September 1, 1993 - 12:00pm - Fred Veltman

The United States has its constitution, Moslems have the Koran, and Christians have the Bible. Each community has its sacred text—a necessity for extending its identity beyond the lives of the founders.

The Adventist church has two sacred texts, the Bible and secondarily the writings of Ellen White. The anti-Roman Catholic billboard campaign, based on a literalist reading of selected portions of Ellen White’s writing, in this case The Great Controversy, is a blatant and embarrassing example of a significant issue facing contemporary Adventism. A literalist application of Ellen White’s writings in a changed cultural setting may appeal to our conservative nature, but we should be clear on one thing: such application is not biblical. Let me illustrate.

When the children of Jacob came out of Egypt as the people of Israel, God gave them a special covenant, His law engraved in stone (Ex. 24:12; 32:15,17; 34:1,27,28). Moses recalls that Sinai experience some forty years later when he is about to die. But in quoting the law of God engraved on the two tables of stone at this time, Moses changes the fourth commandment. He gives a new rationale for keeping the seventh day holy: freedom from slavery. The sacred text continues to structure the community but it is modified to meet the new situation. The children of Israel have made the successful transition from slaves in Egypt to members of the independent community soon to enter the promised land. The Sabbath becomes a sign of freedom, a symbol of the creation of the new community out of the old.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy…you shall remember that you were a servant in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out…therefore the Lord commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. (Deuteronomy 5:12-15).

Moses dares to modify the original text, the text written in stone, in order to make the same basic instruction from God relevant in a new social context.

Ellen White strongly objected to a literalist reading of her own writings that makes no allowance for new situations. In a response to a church school board in 1904 that used her earlier counsel against enrolling children at an early age to prohibit her own grandchildren from attending school, she argued: “God…wants us to reason from common sense. Circumstances alter conditions. Circumstances change the relation of things” (See Review and Herald, April, 1975, p. 7).

The Bible presents many examples of how later interpreters followed a non-literal reading of the older texts. When Jesus presented his messages to the Jewish people of his day, the Palestinian community had changed and the sacred text had been enlarged by prophets and poets. To make the ancient text dynamic and meaningful again Jesus often bypassed the literal reading for the principle behind the text. “You have heard that it was said…but I say to you…” (See Matthew 5). Many of his contemporaries concluded that he was destroying God’s word (Mark 7:5). Some thirty years later Paul used typology and analogy in applying these same ancient Jewish writings, which he understood to have been “inspired by God,” to the problems being faced by the new Gentile believers.

The sacred texts for the Adventist church are dated. They were produced in other times, in other places, and addressed to other cultures. Does this mean they have no value for us today? Of course not. But they must be read with historical considerations clearly in mind. We must not expect that our texts will specifically speak to all of our problems. We look in vain for unambiguous answers to our questions on abortion, the ordination of clergy (male and female), last day events, the role of Christians in times of war, the proper role of Christians in politics, the way God would have us manage society justly in the presence of evil and how best to treat the very old and terminally ill.

On the other hand there is sexual and racial discrimination in our texts. Slavery and the subjection of women are not as clearly condemned in the Bible as our Christian understandings today demand. Does this mean the texts are wrong? My answer is No. The texts were not then nor are they now to be understood as clearly reflecting final truth. Rather, they are perceptions of truth written in terms of what was possible in a previous time and place.

We must take the texts seriously but look for the principles being expressed in the specific application to the earlier culture. The prophecies must be allowed to broadly guide our expectations so that believers are not taken by surprise. They were not written as pre-recorded history but as signals that help us to recognize the future when it happens. The Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah and the day of the Lord clearly demonstrate that faith in God demands an openness to his sovereign will unfettered by a rigid and literal reading of the prophetic text.

Sacred texts and their believing communities live in a symbiotic relationship. The continued life of each is tied to the life of the other. Neither element in the relationship may be frozen in time if the other is to continue its life. Communities which isolate themselves from the larger world and maintain their original forms and lifestyles while the world around them changes soon become irrelevant as God’s witness. They become curiosities and nostalgic symbols of a past no longer understood. Enduring principles and lasting values are those which have been translated into contemporary culture through current forms and symbols.

Texts which are not allowed to be interpreted anew, which remain locked in a rigid mode, are soon set aside by the community as having no power to invoke awe and respect because they no longer serve to motivate proper behavior and inform contemporary faith.

At the same time, communities which allow the text to be manipulated so as to support either a frantic hold on the old ways which have inevitably and irrevocably passed into history, or to defend an unreasoned acceptance of anything that is modem in order to be “relevant,” will soon destroy their own reason for being and turn the readers of their sacred texts into cynics.