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What is the New Theology Part 2: Historical Background
Authored by Pr. Larry Kirkpatrick and published on GreatControversy.org on October 2, 2004
God’s truth does not exist in independent cubby-holes. One doctrine is not partitioned-off from another. Truth is one wholistic, interconnected system. If we wish to understand a given revealed truth, we relate it to already revealed truth. Following this approach, we can discover how it all is wired together. If we consider revealed truths in isolation from others, as separate atoms, we will not see their relation to the whole.
Thus it is with the nature of Christ. If it is merely a problem of reconciling some texts that seem to say one thing with some texts that seem to say another—if the humanity of Christ is not viewed in connection with the divine mission—we can miss its importance. When, however, seen in connection with an understanding of what sin is, what justification means, and what character perfection is, the significance of our understanding of Christ’s humanity takes on a new glow. All these things are wired together. As the rising and falling issues march across the horizon of Adventist history, helpful new perspectives are gathered concerning why in the year 2004 Seventh-day Adventists still loiter on planet earth. In the chapters “Wired I” (following) and “Wired II” (at the end of this book) we explore this interrelatedness.
Historical Development of the Third Angel’s Message
God’s end-time, present truth message has gone through four stages of development. This shouldn’t surprise us, as there are the three angel messages in Revelation 14:6-12 and the fourth angel’s “loud cry” in Revelation 18:1-5. As time ticks forward “new duties are revealed.”1 Neither God nor His truth are ever standing still. The Seventh-day Adventist movement is His chosen delivery system for the truth that will at last divide the world between two now-forming groups: those who obey God, and those who disobey. John 14:15 suggests another way of looking at this: two groups are forming, one that loves righteousness and one that hates it. What has been the developmental history of this group?
First period
The first period was the Adventist era, from 1830-1844, with most energy in its last four years. William Miller was the primary human agency in what we would consider the first angel’s message. Those who lived through this time would recall it as characterized by the powerful lectures of Miller,2 the Daniel 8:14 2300 day/year calculation, prophetic charts prepared to illustrate the same, the idea that Jesus’ Second Coming was imminent, to occur spring or autumn 1843, and that at that time the earth would be judged (the earth, of course, then being understood as the sanctuary to be cleansed).
When the autumn 1843 window passed, the year-zero calculation error was discovered and corrected for,3 leading to the spring and autumn dates in 1844. As the period neared its end, Adventists were shut out of the churches. They built their own, continuing to meet for study and worship even as the hope of Jesus’ imminent return appeared well in sight.
Adventists were divided over the state of man in death. William Miller took the “immortal soul” position, denouncing George Storrs, who took the “soul-sleep” position. Adventists worshiped dutifully every Sunday morning, and pork chops were not out of the question.
Second Period
The second period was in the last half of 1844, called “the seventh-month movement, or “the midnight cry.” Samuel Sheffield Snow and Charles Fitch were the major names we would connect with the second angel’s message. Snow presented the material that led Adventists to fix upon October 22, 1844 as definite time for the Lord’s return.
Charles Fitch, a Congregational Minister, was the first to preach the second angel’s message. But he took Revelation 18:1-4 as the text for his sermon: “Come Out of Her, My People.” Adventists, ill-treated and sometimes excommunicated (up until this time, they were found spread throughout the various denominations) came out from those churches that had rejected the message of the Advent near. Fitch died two weeks before the disappointment of October 22 after contracting pneumonia from baptizing a dozen people in a frigid Ohio lake.
Third Period
The third period comes after the disappointment of October 22, 1844. It is during this period that the shift from Adventist to Seventh-day Adventist occurs. There is much development during this phase. Here is where the third angel’s message and all the angel messages become much clearer. It was during this period that the place of our people became transparent to them and they saw their position under the third angel.
Heaven opened its floodgates and God gifted Ellen White with revelations. The small, trembling group of Adventists, encouraged, continued to study. Bible conferences were held where the interlocking foundation doctrines of this movement were discerned and our understanding of their interrelationships developed.
