Today the Supreme Court decided what is likely the most important religious liberty case to come down in the past two decades.

In Hosanna-Tabor Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Court sided unanimously with a church sued for firing an employee on religious grounds, issuing an opinion on Wednesday that religious employers can keep the government out of hiring and firing decisions. [For additional details on the background and facts of the case, see the Liberty articles "An Issue of Church Autonomy: The Supreme Court Examines the Ministerial Exception Doctrine," (Sept/Oct) and "Hosanna Tabor: The Supreme Court Hears Arguments in a Case with Far-Reaching Implications for Church Organizations" (Nov/Dec).]

The Court’s opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, dismissed as an “extreme position” the plea of EEOC to limit any “ministerial exception” solely to workers who perform “exclusively religious functions.”

Justice Thomas went even further in his concurring opinion, saying that it was clear that the parochial school’s sponsoring church “sincerely” considered the teacher to be a minister, and “That would be sufficient for me to conclude that [this] suit is properly barred by the ministerial exception.”

The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists joined an amicus brief urging the court to rule on behalf of the Lutheran Church.

Said Todd McFarland, associate counsel with the Office of General Counsel and NARLA’s legal advisor: “The General Conference is pleased with the Court’s decision and the reasoning behind it. In particular, the Court’s rejection of the Administration’s view that the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment did not provide protection to religious organizations is especially heartening.  This ruling reinforces that America’s First Freedom remains relevant.”

Many, even among those who call themselves Adventists, question the true origin of the Sabbath and of the 7-day weekly cycle.  Of course, the Bible claims that God instituted both during the Creation Week described in Genesis.  However, critics of the biblical account claim that the seven-day week was actually invented by the Assyrians, or by Sargon I (King of Akkad at around 2350 B.C.), passed on to the Babylonians, who then passed it on to the Jews during their captivity in Babylon around 600 B.C.  The ancient Romans used the eight-day week, but after the adoption of the Julian calendar in the time of Agustus, the seven-day week came into use in the Roman world. For a while, both the seven and eight day weeks coexisted in the Roman world, but by the time Constantine decided to Christianize the Roman world (around A.D. 321) the eight-day weekly cycle had fallen out of use in favor of the more popular seven-day week. (Link)

Secular historians and biblical critics often suggest that the seven-day week likely arose, originally, as a rough division of the lunar monthly cycle.  However, the seven-day week is actually only 23.7% of a lunation, which means that a continuous cycle of seven-day weeks rapidly loses synchronization with the monthly lunar cycle. “This problem is compounded by the fact that a “lunation” is only the mean time for the lunar phase cycle, with each individual lunar phase varying in length. Also, the duodecimal (base-12) and sexagesimal (base-60) numeral systems have historically been the primary systems used to divide other chronological and calendar units. Therefore, it is not immediately apparent why the seven-day week was selected by ancient cultures, rather than a week that included a number of days that was a factor of these numeral systems, such as a six-day or a twelve-day week, or a week that divided the lunation more accurately using a factor of these number systems, such as a five-day or ten-day week. Finally, there are no historical Jewish or Babylonian records that confirm that these cultures explicitly defined the seven-day week as a quarter of a lunation.” (Link)  It seems then like the seven-day weekly cycle is a most unusual or arbitrary division of time that is unrelated, compared to other more obvious divisions of time (month and year), on cyclic natural phenomena.

So, which version of the history of the seven-day week is most likely correct? – that of secular historians and biblical critics?  Or, that of the Bible itself?  Why has a seven-day week been observed for so long by so many cultures?  Why is this particular weekly cycle so popular? – compared to other more natural or “rational” options like the 10-day week that was attempted in France during the bloody French revolution and “enlightenment”?

Well, for one thing, the idea that the Jews adopted the seven-day week from the Babylonians during their captivity some 600 years B.C. is at least partially based on the still popular but effectively falsified “Documentary Hypothesis” of biblical critics. Numerous claims of those who framed the Documentary Hypothesis, and of biblical critics in general, have been definitively falsified.  For example, biblical critics once argued that writing itself had not been invented by the time of Moses.  Of course, numerous 20th century discoveries have falsified this notion – such as the discovery of the ancient Ebla Tablets.

