Doctrine

SDA Doctrines: The Value of Human Beings Basic to Doctrinal Adjustment

September 30, 2021

The value of human beings must be the driving factor of the SDA Church. Without question, people matter. The here and now, is what drives who we are, how we live and how we think. Consideration of how we progress though our modern lives is essential.

To get some background on this discussion you may wish to read:

Forming a System of Values

The first step for the religious person in resolving the question of religious relevance would seem to be asking the most obvious questions: Given the kind of existential questions we are asking, what is immediately present for our epistemological consideration; and on what basis are we to form a system of values? Thinking of the answer to these questions in terms of “risk” would normally lead us to opt for giving “known present earthly life” (existence) priority over a promised but unknown “ideal,” a utopian life in the world made new. Actually, the fundamentalist tendency to view the present as evil while idealizing the past as utopia, negates any hope for the future. The future is often subject to the determination of the myth of the eternal return.

Empirically and rationally, humans in the here and now are the most valuable things in the universe, and their values help shape the future. While sounding suspect, and string theorists with their faith in infinite numbers of universes are positively hostile to it, positing a cosmological constant for each possible universe, on the basis of what we do know about the universe, the statement seems obvious because as far as we know humans are the only organism capable of knowing the universe and cognitively forming values. If you ask, “but what about God?” you are asking only about the symbol for something greater than you think you know.

Extending Value to Human Beings

Certainly, while humans are the result of evolution, there is a metaphysical quality that describes human beings beyond their evolutionary ancestors. To be human is to be greater than the sum of our parts. That metaphysics may reference God, if you will, but it need not. The issue is more difficult than I have made it sound. Brain science is busy looking for applicable mechanisms to explain all aspects of our mental life, but explaining human beings by mechanisms threatens to reduce humans to deterministic machines.

Likewise, in religion, concentrating exclusively on beliefs that demote the value of human beings, and the “here and now,” to the idea of eternal God, and the value of the “there and then” are subversive to the need for immediate action to preserve both ourselves as humans and the world in which we live. The value of human beings in the here and now is to be expressed as a primary value in doctrine.

Answers to Value of Human Beings: Stay Present

We must bring ourselves to attention on the question of values such as, integrity, justice, rights; values which are not to be separated from human love. Are we willing to risk the present good for our understanding of a promise for the future?

Once again, the fundamentalist doctrine of revelation and the infallible text become a stumbling block to understanding the value of the present good. To put it in the most shocking way, some doctrines can promote not only irresponsibility, but a subtle suicidal attitude for the future. The present, which is known, is devalued for the future which is unknown. So, drink your Kool Aid, or strap on a suicide vest. The future will be better. God says so.

Joe Greig, Ph.D.

Ph.D. (New College, Edinburgh University), Professor Emeritus Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI

SDA Doctrines: Faith and Adjustments to the Doctrine of God

Joe Greig / Adventism, Doctrine /

SDA Doctrines: Faith & Adjustments to the Doctrine of God

September 15, 2021

Faith and adjustments to the doctrine of God shows when we express our faith. Faith is not one dimensional. It is possible to express faith in many ways. When we do, we are making known our worldview.

To get some background on this discussion you may wish to read SDA Doctrines: What to Do? and Religious Language as Sign and Symbol

How We Express Faith

One can locate and express faith in many ways: that order will prevail over chaos, freedom over tyranny; the idea that good, or ethical behavior, will always be victorious over evil, that love will conquer hate, and life will prevail over death. These may be expressed as faith in God, but stating this is not necessarily the same as faith in God as defined by the words and actions of the biblical God. One cannot categorically claim that God is Judeo-Christian. This faith is located at the heart of being human. The words and acts of the biblical God are sometimes blatantly immoral, and to retain one’s faith one must make excuses for God, or provide cover. Sometimes one asks if God is really like that. If God is considered the source of ethical behavior, it would seem necessary to critique our understanding of God as one who inspires faith by problematic commands and acts in history recorded in the Bible. God would have to be good, an ethical God; one who would not command us to love, but draw us to love.

The good would not necessarily be defined because it is what any particular god does or says. That God is good is a statement of faith regardless of evidence to the contrary, regardless of what we read in a particular religious text. God is a word, thus a religious symbol. There are many religions and many gods. Judaism is monotheistic, either because an omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent God makes the existence of other gods superfluous, or the monarchy of Judah, attempting to centralize political and religious power established one national and universal God.

Morality and God

In any case, the superfluous gods are demoted to messengers of the one legitimate God. The claim has already been made that a necessary attribute of any worthy God would be morality. While there are many claims about what is moral, all people have predispositions to freedom and other basic rights despite differences of opinion. An absolute morality cannot be legislated or dogmatized universally without it becoming immoral. If morality is the necessary attribute of God, then the questionable statements of God given in some biblical texts cannot be a property of a legitimate God. Nor can a revelation from this god settle the issue of legitimacy.

