Early Syriac Theology and Adventist Theology

Koot van Wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint Lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

20 June 2011

Anyone who thinks Adventism does not have a fixed theology or theology at all, and that Adventism is but just an alignment of one of the traditions out there on the sea of options, is flawed in their thinking. Adventism's contribution to Christianity and biblical understanding on the six types of atonement, namely: consummated atonement among the Trinity before the Fall; completed Ransom Payment Atonement at the cross; Sanctification Atonement for the believer; Honorification Atonement since 1844 with the Investigative Judgment by the High Priest on our behalf as our Great Advocate in Heaven; Glorification Atonement at the Advent; Inquiring Atonement during the 1000 years; Eradication Atonement at the Executive Judgment with the Hell event; is a system of biblical doctrine brought together in harmony and balance by no other denomination or tradition until now. Judaism and many individual Rabbis, came very close to a shadow of these ideas in their Middle Age commentaries on the Scriptures, but all together in one set of doctrine as here, there is no comparison. The fusion of prophecy and sanctuary message or sanctuary type understanding as in Adventism was never so fully understood as here in their beliefs. Because Adventists are historicists, prophetic charts are constructed from the biblical text inductively and a search is made in history to seek fulfillment. Much of this came from earlier traditions in Judaism, Christianity in all its forms so that Adventism is not unique here. When William Miller was very sad one day about his mistake in 1844 he wrote to George Bush, the Hebrew professor of that year at New York University asking him if he then made a mistake of taking this course of thinking? Answered Bush, "do not feel discouraged, you had no choice but to take the course you did, having the greatest of scholars in history before you doing the same". Protestants, Judaism, Catholics before Adventism did the calculations, Adventists like William Miller just totaled it at that year. And then they found out biblically that it is the sanctuary message that is involved and so the disappointment opened up a truth which shed much light on the work of Christ after the cross until now and when He will come and later. Eschatology became a fascinating subject in Adventism.

Our source for Early Syriac Theology is the book by Seely J. Beggiani, Early Syriac Theology with Special Reference to the Maronite Tradition (New York: University Press of America, 1983).

Beggiani set himself the task of finding Early Syriac Theology. Syriac Theology was contaminated with Latin inroads after the 7th century CE. The period that interest Beggiani, is the fourth century at Antioch where the Moronite Tradition were located. Especially the fathers Aphraat and Ephrem (+373) interested him. He looked at the theological insights of these men and their immediate successors James of Serug, Philoxenus of Mabboug and Narsai.

Fourth and fifth century Syria was divided into two parts, West Syria where they were bilingual speaking Syriac and Greek and was influenced by Hellenistic culture and East Syria where the people resisted Greek influence and preserved their semitic heritage. In between West and East was the capital Edessa. The school of Edessa was proud of their Syriac culture. They also translated into Syriac many Greek works, Plato in apocrypha but Aristotle especially translated into Syriac and then into Arabic. Porphyry is known also in Syriac through his introduction to the Organon (S. Brock, "Greek into Syriac and Syriac into Greek" Journal of the Syriac Academy (Baghdad) vol. 3 [1977]: 1-17). Adventism is acquainted with Porphyry namely that this heathen scholar tried to discredit the book of Daniel with links to Antiochus Epiphanes everywhere in the prophecies. Jerome in his commentary on Daniel strongly resisted Porphyry's ideas and especially at the end of Daniel 11:40-45 one can see how openly Jerome differed with Porphyry. But, that means that Syriac theology also became contaminated at some point with Porphyry or Porphyry was available in their libraries. At the end of the day the answer is what one do with a book that is red-listed in one's library.

Two cities since the fourth century became involved in a schism and were centers for each faction: Jacobites in Antioch (West Syria) and Nestorianism or Monophytism in Edessa (between West and East Syria).

Aphraat it is said had only one book besides the Bible in his library, Didascalia (Beggiani 1983: xii). Ephrem as an exegete was influenced by a midrashic approach and hermeneutical practice that is of Jewish origin. When he dealt with Old Testament themes, he tended to be haggadic (Beggiani 1983: xii). Ephrem was from Antioch.

As far as liturgical rites are concerned from the year 400 and later, at least three forms were present: one from Jerusalem and Palestine; one at Antioch as far as Laodicea, Mopsuestia. The third one was at Edessa and was for the Aramaic speaking East.

The West and Eastern country people rejected Chalcedon since they were unaffected by Hellenism. The Maronite group, while in the minority, accepted Chalcedon and were driven out of Antioch to the mountains of Lebanon, in later years. Although the monastery is in Lebanon, their rite preserved the Syriac tradition of Edessa while the surrounding rites were basically from Antioch, borrowed from Jerusalem and also partly from Edessa.