The Ebla Tablets, written some 2200 years B.C., prove that writing, even alphabetic-type writing, was in existence well before Moses. Some of the statements about creation found on these tablets also seem to parallel the Biblical creation narrative, suggesting that the Genesis creation story, or something very similar to it, was known well before the “Deuteronomists” or even Moses came on the scene. In fact, the farther one goes back in time with archeological discoveries, the closer the creation stories seem to get to the one found in the Bible. These tablets also speak of a flood story like that of the Flood story in the Bible. The Ebla Tablets also mention the names Abraham and Isaac, suggesting that such names were known and common during this time. They also tell of two sinful cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, and mention all five of the cities of the valley in the same order mentioned in the Bible. This is in the face of “higher critics” who had claimed that Sodom, Gomorrah, Ur and other Canaan cities of the Bible never did exist. However, the Ebla Tablets showed the Bible was correct and that the critics were wrong (yet again). And the list goes on and on…

Of course, the Ebla Tablets do not mention the seven-day creation week, or any other particular weekly cycle for that matter.  So, maybe the critics are right for once when it comes to at least the origin of the seven-day week?  Consider that if the biblical version is in fact the true version of history that God may have actually provided extra-biblical evidence within life itself of the true origin of the week?  Wouldn’t it be most surprising, from the naturalistic perspective, to find seven-day rhythms within living things?  Yet, this is exactly what has been discovered.  Many living things, to include humans beings, experience seven-day, or “circaseptan” biological cycles.

The relatively new science of chronobiology has uncovered some totally unexpected facts about living things, to include the most puzzling circaseptan or seven-day cycles experienced by many living things. Secular scientists find it difficult to explain how such a seven-day cyclical pattern would arise or evolve in living things by any natural means.

“At first glance, it might seem that weekly rhythms developed in response to the seven day week imposed by human culture thousands of years ago. However, this theory doesn’t hold once you realize that plants, insects, and animals other than humans also have weekly cycles. . . . Biology, therefore, not culture, is probably at the source of our seven day week.”

Susan Perry and Jim Dawson, The Secrets Our Body Clocks Reveal, (New York: Rawson Associates, 1988), pp. 20-21

Campbell summarizes the findings of the world’s foremost authority on rhythms and the pioneer of the science of chronobiology:

“Franz Halberg proposes that body rhythms of about seven days, far from being passively driven by the social cycle of the calendar week, are innate, autonomous, and perhaps the reason why the calendar week arose in the first place… These circaseptan, or about weekly, rhythms are one of the major surprises turned up by modern chronobiology. Fifteen years ago, few scientists would have expected that seven day biological cycles would prove to be so widespread and so long established in the living world. They are of very ancient origin, appearing in primitive one-celled organisms, and are thought to be present even in bacteria, the simplest form of life now existing.”

Jeremy Campbell, Winston Churchill’s Afternoon Nap, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), pp. 75-79.

Specific examples of circaseptan rhythms in humans include: Reject of organ transplants, immune response to infections, blood and urine chemicals, blood pressure, heartbeat, the common cold, coping hormones, and even one’s mood or general state of mind. There is even evidence of a circaseptan cycle in the formation of tooth enamel (Link).

There are also examples in other living things, such as the algae Acetabularia mediterranea (popularly known as mermaid’s wineglass) that shows a seven-day growth cycle or Brazilian bees that observe a seventh-day “Sabbath” rest cycle (Link).

If the seven day week is an invention of culture and religion, as most historians would have us believe, how do we explain innate circaseptan rhythms in “primitive” algae, rats, plants, bees and face flies?  These forms of life have no calendar and can’t read the Torah (Link).  There is even evidence that being in or out of sync with the circaseptan cycle may have an affect on longevity. Consider, for example, that the life spans of the face fly Musca autumnalis or the springtail Folsomia candida are markedly longer when oviposition shifts are allowed to be carried out at intervals that are 7 days apart (Link).

There is, however, research suggesting a lunar influence on various circaseptan cycles (Link).  But several other experiments have shown an intrinsic or endogenous quality to circaseptan cycles that is apparently independent of any external influences – to include that of the lunar cycles (Link).  It does seem, however, that these endogenously derived rhythms are able to respond to external influences (such as circadian influences of day and night or the lunar-induced tides). What is especially interesting is that the circaseptan rhythm, among all the other circadian rhythms, appears to be the one rhythm by which all others are tuned or orchestrated.

“In Franz Halberg’s view, a central feature of biological time structure is the harmonic relationship that exists among the various component frequencies. A striking aspect of this relationship is that the components themselves appear to be harmonics or sub harmonics, multiples or submultiples, of seven…

Circaseptan and circasemiseptan rhythms are not arbitrary, even though they seem to lack counterpart rhythms in the external environment.”

