Nate, don’t you think that you can say the something similar about Trinity as you said about justification? The Christian Church was clear on Trinity for thousand years, which leaves the SDA Church with no excuse regarding its attempt to reinvent a lot of wheels.
That’s exactly right Gabriel. Paul Carden made the exact same comment in his presentation on Adventism at the FAF weekend.
By taking an ahistorical view of the church, Adventists have historically condemned themselves to re-create many of its ancient errors. The entire restorationist movement is guilty of this, and Adventism in particular has been very plagued by it. The restorationist starts with the presupposition that the church apostasized completely very soon after the death of the apostles, thus leaving no truth for us to learn from in any of the early Christian writers, and especially not in the post-Nicene Christians. Therefore, they think that it is up to them to re-discover all areas of biblical truth. So, you have people with third grade educations trying to exposit the Scriptures (many times by “having visions"), and it becomes clear very quickly that they were in over their heads. Now, the modern Adventists who are a thousand times more educated than their founders are stuck because if they give up the legacy of their founders they give up their reason for existence and become just another baptistic fundamentalist congregation.
As you said, the doctrine of the Trinity was settled 1500 years before Adventism showed up (when the church was challenged by a heresy that early Adventism repeated). But, they assume that they have to reinvent every theological wheel because of their prior assumption that everyone before them was at least partially, if not mostly, apostate. I really think that Adventism was created through a sort of “perfect storm” of equal parts radical Wesleyan holiness movement, restorationism (which also produced the unpleasant offspring of JW and LDS, among others), neo-Pelagianism (or Finneyism), revivalism, and fundamentalism (basically all of the worst aspects of the second great awakening, and probably traceable to the radical anabaptists of the reformation era).
b]the incarnation was an extension of his “empire” and not a restriction. His humanity was something he added to his person rather than a capsule into which he only had room for a few of his attributes.
What a great explanation!
I’ve not had a problem with Jesus’ full divinity but this gem nails it down in terms that had escaped me when discussing this issue.
Col 2:9 For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form,
Colossians 3:10 … Jesus is the very stamp of God the Father as he was before the Incarnation
Philippians 2:6-7 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: (7) But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
I’m glad it was helpful, and I’m happy to be able to share his insights.
Also, to Gabriel, I forgot to thank you for posting the question and answer from the Heidelberg Catechism and the commentary on it. I just read through the Heidelberg again over the last week and I really love it, such great truths!
So, you have people with third grade educations trying to exposit the Scriptures (many times by “having visions"), and it becomes clear very quickly that they were in over their heads. Now, the modern Adventists who are a thousand times more educated than their founders are stuck because if they give up the legacy of their founders they give up their reason for existence and become just another baptistic fundamentalist congregation.
As you said, the doctrine of the Trinity was settled 1500 years before Adventism showed up (when the church was challenged by a heresy that early Adventism repeated). But, they assume that they have to reinvent every theological wheel because of their prior assumption that everyone before them was at least partially, if not mostly, apostate. I really think that Adventism was created through a sort of “perfect storm” of equal parts radical Wesleyan holiness movement, restorationism (which also produced the unpleasant offspring of JW and LDS, among others), neo-Pelagianism (or Finneyism), revivalism, and fundamentalism (basically all of the worst aspects of the second great awakening, and probably traceable to the radical anabaptists of the reformation era).
I had never thought about adventism in terms of “perfect storm” (even if I enjoyed the idea and the movie). Make sure to include the need to defend their past as something inherited from this “perfect storm”, because while others come to their senses and realized that their prophecy about Christ’s coming in 1844 failed, the adventists were the most dedicated enthusiasts (or fanatics), creme de la creme, the faithful from the faithful, the remnant of the remnant who, in spite of the evidences poiting to the contrary, had dedicated their energy to defend what cannot be defended. Pretty much the current SDA scholars are doing the same apologetic trying to save what it cannot be saved. And thinking that they are much more educated than their pioneers, their dedication is going beyond the dedication of their ancestors. In this case, is it wise to judge the current defense of their teachings as something less serious than the pioneer’s position and perhaps just benign?
I had never thought about adventism in terms of “perfect storm” (even if I enjoyed the idea and the movie). Make sure to include the need to defend their past as something inherited from this “perfect storm”, because while others come to their senses and realized that their prophecy about Christ’s coming in 1844 failed, the adventists were the most dedicated enthusiasts (or fanatics), creme de la creme, the faithful from the faithful, the remnant of the remnant who, in spite of the evidences poiting to the contrary, had dedicated their energy to defend what cannot be defended. Pretty much the current SDA scholars are doing the same apologetic trying to save what it cannot be saved. And thinking that they are much more educated than their pioneers, their dedication is going beyond the dedication of their ancestors. In this case, is it wise to judge the current defense of their teachings as something less serious than the pioneer’s position and perhaps just benign?
