What About the Bible?

Larry Kirkpatrick 5 July 1999

One of the most revealing questions that can be asked (or answered) about any religious movement, is how it relates itself to the Bible. And the answer needs to be a clear one. Whole belief-systems can be spun from out of thin air if the Bible is used as a launching board for kooky thinking. Some religious groups are notorious for “adding to,” “replacing,” or “supplementing” the Bible with other writings that are not produced under truly authentic inspiration. Such writings, added to the Bible, commonly diminish or adjust its authority, and tweak the entire structure of thought. This brief document presents our view about the Bible.

What Do Seventh-day Adventists Believe About the Bible?

A good starting place is probably to answer the question, “what do Seventh-day Adventists believe about the Bible?” First of all, Seventh-day Adventists have no creed except the Bible. The Bible is their “formal statement of religious belief,” as the dictionary commonly defines creeds. It is true that statements have been crafted enumerating specific points of doctrinal emphasis (see Fundamental Beliefs). But these statements are subject to revision and refinement from time to time, and in this way they differ from the common creed. Creeds are often rigid, one-timer documents, unchanging, and often composed of listings of humanly defined dogmas, reflecting tradition and ingrown religious thought more than the authentic teaching of the Scriptures. For participants in heaven’s end-time movement, it is the Bible itself (and not creeds or lists of beliefs) that constitute the formal statement of religious belief. And how we interpret the Bible is powerfully impacted by how we approach it. So here is how we approach the Bible:

The Holy Scriptures, Old and New Testaments, are the written Word of God, given by divine inspiration through holy men of God who spoke and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. In this Word, God has committed to man the knowledge necessary for salvation. The Holy Scriptures are the infallible revelation of His will. They are the standard of character, the test of experience, the authoritative revealer of doctrines, and the trustworthy record of God's acts in history. Fundamental Beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists, 1.

Thus, “all Scripture” is of an determinative and authoritative nature; the New Testament is not held in superiority to the Old, nor is the Old held in inferiority to the new. They, combined, make up the divinely authoritative whole of the 66 book Canon (measure) of the Bible.

It is not enough to have good intentions; it is not enough to do what a man thinks is right or what the minister tells him is right. His soul’s salvation is at stake, and he should search the Scriptures for himself. However strong may be his convictions, however confident he may be that the minister knows what is truth, this is not his foundation. He has a chart pointing out every waymark on the heavenward journey, and he ought not to guess at anything.
It is the first and highest duty of every rational being to learn from the Scriptures what is truth, and then to walk in the light and encourage others to follow his example. We should day by day study the Bible diligently, weighing every thought and comparing Scripture with Scripture. With divine help we are to form our opinions for ourselves as we are to answer for ourselves before God. Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, pg. 598.

But what about the need of “religious experts” and “specialists” to interpret the Bible for us? Again,

The Bible was written for the common people as well as for scholars, and is within the comprehension of all. The great truths which underlie man’s duty to his fellow men and to his Maker are clearly revealed; and those who really want the truth need make no mistake. The way is not left in uncertainty, as though we were standing where four roads met, not knowing which one to take. The truth is our guide; it is to us like a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Ellen G. White, Review and Herald, 27 January 1885.

Our confidence in God's gift of the Bible is firm. But you may have heard that we also believe in the continuing presence of spiritual gifts in the church, including the gift of prophecy. You may have heard that Seventh-day Adventists recognize in the life and ministry of Ellen G. White a true manifestation of the prophetic gift (see “What Do You Do With the authentic Gift of Prophecy?”), and that she wrote voluminously. You may have noted her words in the two references given above. The question is inevitable. Do we really follow the Bible or the writings of Ellen G. White?

Do Seventh-day Adventists Really Follow the Bible or Ellen G. White?

This is not only an inevitable question, but a crucial one. If you have not asked it, you should! The Protestant Reformation had as one of its watchwords the teaching of “sola Scriptura,” “the Bible only.” How do we relate to this question? I hope that you noticed that for Seventh-day Adventists, “The Holy Scriptures are the infallible revelation of His will. They are the standard of character, the test of experience, the authoritative revealer of doctrines, and the trustworthy record of God’s acts in history.” To end-time followers of Jesus, the Bible is the acid test for all teachings, personal experience, the measure of Christian character, and is the authentic record of historical events presented from Genesis to Revelation. We do not take the Bible in part, but in whole. We do not submit to God in part, but in whole. This has massive consequences.

