Artful Dodger wanted to know what the difference was between my study at Notre Dame and the people I criticize for studying at Fuller Seminary. I am only too happy to reply.
First of all, I have never lied about going to Notre Dame or Yale or anywhere else. In contrast, David Valleskey lied to my face about studying at Fuller Seminary. His friend, Frosty Bivens, boasted about studying there - in front of the entire Midland circuit, but he also denied studying there. Larry Olson's friend blew smoke in Christian News about Our Staff Infection going to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl Parade when Olson had already written about his slobbery pilgrimage to visit Don McGavran,
Second. Notre Dame and Yale were purely academic programs, aimed at producing scholars. I did not have to adhere to a particular confession of faith. In contrast, Fuller is a seminary that pretends to be a graduate school. Fuller has a definite stance against the inerrancy of the Scriptures and disciplines those students who disagree with women's ordination. Even more significant, Fuller teaches a particular kind of ministry, based upon an ideological mix of marketing, Pentecostalism, rationalism, and sociology. Fuller is the home and headquarters for the odious Church Growth Movement. Its purpose is not to produce scholars but to manufacture disciples of Church Growth, who will bring in more disciples for Church Growth. Fuller grads identify with Church Growth, and all Church Growth advocates look at Fuller with fond, deluded devotion.
Third. Fuller does not see itself as an academic program. Its professors get degrees from real schools. Even Pentecostal Babtist C. Peter Wagner (recommended by WELS Pastor Reuel Schulz) earned a degree at Princeton. Several earned degrees under Karl Barth in Switzerland. Faculty at Yale and Notre Dame have degrees from those schools or from those considered their equals. They would laugh at a DMin from Fuller teaching anything.
Fourth. This is the most important. Missouri, WELS, the Little Sect, and ELCA have shown institutional support for Fuller Seminary by sending their leadership there for training, supporting that education with money from the offerings, and promoting those lucky devils with Fuller educations. Almost 100% of the Lutheran leadership in America has identified with an anti-Lutheran, anti-Confessional, anti-Scriptural seminary, because Fuller has the answers and Lutheran doctrine does not - they imagine. In fact, WELS is so far up the digestive tract of Fuller that they can see the bottom of Kent Hunter's shoes. Moreover, WELS is so deeply involved in training at Trinity Divinity in Deerfield that the sect was listed twice in the Trinity catalogue.
The Lutheran church bodies have no commitment to genuine Lutheran scholarship, such as Luther studies or publishing the works of Lutheran orthodoxy. But they are united in working together on the basis of the Fuller Seminary ideology, best expressed by the numbskulls who plagiarized Groeschel, Stanley, and the rest.
