Doctrines are teachings, and anything taught is a doctrine. But the word is most familiar in a religious context, referring to the teachings of a religious leader or community.

Not all doctrines are of the same kind. They differ from one another in what they refer to, in whether or not they can be empirically verified,in their status, and in many other ways. Since awareness of these differences may help us construct or examine doctrines, this paper presents a preliminary taxonomy of the doctrines of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. I will refer also to other religious communities for illustration and comparison. Every set of doctrines can be classified in several ways--some binary, others with multiple categories. I have suggested nine such ways.

1. Halakah/Haggadah. This binary classification is one of the oldest, and it is the primary classification used in Judaism. Halakah is law-torah, while haggadah is story-torah. Halakah refers to the legal material in Scripture and tradition; and haggadah is everything else, all nonlegal material. Corresponding to these categories are two pairs of English words that similarly alliterate: behavior and belief, and law and lore.

In Judaism, halakah is considered far more important than haggadah.Orthopraxy (right practice) rates above orthodoxy (right beliefs)in the sense of correct opinion. Persons can be good Jews and believe almost anything, provided they live according to the Torah. S/he may think as they like about the World to Come, for example, but they must obey the Commandments. In the words of Moses Mendelssohn (a totally observant Jew, but philosophically a Deist of the Enlightenment), Judaism has no dogmas, only commandments.

That may be an exaggeration. The Shema (Deut 6:4 ff) appears to deal with a fundamental metaphysical belief: God is one. But it is possible to argue that it has immediate halakic implications in worship. Another place, however, in which Judaism has made haggadic correctness a condition of salvation is in Mishnah Sanhedrin 10:1: "These are they that have no share in the World to Come: he that says there is no resurrection of the dead prescribed in the Law, and that says that the Law is not from Heaven, and an Epicurean."

It remains true, however, that the main emphasis in Judaism is upon halakah. The contrast with Christianity was dramatically visible in the fourth century C.E. While the Christian bishops were arguing about one iota in the creed--should it be homoousios or homoiousios?--the rabbis were arguing about whether an egg laid on the Sabbath might be eaten. A modern rabbi has remarked a bit acidly that "Christianity is the religion of creeds, and Judaism is the religion of deeds."

In Adventism there have been plenty of disputes about something like the haggadah--the human nature of Christ, the investigative judgment,the identity of the king of the north, for example; but the average Adventist is more concerned about halakah--diet, entertainment, proper Sabbathkeeping, and the like. Among the twenty-seven fundamental beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists (hereafter referred to simply as "the 27"),the following doctrines are examples of those that are primarily haggadic: 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, etc. These are primarily halakic: 14, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22.

2. Metaphysical/Terrestrial (or Vertical/ Horizontal). The age of the Earth, the historicity of the Flood, the date of the Exodus, the evolution-creation debate, the healthfulness of vegetarianism, and other such issues are concerned with past or present realities on earth, and as such they are at least in principle verifiable or falsifiable empirically. The evidence, in so far as it is still extant, is earthly and potentially accessible. If the evidence is no longer extant, it once was; and there remains the possibility that it may yet be recovered. Such doctrines can be subjected to historical or other scientific study.

On the other hand, the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity of Christ, and most eschatological doctrines related to future events are not subject to any sort of empirical observation or proof because they are heavenly realities existing where human observers cannot go (cf.John 1:18 3:13).

Biblical religion has an inescapable historical dimension. The framework of the Scriptures is basically a narrative of events on earth; and they are replete with recitals of salvation history,such as Psalm 78. The Apostles' Creed includes such historical references as "born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried." To be sure, these events had metaphysical implications, but the events themselves were accessible to human ocular vision and made the subject of potentially verifiable or falsifiable historical record.

Adventist doctrine, because of interest in chronology and in healthful living, has a higher terrestrial content than that of most Christian denominations, which tend to emphasize metaphysical beliefs that are out of the reach of cold-eyed science. Much Adventist theology has an interest in science because it is not immune from science.

3. Salvific/Adiaphoric. If belief or obedience on some point is essential for salvation, we may call it a salvific doctrine. Any doctrine that does not pass through that screen belongs in the category of adiaphora (meaning "indifferent"). Among halakic matters, we can distinguish between commandments and counsels.

