QUESTIONS ON DOCTRINE
Herbert
E. Douglass, Th.D.
Late in 2003,
Questions on Doctrines (QOD)
was republished by the Andrews University Press with historical notes and a
theological introduction by George R. Knight.
Published in 1957, this book as Knight wrote, “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.”
In fact, Knight further wrote that the “explosive issues”
opened up by QOD placed the volume . . . at
the very center of Adventist theological dialogue since the 1950s, setting the
stage for ongoing theological tension.”
How right Knight was!
And, in the opinion of many, those “explosive issues” never had to be.
Historical Concerns
In Knight’s Introduction he provides the background of early
conversations between Adventist spokesmen and Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, Walter Martin, and others of the Calvinistic
wing of Evangelicalism.
Some would say, the Fundamentalist wing. Their theological paradigms were on a
different planet compared to Wesleyan and Adventist theology. For example, Barnhouse
declared that Ellen White’s Steps to Christ
was “false in all its
parts.”
The mystery to many of us in Washington
during the 1950s was T. E. Unruh’s (president, East Pennsylvania Conference)
letter to Barnhouse wherein he complimented Barnhouse’s radio program on “righteousness by faith.” This
letter started the strange chain of events that led to the publishing of
QOD. The question was, “How could Unruh
possibly commend Barnhouse’s position on
“righteousness by faith?”
Barnhouse was equally astonished!
This letter led Martin, a young specialist in Christian
cults, to visit Washington in
March, 1955, and hear from Adventist leaders exactly what they believed
regarding certain doctrines that Martin had said were cultic. Knowing that Martin was in the process of
preparing another book entitled, The Rise of the Cults,
Leroy E. Froom, W. E. Read, and R. A. Anderson thought it best to
head off a negative bombshell by responding with irenic deference. A lofty goal for any leader!
Of course there were many topics that Martin and Barnhouse would concede as interesting and different but
not necessarily cultic beliefs.
The four
items that remained on the table were 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 was a created being, not from all
eternity; and 4) that He partook of man’s sinful fallen nature at the
incarnation.
Part of the drama of the middle 1950s was happening
backstage.
Those watching from the
sidelines determined that we would not reveal certain pertinent facts for
various reasons, the chief of which was that we never dreamed that the book
would be so heavily advertised, with so many gratis copies. We thought it better to let the whole matter
die for lack of attention.
Were we
wrong!
The associate editors of the
Seventh-day Adventist Bible
Commentary had the privilege of watching
QOD
being processed, edited, rewritten, and rewritten again.
Our
Commentary office was on the same
floor with Merwin Thurber, the seasoned Review and
Herald Publishing Association Book Editor.
Whenever he had a theological problem of whatever nature, he would come
to our office for counsel.
Week after
week for months this would be the routine as Thurber tried to delete much of
the QOD manuscript and edit appropriately the
rest.
Finally, Froom
dug in and said, “No more editing.
We’re
going with what we have.”
At that point,
the manuscript was about one-half of what they originally wanted. We had hoped to save the denomination from
even worse embarrassment and trouble, but it was not meant to be.
I remember the day as if it were yesterday when one of the
associate editors of the Commentary left the room and returned with a towel
over his left arm and a basin of water in the other. We all took turns washing our hands, formally
absolving ourselves of any connection to the gestating manuscript.
We recognize with the authors that “no statement of
Seventh-day Adventist belief can be considered official unless it is adopted by
the General Conference in quadrennial session.” But perception often
overrules.
You can imagine our
astonishment when we began to see the galleys of the forthcoming book with its
self-congratulatory comments, such as on the title page: “Prepared by a
Representative Group of Seventh-day Adventist Leaders, Bible Teachers, and
Editors.”
On pages 8, 9: “The replies
were prepared by a group of recognized leaders, in close counsel with Bible teachers,
editors, and administrators. . . . These answers represent the position of our
denomination in the area of church doctrine and prophetic interpretation. . . .
Hence this volume can be viewed as truly representative of the faith and
beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist
Church.” These statements did not represent the
reality surrounding the production of QOD.
Many were troubled by the direction of the
book and told the authors so.
And many
more who are listed among the 250 “readers” never returned their comments.
Still, many thought that the book would not amount to much
because of its weakness in lucidly setting forth certain doctrines. They chose to remain respectful. They knew
that the authors had to work with a vocabulary with which hard-core Calvinists
could at least be comfortable.
They
believed that QOD would die a quick
death because most of our teachers and ministers had been taught differently on
at least two core subjects that were painfully stitched together.
