October 30, 2007

Reports by [1] Ervin Taylor (Adventist Today), [2] Arthur Patrick (Avondale College), and [3] Robert Johnston (Andrews University)

[1] Maintaining Church Unity in a Post Modern Era: Many Right Ways to Think

Ervin Taylor, Adventist Today Executive Editor

The chapel of the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary on the campus of Andrews University was the venue for a conference the week of October 24-27 that was anticipated by its organizers to be “an engaging, reflective, scholarly dialogue about Adventist history and theology.” Amazingly, given the fierce and bitter acrimony which has swirled for a half century around the focal point of the conference, the organizers were successful in achieving an Adventist gathering characterized—at least in public—by reasoned discussion and not impassioned oratory.

The occasion for the conference was the 50^th Anniversary of the publication in 1957 of Seventh-day Adventists Answers Questions on Doctrine, a work generally referred to as just Questions on Doctrine, or QOD. The title of the opening paper by Dr. George Knight framed the nature of the book: “Questions on Doctrine: Symbol of Adventist Theological Tension.” His opening sentence provided the context of the conference: “Fifty years ago what is undoubtedly the most divisive book in Seventh-day Adventist history was released to an eagerly awaiting audience . . . [The book] brought about prolonged alienation and separation within the denomination to the Adventist factions the grew up around it.”

It was the reissuing of the QOD volume in 2003 by the Andrews University Press that included annotations and commentary by Dr. Knight that was perhaps an important factor that set the background for this conference. Another key ingredient of immediate significance was a 2005 doctoral dissertation completed by Julius Nam at Andrews University under the direction of Dr. Knight entitled: “Reactions to the Seventh-day Adventist Evangelical Conferences and Questions on Doctrine, 1955-1971.”

The conference was co-sponsored by three SDA General Conference institutions: Andrews University, Loma Linda University, and Oakwood College. The sitting SDA General Conference President, Dr. Jan Paulsen and other GC administrators, have been quite open in expressing their generally negative attitudes about holding the conference, ranging from a general lack of enthusiasm to explicit opposition. According to a typically well-informed source, GC leadership was fearful that the “firestorm of controversy” which resulted from the original publication of QOD might be reignited. Reportedly, one of their worries was that any resurgence of a discussion of a major controversy would create a climate where old wounds would be reopened and even more financial resources would be drained away from the coffers of the institutional church into reenergized “independent ministries.”

The conference organizers are to be commended for moving ahead despite such highly-placed lack of support and, from some quarters, outright opposition. Due to their skills and planning, especially in including all points of view in the mix of speakers invited to make formal presentations, the concerns expressed by GC officials about what might happen did not materialize at the conference itself. The long term effect is another matter which obviously will not be known for many months.

As the detailed historical research most recently of Drs. Knight and Nam have demonstrated, the original blowup over the publication of QOD was primarily a product of a series of actions taken by a small group of General Conference officers seeking to convince a small group of very conservative to fundamentalist Protestant evangelical leaders that the SDA Church was a genuine Evangelical Christian denomination and not a heretical sect or cult holding to false and unscriptural doctrines at variance with orthodox Christianity.

It is important to consider that the “orthodox Christian” doctrines that were at issue were those of particular concern to fundamentalist and conservative Protestants. There were a number of theological positions held by classic Adventism that was questioned, but the one that was most troublesome to these very conservative Evangelicals was the Adventist understanding of the human nature of Christ and specifically whether Jesus partook of man’s sinful, fallen nature at the incarnation. More than just abstract theological issues came into play. The personalities of those directly involved in developing the QOD volume and those who reacted to it were decisive in creating the “perfect theological storm” of reaction to the book in certain parts of the SDA denomination.

It should be noted that in his paper, David Larson of Loma Linda University noted that many on the theological left or progressive wing of Adventism essentially ignored the QOD controversy. To them, the debates surrounding the book “looked too much like a squabble among fundamentalists.”

With respect to the current relevance of the doctrinal questions, an aspect of the attitude of the current GC president toward the issues raised in QOD deliberations had been publicly expressed by him in a statement made during the recently concluded GC Fall Council and distributed as an Adventist Review online news item on October 15, ten days prior to the beginning of the conference. It was reported that he stated that “I have to tell you I just cannot imagine a post-modern person in Europe, a business man in Asia or Latin America, any more than a farmer in Africa will care one iota whether Christ had the nature of man before the fall or after the fall. The realities of the world in which we live have other concerns which occupy us.”