Because the same Bible itself requires us to “quench not the Spirit,” “despise not prophesyings,” and to “prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21. We are not, by an unreceptive attitude, to block the Holy Spirit's work, even if it comes to us in a channel that we did not expect. We are not to despise prophesyings, whether they come to us through the Bible or some other means. We are to test all things. We are evaluate them and lay them up alongside the Bible to verify whether they match its teachings or not. “To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Isaiah 8:20. We cannot “hold fast that which is good” if we cannot determine that which is good. The Bible is given to us as our standard.

We refer to the 66 books of the Bible--from Genesis to Revelation--as Scripture, or the Canon of Scripture. This Canon is closed. That is, no other writings are added to it or included in it. However, as we shall see, this does not mean that no additional inspired writings exist outside of the Bible. And just here is a difficult thought for many of us, because we may never have thought through our belief onthis point. For example, if we hold that only the Bible contains inspired writings, what do we do with the period before the Bible (as we know it) was complete? There was, after all, a time when Moses finished writing the first five books of the Bible (and perhaps the book of Job), but no "Bible" existed. If those first five or six books were the Bible, and you can’t add to the Bible, then the last 60 books of the Bible could never be legitimate. The present content of the Bible was not finalized until perhaps early in the second century A.D. When Paul wrote to Timothy “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16), all Scripture had not been written yet! Books such as John’s epistles, Revelation, and possibly others were not yet in existence. That is, the New Testament wasn’t finished. Paul probably had in mind the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament as he wrote. But what he said would go for all Scripture, Old and New Testaments.

The Phenomena of Inspiration

And what is Scripture anyway? When Christians speak about the Bible, they talk of the “holy writings,” literally, the hagios graphay. These are understood to be documents that are given by “inspiration” of God, and hence, are divinity-breathed writings. God gave visions, dreams, and even inspired “researched” writings through His prophets (See Luke 1:1-4). He guarded the content of all of these materials, so that down through the ages to come before He finished His purposes upon the earth, that His people would have a reliable external source of objective truth to instruct them (2 Timothy 3:16) and give them hope (Romans 15:4). Indeed, they were often written yet more for we who live at the end of time than for those to whom they originally came! (1 Peter 1:10-12).

So how were those writings given? “Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” 2 Peter 1:21. The word for “man” used here is gr. “anthropou,” meaning human-beings, male or female. In other words, people who were holy, people who received the special God-breathed words through the agency and power of the Holy Spirit, received and presented to God’s people His truths. Sometimes this revelation came in the form of visions, sometimes dreams, other times, the inspired thoughts of His spokesmen were recorded in writing.

Really then, an inspired writing is a holy writing. But what if a contemporary prophet writes something down. It can hardly be different in quality--in any way--from the writings produced in earlier times. Indeed, such a writing would be a “holy writing,” a “hagios graphay.” So then, such writings become part of the Bible don’t they? Well, no; no, not at all! While such writings would inevitably have the same quality of inspiration in them as the earlier writings that compose the Scriptures, it does not necessarily follow that they then automatically become part of the Scriptures. In fact, according to the Bible itself, numerous inspired writings exist that were written in ancient times, yet were never incorporated into the Bible. Here are some Scripture references:

These were cases of legitimate, inspired prophetic writings. But not preserved in the Bible at all. Very interesting! Beside this, there are several more prophets who apparently gave only oral testimonies, that have not been recorded. Consider Numbers 11:24, 25; 1 Samuel 10:5, 6, 10; 19:18-24; 1 Kings 18:4, 13. This information warns us to beware of tripping into the trap of creating man-made tests for prophets based on misguided notions. To have insisted that an inspired writing must be recorded in the Bible, would obviously at earlier points in time, have ruled out many authentic prophets; several of the spiritual heros we read of from ancient times would fail such a test!