The publishing work began, the church was organized, and the health message was given. Looking back to where they had come from and ahead to where they were going, the intrepid believers went forward under the leadership of James and Ellen White, and an army of others including Joseph Bates, J. N. Andrews, Uriah Smith, John Loughborough, and more. The book The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan was published. Seventh-day Adventism was on the march!
Fourth Period
We can connect the fourth phase with 1888, when Ellen G. White, E. J. Waggoner, and A. T. Jones presented the righteousness by faith emphasis. Although this should have seen the finish of the work in glory, it marks instead the commencement of a dark period of insubordination and disunity. Clarifying light was presented, but mostly rejected.
We can characterize this period by breaking it into at least three subsections: The 1888 timeframe, the Synthesis I timeframe, and the Synthesis II timeframe. The first of these was characterized by the descent of the fourth angel (Revelation 18:1-5) and failure to let that light do its work. The Synthesis I timeframe is actually a period stretching from mid-century thru 1976. Andreason, Douglass and Wood saw and wrote about the connection between the humanity of Christ and the preparation of the last generation. We might also think of this period as associated with the publishing of Questions on Doctrine (QOD) and the ascendancy of the acceptance of its teachings. The period we call Synthesis II could also be viewed as the close-out or death of QOD period. All its eggs are hatched. At last there arrives a time when the light originally given in this fourth period is accepted, blended together with the light from the first three periods, and allowed to have our hearts. It is the loud cry recapitulated and articulated. Now more detail.
1888 Timeframe (Nineteenth Century Developments)
The first timeframe we noted was the 1888 section. Division arose over minor issues of prophetic interpretation, and over the law in Galatians. An East-West divide arose between the Review and Herald press in the East, (G. I. Butler and Uriah Smith), and the Signs of the Times publishing Pacific Press in the West, (Ellet J. Waggoner and Alonzo T. Jones). After the Eastern group made the dispute public, Ellen G. White said the only fair course to pursue was to permit Waggoner and Jones to publish their differing position.4 By the time the 1888 General Conference Session convened in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the delegates were ready to be bitterly divided. White sided with Waggoner and Jones. Her urgent calls were mostly rejected.
No other event in Adventist history has proven as useful a hook to hang the necessity of your group or movement on as 1888. It is remarkable how the 1888 controversy is taped to the obscure agendas of so many groups. Each reads the need for their own movement into the rift of 1888. Some of these analyses begin to seem suspiciously self-serving when the catalogue of other titles written by the same authors is reviewed. One might be forgiven for wondering whether all are in fact treating their history with appropriate objectivity.5
No matter what we might say about what did or didn’t happen at the 1888 General Conference Session, we have available to us a most illuminating set of materials written by White, Jones, and Waggoner6 in the two decades immediately following 1888. From the pen of A. T. Jones comes his book, The Consecrated Way (1905), and his 1889, 1893, and 1895 published campmeeting sermons.7 From Waggoner we have his books, Christ and His Righteousness (1890), Glad Tidings (1900), and his Studies in Romans (1896). From White, we have Steps to Christ (1892), Desire of Ages (1898), and Christ’s Object Lessons (1905).8 A careful study of these writings will put one—almost—on the cutting edge of Adventist thought.