The 2007 QOD conference might be compared with previous discussions held by the church at Glacier View in 1980 to consider the issues raised by Dr. Desmond Ford on the Sanctuary doctrine and the Faith and Science Conference held at Denver in 2004 to consider the SDA church’s response to the challenge of modern science in the area of creationism. The Glacier View and Denver conferences were organized and manipulated by SDA church administrators to come to preordained outcomes. Both are widely viewed by moderate and progressive Adventists as disasters and retrogressive. The QOD conference was organized by the SDA church’s scholars and will surely go down as making a very positive contribution to the future life of the church and thus an outstanding success. There is a lesson here.

Twenty-one formal papers were presented at the conference. The organizers indicated that the final versions of all papers would be available on the web by the end of January 2008.

In addition to those of Knight and Nam, forward looking Adventists might be particularly interested in observations made in the contributions of Roy Adams, David Larson, Paul McGraw, Jon Paulien Arthur Patrick, Richard Rice, and Ciro Sepulveda as well as comments made by Donald Dayton, a non-Adventist scholar. Included here is a brief summary of the high points contained in the final paper presented at the conference—that of Dr. Jon Paulien, formerly of Andrews University and now of Loma Linda University.

Dr. Paulien in his paper entitled “Questions on Doctrine and the Church: Present and Future” suggests that “[t]he basic issue of the Questions on Doctrine controversy, it seems to me, revolved and still revolves around an unspoken subtext. I summarize that subtext in the following sentence: Is there more than one right way to think?” While he is confident that the early Adventist pioneers would have answered a resounding No to such a question, it seems to Dr. Paulien that the “answer of Adventist history as a whole to this question has increasingly been Yes.” He also believes that “[s]cripture answers this question with a qualified Yes.”

In his view, the QOD episode “brought the diversity and fragmentation of Adventism into public view.” He characterizes that diversity as being currently reflected in “four major brands” of Adventism: (1) Creative Traditionalism [expressed by evangelists and missionaries], (2) Respectful Biblicism [expressed by both “liberal” and “conservative” Adventist scholars], (3) Indifferent Minimalism [expressed by the first world Adventist in the pew—particularly the members of the “younger, post-modern Adventist generation” and, finally, (4) Passionate Creativity [expressed outside first world Adventism in the beliefs of Southern Hemisphere members “driven by tradition and devotional reading of Scripture.”]

He concluded his remarks with an analogy. Within a few generations of the death of the last apostle, the Christian Church was fragmenting into five alternative groups, all with different solutions to the “problem of church unity”: (1) Gnostics [right ideas will keep the church united and pure], (2) Monastics [separation from the world will keep the church united and pure], (3) Montanists [a direct connection by every member with the Spirit of God will keep the church united and pure], (4) Marcionites [emphasizing the gospel and gospel only will keep the church united and pure], and (5) Institutionalists [letting leaders decide important issues will keep the church united and pure.] By the time of Constantine, the Institionalists had become the dominant fraction and the result, in the West, was the Medieval Church.

Following the death of Ellen White, the Adventist Church has experienced a similar process of fragmentation. Dr. Paulien concludes by asking “[w]hich of these five ways will help us the most today . . .? The early church chose the fifth [approach], let the bishops decide and keep us all together. That choice didn’t turn out so well. Will we do any better?”

[2] The Questions on Doctrine Conference: An Overview for the Busy Adventist

Arthur Patrick, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, Avondale College

Attendees at the Questions on Doctrine (QoD) fiftieth anniversary conference at Andrews University registered during the afternoon and early evening of Wednesday, 24 October 2007. The conference closed just before 1 pm on Sabbath, October 27.

Minutes later, at the front of the Seminary chapel, surrounded by vigorous conversation, I asked Dr. Fritz Guy for his assessment of the event. His first response was to recall a cryptic comment from decades ago that was characteristic of our mentor, Dr. Edward Heppenstall: "It is dangerous to think. It is more dangerous not to think."

Adventists are busy people. This report offers an overview of the conference that can be read in less than five minutes.

