Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary to launch extension campuses in Concord, Burlington and Atlanta

My experience with students at Detroit Baptist Seminary is that they are being schooled in five-point Calvinism. I would not recommend anyone to study in that theological environment.

Wow Jim. That was one of the reasons Detroit is at the top of my list.

Jim,

I have an M.Div. and Th.M. from DBTS. The characteristics of the education I received were historic fundamentalism, biblical separatism, unashamedly Baptist, classical dispensationalism, and four points on the Calvinistic scale. This is not all that different from Central or Faith. I am sorry that your experience with some of the grads was negative, but I think if you will listen to Dr. Doran or the professors preach, such as Dr. Bruce Compton, Dr. Sam Dawson, et. al., they do not come across as full-blown Calvinists. The school is passionately mission-minded in church planting and world-wide missions. Few churches and schools equal their commitment to missions, evangelism, and church planting in terms of financial investment, personnel, and emphasis.

I am a current student at DBTS, I started attending as a non-Calvinist and have never been pressured to be one. I have taken many classes and yes I do know that teachers are Calvinists, but do not in any way feel I have to be one to be a student there. Though I have been leaning in that direction on some points, it is not because of DBTS, but my study of the Scriptures. Just to keep others from insinuating I am a young mind easily swayed; I am 42 years old and have been a pastor for 10 years and 5 years as an assistant pastor. I value greatly my training there and have grown both academically and spiritually through the teaching and mentoring of the leadership.

I never attended classes at DBTS, but growing up in the Flint area felt the school’s influence in many ways in the churches we attended. It was a consistently positive influence, though I didn’t always appreciate it at the time (and, FWIW, no, none of these churches would have called themselves calvinist—at least, not then and I think not today either).

They were all, however, dispensationalist (steps on another land mine :D ).

The expansion is a bold move. I hope they are successful.

Virtual classes are an excellent solution for seminaries who want to expand their reach without sacrificing the teacher-student connection and the value of the classroom environment. I wish DBTS the best. Excellent move on their part.

Are these classes going to be taught live in Detroit and then watched at the same time at the remote locations? If that is the case, why not just allow students to take classes from their laptops at home?

There are five-point Calvinists that claim to be mission-minded. It is the “hyper-Calvinists” who believe that “if God wants to save the lost, he can do it without your help,” as William Carey was told in his day. I see some here say that DBTS is only “four-point” Calvinist. I wonder which one they leave out. Would it be “limited atonement”? It is said that this is the foundational point of the five. I am not opposed to DBTS, but just wanted to warn that a young person might be overly influenced by Calvin’s “ism.”

If that is the case, why not just allow students to take classes from their laptops at home?

Jonathan, I don’t know for sure, but I assume the answer, at least in part, is this line from the announcement: Professor-student interaction plus the discipline and camaraderie of the classroom are very important to us

Just for the record, William Carey (the Father of Modern Missions), was a five point Calvinist.

Jim’s perceptions, although all to common, are rather skewed. Most of the Calvinists I know are very missions minded. Many put non-Calvinists to shame in their zeal for, and giving to the cause of world-wide missions.

Don’t believe what anti-Calvinists say about Calvinists. Study both the Scriptures, and Calvinism for yourself. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Yes. The plan is for the extension locations to be viewing the class “live”. The equipment will allow the classes to be interactive in real time so that and extension student can raise a hand and ask a question etc. I am among many at Trinity in Concord that are very excited about this opportunity.

William Carey seems to have been a “sane” Calvinist who believed, unlike his peers of that day, that the gospel should be preached to every creature. If he believed that only the “elect” could respond and be saved, then he was as much at fault as Calvinists have always been. If he believed that Christ’s death was efficacious only for the “elect,” then he preached a defective gospel. If he believed that because of man’s depravity, man was wholly unable to respond to the gospel unless God had elected him to be saved, then he was in great error. If he believed that no sinner could repent and believe the gospel unless he were first regenerated, then he had the cart before the horse. If he believed, as Particular Baptists then and now believe, that no man could be sure of his salvation because he could not know he would persevere until the end of his life, then he was in ignorance of much Scripture. Either he was confused about many things, or he may not have held so strongly to some of the entrenched beliefs of the Particular Baptists of his time. At any rate, we can rejoice that he had a heart for the world, i.e. for every human being, and devoted his life to reaching as many for Christ as possible.

Yes, William Carey was a sane Calvinist very much like Charles Spurgeon, who believed the doctrines some so dislike and often misrepresent. Won’t it be wonderful when we get to Heaven and can get these thorny issues finally settled?

And for the record, please note, dear readers, that it was an anti-Calvinist, not a Calvinist who precipitated this exchange.

So - Calvinism is a beautiful thing - and I really don’t want to get to drawn into this debate on the Calvinism of DBTS. I will say that if there are Calvinistic belief’s in Allan Park - it is because they are first of all found within the pages of Scripture…..and when one practices serious, consistent and careful exegesis of the text - vwalllah! - they often become something of a Calvinist!……..except when they don’t.

Having said that - if there are those in the audience that think DBTS feeds a kind of unhealthy version of hyper-calvinism I would strongly disagree if nothing else based on my own experience.

When I showed up on campus in the Fall of 1991 - I was a 6 point Calvinist! I believed not in supra-lapsarianism but supra-dupra-lapsarianism! Yes indeed - I believed in TULIPS! Not only did God decree - but He decreed His decrees! (eat your typological heart out Arthur Pink!). When DBTS was finished with me after a M.Div and part of a Th.M in the Spring of 1996…… I left Michigan a mere 4.5 point Calvinist……which by God’s grace I still am today. So if this blesses someone’s heart out there - be warmed and filled!

Straight Ahead!

jt

PS - For you “new-bees” here at SI. Over the years we have allowed non-Calvinists fellowship around the SI round tabled camp fire when we have marshmellow testimony time - but they have to sit closer to the fire. We call it the “anxious seat!” I can’t share that reason here publically why we do this - but it is in the secret original documents of SI - which just a few of us old-timers have access too. This information is giving to help certain anti-Calvinistic and non-named individuals who have blogs dedicated to the sharing of the downgrade of SI into unBiblical leanings.

I never ate “marshmEllows,” but only marshmallows, which is the correct spelling. But then maybe the campfire at SI is only visited by poor spellers! Just kidding! So SI has suffered its own “Downgrade Movement” attacks, huh? Glad that the blog is generally accurate and a great blessing to the most of us. Something like your experience happened to me at Moody when I first studied there out of high school. I became a Baptist in a non-denominational school. Just goes to show that the after-supper debates along “theological rail” outside the dining hall were more influential than the classes.