Reasons for backing the not-posh theological college

The Reformed constituency in the Church of England needs to get solidly behind the end-of-Piccadilly-line Oak Hill, rather than steering its ordinands towards ‘evangelical’, liberal leaning theological colleges in old universities. Here are some reasons why from a parish plodder:

* Oak Hill is the only dog on the track. Our constituency needs a distinctively Reformed evangelical ministerial training centre in the Church of England to nourish us with the best possible theological water supply and enable us to have a real, positive influence for the gospel in the wider church and in post-Christian Britain. The influence of the independent Kingham Hill Trust allows for evangelical succession in Oak Hill’s principal. Of course, Richard Turnbull is doing a fantastic job as principal of Wycliffe Hall in Oxford. But, without the safeguard of an independent trust, Wycliffe will be the victim of ecclesiastical Buggins’s turn. With respect, what planet are you on if you think Wycliffe won’t go to a Fulcrum ‘evangelical’ when Dr. Turnbull goes?

* We will lose it if we don’t. The Australian New Testament scholar, Dr. David Peterson, who became principal in 1996, did to Oak Hill what Brian Clough did to Nottingham Forest in the 1970s. He turned it into a centre of excellence — albeit it took him ten years to do it. But then theological colleges are not football clubs. Despite the recent problems over the frankly incomprehensible Federal Vision theology, which has been unhelpfully blogged around the college, the positivity has continued under the new manager (principal), Dr. Michael Ovey. The evidence of this is the outstanding apologia for the biblical doctrine of penal substitution, Pierced for our Transgressions (IVP, 2007), written by Dr. Ovey and two of his students. If the Reformed evangelical constituency doesn’t get behind Oak Hill, then the liberal establishment can say we don’t want our own theological college. And they would be right.

* Oak Hill needs sane people like you. Those of us in ministry who support Oak Hill have to face the fact that it is vulnerable to wacky theology in a way that the more urbane Oxbridge colleges aren’t. The advent of the blogosphere doesn’t help. By going there you can support Mike Ovey and his outstanding vice-principal, Chris Green, in their desire to keep the college on track with sane, mainstream Reformed evangelical theology as expressed in the Church of England’s doctrinal standards. That means Oak Hill can go on producing ministers of the gospel whom people in the parishes can understand. ‘Eh? What on earth was he on about?’ won’t be the reaction after some turgid discourse about the connotations of baptismal regeneration.

* You’re free from the bourgeois English obsession with Oxbridge. You’re a Christian justified by faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and in his ‘full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world’, including yours. The gospel comes first — unless you have another agenda as an Oxbridge wannabe. Are you wanting a half-blue in tiddly-winks?

If you’re worried that you would have to sign up for limited atonement if you go to Oak Hill, the above quotation from the Book of Common Prayer should set your mind at rest.

Julian Mann,
vicar of the Parish Church of the Ascension, Oughtibridge, South Yorkshire —http://www.oughtibridgechurch.org.uk

Reasons for backing the not-posh theological college

Main Articles

Other articles