Homiletical principles
of the Pioneers of Adventism not proper Exegesis?
The early pioneers utilized
Scripture to the best of their abilities. They were faithful pious people who
tried to understand the doctrines of the Bible properly and was open to new
light that still in Christianity were to be unfolded by God. And He did.
Modern young scientists,
Blanco [sometimes], Szalos-Farkas
[sometimes] and
nearly all the regular or past participators in Advent Today or Spectrum,
except myself [for one article in Adventist Today, maybe the last one for them
in that journal!] and others who also participated in these journals, operate
with a rather “loose view” of the Bible and doctrines. It is for them a “new”
paradigm and a shift that is seen as a progress out of a dilemma or
“controversy”. They would opt for a view that “brand” the past pioneers
including Ellen White, Uriah Smith et al, not as “proper exegetes” but rather
as kind of “homiletical, systematic theological analyzers” rather than proper interpreters.
Thus, renewal is called for. “New orthodoxy” is the name of their game. Almost
a hermeneutics of difference, not so much suspicion, if they are pressed for an
answer. But as Green below indicated, it is just another garment for the same:
hermeneutics of difference in post-modern era is a hermeneutics of suspicion in
Feuerbachian, Nietzschean garb. Some problems should
be highlighted here that consists of false or fake axioms: 1.
Axiom of “liberal thinking”: It
is a false axiom to suggest that a professor from Oxford on the same subject of
a farmer William Miller means that Miller is uninformed and the Oxford
professor is “skilled” and thus more correct. 2.
Axiom of “liberal thinking”: Similarly
is it fake to say only Harvard graduates can see science in it proper light and
people who have graduated from Third World country universities have to “bow
out” before the Harvard’s graduate’s views. 3.
Axiom of “liberal thinking”: The
axiom that homiletics and exegesis are in a dichotomous way against each other
and polarized, was a view of many in the Liberal camp in the Ford debates of
the 1970’s. Ever so now and then one would make this comment: “Oh, Ellen White
was not an exegete. She was just homiletically with the subject matter”. The
same was suggested by Ernst Kasemann following Hermann Diem, saying that
dogmatic theologians and New Testament scholars are working with two different
Bibles. Can there be two different Bible? One for exegesis and one for
dogtrines/dogma? Diem and Kasemann said yes. Heppenstall said no. “Doctrines
are the formalized aspects of faith”.
(Heppenstall, Christ our High Priest chapter 12 paragraph 33). One
cannot be without the other, says Heppenstall. “With Jesus Christ there was no
conflict between the doctrinal statements and the experience of Biblical truth”
Heppenstall, Christ our High Priest, chapter 12 paragraph 38). 4.
The
composition of the Bible is a collection of sources from recipies, diaries,
lists, descriptions, prayers, songs, poems, wisdom sayings, prophecies, legal
material, case descriptions, strung together with intext footnotes/endnotes,
written under the supervision of the Editor of the composition, the Holy
Spirit, sewed together with divine historical, divine descriptive, holy
reporting in mind, attempting to always shows the character of God and the
sinful character of humans and some angels on this earth as part of the
universe. Despite slips of the tongue, hand, ear, eye, mind, the imperfect text
was canonized upon completion by the Holy Spirit as the very Word of God and
was to be treated as such. All were inspired by the Holy Spirit working on this
project over millennia. No discrepancies, no conflicts, no contradictions
exists in this text. The incompletion of full data create for the eye of the beholder
sometimes apparent differences, but they are just apparent since careful search
for alternatives do provide explanations. Man’s inability to connect dots is
the main problem. If man is not humble at the foot of the cross knelt down
reading the text, the connection of the dots [hermeneutics] will be in a spirit
of doubt, suspicion, denial, rejection, resistance, refusal, self-defence,
audience pleasing, counter-confessionalism, sin-rationalizing, opportunism. Exegesis
cannot stop at the border of the recipe, or the diary entry but has to go into
the faith zone where the divine relationship of the historiographer or author
reflected from data to God creating fresh “holy data” [Holy Spirit enwrapped]
which is part of total text for exegesis. One cannot humanistically extrapolate
only the humanistic part and correctly report on the text in toto by this
partial prejudice. Modern exegetes wants to stop at the poem and its beauty
minus the God who is in the poem, stop at the recipe minus the God who expects
bread to be baked that way and leave it to the Systematic Theologians to
extrapolate the God-sayings in between these sources to strung together their
logic system of understanding. This is a fallacy. It is fake. Without exegesis
in toto of the toto text, as the pioneers indicated (see Blanco, although
branding them as Baconists [meaning: truth is in the text before their eyes])
systematic theology or understanding of what God’s doctrine is on a specific
topic, is not possible. To say that Miller used systematic theology rather than
exegesis (see Blanco footnote 62 citing Szalos-Farkas) is not correct. Paying attention to the text was upheld by
the pioneers as Blanco indicated and this is the first rule in proper exegesis
even in modern times. 5.
Whether one sticks to the text [exegete] or extrapolated
eclectic parts of the text strung together with other texts from other contexts
under a topic [systematic theologian], both approaches are the same. For example, the exegete’s eyes will read the poem and
its beautiful alliterations, parallellisms, chiastic structures, rhymes,
assonance, etc. but at one point, the poet is not just a secular poet. He is a
faithful poet and will bring in a concept of the divine for him. That concept
is what is lifted out by the faithful systematic theologian who recognizes that
the concept is the same as another earlier or later poet or author or prophet
in the biblical text. The faithful exegete will not ignore this “systematic
theological” collectible item, but also embark on a proper systematic
theological understanding in order to properly put the poet’s faith in total
biblical context. It is not wrong to do that. It is a must. But notice, both
faithful scholars came to the same end. The systematic theologian as faithful,
will take the extrapolated text with care, since it is “pulled out” of a
context, but will carefully search around the text to see if there are items
giving a different understanding than what he/she himself can see. They are
open for change. They are willing to adapt their thinking in faith. But, also
the rest of the scripture should harmonize with this thought since it is the
work of one Spirit as Editor. The end-results of a faithful exegete and a
faithful systematic theologian should be the same. 6.
