“Theological Leverage”: Liberty Baptist Seminary’s New Term for Lying?
Posted by Ingrid Schlueter in Circus Church, Religion on May 24th, 2010 | one response
Nobody has said it better than Carl Trueman at Reformation 21.

Well, so much for the way in which language has been used in general public discourse; what is really worrying is that some of this spin is now firmly established within the church. Two recent examples come to mind. First, there is the notorious case of Ergun Caner, of Liberty Theological Seminary. Caner allegedly invented whole swathes of his past in order to enhance his public profile and career. Most normal people would regard a **** and bull story concocted about growing up in Turkey and having a background in jihadi culture, if not actually true, then as being a pack of lies put forward for personal gain by playing on American evangelical fears about Islam. Not so, according to Elmer Towns, Dean of Liberty’s School of Religion in a statement to Christianity Today: if Caner’s story is not true, then it is just a case of the kind of `theological leverage’ in which the school typically allows its faculty to engage.

So telling lies has now become theological leverage, and is acceptable once one has reached a certain rank in the Christian firmament? “What?” you say “Next thing you know, they’ll be inventing new and trendy terms for adultery which blunt the moral force of that sin too, presumably not an ethical matter either, providing one is high enough up the evangelical hierarchy to be accountable to no-one.” Well, funny you should mention that…… recently, I happened to come across someone talking about a new sin with which I was not familiar, the sin of relational mobility. Hmmm, I thought, sounds interesting. I wonder if that’s what it’s called when I roll over at night and accidentally whack my wife on the head with a flailing arm as I fight off some imagined sea serpent that has invaded my dreams? Or perhaps it’s a cute way of referring to the typical husband’s capacity for vanishing off the face of the earth when his wife wants to go the shops to choose some new wallpaper? Read the article here.


“Theological Leverage”: Liberty Baptist Seminary’s New Term for Lying?- The Crosstalk Blog