At a recent potluck dinner I attended someone raised a question about applying critical methods, logic in particular, to the exposition and defense of Seventh-day Adventist doctrines. Others at the table, however, feared that examining statements of faith by critical methods would ultimately destroy faith and with it the church, the repository of faith. But I disagreed.

The Appeal of Being Rational

One who uses deductive logic may expect that if he or she uses only true premises the conclusion of the argument will be certain. Such an argument is considered both valid and sound. One who uses inductive logic, on the other hand, on the basis of observations or claims, can expect only probability, not certainty. Such arguments are considered to be either strong or weak, rather than sound or unsound.

Rationality and Assumptions

All argumentation rests on assumptions. To a person who is committed to one assumption a given argument will seem logical, but not so to one who denies that assumption. Any argument rests on assumptions, presuppositions, or axioms, and these axioms may be considered so obvious that they do not need proof, or they are true by definition. For instance, most people would assume that their personal experience is reliable, unless someone else could present them with evidence that they lacked sufficient information, they were hallucinating, or their predispositions colored their experience in one way or another, so that they are brought to doubt the reliability of some aspects of that experience.

While our assumptions sometimes lead our reasoning astray, logic by its rules insists that we test our presuppositions as far as possible, thus protecting us from arguing from unwarranted assumptions. This procedure may involve the results of other critical methodologies, for example, science, or the historical critical method. Admittedly, critical methodologies also rest on assumptions, but critical thinking demands that every assumption should be scrutinized, even its own. Sometimes a person may abandon one assumption in favor of another, on the grounds of an intellectual risk factor. Few alive today would risk affirming that the earth is flat.

The rules of logic help us avoid false reasoning and logical fallacies. Consider the statement: "The Bible is authoritative because it is the inspired word of God." Defending this statement usually results in cyclical reasoning. The authority of the Bible is based on its divine inspiration, and the claim for divine inspiration is based on the Bible's authority. This type of reasoning is considered fallacious because it fails to give a substantive reason for why the Bible's authority is equated with its inspiration. But, by introducing critical data from both within and without the Bible, we can test the assumptions behind this argument.

Because critical thinkers admit that their methods rest on assumptions, some conservative Christians argue that as a presupposition, our belief in the infallibility of the Bible is logically as legitimate (or more so) for understanding the world as is the scientific method, which by its own admission ultimately cannot prove reality. They also argue that because all arguments are ultimately cyclical (coming back to their assumptions), it is as valid (or more so) to stand on the literal statements of an infallible Bible as to presuppose the competency of reason or of critical methods in the quest for truth. Therefore, such people reject outright any kind of critical analysis of what are considered these infallible biblical teachings formulated into doctrines.

One sometimes hears the advice, "trust your compass," meaning, "trust your Bible; do not trust your reason or your senses." If one wishes to argue in earth history for a young earth, a literal seven-day creation, and a worldwide flood, he may affirm these because of his presupposition that the Bible is an infallible authority for interpreting geological data. In doing so he may suppress or reject all scientific and experiential data on the grounds of this assumption.

Critical thinkers would counter that while all arguments come back to assumptions, not all arguments are equally rigorous in their analysis of what is claimed for the assumptions. In rigorous argumentation, we should take history and science seriously and integrate it with theology, unless we believe the world is an illusion. Some arguments are based on a narrow field of knowledge, not taking into consideration everything we know. These are weaker arguments than those which incorporate larger amounts of data. People using these arguments sometimes try to avoid what is the case, or what seem to be actual states of the world based on historical and scientific analysis. Thus, when people expand their field of knowledge they can modify or change their theological assumptions in ways similar to those that moved most people away from assuming the world was flat to affirming it is a sphere. We may simply refer to this as the power of the emerging picture to persuade or coerce us into changing our mind.

Admittedly, we cannot avoid cyclical reasoning; but when we attempt to include everything we know into the argument we make the loop as large as possible, attempting to incorporate in a coherent way as much data as possible. The adequacy of our interpretation rests on our ability to accommodate and explain the available data. Theologians would affirm that in some sense religious experience should be included in this data. The existence of this experience presupposes that there is a source for it, and despite many variations, this source has been called God; although others insist that it is also born from our own minds.