Paul in Romans 14 relegated certain practices to adiaphora. The medieval church taught "the counsels of perfection," such as celibacy and the vow of poverty, which were not required for salvation but were marks of piety or works of supererogation ( "beyond the call of duty" ). Classical Protestantism rested its case on justification by faith alone in Christ as one's personal Savior.

Early Adventism tended to multiply "testing truths." Adventist popular piety of the older sort still tends toward a perfectionism that denies heaven to those who are insufficiently scrupulous--though the younger generation has reacted sharply against that, calling it legalism. Nowadays the question of "What must I do to be saved?"--if addressed at all--receives a vaguer answer. But if the question, "Is belief in this, or obedience to that, necessary for salvation?" were addressed to every doctrine, it would probably result in a much shorter list.

Such minimalism may be excessive. Is correct understanding of the state of the dead necessary for salvation? We would probably say not,but a wrong understanding makes one vulnerable to delusions that would have salvific implications.

4. Christian/Protestant/Adventist. Many of the 27 are doctrines that Adventists share with all or most Christians, others with all or most Protestants. Such generic doctrines are the first five fundamental beliefs, for example. The five "Landmark" doctrines, on the other hand, are distinctively Adventist--but perhaps not completely. For example, we share the Sabbath doctrine with the Seventh Day Baptists, from whom Adventists received it, as well as with some smaller Sabbatarian bodies. We share our doctrine of the state of the dead with the Advent Christians and other Millerite remnants, as well as with the Jehovah's Witnesses and numerous Protestant biblical scholars (e.g., H. Wheeler Robinson, Oscar Cullmann, and Clark Pinnock).

It is sometimes said in behalf of Adventist doctrines related to the year 1844 that they must be true because they are our only truly distinctive doctrines, the only ones completely unique to us; and that therefore without them we lose our reason for existence. Without passing judgment on these doctrines themselves, one must say that such an argument would appear to be a peculiar criterion of truth. If such reasoning be persuasive, we would do well to add more unique beliefs. If to the 27 we added the proposition that the moon is made of green cheese, it would indisputably enhance our uniqueness, if not our credibility.

5. Biblical/Traditional/Ecclesiastical. [1] Many Adventists still retain some attachment to the slogan, "No creed but the Bible," [2] and all of the 27 have supporting proof texts of varying appropriateness. But for the average Adventist it is probably true that most of our doctrines would now remain standing even if all the biblical supports were removed. This would be the case either because of the power of tradition or because of the authority of Ellen White or both.[3]

Other doctrines have authority simply because the church has voted them. If they remain in place unchanged for a sufficient length of time, they will become unchangeable. There is not an absolute distinction between doctrine and policy. A policy is a doctrine that the church is willing to change, and a doctrine is a policy that the church is unwilling to change. Time-honored policies become doctrines. An interesting example is the list of the 27 itself.

6. Creed/Confession/Theologoumena. For our purposes let us say that a creed is what believers must agree to in order to be members of the church. It is usually relatively short. A confession is what the ministers of the church must teach. Its content includes much more than the creed. Theologoumena are the frontiers of theological thought, matters that are still debated and undefined by the church. One can think of these categories as three concentric circles, with the creed being the small common core, the confession covering a larger area, and the theologoumena moving out beyond that. If you deny the creed, you lose your membership. If you deny the confession, you lose your credentials. If you deny some point of theologoumena, you lose only friends.

The tendency is for each circle to grow larger by absorbing doctrines from the larger circle outside it. Theologoumena move into confession when an authoritative body of the church, such as a general church council, adjudicating between opposing views, makes a decision that declares one view to be orthodox and the other view heresy.

What corresponds to a creed in Adventism is the baptismal vow [4] consisting of thirteen questions that the candidate for baptism is to answer in the affirmative. (The Apostles' Creed began in the second century as a similar list of questions.) The 27 are the Adventist confession. Still in the realm of theologoumena are issues such as the nature of Christ's humanity and some questions of prophetic interpretation. Apparently the doctrine of the Atonement--its howness, not its thatness--also remains in this area.

