Adventist identity: without transformation, development. Towards a definition


koot van wyk      Seoul  South Korea   24 December 2008


주요 문장 발췌
"세속화가 재림 교회의 정체성을 변경시킬 수는 없습니다다만 그 교회 안에서 예배하는 자들이 본연의 정체성으로부터 이탈하도록 영향을 미칠 뿐입니다." 
"재림주의에 유행이나 새로운 경향이 있을 수 없습니다단지 재림주의에서 이탈하는 여러 가지 "현상"이 있을 뿐입니다. 엘리야 시대에 바알 주의가 바로 그러한 종교적 "경향"이었습니다참된 종교는 그러한 경향이나 이스라엘 사회에 미친 가나안 문화의 영향에도 불구하고 변질됨이 없이 존재해 왔습니다."
"언제나 재림 신앙은 아담과 하와의 타락 이후 존재해 온 성경적 가르침의 테두리 (confines of Biblical doctrines)안에 존재합니다그 가르침에 부합하느냐 않느냐가 재림교인인가 아닌가를 판가름할 뿐입니다."
"재림교인이란 "성경의 사람" (person of the Book) 입니다만일 성경을 읽는 사람이 더 이상 없다면 성경을 읽는 그 한 사람이 바로 재림교인일 것입니다성경을 읽지 않는 사람이라면 설사 침례 받은 교인이라 해도 더 이상 재림 교인이 아닌 것입니다."

Phenomenology investigates not where the identity of the church is but responses by those who claim, support, interact and reject that identity.

For that reason, the title of the book by William G. Johnson is not correct:

The Fragmenting of Adventism: Ten Issues Threatening the Church Today (Boise, Idaho: Pacific Press, 1995).

We need to clarify what Adventism is. Adventism is not the possession of a group of post-1844 believers of a set of doctrines under the umbrella of Seventh-day Adventism.

Adventism with a maximalist definition is existing since the Fall of Adam and Eve. As long as the Remnant was there and is there, there is Adventism. Adventism is in the Bible. An interesting study was done by a scholar looking at all the "How long?" statements in the Old Testament, thus discussing the Delay Theology of the Old Testament.

Even if the organized church, General Conference, Biblical Research Institute, "fall apart", if that is the word, there will be your faithful believer and researcher who will stand no matter if the heavens falls.

Liberal Adventism, or "progressive Adventism" or "democratic" Adventism, or antagonistic Adventism or whatever similar name these scholars call themselves, focus only on the externals: number of people supporting or rejecting a point, statistics to determine whether people believe in 7 day Creation week, etc.

They count the number of dissenting voices and with a typical Harvard University doctoral style, lists all the pro's and con's as if quantity determines truth.

They also get excited when an important scholar support their doubt or suspicion they cast on Adventist historiography, because for them it is a power play, or political play and numbers count.

The essence of Adventism cannot be fragmented, cannot be shaken, cannot be transformed, cannot be alienated, cannot be moved, cannot be destroyed.

The essence of Adventism is in the truths of the Bible properly exegeted. It is Christ as Yahweh, revealing Himself in the Old and New Testament, taking care of the Remnant of believers and substituting Himself with the Holy Spirit when He ascended.

Even in the Old Testament, the Remnant was not exclusively Hebrew. It was multi-cultured and multi-ethnic.

Another book with a wrong title is that of Michael Leigh Chamberlain, Beyond Ellen White: Seventh-day Adventism in Transition (Teneriffe, Qld: Post Pressed, 2008).

The essence of Adventism is not beyond Ellen White, since modern Adventism sees no conflict or tension between Ellen White and the Bible truths.

A better phrase would be: If someone is beyond Ellen White: then he/she will be an Adventist in transition.

Anyone who has investigated history will find many ideas similar to modern Adventism in the Daniel commentary of Japhet ibn ali Halevi in 980 CE. He was jewish and anti-Christian but he had for his time very similar ideas compared to Adventism. Some ideas were not the same and that is a matter of understanding not because Adventism was underdeveloped.

The ideas of Alexander Minorita in his Revelation commentaries 1140 CE, follows similar models at times as one can find in SDA literature.

Isaac Newton 1720 in his Revelation commentary (available online at the Hebrew University in Israel) has many precursors for Seventh Day Adventism.

The title by Richard Bowen Ferret, Seventh-day Adventist Identity: Charisma and Routinisation in a Millennialist Community (Lewiston, Queenston, Lampter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2008) is a pseudo concept of "identity".

The identity of Adventism is not to be extrapolated from manners of worship, whether more spirit-filled occasions or more liturgical in approach. It is responses to that identity, it is reactions that can be measured by phenomenology but to equate it with the identity of the Seventh-day Adventist church is academically and methodologically not correct.