But, and unfortunately for all concerned, Milton L. Andreasen, “the denomination’s most influential theologian
and theological writer in the late 1930s and throughout the 1940s, had been
left out of the process in both the formulation of the answers and the
critiquing of them, even though he had been generally viewed as an authority on
several of the disputed points.”
This omission was not apparent until
QOD
was published. We were dumbfounded that such an intended oversight could have
happened.
The writers of QOD, specialists in their respective fields,
were not equipped to play in the same theological league as Andreasen. Further, Knight was totally correct in
ruminating, “Looking back, one can only speculate on the different course of
Adventist history if Andreasen had been
consulted regarding the working of the Adventist position on the atonement,
if
Froom and his colleagues hadn’t been so divisive
in their handling of issues related to the human nature of Christ,
if both
Froom and Andreasen would
have had softer personalities.”
In 1957, I had reason to discuss certain biblical subjects
with Arthur White, the director of the Ellen G. White Estate. QOD was
fresh on his mind, only weeks off the printing press. He said, “Herb, I thought
I would die trying to make my views known to Froom
and Anderson.”
We still felt that QOD would die a quick death and the less we all said
about it the better.
What we did not expect was the crescendo of
Ministry editorials
and articles that joined with a remarkably orchestrated PR program in workers
meetings throughout North America from 1957 on. The new president of the General Conference,
R. R. Figuhr, recently from South America,
was captivated by what appeared to be a magnificent achievement—heading off
Walter Martin from again including Adventists in his next book on cults in America. Many felt sure that if Elder Branson, General
Conference President, 1950-1954, had not become ill, thus removing his name
from the nominating committee at the General Conference of 1954,
Questions
on Doctrine may never have seen the light of day.
Within seven years the impossible happened! Few really were
reading QOD but the story-line was out; the
vice presidents, union presidents and conference presidents were assured that
any misunderstandings were only semantic.
Denominational workers generally were either lulled to sleep or went
underground to catch their breath.
However, some administrators did read
QOD
and quietly made their positions known, at least this was my experience in
talking with several that later became vice presidents and presidents of the
General Conference!
For a time, they too
kept their peace, not wanting to appear disloyal.
When it seemed to Andreasen that
the QOD authors plus the General Conference
President were not interested in recognizing his concerns, Andreasen
wrote open letters to church members.
What may not be generally known is that Andreasen
agreed that most of QOD was solid Adventist
thinking.
He did not “repudiate” the
greater part of QOD.
Theological Concerns
Andreasen was primarily concerned
with the “troublesome” issues – the “atonement” and “the human nature of
Christ.”
Let’s take another look at the problem that Froom and Anderson faced—it seemed monumental! For example,
Froom took a poll of Adventist leaders and discovered
that “nearly all of them” felt that Christ had our sinful nature. Further, the recently retired General
Conference president, W. H. Branson, plainly wrote in his 1950 edition of his
Drama
of the Ages that Christ in His incarnation took “upon Himself sinful
flesh.”
But indefatigable Froom and
Anderson began their offense, not defense.
-
In
what appeared to Knight as “less than transparent,” they told Martin that
‘“the majority of the denomination has always held” the human of Christ
“to be sinless, holy, and perfect despite the fact that certain of their
writers have occasionally gotten into print with contrary views completely
repugnant to the Church at large.
They further explained to Mr. Martin that they had among their number
certain members of their ‘lunatic fringe’ even as there are similar
wild-eyed irresponsibles in every field of
fundamental Christianity.”
The “lunatic fringe” obviously
included W. H. Branson, M. L. Andreasen and a host of
other authors through the years who held responsible positions as teachers , pastors and administrators.
-
They
kept the new General Conference president well informed. One of Froom’s letters, sort of a
mea culpa, acknowledged
that in QOD “some of the
statements are a bit different from what you might anticipate.”
He went on to suggest that their approach was necessary in view of the
backgrounds and attitudes of the Evangelicals. If Branson were president he probably
would have pointed out that though the authors were using different
vocabulary, they also were missing a grand opportunity to make clear
certain theological points that Adventists have long considered truly
biblically based.
QOD’s Treatment
of the Atonement
-
One of
Andreasen’s chief complaints was the lack of
lucidity as the authors tried to pitch their answers to Martin’s questions
with language he could accept.
Andreasen did not explode to church members. He wrote private letters to the General
Conference President, imploring him to look at the big picture. After all, he had been cast as one of
the “lunatic fringe.”