Curiously, the short baptismal vow sometimes goes beyond the more detailed 27 Fundamental Beliefs. For example, the last question in the Vow asks: "Do you accept and believe that the Seventh-day Adventist Church is the remnant church of Bible prophecy...?" Fundamental Belief No.12 mentions the Remnant without ever making a denominational identification.

The natural tendency officially to define doctrines more and more closely ought probably to be resisted. When the circles become too large, fission occurs--schism. When the rope is drawn too tightly, people cut the rope. Every time a doctrinal point is added to the required list, it is like adding a new station to a railroad--it is one more place for people to get off the train. Minimalism is cowardly, but maximalism is tyrannical. If anything, however, Adventism suffers from doctrinal inflation.

7. Classification by Loci of Systematic Theology. Traditional theological science groups the doctrines under such rubrics as Christology, Pneumatology (study of spiritual beings or phenomena), Soteriology (dealing with salvation), Ecclesiology, and Eschatology. Adventist doctrine is particularly rich in Eschatology.

Eschatology involves a special blend of metaphysical and terrestrial. Much of our eschatological teaching has to do with signs of the end, as well as with the end itself. That which is still in the future is beyond human vision and verification, but we like to extrapolate it from current trends. Some of our traditional eschatology has to do with past events--things that happened in 1755, 1780, 1798, and 1833. Such doctrines tend to lose their persuasiveness with the passing of time. Though we distinguish between the End and the Time of the End, when the Time of the End extends to more than two centuries, the quality of urgency is inevitably diminished. In the early nineteenth century, the astronomical phenomena of 1780 and 1833 ( "dark day" and "falling of the stars" ) were impressive not only because they were recent, but because they were wonders. At the beginning of the 21st century they are less impressive, not only because they are old but also because their causes are well understood.[5]

To some degree, then, eschatology is subject to the scrutiny of history and science.

8. Official/Unofficial. Technically, only the 27 should have standing as a test of orthodoxy in the Adventist church, but teachings and opinions not on that list have at times been used as tests, at least for church workers: the Mark of the beast, Ussher's chronology, the United States in prophecy, the authorship of Hebrews, and others. If a worker were to depart from the common understanding of any of these things, would it be an adequate defense to argue that they are not mentioned in the 27?

9. Living and Dead. Just as there are dead languages and extinct animals, there are dead doctrines. Doctrines die or are killed when the cognitive dissonance that they produce becomes too great to be borne sanely, or when they no longer have any usefulness for spiritual health or as a desirable boundary marker. Doctrines can be killed by official ecclesiastical decision, which is often traumatic and may meet with resistance. In Mormonism, an example was the manifesto of President Wilfred Woodruff forbidding the practice (but apparently not the theology) of polygamy; but there is still significant noncompliance by dissident groups. A more recent Mormon example was the admission of black men to the priesthood (which is normally an offer to all postpubescent Mormon males), in spite of the fact that the church had earlier supported exclusion by both (pseudo-)historical and metaphysical rationales.[6] But apparently the revisionist declaration by church president Spencer Kimball and the First Presidency, based on a new "revelation," has not met significant resistance, probably because the old doctrine had become an embarrassment, and because of the increased authority of the First Presidency and a doctrine of "continuing revelation."

An embarrassing doctrine need not be violently killed, however. It can die gently of itself through benign neglect, or it can fade away incrementally by successive redefinitions, reformulations,qualifications, and general whittling down. On the other hand, redefinition, reformulation, and qualification can serve to keep a doctrine alive by preserving or restoring a relevance or acceptability that had been lost, or by relieving cognitive dissonance. In Mormonism the pattern for the Temple Underwear (which good Mormons wear at all times) had been divinely revealed, or so it was claimed; but when fashions changed, and sleeves and skirts and pants became shorter, the First Presidency conveniently received another revelation permitting an underwear pattern with short legs and sleeves.[7]

Examples of doctrines in Adventism that are dead or dying are the old teaching of the Shut Door, the keeping of Sabbath from six to six, the identification of the king of the north with Turkey, and the old (pre-tithing) system of systematic benevolence. Examples of doctrines that have been revivified by redefinition, reformulation, or reconceptualization are the understandings of the Third Angel's Message[8] and of the Investigative Judgment. Such reformulations are customarily defended as deeper understandings that are really in continuity with the old understanding.

