Another Aunt Sevvy lie

Adventist Today's Another Aunt Sevvy Purposeful Deception or Illiterate Interpretation?

By Ron Corson

 It never ceases to amaze me how the writers over at Adventist Today lie so often. I suppose they write for a select group of people who will only agree with their writers and who won’t even bother to check out what they say. Take this for example from the anonymous Dear Aunt Sevvy:

If you don’t believe in 1844, why remain Adventist, Aunty?

One General Conference official has written that religious liberty in the church means you can leave if you don’t agree with what it officially stands for. Because he sees it only from the office at the top, he doesn’t understand what a church is. 

Here is what the article by Clifford Goldstein said back in 2013:

All this leads to the gist of what constitutes true religious freedom issues, and why I would, as Liberty editor, often tell those church members who wanted to drag us into their church disputes, "Sorry, wrong department."

Why? Because as already stated, at the most fundamental level, church affiliation is voluntary. You freely choose to be part of that body. The state, and the power of force it wields, has nothing to do with your membership. If something happens that you deem unfair, you are as free to leave that church body, just as you were to join. As long as no state coercion is involved, it's not a religious liberty issue in the classic sense.

So in fact the General Conference official was saying you can leave or join a church that is not the meaning of religious liberty. He states the meaning of religious liberty earlier in the article by saying:

This concept gets to the heart of religious liberty and church-state separation. In essence, people who join churches do so voluntarily. They are there of their own free will. They are not forced to join, and certainly not by the state. By joining a church, one publicly associates oneself, to some degree, with the teachings, mission, and goals of that church. What makes that membership meaningful is, however, the free association with that body. That association, and the public proclamation that comes merely by linking oneself to the name of the church, has potency only because one has freely chosen it. Forced membership would all but denude that proclamation of any public witness, of any testimony, public or private, regarding your convictions. You would be there because you had to be, not because you necessarily believed in what the church stood for.

John Locke, one of the patriarchs of religious freedom, wrote in 1698, in the context of religious liberty, that "I may grow rich by an Art that I take not delight in; I may be cured of some Disease by Remedies that I have not faith in; but I cannot be saved by a Religion I distrust, and by a Worship that I abhor."

It is hard to believe any thinking person could produce what the Aunt Sevvy column says. 
There was only one place in the Clifford Goldstein article that actually used the word "leave" and in that same paragraph, it says leaving your church is not religious liberty in the classic sense. Then she continues by saying that he does not understand what church is. To believe that this is just misinterpreting a fairly simple article is hard to believe. It appears that it is meant as an attack on Clifford Goldstein, without actually mentioning his name though he is a constant nemesis for the people at Adventist Today. So the answer is pretty clearly not a simple misinterpretation of the article that Aunt Sevvy linked to. No, it is an attempt to fool people into thinking someone at the General Conference said something very dumb. Of course, the writer who remains anonymous could have given the quote from the article linked to but as that would not work at all with the writer's intentions they only linked to the article hoping that if the reader actually opened the article they would see Goldstein's name and let their bias take over. 

 I am sure though if their comments section worked many would praise the column. But as of now perhaps the Adventist Today site was hacked as when you click on their link to comment it takes you to a page that says

This content isn't available right now When this happens, it's usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it's been deleted.

It has been a few days and I don’t think they have even noticed!

 Update: 10-12-22

So it does turn out that I have been blocked from viewing the public posts of Adventist Today. I did not think that was possible but searching the internet led me to an article on how the administrator can do that even though it is not something mentioned on FaceBook's Help Center. It did sound like it would take a bit of time but since they apparently don't edit out errors in their articles they seem to have time to do it. It does appear from the first answer in the comments that the insertion of the false information had its desired effect.

G.W. 

"This is a great reply from Aunt Sevvy!

The flip side to this conversation is, "I don't feel comfortable around the leaders of my church, and those within their circles.

They seem to be looking for ways to exclude me.

I have no problem with doctrinal differences, but being at church doesn't feel comfortable.

Can I ask those people to leave?"

 

Goldstein...you don't belong!

