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XXXVII
- 10 (04)
“Watchman, what of the night?” "The hour has come,
the hour is striking and striking at you,
AN
INTERPRETIVE HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE INCARNATION AS TAUGHT BY THE SDA
CHURCH - I
Editor's
Preface
With the republication of Questions
on Doctrine as the second book in a proposed "Adventist Classic
Library" series, the Church has been taken back some forty years in its
history. One person in a telephone conversation reacted, "What do I care
about what happened in the Church forty years ago?” Well did Ellen White
counsel in her Life Sketches—"We have nothing to fear for the
future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching
in our past history" (p. 196). While we do not consider the
SDA-Evangelical Conferences, which dominated our history forty years ago to be
the leading of the Lord, the immediate fall-out caused study and research on
the Incarnation by many, including this editor, such as had not been done for
years. Α review of some of that study is in order. Beginning with this
issue of WWN, we will "republish" chapter by chapter our first
manuscript released in 1972 — An Interpretative History of the Doctrine of
the Incarnation as Taught by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The recently
published "Annotated Edition" admitted that the Adventist conferees
lied to the Evangelicals in regard to the Adventist teaching on the
Incarnation. The members of the Church today, which means almost all, need to
know how greatly the Church leadership did lie. We hope to correct all
typographical errors of the original edition, as well as to include
"annotations" as the historical data may require. We recognize that
there was a similar research released some fifteen years later in 1986, as well
as attempts since then, to find a compromise under the guise of "an
alternate view." This view but reflected the teaching of the men who were
leaders of the aberrant Holy Flesh Movement within Adventism.
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2
AN
INTERPRETIVE HISTORY OF THE
DOCTRINE
OF THE INCARNATION AS TAUGHT
BY
THE SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST CHURCH - #1
Preface
As a minister of the
Seventh-day Adventist Church, I had always taught and sincerely believed that
Christ took upon Himself the fallen nature of man when He condescended to
become the Son of man. However, since 1957, I have given intensive study to the
doctrine of the Incarnation, both in the Scriptures and in the Writings, as
well as other Church publications such as the Senior Sabbath School Lesson
Quarterlies. In 1964, as a result of obtaining a copy of a term paper prepared
for the Department of Church History at Andrews University, my interest was
stimulated to begin a research in depth on the history of this doctrine in the
Church. This manuscript is the result. It is not claimed to be exhaustive, especially
in the final chapter that surveys the period of 1952 to the present. (If
possible we will seek in this reprint and revision to enlarge the documentation
of that period so as to make the historical record more complete.) The
documentation presented in the original printing was, however, representative
and authoritative for each period of our history as a church. The chapter on the Holy
Flesh Movement is a brief summary of the research which was begun when serving
as a pastor-evangelist in the Indiana Conference from 1955-62. Continued
investigation was made with the help of a senior student while I was head of
the Bible Department at Madison College from 1962-64. All of this investigation
was organized into a paper to meet the requirements of the course - Research in
Theology - at Andrews University when doing graduate work in 1964-65. Further
study has been made since then, which will be incorporated into the chapter on
the Holy Flesh Movement of this revised manuscript. In pursuing this study and
writing, I had the constant encouragement and help of my wife, Dorothea, now
deceased. We searched together to eliminate errors of typing and spelling. We
sought to see that each quotation was correctly documented and accurately
transcribed in context. We wanted the publication to be letter perfect. We did
not succeed. Letters received from friends called our attention to a number of
typographical errors. It is my intent this time to reach the goal. I would be remiss if I
failed to acknowledge the fulfilment of the precious promise which reads: When you arise in the morning, do you feel your helplessness, and your need of strength from God? And do you humbly, heartily make known your wants to your Heavenly Father? If so, angels mark your prayers, and if these prayers have not gone forth out of feigned lips, when you are in danger of unconsciously doing wrong, and exerting an influence which will lead others to do wrong, your guardian angel will be by your side, prompting you to a better course, choosing your words for you, and influencing your actions (Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 3, pp. 363-364). What applies to deeds and
actions, applies equally to our thoughts and words, whether written or spoken.
In the early morning hours, when much of the writing of the original manuscript
was done, I was many times conscious of the presence of my unseen Guardian.
This research was published
and is being republished because - "The humanity of the Son of God is
everything to us" - and since it is, we need to understand the historic
position of the Church, which emphasized the tremendous victory which Christ
achieved in our nature, so that we may by faith overcome as He overcame.
The Purpose
The purpose of this
manuscript is to present an interpretive history of the doctrine of the
Incarnation as taught by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The time span
extends from the origins of the Church in the Great Second Advent Movement in
the early decades of the 19th Century to the present.
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3 In presenting the teachings
of the Church as to the nature Christ assumed in becoming man, no attempt is
being made to detract from the dignity of His pre-existence as 0ne with the
Father from all eternity, nor in any way to disassociate Him from the oneness
with the Father during His earthly sojourn. At Bethlehem, the Word who was in
the beginning with God "came to be" (egeneto)
flesh (John 1:1, 14). This same God who was manifest in the flesh was received
up into glory, where at the throne of the Eternal, He continues to minister as
the Son of man (I Timothy 3:16; 2:5; Heb. 9:24). The sources which document
the teachings of the Church are: 1) the writings of "the messenger of the
Lord," Ellen G. White; 2) books and publications produced by the Church's
publishing houses; and 3) articles appearing in the journals of the Church. One
important source apart from the writings of Ellen G. White are the Senior Sabbath
School Lesson Quarterlies dating from 1888-89. Inasmuch as the composition
of the Sabbath School lessons represent the combined thinking of many leaders
and scholars of the Church, and since these lessons received universal
acceptance and use by the Church, the teachings contained in these quarterlies
on any given subject would reflect the official position of the Church. The one exception to the
teaching on the Incarnation as found in the above guidelines was the
introduction of a contrary teaching which the leaders of the Holy Flesh
Movement in Indiana promoted from 1898 to 1901. While this Movement did receive
the official endorsement of the local conference committee and administration,
its work and teachings did not represent the viewpoint of the Church as a whole
at that time. It is being introduced into this research because the teaching of
the leaders of the Holy Flesh Movement on the doctrine of the Incarnation has
been presented as an acceptable "alternate view" in the current
Christological controversy within the community of Adventism. In the use made of the
Writings of Ellen G. White, the same hermeneutical (interpretive) principles
are invoked as would be used in the study of the Scriptures on any given
subject (See Selected Messages - I, p. 42). It is assumed that the
inspired testimonies on the Incarnation are not contradictory as the Adventist
conferees of the SDA-Evangelical Conferences concluded (see Annotated
Edition, pp. 522). The letter which appears
to be at variance with the general tenor of the testimonies in the published
sources prior to the death of Ellen G. White in 1915 will be discussed in an
Appendix. Even as Adventist scholars do not begin with the parable of the Rich
man and Lazarus to establish the doctrine of the non-immortality of the wicked,
neither is it a valid approach to underwrite the doctrine of the Incarnation as
taught in the Writings with a single isolated letter to an individual, counselling moderation not condemnation, of a statement when there is no record
of what that individual said or wrote for comparison. The editor does not claim a
conviction-less objectivity in presenting this historical data. For this reason
the title reads - An interpretive History of the Doctrine … (To be continued in the
December issue of WWN) |