-
It
seemed to some of us that both Andreasen and the
authors of QOD (plus the General
Conference President) were shooting right by each other. QOD
did,
in a way, try to salvage any criticism by quoting the Adventist position
on Christ’s mediatorial work as part of the
atonement.
But the general emphasis
of their answer unnecessarily threw the center of gravity on the Cross,
thus minimizing the equally essential role of Christ in the Heavenly
Sanctuary—even though that may not have been their intent.
Adventists
for many years had believed 1) that “the conditions of the
atonement had been fulfilled” on the cross (The Desire of Ages, p.
819) and 2) that “the intercession of Christ in man’s behalf in the
sanctuary above is as essential to the plan of salvation as was His
death upon the cross.
By His
death He began that work which after His resurrection He ascended to
complete in heaven” (The Great Controversy, p. 489).
QOD’s Treatment
of the Incarnation
Here again we must recognize the Calvinistic presuppositions
of Barnhouse, Martin, and other confreres. The human Jesus for them was “impeccable,”
that is, incapable of sinning. Bavinck, one of their
theological giants, wrote that the possibility of Jesus’ “sinning and falling
is an atrocious idea. . . . For then God Himself must have been able to
sin—which it is blasphemy to think.”
Therefore, Adventist authors for a century and specifically
Ellen White had been asserting that Jesus “took upon himself fallen, suffering
human nature, degraded and defiled by sin,”
appeared cultic, far separated from conventional Christian thought.
Froom admitted that some
Adventists had been in print emphasizing these “atrocious ideas” but such were
from those in the Adventist “lunatic fringe”!
Remember, Froom and Anderson
were trying to find some common ground with their
Calvinistic friends!
They used words
such as “exempt from the inherited passions and pollutions that corrupt
the natural descendents of Adam.”
And, “all that Jesus took, all that He bore whether the burden and
penalty of our iniquities, or the diseases and frailties of our human
nature—all was taken and borne vicariously.”
These words, “exempt,” and “vicariously,” Catholics had been
using for centuries in describing Christ’s humanity—cleverly insisting that the
genetic stream was blocked with the Immaculate Conception of mother Mary. Most Protestants never developed a novel
solution, as did Roman Catholics—they just philosophized their notions with no
biblical basis (such as Barnhouse and Martin would
use).
How can we summarize what Knight called “a less than
transparent” defense
of conventional Adventist thinking on the humanity of Jesus?
-
The
Ellen White statements appended to QOD
created “a false impression on the human nature of Christ.”
-
The
authors supplied in bold face a subheading: “Took Sinless Human
Nature.”
As Knight wrote, “that
heading is problematic in that it implies that that was Ellen White’s idea
when in fact she was quite emphatic in repeatedly stating that Christ took
our ‘sinful nature.’”
-
Curious
touches of intimidation are apparent when the authors said (after spelling
out their interpretation of Ellen White statements) “it is in this sense
that all should understand the writings of Ellen G. White when she refers
occasionally to sinful, fallen and deteriorated human nature.” Further, “all these are forceful cogent
statements, but surely no one would designedly attach a meaning to them
which runs counter to what the same writer has given in other places in
her works.” And the implicit response to both
assertions seems to be, “Of course not!”
-
Years
later, such so-called “balancing statements” led Geoffrey Paxton to
conclude in 1977 that Ellen White “has a wax nose. She is turned this way, and then that
way, and then this way again. . . . The final end of being made to take
all positions is to take no position at all!”
-
Not
only did the quotations contradict their contexts, they seem to have been
arranged to foster a particular presupposition. For an example of misrepresenting the
context, think of one that has been used many times since 1957: “No
one, looking upon the childlike countenance, shining with animation, could
say that Christ was just like other children. He was God in human flesh.”
Yet
a few sentences earlier, White also had written: “He was not like all
children. Many children are misguided and mismanaged. But Joseph, and
especially Mary, kept before them the remembrance of their child's divine
Fatherhood. Jesus was instructed in accordance with the sacred character
of his mission. . . . He was an example of what all children may strive to
be if parents will seek the Lord most earnestly, and if children will
co-operate with their parents. In His words and actions He manifested
tender sympathy for all.” One gets the larger picture that White
was painting when we look at the whole article.
-
Here
is another example where it seems we are observing a patently misconstrued
meaning of Ellen White, in the attempt to force a pre-lapsarian
position: “Christ is called the second Adam. In purity and holiness,
connected with God and beloved by God, He began where the
first
Adam began. Willingly He passed over the ground where Adam fell,
and
redeemed Adam's failure.”