Hiddenness of God

Early Syriac Theology, like Catholic Theology tried to affirm the "obvious elusiveness of the Holy which is God and yet the conviction that the Divine is within creation and human existence itself" (Beggiani 1983: 1).

In Adventist theology, God does not hide Himself from man. He did not. He came forward to seek Adam and Eve who were hiding and found them in their lost state to explain the plan of salvation for them and with the sacrificial lamb of the first offering, typifying the coming Messiah Jesus on the cross in future, made clothes for them with the skins. God reveals Himself, explains His plans, informs humanity. Adventists do not believe in pantheism, which is the belief that God is in creation. God is not in creation (Syriac and Catholic Theology) but interested and involved in His creation (Adventist Theology). Beggiani would sharply criticize Adventists if he saw my explanation, since he present his criticism of this type of thinking (as Adventists for example) "in traditions that believe that God has indeed manifested himself in revelation and exercises an abiding presence in grace, there is sometimes an inclination to act as if this radical distinctness of God from humanity has been overcome" (Beggiani 1983: 1). It is the cardinal message of Paul that heaven was brought near, it is the Logos that was made flesh in John 1:14 and thus, it is not a tradition but a biblical truth.

The Early Syriac Christian mind made such a difference between Creature and Creator that God is so distant from human minds that all the controversies over words and terms of the fourth and fifth centuries were seen as counter-productive. God is mysterious in their thinking and cannot be grasped by human minds.

The Syriac church father Ephrem said in "Hymn on the Nativity" which is in the Nicene Fathers 13 (1964): 251-252, that all the angels keep silence all the time since they "in the midst of silence is the enquiry into Him" (Beggiani 1983: 1). He says this to point out that the mysteriousness of God is beyond grasp of the angels.

In a certain way, Adventism agrees with Ephrem here that angels are, as Paul says, curious to see into the mystery of God's plans for His creatures. They are eager to know. On the other hand, the biblical picture of angels from the book of Revelation does not allow for quietness or silence of angels. Not around the throne and not on earth when they came to sing at the birth of Jesus.

At key points in the ministry of Christ, it was angels who sang or announce alone or in choirs. Of course there is no impression of chaos or undisciplined disorder.

Ephrem made it clear that only the Son can comprehend the Father since they are of the same nature (Hymn on the Faith, no. 11, 7-11).

Ephrem is trying to say that in man, if there is no interaction or communication between God and man, man has no ability to understand God because God is transcendent. Adventist theology does not disagree here since sin blocks man from God, not that God is blocking Himself from humans.

Says Ephrem:

"If, then, our knowledge cannot even achieve a knowledge of itself, how does it dare investigate the birth of Him who knows all things?" (Ephrem in "Hymn on the Faith" no. 1 Harp of the Spirit, translated by S. Brock [1975]: 7, op. cit. Beggiani 1983: 2).

All modern discussions on the Incarnation of Jesus Christ falls in this category. The denial by Rudolph Bultmann of the Virgin Birth, Atonement, Advent, Judgment, Miracles, Divinity of Jesus all falls in this category.

Christ made like us to be like Him

Ephrem had the theology in the fourth century that "in His graciousness He put on the fashion of humankind and gathered us into His likeness. . . . These things were for our profit; that Being in our likeness was made like to us, that we may be made like Him" (Ephrem in "Nisibene Hymn, no. 13" Nicene Fathers 170-171).

In Desire of Ages by Ellen White, a couple of pages is devoted to this very concept. All benefits that we can dream of, are all wrapped up in Him. Emptying heaven, that is what the Trinity did for us, in order to elevate us. The first pages of DA goes into all that. There are excellent formulas by Ellen White on this self-emptying of God for the salvation of souls. It is all biblical and Paul in Philipians developed this idea very well. The kenotic theory is extracted from this text. Adventists have the theology of Christ our Substitute to Christ our Example. It incorporates what Ephrem had in mind here. There is no place in Adventism for redactional and narrative criticism or source criticism of the biblical text or neo-orthodoxy ideas of Bultmann and his followers. The biblical text harmonized and presented cohesively with faithful romantic appreciation is totally against the spirit of suspicion that characterizes the division, polarizing and skepticism of words in modern biblical studies. There is no marraige or fusion in Adventism possible between faith and suspicion. Any modern presence of it is simply inroads into or offroads from Adventism proper but not Adventism at all.

