Thanks to a mention onintersections I just saw the following article in the Review:
Our churches are meant to be places of healing and renewal – they must be,” General Conference president Dr. Jan Paulsen declared December 9, 2008, during the twenty-ninth Annual Pastoral and Evangelism Council held at church-owned Oakwood University in Huntsville, Alabama. “The church should not be a battlefield, but a city of refuge.”
Carrying forward a theme he began at the 2008 Annual Council in Manila, Philippines, Paulsen expressed concern over those who would seek to separate the tares from the wheat in today’s Seventh-day Adventist Church, violating the spirit and letter of Christ’s parable in Matthew 13:24-30. “The church is a very mixed lot,” Paulsen conceded, but it is Jesus’ role to judge its members, not our role.
And while “the church has a right a right to church discipline” in situations where such discipline is called for, “however, it must not skew a day to day relationship” with its members.
Emphasizing that some who might be viewed negatively are in fact wrestling with the demands of God the Holy Spirit, Paulsen said “sinners are meant to be received warmly” by the church.
“I wouldn’t want to be only with those who have it all figured out,” he added, saying such people can become “arrogant, clinical and judgmental.”
Paulsen said, “It is within our reach to shape and create the spiritual atmosphere of our community.” Adventists should “create a good home in our local congregations, [and be] a warm family.”
Would not it be nice if our local churches actually took Paulsen's advice. It appears to me there is entrenched in many local churches a coterie of people who really do think they have it all figured out. The trouble is if you ask them a question they won't answer, they are quick to declare others to be unbelievers if they don't think just like themselves. They are killing the Adventist church just as surely as any unbiblical doctrine will, come to think of it they tend to use a good number of unbiblical doctrines anyway.
Oh well read the article on Paulsen and think positive and try to put in place his above mentioned ideas into your local church, maybe you will have more luck than I did.
Our lesson study begins this week with the following:
The sacrifice of Christ provides all that we need for salvation. This includes the possibility of union and permanent attachment to Him as Savior and Lord. This incorporation into Christ, through the ritual of baptism, is our participation in His death and resurrection; it’s our recognition that His death is our death because He died as our substitute. Thus, we become united to Him. In this unity, we not only appropriate all the infinite benefits of His sacrifice but also become members of the new humanity instituted by Him in His own person. This union with Christ is, through the work of the Spirit, embodied in our incorporation into the church as the body of Christ. Thus, to be incorporated into Christ is to have a personal communion with Him and to be united to one another in the mystery of His church.
Do you believe that? The sacrifice of Christ provides all that we need for salvation.
Apparently we don’t even have to believe in God, Christ or even differentiate between good and evil. Apparently our church has joined the Universalists. After all The sacrifice of Christ provides all that we need for salvation. What else could it be, the sacrifice was nearly 2000 years ago and it is all that provides our salvation? As it happened so long ago there is really nothing we can do about it anyway and there appears to be nothing we need to do about it anyway. The lesson continues:
. This includes the possibility of union and permanent attachment to Him as Savior and Lord. Uh oh are they backing away from what they already said; now it includes the possibility of union and permanent attachment to God. Should not they be saying that this includes union and permanent attachment to God? Isn’t that what salvation is, attachment/ union with God?
Oh wait it appears with each sentence they back away further. This incorporation into Christ, through the ritual of baptism, is our participation in His death and resurrection; it’s our recognition that His death is our death because He died as our substitute. So now not only is there a possibility for union with God but we arrive at this union through the ritual of baptism. Which somehow is our participation with Christ’s death and resurrection and we have to recognize that His death is our death because He died as our substitute. Pretty clearly the authors of the lesson did not mean their first sentence at all: The sacrifice of Christ provides all that we need for salvation. One has to wonder just how much is true in their first paragraph.
Are we really united to Christ because He is our substitute? If I don’t believe in Penal/Substitutionary Atonement does that mean I can have no unity with Christ until I believe that He is my substitute?Or is this just a statement like the first line of the paragraph, not at all what they believe but something that they pretend they believe when convenient for their purposes. How could it be that this unity based upon substitution is not found anywhere in the Bible, at least you would think something that important would be clearly laid out. After all as the old saying goes the plain things are the main things. So far the lesson certainly has not laid out any plain things from the Bible.
The fall of Adam resulted in his spiritual death and separation from God. All of his descendants found themselves in the same situation as Adam, unable to overcome sin and death. Humans are, by natural birth, part of the humanity that belongs to Adam, a sinful humanity separated from God.
Where do we find that Adam or anyone else has already experience “spiritual death”? Where do we find that all Adam’s descendants are born spiritually dead? Do they even define spiritual death? If mankind’s spirit was dead how is it that God could ever communicate with them? God would have to resurrect your Spirit before He could communicate with you. Do they even know what they mean, many of you have probably used the idea that Adam and Eve died spiritually on the day the sinned, ask yourself where do you get that from the Bible story and how would you define “spiritual death” and what are the logical implication of such a belief.
The fact is many of you will hear this type of traditionalism as your Sabbath school teachers regurgitate traditions which they hold as true but don’t even know what they mean. Yes they are following the lesson study guide, but afraid to think about what those people are saying. They just assume that because they work for the SDA church they must be right.The sad fact is they are not right, they are not Biblical, they are not logical. Their claims are based upon the traditions they hold and if you don’t accept their traditions you are not following the Bible or you don’t believe the Bible, never mind that what they claim is not even found in the Bible. Please don’t bow down to their idol of tradition.
And I only barely covered the first two paragraphs of the lesson.
A friend asked me a while back to put my thoughts on homosexuality into an article. I told him I had no firm thoughts on the subject and possibly I still don’t but there is a good article and discussion on the issue at Julius Nam’s ProgressiveAdventism.com.
In the article he notes that there is a difference in interpretation on certain issues that the Bible at first glance appears to give as a straight forward statement. He goes through several examples, some kind of questionable but we get the point that some things in the Bible are culturally relevant to a particular time and place. The question then becomes is homosexuality one of those things that was culturally forbidden and perhaps in a society where they are not culturally forbidden they are morally equivalent with heterosexuality.
