My Answers to Questions from the International Board of Ministerial and Theological Education of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists about My Belief

The summer of 2017, those of us who were professors in the Loma Linda University School of Religion were asked by International Board of Ministerial and Theological Education of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists respond to three  documents:  (1) “SDA Fundamental Beliefs, (2) “Methods of Bible Study” and (3) “Academic Freedom.” There was also a smaller document on “Pastoral Ethics.”  What I wrote follows.   I commented on the process before I addressed the three documents.  I continued teaching for eight more years until I retired in 2020. 

    

Reflections on the “Three Documents”
David R. Larson
School of Religion
Loma Linda University

Preliminary Remarks

Every denomination must protect its theological integrity.  For most of its history, Seventh-day Adventists have known each other well enough to do this easily.  At present there is a growing desire in some quarters for a much more formal and centralized process.  

In so far as this is an attempt to deal responsibly with the inevitable complexities of a denomination that is now reaching 20 million members, this is a good thing.   Insofar as it is an attempt on the part of a few leaders to make their views normative for the whole denomination, it is bad. 

We already have an endorsement process and we call it ordination.  The General Conference has issued my credentials for more than four decades and they presuppose my ordination.  I see no need for further endorsement.

The current policies that govern how this process is to take place name the General Conference as the “recorder” of decisions that are made at lower levels and nothing more.  Yet. in fact the General Conference is involved at every step and it will not “record” those names that it finds unacceptable.  

There is no greater reason to be confident the General Conference will “only record” the decisions than it was to be certain that the Fundamental Beliefs as they were first voted by the General Conference would be used “only descriptively.”  The wonder is that some denominational leaders apparently think that they have persuaded us otherwise.  

This endorsement process will in fact be the way the General Conference determines who will and will not be approved to teach religion and theology on each and every SDA campus throughout the whole world.  What’s more, only the Executive Committee of the IBMTE will do most of its work.  This gives enormous and unjustified theological power over the whole denomination to no more than a dozen people.

Those who are administering this process at LLU have trapped those like me who oppose it.  We have expressed more than once our eagerness to answer all theological questions that should come to us from official representatives of LLU and its Board of Trustees while also declaring our unwillingness as a matter of principle to participate in the General Conference endorsement process.  But we have been told that our names will be forwarded to the General Conference with recommendations for our endorsement even if this is not what we want.  Our decision whether to participate in the process has so far been taken away from us.   I hope that this will change.

I have served this denomination for forty-seven years, four as a pastor in the Southeastern California Conference ane forty-three as a teacher at LLU.  All through these years I have been loyal to the denomination and university and true to my own convictions.  If this doesn’t suffice, nothing will.  Not even General Conference endorsement will.

My Responses to theFundamental Beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists

My satisfaction with twenty-three of these is so substantial that they deserve no comment.  These are:

3     The Father
4     The Son
5     The Holy Spirit
7     The Nature of Humanity
8     The Great Controversy
9     The Life, Death and Resurrection of Christ
10   The Experience of Salvation
11    Growing in Christ
12    The Church
13    The Remnant and Its Mission
14    Unity in the Body of Christ
15    Baptism
16    The Lord’s Supper
17    Spiritual Gifts and Ministries
18    The Gift of Prophecy
19    The Law of God
20    The Sabbath
21    Stewardship
22    Christian Behavior
25    The Second Coming of Christ
26    Death and Resurrection
27    The Millennium and the End of Sin
28    The New Earth

In my view, the remaining five of these are now written in ways that can be improved.  These are:

1      The Holy Scriptures
2      The Trinity
6      Creation
23    Marriage and the Family
24    Christ’s Ministry in the Heavenly Sanctuary

My recommendations for these five follow.

1     The Holy Scriptures
Change the first sentence to “The Holy Scriptures, Old and New Testament, are the infallible Word of God as expressed in the words of especially inspired men and women.”

2     The Trinity
Because for all practical purposes many SDAs are not Trinitarian but Tri-theists, more might be put upon the unity of the three persons in the Godhead.

6.   Creation
    (a)Remove “recent” because it is not in Scripture.
      (b)  Delete “constituted the same unit of time that we call a     week today” because it is not in Scripture and it is irrelevant.
      (c)  Put much more emphasis upon what Scripture says about “creation” in passages other than Genesis 1 – 3.

23   Marriage and the Family
      (a) Distinguish between the theological and legal meanings of    “marriage”
      (b)  Distinguish between the “ideal” and the “real” in this and all areas of life;
      (c)  Specify that no one is required to remain in or be bound to a relationship where he or she is not safe.

 

 Christ’s Ministry in the Heavenly Sanctuary       

1.  Begin with what the whole Bible from Genesis to Revelation says about “sanctuary; 

(b)Interpret the controversial passages in the light of what the entire Bible says with emphasis upon Jesus as the clearest account of God’s character.

3. Highlight the significant continuity between what the idea of the “sanctuary” meant to many throughout the generations, what it meant to those who suffered the Great Disappointment on October 22, 1844 and what it can mean for us today.

4. This is the good news that God has not abandoned us, that God everlastingly dwells and intercedes for us. 

12c  Pastoral Ethics
  (a) I agree with this document;
  (b) It would be better to use the word “Code” only for the single sentence summary of the norm and leave the rest as commentary.

(c) Greater emphasis at this time could be put on clergy not “moonlighting” in completely unrelated work.  For instance, It is acceptable for a pastor to do contract teaching in his or her field but unacceptable to be a real estate agent.

(d) This document’s paragraphs alternate between third person declarative sentences to second person imperative ones.  One or the other should be consistently used throughout.

12d  Code of Ethics for Seventh-day Adventist educators.

I have nothing to add to or subtract from this document

12e  Academic Freedom in Seventh-day Adventist Institutions

I have nothing to add to or subtract from this document.  

My personal conviction is that it is impossible to produce a document on Academic Freedom that successfully addresses all cases. I therefore emphasize five very simple considerations.

1.  A potential professor on a SDA campus should understand at least in broad terms the denomination’s views and values and anticipate being comfortable working in this setting.

2. There is always some tension between academic liberty and institutional integrity on every campus whether it be religious or secular.

3.  These tensions are to be resolved on campus and not debated in public media.

4. The institution possess procedures by which cases can be settled in a collegial manner.

5. In any case, the Board or Trustees is fully authorized to determine with finality, within the constraints of the law, whowill or will not have the privilege of serving on that campus.

12f.    Methods of Bible Study

  I have nothing to add to or subtract from this document.  It is probably as good as those who wrote it could do at the time.

1.  Commentary:  This document, which makes much of the so-called differences between the “historical-critical” and “historical-gramatical” methods of studying the Bible, displays how little Christian collegiality there now is among SDA theologians.  

On the one hand, those who affirm the “historical-critical” method do not endorse the objectionable presuppositions of a number of its first and continuing users.  On the other hand, those who deny it utilize all of its useful tools.  

The difference between these two camps is more interpersonal than theological.   It is also more cultural and logistical.  

This dispute could be forever concluded if the principle parties wanted this.  As evidenced by the fact that both sides of this debate persistently mischaracterize the views of the other, they do not want this.  They value too much the benefits of keeping this alleged disagreement alive.

Because there is no way for the word “critical” to mean in English what it means in academic German, it is needlessly divisive to insist on using it.  No matter how often we say, for instance, that Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was not a negative but a positive book, and is widely applauded as such, its English parallel sounds negative. At the very least, the term “historical-grammatical” method avoids this misunderstanding.  It is inherently useful as well.