Theological Teaching Discourages the Ministry

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 10, 1907

Theological Teaching Discourages the Ministry

THE query is raised in many religious periodicals. Why are so few young men presenting themselves as candidates for the ministry? That we need go no farther than the popular pulpit to find the reason has been suggested by some; and this is not a groundless suggestion, as the following incident will illustrate: A young man who intended to become a preacher went to the theological school of the Chicago University. At the end of his course he decided not to go into the ministry. He stated that it was the instruction received at the theological school that caused him to make this decision. What he had been taught was this: “There is nothing miraculous in the Bible; Jesus Christ was the Son of God only in the sense that all of us are; and the death of Jesus Christ did nothing for us.” When the assimilation of such teaching causes a Christian young man to give up his purpose of being a minister of the gospel, it is but reasonable to expect that the preaching of those same theories by men who have had that sort of theological training will have the same effect upon the young men who hear it that it did upon this young man. If it prevented his becoming a minister after he had become a candidate, it will prevent others from becoming candidates. Not only that, but, so far as its influence goes, it is turning the ministry away from gospel teaching to the teaching of a sort of religious philosophy and man-worship, destroying genuine faith, and turning sanctuaries into palaces of doubt.