NOTES

1 The adjective "biblical" is often used by Adventists and Evangelicals generally in the way the early Christian Church used the word apostolic. It means simply what we vaguely believe to be correct and pious, as in such phrases as "biblical marriage," "biblical entertainment," or "biblical roller-skating." It is vague because it is unclear whether something has to be prescribed (commanded or recommended) in Scripture, described in Scripture, or merely not forbidden in Scripture, in order to merit the designation of "biblical." The ordination of women is neither prescribed nor forbidden in the Bible; it is simply not dealt with at all. The same is true of Sabbath School and church school. Are these things biblical?

2 This is the language of our nineteenth century pioneers--which they shared with Baptists, Campbellites, and other anticredal Protestants.But the Bible is, in fact, not a creed; and a better expression is the classical Reformation slogan, sola Scriptura.

3 As an example of the authoritativeness divorced from scriptural support, one union administrator has remarked with great conviction that the Seventh-day Adventist system of church governance is of heavenly origin and must remain inviolable.

4 Church Manual of 1990,pp.44,45.

5 The dark day of May 19, 1780 was caused by a massive forest fire in Canada and the northwest, then virtually uninhabited and almost unknown; the phenomenon was limited to the eastern region of North America. The falling stars of November 13, 1833, resulted from the passage of the earth through the Leonids, a periodic occurrence. Adventist literature has, at least for the past half century, left the door open for a natural explanation of these signs, emphasizing rather the significance of their timing: "These signs occurred exactly as predicted, and at the time indicated so long before their occurrence. It is this fact,and not the cause of the darkness, that is significant in this connection, ... In like manner, even though it were possible for science to account for the remarkable darkness of May 19, 1780, instead of merely speculating concerning it, the event would not be discredited thereby as a merciful sign of the approaching end of probationary time" (Bible Readings for the Home: A Study of 200 Vital Scripture Topics in Question-and-Answer Form Contributed by a Large Number of Bible Scholars rev. ed. [Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1949], 311). The predicted time to which this source refers was after the Great Tribulation of Matthew 24:21. "Within the 1260 years, but after the persecution (about the middle of the 18th century), the signs of His coming began to appear" (ibid., 310). The timing could thus be any time between about 1750 and 1844, a period of nearly a century. Expressions such as "exactly as predicted, and at the time indicated" seem somewhat extravagant as a description of such a span of time.

6 The Book of Mormon clearly teaches that black skin is the result of God's curse (2 Nephi 5:21;Alma 3:6). Mormonism before 1978 taught that Cain was cursed with dark skin; and he became "the father of the Negroes," for Ham married one of Cain's descendants, named Egypta--thus transmitting and perpetuating the curse in the postdiluvian world. The metaphysical explanation ran as follows. In order to progress toward godhood, spirits must pass through a stage of being born on earth and receiving bodies. There was war in heaven, and a third of the spirits rebelled against the heavenly Father, a third was loyal to Him, and another third attempted to remain neutral. The loyal ones are born into white bodies. The rebel spirits are denied the privilege of getting bodies, but they sometimes attempt to circumvent that handicap by seeking to possess the bodies that belong to the good spirits, hence spirit possession. The spirits who attempted neutrality are allowed to receive bodies, but only black bodies, the sign of the curse that is upon them. Fulsome documentation is provided by Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Major Problems of Mormonism (Salt Lake City,UT: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1987), 39-49.

7 For details, see Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Mormonism--Shadow or Reality? 5th ed. (Salt Lake City, UT: Utah Lighthouse Ministry, 1987), 459-61a, 463-66.

8 The classic Adventist understanding of the third angel's message of Revelation 14 ended the message at verse 11 and emphasized the warning about the mark of the beast. Later Adventism, taking its cue from a dictum of Ellen G. White in 1890, ends the message with verse 12 and understands "the faith of Jesus" to contain an objective genitive; whereas earlier Adventism understood it as a subjective genitive. Ellen White wrote: "Several have written to me, inquiring if the message of justification by faith is the third angel's message, and I have answered, It is the third angel's message in verity." The Review and Herald, April 1, 1890, excerpted in Evangelism as Set Forth in the Writings of Ellen G. White (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1946 and 1974), 190; Selected Messages from the Writings of Ellen G. White Book 1 (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1958), 372.