Today I saw and interview with Clifford Goldstein on 3ABN The show was 3ABN Today. I saw it on 5-16-2015 though I don't know if that was the original air date or not. In this portion which I have recorded and placed on YouTube Goldstein the following is stated:

Interviewed by Shelly Quinn on 3ABN Today; speaking of a new series Goldstein is introducing on the 3ABN channel:

“…Why would Adventists want to watch your program, who already believe in the Bible?”

Goldstein:

“Well we are all assaulted by this in the church being assaulted by this, we are also in the church being assaulted by evolution by a lot of you know even professed Adventists who believe in evolution and I am sorry if you believe that God used millions of years what they now call neo-darwinian synthesis to create life you do not belong in the Seventh-day Adventist church.”

Quinn:

“I agree”

Goldstein:

“You don’t  belong  here, some people say they can reconcile it well I think they are being deluded. But there are a lot, particularly our young people who tend to be a lot more honest  and if I were a young Seventh–day Adventist and I were convinced that evolution were true I don’t know how I could remain a Seventh-day Adventist…”

 

There are a number of problems here. First he miss defines Neo-Darwinian synthesis apparently conflating it with Theistic Evolution.  The definitions follow later. The really key problem here is that his view produces a self fulfilling prophecy. His view is that if Adventists believe that God used millions of years then you don't belong in the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church. Then in his estimation if you are a young person who believes in evolution (apparently any kind, I don't know, let us for this article assume he just means that evolution was a involved in millions of years to get to life that we see today) then you simply could not remain an SDA. Why would that be? The simple answer is because people like him say that you don't belong. He then thinks that these young people are more honest then those older deluded Adventists who came to realize the reality as they see it in the principles of evolution and the evidence for an earth that is much older then traditional Adventism says. These older people did not have people in General Conference leadership roles telling them they did not belong in the SDA church. Well he clearly is out to fix that! They simply don't belong!

 

The Adventist church has somewhat allowed the divergent beliefs of those who can synthesize modern science and theology but it has become an exceedingly unfriendly place for such people. After all why be part of a group that says you don't belong. Not something I would fight to remain in, but that may be because I find so many other problems in the SDA church.

 

If any of you think that this is simply about the wording of a fundamental belief to be decided at the upcoming General Conference session...you are in for a disappointment.

 

Now for some definitions.

        

Theistic evolution is the teaching that God used natural evolutionary processes to bring     life  to its current level of speciation. Theistic evolution would deny the specific creative act of God in bringing the person of Adam, who would be the first human and the representative of mankind, into existence.https://carm.org/dictionary-theistic-evolution

 

Theistic Evolution would include most of the variants of Intelligent Design and has been the view of notable Christians such as C.S. Lewis: "C.S. Lewis clearly believed that Christians can accept evolution as common descent without doing violence to their faith. This is what Lewis was getting at when he wrote to evolution critic Bernard Acworth, "I believe that Christianity can still be believed, even if evolution is true."¹⁸ In Lewis's view, whether God used common descent to create the first human beings was irrelevant to the truth of Christianity. As he wrote to one correspondent late in his life, "I don't mind whether God made man out of earth or whether 'earth' merely means 'previous millennia of ancestral organisms.' If the fossils make it probable that man's physical ancestors 'evolved,' no matter." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/11/darwin_in_the_d_1079231.html

 

What is intelligent design?
Intelligent design refers to a scientific research program as well as a community of scientists, philosophers and other scholars who seek evidence of design in nature. The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection. Through the study and analysis of a system's components, a design theorist is able to determine whether various natural structures are the product of chance, natural law, intelligent design, or some combination thereof. Such research is conducted by observing the types of information produced when intelligent agents act. Scientists then seek to find objects which have those same types of informational properties which we commonly know come from intelligence. Intelligent design has applied these scientific methods to detect design in irreducibly complex biological structures, the complex and specified information content in DNA, the life-sustaining physical architecture of the universe, and the geologically rapid origin of biological diversity in the fossil record during the Cambrian explosion approximately 530 million years ago. http://www.intelligentdesign.org/whatisid.php1. T

The Neo-Darwinian Synthesis (also called the "Synthetic Theory of Evolution")

• formulated during the decade 1937-1947.

• updated Darwin's ideas using new information from many scientific fields.

• main features of this view are mutation and natural selection.

