Westminster Theological Seminary

   

Westminster Theological Seminary (WTS) is a Reformed Christian educational institution with campuses located in Pennsylvania and California.

The seminary was formed in 1929, largely under the leadership and funding of J. Gresham Machen, with the vision of continuing the theological tradition of Princeton Seminary, from which the WTS founders felt Princeton was departing.

The seminary currently offers the following accredited degrees:

Westminster Seminary has a worldwide reputation, drawing roughly a third of its student body from Korea, with numerous other countries of Asia and Africa well represented.

Historically, the seminary has prized its stringent academic standards, requiring that students who do not arrive with ability in Greek and Hebrew, spend a year on each language. Students are required to master a wide range of topics in not only theology and biblical studies, but also history, philosophy, and sociology. Many of the professors themselves have advanced degrees from Harvard University, Yale University, and Princeton University and bring the most recent learning of the academies to the classroom.

Pastoral training is the primary focus of the seminary. This is evident not only from the practical requirements for the Master of Divinity students, but again from the example of the faculty themselves. All teaching officers are required to subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, the core doctrine of all Presbyterian churches. Further, the seminary maintains a policy of requiring that a high proportion of the faculty be men ordained in Presbyterian churches.

The faculty of WTS has included well-known theologians of the past and present such as J. Gresham Machen, Ned Stonehouse, Cornelius Van Til, John Murray, Richard Gaffin, Sinclair Ferguson, and Oswald T. Allis.

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