Midcourse correction at Westminster

Tremper Longman continues to inveigh on WTS. I'm going to comment on his latest post:

https://www.facebook.com/tremper.longman/posts/824038304282132?fref=nf

As you know a number of us are concerned about what we understand to be heavy-handed moves by the administration…

i) It's  possible that the WTS boad/administration has been "heavy-handed." It's also possible that some colleagues who were originally more supportive of the OT dept. reversed themselves when the sensed a change in the weather. 

Conversely, since Gaffin, for one, is safely retired, he's free to speak his mind. The fact that his public statements have defended the newer regime can't be chalked up to the fear of losing his job. 

In addition, I've heard horror stories about the heavy-handed liberal culture of Calvin College, &c. So it's a two-way street. 

ii) We also need to distinguish between optics and substance. Even if, for the sake of argument, the WTS administration was maladroit in dealing with the problem, that doesn't mean it wrongly identified the source of the problem.

…to shape the seminary in a different direction than the proud history of the school would lead. 

Well, historically, WTS was founded to carry the torch of the Old Princeton theology after Princeton Seminary went liberal. What we're witnessing is a replay of the Fundamentalist–Modernist controversy, with Enns reprising the role of Briggs. The names change but the play remains the same. 

I certainly acknowledge the right of the school to define itself in any direction it should chose to go, but people should know that direction and judge for themselves if they want to support it. 

I like the direction in which WTS is  going. It's a long overdue midcourse correction. 

Also, they should be aware of the tactics used in accomplishing their purposes. Though he does not play a role in the Chris Fantuzzo’s account of his treatment at Westminster, we should remember Carl Trueman’s honest and public description of the means that the seminary used to accomplish that purpose that I posted earlier.

Actually, I don't recall having seen the offending statement by Trueman. I think that may have been from an earlier post before Longman changed the privacy settings to make his posts public.

In any event, if Trueman was an instrumental figure in the ouster of Enns (not that Trueman could do that single-handedly), then so much the better for Trueman. 

For those of you who are not familiar with the academic process, it is unbelievable that the president would make an appointment as in the case of Iain Duguid or let go a member like Chris Fantuzzo without departmental involvement from the very start. This is particularly the case for Westminster. It may be legal. It may be hidden away in the bylaws, but it is unprecedented…

i) To begin with, this complaint is silly. From what I can tell, the WTS board/administration thinks the OT dept. needs to be rebuilt from scratch. In that event, you wouldn't expect the board/administration to seek the advice and consent of the very people whom they deem to be the source of the problem. 

ii) And is this really unprecedented? When Jack Preus lowered the boom at Concordia Seminary, did he first consult the liberals? When SBC conservatives regained control of their seminaries, did they consult the liberal faculty first?  

I'll now switch to Fantuzzo, whose letter Longman posted:

Doug Green has received was not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern. 

And a gratifying pattern at that.

I was warned by a supervisor not to return to that world, and former teachers told me about the toxic culture at WTS.

"Toxic"! Where have we heard that before? Witness the evolution of an urban legend before your very eyes.

After the board meeting, Peter Lillback (twice) conveyed his belief that I would become “a superstar” (his term)—just finish the dissertation! Then Jeff informed him that President Lillback had decided to block the department’s decision to promote me. (Peter was not present.) I also indicated that Tipton and I had discussed the matter, adding that he had suggested in personal conversation that he might be more careful. My comment got back to Tipton (another recording?), and he phoned me. During the conversation, he denied telling me he might be more careful.Dick Gaffin [a former colleague of Longman and Dillard’s] was also familiar with my position and pledged to support me before the faculty and board, if/when I ever required it.)

An obvious problem with this account is that it's a he said/she said recap. So whose version of events are you supposed to believe? 

The only difficulty I faced during the interview process came in a phone interview with Greg Beale, which I thought inappropriate because he wasn’t a Westminster faculty member. He mainly voiced objections to Longman and Dillard’s An Introduction to the Old Testament, expressing disagreement with their views on Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, authorship of Isaiah, and the composition and date of Daniel. 

Good for him.

We disagreed about his reading of Longman/Dillard, but nothing more came of it.

Beale isn't the only one to reads their introduction that way. So does O. Palmer Robertson. 

In this phone conversation, Tipton also objected to my view of the controversy over Enns’s, Inspiration and Incarnation. I thought OTI students should read the book for themselves, that we (OT students) had an opportunity to go back to the drawing board. I told Tipton that I believed WTS was drawing lines too strongly, that it was rolling back the clock too far, that this was due to the model of Enns’s book as a cancer: WTS was in danger of cutting away healthy tissue. His response? I should “seriously start searching for another job,” for my view of the Enns controversy had disclosed that I “lacked sufficient militancy to be a Westminster professor.” 

