July 1, 2002 - 12:00pm - Ervin Taylor The recently held GC-sponsored conference on "Theological Unity in a Growing World Church" brings to mind an opinion piece written by Clifford Goldstein that appeared last year in the Adventist Review (July 26, 2001). It was entitled "The Pythagoras Factor" and it raises the issue of what a "true" Seventh-day Adventist must believe A church, Goldstein insists, "must define itself, must identify what it is, what it believes in, what it stands for." Then he asks the very interesting question: How much "deviation" from its traditional doctrinal formulations "can a church allow before losing its identity?" Or, put another way, How much pluralism in theology can a denomination stand?

 

Goldstein states that he obtained his inspiration from the ancient Pythagoreans. According to him, they would disfellowship any members who divulged to outsiders the nature of irrational numbers-a belief that Goldstein characterized as "wacky." Even if it is "wacky," he argues, every religion has "the right . . . to identify the parameters of its faith, whatever those parameters are and whatever the rationale-'good' or (as with the Pythagoreans) 'bad'-behind them." He cites beliefs such as atheism and being an "avowed Satanist" that, if held by an individual, would preclude him or her from serving as an ordained Adventist pastor or member of an Adventist theology faculty.

 

To this reasonable list, Goldstein adds other sets of beliefs which, he insists, we must examine if we are to talk about a "true" Seventh-day Adventist. How about, he asks, someone who does not believe in a literal six-day Creation, rejects a worldwide flood, thinks that Daniel was written in the 2nd century B.C., does not accept the entire 27 "fundamentals" as written, and questions if anything important happened in 1844? Goldstein states, "For me, it's hard to understand why one who rejects those teachings would even want [his emphasis] to be an Adventist, much less teach or preach among us. But the issue isn't if they want to; the issue is Should they even be allowed to (that is, teach or preach among us)?" And then finally, his crowning comment: "Our leaders and administrators not only must define the parameters of our faith; they have the right-even the obligation-to enforce them."

 

Why does Goldstein feel so free to proclaim the idea that administrators have the right to define the Adventist "parameters of faith"-even if some of these "parameters" (e.g., a recent worldwide flood or that the Adventist institutional church is "the remnant church" of the Book of Revelation) are, to use his own term, "wacky"? As Raymond Cottrell has well documented, having church administrators think they can define Adventist faith parameters is one of the very regrettable legacies left behind by Robert Pierson, General Conference president from 1966 to 1979. Since that time a number of church administrators have attempted to take on the role of arbiters of what is and what is not "orthodox" Adventist theology, despite the fact that they have few qualifications in theological scholarship. In almost every case, e.g., Glacier View, the results have been disasters for the church. The fundamentalist side of Adventist theology currently being advanced by the Adventist Theological Society (ATS), appears to have been adopted by a number of these administrators as representing normative and orthodox Adventism. One suspects that Goldstein has adopted the ATS agenda, a position that might be labeled--with apologies to the late Eric Hoffer-as "The Fundamentalist Factor."

 

I am sorry that he and others of like mind cannot understand that many individuals with a solid commitment to our faith community are not beholden to "The Fundamentalist Factor." Membership for these people does not require them to park their intellect and rationality at the church door. They have come to the conclusion that a number of our traditional positions cannot be supported, when one takes the Biblical narratives seriously with their cultural and historical context, and they seek to understand what these passages are trying to communicate. Most important, non-fundamentalist Adventists have no need to require other church members-including Goldstein-to understand the scriptures in the same way they do. Why should he insist that other church members must view the scriptures as he does? .

 

How much pluralism can our church stand? Actually, the basis of church unity has little to do with doctrinal uniformity, and to insist on it will only foster disunity and schism. The true basis of unity in any Christian body should be the same as that which united the earliest Christians-the confession that Jesus is Lord. Everything else is commentary.

 

Ervin Taylor is Executive Editor of Adventist Today.

Ervin Taylor is professor of anthropology at the University of California,

Riverside and Executive Editor of Adventist Today.