Note
QOD’s special emphasis! But
there was more in the article quoted!
The next sentence is: “But the first Adam was in every way more
favorably situated than was Christ.”
Then White went on to show
why
Jesus became man after the race had deteriorated: “In His human nature
He maintained the purity of His divine character. He lived the law of God, and
honored it in a world of transgression, revealing to the heavenly universe, to
Satan, and to all the fallen sons and daughters of Adam, that through His
grace, humanity can keep the law of God. He came to impart His own divine
nature, His own image, to the repentant, believing soul.”
·
In the listing of six reasons for Christ coming
to earth, it seems that the authors of QOD omitted
two of the most essential reasons:
He
came to save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21). He came to be our Example (1 Peter 2:21).
It would have been more than helpful if they had listed the additional
reasons Ellen White has provided us.
Radiation Fallout
As Knight
said, QOD “easily qualifies as the most divisive
book in Seventh-day Adventist history.” To document this divisiveness is easy
but painful.
Most, if not all, of the
so- called “dissident” or “independent” groups of the last 45 years are direct
results of the explicit and implicit positions espoused by
QOD on the Atonement and the Incarnation.
On two continents the reaction was immediate. Most, if not all, of these “dissidents”
would not exist today if QOD had not been published.
Hovering
over the theological fog that QOD
generated
was the “official” imprimatur that the book was getting around the Adventist
world.
Although the authors tried to say
that QOD was not an “official”
statement of Seventh-day Adventist beliefs, the description of their efforts
could not be hidden.
In my Washington
years, I heard that the workers of a certain world division upheld QOD’s pronouncements “unanimously” as the denomination’s
official position.
One of our young
scholars told me that he had been taught in four of our denominational schools
and universities and on each campus QOD was
considered “official.”
It was difficult to swallow
QOD’s
contention that “a few, however, held to some of their former views, and at
times these ideas got into print.
However, for decades now the church has been practically at one on the
basic truths of the Christian faith.” That statement is correct for the most part
but surely not in QOD’s treatment of the
humanity of Christ and the lack of lucidity in developing the sanctuary
doctrine—both of which are enormously important when one considers the purpose
of the gospel.
In 1975, a representative group of us gathered in Washington
in response to the Review and Herald Publishing House’s call for counsel
regarding the republication of QOD.
The
leadership of the General Conference were generally
opposed to its reprinting for many of the reasons included in this
article.
The more the book was examined,
the firmer their denial for a reprinting became.
Knight is as clear as blue sky on a cloudless day! He
recognized that Andreasen had a point in declaring QOD to be “a betrayal in order to gain
recognition from the evangelicals.” Knight observed, “Unfortunately, there does
appear to be elements of a betrayal in the manipulation of the data and in the
untruths that were passed on to Barnhouse and Martin
on the topic. . . . The result would spell disaster in the Adventist ranks in
the years to come.
Official Adventism
may have gained recognition as being Christian from the evangelical world, but
in the process a breach had been opened which has not healed in the last 50
years and may never heal.”
However, the proposed solution in this recently republished
QOD, pp. 522, 523, seems to be less than
sufficient to bridge the gap between the “pre-laps and post-laps.” Melville’s position does not throw real light
on our Lord’s humanity as do White’s explanations in
The Desire of Ages and
in all her other writings when properly understood.
Theological Concerns That Need Fresh Discussion
1)
Mixing apples and oranges. For example, “It could hardly be construed .
. . that Jesus was diseased or that He experienced the frailties to which our
fallen human nature is heir.
These
weaknesses, frailties, infirmities, failings, are things which [sic] we, with
our sinful, fallen natures, have to bear.
To us they are natural, inherent, but when He bore them, He took them
not as something innately His, but He bore them as our substitute. He bore them in His perfect, sinless
nature.
Again we remark, Christ bore all
this vicariously, just as vicariously He bore the iniquities of us all.”
“He was nevertheless God, and was exempt from the inherited passions and
pollutions that corrupt the natural descendants of Adam.”
Adventists
have never argued that Jesus ever sinned, or inherited evil, corrupted “passions
and pollutions.”
Arguing such creates a strawman!
The
Adventist position for a century was solidly based on biblical statements such
as Hebrews 2:14-18; 4:14-16; 5:7-9; Romans 1:1-3; 8:3,4; 2 Peter 2:21;
Revelation 3:21.
