“There is no theology there.”
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer, reflecting on his time at Union Theological Seminary
Introduction: A Common Trajectory
Doctrine is not decorative. It is constitutive. The church does not merely possess a creedal faith; she is shaped by it, governed by it, and sustained through it. When orthodoxy is quietly displaced, institutions may continue to function administratively, yet they no longer recognize their purpose. They become like cathedrals built without load-bearing walls: they may stand for a time, but their structural integrity is already compromised.
This essay arises from a question many ecclesiastical leaders sense but rarely examine directly: what happens when a seminary no longer understands itself as accountable to the church’s confession? My own experience illustrates that when such guardrails are lost, a school does not merely drift; it gradually reconstructs itself on an entirely different foundation. Unfortunately, this transition is more common than most Christians realize.
The apostles speak of the church’s teaching not as a flexible project but as a received inheritance: “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). When that “once-delivered” faith is treated as provisional—accepted as a historical artifact but not binding as truth—the loss is not merely doctrinal. It is institutional and formational.
What follows is not a polemic. It is a personal witness: an account of what institutional decay looks like on the ground, how it shapes students, and why its effects persist long after biblical language is retained.
What Drift Looks Like on the Ground
Several years ago, I completed a degree at Claremont School of Theology (CST), a school that now openly identifies as interreligious. The steps that led to this reorientation did not emerge suddenly. They unfolded gradually over decades, through the influence of higher-critical scholarship, shifting faculty commitments, and—most decisively—a redefinition of what could count as reasonable Christian faith.
During my time at CST, orthodox doctrine was not treated as something to be received, confessed, and proclaimed as authoritative. For most students, it appeared only in a single course surveying the historical background of contemporary theology.
In New Testament studies, Jesus was frequently described as a type of Greco-Roman hero. Professor Gregory J. Riley argued that diverse cultural influences—including Greek philosophy, Egyptian religion, and Zoroastrianism—shaped early Christian belief. Another instructor, Dennis R. MacDonald, an openly avowed atheist, advanced arguments that Gospel narratives consciously imitated Homeric epics.
The cross and resurrection, when addressed at all, were treated as mythic constructions within the ancient world. When students asked why early Christians were willing to diligently follow Jesus of Nazareth—or even die for him—the methodological framework itself could never supply a coherent response.
As for the Old Testament (designated “the First Testament” at CST), it was taught with remarkable academic rigor, especially by Marvin A. Sweeney, a distinguished Jewish scholar. He was a uniquely gifted lecturer, possessing extraordinary command of historical, linguistic, and literary detail. Nonetheless, like other instructors, he approached the Hebrew Bible as a collection of evolving human traditions instead of divine revelation.
In the end, Scripture was studied seriously—but never truly understood as sacred text. Christ was examined critically—but never truly acknowledged as Lord. Even the M.Div. and D.Min. programs emphasized critical analysis and critique rather than pastoral formation.
How the Ground Was Prepared
This classroom orientation did not arise in a vacuum. For decades, CST functioned as a primary institutional home for Process Theology. John B. Cobb Jr., widely regarded as its leading American representative, and David Ray Griffin, one of its most influential systematisers, both taught there. Together they founded the Center for Process Studies on campus in 1973. Rooted in the secular metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead, process thought came to shape the school’s theological imagination at a foundational level.
Within this framework, God is no longer understood as the sovereign, transcendent, and self-revealing Lord, but as finite, immanent, and dynamically interrelated with the world. Revelation becomes diffuse rather than decisive. Scripture ceases to function as authoritative word and is re-presented as one inspired text among many, religious or otherwise. Once these metaphysical commitments are adopted, Christianity can no longer assert creedal supremacy.
Against this background, compatible theological movements gained privileged status across the curriculum. Liberation theology in its Marxist-inflected forms, as well as feminist and womanist variants, were widely affirmed. By the time students graduated, the combined influence of process metaphysics and liberationist themes had effectively defined the boundaries of acceptable theological discourse.
