Symposium on Atonement shows no change for Adventism.

Adventist Today Website gives us a report on the recent event in Loma Linda University where the Adventist Theological Society (ATS) held a symposium upon the subject of Atonement theories.

The article is written by someone who agrees with the Substitutionary theory of the atonement and keeps calling the ATS centrist. In one paragraph he writes the following:

Moskala was careful to point out the positive contributions of each of the theories.  He stated that Christ took the penalty of sin upon himself, citing 2 Corinthians 5:21.  “When we come to Jesus, He took our sin and gives us His righteousness.”  Jesus became a curse for us (Galatians 3:13).  The presenter  cited Romans 1:16-18 and mentioned that both the Righteousness of God and the Wrath are revealed.  “God’s truth is paradoxical.  God’s love and justice need to be related.”  He mentioned the Biblical Flood as an example of God’s grace and justice. He also stated that “Substitution should be taken seriously,” and that the death of Jesus was a punishment for sin.  Jesus experienced God’s wrath.  Isaiah 53:4-6 presents Calvary as a punishment—Jesus was “pierced for our transgressions. … Here is the plain image of the Substitution. God’s character is revealed, with both love and justice included in the law.  The God of the Bible is a God of love, truth, justice, freedom and order.”

Notice his most affirmative statement that Jesus experienced God's wrath. For that he uses a foreshadowing statement found in Isaiah, not anything from the New Testament actually written after the event. The reason for that of course is that there is not one verse in the New Testament where it says that Jesus experienced the wrath of God. And you really can't take all of the things that Isaiah says in those sections as affirmations about Jesus, read it some time and see.

Dr. Jiri Moskala also says that Jesus took the penalty of sin upon himself. But what is the penalty of sin? Well it is the second death as recorded in the book of Revelation. The specifics of the second death is that it is eternal death...no resurrection. Jesus was killed by human means, the Crucifixion was a human torture and death devised and preformed by humans.  He was also resurrected from the dead on the third day. Of course if you listen to Adventist they will claim that Jesus suffered the second death, though they have no Biblical reason for this but as the article state the ATS holds Ellen White as inspired. As their statement says: "“Adventists believe that God inspired Ellen G. White. Therefore, her expositions on any given Bible passage offer an inspired guide to the meaning of texts without exhausting their meaning or preempting the task of exegesis..." It does not take much to realize that the statement is a fiction and that the dependence on Ellen White very much stops exegesis. The whole second death thing is ample proof of that. In fact if you go back to the texts that Moskala uses 2 Corinthians 5:21 which is the paradoxical conclusion to a rather convoluted argument Paul makes it is very much equivalent to a proof texting technique. But we still sin and we aren't all that righteous so just what does that even mean. It is hard to take such things serious as if they are meant to tell us that Jesus paid in one person the penalty for all people. This idea that Jesus paid the penalty of sin denies the very nature of forgiveness. Because you don't have to punish someone to forgive them. Jesus' Message was that of forgiveness not penalty.  The substitutionary atonement theory degrades the gospel. It encourages pagan ideas about God and it is not something that Paul taught. It was not an accepted idea until the 11th century and it grew out of Anselm's Satisfaction theory of the atonement.

It is sad that such poor analysis is preformed by the ATS. But as long as they must agree with Ellen White they have no other choice because their inspired prophet was very much a Penal theorist.  Which could well lead to a second article on why the followers of Graham Maxwell ignore what Ellen White actually said and so often claim she was not penal or substitutionary in her view of the atonement. In my view Adventism is doomed to failure and innovation because of Ellen White. No one who continues to accept her as an inspired interpreter of the Bible can ever disagree with Ellen. Even though Ellen was very much a person of her times and should never be given the authority that Adventism has done with such things as calling her the Spirit of Prophecy, pen of inspiration, messenger of the Lord etc.

Who defines what an Adventist is?

I walked out of the sermon today. It was a special youth rally sponsored by our conference. The music was good the lighting was dramatic and then the sermon began. The speaker for the rally was an Academy student probably from Auburn Academy. He recapped some of his sermon from the previous Friday night meeting. He began by saying that Jesus came up with a plan to come and die to save man. He brought the plan to God who twice rejected it because He did not want Jesus to die. I left.