• genetic mutations produce variation within a population (Darwin could not explain variation).

• natural selection preserves the most fit varieties within a species, as explained by Darwin.

• macroevolution is simply microevolution extrapolated.

• evolution is slow, gradual, and continuous, as held by Darwin.

• this view has difficulty explaining the fossil record with its lack of transitional forms.

In the 1930s and '40s evolutionists worked to incorporate new data from various subdisciplines of biology into a revised version of classical Darwinism. The primary focus on natural selection was maintained, but other aspects of Darwin's thinking were updated.  http://www.creationbc.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=124&Itemid=62

 

You can see that there is a large division between Neo-Darwinian Synthesis and Theistic Evolution and Intelligent Design...that being the unseen hand of God somehow at work. Which makes Goldstein's use in the sentence completely wrong. "I am sorry if you believe that God used millions of years what they now call neo-Darwinian synthesis to create life you do not belong in the Seventh-day Adventist church.” If he meant to say that naturalistic atheistic evolution then I could agree because why be a part of a theistic church if you don't believe there is a God then I would not have a problem with his view. But since in the sentence he specifically said "if you believe that God used" and then reference an entirely naturalistic evolutionary process his statement does not work on any level. Sadly like the interviewer Shelly Quinn there are far to many people who will simply agree with Goldstein's incorrect logic and use of terms.

 

 

 

Redefining Theology, Goldstein and Genesis

There was an interesting comment over on the Spectrum Magazine blog concerning Clifford Goldstein's March 2012 article in the Adventist Review, the subject of my previous article. In the comment section one atheist/former (you have to know his history of comments to know this fact it is not present in this comment) Adventist writes:

“All of you seem to have skipped Cliff's challenge: "For years I’ve been asking someone to give me a reinterpretation of the texts, based on the Darwinian worldview, that doesn’t undermine almost everything we believe: the trustworthiness of the Bible, the origin of sin and death, the character of God, and the meaning of the cross."

In the interest of not repeating the same old arguments and posts we've seen so many times before, why not seriously address his point. Cliff's argument is not with science per se; his point is that he is not willing, under any circumstance, to give up on the Christian gospel. If evolution allowed him to keep his faith intact, he would be happy to acknowledge the science behind it, if I read him correctly. The reason I think he is so angry at you is that he believes that you're eroding the ground upon which Christianity is built.”

I think this raises an important observation, Goldstein has not seen anyone produce a theistic evolutionary response that leaves in tact all of Goldstein's theological assumptions. No one really tries to answer Goldstein because it can't be done and contain all of Goldstein's assumptions that make what Goldstein considers the gospel. In brief what does his view of the trustworthiness of the Bible mean. Well he means that the first 11 chapters of Genesis are literal and historically accurate. Something no theistic evolutionary accepting Christian would accept. So to Goldstein to deny the literalness denies the trustworthiness of the Bible. But for those of us who accept theistic evolution trustworthiness is not based upon literalness.

The origin of sin and death is not really the topic of the first chapters of Genesis. Sin is not even mentioned until the story of Cain and Abel. Death is mentioned as a consequence of actions. Because of Adam and Eve's actions the tree of life is removed from their access. The story is hardly about the origin of sin and death, even Adventists seem to acknowledge that sin originated with Satan and Satan is not even mentioned in the Genesis story. He is a later addition to Jewish thought and then attributed to be the serpent of old in the book of Revelation. So even to the Adventist the subject is not the origin of sin.

What Goldstein means by the character of God I don't know, I would guess from his article he is thinking; how can God create through a system of death where animals and plants grow change and die and evolve. Apparently it is OK for God to make animals become predators upon others and virus and plants to attack and kill a host because God is upset by human sin. But he has to draw the line somewhere and he choses the evolution of nature to be somehow contrary to the character of God. Personally I don't see any problem with death before Adam and Eve, the assumption that it is not involved in the Genesis story seems wrong to me as the people in the story eat. So they are destroying cellular material and that is death. This is not a real problem unless you take the perfect world idea to it's logical conclusion, bacteria would grow and exponential rates and cover the earth in less then a week (maybe even 24 hours) if there was no death. The story is not trying to tell us there was no death, that is something people like to read into the story. Goldstein's assumptions are part of the things read into the story and he wants them maintained when they should be let go.