I'd say that's a pretty good reason to ax Fantuzzo. And that's based on his one-sided, self-serving account. 

Later Lane Tipton objected to my teaching on the NT writers’ use of the OT. I discovered that a certain student was taking him recordings of my lectures, and I believe he was feeding this student questions to raise in class.

What's wrong with recording his lectures? Rather than secondhand summaries, anonymous tips, or unsourced attributions, you have the speaker in his own words. Isn't that a fairer way to judge his position? 

Recognize that no one had ever come to observe my classroom.

If his lectures were recorded and distributed, isn't in-person observation superfluous? 

Students were telling me (I believe as early as 2010) that in his AP and ST classes Scott Oliphint would openly object to my teaching the comparative approach in OTI. The mere inclusion of the subject meant I was “Enns all over again,” and “anyone who thinks understanding the ancient Near Eastern environment is important for biblical interpretation has an aberrant doctrine of Scripture.”

This seems to be hearsay rather than direct quotes from Oliphint. 

When Mike asked Jeff to explain this act, he was told that certain faculty were "strongly opposed" to my advancement.In this conversation, Tipton warned that opposition was mounting against me. I inquired further, and he said Beale (now a voting faculty member) objected to my teaching about multiple hands in the authorship of Isaiah.You can imagine my colleagues’ reaction. Neither the President nor the Dean had consulted Mike or Doug about this decision. As senior OT scholars, their professional counsel had not been sought; as faculty members, their academic and administrative roles had been disregarded; as leaders of the OT department, their choice of colleague had been rejected without discussion. No one had spoken with them about the matter before this meeting, and no open discussion about Peter’s decision was permitted afterwards. It was decided, having already been determined behind closed doors. In what was historically a faculty-run institution, Peter’s act was unprecedented: my colleagues and I had been snubbed; Iain had been promised the job by Presidential fiat! In my view, Peter, Jeff (and Iain?) had treated the OT department, the WTS faculty and board, and its staff and students (all typically involved in the hiring process) with utter contempt. For Doug Green (at least), this abuse of power was a sign of things to come.

Several problems with this complaint:

i) Once again, if the WTS board/administration regarded the OT dept. as hopelessly compromised, you wouldn't expect the administration and the board to seek their input. From what I can tell, the board/administration think the problems with the OT dept. require a root-n-branch remedy.  

ii) Fantuzzo is trying to reframe the issue as a conflict between the administration and the faculty. Yet by his own admission, some of the opposition to the OT dept. came from faculty. Indeed, we know from the divided vote to grant Enns tenure that the faculty was quite polarized on the issue. 

So what Fantuzzo is really insinuating is that each department should be autonomous, not merely in relation to the administration, but in relation every other department. The NT dept, or church history dept. or systematics dept. should have no vote on hiring or firing in the OT dept.  

iii) In addition, consultation with the OT dept. would give its faculty lead-time to mobilize opposition. Recruit students to the cause. Mount a public campaign. "Save our Seminary." Why invite opposition? 

iv) Are students typically involved in the hiring process? I guess I never got the memo. 

Mine is yet another chapter in the abuse of power by Westminster’s administration and board. And OT studies at the seminary is characterized by the doctrinaire control of OT interpretation by non-specialists…

The hermeneutical issues are interdisciplinary. How the OT is fulfilled in the NT is a question for OT and NT scholars alike. That can't be compartmentalized, for that, by definition, involves an understanding of the OT and NT alike.

Moreover, when Enns makes 1 Cor 10:4 a paradigm-case for his hermeneutic, or when he and McCartney make Mt 2:15 another paradigm-case, surely NT scholars have at least as much competence to address that issue as OT scholars.

…who aggressively seek to marginalize colleagues wanting to do justice to the OT’s distinctive ‘voice’ as witness to Christ.

But the very question at issue is whether the OT does, indeed, witness to Christ. Or do NT speakers and authors impute an OT witness to Christ in defiance of the sense, reference, intentions, implications, and context of the original? 

Tremper Longman there is no liberalism creeping in at Westminster... Doug Green and Chris Fantuzzo are not liberals by any stretch of the imagination.

The fact that Longman vouches for his erstwhile colleagues hardly inspires confidence. He's not exactly an impartial character witness. Heck, he even defends John Goldingay.  

The present Westminster would fire or "retire" both Ray and me and Al...

A promising development. 

Jonathan Bonomo What we see here is a world in which those in positions of power prevail over the humble in deals made behind closed doors. This is the way of the world, not the kingdom of Jesus. May the Lord have mercy upon his people.

Some readers may remember Bonomo as a member of the "Reformed Catholic" clique (a la Paul Owen). Gives you some idea of where he's coming from.