Question (Unaccredited Bible Schools)

<<As a Jew, I am always fascinated by the idea that one can become an expert in the Hebrew bible without being able to read biblical Hebrew.>>

I guess that depends on how you define "expert." If you divine "expert" as having a BA or an MA, then yes, one can become an expert without knowing Hebrew. If you define "expert" as having an accredited MTh or higher, Hebrew is typically required. Also, out of curiousity, what persuades you to think that Hebrew is required to learn the Hebrew scriptures? Do you not trust modern translations?

 

I think that the main reason that these kind of phony Bible schools exist is simply because they can. Religious exemptions make schools of religion immune from state regulation. I guess that some of them are conscious scams while others are sincere efforts run by naive people from church basements.

A more interesting question to me is why they are almost inevitably extremely conservative, theologically speaking.

I guess that the Catholics and the 'mainline' Protestants have strong organizational structures and clear educational requirements for their clergy. But fundamentalism has often been kind of anti-intellectual, stressing the Athens/Jerusalem distinction, while their ordination requirements might be considerably less formalized. But as the fundies move upscale into the middle class, becoming evangelicals in the process, they start to place a higher value on education.

So my hypothesis is that most Catholics and 'mainline' Protestant clergy already have legitimate credentials as a condition of their ordination, while lots of ministers in little independent churches probably feel some need to upgrade.

How can people take these degrees seriously? I guess it depends on who the 'people' are. I really doubt if scholars in religion take them seriously. Highly institutionalized church hierarchies probably wouldn't. But parishoners and members of the wider community might. It adds to one's stature among laymen if one is not only "Rev." but also "Dr.". And laymen are rarely in a position (or motivated) to evaluate their minister's higher education.

It's more difficult if we ask whether the ministers take their own degrees seriously. Perhaps some do. Self-deception is awfully tempting. If a degree is *legal* (as virtually all religious degrees are), if it actually required some work, and if it stroked a man's ego by recognizing his life experience, little annoyances like lack of accreditation from the "fallen" world can probably be ignored. The doctorate is a shining symbol of a higher calling and needs no help from Athens.

That raises another question: are questionable degrees more common among sectarian religious separatists?

I don't know, but I sense that there could be some research topics in the sociology of religion lurking in this religious degree-mill issue.

 

A recognized difference between Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism is that while both branches of Christianity may hold very similar basic tenets, the former is often accused of being anti-intellectual. (see relevant articles in EDT). While this claim may be true of a general trend in Fundamentalism, I certainly don't think that this is always an accurate claim. Often Fundamentals espouse the KJV as inspired.

On the other hand, anyone who has read through an issue of the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, a publication of an association of Evangelicals, would find little basis to question the scholarship of its contributors. Often Evangelicals consider only the autographa of Scripture inspired.

 

Hell's bells, Nosborne, it stupefies me. I also don't understand how anybody can claim to be a New Testament expert if they don't even know what language the thing was written in.

Notice also: you won't find me ever claiming expertise in Hebrew--sketchy would be an overly kind description of my awareness, which is decidedly inferior to that of most clergy in my denomination. (But I can probably read Yiddish better than any of 'em. I recall Bundists hollering at Arbeterverband types in my younger days...nu, so I digress.) The ability to understand English commentaries based on the Hebrew text (or Aramaic, or Greek) does NOT constitute expertise.

All the best for Pesach, by the way.

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Hi Bill Dayson: I think you hit on an interesting point. We're as separatist and sectarian as anybody, but we're also highly institutionalized. Setting aside the issue of whether or not our unaccredited seminary is "as good as" somebody else's accredited seminary, under normal circumstances you don't get out without meeting very long-established criteria for studies--independent of any claims to personal piety, etc. The argument "I'm godly so being a moron is OK" would not work. The professors, not local church laymen, vet candidates for ordination.

There's the rub. Without, again, getting into the non-education-related question of the prerogatives of the local church, well-intentioned but--in the field--uneducated persons are in no position to judge real expertise.

