Listener Austin Cook prompts Pastor Joel to critique Christian higher education, contrasting his limited DBU experience with a sharp theological disagreement regarding John MacArthur's dispensationalism and rejection of typological hermeneutics. Joel advocates for cultural engagement across all sectors, recommending alternatives like Doug Wilson's Grave Friars program and online resources such as Apologia over traditional seminaries he deems compromised by critical race theory. Ultimately, the discussion challenges the necessity of formal degrees for ministry, asserting that local church suffrage under the 1689 Confession empowers ordination without institutional accreditation. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Requesting Five Star Reviews00:02:04
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Austin Cook.
Hi, Pastor Joel.
You've mentioned before that you went to DBU.
Do you have thoughts or concerns regarding that institution?
What do you think about the current state of Christian higher education?
Good question.
Thanks, Austin.
I have no thoughts about DBU, none whatsoever.
I attended the school.
I have a degree from the school.
I did not live on campus.
I never went to chapel.
I got a pass for that, so I wasn't just skipping out, but I had permission not to go.
I never went to a single chapel with the school.
I never went to any of the school events.
I had no experience in the campus life whatsoever.
I showed up for my classes, I took my classes.
I passed my classes, most of them, except I failed art.
And I was like, talk to my art teacher, and I was like, this is insane.
This is a throwaway class, right?
You're supposed to just pass people.
And she said, I know that, Joel.
You are the first student in about 20 years of my art class who's ever failed.
So I take that as a point of pride.
I think that's pretty impressive.
I am the only student at DBU who failed art class.
So I had to end up taking it again and pass.
But all that being said, my point is I don't really know much about the school, I really don't.
And the classes that I took, I didn't take a bunch of Bible classes.
I took a few, but most of the classes that I took were business related.
So I can't speak about DBU, but I will answer your general question about higher education, Christian higher education.
Yeah, I think right now it's Slim Pickens, right?
You got Owen Strand.
I forget the name of the seminary that he teaches at, Grace something, Grace Covenant or Grace Bible or whatever.
You got Master's Seminary.
I personally want to go.
Christian Higher Education Options00:08:01
I love John MacArthur, appreciate him.
I want to go to Master's just because there's enough different, like, John MacArthur is a Calvinistic Baptist.
He's not a Reformed Baptist, so he's not confessional.
He's not Sabbatarian.
He is premillennial.
He's dispensational, right?
So I want something that's going to be covenantal, not dispensational, something that's postmillennial, not premillennial or all millennial.
I want something that is Kyperian, a full orbed all of Christ for all of life, not more two kingdom.
John MacArthur is not radical two kingdom, but I think he falls more in the two kingdom camp than the Kyperian camp.
So John MacArthur, two kingdom, premillennial.
Also, just his hermeneutic.
He despises the analogical or typological, Christological aspect of the hermeneutic that Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians would embrace.
So, Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians, we would have a historical, grammatical, literal hermeneutic, but a fourth piece of analogical, meaning we would be able to read certain things in the Old and New, but especially the Old Testament and see them as typological, pointing towards Christ, where MacArthur can do that, but he can only do that when explicitly said or mentioned by an apostle in the New Testament.
Whereas we would be able to say the apostles are not just giving us the exclusive and exhaustive individual cases, but they're actually giving us a hermeneutic, a principle for reading the Old Testament.
And so we can look at other passages of Isaiah, for instance, or Ezekiel or Jeremiah that are not cited by the apostles in the New Testament and given their fuller meaning.
And yet we can look at these other passages and with careful hermeneutics and careful exegesis to say, yeah, this also points towards Christ or this has a new covenant fulfillment, right?
So John McCarthy, I would disagree on his hermeneutic.
I would disagree on the fact that he's dispensational, not covenantal.
He's non Sabbatarian.
He's non confessional.
He's premillennial.
You know, he's more in the two kingdom camp than the Kyperion camp.
So, all that being said, it depends where you're at, right, Austin?
It depends, you know.
That means that John MacArthur is faithful in many regards.
And he is, you know, more than well underneath the banner of orthodoxy.
So, he is orthodox and better than just orthodox.
