the demise of Knox Theological Seminary, his alma mater. Allow me to provide a bit more perspective.
Back in the heyday of Knox being more to the writer’s liking, he wants to say there was no hermaneutical funny business.
“James Kennedy died on September 5, 2007, and his funeral service was on September 13. Almost immediately after he was buried the Seminary began to depart from its vision. Reports came to the dean of students complaining about statements that professor Warren Gage made in class.”
However, comma.
I was a participant in the Knox Theological Seminary Colloquium on the Federal Vision in August of 2003, four years prior to this. We had periods of round table discussion, with men from both sides presenting papers. We shared meals together, and taking one thing with another, it was one of the few moments in this whole sorry controversy where things were basically being done right.
One of the great ideas that Knox had was to have a series of devotional lectures, unrelated to to the topic of our controversy. These lectures were presented to us by Warren Gage, courtesy of Knox Seminary. The lectures were great — I didn’t buy everything necessarily, but the lectures were great. We were delighted with them, and the lectures were brought to us, hosted by, delivered to us in the name of, the old orthodox seminary.
Some of the things that Welch objects to in this article were part of those lectures. So the intimation that the death of D. James Kennedy was the signal for “the heretic” to show his true colors is false. It would be more accurate to say that the death of Kennedy was the signal for somebody to mount a complaint about something that the seminary had been doing out in the open for years.
There. The record is straight now.