This biblical foundation lies at
the core of Ellen White’s understanding of Christ’s humanity. For example: “It would have been an almost
infinite humiliation for the Son of God to take man's nature, even when Adam
stood in his innocence in Eden. But
Jesus accepted humanity when the race had been weakened by four thousand years
of sin. Like every child of Adam He accepted the results of the working of the
great law of heredity. What these results were is shown in the history of His
earthly ancestors. He came with such a heredity to share
our sorrows and temptations, and to give us the example of a sinless life.
“Satan in heaven had hated Christ for His position in the courts of God.
He hated Him the more when he himself was dethroned. He hated Him who pledged
Himself to redeem a race of sinners. Yet into the world where Satan claimed
dominion God permitted His Son to come, a helpless babe, subject to the
weakness of humanity. He permitted Him to meet life's peril in common with
every human soul, to fight the battle as every child of humanity must fight it,
at the risk of failure and eternal loss.”
Throughout
White’s The Desire of Ages,
many statements only add to the clarity of
the above.
2)
Hermeneutics.
One of the main principles of
interpretation is to allow the author to interpret himself/herself. Further, the author can best state his/her
position in a book designed to clarify all aspects of the author’s thinking.
When an author has written more than seventy years on a subject, one should not
be surprised to find statements lifted from letters, diaries, and general
manuscripts that may seem to be contradictory.
But when the student has a grasp of the intent of a letter and has
access to the entire diary or manuscript, those apparent discrepancies vanish
like Jello on a hot July day. In other words,
The Desire of Ages should
be the acid test of Ellen White’s Christology by which all other statements
should be judged.
3)
Modus operandi.
On subjects such as “The Ten Commandments,”
“The Sabbath and the Moral Law,” “Scholarly Precedents for 1844,” The Meaning
of Azazel,” “The Investigative Judgment,” “Condition
of Man in Death,” and “Champions of Conditional Immortality,” the
QOD authors used a host of non-Adventist writers
to supplement and enhance their doctrinal positions.
The
question comes quickly to mind that an equal supply of non-Adventist writers
could be gathered, other than Calvinistic writers, to substantiate the historic
Adventist position on what is meant by Christ’s “sinful, fallen human
nature.”
Why aren’t books authored by
Harry Johnson, Karl Barth, T. F. Torrance, Nels Ferré, C. E. Cranfield, Harold Roberts, Lesslie Newbigin, Anders Nygren, C.
K. Barrett, and Oscar Cullmann, referred to, for
starters?
Such
scholars clearly espoused the New Testament position that Jesus “truly Man,”
became the kind of person that He came to redeem, not only in His death but
throughout His life, that He inherited fallen, sinful nature that makes sin
very probable but He did not yield to that tendency. His personal self, His
untarnished will, never yielded to the inherited tendency to sin; He directed
His energies and will power at every point toward overcoming all sinful
tendencies and doing the will of His Father in heaven.
In
other words, biblical writers and Ellen White viewed what is generally called
“original sin” as the universal tendency in human nature to seek selfish
interests.
Jesus shared this commonality
with humanity—but He remained the unsullied Example for us all (Revelation 3:21)—He remained sinless.
4)
Distinguish between “propensities of sin” and
“propensities to sin;” between “inherited passions” and “evil, corrupted
passions;” between “lower” and “higher nature.” Space does not permit an
examination of Ellen White’s distinction between these terms. We should let an author tell us what is meant
by her usage.
Jesus had all the natural
passions of a child, or a teenager, or an adult—for self-preservation, for
reasonable physical comforts, for an appreciation for the opposite sex, to be
appreciated by His friends.
But He never
allowed these natural, God-given passions to become “evil, corrupted
passions.”
He never permitted His will
to yield to any of these natural passions that would have contradicted the will
of His heavenly Father (Luke 22:42)
Jesus took our inherited tendencies to
evil but not our cultivated
tendencies of evil—He did not choose to sin, to be corrupted.
Christ’s
higher nature, as ours, included choice and will and thus character. His lower nature embraced normal human
passions that seek selfish, indulgent ends. The difference between Jesus and us
is that He always chose not to be defiled.
He was uncorrupted.
Many
are Ellen White’s insightful comments: Speaking of those discouraged and who
say, “My prayers are so mingled with evil thoughts that the Lord will not hear
them. . . . These suggestions are from Satan.
In His humanity Christ met and resisted this temptation, and He knows
how to succor those who are thus tempted.” Many such embracing statements abound.