Much of the discussion following the article is about the hermeneutics involved. Right there of course we have reached a loggerhead between people’s interpretations. So I can tell you now there will never be a consensus in Christianity on the issue. Not really all that surprising when we consider how Christianity has not produced all that much consensus between the different factions in its long history. It might be fun sometime for someone to list all the different contentions in Christianity, perhaps something someone could do over the next ten years. Don’t hold you breath waiting for me or anyone else to do it though.
That leaves us with the reality that we don’t agree, inside the SDA church and outside the SDA church as well as inside and outside of the other denominations. Which leaves us with the practical question how do we treat homosexuals in our local churches?
Can we love and accept them as sinners saved by a loving God or must we declare them to be sinners different from the rest of us sinners. In which case we have to start our list of which sins are worst so that we can order them properly. We should perhaps look at the Book of Lists I don’t have a copy but I suspect the list does not rank sins. Then again just as I never agree with lists of the 100 best songs or ten best movies of the year I doubt we would find a lot of agreement with a particular list of sins even one to a hundred. Probably we could agree on the top 1 (don’t murder people) but not much beyond that I suspect.
The next question is how will the local church react? If they can’t handle a Progressive Adventist leading out a couple weeks a month in an early teen class what will they do if a homosexual couple attends their church? What if one of those homosexuals offers opinions in a SabbathSchool class? We can’t answer those questions until we know the health of the local church. Therefore I will offer up some ideal reactions to dealing with homosexuals in the local church.
We love them as Jesus loves them.
We accept them as equal with us (I am not talking same sex marriage here).
We listen to what they have to say, respect their right to be Christians.
We expect them to be tolerant of other views as others are tolerant of the homosexual’s views.
We acknowledge their ability to mission as ambassadors of Christ which may be different from our abilities as ambassadors of Christ.
We all seek to develop our thinking and interpretative skills as well as our communication skills so that we and others we interact with can continue to grow in the knowledge of God and man.
We all acknowledge that we are sinners who see through a glass darkly, who tend toward selfishness and tend to be judgmental; we are not content to be as we are.
In short instead of living by the phrase “let’s call sin by its right name” perhaps we should live by the phrase “let’s call love by its right name”; as love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8).
The leader of Lancashire's Roman Catholics has blamed education for the Church's decline.
In an interview with a Catholic news agency Bishop Patrick O'Donoghue, the retiring Bishop of Lancaster, said university-educated Catholics were misinterpreting Church teachings.
In Catholic newpaper The Tablet Bishop O'Donoghue is reported to have said: "The Second Vatican Council tends to be misinterpreted most by Catholics with a university education – this is, by those most exposed to the intellectual and moral spirit of the age.
"These well-educated Catholics have gone on to occupy influential positions in education, the media, politics and even the Church, where they have been able to spread their so-called loyal, dissent, causing confusion and discord in the whole church."
A week or so ago I posted the link to my blog article on Thinking Adventists on Cliff Goldstein’s Adventist Today Blog. In it I mentioned that I recently got a copy of a newsletter/newpaper (Eternal Gospel Herald ) from some historic Adventists, one of the editors being Ron Spear. I mentioned that I did not want any part of their brand of Adventism. Cliff responded that he did not want any part of their brand of Adventism either. My post where I said that is no longer on Cliff’s blog and neither is the response Goldstein made. Gone I have no idea why but in a later post that is still there I stated the following:
“We read a lot from Cliff about how crazy we progressive, liberal, left wing Adventists are. We even hear from him how we are few in number. So why does he not spend anytime, any columns dealing with crazy rightwing. They are certainly more numerous then Progressive Adventists and very visible, I see their material at our church literature displays all the time.
I will ask this question again on my blog later this week where it can be seen by a larger population. But it is an interesting question isn't it?”
Since Cliff purged his blog of his comment about not wanting to be a part of the Adventism presented by such publications as Ron Spear’s Eternal Gospel Herald you will have to take my word for it or ask someone with a good memory who subscribes to Adventist Today and reads Cliff’s blog. You can read back issues of Eternal Gospel Herald at http://www.eternalgospelherald.comThough they still don’t have the copy up which I received (though some of the articles are recycled from earlier issues). You can certainly get a feel for the paper by looking at their PDF archives. The paper is made up of a lot of material written by SDA church leaders of the 40’s and 50’s and a good deal of criticism of the Roman Catholic Church. Most importantly, and the reason I think that Goldstein spends practically no time talking about the far right wing of Adventism, is the many Ellen White quotes used by Historic Adventists. A good example would be this PDF article The Crisis Comes as an Overwhelming Surprise —By Pastor Ron Spear which is filled with Ellen White quotes.
The fact is that these historic Adventists have abundant quotes they can use from Ellen White; we all know just how quotes from Ellen White can be used to pound people over the head so it is little wonder that Goldstein avoids dealing with them. Better no doubt to fight the Progressive Adventists who may counter that Cliff is not logical or is anti-intellectual then to deal with the Historic Adventists who will club him over the head with his own prophet.
Will Clifford Goldstein answer the question I asked on his blog, no I doubt it and will he change his practice and actually deal with the right wing historic Adventists? I hope so but I doubt it.
Recently I was talking to a friend who said that if my intention was to teach progressive Adventist ideas in the Early Teen class instead of Jesus that he would oppose my position as a teacher there. That got me to thinking; we often note the differences between Progressive Adventism and Traditional Adventism and it appears that some don’t realize why we are Progressive Adventists.
Progressive Adventism is more then the difference in beliefs it is a difference at how we arrive at our positions. So it is not something that one can simply turn off so that they can get along with Traditional Adventists. Perhaps an example is in order, something that most every Adventist can understand. General Christianity has a conception of God which includes the need for God to torture forever and ever those who are lost. Adventists look at the same Bible verses that the mainstream Christians use and instead of eternal torment, they see the annihilation of the lost. Not only are those far different concepts they cause a fundamental difference between the conceptions of what God is like.