For example: I'm a maths idiot. It takes nothing to fool me into thinking you're a great mathematician. Now, I want to be sure my bank account balances. The average layperson wants his/her cleric to be knowledgeable. The problem is that once you get more complicated than a chequebook, or I get more complicated than simple explanations of the NT in a sermon, neither I, in the first case, nor Fritz the Layman, in the second, is in any real position to know if you or I, respectively, have any idea what we're talking about. All Janko the Maths Idiot or Fritz the Layman can do is react to the impressiveness of displays of (ostensible) learning--which might, for all that, even be displays of real learning but needn't be. This explains how people who are notorious flummerers can sweet-talk congregations into believing they're brilliant. If a shared "edge" of ideological extremism can be introduced as a binding agent, so much the better. If said flummerer either erases his tracks or just plain brazens it out, how's the poor congregation to know?

Denominational hierarchies and oversight don't always work (the current mess in the RC Church illustrates that, sadly), but when they do, the local congregation is in fact afforded some protection against the intellectual fraud, the educational flummerer, and the ecclesiastical mountebank. Not perfect protection, but some--sort of like accreditation.

 

Speaking of such things, currently I'm in dialogue with ISOT-Asia. This school is in the Philippines with mostly an Asian student body. By way of contrast from some USA schools here oft discussed here ISOT-Asia** offers these relevant language courses in its MA/MDiv programs:

Elements of Biblical Hebrew
Introduction to Hebrew Exegesis
Exegesis of Poetic Lit
Exegesis of Wisdom Lit
Advanced Hebrew Grammar and Rapid Reading
Elements of Biblical Greek
Introduction to Greek Exegesis
Exegesis of 1 Cor
Advanced Greek Grammar and Rapid Greek Reading

THM Courses continue with four MORE courses in Greek being offered.

**BTW Unk, now that I have the catalogue, the faculty appears to be about 70% Asian.



[As my disclaimer I had only two years of Hebrew and four of Greek LONGGGGGGG ago!]

 

It's not that I don't "trust" translations; most translators, Christian and Jewish, are far more skillful with biblical Hebrew that I could ever hope to be.

No, my objection is that any translation, no matter how skillful the translator, reflects the word and phrase choices of the translator. Unless you actually have access to the original, you not only can't KNOW what choices the translator may have made, you are probably not aware that choices were even MADE.

Another reason for reading in the original (even with help from translations and dictionaries) is that the language has its own beauty of expression. Let me give you a VERY trivial example, with apologies to the real scholars out there):

Jacob buys Esaus' birthright with a "mess of potage". Okay, the story as told is clear enough and the reader in English understands the transaction. However, the Hebrew word for "potage" seems to me to be related to the words for "earth", "man", and "red". To ME, anyway, there's a much BIGGER story here now, one that you just can't fit into a translation and still have a readable English text flow.

You can also tell things about the writers from the text. The Book of Job, for example, is written in Hebrew that is simple and restricted, almost like those "special English" broadcasts from Voice of America. Now, that suddenly makes brilliant sense once the reader understands that "Ninevah, that great city", is NOT A JEWISH CITY!

Well, I am truly NO SCHOLAR and I could be wrong on all counts...but if you don't do Hebrew, how would you know??

 

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Would it be wrong to imply that because it has been reported that one SACS school had this scandal, that every school that SACS accredits must have similar impropieties? Of course it would. As asinine as it sounds, that is what this whole thread sounds like. Rather than looking at the school on the merits...not only what it teaches, and who teaches it, but what they have produced... we castigate it because it does not have the RA seal of approval. It asserts that because one school is seriously substandard, then all of this vein must be.

And right now some of the degrees from the SACS approved, RA approved instituion in Louisiana are not worth the paper they are written on. They have no more value than...a degree from Lake Charles right now. Wonder if there will be an outing parade of them?

Ok I know that last paragraph will get me flamed royally, but I am going out of town for a week....lol.

