Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to the Grace in Focus broadcast and podcast, coming to you daily from the Grace Evangelical Society. And today, two of our regular hosts, Bob Wilkin and Philippe Sterling, are going to talk about their years at Dallas Theological Seminary, and how God was forming this grace message in them during those years. We thank you for listening to Grace Evangelical Society is in North Texas, we have a website, faithalone.org, and there you can learn about our seminary, Grace Evangelical Seminary, where you can earn an MDiv degree. For free, if you keep a B average, find out more, go through the application process, you’ll be ready to study with us here coming up soon in our fall semester, and get all the information you need at faithalone.org. 

Now, with today’s conversation, here are Bob Wilkin and Philippe Sterling. 

BOB: So, Philippe, you and I both went to Dallas Seminary, and I wanted to talk a little bit about our experiences at Dallas Theological Seminary, the highlights of things we learned and benefited from, what years were you at Dallas? 

PHILIPPE: 1981 to 1985. 

BOB: Right, well, I came three years before that. I was 78 to 82 for my master’s degree. So, what are some of the key things you learned at Dallas Seminary? 

PHILIPPE: In learning the elements of Greek and being able to use it in my study of the Scriptures, yet at the same time, also, on beginning to see the need of being clear on the good news message of believing in Christ, for everlasting life, that summer that I came my teacher for first year Greek was Jackie Deere, even though he wasn’t in the Greek department, he was in the Old Testament department, but he wanted to have the experience of teaching a Greek class, so he was my Greek prof, the very first one, that I had, and I clearly also remember him sharing that summer about a professor that he thought was a very genial man, and yet that was really knowledgeable about Greek and he said that he even had a wonderful book that he had published just a few years earlier called The Hungry Inherit, and he encouraged all of us to read that, and so I got a copy of it, and I was my first acquaintance with Zane Hodges there. 

BOB: I had a similar experience. I took first year Greek with Buist Fanning, and then the next year in summer, I took first year Hebrew with Jackie Deere. I ended up, I remember Jackie said, how could you get a master’s degree in French literature and not be able to read French? How could you get a master’s degree in Spanish literature and not be able to read Spanish? He said, well, how can you get a master of theology and not be able to read Greek and Hebrew? He said, you need to be able to be very, very knowledgeable about Greek and Hebrew, regardless of what you major in, but he said, I don’t think anybody at Dallas Seminary should major in anything other than Greek and Hebrew. So I ended up grading for Jackie for five years. 

PHILIPPE: Oh, really? 

BOB: Yeah, I was a New Testament guy, but I graded for him for five years. I became his chief grader after a while. I also graded in the New Testament department. I graded in the Bible department. I graded, even graded homiletics, preaching at one point. And I would say in my four years in the master’s program and three years in the doctoral program, one of the really big things that helped me was grading, because as I graded the papers of students and the exams of students, I learned not only how to grade, but I learned a lot about helping people learn. 

PHILIPPE: But I imagine you must have graded some of my papers because I had Jackie Deere for the second year of Old Testament. So my papers on, I guess, on Jonah and on Ruth, I was used to during the grammar. 

BOB: Well, I also graded for Alan Ross, because Alan Ross taught Psalms and Jonah. But so what are some of the other things that you really benefited from as well? You came up with clarity and evangelism. And of course, you had that during your time was Cru, but you also improved by taking classes from Hodges, right? 

PHILIPPE: Well, I ended up taking one class from Zane. That was my last year when it was the 1 and 2 Peter and Jude. So I because of my concentration on Old Testament, most of my electives ended up being, you know, taking Leviticus, Exegesis of Leviticus. And so the good benefit from the importance of the language is certainly being able to work some. And the second that’s what happened in the influence of Alan Ross is, you know, especially doing an exegetical analysis and outline, that will lead, you know, to an exegetical exposition, but just a whole matter of synthesis and analysis and that has influenced me greatly. 

BOB: Okay. So what does exegetical mean? Because some of our listeners are going “Exegetical? What is that?” 

PHILIPPE: Exegetical. Oh, it’s going to be letting the scriptures speak for themselves and explicating what the scriptures actually teach in working with the languages, then to bring across the sense of it and the structure of it. 

BOB: That’s called exegesis or the exegetical method or whatever. It’s another word for like interpretation or hermeneutics is exegesis or exegetical. And so you learn to write exegetical papers, which was a way to explain the text of scripture. 

PHILIPPE: Right. And it’s structure and then, of course, the meaning of words and the grammar and everything, but then using all of that then to come up with a clear outline of what a passage of Scripture is about. And Alan was, Dr. Ross was especially helpful to me in all of that. So I ended up taking I think seven or eight classes, you know, from him, even though eventually I kind of learned that he is soteriology was different than what I understood. 

BOB: And what does Soteriology mean? 

PHILIPPE: Okay. That’s the doctrine of salvation of the good news. 

BOB: So Dr. Ross might have been lightly lordship salvation. 

