It is commonly assumed that those who receive formal theological education are thereby equipped to teach others. In reality, religious institutions often function as finishing schools for unbelief, and the credentials they confer are no guarantee of biblical understanding. A man may hold multiple degrees, occupy a prestigious pulpit, or lecture at a seminary, and yet remain entirely ignorant of the most elementary doctrines of Scripture. Worse, his learning may serve not to clarify the word of God, but to entrench his rebellion against it under the guise of scholarship.

This phenomenon is not new. Scripture warns that many will be “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” Theological illiteracy persists not because information is lacking, but because submission to divine revelation is absent. Religious professionals who read the text with no intention of believing it cannot be expected to understand it. Their exegesis bends to the expectations of their denomination, their academic peers, or their donors, rather than to the authority of the text. In such hands, the Bible becomes a tool of evasion rather than proclamation. The result is a clergy class trained not to preach the word of God, but to protect the people from it.