"One outstanding difficulty in theological education today is that the students persist in regarding themselves not as specialists, but as laymen. Critical questions about the Bible they regard as the property of men who are training themselves for the theological professorships or the like, while the ordinary minister, in their judgment, may content himself with the most superficial layman's acquaintance with the problems involved. The minister is no longer a specialist in the Bible, but has become merely a sort of general manager of the affairs of a congregation.
... If, on the other hand, the minister is a specialist - if the one thing that he owes his congregation about all others is a thorough acquaintance, scientific as well as experimental, with the Bible - then the importance of Greek requires no elaborate argument." - J. Gresham Machen (February 7, 1918)
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