In the 1930s the church refined its statement of beliefs.9 Institutional retrenchment was underway. A small group of leaders In the 1950s, reversing a century of sound Christology, published the tragic Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine.10
In the 1976 to 1980 stretch, crisis rumbled through the church as Geoffrey Paxton, Robert Brinsmead, and Desmond Ford pressed home their ideas concerning the gospel. Ford was defrocked in 1980 and eventually left the church.11 The late eighties and early nineties saw the church locked in worship wars, and the rise of independent and self-supporting groups and ministries of varied stripe. By the turn of the century it seemed the church was facing an even more subtly refined challenge with the arrival of the “Newer” Theology.12 Ideas Ford had proposed and the church had rejected 20 years before now were regularly appearing in the Adventist Review.13
Synthesis I Timeframe (Twentieth Century Developments)
We said that reading the material from Waggoner, Jones, and White would bring one “almost” up-to-date on Adventist thinking. Of course, you can’t be any more up-to-date than to read the writings of Ellen White! But as we follow the counsels there given, as we move forward down that road marked out by Heaven, is it not logical to expect that we will see fresh connections between these truths? Is it not likely that as implications become apparent that other insights will coalesce? During this period, among the mostly negatives, there were three exciting positives, cases where truth began to coalesce.
One is the written works of M. L. Andreason. Former dean of the Seventh-day Adventist theological Seminary, Andreason was a leading denominational scholar on the book of Hebrews. His writings built on the concepts of the 1888 trio and drew forth the implications for how we live and how God plans to vindicate His character through the great controversy war. They showed that the key is Christology, the nature of Christ.14
Dovetailing with Andreason, Review editors Kenneth H. Wood15 and Herbert E. Douglass put pen to paper. General Conference President Robert H. Pierson led the church forward. Revival was near in 1973-1974.16 But the opportunity passed. The deck was reshuffled. A dark new era began. Even so, a third positive development surfaced. When Desmond Ford came to Pacific Union College and pushed the school—and denomination—into crisis, another PUC theology professor was led to his own exploration. Dennis Priebe began a journey. His analytical mind worked through the logical steps of the opposing theological systems.
The result was a powerful itinerant ministry that has continued some 20 years. Priebe’s book, Face-to-Face With the Real Gospel links together in one small space the core theological questions of the doctrine of sin, the nature of Christ, and Heaven’s plan for character perfection. This book was the harbinger of good things to come. For years it quietly did its work as the Priebes crossed and recrossed the continent visiting churches large and small, one at a time, one day at a time.
The challenges the church has faced with Questions on Doctrine, the New Theology, Desmond Ford, and the Newer Theology are all aspects of this fourth period. While Andreason, Douglass, Wood and Priebe gave us expanded insights, other trends during this period were of a nature to hide these away, to hinder their rising. Hostility is today directed by some at these very insights.
Synthesis II Timeframe (Twenty-first Century Developments)
But God was not done. In recent years, the arrival of the internet, networking meetings like the regional Youth Conferences,17 and an independent press no gatekeepers can blockade, suggests the in-process passage into the Synthesis II phase, ripe with opportunity and potential! Make no mistake; we are still in the fourth period. The church accepted the light available in periods one thru three. It is the fourth period where we linger, just beyond Canaan. All the pieces are before us. Heaven has placed them all within reach, if not dropped them right on our heads!
Will we follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes? We say, Yes, but the fact is, in 1888 the upward path took what to many was an unexpected turn. We hit a bottleneck. Few have been willing to follow Him. Revelation 14:4 is the sieve. It is all about truly belonging to Jesus or belonging only superficially. Opportunity lingers. But the sands are running through the glass. God shall not indefinitely tarry. It is time for us to take a fresh look at the humanity of Christ and what it tells us about Heaven’s intended experience for His last generation.
The Angel Messages Spring-Loaded
How these messages unfolded historically is interesting. But what was implicit in them? Actually, all the angel messages are implicit in the first. More than this, the way Jesus Himself lived while in human flesh like our own is also implicit.
We pointed out some of the tumult surrounding each period to show that
• There was healthy debate in those years—not always the zip-locked unity of clear-cut agreement.
• The understanding of our spiritual pioneers went through sometimes intensive periods of development.
• The first Seventh-day Adventists (rising in the third-period) could look back on the preceding phases of development and with hard-earned vision see their current position.
• Not only backward, but forward opened the future pathway to those living in the third period. If not entirely understood, still the direction forward was clear.
