If You Had to Recommend an Unaccredited Seminary with Distance Learning

If you had to recommend an unaccredited distance learning seminary to someone because cost was an issue, which seminaries would you recommend? Are there any with enough rigor to make it worth it even understanding potential limitations of unaccredited degrees. I know that stuff partially depends on the denomination?

 

A follow up would be, at what level would you recommend an unaccredited degree. For example, would you recommend a doctorate or only undergraduate or graduate level.

 

There can be specific situations where a doctorate from an unaccredited school might serve you. But these are so few and so specific it is hard to generalize the matter, except to say that, generally, it's a bad idea.

Doing an unaccredited bachelor's or master's makes even less sense. But again, it depends on the ecosystem in which you live. For some people, it just might not matter.

 

From what I've seen, unaccredited Christian degrees are often just as expensive (sometimes even more so) as some of the top accredited universities out there. If cost is a concern, somewhere like Kairos or NationsU is probably the best way to go. Can't really get cheaper than NationsU.

 

This tier will also include legitimate non-U.S. schools potentially with equivalent to U.S. accreditation. South African Theological Seminary's two academic year MDiv is under 4000 USD total if my quick math is right.

 

Here's my short list in no particular order:

1. Birmingham Theological Seminary (ARTS Accredited)
2. Whitefield Theological Seminary
3. Expositors Theological Seminary
4. Covenant Baptist Theological Seminary (ARTS Accredited)
5. The Log College and Seminary
6. Reformation International Theological Seminary
7. Master's International School of Divinity
8. Reformed Baptist Theological Seminary
9. ICR School of Biblical Apologetics
10. Forge Theological Seminary (obviously, I'm biased)

Yes. A good metric is to evaluate those institutions that make their syllabi and(or) research requirements available to the public.

If one's goal is to serve within the context of the local church, mission field, or even in a parachurch setting, whether one completed a program at an institution that possesses conventional accreditation almost never matters. Rather, the individual's abilities, grasp of the relevant disciplines, and expertise in the specific ministry are of primary importance. There are always exceptions. For Baptists, a church's pastoral search committee or board of elders will generally determine whether accreditation matters. For Presbyterians, it's the local presbytery. For Anglicans, it's the dicocese.

 

Christian Leaders College. They have articulation agreements with accredited colleges, and they're an applicant for ABHE.

BiblicalTraining. They're free, but if one chooses to do so, they can pay $180 per credit to transfer to a Canadian school.

The Bible Project. No credits. I think they give free certificates.

 

I wouldn't consider SATS unaccredited.

 

Interesting unaccredited seminary recommendations, although almost exclusively Calvinist. Personally, I would avoid the ICR School of Biblical Apologetics, which is "a formal education arm of the Institute of Creation Research" and promotes Young Earth Creationism, a perspective which has done untold damage to the faith of young people, a disaster from an apologetic (defending the Christian faith) standpoint.

 

Almost. Two aren't.

As someone who has a background in apologetics, I'd say you're completely wrong about that. Not only is YEC the only exegetically defensible position, it is the historic position of the church. There are countless young people who affirm it as it is required from the natural reading of Scripture.

 

Good luck persuading university-educated people that the earth and the universe are 6,000 years old!

Having looked at many modern evangelical commentaries on Genesis, I would say that only a tiny minority of exegetes would agree with you on the matter. They mostly occupy the tiny space between John MacArthur's and Albert Mohler-type ultra-conservative and fundamentalist (not mainstream conservative by any means) seminary circles.

 

Ha!

 

"היה" would like to have a word, as it were.

 

Good luck persuading university-educated people that a prophet was swallowed by a fish and regurgitated upon the land only to preach to the Ninevites, or that Elijah multiplied oil, or that an axe head floated on the water, or that a snake and a donkey spoke, or that Jesus rose bodily from the dead.

YEC is the typical viewpoint of most Christians and PLENTY of us are university-educated, thanks.

Most technical commentaries do not address the relevant questions. There are legions of commentaries on Gen. 1-11 that assert a YEC interpretation. Of course, if by "evangelical commentaries" you mean recent texts (e.g., NICOT; WBC; BECOT), then sure.