Last is his meaning of the cross. Goldstein is a forensic atonement person. I don't accept the substitutionary atonement, so I really would not find my meaning of the cross to be the same as Goldstein. In fact I think the substitutionary atonement theory speaks terribly about the character of God.

So can anyone do what Goldstein wants done? No, because what he wants is to find his beliefs encompassed with a totally different understanding of theology. His view is traditional but that hardly makes it correct. Traditions come and go, they are constantly adjusted and changed and just because they are traditional does not prevent their evolution. But that is what Goldstein wants; his tradition to be maintained, if not he can't accept anything else. But that really does not leave him in the position of authority in rejecting other views. It only means he won't look at anything other then the way he sees things.

The atheist commenter on Spectrum wants us to admit that the idea of evolution destroys the gospel. It does not, it destroys the fundamentalist or the traditionalists gospel. But is that really a bad thing?

Brain Dead Administation

I think I have figured out the leadership of the Adventist church. Ah you may say no one can figure out their inscrutable minds. After all the Board Chairman at La Sierra University Ricardo Graham recently asked 4 people to resign after listening to a secret recording of their private conversations. As if private conversations should be supplied to employers for their use in deciding faculty and staff positions. You may think they would not want their words recorded and played back to their constituency. But I think they don't even think about that. It is to Clifford Goldstein that I owe this new understanding of Adventist leadership.

Here is the paragraph that led me to my new understanding:

“The dead, therefore, know no delay in the Second Coming. It’s we, the living, who fret over it, but only because we look from the wrong perspective, the perspective of the living. But that’s too narrow a view, because most people are dead a lot longer than they are alive. From 
the perspective of the dead, things appear quite differently.”

You see if you have perspective of an active and thinking brain you act differently then someone who as Goldstein says in his article: “--what would death do to that experience when we have no brain function or, if dead long enough, no brain?”

So he wants people to look at the wider view of things. That view, that perspective, in his article is that of the inactive, non functioning, dead brain. Are you getting the picture? The goal of the Adventist leadership is to have the wider view of things. The perspective of the dead with no thoughts and no brain. What is the perspective of someone with no brain; normally being brain dead is not a something to be desired but it appears to be good and we are to emulate it and it does appear that the administration at La Sierra University are doing their best not to think. Strange how not thinking and fundamentalism go together, but that is the subject for another day.

Idealogues; impossible to explain to them

I could not think how to point out this problem with President Obama in a way that reflected the purpose of this blog until I read something from Clifford Goldstein this last week. First President Obama, in an example of saying one thing the opposite of what is true. At the recent Obama question and answer session at the House Republican Retreat in Baltimore President Obama in referring to a fictional account of some none existent Republican plan that was to do twice as much as Obama’s plan and cost nothing Obama said:

“And the notion that I would somehow resist doing something that cost half as much but would produce twice as many jobs -- why would I resist that? I wouldn't. I mean, that's my point, is that -- I am not an ideologue. I'm not. It doesn't make sense if somebody could tell me you could do this cheaper and get increased results that I wouldn't say, great. The problem is, I couldn't find credible economists who would back up the claims that you just made.”

Notice the part where he says I am not an ideologue. An ideologue by the dictionary definition is:

1 : an impractical idealist : theorist
2 : an often blindly partisan advocate or adherent of a particular ideology

It is the second definition that is most often used, a partisan advocate of a particular idea.

Notice later in the speech how Obama verifies that he is an ideologue:

“Now, what I said at the State of the Union is what I still believe: If you can show me -- and if I get confirmation from health care experts, people who know the system and how it works, including doctors and nurses -- ways of reducing people's premiums; covering those who do not have insurance; making it more affordable for small businesses; having insurance reforms that ensure people have insurance even when they've got preexisting conditions, that their coverage is not dropped just because they're sick, that young people right out of college or as they're entering in the workforce can still get health insurance -- if those component parts are things that you care about and want to do, I'm game. And I've got -- and I've got a lot of these ideas.”