• Today—we are still in the fourth period.
The fourth period is the nasty one. It is where too many of us have choked on truth. The light shines now brightly; the implications of what we believe stand out so sharply that many stop short of following Jesus that far. Among us are found those who are ready to be conventional Christians. Yet today Heaven is calling for more than this, and our knees are wobbly.
Some of us are trapped today in a holding-pattern, refusing to go backward and refusing to go forward; neither cold nor hot. But mark this word: a people who remain neither cold nor hot are a people who aren’t going anywhere.
Heaven has granted us a depth of insight, enfolded, ready and coiled, spring-loaded, threatening to break into the open and show itself if we will only stand ready. But for decades we have refused to watch. Too many of us have demonstrated that to seek and find has not been our interest, but to dodge and hide. Certain among this people grew discontented with truths that so set us apart, and veiled them in order to make the Church appear groomed and well coifed. In an attempt to hide our supposed fanaticism, the remnant church was dressed in Cinderella gown so as to be labeled as legitimate and to walk among the more-accepted Churches.
The outcome has been no less than tragedy. No longer may we by our silence consent and condone the mainstreaming of this truncated form of our faith as legitimate Adventism. We must comprehend powerful truths from glory-days past. What was legitimate in 1887 may not be so legitimate in 2007. Pretentious sophistries must be unmasked. Not only the foundation pillars, but the implications of our faith, the very ladder connecting earth and heaven, must be reexamined and grasped afresh.
The gates of heaven remain open to us, but soon His work will end. We must seek Him while He may be found. Probation will soon close. What will now God’s people do?
DNA-Splicing the Apocalypse
The “Adventist” part of Seventh-day Adventist theology causes us to place under close scrutiny what the Bible says concerning the end-times. The “Advent,” of course, is the arrival of Jesus at His Second Coming. But something happened along the way. Among the topics commonly addressed by our pioneers were the sealing, close of probation, the 144K, and the cleansing of the sanctuary. It has become uncommon in our day to hear such topics discussed. Instead, we are warned against our prophetic heritage. Here’s how the warning goes:
If we start with eschatology, we run the risk of aberrant theology—we are starting where we should be finishing. Unfortunately, some Adventists have fallen into that rut. Some begin with eschatology and move back to Christology—the doctrine of Jesus.18
Johnsson’s warning is curious, especially to anyone who knows in a rudimentary way the history of Adventism. After all, this movement began with Daniel 8:14 and eschatology, arriving at full-flame in 1844, only to be followed by watershed-event number two, the 1888 emphasis on Christology! This was not our order, but God’s. In His wisdom and providence, He elected to bring these emphases to our consciousness in this order. Is God responsible for launching His people into an aberrant theology?
Approaching the plan of redemption from Revelation 14 and moving from the character result in the final generation, working back to discover the experience that takes you to it, makes a certain amount of sense. On the other hand, if our starting place is the conventional evangelical understanding of the gospel weary and tradition-worn, deeply tinted with Roman Catholic salvation concepts (Augustine’s teaching of original sin), we would be starting at error.
God didn’t revive His church in these last days only to bridle us with ancient error. He wants to see the work ended right away. There has been a reticence—just as in 1888—to permit God to guide His people forward. A kind of Adventist orthodoxy has developed. The illegitimate Questions on Doctrine work of the 1950s set the stage for the problematic resolution of the Ford crisis decades later. When the 1980 statement of beliefs was prepared the areas dealing with the humanity of Jesus and the meaning of salvation were in many ways left mushy and ambiguous. Eschatological and Christological elements of our faith have received diminishing attention and through a quiet, decreasing emphasis, have been relegated to the periphery of our denominational attention.
