Separate ministers if need be from the universities and train them by God's commandments
In her Coronation the Queen was asked,
“Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law?”
To this the Queen relied, “All this I promise to do.”
If the Queen’s University wants to keep the name of the Queen in its title it should behave accordingly.
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Hide AdHowever, my point is not about what Queen’s should do but the church do.
While there may be certain advantages of churches training men for the ministry in worldly universities with state approved degrees, churches are not obliged to use such facilities.
I studied at the London Theological Seminary (LTS) in the late 1990s, a Bible college founded by the famous Dr D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in the 1970s.
Even back then Lloyd-Jones advocated that men be trained for the preaching and pastoral ministry without obtaining degrees because while the training at LTS was to be vigorous, it was to be fundamentally spiritual and not suited to examination that had to meet state regulations.
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Hide AdHence now we see an inevitable clash between the spiritual church and the secular world.
While the atheistic world has gained influence, even in Northern Ireland, real Christians still believe that by the grace of God men can be saved by Christ and enabled to repent of all sorts of sinful conditions in which they may otherwise be firmly stuck such as atheism, Popery, Islam, homosexuality, etc.
Our universities should be brought back in line with our Protestant Constitution but if not then the church should not hesitate to separate from them and train our ministers according to God’s commandments.
Rev Peter Ratcliff, Editor of English Churchman