JMac and Mohler are "ultra-conservative and fundamentalist"? What a curious claim since "fundamentalist" typically refers to a particular expression of baptist churches (i.e., IFB). Rather, JMac and Mohler evidence a traditional (i.e., pre-modern) form of confessional Christianity (less so with JMac) that is essentially historic Protestantism. So Tadj, would you say the patristics, Aquinas, or magisterial reformers were "ultra-conservative fundamentalists" too?

 

I would say that there is a big difference between the attempt to show how miracles may be compatible with mainstream science (as taught by any respectable university in the world) and the attempt to affirm miracles by discrediting modern scientific data and its scholarly interpretation. One is an exercise in modern-day apologetics or philosophy of religion, while the other simply makes Christianity a laughingstock by setting up a massive conflict between the findings of science and faith, asking people to make a stark choice between loyalty to Jesus or “secular science” in Ken Ham fashion. While any form of orthodox Christianity surely requires the affirmation of miracles (such as the Resurrection of Jesus, etc.) and the gospel may appear foolish (based on scriptural testimony to such a phenomenon),Young Earth Creationism shouldn’t be treated as a substitute for the offense of the cross.

For some reason, the National Association of Evangelicals (I would say that they are quite representative of mainstream evangelicalism) does not share your view that YEC is the only responsible view to hold, so I am quite certain that your dogmatic Young Earth perspective represents a minority within the mainstream evangelical movement, although you would probably identify yourself among the Reformed anyways.

https://www.nae.org/evangelicals-can-different-views-creation-leaders-say/

Therefore, I’ll leave you with a thought-provoking quote from a mainstream confessional Reformed theologian (although not an exegete, to be sure) from Westminster Seminary California:

“Modern science has promised more than it can deliver. That accounts for much of the cynicism postmoderns seem to have toward the answers to their ultimate questions. To be sure, science is better equipped to answer some questions than any other field. For instance, it is science and not theology that will tell us the age of the earth. The Bible does not provide that kind of information, nor does it care to. There are a lot of important and reasonable questions the Bible does not try to answer. If it did, there would be a lot of unemployed geologists.

While science will lead the way toward the discovery of when we got here and will help us find the reasons for how we got here (beyond the revelation we already have in the inspired text of Genesis 1–3), there is a question to which of those other questions ultimately lead, a question, nevertheless, which science will never be able to answer any more than theology will be able to determine the age of the earth. That question is, “Why are we here?”

(Quote from Dr. Michael Horton, “Putting Amazing Back Into Grace”).

 

Creation in six ordinary days is...a miracle not unlike the other miracles depicted in the Bible. Moreover, one would have quite a difficult time correlating Pauline Christology with OE or theistic evolutionary theologies as the most recent texts have demonstrated. This is a question of epistemology and Lordship. If the Scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith and practice, then the rigorous exegesis of the text determines what ought to inform Christian piety. Given the transcience of the scholarly interpretation of scientific data, I think you would likely agree that it is hardly authoritative regarding origins.

The NAE is a big tent organization that takes non-commital views on everything from justification to sovereignty. It's non-commital views on creation are hardly an argument.

Well, that's Horton's viewpoint. Does the text depict a historical Adam? Clearly, that is how the NT interprets the account. I wonder, would Horton also say that the flood was localized?

 

I believe the standard line is that the universe was created to look old. Which has never sat right with me.

The Pentateuch is the history of humanity - specifically the Jews living in the Middle East. If there was a pre-humanity, why would those people care about that? The Bible says nothing about North America, for instance, but it very obviously exists. If I am talking about how my day went, I am not generally going to do a play-by-play of every single minute: it's going to be highlights. If one is going to assume that it's a completely true history, I don't see why the Pentateuch couldn't/wouldn't do the same. The Earth is created, billions of years of "nothing" happens, then humanity arrives! Jewish people in the Middle East wouldn't have needed to know or care about things like T-Rex or stegosaurus. So why bother to put those things in their holy books?

 

There is a stark difference between data and the interpretation of data. When you claim "There's voluminous physical evidence against YEC" you are conflating data and the interpretation thereof. Further, you do realize that there are credentialled scientists aplenty who affirm YEC right?