I have been attending Seventh-day Adventist congresses, conferences, symposia, workshops, and similar events since 1949. The QoD conference is the second in importance of the many such events that I have experienced during the past 48 years.

What is Questions on Doctrine? It is a 720-page book published by Review and Herald in 1957. Its full title better describes its content: Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine: An Explanation of Certain Major Aspects of Seventh-day Adventist Belief. The book answers a long list of very specific questions a young Baptist author posed to Adventist leaders.

Why this conference? QoD has proved to be the most "divisive" book ever published by Adventists. But it is also a very good book. Even most of its harshest critics concede that they believe more than ninety per cent of what it says. For its supporters, it was "a breath of fresh air" or "a tremendous blessing."

Who conceived and birthed the 2007 conference? It was the brain-child of Dr. Michael Campbell (now a pastor in Colorado), Dr. Jerry Moon (an Adventist historian at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary), and Dr. Julius Nam (a Religion teacher at Loma Linda University). As organizers, these scholars did a superb job under the friendly mantle of three General Conference institutions: Andrews University, Loma Linda University, and Oakwood University. How fitting it is that these institutions aided this exciting venture.

But the Church as a corporate entity did not fund this crucial event because participants and presenters paid their own travel costs. For instance, as one of the presenters, I can say that our family's inheritance paid over one hundred dollars for each minute that I spoke at the conference. This conference was for many participants a SKI-ing trip: "Spending Kid's Inheritance." Broadly we can say that it was organized by volunteers and attended by volunteers. Of course, some church entities sponsored employees to attend.

Why was the conference so significant? Of many reasons, perhaps the most important is that it "heard" representatives of the major voices that for fifty years have engaged in vigorous conversation about QoD and the issues it raised for Adventists. But this conference also offered the perspectives of some of our best-informed thought-leaders. More than that, in the main, opposing perspectives were stated in clear language and were heard respectfully. Such a process enables the audience to weigh the evidence prayerfully and calmly.

Why might this conference help? Adventists move more effectively beyond conflict to a better understanding of their identity and a fuller participation in their mission? Because the 348-pages of papers will shortly be available on the Internet so everyone can study them in detail. Because the oral presentations (often shorter than the prepared texts) will be available as podcasts, Adventists everywhere will be able to experience the conference far more effectively than mere reports by observers could enable them to do. Because the presentations cite most of the important literature that, read carefully and in its entirely, express the problems and point toward potential solutions.

Some of the most important features of any conference of this type reside in the personal insights that are shared, as advocates of opposing concepts talk face-to-face. I had hoped that a pastor who has felt free to firmly criticize various Adventists and their ideas might feel less tension over these issues after hearing the conference presentations. So, in the Seminary chapel, I suggested my desire to converse with him and expressed my conviction that at least in the New Jerusalem we might share fuller understandings of the faith we cherish here on earth. In response, the pastor gave me the distinct impression that I will not be in the Kingdom of God because I do not have an adequate understanding of the issues that confront the Church. I suggested that since we both believe in the same Savior, it is possible that we may both be in heaven. The "message" I received confirmed my impression that I am a hopeless case. So I will seek to converse with the pastor further by sending him a copy of this brief report with an invitation for him to respond to my email address: arthur.patrick@pacific.net.au. We are both members of the same spiritual family; he is my brother in Christ; I hope we can each serve our Lord reinforced by brotherly fellowship.

In a mere thirteen thousand words, the paper that I presented on October 25 tries to summarize the impact and potent of what I call "The Questions on Doctrine Event." I have been trying to analyze this event during the past fifty years. My paper took ten months to write. During that time I was greatly helped by people who commented on various drafts. Now the conference has ballooned the range of insights. While at this point I think my paper still offers useful reflection on the "event" that is still worth reading, I believe that our Church is on the cusp of a fresh opportunity to move forward.

Yes, Dr. Guy implied it is dangerous to think. Thinking can stimulate conflict. But it is more dangerous not to think. God has given humans a capacity "to think and to do." We are responsible to Him and to each other to wisely use such gifts. But Dr. Guy added a third concept. In his conviction, there is great merit in the paper presented on Friday night, October 26, by Dr. Jon Paulien, who suggested that “there is more than one right way to think.”

