Alden Thompson's Revealing Interview

Spectrum offered a few interviews related to the Good News Tour event this past weekend. I would like to comment on the above statement made by Alden Thompson as he was interviewed by Jared Wright.

First I would have to say that among Adventist theologians Alden Thompson is one that I would tend to agree with more often then not; excluding views on Ellen White. So I don’t write this as an opponent of Alden Thompson but as someone in general, in favor of his presentations.

At 5 min and 08 seconds into the interview in a response the question Jared Wright asks:

“What would you say that this particular message that the Good News Tour offers has to say to Adventism and how can this help Adventism as a body?”

At 5 min 33 Thompson says:

“If you ever get to the place where the entire church buys into this, and I am talking about an entire local church without providing for the opportunity for the other part to be part. Then I think that would be a very unbalanced church. You really need both perspectives in creative tension with one another not only in terms of the life of the church now but when the children come along they’ll almost guaranteed, they will have a different view then their parents. So there needs to be a big enough home to include the entire Adventist family.”

Jared Wright then asks:

“So a tent that encompasses various different positions without excluding anyone.”

Alden Thompson:

“Absolutely..”

The two positions that are being referred to here are the Penal/Substitutionary Atonement, the legal view of atonement and the Moral Influence view often renamed as the demonstration view of the atonement, in Adventism named the trust healing model or the Larger view model. The Penal view sees Jesus paying the penalty for sin so that He is our substitute, who pays the penalty and who imputes His righteousness to us. The Demonstration view being that Christ demonstrated the character of love and forgiveness of God thus giving us reason to be able to verify that God is who and what He says He is and enabling us to trust God so that He can heal us.

The problem here is that the Penal/Substitutionary atonement theory has long accepted the view that Christ demonstrated the love and character of God and that it leads us to accept the gift of Grace. But that is in addition to the necessity that for God to forgive He must punish someone because His justice demands that since laws were broken punishment has to be meted out.

However the demonstrative view of atonement says that God can freely forgive and that is what love can do, it requires no punishment for forgiveness, in fact if someone is punished then it can not really even be called forgiveness. This is not a tension that can live together. Either one is Penal and accepts demonstration as an addition to Penal theory or one holds to demonstration alone, without the need for forgiveness to be predicated upon someone paying the debt of someone else.

I understand where Thompson is coming from, just after the quote given above he references some Ellen White statement about having different teachers, as if the moral influence theory is merely another teacher of atonement, a different teacher, and Penal Substitution is another teacher. Of course then carried to the logical conclusion you have to add the other theories as equally good teachers. The Ransom theory, where Jesus is a ransom paid to Satan, or the Mystical theory were we were mystically present in Adam and mystically present in Christ etc. For a more complete summary of the various atonement theories see the article on the Church history of the Atonement

Ellen White is very clearly a supporter of Penal Substitutionary Atonement even going so far as picturing Christ pleading to the Father, “my blood my blood”. Though she does have excellent statements showing the demonstrative side of Christ, those are no different from numerous other Christian authors’ statements even though they also held to the Penal/Substitutionary view. Thompson, here I think, is more consistent then the other Good News Tour presenters. But Thompson is also actually opposing their position. It is the Good News Tour presenters inconsistent use of Ellen White that bothers me the most. In one moment they will extol something from Ellen White as a presupposition that they build on and at the same time ignore multitudes of Ellen White statements which are clearly Penal Atonement views. It is a kind of inconsistency that cannot be maintained. To hold her as a prophet in some areas and not other areas creates the unsupportable position of saying when she is speaking as a prophet and when she is not, how do you tell which is which? Without any of the flexibility we can have with the Bible since it is written over thousands of years by multiple people, many unknown and many different purposes for writing.

One other note: It is my dream to actually have an entire church with the moral influence, demonstration view of the atonement. I honestly think it is the only hope Christianity has for survival. Contrary to Thompson’s view that the children will reject what they are taught I think they will cling to the things that make sense. The Penal view has held sway for 3-400 years now it is simply not true that the younger people in the church will reject the views of their parents. If that were true we would have switched atonement views far more frequently then we have.