We have two views here of the identity of Adventism:

a) some scholars who count statistics and externals to calculate and compute and graph what they misperceive to be the identity of Adventism, but which is actually phenomenology as responses of worshippers to the identity. 

b) the view of this researcher that identity cannot be measured but only discovered in the confines of Biblical doctrine and people's adherence to it.


Testing identity is not outside the Bible but from within. No norm outside the Word of God can be a test whether an Adventist is what he/she is or not.

If the norm is quantity, then it is outside the Word of God.

Secularization does not change the identity of Adventism but influence its worshippers to deviate from the identity.

One can be honestly wrong.

To look for acceptance in the culture, theological circles of the globe is not to change the identity of Adventism but is a deviation from that identity. It is a moving away from it.

The article title by Gilbert Valentine, "Drifting toward a crisis" (sdanet.org/atissue) is also not correct. Apparently in 1915 W. W. Prescott predicted that a crisis will come relating to views of Ellen White in future.

This is not "drifting toward a crisis". It is not Ellen White that is the problem, it is the methodology and epistemology of those who studies her. The crisis lies in those who create the crisis, not in the data itself.

An antagonist historiographer will utilize eclectic historiography methods to pick and choose only that data and those scholars who are negative, critical, skeptical, with doubt and working with a hermeneutics of suspicion rather than a hermeneutics of affirmation.

They do not only doubt Ellen White, they feel that hermeneutics of suspicion should be carried even into the Bible similar to the phenomenon of Rationalism in the 18th century and Enlightment in the 19th. One looks in vain for citations from Gerhard Hasel's books on these topics in their articles.

One cannot apply the Christian ethics of H. Richard Niebuhr to Adventism and then conclude that transformation of culture has an influence on Adventism's being and becoming an Adventist. A doctorate on this aspect appeared by Charles Scriven, The Transformation of Culture: Christian Social Ethics After H. Richard Niebuhr (Scottsdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1988). 

As we said supra, the being of Adventism or identity is not swung back and forth by trends and movements. It exists in the confines of the Biblical doctrine that existed since the Fall of Adam and Eve. Adherency to those doctrines made people Adventist or not Adventists.

For example, it is now and then common among professors to be evasive of the Alarmist approach of the Nearness of the Coming of Christ. This quietism of the Alarmist approach is not the identity of Adventism, again Adventism within the confines of the Old and New Testament. When the ten virgins slept it was an Alarmist that woke them up! The quietist was one of the ten sleeping. Queitism Eschatology is not now suddenly proper Adventism or the latest fashion of Adventism.

There is no fashion or brand of Adventism. There are deviant manifestations of Adventism that is a brand of deviation.

Baalism in the days of Elijah was such a brand of Israelite religion. True religion existed despite the "brand" or Phoenician cultural transformation in Israelite society. The identity of Elijah did not change, not develop, he did not follow them in their ways. Elijah kept to the confines of the Revelation of God as known in the books of Moses and that gave him all the power he needed.

An Adventist is a person of the Book. Even if no-one reads that Book any longer, then only a reading person as believer can be an Adventist. Such non-readers are no longer Adventists regardless their baptism certificates.

A title like that of the dissertation of Kai Arasola, The End of Historicism: Millerite hermeneutics of time prophecies in the Old Testament (Uppsala: Arasola, c. 1990) is problematic. Historicism will exist until the Coming of Jesus and only then the lines of Futurism, Presentism and Historicism will converge into one. The "end" is "wishful thinking" or analyses of phenomenological responses rather than dealing with the identity of historicism as method since the days of Adam and Eve. The Messiah in the Old Testament is based upon historicism as method for prophecies.

One can see the agenda of the liberal Adventists in the following statement, namely that the Adventist Today (AT) tries to offer "reliable unfettered news ... among people who treasure their Adventist heritage while rejecting some fundamentalist elements of historic Adventism" (cited by Arthur Patrick, "Contextualising Recent Tensions in Seventh-day Adventism: 'a constant process of struggle and rebirth'?" 2008: 22 footnote 28 [online available].

The views of Lowell Cooper, vice-president of the General Conference, namely that "Disagreeing Faithfully: How to understand the difference between unity and uniformity" Adventist Review 28 June 2007: 8-11, is giving a misleading dichotomy. Satan said the same to Eve when he wanted her to take the fruit and eat. Unity was at stake in that conversation. Pluralism was very popular in the days of Elijah. Pluralism supported by a top official of the Adventist organized church will not change the identity of Adventism which reacts the same as in the days of Elijah.


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