While conservative Protestant theology was not formally prohibited, it was rendered methodologically unintelligible and effectively dismissed. Conversely, revisionist systems rooted in fluid metaphysics and political aims were treated as self-evidently faithful.
Yet, if we look back to Protestantism’s origins, the magisterial Reformers insisted that the church and its institutions invariably require confessional accountability. For instance, the Book of Concord has never been a purely historical artifact for Lutherans—it is a living doctrinal standard. Hence, C. F. W. Walther and later Hermann Sasse warned that when essential doctrines are treated as discretionary, theological education inevitably shifts from proclamation to speculation. And once orthodox tenets become unenforceable, the church is defined sociologically rather than theologically. CST’s history reflects this trajectory.
Pastoral Formation Without Discipleship
Predictably, the absence of confessional grounding was matched by the absence of spiritual formation. During my time at CST, there were no courses devoted explicitly to Christian discipleship. Theology was treated almost exclusively as a scholarly enterprise rather than preparation for ministry.
While students were trained to analyze, critique, and dialogue, they were not taught to pray, submit to the word, or be formed as clergy. Faith commitments were treated as private matters, largely irrelevant to professional expertise. Nevertheless, Scripture ties ministerial competence precisely to fidelity: “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved… rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15). When the Bible is treated primarily as an object of critique, the habits required for pastoral stewardship cannot develop.
This paradox became evident in interreligious engagement. I was appointed as one of two CST representatives to a local ecumenical dialogue. Contributors included delegates from an evangelical seminary, two Roman Catholic seminaries, and a conservative Jewish seminary. Somewhat unexpectedly, I found myself among the few Claremont students able to sustain substantive theological conversation. Although I knew little formal Judaism at the time, personal immersion in Scripture and doctrine provided a shared grammar for dialogue.
The irony was difficult to miss. An institution committed to interreligious openness had, in practice, nurtured students unable to articulate even the contours of their own tradition. Deconstruction had replaced doctrine. And, without doctrine, even rudimentary dialogue was impossible.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer witnessed a similar dynamic in Berlin and later at Union Seminary in New York. In Discipleship and Life Together, he argued that theological education severed from prayer, confession, and obedience inevitably produced what he called “cheap grace”—Christianity reduced to a therapeutic idea that costs nothing. When he founded Finkenwalde, pastoral formation centered on Scripture, worship, and disciplined community. Inversely, at CST theology was framed almost exclusively as an academic undertaking. The result was not intellectual freedom, but spiritual and institutional hollowness.
A Seminary in Name Only
At one point, a professor of ecclesiology remarked that CST was not truly a seminary, but a school of theology. While the terms are often used interchangeably, the implied distinction proved revealing—particularly in a class dominated by M.Div. students. A seminary exists to nurture leaders for the church; a school of theology studies religion as an academic phenomenon. The school increasingly understood itself as the latter even as the former constituted most of its students.
This detachment manifested predictably. Local United Methodist churches—the denomination with which CST was formally aligned—began declining pastoral interns, explaining that they no longer trusted what students were being taught. Financial pressures eventually forced the organization to leave its sprawling Claremont campus and relocate to shared church facilities in Los Angeles. The symbolism was unavoidable: a theological institution untethered from ecclesial life continued to depend on traditional Christian goodwill for its survival.
Surveying the Ground Today
The end point of this drift becomes unmistakable when one considers CST’s official description. The school’s stated mission is no longer oriented toward forming pastors and teachers according to the precepts of Christian theology, but toward cultivating “spiritual, academic, and community leaders for compassion, justice, and belonging, through interreligious and intercultural graduate theological education."
These aims are not presented as supplementary to Christian formation; they are described as constitutive. Institutional learning outcomes require students to interrogate their own traditions through engagement with critical scholarship drawn from religious and nonreligious perspectives, and to apply liberative, interdisciplinary approaches to theology. Notably absent is any expectation that students receive, confess, or submit to the doctrinal inheritance of the apostolic and catholic church.
