Dr. Couch, why did Dr. John F. Walvoord, the president of Dallas
Seminary, finally allow the school to become accredited around 1970? I
thought he stood against it. By the way thank you for your historical
work in getting the State of Texas off the backs of Christian Bible
Colleges and Seminaries. I know you took a lot of criticism for that
fight!
Early on Dr. Walvoord and Lewis S.
Chafer (the president until 1952) did stand against accreditations.
(Walvoord was Chafer’s assistant at that time.) They understood that
such "secularized" intrusions were but traps that would in time control
seminaries. Probably some of the "staff" influenced him in the 1970s
that the school needed this to please the students whose degrees from
Dallas were not being recognized. (Though hundreds of us hold
"unaccredited degrees from the school and somehow it didn’t hurt us!)
But Dallas would "experiment" with accreditation for a short period
during the depression years.
Dr. Walvoord told me when I was writing
his biography that in October 1936 the seminary had filed for
accreditation with the American Association of Theological Schools
(AATS). At that time about sixty seminaries had formed this organization
"to create some kind of theological conformity."
Then, Chafer didn’t believe that Dallas,
which was a very conservative school at that time, would be hindered
from joining such an organization. The seminary began working hard "to
modernize" itself as a prerequisite for such an organizational
acceptance.
In September 1936 The Christian Century magazine published an editorial on "What is Good Theological Education?" The article stated:
By 1938, and after some thinking and prayer
on the part of Chafer, Dallas Seminary was not going in that direction.
The hiring of faculty out of the pool of its own alumni did not conform
to the policies of most accrediting organizations. In other words, the
AATS did not want schools to over-use their own faculty on their staff.
So Dallas withdrew its application by the spring of 1944.
Walvoord added in his conversation with
me, that Chafer then focused his attention to systematizing the theology
of dispensationalism. He wanted to make theology clear to Dallas’
students. In some ways Chafer was pioneering new ground and Walvoord set
out to help him.
Pastors need to learn from this. Keep
your love of the Word of God and the Lord strong. Don’t be "impressed"
by accreditations! Don’t be tugged and enticed by the world.
Accreditations are humanistic approvals. We do not need this to be
successful in the eyes of our Savior! Fly your spiritual plane straight!
Don’t deviate from the flight plan!
Thanks for asking.
Dr. Mal Couch