The true God must remain unknowable, so expressing God as a God of love is an act of faith anchored in the human act of loving, something we have actually done, not something we know from science, nor does it appear from any appeal to religious experience. In a world of many gods, it may be the case that because one god may exceed another in goodness, the Judeo Christian God expressed developmentally and theologically as an ethical God, is the best or most valuable expression of God for human belief and action; but that is another question dependent on how values are formed and the meaning given to “the good.” We still will have to have faith that at its root the belief that God loves will have to be inseparable from the act of humans loving. In any case the idea of a moral God will not go beyond the collective human imagination.

Adjusting fundamental beliefs

Often promoting this established morality becomes a mask for wars and evangelism where morality is not the primary concern at all; rather, the interests are economic and political. Obviously, the core content of any doctrine affects the relevance of the church in the world. The relevance of a religious organization depends on what it believes and says about God. This belief will affect other doctrines. If the church is to be relevant, and considered by its broadly informed membership to be worthy of support, our entire list of fundamental beliefs must be adjusted for meaning beyond what is said to be revealed or possible by sola scriptura. Doctrines, like scientific facts, are subject to change; but the faith driving the doctrine does not change, indeed cannot change if we are to activate our human freedom rather than be resigned to destructive deterministic forces. The question is: how is this adjustment to be made? Science can say nothing about God; reason can, because it insists that we define our terms. However, science can critique what doctrines say about the empirical world and this may bring a change within a doctrine. Doctrines are a systemic and linguistic whole. While some doctrines may simply fade away due to the critical adjustments, this possibly will be because they have become so weak within the system that they are absorbed by more important doctrines. Or they may simply drop out of mind.

The Result of Informing Doctrine

In the context of expressing what the Second Coming signs, Chiliasm might be such a candidate. In the process of informing doctrine, reason and science will not dethrone God as an ontological symbol because (to draw on Paul Tillich’s well-known expression) Faith (God, ultimate reality) is our “ultimate concern.” The existence of reality (another symbol), which though unknowable informs all of our knowledge, would likewise have to be assumed out of existence for this to happen, and doing this would raise the question of the grounds for doing science.

SDA Doctrines: Faith & Adjustments to the Doctrine of God

Societies Change. Many SDA Doctrines reflect a refusal to accept science. That’s a sure way to lose members.

Joe Greig, Ph.D.

Ph.D. (New College, Edinburgh University), Professor Emeritus Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI

Joe Greig / Adventism, Doctrine /

SDA Doctrines: Religious Language as Sign and Symbol

August 30, 2021

Let’s look at SDA doctrines and the religious language used to give meaning to Adventist doctrine. Here we will explore the relevance of the signs and symbols and their role in shaping our worldview.

To get some background on this discussion you may wish to read SDA Doctrines: What to Do?

Signs and Symbols

We communicate information within a construct or system by means of “signs” and “symbols:” words, sentences, etc. According to the discipline of semiotics, human beings are “meaning makers.” In the process of meaning making, linguistic signs, words and speech signify what is beyond their mere forms. That is to say, they have no meaning in themselves; thus the relationship among signs and their meanings is constructural and highly psychological.

Furthermore, when they are endowed with meaning, it is contextual. Words have different meanings in different contexts. Think of how many meanings words like “open” and “shut” have depending on context. Any image, word, or mental construct, be it story, or by arbitrary extension doctrine, becomes functional when a meaning attaches to it. A doctrine is not a description of the empirical world or even of a biblical message or idea; the doctrine creates the reality, or the meaning of a biblical text. If this is so, then linguistic signs can take on different meanings when circumstances demand them. This perspective on language is useful when we consider the possibility that doctrines may take on different meanings due to what they sign in situations other than those in which the meaning originated.

It is doubtful that form can be completely separated from content, so the formal aspect will retain some representation even though the content changes. Examples might include how the “fear of God” is never really lost theologically even though God is said to be a God of love; or justice is still demanded though God is merciful. A change in doctrine may be coextensive with a change of world views; from a precritical world view uninformed by science and history to one in which science and history play an appropriate role.

Insight informed by science and reason

Adopting a scientifically informed world view does not assume infallibility or a claim to know reality even though one assumes (postulates) that it exists. It is an attempt to make the best sense of empirical evidence within our scientifically informed construct of reality.

What we know of reality is dependent on the way our minds work to create a picture from the noise and unorganized data surrounding our narrow focus within a more extensive unknowable context. The scientific and rational mind is not perplexed with the resulting uncertainty because it is simply the case that with our limited brain capacity and focus we can know no more than our minds and our senses, which receive information, are able to process.

If this claim is the case, then the fundamentalist doctrine of revelation and inspiration which was formulated to guarantee the infallibility of the biblical text, but which also resulted in sanctioning an ancient mythical world view contained therein, will have to be transformed to make it understandable as theological imagination or insight informed by science and reason, but not necessarily limited to them.

Revelation & Salvation

Inspiration will define the creative spirit and quest of the human being responding to the mysteries of life and the world; and rather than being understood as knowledge attained supernaturally which bypasses the rational and scientific processes, revelation will be understood as embracing salvation, a perception of deliverance, or new life, rather than “new light.” Appeal to a supernaturally inspired revelation not only diminishes the human capacity for freedom but is a means of circumventing the hard work of reason, experimentation, and discovery. Because revealed knowledge is considered certain rather than provisional, no scientific or rational argument is allowed to be effective against it. It is immune to experimental falsification.