The difference in methods of interpretation which result in better conceptions of God is the reason why we are Progressive Adventists. It is not simply to be different from Traditional Adventists it is because we see a better way of understanding God. It makes no sense to say yes here is a better understanding of God and man but don’t use them when talking to people, only talk to them using traditional language and concepts. It would be like having a good and useful math formula that you were not allowed to use because the book used a convoluted formula that most can not remember or get to work when they use it. Now you may want to show your students the book’s formula and run through it so they know about it but you would not leave it there you would instruct them about the useful formula also. That is often how we compare and contrast Progressive Adventism with Traditional Adventism, but that comparison is not the reason for the difference.
The reason for the difference is the thought processes that go into the conclusion. We list conclusions because they are concrete differences they are easier to understand and relay then an exposition of how we got to those conclusions. Many of my articles go into the thought process that leads me to different conclusions then Traditional Adventism or mainstream Christianity but people often don’t read lengthy articles they prefer to just get down to what the difference is with their belief. If they are critical thinkers this is not a problem because they will continue to examine the information to find the “why’s” but if they don’t think critically they will just assume that the difference is just because the Progressive just want to be different.
It however is they “why’s” that are of primary importance. Why do we want to have a more accurate view of God, why have a view of God that removes arbitrary or cruel aspects from God. The why is because we want to grow in knowledge and present the most accurate view of God we can produce. The why is because if we can portray God as a friend who is for us and not against us, we fulfill our mission as Ambassadors of God. We present a religion that makes sense to people and they will be far more receptive to accept a relationship with God. When, as I posted in a previous blog we lose 90% of our youth from being believing Christians we should realize that our traditional methods of teaching about God are not connecting with even our own children. How are they going to connect with the larger outside world if we can’t even entice our own children to stay in our religion?
Progressive Adventism seeks to present other ideas which acknowledge that there are in fact different ways of understanding things. That we don’t necessarily have all the answers but we are in a search for truth and we don’t have to all agree but we do need to take the time to think. Salvation is never going to be about what we know or don’t know, it is God’s gift that gives salvation to people; whether Progressive or Traditional Adventist, Roman Catholic, Baptist or Mormon or Agnostic. God grants the salvation and He knows the hearts of men. We are merely agents of God but we can make God appear attractive or repugnant and we have a duty to present God to the best of our ability. And that does not mean setting our minds aside and only teaching or thinking the thoughts of yesterday or the interpretations of yesterday. The Bible clearly presents a growing understanding of God through out it progression. Should we not also continue to progress?
We understand the disappointment and even sadness that you carry as a result of some of your experiences within Adventism. Second, we reiterate the fact that we did not leave Adventism because of hurts or disappointments. We all studied independently. Further, we did not only leave historic Adventism; we also left liberal Adventism that demeans the law, the atonement of Christ, the complete reliability of Scripture, and the sovereign authority of God including His wrath.
Goldstein believes along with Ratzlaff that the Progressive Adventists are those who demean the law, the atonement the reliability of Scripture and the authority of God including His wrath. He writes:
Let’s look, for example, at what the so called “thinking” Adventist does with the “complete reliability of Scripture.” I recently had an article on Daniel 2 in the Review (Oct 16, 2008). Just good old, Daniel 2, kind of a cornerstone of Adventist prophecy. Well, on another blog, one filled with “thinking” Adventists, a blogger went ballistic, attacking the article because I actually was so closed minded to believe what the texts themselves say about when the book was written.
I mean, how could I be so stupid, so narrow, that when the Daniel says--“And in the second year of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams, wherewith his spirit was troubled, and his sleep brake from him” (Daniel 2:1) or that “In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed: then he wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters” (Danel 7:1)--I actually believe it? What a non-thinking Adventist I must be!
The blogger noted that there is a good deal of scholarship that places the writing of the book of Daniel between 167 and 164 B.C. Apparently the Bible tells us the date of the writing of books therein. You can’t find those texts however because in fact the Bible generally does not tell us when something was written. We of course don’t even know if the stories necessarily happened or not. Is the story of Jonah or Job based on literal historical occurrences or not. In fact what Goldstein assumes is the real problem. He assumes the book of Daniel was written at the time of the stories in the book. Who knows what reason Daniel then wrote it in a third person perspective.
If the reliability of scriptures is based upon the assumption and traditions then it is not really a case of reliability anymore. It is a case of presuppositions that others may disagree with, as in this case because of numerous reasons a later date for Daniel is indicated. Does this mean that it is somehow trying to denigrate miracles? Well about the only miracle that would be affected would be that the book contains a prophecy of the rise of three kingdoms. Not much of a miracle when you consider that 3 of those kingdoms arose during the period of time that the book covers, the nations being mentioned in the book. Now the other aspect is that people think the book very accurately describes Antiochus Epiphanies. But as an Adventist Goldstein would not care about that because Adventism denies Antiochus as being a fulfillment anyway. And the abomination of desolation as spoken of by Christ would not be affected whether it was written 500 years earlier or not. So even using a later date for the book would not change any of its important prophecies.
Goldstein concludes with this:
The so called “thinking” Adventist is, really, nothing more than a product of the times: the times says this, the “thinking” Adventist thinks this; the times says that, the “thinking” Adventist thinks that. In contrast, the real thinking Adventist steps back, looks at the big picture, has seen in the past how following the times has led folks (and church) astray, and is determined through God’s grace not to fall into the same trap.
Goldstein is trying to put down “thinking” Adventists because they are a product of their education rather then being the product of a church tradition. Unless you hold tightly to a tradition you are bound to be a product of your times. In our case we are products of our time, the information age. Knowledge is more freely accessible now then any time in history. The question then is how one uses the knowledge. The use of knowledge is often termed wisdom, so even though Goldstein likes to belittle Progressive Adventists as dupes who are not thinkers at all while those who hold to tradition are the real thinkers he does a poor job of making the case. After all someone who calls light darkness and evil good has a real selling job to do.
What about Ratzlaff’s other statements; is Progressive Adventism really out to demean the law, the atonement, the reliability of Scripture and the authority of God including His wrath. We would have to ask for some specifics here to really understand what he means. By law does he mean we don’t believe that the Sabbath has to be Saturday or that we must not light a fire or use electricity on the Sabbath. Do we demean the law if we don’t follow it the ways the orthodox Jews do? Who knows what he means, as far as I know he no longer does church on Saturday and instead worships on Sunday and I am sure he does not want us to be stoning people to death as some of the laws prescribed.
