A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original review appears below. J.H. (Hans) Kouwenberg is pastor at Calvin Presbyterian Church, Abbotsford, B.C. and the editor of Channels.
Brian J. Fraser, Church, College, and Clergy: A History of Theological Education at Knox College, Toronto, 1844-1994. McGill- Queen’s University Press: Montreal & Kingston, 1995, 261 pp.
Evangelicals will not be surprised to know that the history of Knox College started out with a rather strong, founding Free Church evangelical vision (pp. 3 – 42), which ran into “conflicting strategies” (pp. 43 – 66), developed into “broadening perspectives” (pp. 66 – 90), and into a so-called “progressive” (pp. 91-114) mindset in the 1890s to early 1900s.
It is not surprising also that many of the professors at Knox College ended up “promoting the United Church of Canada” (pp. 115 – 139). They moved with the temper of their times.
It is also not surprising that after Church Union was effected in 1925 the Presbyterian Church in Canada ended up with what Fraser calls a “mixed bag of continuing Presbyterians” (pp. 140- 164).
But what is surprising and distressing is that in spite of the development of some “diverging views” among the faculty since 1945 – 1977 (pp. 165 – 195), Knox College has not appointed any solid, hearty and authentic evangelicals to the faculty, even though some excellent candidates have been available.
“One voice that was not heard from within the faculty during this period was that of the continuing confessional orthodox wing of the church. Though representatives of this worldview were nominated regularly for chairs at Knox, none was appointed. After 1976, they began to look to Ontario Theological Seminary, which had grown out of the work of the Ontario Bible College, as their centre for theological leadership and education. The possibility of a genuine dialogue at Knox between creedal and catholic Presbyterianism did not materialize. Instead what developed was a rivalry, at times bitter and divisive, between the two schools and their supporters within the denomination” (pp. 171 -172; see also Fraser’s notes 11 and 12 on p.247).
I remember that while I was at Knox College from 1970 to 1973 the principal at the time wouldn’t countenance an evangelical luminary such as Carl F. Henry – with whom I don’t necessarily agree in every point – to give an informal lecture at the college to students who wished to come voluntarily. Even today the best we can do to answer people’s concern that we have some emphasis on evangelism is to support and fund the Anglican’s Wycliffe College’s Institute for Evangelism.
Why are Anglicans, self-described proponents of the via media (the middle way) able to honour in some way both the “low” and “high” ends of the theological spectrum – admittedly in separate colleges, with Wycliffe and Trinity across the street from each other at the Toronto School of Theology – yet Presbyterians continue to seek the “middle muddle” and end up somehow excluding the evangelical wing of the church?
What seems to be a closed shop among Presbyterians hasn’t been helped by a rather restrictive and parochial decree passed by a General Assembly some years ago that insists that student graduates from colleges other than the “kosher” three: Knox, Presbyterian College, or Vancouver School of Theology, will normally have to do up to two years of additional studies at one of these three colleges. Yet none of these colleges has appointed a known evangelical to their faculties. How will truly differing theological perspectives be offered and nourished if this does not change?
This major point of the historic exclusion of evangelical professors from the theological colleges of our day, noted by Brian Fraser in his book on Knox College, is a point worth pondering with a view to working for a change.