Axiom of “liberal thinking”: Homiletics depends on
systematic theology which is contrary to exegesis that is depending on the
text.
This axiom is false. As just pointed out, just the
secular speaker or reader will argue this way. Some of my professors were this
way. At the Calvinistic University where they taught me, he said that on Sunday
standing on the pulpit he speaks with faith to faithful people but when he is
in the class behind his lectern, he does not believe anything he said on Sunday
on the pulpit. This is textual psychopathy. Two ontologies, two epistemologies,
two methodologies and two different outcomes: one exegetical as opposed to the
other which is homiletical. The content of the pulpit speaker should not be any
different than the context of the exegete or the content of the systematic
theologian. This is the proper Adventist view on the matter. It is with this
understanding that Adventists as pioneers operate and their rules of
interpretation (see Crocombe [although he branded SDA hermeneutics as derived
from Miller, which is not correct since it was tapped potentials up to their
time utilized around a common doctrine that expanded as consensus for both
doctrines and method of hermeneutics as feasible that led to the common
hermeneutics] and also Blanco [2017], Damsteegt [2013], Timm [2000], Waggoner
[1887], James White [1851, 1854], Uriah Smith [ ], Ellen White [1883, 1891]). 7.
James White is not a systematic theologian as opposed to
an exegete when he says: “Scripture must explain Scripture, then a harmony may be
seen throughout the whole”. When
he said that to study the Bible one must “collat[e] the different portions of it”. “Let
us have a whole Bible, and let that, and that alone, be our rule of faith and
duty”. And
also that the student need to search “the Scriptures for the whole truth, and
for his whole duty”. 8.
It is not systematic theology building joy that James
White had when he said that the Adventist position on points of faith is: “a connected system of truth, the most beautiful in
all its parts, that the mind of man ever
contemplated”. If exegesis is done properly then the truths of each
exegetical portion of the text from different biblical books, should all ring
one sound and that sound will be beautiful because it is truth as opposed to
error. This system of connection will have a clear, simple, logic beauty to it.
And it always does. Phillip (in the Book of Acts) got into the chariot and
although the Ethiopian was trying his best to do exegesis from Isaiah, Phillip
had to take him as himself a skilled exegete who connected the dots as a
systematic logic thinking throughout the Scripture, from text to text to see
the Messiah in verity. It is not one or the other, it is both. 9.
Here is the rule then: All faithful biblical exegetes
will eventually become biblical systematic theologians and systematic
theologians who are not biblical exegetes are philosophers or sophists but not
the biblical way. 10.
Hermeneutics of suspicion is conventional in our day but is rooted in doubt and
suspicion by men like: F. Nietzsche “there are no fact, only interpretations”; I. Kant “I have found it necessary to deny knowledge, in
order to make room for faith”; Hamann to Hans Jacob von Auerswald on 28th of
July 1785 “…the heart beats before the head thinks”; T. Kuhn “…the proponents of competing paradigms practice
their trades in different worlds” [Evolutionism is not the same as Creationism,
Preterism is not the same as Historicism]; L. Feuerbach “…an object first takes on its true
intrinsic dignity when the sacred nimbus is stripped off; for as long as a
thing or being is an object of religious worship, it is clad in borrowed
plumes, namely, the peacock feathers of the human imagination”; K. Barth, “We….need be afraid of no Feuerbach”; F. Nietzsche, “Is the cross an argument?” [contra see 1
Corinthians 1:18 “For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing…”];
11. Hermeneutics
of difference is a suspicion in postmodern guise. H. W. Frei “…a good hermeneutics of a text is one that
has ‘breathing space’, that is to say, one in which no hermeneutics finally
allows you to resolve the text – there is something that is left to bother,
something that is wrong, something that is not yet interpreted.” (Frei “Conflicts
in Interpretation: Resolution, Armistace or Co-existence?” 1993, page 162). Source: G. Green, Theology, Hermeneutics, and Imagination: The
Crisis of Interpretation at the End of Modernity [Cambridge University Press,
2000]. Downloaded from http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=105491683# M.
Blanco, “Early Adventists’ Homiletical Principles and the
Expository-vs-Thematic Sermons Discussion.” Davar Logos. Vol. XVI no. 1 (June
2017): 29-60. Downloaded from Academia.edu. Principios homiléticos de los
primeros adventistas y la discusión de sermones expositivos versus temáticos. 12. Final word by
this writer here: Anyone who is an epigraphist will know that when you work
with text, cuneiform or ostracon or mural (Deir ‘Alla) or parchment, or any
Ancient Near Eastern text, you need to look at as many similar texts on the
topic that are available as possible to get a proper understanding what is
going on. “Systematic Theology” of these ancient religions are a necessary
ingredient for understanding the exegesis of the text you are preparing for an
article to be published. It is the same for the biblical text as exegesis. If I
give a talk on my findings in the ostracon, I am not saying falsehood as
opposed to my fine analysis in the article I published. The data, detail are
the same. They ring the same truth. This is also the same with preaching an
exegesis or preaching a systematic understanding. Dear God The young scholars at
universities in Adventism, are scooping up from non-SDA books, universities and
thinkers with preteristic, nihilistic and suspicion filled relativism ideas
that confront Your Word and its doctrines. Help them to open their eyes and see
the danger they put themselves in. In Jesus Name Amen.