This reorientation is demonstrated throughout the curriculum. The Master of Divinity—the degree traditionally intended to prepare clergy—presupposes sustained engagement with interreligious dialogue rather than maturation as a Christian pastor. Students are trained for contextual leadership, interfaith chaplaincy, and “innovative” ministry, while theological instruction is consistently framed through pluralist and comparative lenses.
Most revealing is the prominence of Process Studies, which functions not as a primary theological option among others, but as a central organizing framework. Entire degree concentrations are devoted to process-relational metaphysics, explicitly rejecting classical Christian doctrines of divine sovereignty, revelation, and immutability in favor of a fluid, pluralistic worldview. Once this positioning is sacralized, orthodox Christianity cannot exist without incoherence.
Even where the language of “spiritual formation” appears, it is severed from confessional standards. Progress is redefined psychologically, therapeutically, or socially—often in explicitly non-Christian contexts—rather than as a disciplined following of Christ. Some degrees explicitly disclaim any direct relationship to ecclesiastical ministry, even as they are housed within a theological school endorsed by numerous mainline denominations.
In short, CST does not merely tolerate religious pluralism; it institutionalizes it. The seminary no longer understands itself as accountable to the historic church, but as a site for managing secular diversity. Once this shift occurs, biblical fidelity ceases to be a virtue and becomes a liability, making pastoral formation structurally impossible.
When Drift Becomes Normalized
Perhaps the most revealing feature of CST’s history is that there was never a sustained sense that anything had gone awry. Instead of reassessing its trajectory when confronted with congregations refusing student interns, the collapse of its multi-faith Claremont Lincoln University project, or ongoing financial instability resulting in conditional accreditation, the school instead formalized its identity as explicitly interreligious.
Today, faculty represent not only various Christian denominations, but also Buddhism, Islam, and Jainism. At the same time, the environment has proved far less liberal than historically advertised. As in political discourse, the label progressive functions to justify a secular-pluralist narrowing of acceptable belief. Once confessional Christianity ceased to be recognized as a live option, orthodoxy was displaced not only by revisionist theologies, but by non-Christian traditions altogether. Reform became unintelligible precisely because scriptural faith had ceased to exist.
Conclusion: Guardrails and Fidelity
My time at CST was not without benefit. I learned to conduct research with greater methodological rigor, to understand higher-critical scholarship from the inside, and to engage thoughtfully with revisionist and skeptical approaches to Christianity.
Yet these skills, valuable as they are, were never sufficient to sustain faith or to form an ecclesiastical leader. As biblically oriented belief came to be regarded as intellectually untenable, I regularly observed M.Div. students transferring into M.A. programs—an implicit confirmation that the institution no longer fostered pastoral development. I also learned that progressive dogmas are rarely uniform and very seldom stable; what is confidently asserted today is often revised or abandoned tomorrow.
In contrast, Christian orthodoxy is ordered toward truths not subject to scholarly fashion. When the early church confronted its own waves of novelty, it learned to distinguish genuine doctrinal progress from theological drift by holding fast to what Vincent of Lérins famously described as “what has been believed everywhere, always, by all.”
In time, I found myself embracing a confessional Lutheran framework—not as a rejection of the skills I had acquired, but as the recovery of a faith grounded in Scripture, tradition, worship, proclamation, sacrament, and discipleship.
From the beginning, seminaries existed to serve the church by forming pastors and teachers, not by producing detached theorists. This mission requires intellectual rigor alongside doctrinal clarity and ecclesial accountability. Without these guardrails, institutions may continue to function administratively, but they will no longer recognize the purpose of their existence. They will have lost sight of God.
The task always before us, then, is neither nostalgic nor reactionary. It is simply the work entrusted to every generation: to guard the deposit, to hand it on undiluted, and to ensure that those called to ministry are formed not only as academics, but as faithful emissaries of Jesus Christ.