What we need now is a church that is able to appreciate what love is and not operate under models more in line with God as tyrant than God as love. No doubt tradition will be hard to fight, and no doubt we will be accused of heresy because we don’t accept the tradition. And ultimately it means leaving behind Ellen White as prophet. For she was a product of her time and we cannot allow her time to dictate our future and we simply cannot allow the tension of contradictory beliefs to define Christian religion. For Adventism that means either progressing or retreating, moving forward with reasonable ideas or moving back to nineteenth century traditionalism repeating the same mistakes that earlier reform movements made.

Comparision of Forensic vs. Demonstrative atonement

"In a comment on a recent blog article here Douglas Hackleman gave us a link to his article “World’s Apart” written around 1980 for Spectrum. On page 6 he compares the two conflicting views on the Atonement mentioned in the previous blog articles; particularly between Graham Maxwell and Desmond Ford. While the Good News Tour claims that they are not representing Graham Maxwell’s theology the fact remains that most certainly, he has heavily influenced the Good News Tour presenters.

From Hackleman’s article [I applied the text color, green for Forensic and blue for Demonstrative theory which Maxwell calls the Larger View today]:

“The following outline contrasts a few of the major points of conflict between the Forensic and Demonstrative views of the Atonement.

(1a) In Forensic views of the atonement the emphasis is on the desperate need of the sinner to be justified or cleansed from guilt. Salvation, or a right standing, or acceptability with God, is contingent upon the penalty for our breaking the law being paid by Another (Substitution).

(1b) I have labeled the non-forensic understanding of the Atonement the Demonstrative theory because its proponents understand the Cross primarily as a revelation of many things which fit loosely under the word Grace. But because the term “revelation” comes with many semantic loadings, I have disqualified it as a title, opting instead for the Demonstrative theory of the Atonement. The detractors of this position label it Moral Influence theory primarily because it shares the belief that the Cross was intended to bring about a change in man, not in God.

(2a) Forensic theology of the Cross hangs on the concept of Substitution and Representation. “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). Christ took our place dying the death that the Law, or Justice, demanded.

(2b) Demonstrative thinking is good for its name at this point, enumerating several truths revealed clearly at the Cross: The Gracious love of God, the awful nature of evil, and the certainty that God can be trusted when He describes the consequences of disorderly living in His orderly universe.

(3a) The writings of St. Paul (particularly Romans the third chapter) are considered normative and authoritative for Forensic interpretations of the Cross. Quoting Desmond Ford: “Romans is the central explanation in the New Testament on the Cross of Christ.” “[Paul] synthesizes the whole weight of God’s preceding revelation. The whole Old Testament is forensic.”8

(3b) All sixty-six books of Scripture and the writings of Ellen White—interpreted in light of the life and teachings of Christ and the Great Controversy in which He was engaged—comprise the background and illumination for the Demonstrative explanation of what happened at the Cross.

(4a) A rather literal interpretation of the forensic metaphors in Scripture—particularly those of Paul in Romans—is demanded by exponents of forensic explanations of the atonement. When others suggest that Christ’s teaching—particularly the Prodigal Son parable—sheds light on God’s attitude toward sinners, Ford says, “I wouldn’t be comfortable trying to take a parable to tell the whole story of salvation,” and he cites the copious presence of forensic language in the Desire of Ages chapter on Gethsemane and Calvary and “all the forensic language there about surety, substitution, wrath.”9

(4b) The Demonstrative advocates interpret the Old Testament sacrificial system and the forensic language of Paul as metaphors of Grace, realizing that the transcendent cannot be described apart from metaphor. This from an understanding of the Great Controversy and the view of God’s posture to sinners taught by Christ through the parable of the Prodigal Son and even more profoundly demonstrated by the way Jesus treated sinners while He lived among us. God, represented by Jesus, did not become Gracious after the Cross, they contend.

(5a) The Forensic concept of sin tends to be objective. There is a tendency to ascribe ontological properties to sin; it is something. You can get it on you. “I have guilt upon me,” as Ford says. Sins, then, can be moved about in books. And the sinner has a “status” or a “standing” which only can be affected by Christ standing in the sinner’s place. Only Christ’s “work done for me matches the Holy Law,” says Ford.10

(5b) By great contrast, the Demonstrative approach to sin emphasizes its subjective nature. It is a severed or hostile relationship, a condition rather than a status, a state rather than a legal standing. This alienated condition called sin expresses its misery not only in estrangement from God but from our fellow humans and ourselves. The Demonstrative theory explains the Cross as necessary to heal sinners because only the Cross could repair the relationship broken by sin.