5.
Areas of concern that may still require open
discussion are found in the extended notes on pages 516-529.
The author of
the notes framed in gray was precisely correct: “The logic that flowed from
that belief was that if Christ was just like us, yet had lived a sinless life,
then so must other human beings—especially those of the last generation. . . .
[This teaching] became the belief of the majority of Seventh-day Adventists in
the first half of the twentieth century.
That teaching was so widely accepted that it no longer needed to be
argued in Adventist literature.
It was
accepted as a fact. It was upon that teaching that M. L. Andreasen
would build his final generation theology.”
·
Here is the clear statement why
QOD was so “explosive”! QOD was
hitting the fan of many years of Adventist Christology that had been a Rock of
appreciation and personal trust among clergy and laity.
·
This “widely accepted” understanding of the
nature of Christ’s humanity was not Andreasen’s novelty—Andreasen,
a remarkable student of
Ellen White’s
thought, reasoned from her writings.
Andreasen was only one of many thousands of
pastors and teachers who had reached the very conclusions that were “accepted
as a fact” up until QOD was published.
·
The suggestion that Ellen White’s understanding
of Christ’s humanity was derived from her reading of Henry Melvill
is interesting but far off the mark.
This connection does not occur to those who spend a few moments noting
how White herself used the words “propensities,” “passions,” “infirmities,”
etc.
·
The suggestion that since the 1890s there had
been “two quite distinct Adventist understandings on the human nature of Christ
in Adventism” (pre-fall Adam versus post-fall Adam) needs substantiation. To suggest that all other writers except
Ellen White were in both camps and Ellen White was in a third, the “invisible” camp, seems to be a strange observation. The immediate examples of that “position”
follow exactly the pattern of the 1957
QOD’s
mistreatment of Ellen White’s writings.
·
The “last-generation” (the one that waits
expectantly for Christ’s return, cooperating with Him to be entrusted with His
sealing—Rev. 7) concept seems to be the distinctive feature of Ellen White’s
eschatology.
6.
The second topic that severely divided the
Adventist Church since the late
1950s was the issue of righteousness by faith. Evangelical media observed
that by the 1970s the church was divided between “Traditional Adventists”—those
who defended positions that were “accepted facts” before
QOD and “Evangelical Adventists” who emphasized the Reformation understanding
of righteousness by faith.
Implied in this “evangelical” understanding was
1) a rejection of Adventism’s distinctive view of a pre-Advent judgment and 2)
the connection between the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary and the
cleansing of habits and choices culminating in the close of probation. In minimizing the “essential” aspects of the
atonement that are embedded in the Heavenly Sanctuary doctrine, the spotlight
attention focused on the Cross.
When
this double focus is lost, the biblical concept of righteousness by faith is
greatly damaged.
Everything is connected
to everything else on the genuine gospel tree; when one aspect of gospel truth
is compromised, many other doctrines become tainted! Limited gospels wherein
Righteousness By Faith is focused only on the Cross
are like birds trying to fly with one wing.
-
Part
of the fallout since 1957 is the cavalier treatment of Ellen White’s
ministry. It became
modus operandi for many pastors and
teachers who seemed to get the impression that she has a “wax nose.” As
Paxton observed: “The final end of being made to take all positions is to
take no position at all!”.
-
In
recent years, Ellen White has been viewed as a devotional writer but not
a theological guide.
-
Because
her clarity regarding the purpose of the gospel and the embedded
connection with the sanctuary doctrine was strangely muted in
QOD,
it became
a half step toward splitting the twin doctrine of Christ’s being our “atoning
sacrifice and an all-powerful Mediator”—the ellipse of truth that Satan “hates”
(The Great Controversy,
p. 488).
·
This muting of joining our Lord’s Mediatorial work with His death upon the cross opened the
door to a limited understanding of justification and sanctification—a division
that has perplexed Adventist congregations for forty-five years.
A Deeper
Lesson to Be Learned
What seems to be an unspoken, deeper problem with
QOD is what was left unsaid. Martin and Barnhouse were recognized scholars though listening to a
different drummer.
But they could think
theologically.
What a perfect
opportunity it would have been for Adventists to use equally trained minds to
show why Adventists have a distinctive understanding of soteriology,
Christology, and eschatology.
Like
Hezekiah, who
failed to show the Babylonians his rich treasure of truth, we missed the
greatest opportunity of the last century to give inquiring men the parameters
of the big picture of the Great Controversy Theme.