This is an ideologue position because it puts forth that these components have to be met; even though they cannot be met. For instance any insurance plan that includes preexisting conditions will not reduce people’s premiums because the premiums have to cover more people with already known problems that will require more treatments. If you cover more people who currently don’t have insurance then again those already paying for insurance will have to pay more to cover those who don’t have insurance. Of course the young people just out of college could get health insurance but don’t want to pay for it because they don’t expect to use it that much. So what he has done is present an impossible ideal that he claims if you have a plan that can cover those components he will listen. But of course since there is no plan including that coming from the Congress or the Senate democrats that can do that, clearly the Republicans can’t do the impossible either.

Now why this example is included on a Adventist religion blog is because it is a frequent tactic of Adventist as well as other Christians in dealing with ideas that they oppose. Here is a portion of what Clifford Goldstein recently wrote on the Spectrum blog comments in response to Ron Osborn’s article:

“My big question, as I said, was in reference to evolution and the cross, because I can't see how evolution can be true and the cross, at least the subtitionary model (the only model the Bible teaches [I know that's a zinger on here]) could possibly be reconciled with it. I was waiting for your response to that.

I must admit I was disappointed. Is what you wrote above your answer? If so, then I am confirmed even more in my belief that one has to chose evolution, or Jesus, but not both.

Your words, "Or does this narrative in fact keep the cross as far away from the creation as possible? The standard legal-forensic model of Christ’s death may in fact be a desperate attempt to isolate the creation story in Genesis in a way that allows us to read it without any reference to Christ at all" . . . ? Maybe I'm missing something here, but what in the world, brother, are you talking about? Am I alone in finding those two lines uncomprehensible?

Can anyone on this blog give me a logical, coherent, biblical way of harmonizing evolution with the cross? I'm even willing to listen to someone harmonize a Maxwellian-subjective-view of atonement with evolution, if they can. “

Goldstein even while challenging someone to show him an alternate view posits that his view is the only real view anyway. In other words he sets himself up in the ideologue position. He is asking for someone to explain a different view from his own that incorporates all of his already preconceived notions. Particularly his Substitutionary view of Atonement. He says: “at least the subtitionary model (the only model the Bible teaches…)” and then later says “Can anyone on this blog give me a logical, coherent, biblical way of harmonizing evolution with the cross? I'm even willing to listen to someone harmonize a Maxwellian-subjective-view of atonement with evolution, if they can.” Setting up the impossible mission where the subjective view of atonement most be based upon the Biblical version which he has already told us is only Substitutionary. There is thus absolutely no way for anyone to present a logical coherent view that will be viewed as logical and coherent to Clifford Goldstein. The ideologue position prevents the ideologue from ever listening to anything that is not their position even if their position is impractical.

This does remind me that I have to finish my article which may help answer Cliff’s question. But even as you read it you will realize that there are vast differences in ways of interpreting things that have to be considered. You can’t declare this is what has to be incorporated for me to accept the idea behind theistic evolution and the reconciliation to God through the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ. I even doubt that people like Cliff would read to the end of part two and maybe that is why it has taken me so long to work on part 3. See: Ecclesiastes the Anti-Fundamentalist Book

Why won't Goldstein take on Historic Adventists

Cliff Goldstein is not alone in his dismissal of “Thinking Adventists”. The following is from Lancashire Evening Post:

Bishop blames intellectuals for Church's decline

12 November 2008 By Sonja Astbury

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.com Though 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.

Thinking Adventists

Clifford Goldstein writes in his blog entitled Will the Real Thinking Adventist Please Stand up? Part Two (subscription only) about his agreement with Dale Ratzlaff’s statement in Proclamation Magazine. Here is the paragraph from the letters section response that impressed Cliff:

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.

Atoday Blogs and a conversation with Goldsten

Adventist Today has completed their new Website and they have included a new blog feature. As Reinventing the Adventist Wheel says:

The new Adventist Today website has been officially launched after being down for nearly a week. It was worth the wait. Six bloggers, including Alex Bryan, Cliff Goldstein, David Person, Heather Quintana, Shayna Bailey and Erv Taylor will blog regularly from the left, right and center tackling anything from emerging church, creation/evolution divide, relationships and dating, trends in pop culture, Adventist doctrines, social and racial issues, and more.

There's also a news, interviews and reviews section. The kickoff feature article is an interview I conducted with Adventist-turned-Catholic and Hawaiian judge David Pendleton.