Feeling and Reason

When philosophers learned that primitive, nonrational people, as they saw them, had a living and personal experience of divinity in the world (and history), they tried to represent this as a necessary idea of God, One who could be known or the existence of whom could be proved by reason alone. Thus they played down religious experience or religious feeling as a way of knowing God. But, instead of making people passionate and in love with the living God, this procedure made them anxious and uncertain, for God is not an idea of the mind but a living experience of divinity in the world. Eventually, as rationalist thinkers aimed at developing an objective epistemology, they subverted religious feeling as being purely subjective. They sought to separate the objective from the subjective. Theologians who held an undue regard for reason also contributed to the idea that reason was the image of God in man, and that it separated humans from the beasts which were controlled by instinct and base feeling.

We are still trying to overcome the disjoining results of this rationalistic predisposition. Friedrich Schleiermacher began the rehabilitation of religious experience and feeling by his theological view that religion was the "feeling of absolute dependence." Soren Kierkegaard, resisting the identification of religion with reason and doctrine, also contributed to this theological move with his ontology of "passion." Truth, he said, was what one was most passionate about, and the inwardness of faith was the highest passion. Rudolf Otto taught a phenomenology of religion in which he argued for a person's state of mind that directly apprehended an ineffable numinous element in the world, the holy, which was completely independent of rational conceptualization and which was prior to any "feeling of dependence" or the assigning of attributes to God.

Alfred North Whitehead, in his "Process Theology," also emphasized the dimension of self and feeling characteristic of every actual entity and the process of its becoming.

Scientists eventually came to understand that the proposed radical disjunction between the objective and the subjective was unwarranted. Not only was there an inseparable linkage between intuition, theory and experiment, but researchers could not totally separate their values from their projects. John Polkinghorne, particle scientist turned theologian, goes so far as to say that "cold" scientific theory is insufficient to take account of the "human longing" to make sense of the universe. The subjective should be considered a source of "real" knowledge.

On a practical level, humans have long combined feeling and reason for desired results. We may simply refer to our choosing a mate. What a sorry lot we would be if we employed either feeling or reason exclusively in selecting the one with whom we intended to spend the rest of our lives. We need to use both.

Theologically, one can affirm that God created human beings with the ability to feel as well as think rationally. Religious feeling, like other forms of feeling, may be nurtured and refined or suppressed and denied. Religious feeling is expressed more as art than as pure (objective) empirical description or rational analysis. When as believers we unite reason with feeling, or our apprehension of the numinous in Jesus, we do so with the desire that through his life and teachings we may come to feel as God feels, love as God loves, suffer as God suffers, and reason as God reasons. Even our fear of death is tempered because in the numinous we feel God's immortality. Once we do not have to defend our faith by a fragmented epistemology, we are freed to appreciate the mysteries of God from the perspective of fallible but faithful human beings attempting to symbolize those mutually human and divine feelings in developing pictures, ideas, and doctrines. But the passion (feeling) we have for God and the pursuit of truth is more fundamental than strictly rational arguments or the formulation of unyielding doctrine.

Feelings about religion, however, are not all positive and constructive. When as Adventists we sense danger or detect a threat to our beliefs, as when doctrines are brought into question, we experience fear. Consider, for instance, the fear that things will disintegrate if critical methods are applied to Bible and doctrine. This fear is no less real than the fight for survival in a life-threatening crisis. Our fear is informing us, but we need to consider whether the fear is rational. Perhaps it is not. We are also need to affirm a reasoning as well as a feeling about our spiritual and social condition. When people react to fear, they must not subordinate rationality to it. Our task is to guarantee that feeling and reason function holistically, and that one not be allowed to negate the other. A fear may be justified, but not necessarily for the reason we first expect.

Assumptions and Fears: Rational and Irrational

There are two fears notable in Adventism today. One is that some of our doctrines may be biblically weak or wrong, and the second is that the church is in danger of slipping into a faith- eroding liberalism. Actually, both fears come from the assumed consequences of these possibilities. That we might have questionable doctrine would deny our fundamental assumptions about the Bible and revelation, thus our certainty of salvation. And theological liberalism, the source of questioning, might herald the demise of the church as God's remnant people at the end of time and reduce us to being just one of many churches.

But are these fears sufficiently rational? Let us consider the issue of liberalism first, because although it is an outgrowth of the doctrine of the church, it has taken on a political and emotive life of its own apart from discussions of doctrines or theology. Is it rational or irrational to fear that adopting a more liberal approach to theology and church will bring on the demise of the Seventh-day Adventist Church? There are two recurrent questions on this matter: Aren't the growing churches today conservative and fundamentalistic? And, don't conservatives support the church financially better than liberals?