Gabriel
Hey Gabriel,
I definitely don’t consider the apologetic of modern Adventists to be benign. The fact that they have the education that their founders lacked (i.e. knowledge of the biblical languages, etc.) means that they know they should give up the obviously ridiculous notions of the IJ or Ellen White’s prophetic gift. The scholars obviously know that their only two distictives (IJ and EGW) are embarrassing. However, if they give up these two they basically turn into another Church of God denomination (or something like that). Again, they lose their reason for existence. Their “distinctive message” is more important to them than the Gospel. So no, their apologetic is anything but benign. As one former Adventist pastor put it, “It is a church that exists only to preserve itself.” The founders were just trying to save face after the embarrassment of their obviously sinful date-setting. The current Adventists are defending it entirely for self-preservation regardless of whether they know their distinctives to be unbiblical. I would say that their defense of Adventism and continued deceitful “prophecy seminar” approach is more serious than that of the founders. Unrepentant sin always escalates.
I definitely don’t consider the apologetic of modern Adventists to be benign. The fact that they have the education that their founders lacked (i.e. knowledge of the biblical languages, etc.) means that they know they should give up the obviously ridiculous notions of the IJ or Ellen White’s prophetic gift. The scholars obviously know that their only two distictives (IJ and EGW) are embarrassing. However, if they give up these two they basically turn into another Church of God denomination (or something like that). Again, they lose their reason for existence. Their “distinctive message” is more important to them than the Gospel. So no, their apologetic is anything but benign. As one former Adventist pastor put it, “It is a church that exists only to preserve itself.” The founders were just trying to save face after the embarrassment of their obviously sinful date-setting. The current Adventists are defending it entirely for self-preservation regardless of whether they know their distinctives to be unbiblical. I would say that their defense of Adventism and continued deceitful “prophecy seminar” approach is more serious than that of the founders. Unrepentant sin always escalates.
Nate, you just presented the picture that stands at the basis of my evaluation of adventists as having the whitest fleeces. Instead of rejecting the errors they know very well, they reformulate them and repackaged them in such a way that they may look polished and in harmony with the orthodox position of the church, while all the while you have the old teaching in a better suit. They give the impression that they moved from heresy to orthodoxy in order to escape detection. That’s why I call them wolves in sheep’s clothing. These are not the conservative adventists who don’t care if their church is regarded as orthodox or not, but the scholars who are paid to do apologetics for the church like Knight, Whidden, Gane, Braedford, Weber, etc. While the error is more easily detected in the conservative sustainers of the IJ, it is harder to be detected in the writings of these apologists, and consequently they should not receive credit for what is apparently a courageous attempt to move the denomination toward the gospel, but their fleeces must be exposed. As Mark Driscoll said, a minister of the gospel should feed the sheep, rebuke the swine and shoot the wolves.
Nate, you just presented the picture that stands at the basis of my evaluation of adventists as having the whitest fleeces. Instead of rejecting the errors they know very well, they reformulate them and repackaged them in such a way that they may look polished and in harmony with the orthodox position of the church, while all the while you have the old teaching in a better suit. They give the impression that they moved from heresy to orthodoxy in order to escape detection. That’s why I call them wolves in sheep’s clothing. These are not the conservative adventists who don’t care if their church is regarded as orthodox or not, but the scholars who are paid to do apologetics for the church like Knight, Whidden, Gane, Braedford, Weber, etc. While the error is more easily detected in the conservative sustainers of the IJ, it is harder to be detected in the writings of these apologists, and consequently they should not receive credit for what is apparently a courageous attempt to move the denomination toward the gospel, but their fleeces must be exposed. As Mark Driscoll said, a minister of the gospel should feed the sheep, rebuke the swine and shoot the wolves.
Gabriel
I agree Gabriel. If Knight and Bradford were actually courageous they would do what Des Ford did and expose the Adventist distinctives for what they are: Gospel-destroying. Instead they revise history and repackage the same old stuff. The only way to reform Adventism is to leave it.
There is yet another discussion now taking place over on CARM about the Trinity: http://forums.carm.org/v/showthread.php?t=209711 As can be seen, all of the SDAs posting are once again agreed in believing in Tritheism.