Today some Adventists have left far behind any interest in these things, while others have focused on a cluster of points where it has been considered safe to be a kind of “mainstream” conservative. Such persons will highlight wins in godly worship music, in church standards, in upholding a literal six day creation, and so forth. But topics like the nature of Christ, the concepts of righteousness by faith in the end-time setting, character perfection, of delaying or hastening the Second Coming of Christ, are kept in an unspoken “out of bounds” category.
Let us honestly ask ourselves: Is an interest in addressing such topics a de facto sign of danger, or, is it a much more ready signal for concern when we hide in the notion that we are denominationally orthodox and we assert our conventional and mainstream approach? Seventh-day Adventism can never decline to a homogenized state and be true to its mission. We are reformers. We are an apocalyptic people living at the intended closure-point in the great controversy war. We need the eschatology that gave us the end-time perspective in 1844 just as we need the gospel that gave us the clarity on Christology that followed 1888. “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” (Review and Herald, October 12, 1905).
How has He led us in our past history? Eschatology first, then Christology. It is that or it is DNA-splicing the apocalypse, changing what we are, forgetting the way the Lord has led us, and choosing the only pathway where inspiration said we had anything to fear. These are the things at stake. Forgetting yesterday puts at risk tomorrow. Seventh-day Adventists must not, for our religion would be changed. The foundation of the changed Adventist variant would be built on the sand. Books of a new order would be written, as they began to be in the 1950s. At last storm and tempest would sweep away the counterfeit faith (Selected Messages, vol. 1, pp. 204, 205).
Do we have to go there? Must we leave our people outside the sheltering protection of truth, or may we at this late hour make a course correction that will mean refreshing God’s teaching in harmony with our past history, and following the leading of the Lamb Jesus (Revelation 14:4) just as He led His people before? Let us be faithfully about the journey that follows God’s opening providence; starting where He started us; taking the path that He pointed us to. A Seventh-day Adventist is always a pilgrim. There are no stopping places for him. He is following the Lamb. His reform will be continuous.
In Selected Messages, vol. 1, pp. 201-208, Mrs. White makes pointed reference to several characteristics that would follow in the wake of the departures from truth then under way. The essence of the new movements into erroneous sideshows that would develop were pointed out to be:
- Repudiation of the past leading of God in the Seventh-day Adventist movement.
- Substitution of a New Theology for the original Seventh-day Adventist theology.
- The finely grained nature of the new errors, apparently very close to truth.
- Specific attacks of the heavenly sanctuary and Revelation 14 teachings.
- The pleasing presentation of erroneous theories.
- The New movement would be in favor of our being virtuous but would be powerless to produce virtue in its adherents.
It is in this light that we consider the markers of the New Theology as we proceed through this series. We will see that they match quite closely the six characteristics foretold by God’s messenger in warning to His remnant. No, they do not so openly repudiate our past or present themselves as teachings that have replaced Adventist teachings. On the contrary, they present themselves as nothing of the kind. What else would we expect? Let us be now keen students of the inspired writings and of the history of God’s people for then we have a basis for weighing all these things.
It is as reformers then, that we thus proceed to answer, What is the New Theology?
Proceed to Part 3: Four Periods of Seventh-day Adventist History Chart.
Proceed to Part 4 (Link to be added when article published).
Endnotes
- Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 425.
- If you’ve never read these lectures you are missing a blessing. They are powerful and will give you a flavor for the shape and emphasis of the movement at this period. You can acquire a copy from Leaves-of-Autumn Books, Inc., PO Box 440, Payson, AZ 85541.
- There is no year-zero between B.C. years (before Christ) and A.D. years (anno Domini, “in the year of our Lord”), meaning one year must be added in calculation to prophetic periods crossing this divide.
- “The matter has now been brought so fully before the people by yourself [written to Butler and Smith] as well as Dr. Waggoner, that it must be met fairly and squarely in open discussion,” Ellen G. White, 1888 Materials, p. 35.
- For example, one prominent author has written numerous books suggesting a persistent grumpiness, as evidenced by such titles as, Angry Saints, 1888 to Apostasy, I Used to Be Perfect, The Fat Lady and the Kingdom, My Gripe With God, Millennial Fever and the End of the World, Myths in Adventism, The Pharisee’s Guide to Perfect Righteousness, etc.
- In some places, Jones and Waggoner suggested a semi-arian position on the origin of Christ, but these places have by and large been edited out of contemporary versions of their books. Since few if any contemporary Seventh-day Adventists are advocates of that position, this is of only tangential interest to the current debate and will not be further dwelt on in this text.
- Available through Laymen Ministries International at http://www.lmn.org.
- Woodrow W. Whidden III in his book, Ellen White on Salvation (Hagerstown, M.D.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1995), claims he ends his treatment of her writings in 1902 because her views on salvation see little development after that time. He says, “I found no path-breaking statements after 1902” p. 11. This conveniently makes it possible for him to sidestep certain of her statements in Christ’s Object Lessons that could challenge key parts of his thesis (for example, statements found on pp. 69, and 307-319, 331-333. Whidden not only ignores such lines, but prefers to class inspired statements that do not fit his viewpoint as “doctrinally imprecise,” “seeming imprecision” (p. 108), “perplexing” and “puzzling” statements (p. 112), and “either a flat-out contradiction or possibly a lapse in precision,” “either a clear contradiction… or a manifestation of imprecision” (p. 113). Let the reader note that these statements compare the inspired writings to the interpretations of Dr. Whidden, and evaluate the inspired writings as flawed. We think, however, that the inspired writings are correct and that perhaps it is the interpretations of them that are flawed.
- We review the Seventh-day Adventist belief statements more closely in our chapter titled, “Wired II,” at pp. XXX-XXX of this book (NOTE: In some places in the endnotes of this and the forthcoming articles we fill yet-to-be-determined page numberings with triple X’s).
- We look at greater length at this in chapter XXX “The Questions on Doctrine Question, pp. XXX-XXX.”
- A move was made to reverse Ford’s defrocking in 2002. See my “Desmond Ford Redux” at
http://www.greatcontroversy.org/reportandreview/kir-dfx.php3.
As a postscript to the attempt, we note that the Avondale College Church in Australia circulated a statement that the Adventist Theological Society (ATS) and the teachings of Dr. Richard Davidson could be favorably compared with those of Dr. Ford. ATS Australia and Dr. Davidson both protested strongly. The South Pacific Division officers, Australia Union Conference and North New South Wales Conference officers also disagreed with the attempt to reinstate Dr. Ford. The project was unsuccessful, and his membership in the Seventh-day Adventist Church was discontinued at last in 2003. - For insight on this see my sermon, “It’s 1979 Again,” at
http://www.greatcontroversy.org/documents/sermons/sermons-kir/kir-h2j12.php3. - See my “New—Or Newer—Theology?” at
http://www.greatcontroversy.org/editorial/ed120-newornewertheology.php3. - See M. L. Andreason, The Sanctuary Service, “The Last Generation,” pp. 299-321.
- Here and anywhere else through this book where these or other names appear—the names of living persons—we wish to clarify that the names are presented not because we attempt to lift up this or that person, but only to indicate that we believe that Heaven was at work through human agencies—mere men of clay. When anything good has happened, we know all the credit can only go to God.
- The Seventh-day Adventist Church’s General Conference published stirring appeals in 1973 and 1974. These are online at
http://www.greatcontroversy.org/documents/papers/19731974.html. We also have made these available in pamphlet form. - At the time of publishing, the following regional Youth Conferences were online:
http://www.NWYC.org
http://www.NEYouthConference.org. - William G. Johnsson, The Fragmenting of Adventism, (Boise, ID: Pacific Press Publishing Assn., 1995), p. 78, emphasis in original.
The above material is an extract from the projected 2005 book, Simply Seventh-day Adventism, by Pr. Larry Kirkpatrick, to be published by GreatControversy.org.
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