Of course this child of our educational system did not arrive at the above atrocity on his own. He is parroting what the confused Arians and Tri-theists of Adventism think. He is repeating the errors of our own so called prophet; Ellen White says in a number of places usually under the title The Plan of Salvation. Here are some excerpts so you can see the source of this Arian idea:

Sorrow filled heaven, as it was realized that man was lost, and that world which God had created was to be filled with mortals doomed to misery, sickness, and death, and there was no way of escape for the offender. The whole family of Adam must die. I saw the lovely Jesus and beheld an expression of sympathy and sorrow upon His countenance. Soon I saw Him approach the exceeding bright light which enshrouded the Father. Said my accompanying angel, He is in close converse with His Father. The anxiety of the angels seemed to be intense while Jesus was communing with His Father. Three times He was shut in by the glorious light about the Father, and the third time He came from the Father, His person could be seen. His countenance was calm, free from all perplexity and doubt, and shone with benevolence and loveliness, such as words cannot express. He then made known to the angelic host that a way of escape had been made for lost man. He told them that He had been pleading with His Father, and had offered to give His life a ransom, to take the sentence of death upon Himself, that through Him man might find pardon; that through the merits of His blood, and obedience to the law of God, they could have the favor of God, and be brought into the beautiful garden, and eat of the fruit of the tree of life.

…that He would die the cruelest of deaths, hung up between the heavens and the earth as a guilty sinner; that He would suffer dreadful hours of agony, which even angels could not look upon, but would veil their faces from the sight. Not merely agony of body would He suffer, but mental agony, that with which bodily suffering could in no wise be compared. The weight of the sins of the whole world would be upon Him. He told them He would die and rise again the third day, and would ascend to His Father to intercede for wayward, guilty man.

… The angels prostrated themselves before Him. They offered their lives. Jesus said to them that He would by His death save many, that the life of an angel could not pay the debt. His life alone could be accepted of His Father as a ransom for man.

... Satan and sinners would be destroyed, nevermore to disturb heaven or the purified new earth. Jesus bade the heavenly host be reconciled to the plan that His Father had accepted and rejoice that through His death fallen man could again be exalted to obtain favor with God and enjoy heaven. (Early Writings of Ellen G. White, page 149 1882; Spirit of Prophecy Vol. 1 page-45 1870 ; Spiritual Gifts, Volume 1, page 23 1858;)

I bring this incident up in light of the past two posts where some in the Adventist church are demanding that scientifically accepted evolutionary theory not be taught in Adventist Colleges. If you read the arguments they make their primary reason is that the SDA church teaches a literal 6 day (assumed 24 hour) time period in the recent past, most again assuming that recent means 6-10,000 year period of time. If you are a Seventh-day Adventist this has to be your belief or you simply are not a Seventh-day Adventist. Here is a quote from the Adventist Theological Journal article from a few years back:

But Scripture does not only indicate that the miracle of creation was performed in a short period of time. Through its genealogical listings and its naming of generations traced back to Adam, the first human being, it strongly indicates that the creation occurred not long ago, as compared to the claims of evolution.And so, we Adventists accept the account of a recent creation on the basis of the credibility of God’s supreme revelation, Scripture. And we believe also on the basis of the credibility of God’s recent revelation through the visions and writings of Ellen G. White,10 which likewise emphasize that creation took place approximately six thousand years ago. (What Is an Adventist? Someone Who Upholds Creation Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 7/2 (Autumn 1996): 142-167. Article copyright © 1996 by Marco T. Terreros.)

One has to wonder then if we must believe that God and His Son are not in fact One That one of them had to convince the other about a plan to save humanity. That Jesus was pleading with the Father to give His life a ransom. Because that is the way Ellen White saw it in a vision and we are Adventists and we have a fundamental belief about Ellen White whereby we say she is an authoritative source of truth. Likewise if Ellen White says that creation was six literal days approximately six thousand years ago we all must accept it to be SDA’s.

Today I saw at least in part the power of our schools indoctrination, not even indoctrination in the Bible or Christianity but in a very faulty Adventist tradition that we can easily trace to Ellen White. To be a true Adventist then is to be fully indoctrinated into whatever beliefs the denominational hierarchy or some self appointed traditional Adventist chooses to assert as our beliefs. Accept it and people like the Adventist Theological Society will accept you. Reject some of their beliefs and you are simply not a Seventh-day Adventist. Teach our students current scientific theory in a Biology class and those teachers should be released or restricted, they are violating Adventism.

The problem is that most Adventists don’t really pay all that much attention to what the church leadership says. We don’t feel that they are defining our positions, some of them perhaps but not all of our positions. We feel it is appropriate to live up to the light we see from God, science, history and even tradition. We don’t need the official denomination to define for us what an Adventist is. Then there is the other side which says we will cleanse the church. These are the Churches beliefs accept them or don’t but if you don’t you should not teach, you should not be in any kind of leadership role and you should not call yourself an Adventist.

It is pretty plain why so many of us don’t ever call ourselves Adventists but use terms like Progressive Adventists. We want to indicate that we are not of those who are trying to restrict the freedom of belief that is found in Christianity. To be a Christian we don’t have to hold to what somebody in some position of supposed authority calls “orthodox Christianity” and we don’t have to violate our conscience to believe in traditional Adventist views either. May our tribe increase! But to do that we have to fight the traditional Adventists attempts to cleanse thinking Christians from the Seventh-day Adventist church. Because make no mistake about it they are after you.