THE IMPACT OF NORMAN SHEPHERD'S TEACHING WITHIN
WESTMINSTER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY
Mark W. Karlberg
T
his year's annual meeting addresses issues relating to the boundaries the broad parameters of evangelical doctrine. The
pivotal doctrine which distinguishes Protestant evangelicalism from all other expressions of religious faith is justification by faith
alone, what Martin Luther and all the Protestant reformers correctly identified as the article of the standing or falling church. Two
things are to be noted here: (1) the church is defined by her adherence to the biblical doctrine of salvation, specifically,
justification by faith. Apart from the proclamation of this gospel, the one and only gospel, there can be no true church. God has
promised that he will indeed preserve a remnant for himself down through the ages, within or without the institutional church, a
remnant that faith-fully adheres to the good news of Jesus Christ, the only savior of the world. No other religion is worthy of
obeisance. No other religion can claim credence in its offer of salvation. Christ alone offers hope and assurance concerning
redemption from sin. The fact that other religions of the world espouse partial truths truths which come through the "light of
nature," what God has freely granted humankind by virtue of its creation in God's own image, now damaged by the Fall does
not validate those religious faiths as sources of redemptive revelation. (2) If we take seriously Luther's dictum respecting that
article of the Christian faith upon which the church stands or falls, then we are at the same time acknowledging that only the
teaching of Protestant evangelicalism concerning the nature and means of salvation is expressive of Christian orthodoxy. The
Apostles' Creed, one of several early ecumenical creeds, makes reference to the "forgiveness of sins," an integral aspect of the
biblical doctrine of justification by faith. By definition, creedal orthodoxy must distinguish between truth and error. In so doing, we
are obliged to distinguish between three branches of Christianity Protestant, Roman, and Greek. For the Protestant, the early
creeds of the church necessitate the fuller, more explicit statements of faith produced in the age of the Reformation and
thereafter, statements which are themselves the product of the church's apologetic defense of the Christian faith. Needless to
say, the Protestant self-understanding does not sit well in an age of secularism and religious equality. Secular dogma claims that
all religions are to be regarded as valid; all roads lead to the same supreme being.
The documents arising out of discussions between leading Protestant evangelicals and Roman Catholics in recent
years are illustrative of the changes now taking place in evangelicalism in general. (The assaults on biblical truth are striking ever
close to home the duty to remain vigilant has only intensified.) These documents reflect the current mood of theological
interpreters. Norman Shepherd is one of many who have offered proposals how to achieve the reconciliation between Catholics
and Protestants on the doctrine of salvation. In his book The Call of Grace: How the covenant illuminates salvation and
evangelism, Shepherd abandons the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith and adopts a Barthian formulation on covenant
and election. I have critiqued this book in the Spring 2001 issue of Trinity Journal and in my fuller exposé The Changing of the
Guard: Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, an analysis which places Shepherd's theology in the context of the
dispute within the Westminster community, a dispute that has extended over a quarter-century. The issues in this controversy,
however, are issues more widely debated in contemporary scholarly circles. The Evangelical Theological Society in timely
fashion raises the question, What are the boundaries of evangelical doctrine? The twofold query I bring today is this: How did the
teaching of Shepherd gain a foothold within Westminster Seminary, once the bastion of Reformed-Protestant orthodoxy? And
what is the extent of this teaching within the institution and within the wider community served by Westminster?
Back in the late 1960s differences over the interpretation of the divine covenants first began to surface among
members of the faculty. Prior to this time, John Murray, long-time professor and systematician, was already engaged in a
reformulation of this critical element within the system of Reformed doctrine. It would be many years, however, before Murray's
ideas would begin to jell in his own thinking and in the thinking of his students. Parenthetically, Murray's faculty colleagues,
perhaps with the exception of one or two, were not alert to or cognizant of the changes taking place in Murray's thinking. Further
background to Murray's own preoccupation with the subject of the covenants was the situation in his own homeland of Scotland.
The Scotch Presbyterians never fully recovered from the divisions that occurred during the Marrow controversy in the eighteenth
century. In the thinking of Murray and the Torrance clan the root of the problem lay in the Reformed orthodox doctrine of the
covenants. According to Murray, what was needed was a "recasting" of the doctrine. Murray moved in a direction that was similar
to yet fundamentally different from the neoorthodox school of Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance. That is not the case,
however, for Murray's student and successor in the systematics department of Westminster, Norman Shepherd. Sinclair
Ferguson, Shepherd's replacement upon his dismissal from the faculty, likewise adheres to Barth's mono-covenantalism. The
travesty in all of this is that while Shepherd went out the front door, Ferguson came in the back. But that takes us well ahead of
our story.
What follows is a thumbnail sketch of Murray's theology of the covenants in its most mature form. (Further analysis is
provided in my book Covenant Theology in Re-formed Perspective.) Much of Murray's theology reflects standard Reformed
teaching. Adam was originally placed on probation: it was required of him to render full and perfect obedience in order to receive