PHILIPPE: Yeah, he was lightly lordship salvation. He didn’t push that, but yeah, that’s where I understood him to be eventually. 

ANNOUNCER: The Grace Evangelical Society’s seminary, GES Seminary is getting ready for the 2025 fall semester. All classes are online and we are now ready to receive your application. GESseminary.org is where you apply. And if you want to begin study this fall, we must receive your application by July 29. That’s GESSeminary.org. Classroom size is limited. So let us hear from you soon. Apply now. GESseminary.org. 

BOB: All right. Well, I’ve got a few points I thought I could point out that I gained from: one was love for the Word of God. Starting with Greek classes, starting with Jackie Deere and first year Hebrew. All the classes I took from Zane Hodges. I came away loving God’s Word and wanting to be a person who lived it and taught it both. I also learned through Zane Hodges—I mentioned this in one of the previous episodes—that a person doesn’t even need to be willing to change. They don’t even need to recognize that maybe Jesus will change my desires. They simply need to believe in Jesus to be born again forever. And I thought that was helpful. 

And also one of the things that I got in various classes, but especially with Zane Hodges was the doctrine of Eternal Rewards. I don’t know about you, but when I was on staff with Crusade, I didn’t believe in Eternal Rewards. Did you? 

PHILIPPE: I did. That was mostly the result of my reading and studying of the Scriptures. So I never would have questioned that. It seemed to me clear enough that we’re destined to be with Christ, but there were some reward aspects involved. 

BOB: Well, I didn’t get that until I got to Dallas Seminary. Once I got there, whoa, did that open my eyes! And I found that helpful. Another thing was Calvinism. I had heard about Calvinism a little bit when I was on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ. But when I got to Dallas Seminary, I really learned a lot more about Calvinism and about Arminianism. And I found that very helpful. I wrote my master’s thesis on the, it was called an exegetical evaluation of the Reformed doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. The fifth point of Calvinism.  And I found that very, very helpful. To me, learning a lot of the language of theology was helpful to me because if you’re out there and you’re dealing with Calvinists or you’re dealing with Arminians and I’ve debated a number of each, you need to know the lingo. 

PHILIPPE: Yes. In fact, for the class on soteriology and the doctrine of salvation that I took, my professor was Craig Glickman. And he was excellent, taking us from Genesis to Revelation and seeing the whole flow, you know, of doctrine that develops there. But then it also going very much into all the areas of understanding the terminology. 

BOB: I remember Craig Glickman saying, this was in a different class. It was on eschatology, but he said, the doctrine of salvation, soteriology is the doctrine of salvation, wait for it. It’s salvation, all kinds of salvation, salvation from disease, salvation from famine, salvation from destruction, salvation from physical death, salvation from eternal condemnation, all of it. And he said, most of the time in Scripture, salvation is not salvation from eternal condemnation. So don’t, Craig said, don’t use the word salvation to equal regeneration. They’re not the same, only in certain passages. And that led to my chapter on save and salvation in The Ten Most Misunderstood Words in the Bible. 

A couple other quick ones, where I wrote my dissertation on repentance and salvation. And then through the ministry of Zane Hodges, after I got my doctorate, I ended up repenting of my dissertation and changing my mind. And I learned a lot about problem passages in seven years at Dallas Seminary. And one of the things I think we both learned a lot, don’t you think we learned a lot about how to write? 

PHILIPPE: Yes. In fact, I didn’t know anything about grammar until I came to Dallas, you know, right? 

BOB: Right in there, English, right from my grammar, Greek and Hebrew, right? 

PHILIPPE: And then just writing, you know, doing these papers both theological papers and exegetical papers and then problem passages and everything just that’s where I learned to write. 

BOB: So here’s the thing, Dallas Seminary really changed after you graduated, after I graduated, but especially after 1985. Zane Hodges left after 1986 and things really started changing. More and more of a lordship salvation emphasis, a move away from a lot of the conservative things we got, like a young earth and the flood that was worldwide and things like the gospels are the very words of Jesus and that kind of thing that shifted over the years. But I think we could both say this, don’t you agree that Dallas Seminary was a wonderful blessing to your ministry and that you’ll be forever grateful for what Dallas Seminary gave you.

PHILIPPE: Oh, absolutely, Yeah, for learning to use the tools to study the Scriptures in depth. And then to be able to present that, those were that skill set that I acquired, you know, through that. I’m forever grateful. 

BOB: And by the way, this is why we started GES seminary is because we want to give students what we got. And that’s what we’re doing in this three-year online program is we’re trying to replicate to them the things we learned in our time in seminary. So thank you, Dallas Seminary, for what you gave us and Lord, thank you for ending up and guiding us to that seminary where we could have gone to lots of other seminaries and we’re so thankful and we want all of us to remember to keep grace in focus. 

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On our next episode: how can an anxious person remain assured? Please join us and until then, let’s keep grace in focus.