From Zorro - And My Dogmatics Professor - Otto Heick - About Knapp

 The ELS pastors want you to know this is Woods'
explanation of Knapp's opaque theology.
But I want you to know that a Calvinist gave America
the terms  of Objective Justification and Subjective Justification.

 Mrs. Ichabod and I knew Dr. Heick quite well.
He took us to dinner, ate at our apartment,
and took us to his wife's grave. Waterloo Lutheran Seminary.

I happened upon this reference in G.C. Knapp in working through Heick's A History of Christian Thought. It occurs in Book Four, The Disintegration of Confessional Theology; chapter seven, German Rationalism; section head, The Theologians of Rationalism. The page reference is 128.


"Frequently all the theologians of this period have been thought of being as one stripe. This is not quite correct. Two main schools of thought can be distinguished among them: the Supernaturalists and the Rationalists proper. The former exerted a kind of restraining influence in the earlier period of the Enlightenment; they marked the transition from Orthodoxy and pietism to rationalism...Relying on Kant's axiom that pure reason cannot establish religious truth, the second group of Supernaturalists emphasized that reason cannot deny the claims of Christianity. Among the proponents of this view were F.V. Reinhard at Wittemberg and Dresden (d. 1812) and G.C. Knapp at Halle (d. 1825). They labored to prove by rational means the possibility, necessity, and reality of the content of supernatural revelation. Truth was to be proved by Scripture. The idea was that Scripture, not reason, was to decide in matter of religion; but reason establishes what the teaching of Scripture is."

The rationalizing tendency sticks close to pietistic outbreaks, most notably in the argument that we can hinder the divine operation of the Holy Spirit working through the Word by our human foibles. From there, it is a quick jump to we are responsible for relative success or failure in the empirical growth of church organizations. Very rational.

Z

Seminaries Merging Right and Left - Mostly Left

Leonard Woods Jr is the Calvinist who translated the Halle University lectures of
George Christian Knapp,
coining the English terms of Objective and Subjective Justification,
which are now treated as directly revealed by the Holy Spirit
to CFW Walther and JP Meyer.

Andover-Newton Theological School, founded in 1807, is closing its Boston campus and moving, due to rapidly shrinking enrollment. The new president's adultery, revealed just before his installation in 2014, did not help matters.

Andover-Newton is considered the canary in the coalmine of mainline seminaries. Like Colgate-Rochester-Crozier--where Walter Rauschenbusch and Martin Luther King studied at its component parts--the endowment funds have helped delay the final stages of decomposition.

Those who love Universal Objective Justification will grieve that the historic birthplace of Double Justification, Objective and Subjective, will be turned into something more memorable, like a gourmet food mall or a quaint collection of libraries where the homeless can sleep and bathe.

Biographical details of Woods:

His son, Leonard, scholar, born in Newbury, Massachusetts, 24 November, 1807; died in Boston, Massachusetts, 24 December, 1878, was graduated at Union college in 1827 and at Andover Theological Seminary in 1830. In 1831-'3 he was resident graduate scholar at Andover, and in 1833 he was licensed to preach. His private pupil, Richard Henry Dana, says of him: " At the age of twenty-four years he had been the first scholar in the Phillips academy, the first in every branch at Union, had been graduated at the Theological seminary the acknowledged foremost man of his period, and had published a translation of Knapp's Christian Theology, enriched with a long and fully thought-out preface, with original notes showing profound scholarship. He was assisting Professor Stuart in his commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, ' and aiding Professor Robinson in editing the ' Biblical Repository, ' then the most scholastic periodical in America, and was assistant instructor of Hebrew in the seminary." He edited the " Literary and Theological Review" in New York city in 18"34-'7, and although that periodical was the organ of the Presbyterian and Congregational churches, he directly opposed the opinions of many of its supporters, objecting to the proposals of temperance and anti-slavery societies and popular revivalists, and to the German Reformation, and defending the few and simple conditions of admission into the Anglican communion, as compared with the minute requirements of doctrine in his own church. He was professor of sacred literature in Bangor theological seminary in 1836-'9, and from 1839 till 1866 president of Bowdoin. 

Although Andover was a Calvinist seminary founded as conservatives fled the horrors of Unitarian Harvard, Andover has ended in the same far Left spectrum of mainline dysmorphia.

Covenant Relations

Andover Newton has historical covenants with the American Baptist Churches (USA) and the United Church of Christ. 

The School has a long-standing and progressive partnership with the Unitarian Universalist Association and offers UU students the courses and support they need to pursue ministerial fellowship with the UUA.  

I am dabbing tears from my eyes at this moment - tears of laughter. The old adage is true - "Young Calvinist, old Unitarian."

Just as UOJ Halle lecturer Knapp denied the Biblical foundation of the Holy Trinity, so does the Calvinist seminary home of Knapp's translator deny the Holy Trinity altogether.

• The American Baptists are the ELCA wing of Anabaptists. 
• The United Church of Christ is pan-religious. 
• The Unitarian Universalist organization is openly atheistic.

ELCA Seminaries Crumpling Under the Weight of Declining Enrollment and Soaring Costs

1. Southern Seminary (ELCA) is rejoicing about its new location at an ELCA college. 
2. The Berkeley ELCA seminary is joining the chorus.
3. Gettysburg and Philadelphia, 100 miles apart (for Mequon grads) will merge.
4. The Chicago campus is dwindling, overbuilt from the start.
5. Columbus - Trinity - is also feeling the pain.
6. Luther Seminary is selling two parcels of land as part of its "long-term development plans." Uh-huh.

The security camera at ELS headquarters captured this photo.