The atonement comment is more easily puzzled out. Most of Christianity has come to accept the Penal/Substitutionary Atonement theory which grew out of the Satisfaction theory 300- to 400 years ago. No other atonement theory is acceptable to these people so if you don’t follow their atonement theory you must not believe in atonement. Thus if you don’t believe that God poured out His wrath upon Jesus at the cross you demean atonement.
I have already went over some of the reliability of Scripture on Daniel, no doubt when people hold to tradition they can’t see any possibility of anything other then earth created 6000 years ago as so famously demonstrated by Usher’s Genesis chronology. Reliability of Scripture is really based upon their presupposition that Scripture was only meant to express literal historical events no matter the problems that come along with such expectations. And finally the authority and wrath of God. Again based upon their tradition that God says obey me or I will kill you. Or the ever popular but thankfully becoming less popular, obey me or I will torture you forever and ever amen. As the bumper sticker says, “God is coming again and boy is He mad”.
So I am guilty of being a thinking Christian, not the kind of thinking that Clifford Goldstein espouses thankfully. I am still a Progressive Adventist though who knows how long that I can remain Adventist with people like Goldstein trying to run things. Maybe when those Traditional Adventists actually start discussions with a modicum of intelligence we can get some where, right now they work under the rubric:
“If you don’t agree with us as Traditional Adventists you don’t believe in Scripture, you don’t believe in atonement you don’t believe in God. “
My recent experience at my local church verifies it all too well.
On December 6, at 3pm the Pacific Northwest Adventist Forum presents Richard Rice, Ph.D. Professor of Theology, Philosophy, and Religion Loma Linda University presentation entitled "The Openness of God- Then and Now" The location is: North Hill Adventist Fellowship 10106 36th Street East Edgewood, WA 98371
Much of his chapter deals with refuting the idea that God is personally involved with humanity, which I think is probably an argument against a minority opinion treated like it is the majority opinion. Rice writes on page 12:
According to this influential view, God dwells in perfect bliss outside the sphere of time and space. From his lofty vantage point, he apprehends the whole of created reality in one timeless perception: past, present and future alike appear before him. But though he fully knows and cares for the created world, he remains essentially unaffected by creaturely events and experiences. He is untouched by the disappointment, sorrow or suffering of his creatures. Just as his sovereign will brooks no opposition, his serene tranquility knows no interruption.
In contrast to this view which as I said probably few Christians maintain Rice gives the open view as:
The Open View of God The view of God and his relation to the world presented in this book provides a striking alternative to the concept just described. It expresses two basic convictions: love is the most important quality we attribute to God, and love is more than care and commitment; it involves being sensitive and responsive as well. These convictions lead the contributors to this book to think of God's relation to the world in dynamic rather than static terms. This conclusion has important consequences. For one thing, it means that God interacts with his creatures. Not only does he influence them, but they also exert an influence on him. As a result, the course of history is not the product of divine action alone. God's will is not the ultimate explanation for everything that happens; human decisions and actions make an important contribution too. Thus history is the combined result of what God and his creatures decide to do. (page 15-16)
Well we are not going to find a whole lot of argument with that, whether a person is traditional or not. He goes on to show the love of God and that God is involved with humanity. As such there is little there to disagree with. His next paragraph reveals where the difference really lies:
Another consequence of this conviction concerns God's knowledge. As an aspect of his experience, God's knowledge of the world is also dynamic rather than static. Instead of perceiving the entire course of human existence in one timeless moment, God comes to know events as they take place. He learns something from what transpires. We call this position the "open view of God" because it regards God as receptive to new experiences and as flexible in the way he works toward his objectives in the world. Since it sees God as dependent on the world in certain respects, the open view of God differs from much conventional theology. Yet we believe that this dependence does not detract from God's greatness, it only enhances it.
Here we see the idea that God is continually learning and this is where the problems really begin because it puts God the experiential learner as opposed to the almighty God. His new experiences determine his objectives. While he may feel it enhances God it raises more problems then it solves. For instance progressive Christian view's realize that the writers to a large extent place their ideas of what God thinks into their stories. As in the flood story God is sorry that He made man in the first place or in the story of Moses where God repents of the evil of starting a new nation out of Moses because Moses talks God out of it since it would have actually make God look bad. The problem here is that God would have to be behaving in ways that are far from God like. At least far from the God like attributes we think of today, almighty and knowledgeable. He behaves far more like the gods of the nations around Israel at the time. Arbitrary and less then logical...way less. In the open view God learns from the conversation with Moses and changes His mind...He has grown from the experience, in the flood story He gets mad and kills everything except for what gets put in the boat. Not really killed in any god like way but through a tremendous disaster that destroys plants and animals alike rather then addressing the strictly human problem.
To explain this change in God Rice writes:
But a significant feature of this passage does not permit this construction. The fact is that God relents in direct response to Moses' plea, not as a consequence of the people's repentance of their apostasy. The repentance mentioned in this case clearly applies to a change that took place in God, not in his people. Of course, God's essential nature and his ultimate purpose did not change—Moses' appeal presupposes this. But this hardly means that nothing in God really changed. To the contrary, his ultimate objectives required him to change his immediate intentions.
God was about to behave pretty irrationally and Moses talked Him out of His irrational idea by explaining why God should not destroy Israel.
My greatest problem with the open view is that it establishes God in behavior particularly in the Old Testament which is likely based more upon the writers concept of God then God's ultimate character. They were beginners just learning about God and dealing with the relation of God to man which we clearly see progressing through the Old Testament. As the writers progressed from blind obedience to a reasoned faith not based upon the rituals and sacrifices but upon living lives of justice, mercy and caring for other people. In which case it is not because God is changing but because people are changing, they are growing in understanding and knowledge, God is the one leading in a step by step process slow as it may be it is the only way people can learn. No doubt and even slower process when you consider that the other people of the world were just as primitive and the violence of the time made justice and mercy difficult. Thus the wars with other nations and the rules to kill Sabbath breakers and adulterers and rebellious children.
To me it seems the open view of God is based upon some faulty assumptions. But then that is another problem that has plagued mankind since the beginning and why we still see through the glass darkly.
