Journal: Central Bible Quarterly
Volume: CENQ 12:1 (Spring 1969)
Article: Central Baptist Theological Seminary—A Warning
Author: Richard V. Clearwaters

Central Baptist Theological Seminary—A Warning

Richard V. Clearwaters

President

In this day of ecumenical deceptions you should closely examine any fundamental Baptist Theological Seminary that you may choose to attend or support. This article was inspired by the President of a conservative Baptist Theological Seminary asking me categorically, “Just what do you at Central Baptist Theological Seminary believe about the Local Church?” We were proud to be able to refer this brother to a booklet of sixty pages, “The Local Church of the New Testament,” which spells out in sixty pages one of the ten points of purpose printed in every catalog the Seminary has printed: “It is geared to local church ideology and individual cooperation in spiritual unity rather than geared to ecumenical cooperation in organizational unity.” We were prepared to defend this treatise which we authored and published in 1954 but it brought an abrupt end to the dialogue.

We realize that this Biblical position does not make one a ‘DARLING’ with the ecumenical crowd (among the baby sprinklers) because it does not recognize that imaginary line in the Bible between things important and things unimportant; it does not recognize any meaning or mode of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper that the Bible does not support; and it does not recognize any aspect or phase of either Reformed or Covenant Theology (usually identified by Infant Baptism). We are proud, however, that in this position we can say with Paul in Acts 20:27, “For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.”