Many of the arguments about impending demise and retarded growth are based on specific kinds of arguments which rest on dubious and untested assumptions. In the case of liberalism causing the demise of the church, one often hears the slippery slope argument: once you start sliding, you cannot stop, and once liberalism is allowed in the church, soon there will be nothing left to believe in. Or one may be guilty of a hasty generalization. For example, "When the Methodists became liberal they began losing members, and the same thing will happen to us if we become liberal." We may consider this reasoning to be fallacious, because a conclusion has been generalized from an insufficient sampling of the target group. Also, there may be reasons other than being liberal for dwindling church membership. And on what grounds does one argue that a large membership is a sign of faithfulness?

In the cases of the growth of conservative and fundamentalistic churches, at the expense of the liberal ones, it may be argued hypothetically that people flock to them because of an irrational fear due to a perceived theological uncertainty. They may be hiding their heads in the sand. Or these churches may be growing because the members believe in big families. Or, it may be an educational system that contributes to church growth. But the causes for membership loss must be searched out by careful research and argumentation; otherwise one risks developing and promulgating an irrational fear where there is no sound reason to be fearful. A rational fear is one processed from the conclusion of a rigorous critical and rational process. For further analysis and commentary on the reasons for church growth and decline I refer the reader to the Spectrum article by A. Gregory Schneider, "The Real Reasons Conservative Churches Have Grown." (October 7, 2002).

The Fear of Compromising Doctrine

Although all doctrines are in unity, and making changes in one necessitates making changes in others, the compromise of Creation and Sanctuary seems to produce the most anxiety among Adventists. The anxiety results from the application of critical methods to their expression and understanding. What to do with historical criticism and modern science in understanding the doctrine of Creation, is a staple of theological discussions by both conservative and liberal scholars. Slightly less popular, but of equal importance, is the effect of historical and textual research on the doctrine of the Sanctuary. Presently, the popular Adventist understanding of the doctrine of the Sanctuary depends on assumptions about prophecy, history, texts, and the authority of Ellen White. These assumptions are now being questioned by many Adventists familiar with both the textual and hermeneutical problems basic to the formulation of the Sanctuary doctrine.

Logicians recognize that logic is only as good as the presuppositions from which an argument begins, and ultimately where it ends. In using logic, while realizing its limitations, we try to keep honest and refrain from a kind of epistemological insanity brought on by the fear of facing the obvious, or the more probable.

With this in mind, we can ask several questions about the doctrine of the Sanctuary from a logical perspective. How reliable was the Millerite interpretation of the biblical texts dealing with the sanctuary and the end of time? And following, how are we to understand the explanation of the Great Disappointment with the Investigative Judgment? And further, if we are to be logical, wouldn't it seem rationally more respectable and less risky to argue that the Millerites, who were poorly educated, uncritical about biblical history, and having access to only a limited number of texts, both biblical and non-biblical, would possibly formulate incomplete or even wrong ideas? Furthermore, wouldn't it be more likely that these ideas would be subject to correction and reinterpretation upon future events and the discovery and understanding of different, possibly better texts? And that, in turn, these events and texts would necessitate theological adjustments, even explanations of how a particular doctrine came into being? Wouldn't it be more risky, logically, to argue that these early formulated doctrines should be defended as changeless at all costs and by the most ingenious means, because an inspired prophet, also with little formal education, consented to them and thus made it unnecessary, even wrong, to debate text and theology? Doesn't it seem possible that doctrines, whether or not agreeable with scripture, are not formulated from the Bible alone, but also from interests in contemporary issues, situations, and questions?

If we were to change our ideas about how the pioneers came up with the doctrine of the Sanctuary we would not necessarily change or negate the core religious content of the spiritual passion and experience of the Millerites, Ellen White, and the early Adventists. The doctrinal formulation may have been indicative of their scholastic inadequacies, but we don't have to reject their passion for God because of that. We will have to ask ourselves which is the most important for faith-embracing the Millerite and early Adventist passion for Christ, or defending the conservative position by affirming the debatable scholastic details of the Sanctuary doctrine? Once again, we are in the midst of examining our assumptions.