Good post Dr. Clifton.

P.S. Italics are my response...and excuse the previous post...I could not delete it nor make the corrections oin time.

 

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I just got off the phone with a friend of mine who is currently enrolled in one of the Doc programs at Andersonville. I will not crucify him, but this was in his words his reasons for going to ATS...

1.) He could do it at home/office.
2.) He could do it at his own pace.
3.) He could get into their program.
4.) He could afford their program as opposed to U.T.S. in Dayton.
5.) Since his church was not paying for it/sponsoring anyway their opinion on the matter did not count.
6.) He knwe many other people enrolled.
7.) They (ATS) said they were acredited and by everything he found it they were acredited.

Please do not laugh at #7. I know a guy who has a BA from Univ of PA, 2 Masters degrees from Harvard, and a Doc from U.T.S. (all RA) that has a Bible/Ministry school and guess who his acreditor is? That is right...ACI.

ANyway...my friend and I will be gong to a conference this week. Maybe by the end, Mr. Grover I can convince him to at least look into SATS.

 

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I just got off the phone with a friend of mine who is currently enrolled in one of the Doc programs at Andersonville. I will not crucify him, but this was in his words his reasons for going to ATS...

1.) He could do it at home/office.
2.) He could do it at his own pace.
3.) He could get into their program.
4.) He could afford their program as opposed to U.T.S. in Dayton.
5.) Since his church was not paying for it/sponsoring anyway their opinion on the matter did not count.
6.) He knew many other people enrolled. (As do I)
7.) They (ATS) said they were acredited and by everything he found it they were acredited.

Please do not laugh at #7. I know a guy who has a BA from Univ of PA, 2 Masters degrees from Harvard, and a Doc from U.T.S. (all RA) that has a Bible/Ministry school and guess who his acreditor is? That is right...ACI.

I also do not agree with him, but I will not condemn him or his choice either.
Anyway he and I will be gong to a conference this week. Maybe by the end, Mr. Grover I can "educate" him to at least look into SATS.

 

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Janko's assessment, IMO, is correct. Schools such as LCBC, which offer doctorates for a few hundred dollars and minimal work are the religious counterpart of such entities as NIU. www.universitydegree.com

While RA/GAAP is indeed the "best" route one can take, substantive non-RA/GAAP options do exist. Circumstances do not always allow one to choose the "best" possible route. Logistics, economics, personal objectives, doctrinal positions, etc., are all variables to be considered in one's choice of degree program. For some, the non-RA/GAAP route is adequate. For many, it is not.

IMO, many non-RA/GAAP religious "schools" are little more than mills, laundering money from unwary students, with no intention of offering a substantive educational experience. These type of entities have taken advantage of the religious exemption enjoyed by religious schools, and certainly do not warrant serious consideration.

For those students who do not need an RA/GAAP credential schools such as LBU offer a substantive academic program. LBU is one of six schools approved by the BBFI (www.bbfi.org/colleges.htm) for the training of its ministers/missionaries. IIRC, three of the six are RA/GAAP, three are not. LBU is the only one of the six offering doctoral level study. This denominational/organizational approval is not the equivalent of RA/GAAP, nor does it purport to be. It does, however, IMO, lend credibility to LBU's programs of study. An advanced search (exact word) on Google reveals over 500 hits for LBU and almost 100 for LBTS, most of which are pastors, yet some do serve within academe. A large portion of these are individuals who have earned RA/GAAP bachelor's, master's and even professional doctorates, then earned either a Ph.D/Th.D. at LBU/TS for ministry/professional/para-church/etc. objectives.

 

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I think that schools with those several characteristics would be well served to go RA. But there are a few schools with those high standards which for whatever reason are not accredited. BJU is one. TEDS and DTS regularly accept grads of a few UA schools into doc work.

But can anyone supply the details of JUST ONE grad of the ATS masters in Theology completing a Phd/ThD in Bible or Theology at a RA/GAAP school? If not, what does that imply??

 

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