I think he's orthodox and faithful.
And I'm grateful for John MacArthur in a million and one different ways.
But I would not go there given my convictions and my understanding of theology and the scripture and how to read the scripture, and also just the need of the hour.
I think providentially, the time and place that God has put us, I think one of the things that we desperately are in need of is all of Christ for all of life, not just the home and the church, but applying all of Christ for all of life.
I think Christians should be fighting the culture war.
Number one, I think we have to wake up and say there is a culture war, and two, that that is a part of our Christian mission.
Now, that's not a substitute.
It doesn't overshadow preaching the gospel and evangelism and conversion, but it is a part of the Great Commission.
Making disciples, going and baptizing and teaching involves teaching people to live out the gospel and to also live out God's law, his moral law, in every realm of life.
And that includes the political sphere, that includes culture, the arts, academia, medicine, all these different things.
And so that's something that MacArthur has gotten involved in the court.
Culture war when it encroaches on his doorstep, right?
So, when Gavin Newsom says you got to shut down your church, then John MacArthur will take a culture war stand.
And I'm incredibly grateful for it and his courage because a lot of guys didn't.
But I think it's beyond that.
I think that we actually need to be infiltrating every area of life and bringing the gospel to bear.
So, all that being said, I think that's the need of the hour.
My differences in terms of philosophy of ministry, theology, and hermeneutics would make it to where I couldn't go to masters.
However, if you could, Great.
If you're dispensational, if you're non confessional, if you're non covenantal, if you're premillennial, if you have a literal, grammatical, historical hermeneutic, which I do, but you reject the analytical portion, so you would disagree with Sinclair Ferguson, you would disagree with R.C. Sproul, you would disagree with guys like that, then MacArthur, his school, I think, would be great for you.
So you could go to MacArthur Seminary, so you got Owen Strand and whatever the name of his is.
I forget.
You've got MacArthur.
There's some other ones that are faithful.
I think there's like a John Knox seminary that I've heard good things about.
So there's a few.
Also, you could go to Doug Wilson and do his Grave Friars thing.
That's like, you know, now I don't know if you'll get in.
It's only like, I think, 12 or maybe 20 guys, but it's just a part of his local church, which I think is one of the best things when you get seminary level training, theological training in the context of the local church.
But it's still robust and hefty and lots of reading assignments and writing assignments and preaching, and you get to sit in.
On Christ Church, Doug's Church there in Moscow, Idaho, their elders' meetings, and all these different things.
And so a lot of guys have done that and gone out of that into formal ministry and been just as trained, if not better trained, than going to your typical traditional seminary.
Other than that, though, like right now, the SBC, I don't feel great about Al Moeller Seminary.
I think Al Moeller says the right things, but he continues to harbor critical race theory professors.
And you can just look at the library.
At Southern Seminary and find Woke Church on the Shelf by Eric Mason and those kinds of things.
And I think I mentioned Albert Muller not to say that he's the worst, but I think that would be the best.
Danny Aiken would be worse.
So I think that's the best of the six SBC seminaries.
And even that one, I would just be a little bit nervous about.
So I would say there's a handful of some seminaries that might be worth going to.
But that said, I think there's so much opportunity today by God's grace and in his providence with the internet and all these different things and podcasts.
And I mean, you can do Bonson U, right?
With Apologia, right?
So you can go to Jeff Durbin, James White, you can go to Apologia.
And they have this for free, all of Greg Bonson's teachings.
They call it Bonson U, Bonson University.
You can take that for free.
You can, for $8 a month, get the Canon Plus app and just a plethora of content.
Right now, I'm going through the, it's like a 37 part series by Kenneth Gentry on post millennialism.
And it's the recordings, it's super old.
You can tell it's tapes and they have to stop to turn over the tape.
But you can hear what he's saying.
It's old, not great quality, but you can hear what he's saying.
And, And so it's super old, but it's his seminary class.
It's like a 37 part seminary class that I'm getting for $8 a month by doing Canon Plus and a whole bunch of other stuff too.
You can get courses in economics by Greg Bonson's son, David Bonson, on the Canon Plus app.