Only subscribers to the print magazine will have full access to the new site. For $19.50/year, it's a steal. Check it out.

Why in the world of blogging would they choose to prevent wider readership I don’t understand. As some of the comments in the above mention blog state, it does not seem like a good idea. Still they have also reduced the price to the magazine and blogs to an electronic version of the magazine with its access for only 8 dollars per year so in that respect they are making it pretty affordable. But as a blogger I know that most of those who access the blog do so through the process of keyword searches. So if you don’t have your blog open and available to be indexed by the search engines you have a very limited readership. Also as a blogger it is now difficult for us to link to the material that is membership protected. For example I had a bit of a discussion on Clifford Goldstein’s blog, I could create a link to it but you won’t get in unless you have a membership. Since I don’t know what restrictions there are when dealing with members only blogs I will only quote a few sections and then give you my comments. In this case I can sum up his responses fairly easily.

Goldstein’s topic was “no other options” which is that Adventists who hold to a few particular beliefs really have no where else to go. He then goes on in a comment section to tell someone who believes in theistic evolution to get out of the church as he says: “They exist but if they had a modium of rational thought they would know that they don't belong in this church”

My first reply was as follows:

That is funny, Cliff starts out saying there is no place for Adventists to go if they hold to some key doctrines, if my math is right our choice is stay in the Adventist church or find that elusive .01% to go to. Then in the comments section he wants Adventists to leave if they accept theistic evolution. It may just be me but the message seems contradictory. Maybe an article by Cliff telling us what we can disagree with in the Adventist church would be more helpful than proclaiming that we have no place to go. Then again what good would it do for Cliff to tell us what we must agree with and where we must go if we disagree with Cliff...Cliff is not the Adventist church for which I think all the universe both in earth and in heaven may rejoice.

His response was that I was distorting what he said and that we should leave.

My response:

Cliff wrote:

"I'm not saying, Ron, that they have to agree with me. That's a typical distortion."

I never said that you were saying that we had to agree with you, in fact I expressed my joy that you are not the Adventist church so that we don't have to agree with you. So what you call a typical distortion was not even present in my comment. Now lets assume for the moment that a person believes in evolution of the non theistic kind. Do you not think that there could be some benefit to a sabbath day's rest in their lives?

It always seems funny to me to hear people like Cliff express their contempt for evolution yet they don't believe that animals were created with those ripping and tearing teeth, that predator and prey web of life. It is OK for God to make those evolutionary changes but the idea that evolution beginning from simple forms to more complex forms under the guidance of God is just too much to believe. Both would be God's creation, both would be systems established by God. The question is what makes the most sense with the evidence around us. The idea that there was once a perfect world of which we can't even imagine, of which God expelled humans from for one violation prompted by a talking snake and then cursed the entire earth, humans and animals and plants seems less likely then a world where God established life through a process of growth and development until humans developed the capability to communicate with God just seems more reasonable.

The other day I was playing tennis and watched a hawk capture a small animal and fly away. Anyway you look at it if you are a deist that is something that God had a hand in. If there was indeed once a perfect world why not keep the perfection in the world, let man have his consequences from sin, why inflict it upon the small animals, why should they have to deal with the terror of being picked up and carried away from everything they have known only to be torn apart by the hawk. How much more we would have learned seeing the way animals responded without fear from other animals. What a marvelous opportunity to see what God had really intended for us all. No that is not the world we see, in fact in our Bible stories we see God so upset at wickedness that he wipes out all living creatures not in Noah's ark.

So the question we have to ask is are these stories reasonable or our they methods ancient people used to inspire a conception of God, primitive true but introducing the idea that God could be more then a local deity who we have to pay homage to. The beginnings of a great new understanding of man and God...unless we become stuck in the primitive mindset by making the stories into literal history to which God must be tied and restricted to, what today would be viewed by most intelligent people as unreasonable and backward. Do we grow in our understanding as we grow in our other human areas of knowledge or is our faith placed not in God but in the ancient assumptions and stories as if they were God. This is not merely a struggle about Adventist doctrines but about how we understand ourselves and our God. If the answer is to force those people out of the church then it is likely on the wrong path, a path similar to the Roman Catholic church took during the reformation. The path of least resistance usually goes downhill.

