Cedarville’s Absurd and Un-Christian Action Against Michael Pahl

Less than a year after Cedarville University hired theologian Michael Pahl, administrators relieved the associate professor of his teaching duties.

The issue at stake? A historical Adam and Eve, a debate that dates back to Augustine and has recently cropped up at evangelical schools such as Calvin College and Reformed Theological Seminary. But what appears new in Cedarville’s situation is the trustees’ requirement that faculty hold particular beliefs for particular reasons.

Pahl affirms the Ohio school’s doctrinal statement (recently augmented by trustees via theological white papers) regarding human origins, but his beliefs are based on a literary reading of Genesis 1 and 2.

“I hold to a historical Adam and Eve, though not on exegetical grounds,” Pahl wrote in his defense to trustees, which CT obtained. “My reasons are more theological in nature …. [T]he doctrinal statement does not mandate specific exegesis of specific biblical passages.”

Yet Cedarville administrators concluded that the theologian “is unable to concur fully with each and every position” of its doctrinal stance, according to an official statement they released with Pahl.

Micahel Pahl is one of the most conservative (without being a Fundamentalist) scholars I know either in person or by reputation. I’ve admired his work for a good while now and even, though he may dislike it, count him a friend.

There’s something seriously amiss with ‘academic institutions’ which are so rigid and so unbending and so willing to cater to an anti-intellectual clientele that they forsake the practice of Christian love and the acceptance of views which aren’t all that different than their own.

Do you know what these schools and their leaders are like? They are like the Taliban- requiring unquestioning obedience to a particular view.

This is WRONG. For shame, Cedarville, for shame.  Or rather, and more accurately, shame on you Talibanville University.