Joe Greig, Ph.D.

Ph.D. (New College, Edinburgh University), Professor Emeritus Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI

Joe Greig / Adventism, Doctrine /

SDA Doctrines: What to Do?

August 15, 2021

The problems with SDA Doctrines are long standing. Now, is a good time to consider what to do about them. For years now, Adventists have had to face the troubling factors associated with our doctrine. Unfortunately, for some, these issues with SDA doctrines lead them away from the Church.

The Biblical Prophecy

Forty years ago, while working on my doctorate, I was with a group of students in the student lounge at the University of Edinburgh discussing apocalyptic literature. An Australian Ph.D. student, familiar with SDAs in Australia, made a not-too-complimentary comment about our peculiar apocalyptic take on the future and on the Doctrine of the Sanctuary based on our interpretation of Daniel 8:14.

SDA Doctrines: What to Do - Daniel 8:14

Problems of Interpretation

The conversation turned to discussing Seventh-day Adventists from the earliest critically uninformed interpretations of the books of Daniel and Revelation to our present-day exclusive understanding of SDAs as the Remnant awaiting salvation at the apocalyptic Second Coming of Christ.

Excluding myself, the Australian was obviously the best informed about Adventism, and the most curious, even though there were several denominations represented by the students in the group. I was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable with his remarks and questions. Everyone there was knowledgeable on apocalyptic literature and quickly saw the problems a historical critical understanding of those books posed to an interpretation made by a minimally educated New England farmer who was expecting the end of the world and standing at the beginning of a movement that eventually became the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Transformation of Doctrine

How does a denomination, developing theology from within a literalist view of the Bible and adopting a method of sola scriptura, come to terms with historical critical views on Daniel and Revelation and still retain a doctrine based on a pre-critical understanding of their messages?

Perhaps in desperation, I said something spontaneously that everyone seemed to have no problem with:

“It doesn’t matter where you start out, it’s where you end up.”

I had faith that the church would eventually accommodate a critical perspective and adjust its theology accordingly. That did not mean scraping its doctrines, at least not the major ones, no matter how they were informed, but identifying the existential concerns embodied in the doctrines, then translating them into contemporary religious, social, and political existential expressions.

It is doubtful that any group, despite its claims to the contrary, ever approached the Bible as a repository of truth without being influenced by social and historical contexts in discovering what belief and practice should be. Rather, the Bible is approached to discover what it says about present issues religious communities face. That is why it seems to be a repository of knowledge on everything: the Papacy and Soviet Union, they are there in prophecy; Capitalism and Social Security, they are there, etc.

The theological understanding of nineteenth century Adventists was formed by a precritical mythical world view and expressed in the language of Scripture. Now, I argued, that expression had to be transformed into language informed by historical critical methodology; it had to be understood within a new world view. But it did not mean completely abandoning the language of those identifying what the church believed.

Former Adventist on SDA Doctrine

My Understanding on SDA Doctrine

To me it meant transforming doctrine, in this case the Doctrine of the Sanctuary, into an Adventist philosophy of history, a history in which Christians, and in this case, Adventists in particular, proclaimed their understanding of the Gospel which would move history in the direction of God’s purpose.

Although today, I would revise some of it, basically it emphasized bringing the world into moral judgment by preaching the Gospel, in particular the message of the third angel, with which Adventists identified. It meant confronting the world with the moral failures (sins) of the past and present and offering the forgiveness of God. Read my ideas on theology to see what I mean.

Everyone involved in that discussion in the student lounge recognized the dangers of identifying what God’s purpose might involve. My idea might encourage religio-political tyranny by divine right. But we also knew that sooner or later, every critical thinker has to admit to a measure of ignorance in the construction of every system of knowledge. Also, it was assumed that sooner or later, if the rational operation of the human mind is a requisite property for understanding the world, regardless of limitations, every non-critical system of knowledge, if it is to remain viable, will have to surrender and comply with rationality and critical investigation.

So far, the SDA church has not conformed. Read about Why the SDA Church Needs to Change.

Key Factors of SDA Doctrines

Over the next several weeks, I will explore the exclusive understanding of SDAs as the Remnant awaiting salvation at the apocalyptic Second Coming of Christ as related to the following:

Religious Language as Sign and Symbol
Faith and Adjustments to the Doctrine of God
The Value of Human Beings Basic to Doctrinal Adjustment
Creation and the End of the World
Creation, Evolution, and Integrity
Creation, Evolution, and Medical Ethics
Creation, Evolution, and Other Moral Issues
Historical Criticism, The Biblical God, and Morality
Reworking Doctrines
Faith and Suffering

Tune in to our next post for a discussion on Religious Language as Sign and Symbol

Joe Greig, Ph.D.

Ph.D. (New College, Edinburgh University), Professor Emeritus Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI