Why Do So Many People Leave Seminaries With Less Faith in the Bible?

I think many people start off believing what is written in the Bible. However, they mistakenly believe also that if they study in a seminary they will become deeper rooted in the Bible and Christianity. Sadly, often the opposite is true.

In seminaries and Bible colleges they are taught by professors who often correct the Bible and teach them from various Bible versions. The word of God becomes diluted and polluted with humanism, modern psychology, and naturalism. One of the first things attacked is that God did not really mean six days, and it degrades from there. 

This happens repeatedly for 2, 4, 6, or 8 years until they leave the seminary quoting authors instead of the Bible. By the time they graduate, they have received a lot of information but have missed the deeper things of God—through faith we understand (Hebrews 11:1–3). 

Often their faith has been so undermined that when they assume positions in churches they proliferate the same teachings to their congregations (Acts 10:28–31). The members believe these teachings because, hey, the teacher came from a seminary. 

The church has fallen into the trap that to understand the Bible, one must leave the church and attend a seminary. The teachings of seminary professors cannot be monitored by the church. The church member is now under the teaching of a professor instead of a pastor-teacher. 

But the Lord has ordained the church as the means for education of His people. He did not ordain sending people from the church to learn theology elsewhere. Christians are supposed to learn their theology from the local body (Acts 2:42, Ephesians 4:11–15). Here the pastor-teacher is supposed to protect the flock from false doctrine (Ephesians 4:14). 

Sometimes learning takes years of sitting under church teaching. But in our weakness as humans, especially humans in modern western culture, we seek shortcuts to what is supposed to take time and maturation (cf. 2 Peter 3:18). This is one of the concepts behind the term “elder,” in the Bible, and the idea behind a bishop not being a new convert (1 Timothy 3:6).

Some people reading this may agree that they learned some of the best lessons sitting under a God-fearing preacher who practiced Bible exposition in his messages. And I suppose there will be others who think they learned the most in Bible school.

But to answer the question more succinctly: People come out of seminaries with less faith then when they went in because we have failed to heed God's word. 

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By Jerry F. Smith

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