As college came to a close, I
felt more convinced of God’s call to pursue a Master’s Degree at a Reformed Seminary. I had narrowed my search to about five seminaries. Due to the strong influence of R.C. Sproul in my own thinking, I had strongly considered Knox Theological Seminary where he was teaching at the time. Also, our congregation at Holy Trinity was financially supporting the ministry of O. Palmer Robertson. He came to visit us a few times at our PCA church in Tampa, and due to his influential writings on Covenant Theology and his present status as Old Testament professor at Knox, the Sproul/Robertson team attracted me to Knox Seminary. However, due to a stroke, Sproul was no longer able to hold his teaching position at Knox and soon after Robertson decided to leave and work as Director and Principal of African Bible College, Uganda, and Professor of Theology at African Bible College, Malawi. In God’s providence I was being led to Reformed Seminary.
For some reason in those early years RTS never even crossed my mind. The overwhelming influence of WTS (Philadelphia) and Knox (Fort Laurderdale) in the environments I frequented hindered me from taking a closer look at the Orlando campus. But in November of 2002 we made a trip to RTS to hear a debate between James White and John Sanders on open theism. What was significant about that trip was not the debate itself, but my time with an RTS student who was gracious to host us one evening. I remember very vividly that pivotal moment when he handed me a VHS presentation on Infant Baptism by RTS Professor Richard Pratt. That video was instrumental in forming my own view on baptism and on the structure and nature of the kingdom of God.
What was most striking about Reformed Theological Seminary was the combination of strong scholarship and a strong conviction that theology could not remain theology if it were not practiced. Later I would learn that orthodoxy “right belief” and orthopraxis “right action” is indispensable in the framing of a Biblical worldview.
