Thanks. Good point about the local church being more theologically stable than the academy. I don’t think it’s a coincidence, but I’d have to think more about why there’s a correlation.

And thanks for the corrections. CTI is still active, but their pastor-theologian program is not.

At least historically, it seems to be the case that heterodoxy has been primarily introduced via academic channels, with the local church the last bastien of orthodoxy. (Witness, too, the same course of influence in the opposite direction, taking place in some parts of the Southern Baptist conference, wherein the seminaries– especially Southern– have engaged in a deepened recommitment to orthodoxy, which has slowly resulted in the local churches also increasing in their orthodoxy.) Could this be coincidence in history? Or could Ecclesial Theology/Theologians be a means for protecting orthodoxy because of this tendency?

Also, two minor points of question/correction: first, I believe you may have the above references (to the other institutions) backwards, as it appears at first glance that CTI is still active, while the program for the PC-USA is now defunct. Second, I’m sure it was a typo for you to refer to the “Presbyterian Church of America” instead of the “Presbyterian Church- USA” which is the current iteration of the former. But some of your readers, less acquainted with American Presbyterian history, might mistake you to mean the Presbyterian Church IN America, which is a very different denomination.