(6a) Speaking about “God’s holy law” and “the law accusing sinners,” the Forensic explanation of the law tends to objectify—even anthropomorphize—the law, giving it properties of its own, including the capacity to act as a prosecutor. Still, Dr. Ford says,“the law isn’t something outside [God]. The law is just what God is.”11 But that leaves God accusing sinners instead of “the accuser of the brethren,” Satan.

(6b) The law of God—from the Demonstrative perspective—is the way God made the universe and its creatures to operate: the way things are. The Ten Commandments are seen as the human being’s owner’s manual, or service manual. Living out of harmony with the way we were optimally created to live, results, naturally, in a host of miseries ending in death, which Maxwell explains, “is the consequence of disorderly living in an orderly universe.”12

(7a) The Forensic view of the atonement would have to view the death of Christ as an execution— such as the wicked will receive at the end of the age—since Jesus was made to be sin in our place and died the second death for us. Paxton speaks euphemistically about “the Father putting forward the Son to be a propitiation, but at the same time giving Himself in His Son.”13

(7b) The Demonstrative approach explains the second death of the wicked as the natural consequence of separation from God’s sustaining power brought on by intractable rebellion. God “gives them up,” or “lets them go.” Rather than paying the price or penalty for disobedience on the Cross, God demonstrated the terrible consequences of separation in Jesus who was made sin for us and cried out, “Why have you given me up?”

(8a) Ford, Paxton, and others, perceiving a lack of assurance of salvation among the Adventists they encounter, have attempted to rectify this doubt, this uncertainty, by preaching justification with a heavy legal, transactional emphasis. Reacting also to what they feel is a dangerous leaning toward a “Tridentine” theology of “salvation by works” or “imparted righteousness” or “salvation by sanctification,” they have been making it very clear that our assurance of salvation is based on what Christ did on Calvary, not what Christ is doing in me. And the argument rages whether Righteousness by Faith includes only justification or also sanctification.

(8b) Meanwhile, the Demonstrative adherents feel that the uproar over Righteousness by Faith is unfortunate since they believe, behind it all, “our assurance is based on the kind of Person God is,” and that a thorough study of Scripture fosters trust in statements like Paul’s in Romans 1:17 where the Righteousness of God is revealed as the good news of His power to heal and save. If we believe that, the doubt over assurance is unfounded.

Well, is the cross primarily a substitution? Or is it at its heart a revelation? Is it a legitimate method, for understanding the Cross and its purpose, to accept Paul’s forensic language as normative, and to take that language quite literally? Or do we need to focus more on Christ’s revelation of God and His central role in the Great Controversy? And should not the tendency for Paul to emphasize legal terminology be understood as—at least in part—a reflection of the period and culture in which he lived and to which he tendered his unprecedented message?"

Deuling Errors

ProgressiveAdventism.com now known as AdventistExpressions.com posted the fact that there will be two competing ideologies on The Loma Linda Campus. The article begins:

Crossfire on LLU Campus

The weekend of September 5-6 will feature a theological showdown of a sort on Loma Linda University campus.

At the University Church (the larger of the two campus churches), the “Good News Tour” will arrive on Friday evening and all day Saturday. A key objective of this program is to highlight a certain picture of God that emphasizes God’s kindness, compassion and non-violence. GNT is said to be Inspired by the teachings of Graham Maxwell who provided a strong reaction against the penal substitutionary atonement theory. In essence, Maxwell saw the cross as a showdown of governing principles between God and Satan, and a divine expression of unconditional love. In that expression, there can be no violence.

Over at the Campus Hill Church, the Adventist Today Foundation is hosting two lectures by Desmond Ford, probably one of the most significant (and controversial) theologians produced by the Adventist church. The two lectures entitled “The Theory of the Forensic Atonement in Light of the Gospel” and “This I Believe” will take place at 3pm and 8pm which means the first lecture will go up straight against all the afternoon sessions of the Good News Tour. My sense is that Ford will defend the substitutionary understanding of the atonement which has been a centerpiece of his theology.