Recently I sent an Email to the folks in charge at my church. In it I asked how they would respond to the 5 previous articles on this blog. How will Traditional Adventism seek to retain our young people in the church? A portion of my email stated:
I arrived at this decision when I was thinking what the traditional Adventist proposes to do to help youth stay in the Adventist church. I looked on the internet and found precious little that dealt with the principles involved in retaining American youth in the SDA church.
After I read the article copied below, I was thinking, as it identifies relationship as the big thing how does one build a relationship if they deny the ability of others to hold differing views. Can one have a relationship with the young person while demanding that they accept all your beliefs and doctrines? What does a young person feel if they find that their teacher is not allowed to teach anything other then generic SDA beliefs or worse yet a subset of SDA beliefs which are ill identified or have to be officially presented by the SDA organization? Basically it comes down to how is a relationship built or maintained if the relationship is primarily built upon either side accepting a specific set of doctrines? How does a method of Traditional SDA doctrine only related classes, work with visitors or the friends of youth, do they feel that their church is open enough to accept their non SDA friends or will they feel that their teachers can't handle alternative Christian views? Perhaps, and I hope this is not the case but it likely is, we don't want to expose our young people to other possibilities and ideas because we have assumed that we have all the truth and if it is not part of our doctrines then it has no value, that the possibility that we could be wrong is too terrible to even contemplate.
Every year I see my students leave a vibrant campus, and I know what’s going to happen to them. Many will walk inside a small Adventist church, where they expect or hope to encounter excellent preaching; soul-stirring music; honest, deep friendships characterized by open dialogue; and attractive, imaginative, courageous discipleship.
Soon they will be disappointed. Soon after that, they will bolt.
Some of that may be a little over the top. I grew up very close to Walla WallaCollege and I don’t recall it being known at that time for excellent preaching or soul stirring music. What did impress me was the selection of SabbathSchool classes. Most were too big for real discussions but the range of thought was so much greater then any other church. It was there that the open dialogue found it’s fulfillment. The friendships were the result of the college not the church, but know doubt friendships made the dialogue even better.
Of course Adventism is not alone in seeing their young people leave the church. It happens in most all Christian churches in America. Here is a post from Ben Witherington’s blog:
Ron Luce is worried. And if Ron Luce is worried, we should be too. Ron runs an organization called Teen Mania which puts on camps, concerts and various and sundry other sorts of events for youth. He claims that in the last fifteen years 2 million youth have attended his events, the usual formula for which includes some prominent popular Evangelical band, speakers, and counselors. There is a figure that was put out there a decade or so ago which said that even Evangelical Churches are retaining only about 4-5% of our youth. A more recent poll by George Barna suggests that only 5% of our country's youth are Bible believing Christians, but perhaps he was defining Christian or Bible-believing too narrowly. I personally don't think this is true, but even if it is in the ball park it means that youth ministry as currently constituted is largely failing. You should read the story for yourself. Here's the link from this morning's N.Y. Times.
The youth in our churches have the same malaise affecting Christianity in the Western World. They just haven’t committed the years as adults so they feel free to bolt. The fact is that music and speakers and counselors aren’t going to really change anything. We have to change they way we do church. We have to allow open dialogue, stop being so dogmatic and provide relevancy of Christianity to the reality of the world we live in. Relevancy is not found in doctrines but in relationship; relationship between people which encourage and stimulate the relationship with God. We could all have a relationship with God in private but really what good is that? Christianity was never about making the individual content with whatever he or she thought they wanted in a relationship with God. After all if it is just you then you will tend to make God fit in to your ways. We need the outside relationship to stimulate that personal relationship with God…to make it more than what we want into what makes our community better. In simple terms we need to be healed, but when we are isolated by ourselves our sickness is not so obvious and of course we are of no aid to the other sick campers.
We have to get past our insistence upon doctrines as our salvation or the way to salvation. They are not, and sometimes our doctrines are part of the problem. The old methods are not working; they are not working in the Adventist church any better then any other denomination or non denominational church. When was the last time your church talked about this subject? Mine doesn’t I hope to stimulate them; it is too bad I had to be treated as problem to get them to talk about it, if they will talk about it. Hopefully they will respond and I will relay it here, and if they don’t…well hopefully not every Christian wants to play ostrich with their head in the ground.
In today's climate, the general public is suspicious of trying to be sold a bill of goods from organized religions and "snake-oil salesmen." Many will not darken the door of a church let alone have the time or the inclination to devote to attend a 3-5 week campaign. Yet,these same people are starved for authentic connection, friendships, and purpose in their lives. That's a clear signal to us that we, as a denomination and as local congregations need to keep shifting our emphasis from evangelism as a one off event run by the professionals, to something we do as everyday, caring Christians.
In fact, many growing churches that practice such relational evangelism, and that have intentionally organized house to house fellowship groups to recieve and nurture people in the faith, do not need to do much, if any, public evangelism. They have cooperated with the Spirit in the way to most effectively love people, and "God adds daily to their number those who are being saved."
Even if, from an Adventist perspective, such churches don't have all the correct doctrine, God will still bring people into their midst because he knows that they will be well taken care of in a healthy, safe, caring environment. And, if we are not equipped, ready or inclined to recieve people in our local churches in this way, God won't bring them to us in any significant number... no matter how much doctrinal truth we may toss at them, or how many dollars we continue tossing at public campaigns.
After my recent experience of being told I can't help lead a sabbath school class of early teens because I don't agree with certain doctrines I realize just how far we in the Adventist church have fallen away from relationships. I knew the elements were there, declaring that we had the truth or that we are the remnant etc. Doctrine can never replace relationships, either relationships between people and relationship with God. Until we realize this as a church, and it has to begin at the local church, there appears little point in continuing the charade. We have as the Newsboys sang "lost the plot".
I was watching the John Ankerberg show today and he went over his most controversial shows. The most controversial was the one on the Masons. What one of the former Masons said struck me. He went over how Masons in their secret ceremonies teach a good works to salvation. He lamented that some of the things he taught these people would end them up in hell. What struck me was how much of Christianity has bought into, it is what you know rather then who you know. As if salvation was from what we know, the doctrines we know and accept. This has lead churches like the Adventist church to try and spread their doctrines rather then to spread the love of God through relationships. It has made us ineffective Christians, poor ambassadors of Christ.