Recognizing that we have a problem of assumptions in our theology, and acknowledging our fear of examining and possibly modifying them, we have to ask why it is that so many are reluctant to gain a more balanced or complete understanding of God and reality by walking through this dilemma with reason in one hand and religious experience and feeling in the other. While I would like to list "concern for the weak brother" as primary in this resistance to theological development, the hostility many people have received for being a strong brother leads me to think that the primary concern (fear) is political. It is not only the fear of alienating the fundamentalistic members; it is the fear of loss of control. All organized religions exercise control over religious experience, or over spiritual manifestations. And to a degree they should control and shape it. No one stands alone. But some people are afraid that by turning the church over to Christ it will become liberal, atrophy and die; contributions will dry up and programs will have to be terminated. The way it stands, such a statement sounds simplistic. The church needs to be administered by human beings, and its membership needs to contribute financially to the institution. But at its base, the church is an organization of spiritually related people who are united by religious feeling and experience. It is not General Motors. And along with the impossibility of avoiding human folly in carrying out God's work, it does follow from our theological presuppositions that we should let Christ take care of his church. Do we passionately believe that when Christ said the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church, he meant it? Will there not always be passion for God, for God's existence, for salvation, and the fellowship of the saved? Are we willing to take the same risks God took in the Incarnation to free the church from dogmatic strictures and hope that its attributes flowing from God's love will draw it closer, or even back to the source of that love? Would not this love open the purse strings of the membership? Admittedly, affirming passion for God as the ground for all theological beliefs and religious certainty sounds mystical. Some argue that because the mystic lives in God, no logical construction of beliefs or actions are needed. But the mystic also lives on earth, and as long as that is the case, symbols of truths too large to be encapsulated in a static doctrine must be refined and their spiritual content distilled so that new spiritually energized action may follow from God's dynamic self-revelation.

As we affirm the liberating power of love and accept a risk like the one God took in the Incarnation to be faithful to his covenant with the creation, our questions and discussions of freedom-academic, cultural, social, and religious-will seem like experiments in divine wisdom. While we allow for the working of free will, even in opposition to God, would it not be better for us to "assume" that whoever is loved and falls away will return to the source of love? Some do not return, of course, because of an inadequate understanding of God. Can the church perish if it loves? I think not.

Recently, I was reading in the spring 200XX issue of Spectrum an article, "Why I remain a Seventh-day Adventist." I, too, have a passionate desire to be, to remain, a member of the Seventh-day Adventist family. But I have to admit that I joined the church in a state of considerable ignorance. Now, with my educational background and general experience with humanity I would respond with considerable caution to an evangelistic appeal. I would have to admit that some things being preached rest on dubious assumptions which control biblical interpretation and result in bad theological reasoning. It isn't that I could not under any condition affirm the specifics of certain doctrines, but that I could affirm them only if they were expounded under different theological presuppositions and given different interpretations. Applying critical tools to the tangible expressions of faith can only help us refine our inherited expressions of faith. Many fear to do so. But except as we do, we must forever appeal to the multitudes of the fearful and the ignorant, while alienating the informed. To some this may appear as intellectual arrogance, but truth reveals itself only to those who approach it in humility. And when one catches a glimpse of the truth, one follows wherever it leads.

The question I ask is, could I ever share my deepest spiritual experiences, passions, and convictions with those who equated their religiosity, not with a passion for God, but with static doctrines, especially those expounded with invalid, unsound, and weak arguments? Could I ever feel I was considered an equal in the body of Christ?

Despite the wishes of some, theological and religious pluralism are now characteristic of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Some of this pluralism, while logically presented, is not the result of sound reasoning. It ranges from the insistence on personal theological opinion to the hunger for a deeper felt spirituality that is purely emotional. Such spirituality, without being accompanied by reason, sometimes goes astray, relapsing into a dangerous form of worship centering on self-exaltation, instead of developing an ethical orientation and reaching outward to affirm others and the world.

Contributing to the pluralism in the church are those who are passionate for God and the church. They work faithfully in the intellectual and spiritual vineyard. They fear God and walk humbly with their knowledge of the world. Because they realize that what appears to be the case is never identical with what is ultimately real, their approach to reality is similar to the way repentant sinners approach God. They hold that faith should seek understanding, not understanding seeking faith. They insist on thinking with clear heads, on defining their terms, on sound logic and rigorous argumentation; they use critical methods as tools, not as weapons. For them spiritual growth is not without intellectual struggle, but like Jacob, they wrestle with God, prevail, and receive the blessing of faith. Above all, they pray that they may feel God's love as God feels it, and love others as God loves them. It is in the arms of this fellowship that I am held in the church.

Joe Grieg, A. Josef (Joe) Greig, Ph.D., professor emeritus, Andrews University, received his Ph.D. in Old Testament from the University of Edinburgh. His research and writing interests include Old Testament Theology, the Christian and the environment, philosophy, and poetry.