Of course I am not near LLU so I won’t have to make a choice. In fact I disagree with both speakers. The Good News Tour people use an irrational method of accepting Ellen White ideas and rejecting Ellen White ideas. Holding to the prophetic guidance of Ellen White while ignoring many of the things Ellen White says on the subject. It is too bad that they are so inconsistent and focus so much upon the idea of no violence. Because factually Ellen White was very supportive of the Penal/Substitutionary view of Atonement and secondly the Bible is full of violence with much of it being attributed to God. Holding to Ellen White while ignoring Ellen White is certainly a formula for failure. The sad part is that they are on the right track but being so indoctrinated with Ellen White they don’t have the courage to leave her and her nineteenth century views behind.

Desmond Ford on the other hand holds a traditional Evangelical view which is that Christ suffered our punishment for sin, God poured out His wrath upon Christ so that He could forgive our sins. Nothing new here, just the basic stuff that Protestant religion has produced since the Reformation. This is the view of most of the Protestant Christian world.

So which one would I choose to go to? Probably the Good News Tour because I continually hope they will make a break through past their Adventist Ellen White dependence. It is holding them back from reaching both Adventists and the outside world. Any knowledgeable person attending their lectures would immediately see that they are heavily dependent upon extra biblical sources and that the sources are used as the primary basis for propositions. But then again that is not much different from the Penal theory which main claim is that it is the accepted tradition. When people see the verses in the Bible that speak of atonement they remember how the Penal theory uses those verses and assume that the Bible was written using the Penal Atonement theory as a reality. Not according to the facts that the Penal theory took over a thousand years to appear in Christianity.

For more see: Response to Graham Maxwell's Great Controversy View

Church History of the Atonement

Good News Tour Presentations, fiction over fact

As I have been listening to the Good News Tour 2006 presentations I have noticed that their Biblical understanding is frequently questionable. Most of this is developed from their unquestioning acceptance of what they call the Great Controversy view. Which is based largely upon assumptions they draw from taking meaning away from the context given in the Bible. For example here is some material from Marco Belmont in the latest issue of the Good News Letter.

The Sin of Defining Sin
(And how it affects our youth)

Having served as a youth pastor, I’m tuned into kids, and how they reject vague, formless, and fuzzy theological answers. One of the more popular questions my youth would sometimes ask is this: "What is sin?" Is this not a question we must answer if we are to comprehend why God came down and lived in a womb for nine months, let His own created beings raise Him into adulthood and ultimately–(here’s the kicker) murder Him? …

Where did sin originate? Heaven. More specifically, in the very presence of God. I can hear one of my 16-year-olds protesting. ―Pastor Marco, I was told that sin can’t live in the presence of God. Valid question, right? What would you say to this teenager? Does it make sense to say that sin can’t live in the presence of God but it did originate there? So, whatever sin is, it obviously does something to change our perceptions about God - NOT God's perception of us. If sin can’t live in the presence of God, then how are the youth of 2007 supposed to go to God to get the solution for sin? We say, ―Go to God and in the same breath we suggest ―but don’t get too close. I recently read this statement in a popular theological periodical: ―Sin, therefore, is as much who we are as it is what we do, be-cause, in the end, we do what we do because we are what we are.

You only come up with the answer that sin originated in heaven by assuming that the verses in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 are not writing about the king of Babylon and Tyre respectively but holding to the Lucifer myth that those verses are actually talking about Satan. However we know from history were the Lucifer myth came from and we know that it is not found in either the Jewish history or the New Testament period. For more information and an extensive list of quotes from modern Bible Commentaries see the article Who is Lucifer or Satan Misidentified.

If you can’t hold to the Lucifer myth then much of the presentations at the Good News 2005 will be pretty hard to take. The Bible actually never tells us about the origin of Satan, when where or how he became the adversary of God. It is extra Biblical sources and a whole lot of reading into texts that give us the theory of Satan’s fall. The book of Genesis begins with man’s fall because we are part of mankind and we are the ones in need of reconciliation to God. When we try to insert extra material into the story we merely create a fiction that we call fact. It may be that we want to know more then we do but in the end we are only left with what we are given.

Marco continues:

This seems more than a little confusing. However, I think the writer is summarizing an idea we've heard all our lives in one form or another – that as soon as we come out of our mamma’s womb, we’re already horrible sinners. We seem to be telling little Johnny that not ONLY is he born into a sinful world with sinful tendencies and disabilities (which is true), but that he is already BAD to the bone, and hopeless! We may even follow it up with ―Now Johnny, don’t even attempt to try and understand why you are a sinner and why you were just born that way, but it’s very important that you understand that God can forgive your sin if you beg Him to. But unfortunately, sin can’t live in His presence. So, well – um – well — uh… look, don't ask questions. Just get ready for church. We’re already late.