And the worst thing is so few are listening and if you listen and want to do something you have to constantly fight those who refuse to listen and refuse to do anything new or different. You can't debate a doctrine because then you are attacking a "truth" and if they give in than they are on the road to compromise and any step away from what they hold as truth would be evidence that the people are falling into apostasy.
I also today heard a useful sermon by Brian Houston of the Hillsong church entitled "a place of agreement" very appropriate to this issue because the Bible calls us to agree but in reality few of us agree on anything. Check it out on Itunes.
Continuing on the theme of what kind of church do we want I thought I would cite some relevant material from Fritz Guy. Just to be clear the reason for this most recent series of articles is because I have been rethinking the future of Adventism more particularly my place in Adventism.
This issue is rather important to me because it reflects my experience in my local church. For several months the church did not have an Early teen leader. My daughter was very bored because they grouped primary through early teen together. I volunteered to lead the Early teen division as it turned out a couple of other people agreed to help I would do 2 weeks and the others would do two weeks. There also had to be two adults in the room for safety reasons.
After about 2 weeks some concerned people came to the children's Sabbath school ministry team leader and complained about things I had written on my blog. Those three topics mentioned were the inerrancy of scriptures, the infallibility of scriptures and belief in EGW as prophet.
I was asked nicely to quit. This is not to blame the SabbathSchool leader or the head Elder (since we are in between Pastors) for they are as much victims of the current church culture as I am. I have been fighting it for years, this is possibly their first experience and since the squeaky wheel gets the grease it is always easier to give in to the demands of the sanctimonious. If only those people read the following, if only our church Pastors would give sermons to encourage thought.
Please note the above is the cached version the other version seems to be down.
A still different development that has seldom been recognized was moving toward fundamentalism in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.21 This was an Adventist response to the fundamentalist-modernist polarization that affected and afflicted much of American Protestantism in the early decades of the twentieth century. Modernism was an essentially naturalistic view of all reality, including human existence, and religion, and it took a decidedly dim view of miracles, in the Bible as elsewhere, and cast doubt on the traditional authorship of many books of the Bible, on the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus, and on a literal, six-day Creation. This view was largely the result of two cultural factors: Darwinian evolutionary understandings of the origins of life and humanity, and German higher critical views of the origins of Scripture. In reaction, the fundamentalist movement developed in North America during and after World War I. It identified and affirmed several "fundamentals" of Christian faith, such as the inerrancy of scripture, the deity and virgin birth of Christ, the creation and fall of humanity, the substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection and ascension of Christ, the personal and imminent return of Christ, and the final resurrection and assignment of all people to eternal blessedness in heaven or eternal punishment in hell. These beliefs had been set forth in a series of twelve volumes published between 1910 and 1915 and called The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth.22
Obviously, most of these "fundamentals" fit nicely with Adventist beliefs—the major differences being the disregard of the seventh-day Sabbath and the insistence on an everburning hell. So Adventists often claimed to be "the most fundamental of the fundamentalists"23 and, indeed, "the only true fundamentalists."24 But the first of the so-called "fundamentals" was problematic, the one that proclaimed the "inerrancy" of Scripture— which meant that there were no inaccuracies of any kind. This view was not based on a careful reading of Scripture itself, but on a line of theological syllogism: Scripture is the Word of God; God is perfect and therefore cannot be in error; therefore Scripture is inerrant.
This view of Scripture was perfectly acceptable to some Adventists, although not to all. Since the beginning of the Advent movement some, including some prominent figures, had held to verbal inspiration and inerrancy.25 And by the 1920s, many Adventists "also applied their beliefs in inerrancy and verbalism to the writings of Ellen White."26 But this was never means unanimous, the most significant dissent coming from Ellen White herself. In 1886 she wrote abut the process of inspiration that resulted in Scripture:…
And in 1888 she reiterated a realistic understanding of both the divine initiation and the human limitations of the Scripture: "Some look to us gravely and say, 'Don't you think there might have been some mistake in the copyist or in the translators?' This is all probable, . . . [but] all the mistakes will not cause trouble to one soul, or cause any feet to stumble, that would not manufacture difficulties from the plainest revealed truth."28
An additional element in the fundamentalist reaction within Adventist theology in the 1920s "was the continuing temptation to do theology from Ellen White and to make her equally authoritative with or even superior to the Bible. This approach, of course, ran against her [own] lifelong counsel. But she was now dead and various Adventists did with her writings what they felt best."31 A common idea was that the Ellen White materials were "inspired commentaries" on the Bible.32 Indeed, this idea became so dominant that "all too often Adventist laity and clergy alike used the writings of Ellen White in such a way that the 'lesser light' [as she called her writings] became the 'greater light' in practice rather than the Bible."33 Ellen White, on the other hand, never said, "Let me tell you what the Bible means." Instead, she insisted that people read the Bible for themselves. She was an agent of Scripture, urging people to read it, not its guardian, protecting it from misinterpretation.
Unfortunately the fundamentalism that became prominent in the 1920s is still very much with us.
Another development that has not received the attention it deserves was increasing Biblical literacy signaled by the publication of the seven-volume Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary in the 1950s.34 As Knight observes,
It is difficult for Adventists living 50 years later to grasp the revolutionary approach to Bible study in Adventism represented by the Commentary. For the first time in its history the denomination produced a document that dealt with the entire Bible in a systematic and expository manner. . . . The Commentary made extensive use of the text of the Bible in the original languages, archaeological insights that helped recreate the times in which the various Bible books originated, and a weighing of variant readings in the ancient tests. . . . More important, however, is the fact that the Commentary moved away from the central tradition of Bible study in Adventism with its apologetic purpose and proof-text method. In the place of a defensive approach to the Bible, [it] sought to let the Bible speak for itself. . . . [It] sought to set the Bible before the church not as an "answer book" for the concerns of the Adventist church but as God's word to His people across the centuries.35
Besides demonstrating the maturity and confidence of Adventist Biblical scholarship, this extraordinary undertaking accomplished several other things as well.