So I just think that between the Moscow guys, between Apologia, between our ministry, between other faithful ministries, there's just enough content that you can get.
Yes, there are some things that you probably, well, you can get these too, but you just probably won't do.
Here's what seminary does.
Seminary, in some sense, it forces you to learn things that you would not want to learn on your own, like languages.
Some guys want to learn that, but typically, guys are much more interested in systematic theology and biblical theology than they are Greek and Hebrew, myself included.
So, I'm weaker personally.
I'll admit that I am weaker on languages than I probably would be if I had spent years and years in seminary.
But I am stronger than a lot of seminary graduates that I know in all.
Seminary Requirements and Compromises00:03:33
Other areas that, because of their seminary and some of their compromise in that seminary, they didn't give them a full orbed theology on blank, you know, this or that.
So, all that being said, it depends on you, it depends on the gifts that God's given you, how disciplined are you, all those kinds of things.
But assuming that you're disciplined and you're motivated and you want to be in ministry and you want to be in ministry faithfully, able to teach with experience and knowledge.
If you have that desire and you have that discipline, I think you can learn without going to seminary, or you could go to a few of the good ones.
But by and large, the days of, oh, well, let's just go to this seminary, and pretty much any Baptist seminary or any Presbyterian, we can trust them.
I think those days are gone.
The last thing I'll say, bringing it full circle all the way back to our question about Baptist polity and who has authority within the 1689 Reformed Baptist church polity for administering the Lord's Supper, baptism, or preaching or teaching.
That's one of the beauties of being Reformed Baptist.
So I don't know what you are, but I'm Reformed Baptist.
And if you are Reformed Baptist, ordination, the institute that has the authority to ordain ministers of the gospel, elders and deacons within Reformed Baptist theology, church polity is the local church.
It is the common suffrage, is the language used in 1689, meaning it's the majority vote of the members of that church.
So that's, again, I think that's one strength.
Right, and I understand on the other side of the coin, you can make that out to be a weakness.
Like, oh, well, you're gonna have a bunch of Baptist preachers that aren't theologically sound because they never got a formal education.
Um, that's possible, yeah.
You could have some uneducated Baptist preachers, but you could also have some highly educated, formally educated, but compromised Presbyterian preachers.
And I think we've seen that.
So in the Baptist world, you've got guys who don't have a degree and they do some things that are bad, like Stephen Furtick is in the Baptist world, technically.
On the Presbyterian side, you've got Amy Bird, you've got Tim Keller, highly educated.
But he's a Marxist, straight up.
So you can have the highly theologically trained Marxist, or you can have the Baptist who's faithful, but it's like, gosh, I wish he knew a little bit more.
And obviously, these are extremes.
In both worlds, you can be highly trained Presbyterian and faithful, and you can be a Baptist and not dumb.
You could be an educated and trained Baptist.
My point is just to say that within the actual Baptist confession, within Reformed Baptist polity, You don't have to go to seminary to be a minister of the gospel, to be an elder.
And to be fair, on the Presbyterian side, this wouldn't work in the PCA, it wouldn't work in the OPC, but if you're a part of Doug Wilson, his presbytery, the CREC, they don't require that someone go to seminary because if they did, then Doug Wilson would not be qualified.
Doug Wilson did not go to seminary and he knows far more and is far more faithful than most people who have gone to seminary.
And so his presbytery.
His presbytery has recognized, okay, that's an extra biblical requirement.
The Bible doesn't say, thou shalt go to seminary.
Biblical Teaching Benchmarks00:01:02
What the Bible does say is, you must be able to teach.
It doesn't say how you get there.
That's the point.
The Bible says, here's the benchmark, but it doesn't say, and the only way to get there is with this curriculum and this syllabus and these professors and this piece of paper giving you, you know, your credentials.
Seminaries like to pretend as though that's in the Bible, but it's not.
The Bible says, you must be able to teach, which means you must be diligent to learn.
And the reality is, in our day and age, there are more and more avenues to learn and to learn well if you're disciplined and if you have that desire without taking a loan and without giving your money to seminary that you find out halfway through your degree is woke.
Okay, so that's my answer.
Thanks so much for listening.
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