I’d like to suggest that when we tell a child that he is born a horrendous and hopeless sinner before he even gulps his first breath, we just might be instilling hopelessness. Satan used a lie at the tree with our first parents, saying that God didn’t make them good enough, and if they would just eat some yummy cantaloupes, they’d finally achieve perfection. Now, he whispers loudly to us—"You're already so MESSED up that you might as well GIVE up!" And many of us do.

Now that people have successfully created the Lucifer myth it is easy to extend the myth building farther. Through the book of Revelation we see Satan identified with the serpent of old so that is perfectly acceptable but does the story indicate that the serpent charges were addressed at saying the people weren’t good enough. No in fact the attack was upon God through the selfish desires of the people.

(Gen 3:1-5 NIV) Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'" "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman ."For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

So it was not about being good enough it was a play to pride that they wanted to be like God. Trust is the key element here, can man trust God or not. The rest of the Bible is about creating that trust. The story continues with the banishment from the Garden and then on to the first murder. It is clearly not about Satan whispering “your all messed up”. Well unless you assume that the inspiration of the Bible is from Satan, otherwise you have to admit God has pretty much identified us as messed up people. In general even the atheist would agree with the idea that people are messed up it seems to be an historical fact rather then the whispering of the deceiver.

Where does the Bible say that sin can’t live in His presence? Well that appears to be another of those insertions that people put into the Bible along with a whole host of things that they draw from metaphors like God is a consuming fire. But suffice it to say God met with the sinner Moses, talked with a whole bunch of patriarchs and prophets and came down and lived among us as Jesus Christ. God can do as He desires and people have no business foisting nonsense upon youth. Which brings me back to my problems with the numerous presentations at the Good News tour with the exception of those presentations by Alden Thompson, though I still have one more to listen to of his.

Marco concludes:

In conclusion, permit me to make one final statement. If sin is lies about the Character of God that originated in the mind of a created being in the very presence of God, then the solution to sin is the truth that dispels those lies in the minds of God’s created beings, as we behold and utilize that truth, in the very presence of God. And that, my dear global family (who I love with all my heart), is why Jesus Christ is the solution to the sin problem – because on earth, He WAS God, and now we know the truth about what God is really like and realize that Satan was a liar from the beginning. With that truth available, we can allow the healing that comes with trusting the healer. I believe this to be the concept that God has been trying to communicate to His people from the beginning: that at the Cross of Calvary, we discover we have no reason to fear a God who loves His creatures so much that He allowed them to murder Him. Marco Belmonte

Aside from his conclusion of what sin is, which is based upon some of his assumptions rather then accurate Biblical interpretations, because frankly sin is far broader then lies about the character of God, he presents a reasonable conclusion. The question is why involve all the supposition and fantasy to come to the idea of trust in God which was pretty clearly in the Adam and Eve story to begin with if it had not been reinterpreted by Marco. He could have quoted Jesus saying that Satan was a liar and murderer from the beginning, no need to plead to tradition about Lucifer, no need to pretend that sin can’t exist in the presence of God.

I am glad that this article was published because it makes it so much easier for me to say what I wanted to say about those Good News Tour presentations. They have some very good parts to their message but it is filled with so much rubbish that it becomes hard to stomach. They have restricted the gospel to and Adventist traditional view and don’t seem to realize that there is a whole world out there to be reached. Their message will not even be heard by other Christians because it is so infected with an extra-biblical view that they have named the great controversy. I remember asking them at HeavenlySanctuary.com what their definition of the Great Controversy was. Their best answer seemed to be the first three chapters of the Ellen White book Patriarchs and Prophets. Not exactly a great Biblical definition.

A Sermon You Should Hear

I have been listening to the Good News Tour 2006 talks found on the HeavenlySanctuary.com website. I am probably a little more then half way through and will offer some analysis in the near future. For now I would like to recommend people listen to Alden Thompson's talk entitled Jesus Solves All The Problems in The Bible

The title of course is a bit facetious but it is well worth listening to as it relates quite well with the quarter's Sabbath School Lessons on the Bible. what I like about Thompson is that he does not take verses out of context the way most of the other speakers at the conference do.