Dad had to drop out of the seminary (Candler) in the 1920s (financial reasons) and go into full-time pastoral ministry. In 1947, another seminary (Westminster) recognized and rewarded his service with a scholarship that enabled him to go back to seminary and complete -- finally -- his studies for the STB degree (Bachelor of Sacred Theology). I was in high school, so I remember those years well.
Dad was "supply" pastor of a little church and was home on weekends. He car-pooled with other nearby supply pastors who were also theology students at Westminster. The conversations on those long twice-a-week drives back and forth were predominantly theological discussions. The twenty-few years age difference between Dad and his modernist classmates was often obvious in the nature of the ways they viewed matters of Scripture.
The topic on one drive was miracles. Dad (as usual) said nothing as the younger fellows explained-away several miracles as ordinary natural events locally misunderstood and misinterpreted -- until they got to one miracle that the younger fellows rejected because they couldn't explain it in natural terms.
"Do you mean," Dad asked, "that because you can't explain it, God couldn't do it?"
That ended
that discussion.
Most Christians percieve me as arrogant. I don't agree.
I've been there too. The usual allegation is "You think you're better than us." My answer is that
I think that what I believe is truer than what they believe, not that I'm any better than anyone else in any way.