Let us grow together in understanding, helped by “the dialogue and dialectic of a community,” and be about the work that God has given us to do. Jesus is our all-sufficient Savior; His Second Coming is imminent. This is very Good News!

[3] Questions on Doctrine 50th Anniversary Conference: A Personal Reaction

Robert M. Johnston, Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins, Emeritus, SDA Theological Seminary, Andrews University

I have attended several Adventist conferences recently, and I am happy to report that the most recent one that I attended, a conference marking the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the book Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine, suggests that we are finally learning how to do them. In my view it was satisfying and brilliantly successful. The organizers did almost everything right.

This is not to say that the other conferences were badly run—quite the contrary, their planning and logistics were nearly flawless. But they suffered from certain fatal defects that this conference avoided—more on this later. First it may be necessary to tell briefly what the conference was about.

Over a half century ago, it came to pass that a group of General Conference officers led by L.E. Froom, R.A. Anderson, and W.E. Read entered into a dialogue with a group of Fundamentalist Evangelicals led by Donald Grey Barnhouse and Walter Martin. Barnhouse was the pastor of the Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia and editor of Eternity magazine, at the time a leading evangelical publication; Martin was a modern heresiologist and cult hunter. The latter had already published a book attacking the Jehovah’s Witnesses and was in the process of preparing a book to be titled The Rise of the Cults, which was to include a section on Seventh-day Adventism. Because of a fortuitous chain of events Martin decided that the right thing to do was to talk to Adventists directly, lest he bear false witness against them. Hence the dialogue.

The talks were cordial. The Evangelicals formulated some forty-eight questions about the distinctive features of Adventism, but their central concerns were about four of them: “(1) that the atonement of Christ was not completed upon the cross; (2) that salvation is the result of grace plus the works of the law; (3) that the Lord Jesus Christ was a created being, not from all eternity; (4) and that He partook of man’s sinful fallen nature at the incarnation.” Martin had done his homework and had amassed a good deal of Adventist literature that taught precisely these things, which in the evangelical view placed Adventism outside the pale of true Christianity.

The Adventist partners in dialogue insisted that either they no longer taught these things, or that they had been misunderstood. The two most difficult ones to deal with were the first and fourth. Classically, Adventism had taught the real atonement was Christ’s ministry in the heavenly sanctuary, and that He had been born on earth with fallen human nature. The atonement issue was more or less successfully dealt with as a merely semantic problem. The nature of Christ’s human nature was the most difficult problem, especially because of a number of Ellen White’s statements. But the Adventists were able to discover other of her statements that seemed to take the other side.

With the support of General Conference President R.R. Figuhr, the Adventists proved their bona fides by publishing their answers to the forty-eight questions in a book of 720 pages, including appendices of Ellen White quotations on the nature of Christ. This was Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions of Doctrine: An Explanation of Certain Major Aspects of Seventh-day Adventist Belief, “Prepared by a Representative Group of Seventh-day Adventist Leaders, Bible Teachers, and Editors,” published by the Review and Herald Publishing Association in 1957. (The book is popularly referred to as QOD.) Eventually 150,000 copies were printed. Barnhouse published an article in Eternity that welcomed Adventists into the Christian fold, albeit noting a few eccentricities. Martin published The Truth About Seventh-day Adventism expressing similar conclusions.

Then all hell broke loose. Eternity magazine lost a fourth of its subscribers, although they were soon after replaced by the subscription list of another evangelical publication that ceased publication. Martin and Barnhouse were denounced by fellow Evangelicals as having been duped by the Adventists. On the Adventist side it was no better. The opposition was led by M.L. Andreasen, who proclaimed that the GC brethren had given away the store. Andreasen had been the leading Adventist theologian of his time, and he had worked out a theology of the Final Generation that will vindicate God in the Great Controversy by living in perfect obedience to God’s commandments. He took umbrage especially to QOD’s formulations about the atonement and Christ’s human nature.

Andreasen had not been involved in any way in the process that finally resulted in QOD. In fact, he felt that he had been put on the shelf and deliberately snubbed. He had been voted retirement without having asked for it. He was not even among the 250 readers to whom the manuscript of QOD had been sent for review. He launched a vigorous movement of opposition to the book and what it stood for, a stream of Adventist thought that has continued until now, with prominent exponents such as Herbert Douglass, the brothers Colin and Russell Standish, and the late Mervyn Maxwell.