(1) It drove Adventist theology to examine its foundation in the Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts. No longer would it be sufficient base a scholarly argument on an English translation, and least of all on the often-archaic language of the King James Version of 1611, although that was the text printed in the Commentary. No longer could we do theology simply by using an English concordance, as William Miller and many later preachers had done.
(2) It disclosed that in many cases there was more than one "Adventist" interpretation of the text. Adventist Biblical scholars had long been engaged in arguments about such things, but now the different views were out in the open for everyone to see.
(3) Adventist theology had to recognize various kinds of diversity in Scripture itself. In some cases there were textual variants, so that readers could not be sure exactly what the Bible writer had actually written. In other cases, there were varying accounts of the same incidents—most notably in the Gospels, but also in Kings and Chronicles. Evidently it was not important to get all the details correct all the time. In still other cases, the theology of one writer seems to be different from that of another. The cumulative impact of this diversity at various levels makes the ideas of verbal inspiration and Biblical inerrancy highly implausible. It is difficult to be a fundamentalist if you read the Bible attentively and thoughtfully.
A somewhat parallel development has been the humanizing of Ellen White. If one starts with a picture of her as a divinely inspired prophet—especially a verbally inspired and infallible one—then the more one learns about her and her work, the more problems arise and need to be solved. The surprises are almost always bad news, challenging what one has believed. What is one supposed to do with a prophet who preached vegetarianism but wrote to her daughter-in-law asking her to get her "a few cans of good oysters"?36 But if one starts with a 19th-century woman who was part of the Adventist anticipation, disappointment, and new beginning in 1844 and who married a brilliant but volatile preacher-entrepreneur then the more one learns the more impressive is her contribution to Adventist faith and life. She was involved in establishing the major institutional enterprises of the church—publishing, health care, education, and overseas missions. She was also the predominant influence in the development of both Adventist piety and Adventist theology. Literally millions of Adventists, for example, have benefited from her teaching about the nature of prayer.37
In many ways she influenced the theological agenda of the church, but she never claimed to have the last theological word. Adventist theological conversation often begins with an insight she expressed, but it never properly ends there. The role of a prophet is to encourage Bible study and theology by the church but not to do them for the church. She said, for example, "We have many lessons to learn and many, many to unlearn,"38 but she never explained which lessons were which. Here as elsewhere, she provided the challenge; it is the church's task to do the work.
Regarding an understanding of atonement, for example—how the death of Christ accomplishes human salvation—her views point Adventist thinking beyond a simple penal-substitutionary theory:39 "Satan led men to conceive of God as a being whose chief attribute is stern justice,—one who is a severe judge, a harsh, exacting creditor. He pictured the Creator as a being who is watching with jealous eye to discern the errors and mistakes of men, that He may visit judgments upon them. It was to remove this dark shadow, by revealing to the world the infinite love of God, that Jesus came to live among men. The Son of God came from heaven to make manifest the Father." In other words, "The Father loves us, not because of the great propitiation, but He provided the propitiation because He loves us."40 But she never spelled out the particulars of a more adequate theory.
If we stand back now and look at the history of Adventist thinking, is there anything we can say about general patterns and principles? I think so, and here is a threefold characterization: change, diversity, and enlargement.
First, the most prominent pattern and in Adventist thinking is change. Knight begins his account of "the development of Seventh-day Adventist beliefs" with this observation: "Most of the founders of Seventh-day Adventism would not be able to join the church today if they had to agree to the denomination's '27 Fundamental Beliefs'."51 This is hardly a surprise, given the developments we have noticed this evening. The idea of "present truth" points to the fact that "each generation must in some ways be a first generation all over again."52
Each generation is called to live in the spirit of discovery. It can—and should—build on the foundation of the past, but it is called to build, not just preserve. It is called to build with realism and integrity, with insight and creativity. Here as elsewhere Ellen White saw the situation clearly: "Whenever the people of God are growing in grace, they will be constantly obtaining a clearer understanding of His Word. They will discern new light and beauty in its sacred truths. This has been true in the history of the church in all ages, and thus it will continue to the end."53 Our Adventist theological tradition is not a stockade to imprison our thinking, but a platform on which to build. Authentic, thoroughgoing, truly historic Adventism is progressive Adventism. It was that way in 1844, and it has been that way ever since, as Adventists have been responsive to new facts, new circumstances, new needs. This was the motivation for the very important preamble to the 1980 statement of "Fundamental Beliefs."54
A second, and closely related, pattern that is visible in the history of Adventist thinking is diversity. The history of Adventist thinking is a history of family arguments—arguments about the relation of obedience to salvation and the relation of Christ to God, about the nature of inspiration and the role of Ellen White, about the battle of Armageddon, about the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary, about the influence of scientific knowledge on our reading of the Bible.
As change is inevitable, so is theological diversity. There always has been, and always will be, dissent. Because people are different, they hink differently and hear God's word differently. What to some members of the community is obvious, inescapable, and logically necessary, to others is mistaken, unwarranted, and absurd. And there has been, and always will be, dissent about the significance of dissent. in regard to a particular issue. When a dissenting voice is heard, almost always someone responds by saying that the dissenting view is—or will result in—the complete abandonment of Adventist belief. This happened in the nineteenth century; it happened in the twentieth century; and it is happening already in the twenty-first century.
But we needn't be frightened by the specter of "pluralism." There has always been a plurality of views. To the end of his life, Uriah Smith held an unorthodox view of the nature of Christ—in spite of Ellen White's statements to the contrary—but he was neither ostracized nor vilified, much less expelled from the community or its ordained ministry.
Theological diversity is not only inevitable and tolerable; it is also potentially valuable. So far from being a liability, it can be an asset. It is often through dissent, discussion, and dialogue that the church comes to a more adequate understanding of truth. As Ellen White advised us long ago, "When no new questions are started by investigation of the Scriptures, when no difference of opinion arises which will set men to searching the Bible for themselves, to make sure that they have the truth, there will be many now, as in ancient times, who will hold to tradition, and worship they know not what."55 Of course, dissent is not always a move in the right direction. An idea or insight that is new is not necessarily true. A dissenting opinion must make a case for itself.
