So, after graduating from college I got a job working for Coral Ridge Ministries and fell into regular conversation for awhile with a seminary grad (RTS or Westminster) who told me about Norman Shepherd.  It was probably 1990.  He said (and I’m pretty sure I have this word perfect because it made an impression) that Shepherd taught that good works were necessary to salvation.

What?

Could you say that again?

I heard right.

This guy was outraged at what happened to Shepherd.  He said that one guy on the board resigned because there was no point of serving at an institution where teachers were not permitted to teach Westminster doctrine (and I have no idea who this may have been or any independent verification; I’m just telling you what he said).

I sat there trying not to freak out.  Plainly my friend was expecting me to be sympathetic toward Shepherd because I was (for a young punk non-seminary guy anyway) a knowledgeable and committed Calvinist.  He thought I would know that Shepherd was right.

I’m not sure how I reacted at the time except, believe it or not, I stayed quiet and asked questions.

Then I went home and began reading the Westminster Confession and Catechisms.

I had to face two basic questions:

1. Was Norman Shepherd’s teaching faithful to the Westminster Standards (and perhaps the Reformed heritage generally)?
2. Was it Biblical?

This was years before Shepherd began thinking about the theology of Zacharias Ursinus and came to question the distinct “imputation of the active obedience of Christ” as a result of his studies of a contributor to the Heidelberg Catechisms.  So that was not even an issue.  The question was about how we should understand, express, what the Bible demands of sinners as a condition for salvation.

There were some other issues but at this point I had two documents once I did some digging:

1. The 34 Theses
2. The Grace of Justification

It has been quite some time since I’ve read these things by Norman Shepherd, so I am not going to say much now about them.  But one of the things that shocked me as I read the Westminster Confession, and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, was how much I had not read them before, even when I was reading them.  The power of Already Knowing What They Were Going To Say had pretty much rendered me a worthless reader.  I had not paid attention to details.  I had not put together statements that were located on different pages.  I simply had not allowed my mind to truly think about the actual content of the text.

This was written over a decade later, but it gives you an idea of what I discovered.

And yes, I did decide that the Westminster Standards were being fully Biblical in what they taught on the issues.   Though I’m ashamed to say I don’t have as much written to show concern for that issue.