The controversy was the subject of at least two major doctoral dissertations, by Leroy Moore and Julius Juhyeok Nam. At the same time, QOD has been republished with annotations by George Knight. Knight’s introduction to the new edition begins thus: “Questions on Doctrine easily qualifies as the most divisive book in Seventh-day Adventist history. A book published to help bring peace between Adventism and conservative Protestantism, its release brought prolonged alienation and separation to the Adventist factions that grew up around it.”

So Dr. Nam, with the encouragement of Dr. Knight, the assistance of Michael Campbell and Jerry Moon, and the support of the administration of the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, organized the conference of which I write. It was held at Andrews University, October 24-27, 2007. It was a bold and risky undertaking, because some of the brethren on high had grave misgivings about it. It could, after all, exacerbate old wounds.

So—what did the organizers do right? First of all, they were totally and completely fair to all sides. Every possible view that could be reasonably discovered was credibly represented. It is probably the case that the QOD positions are the ones most in favor among contemporary Adventist theologians, and so of course a number of presenters spoke for that. But the organizers took pains to give equal time to the other side. (In fact, some on that side were allowed such indulgence that one spoke for more than two hours!) Various other permutations were also included, such as the unique “Comments by a Left-Wing Neo-Andreasenite” (David Larson).

The subject was dealt with both theologically and historically by some twenty-four presenters, including devotional speakers. I think it is safe to say that no prominent players in the controversy (e.g., Herbert Douglass and the Standish brothers) were left out. Two presenters were non-Adventists: Kenneth Samples, a successor to Walter Martin who has studied Adventism for decades, and Donald Dayton, a Wesleyan expert on the history of American religion. The formal presentations were punctuated by panel discussions which included answering written questions submitted from the audience. Anyone who paid the registration fee could attend, and some 210 people did. They received printed copies of all the presentations.

This openness and transparency was refreshing. It is the only right way to do it. After all, the original trouble began in the first place because M.L. Andreasen had been left out. It is easy to achieve a kind of unity by hand-picking participants, shutting out potential dissenters, and thus stacking the deck, but that results only in a Pyrrhic victory of sorts. Those who are not allowed to have their say in the official forum will make their own forum, and they will be heard.

Second, the organizers encouraged a spirit of kindness, brotherhood, and scholarly courtesy that transcended divergent opinions, however frankly expressed. This was not a pious gimmick to suppress debate. People not only spoke well, but they listened well. There were glimmerings of tolerance and even rapprochement. Those who might have been a bit strident in the beginning began to soften. I do not know whether any minds were seriously changed, but I am certain that by the end of the conference everyone felt better about each other, even about their ideological opponents. Even if they remained in opposition they were no longer enemies. Appropriately on the concluding Sabbath the participants celebrated the ordinances of footwashing and the Lord’s Supper.

Third, it was stated at the beginning that there was no intention to produce at the end some kind of resolution or “consensus statement.” That would have created pressure to force agreement that would have been false or even more divisive. You cannot produce in three days agreement about something that has been a sore point for fifty years. Besides, many have had the experience of seeing such documents produced at the end of a conference by a chosen few that did not represent fairly the views of a substantial portion of the participants. With such pressure removed the participants could communicate with each other knowing that they did not need to win or be defeated. They did not have to worry about a vote that would make some winners and others losers. This simple announcement did magic for the atmosphere. The result was a reconciliation far more real than any formal resolution could produce.

There were two things that were not done which in other conferences perhaps should be done. For one thing, none of the speakers was a woman. In this instance that can be excused, however, because none of the experts or major players in the controversy were women. It would have been a waste of precious time to include a speaker for irrelevant reasons. Second, it is often useful to follow a keynote address or other presentation with a respondent, especially a critical one. Apparently the organizers thought it more important to have a large variety of speakers. Since the speakers represented various contrasting opinions they fulfilled some of the functions of respondents, except that the papers presented were not directly criticized.

I was not able to attend the Sabbath dinner that followed the last service. I understand that there was informal discussion about Where Do We Go From Here? But I do not know what was concluded about that. I only know that it was an excellent conference that may well serve as a model for others.