A third pattern in the history of Adventist thinking is a general movement toward enlargement, toward broader, more comprehensive views. This kind of movement appears in various aspects of our thinking. In reading Scripture, for example, the focus has moved away from individual verses and toward larger units—paragraphs, chapters, books, and even the Bible as a whole. There has been a tendency to take context more seriously in understanding what a particular sentence of Scripture is saying to us.56 Even a whole book of the Bible may not be the last word on a subject. To understand the relationship between trusting God's love and doing God's will, we need the New Testament letters of both James and Paul, and the Gospels as well. It is the larger whole of Scripture, not a sentence here or there, that is theologically authoritative as "the rule of faith and practice."
In the outcome of our thinking, there has been movement from details and particularities to larger theological understanding. There are "larger views" of the sanctuary, of the atonement, the Sabbath, the "mark of the beast," the mission of the church, and other traditional ideas and activities. And in regard to our theological conversation partners, we have moved from talking and listening exclusively to ourselves—that is, to like-minded Adventists—to interacting with the larger Christian community. So the reality of change in our theological heritage has resulted in diversity and enlargement of our Adventist thinking.
Recently I rather poignantly found out just how specious most in the Adventist church are concerning the religious education of their children. However it is not only the children it is also faulty in regards to the knowledge of adults as well.
We have seen a steady decline in Christianity and Adventism in the Western world. What have we done to counteract the trend?
For years the Christian church has spent the vast majority of its resources in areas where Christianity is known.Through the Global Mission initiative, the Seventh-dayAdventistChurch has made the 10/40 Window a priority in mission.
Today Adventist missionaries, pastors, laypeople and Global Mission pioneers are carrying the message of hope to the 10/40 Window.Much still needs to be done, but your loving donations and prayers are making a difference. Thank you so much for your support of Adventist Mission.http://www.adventistmission.org/article.php?id=2
This is the emphasis for the last few years. The Adventist church has apparently given up on much of Europe and the United States. How will they reach these people? Apparently from the article linked above it is by sending evangelists.
So what does the SDA church offer for the youth in North America, how are they going to communicate with a world that is growing increasingly secular while also becoming increasing knowledgeable with the internet and it’s abundance of Religious and anti-religious material.
The article suggests on page 12 in the beginning chapter on Discipleship the following statement is made:
Consider
Examine your life plans. How does witnessing fit in? If we assume the above statement to be true – that our value in this life is “to be used to disciple men and women to the Lord Jesus Christ – what needs to change?
These days, if we want to be effective…, we have to be able to discuss truth – both the truth of Scripture and the truth about God that’s philosophical in nature. How do we do that?
•Know what you believe. [Have a] basic understanding of sin and salvation. Take some time to expand your understanding of what “truth” is.
•Know current thinking about God, truth, religion, etc. [Y]ou can…get a grasp of these ideas from [surfing the internet,] watching television, or reading some magazines that talk about what’s happening in the world. Above all, the easiest place to learn about current thinking is to listen to what your unsaved friends are talking about.
Much of the rest of the paper is the same old material on service and evangelism etc. The article and our church takes precious little time to deal with the foundation of witnessing however. That is to think critically and to have a good knowledge of religion not simply your own churches traditions but of other views both inside and outside of the Adventist or the Christian church.
In a recent conversation I had with a couple of people of authority over our young peoples classes in our local church. They sought to take issue with some of my thoughts from my article on Why I am a Progressive Seventh-day Adventist. One of the issues is that I don’t hold to the inerrancy of the Bible. It is easy to give examples of numerous errors and contradictions in the Bible and after I gave the classic about David being either inspired by God or Satan to number Israel one ofthe people stated that they could with certainty bring those issues to someone in the church who could answer the problems in a way that would solve any questions. Of course those of us who study Christianity know the answer. It is onlythought to be inerrant in the autographs (original manuscripts). Of course we don’t have the autographs and we will very likely never have them and unless we had them there is nothing to say that the manuscripts we do have do not have errors in them. In short inerrancy is a gratuitous assertion accepted by faith, not faith in God even, for nothing in the Biblestates the writing is inerrant. No the faith is in their belief that something that we don’t have is something that no other written document in the world is, inerrant.
Obviously this is a carry over from the old days when the Bible was thought to be verbally inspired. The second subject was likewise connected, the infallibility of the Bible, again nothing in the Bible, any of its component books make a claim for Biblical infallibility let alone for the compiled document we call the Bible. In a world with over 30,000 denominations and independent Christian churches all based upon the Bible it is a foolish notion to even speak of infallibility of the Bible. After all written words always require interpretation so that even if something as somehow infallible once the material entered into the fallible mind of a human being the infallibility is gone. This along with the questioning of Ellen White as a prophet, have made Progressive Adventists unwelcome as teachers for our young people. I fear that this fear of Progressive Adventism is not something found only in my local congregation. Traditional Adventists have been complaining about it for a long time. This last week Clifford Goldstein once again complains about SDA’s who are “the ones who have assaulted my beliefs the most”. (http://www.atoday.com/content/more-fear-within Adventist Today Blog subscription only)
This fear of being challenged by thinking SDA’s is reflected in the mission activities of our church and the way the church addresses our young people. They ignore the questions and the needed education required of the modern Western world and they focus on third world mission where they can teach their traditions with easier acceptance from a poorly educated populace. But what happens when they learn more, what happens when they have access to the information that we have in the Western World. As the article above pays lip service to knowing what other Christians and other philosophies believe the church does little to actually teach their youth how to think, because if they think, they will move away from traditional Adventism. And that is the fear, that Adventism has become a monument of truth, that truth being something delivered to the Adventist church sometime in the 19th century.
A truth which can’t even be debated because to debate it means you have to listen to other positions and interpretations. Which is why traditional Adventists won’t actually deal with the subject where they disagree with Progressive Adventists, rather they work behind the scenes questioning peoples qualifications to serve the church as leaders in children’s divisions etc. Taking every effort to insure that their children only hear what they accept. Pretending that the young people can’t handle ideas because the parents as traditional Adventists can’t handle ideas.
After so many years of losing our youth you would think that these traditional Adventists would begin to see they are hurting the very people they think they are helping.
