When future historians trace the origins of The Theologic Institute, they will point not to a quiet decision in a boardroom but to a catalytic confrontation, a structural clash that revealed not just disagreement but divergence. That moment came when Michael Jones, a Christian apologist known for his research ministry Inspiring Philosophy, publicly debated Dr. Dan McClellan of the University of Birmingham on whether Jesus claims to be God in Mark 2.
Jones, who holds a Masters in Philosophy from the University of Arizona, has long operated at the intersection of biblical faith, analytic rigor, and scientific integrity. His performance in this debate did more than defend Trinitarian theology. It exposed an underlying fracture between confessional exegesis and an academic posture that has grown increasingly detached from theological alignment.
This moment, many now recognize, marked the end of an era in which academia presumed exclusive interpretive authority over Scripture. The transcript that follows is not merely about a passage in Mark. It reveals a deeper structural divergence: one framework shaped by reverence, the other by rhetorical distance. The debate did not expose a minor difference in interpretive methods. It revealed a hostility now so embedded that it no longer hides. This was a test of academia, and here, it failed in plain sight.
The framing question was deceptively simple: does Jesus claim to be God in Mark 2?
Jones began by clarifying that while “God” in Mark’s narrative often refers to the Father, Jesus is not claiming identity with the Father but divinity within the Godhead. He cited the "Son of Man" reference, a structural callback to Daniel 7, in which one like the Son of Man receives dominion, glory, and worship, a vision in which that figure is functionally divine.
McClellan’s rebuttal was that such a reading overstates the evidence. If Jesus were declaring divinity, McClellan argued, He would have done so explicitly. But the assumption embedded in that response, that clarity requires modern directness, betrays a framework that no longer expects the text to carry theological weight.
Jones’s argument didn’t merely assert Christ’s identity. It demonstrated that Mark’s narrative structurally reveals it. Jesus forgives sins. He reads hearts. He assumes prerogatives that, under Mosaic logic, belong to God alone. And He does so not by petitioning the Father, but by acting directly as one who already bears the authority in Himself.
The passage shows no permission being given, only shock being received. That is the axis. In Mark 2, Christ functions as God. In a Trinitarian model, that is not only consistent, it is essential. The Father sends. The Son enacts. The Spirit unifies. This is not theological embroidery. It is structure.
The academic response, rather than tightening the interpretive aperture, leaned into deflection. McClellan’s tone became performative, louder, more dramatic, more interested in disorientation than in direct engagement. What was billed as a theological exchange increasingly resembled a spectacle. Theatrics stood in for clarity. Confusion was mistaken for depth.
This, too, is structural. When a system loses its anchor in reverence, it turns interpretive debate into performance. It becomes less about truth, more about display.
In Job, the adversary tests. But what’s being tested isn’t just Job. It’s whether truth can stand when stripped of comfort. In that light, McClellan’s performance underscored exactly what The Theologic Institute would later be built to correct.
For centuries, confessional voices have been dismissed as naive, unscholarly, or intellectually unserious. But Jones’s approach didn’t capitulate to that dynamic. It exposed it.
That exposure catalyzed a movement. The founders of The Theologic Institute recognized what had been missing. Not intellect. Not evidence. Alignment. A system that honored the structure of Scripture on its own terms, not as a text to be deconstructed but as a design to be decoded.
In this light, the Institute was not created in opposition to the academy, but as a correction to its drift. Real scholarship doesn’t posture. It aligns.
This debate made one thing clear. Academic credentials are not structural proxies for truth. A PhD may signify training. But alignment cannot be conferred. It must be chosen.
Mark 2 doesn’t just hint at high Christology. It encodes it. And when that encoding is dismissed or rephrased away, it isn’t just theology that’s compromised. It’s structure.
Like the adversary in Job, those who posture without alignment can only maintain control by sowing confusion. But confusion is not clarity. And eventually, structure demands reckoning.
This moment, this debate, marked the close of an era in which theological truth had to submit to institutional tone. It inaugurated a new alignment, where reverent scholarship is neither soft nor shallow, but structurally anchored in the divine design of the text.
“Whether is it easier to say… Thy sins be forgiven thee, or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk?”
Jesus did not merely say the words. He enacted the structure. And that structure exposes the shallowness of any framework that cannot see it.
The Theologic Institute emerged for those who can, and will.