Cliff’s response:

If you don’t agree then “I find the lack of moral integrity astounding, and depressing, to be honest.”

So I explained further:

Cliff wrote:

If you are so sure our basic view of the Bible is wrong, and that the "primitive mindset" of the Bible is "unreasonable and backward," then why are you a member of a church which accepts the "primitive mindset" of the Bible as gospel truth?

You have placed two things together there that are not the same. Your basic view of the Bible is wrong, that is pretty clear. That does not however mean that all the Bible is unreasonable and backwards, only sections are. The Bible as a progressive work also goes on to correct some of the earlier primitive mindsets. That is why Job deals with why bad things happen even to good people, why Jesus did the same thing correcting the view that if you were righteous then you would be healthy and wealthy. In an article you wrote about the test of adultery preformed in Numbers 5, I think you are in the minority who don't think that was a primitive and backward mindset.

The interesting thing also is that the Adventist church is not really made up of those who accept the primitive mindset, true there are many that do, the people who collect their pay from the denomination and who never talk about their beliefs or those who are paid by the denomination to defend it's beliefs (I guess if you can hire a lawyer to defend you the church can hire apologists to defend it, both probably on the same level of respect). Does that make the church right because they hire people to defend and support them, or is that simply how bureaucracy's work? Is supporting a bureaucracy the high calling of a Christian, again shades of middle ages Roman Catholicism there. Yet there are others in the Adventist church who don't tow the line but seek to raise the standards, the standards of reasoning and textual criticism in ways that make God respectable. Now I know there are people who trust God no matter how they view Him. There are those who rejoice at the God who hates sin so much that He will torture people for eternity. It is right for God to do that because that is what God does and God does only what is right. Adventism rejected that because what they said was right is unreasonable, it is a poor representation of love and of God. They have wonderful verses they can use to demonstrate that that is what God will do. They have a method of interpretation that makes it easy to hold to the literal view of the texts they use. Just as you do with what appears to be an equally symbolic story (garden of Eden), but you would say it is not symbolic, and they will say their texts are not symbolic. We end up with only having our reasoning abilities to tell us which method to use.

So the Adventist church helped teach us to think and now when lay Adventists and Adventists College Professors do apply their reasoning abilities the traditional Adventists say "stop that, this is what we believe accept it or leave". So it is understandable that for many of us integrity means applying reasoning and knowledge even above the support of a bureaucratic church organization. Because really in the search for truth just because you have a denomination does not mean you have the truth. And just because we offer other methods of interpretation does not mean we are tearing down the denomination. It could tear down, it could build up or it could do nothing. We have yet to see the result, fundamentalism and it's fear of change is probably not the best course of action however.

His closing response today was:

Well, we have a whole lot of examples of other denomination in which the so called "progressives" got control, and look where those churches are today. Many of them are debating over whether the resurrection of Jesus was literal, or just a symbol of something else. Kind of like what the wacko left does to Genesis. We're holding the the line against that kind of compromise and apostasy, and if in so doing we are called anti reasonable and the like--who cares? I certainly don't.

Actually the conversation is not nearly as frustrating when I abbreviated Cliff’s responses. I kept the last one in its entirety because it is instructive. First he claims that there are many denominations that are debating whether the resurrection of Jesus was literal or not. As last week that was the subject of the lesson I taught I actually looked to see and found that even among liberal Christians most believe in the literal resurrection, it is a very small minority such as the Jesus Seminar people and Bishop Spong who think the resurrection is symbolic (that even death should not stop our quest for life and love). That other churches hold these debates just as we in the Adventist church hold these debates does not mean that the no resurrection view has a foothold. It is too central to Christianity and the extremists who hold to no resurrection have so little to base their view upon. A good example is found in the 1999 report of an Anglican debate Jesus scholars debate at National Cathedral

In any event the debate of ideas is not the problem, it is the fear of examining ideas that is the problem. If one fails to even try to be reasonable, if they fail to even try to look at possibilities then how can they ever expect to spread their views to others, asking others to look at different reasons and possibilities? If we all just went around assuming what we believe is the only truth then we would be the most foolish and unproductive people in the world.