Creation and Sin

For Ephrem every action of God in Creation was directed to Christ as the First Born. "In the beginning, however, the works have been created through the First-Born. . . .Fully revealed is the truth to him who wants to see it: the six days that were created give testimony . . . that (the Creator) did not give commands to the (created) works that they should make themselves . . . The Father commanded through his Voice, the Son carried out the work" (Ephrem in T. Kronholm, Motifs from Genesis 1-11 in the Genuine Hymns of Ephrem the Syrian [Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1978], 40-41).

The pre-existence of Christ and Creation by Christ theology is in Christ Object Lessons and Desire of Ages by Ellen White fully dealt with. Adventism aligns very well with early Syriac Theology of the fourth century here.

Let us make man in our image

Ephrem Christologize the Genesis text here by pointing out that Christ was the man in mind here and that the Word which became flesh was really behind this statement. While Christ as the Word is the image of the Father, He is also the perfect figure of man (Ephrem in Nabil El-khoury, "Gen. 1,26 -- Dans l'Interprétation de Saint Ephrem, Ou La Relation de l'Homme À Dieu," Orientalia Christiana Analecta, vol. 205 [1978]: 199-200; op. cit. Beggiani 1983: 14).

Hans LaRondelle in his book Perfection, dealt extensively with this concept. In Adventism, the expression is a faithful relationship with God and that is the image. As LaRondelle said: "Therefore the imago Dei cannot refer to the divine or human ontic qualities as such but rather to the actual functioning of the specific and living love-relation between man and his Creator" (H. K. LaRondelle, Perfection & Perfectionism: A dogmatic-ethical study of biblical perfection and phenomenal perfectionism in Andrews University Monographs Studies in Religion Vol. III [Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1984], 63). LaRondelle find resonance with G. C. Berkhouwer and T. H. Vriezen here that connects with the Adventism as he knew it.

The concept of Ephrem here is that man is created in what the Second Adam would be and that is true as far as the sinless aspect is concerned but the First Adam was superior in body infirmaties and body corruption and 4000 years suffering of the body and genes of Christ that characterized the Second Adam's body. The First Adam was perfect in physical body which Christ could not claim. Adventism would differ slightly with Ephrem here. It is a beautiful idea of Ephrem but the reality is that Christ took on human flesh after 4000 years of deterioration not immediately in the Garden of Eden. That is Adventism.

The other Early Syriac scholar, Narsai also supported the idea of Ephrem in his Homily no. 62, that Jesus is the image of Genesis 1:26 since "He (the Creator) called the first Adam by the name of image in a secondary sense. The image in reality is the Messiah, the second Adam" (Frederick McLeod, "Man as the image of God: its meaning and theological significance in Narsai," Theological Studies vol. 42 [1981]: 458-467; 462).

Free will of Ephrem and Adventism

Just as Adventists are well aware of, Early Syriac Theology also taught in the Eastern church by Ephrem that God created Adam with a free will and that is part of the concept of imago Dei. Ephrem said:

". . . the compulsion of God is an all-prevailing force (but that is not pleasing to Him which is of compulsion) as that whcih is of discerning will therefore in our fruits He calls us who live not as under compulsion, by persuasion. Good is He forever. He labors in these two things: He wills not to constrain our freedom nor again does He suffer us to abuse it. For had he constrained it, He had taken away its power, and had He let it go, He had deprived it of help. He knows that if He constrains He deprives us; He knows that if He casts off He destroys us; He knows that if He teaches He wins us. He has not constrained us and He has not cast off, as the Evil One does; He has taught, chastened, and won us, as being the good God" (Ephrem in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, page 281 op. cit. Beggiani 1981: 15-16).

LaRondelle discussed the free will concepts of Pelagius, which he rejected and also the free will concepts of Wesley which he sees as a hybrid of Protestant grace and Franciscan-Jesuit moral theology. LaRondelle wished to stick to the Lutheran indication of the problem of original sin remaining in us as a continuous problem that needs daily grace from God and forgiveness (321). It may be said that in Adventism there is your pro-Wesleyan free will thinkers and your pro-Lutheran free will thinkers. The role of the free will is not denied but both groups in their own right is trying to keep a healthy balance between avoiding self salvation and impossibility to keep the commandments. When the Lutheran Zinzendorf and Wesley talked about this aspect on the 3rd of September 1741, their debate made Wesley say: "I think we strive about words" (LaRondelle 1984: 319-320). That is the same contention that there is between pro-Wesleyan Adventists and pro-Lutheran Adventists. Both admit the law of God and the Sabbath can be kept and should be kept.

To be continued . . .