Board Meeting to Consider Report from Committee on Justification
Hewitson, Page 68
Because the board remained divided even after the Study Committee Report on Justification, there were three options available.
Clowney was extremely desirous to end the controversy, and made the following recommendation: “The board must, in my judgment, initiate some form of decisive action at this meeting.”
Decisive action could take several courses.
1. The board could reaffirm its previous action terminating further investigation of Mr. Shepherd’s views and affirming its ratification that the doctrinal standards continue to be well understood and subscribed to on the part of the faculty.
2. The board could notify Mr. Shepherd that it had found adequate cause for his dismissal and then arrange for a hearing in accord with the policy of the seminary.
3. Clowney’s recommendation:
Determine that in view of:
a. continuing allegations by members of the faculty and board that Professor Shepherd’s teaching is misleading and tends to confuse the doctrines of justification by faith alone and other doctrines central to the doctrinal basis of the seminary; and
b. documentation presented to this board meeting purporting to support such charges; and
c. the broader scope of doctrinal issues raised, including the question of our understanding of the covenants and the covenantal perspective in Biblical [sic] teaching; and
d. the seriousness with which Professor Shepherd’s alleged misrepresentations and confusing structures of thought are viewed by those who are concerned; the board erect a commission to determine whether charges made against Professor Shepherd’s views are substantial and true, and to determine whether his published views and system of doctrine to which the seminary is committed, and to discover his present opinion on the issues that have controverted, all with a view to determining a recommendation to be made to the board in November 1980; such a recommendation should either propose that Mr. Shepherd be dismissed or that he be exonerated and the controversy ended in the faculty and board.
The board adopted Clowney’s recommendation.