Why did Trinity Evangelical Divinity School fail?
Last month, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS) announced it is merging with a Canadian university, closing its campus north of Chicago, and relocating over 2,000 miles away. As happy a face as the seminary and we alumni wish to put on this, this effectively marks the end of a once-prominent Evangelical institution.
At its heyday, when I was a student there in the late 90s, it was home to world-class scholars like Don Carson, Wayne Grudem, Harold O.J. Brown, Douglas Sweeney (now dean of Beeson Divinity School), the erudite and genuinely godly missiologist Paul Hiebert, and many others. Carl Henry was one of my visiting professors. John Stott spoke in the chapel. And yet, in just a quarter of a century, it's on the verge of dissolution. How did this happen?
Collin Hansen, editor-in-chief at The Gospel Coalition (TGC), wrote an obituary for our mutual alma mater. He identified two reasons — both practical — for TEDS’ demise: 1. lack of “ample endowments” like those that sustain elite institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Duke despite their liberalism and declining enrollments; 2. insufficient financial support from a large denomination. Although TEDS had a denomination backing it, it was the tiny Evangelical Free Church of America (EFCA). For reasons unknown, the EFCA chose not to continue investing in TEDS. I’m sure Hansen’s autopsy is partly correct. But I know, from my experiences there, an underlying spiritual cause for TEDS’ untimely end – one that TGC may overlook due to its similar weaknesses.
I arrived at TEDS in 1996, six years after earning an M.Div. at Fuller Theological Seminary. Academically, Fuller and TEDS were comparable. Indeed, Paul Hiebert had transitioned from being a missiology professor at Fuller to TEDS by then. But they were worlds apart culturally. Fuller was committed to “Evangelical feminism,” which is, of course, an oxymoron. TEDS hosted feminism, toyed with it, allowed it, but thought it was above taking a definitive stance either for or against it. It aimed to be above the fray in the complementarianism vs egalitarianism debate. Hansen hints at this by celebrating TEDS’ “alternative to death-dealing liberalism and soul-stifling fundamentalism.” That may be true, but when it comes to overt biblical issues, like feminism, remaining neutral, as though there’s a biblical case to be made for feminism, is a dereliction. It is theological third-wayism, and TEDS’ decision to take that route was, I believe, the way to its dead end.
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Accustomed to the free-wheeling seminary culture of Fuller, when I arrived at TEDS and saw a bulletin board notice for a meeting of “Christians for Biblical Equality” (CBE, the pseudo-Evangelical feminist propaganda outlet), I posted an alternative notice, a parody of the CBE invitation. Mine featured a mock logo with a question mark inside a fish symbol, advertising a fictional “Christians for Bible Evasion” (also CBE). I thought it was funny, Wittenberg Door — now Babylon Bee — kind of stuff. I was the only one who thought so on that campus. When I admitted in class that I was responsible for the mockery of CBE, a fellow student turned around and scornfully asked me, “You posted that?” Fuller would have shaken its collective head, except for a minority like me, but allowed the parody to remain.
At TEDS, it was taken down immediately and caused a tempest in a seminary teacup. Soon, during a chapel meeting, professors chided such boorishness and advised us all that, above all — not that we defend the clear, repeated, emphatic statements in God’s Word about men’s headship or how feminism inevitably undermines the authority of Scripture; or even, as at Fuller, a convictional, though naïve and foolish insistence that we can be “Evangelical and feminist” — but, above all, be nice.
TEDS was undone by its refusal to take a stand, its commitment to third-wayism, and its tacking to the middle. When you attempt to walk down the middle of the road, you get hit by traffic coming from both directions.
Oh, what could have been. TEDS was positioned to be the seminary of the “Young, Restless and Reformed” (YRR) movement, had it only been bold enough to embrace it. With Grudem on board, TEDS could easily have been a bastion of complementarianism, even served as the home of the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW). But that would have required taking a stand. TEDS might have been better off, purely practically, though not spiritually, if it had taken the Fuller route and embraced feminism. Instead, it chose to be political, thinking that if they were as inoffensive as possible, avoiding taking stands on controversial issues, then they would offend no one and prosper.
But this strategy never works.
Believers want their institutions to be bold when the Bible is bold. TEDS, however, tried to be all things to all people and, in the end, became nothing. This should teach us all a lesson for the future.
John B. Carpenter, Ph.D., is pastor of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church, in Danville, VA. and the author of Seven Pillars of a Biblical Church (Wipf and Stock, 2022) and the Covenant Caswell substack.