Inerrancy or Infallibility?

Some argue today that the individual words of the prophetic writer are inspired. That is, that God gave the exact words to use directly to the prophet. This dictation-style literal theory of inspiration reduces the role of the prophet to little more than a robotic relay. There are at least some Scriptures which appear to be inspired in this way. For example, in Galatians 3:16 inspiration is so careful that it distinguishes between singular and plural in the original language, speaking not of “seeds” as to many, but as of one, and to thy “seed” which is Christ. But there are many challenging places in Scripture where the process of inspiration is best explained by what might be called “thought inspiration,” that is, God through the Holy Spirit gave the prophet inspired thoughts in understandable form, and the prophet clothed those thoughts in his own words which were thus inscripturated. This not only explains certain phenomena better than universal verbal inspiration, but it makes the prophet God’s penman and not his pen. His humanity is not denied or roboticized.

The theory of inerrancy, which creates more problems than it solves and can force labored harmonizations, is not compelling. But while we do not find inerrant verbal inspiration to be Biblically supportable, we affirm our unshakable conviction that still the Scriptures are “the infallible revelation of His will. They are the standard of character, the test of experience, the authoritative revealer of doctrines, and the trustworthy record of God’s acts in history.” Seventh-day Adventists hold unflinchingly to the historic veracity of the whole Bible, including Genesis chapters 1-11, where numerous theologians and teachers accept those sections only as mythic, allegoric, etc. The Scriptures are infallible.

Double Standard?

Is there then some kind of double standard of belief for us, since we accept the Scriptures as inspired, authoritative, and infallible, but accept also the fully inspired nature of other holy writings? Are we proposing two different levels of response to divine revelation? I do not think so. Actually, our response to God’s revelation is dynamic. Anything that is a holy writing must be from heaven, and any writing from God’s realm must be considered authoritative to those who worship Him and accept His government. But just as Christians in general are (we hope) responsive to everything that they understand about God’s plan for us from the Bible, we recognize that there is in the Scripture a bottomless source of revealed information and that we respond to it as we grow in our knowledge of it step-by-step.

In the same way, as we grow in our knowledge of what contemporary prophetic writings have to say to us, we grow in our understanding and advance in just the same way: step-by-step. Our response is dynamic as we continue to actively grow in our relationship with God. So we can affirm with Christians everywhere the Bible and its complete canon of 66 books as an authoritative, unitary whole. We make it, as heaven has taught us the final word, the acid test, the grand and sufficient source of salvific knowledge. But we also affirm that if we are to follow the Bible, then we must follow even its directions which are not necessarily followed by mainstream Christianity. Like “despising not prophesyings.”

How Should People Respond to the Idea of Contemporary Revelation?

You will want to read the sister document to this one, titled “What Do You Do With an Authentic Contemporary Prophet?” in addition to this one. We summarize as follows:

1. Following the Bible means that we must be ready to receive authentic prophesyings.
2. Because Seventh-day Adventists seek to follow the Bible completely, they take the Biblical teaching in regard to prophets very seriously. It is because of their attitutude toward the Bible that they do so. Far from being a badge of unbiblical teaching, it is a demonstration of their ultimate fealty to truth–all the truth–of the Bible.
3. While an important distinction must be made between the Canon of the Bible’s 66 books--the Holy Scriptures--which test all purported revelations, no meaningful distinction can be made between the phenomena of inspiration in operation in the Bible prophets versus that in operation in contemporary prophets.
4. Seventh-day Adventists, recognizing the authority of all writings inspired by God, and having carefully tested her by the Bible tests, consider the writings of Ellen G. White to be a continuing source of truth. We follow the counsel of Scripture and her own admonition to bring everything to the test of Scripture.

This document does not discuss why God would send an authentic prophet to our generation, but you’ll find some answers to that question in another document on this site. We make it our practice here to put all of our cards on the table. We wish to facilitate your understanding of anything that may seem out of the ordinary that you run into on this site. We hope that we haven’t offended anyone by taking this approach. May God bless your walk with Him and your application of His things to your life.

Footer Graphic
Last Modified 20 March 2000