Jeremy Campbell, Winston Churchill’s Afternoon Nap, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), p. 30

And, from a more recent paper published in 2007 the author writes:

The endogenous nature of the about weekly (circaseptan) rhythms is shown by their occurrence in animals kept under laboratory conditions precluding circaseptan periodic input, their appearance as circaseptan reaction pattern after noxious stimuli, or introduction of an antigen, and in human subjects by the observation of their free running (rhythms that are not synchronized to environmental time cues) with a frequency different from the calendar week. It appear that our seven-day week, which is found in many ancient and modern civilizations including the three main monotheistic religions, may be an adaptation to an endogenous biologic rhythm rather than the rhythm being a societally impressed phenomenon.

Erhard Haus, Chronobiology in the Endocrine System, Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews, 59 (2007) 985-1014

Again, given the historical reliability of “higher” biblical critics compared to the fact that the Bible’s claims about history have proven true time and again, combined with the internal evidence for circaseptan rhythms within ourselves and many if not all living things, is it really such a stretch to imagine that the Bible might be right yet again regarding the Creation Week and the Sabbath rest given to us by God from the very beginning of life on this planet?

Consider a situation where someone (the God of the Bible in this case) claimed to have created a given cyclical pattern of time specifically for our benefit (i.e., “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath – Mark 2:27). This is a testable claim. Given the truth of such a claim the implication is very direct and clear. Obviously, in such a situation one should actually expect to find some sort of biorhythm(s) that is tuned to this particular weekly pattern. One should also expect that if one did not follow God’s advice on following this pattern (given that God actually exists and is in fact our Maker), that one would be able to notice a physical difference in one’s general well being when in or out of line with God’s claimed ideal pattern for the weekly cycle. In other words, God has presented a testable hypothesis or claim to us that we can actually test in a scientific, potentially falsifiable, manner.  Perhaps there is a reason why Seventh-day Adventists are the longest lived ethnically diverse group of people in the world (Link)?

It’s like being told to use a particular fuel for your car for optimal performance – by the car’s designer. You can expect some sort of actual physical difference if you don’t use the particular type of fuel you were told to use by the car’s creator.

Just another piece to add to the puzzle…

The Bible makes many extraordinary, even magical, claims about the nature of human history and about the nature of reality in general.  Of course, so do many other fairytale books and well-loved moral fables.  What, if anything, makes the miraculous claims of the Bible any different?  Why should anyone believe in the historical existence of talking donkeys and snakes, a truly virgin birth of an incarnate God-man, people raised from the dead, someone walking on water, splitting the Red Sea to walk through on dry ground, the creation of all life on this planet in just six literal days, a worldwide flood that destroyed every land-dwelling animal except for those on Noah’s ark, and on and on and on?

Some people choose to accept as historical facts certain specific miraculous stories within the Bible, such as the virgin birth of Jesus and his resurrection from the dead, while they reject other stories as just too far fetched, such as a literal six-day creation week.  But, upon what basis does one accept the magical claims of the Bible on the one hand, but reject those on the other?  If one is going to give the Bible any kind of authority to present truly fantastic or miraculous events of any kind, how then is one going to pick and choose which miraculous stories are more or less likely true within the same book? – stories which are all equally presented as historical facts, intended to be taken as such by the biblical authors themselves, within the pages of the Bible?

It seems to me that there is very little reason to accept certain fantastic Biblical stories as historical facts while rejecting others that are presented in essentially the same manner as fable or allegorical.  If one is to be rationally consistent, one must either accept or reject all of the historical (and futuristic) claims of the Bible as the biblical authors intended them to be understood, or reject all of the fantastic, miraculous or magical claims of the Bible all together.  I really don’t see how one can rationally have it both ways?

This was essentially the point of James Barr, a well-known secular scholar of Hebrew at Oxford University.  For example, Barr argued that it is quite clear that the author(s) of the Genesis narrative intended to convey to their readers, to us, a literal historical account of God’s creative act in the formation of life on this planet. I don’t think even liberal secular scholars of Hebrew would deny this, as Barr explains:

Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience. (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the “days” of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.

Letter from Professor James Barr to David C.C. Watson of the UK, dated 23 April 1984.

Now, Barr never did believe that the Biblical account of Creation or the Noachian Flood actually happened as described (He has since passed away).  Barr was just pointing out the fact that the writer/compiler of these stories did in fact believe that the stories he wrote about happened as described and he wished to convey this to his readers. This concept has important implications for Biblical credibility, in my mind, with regard to other equally fantastic claims about historical and future realities.

Of course, there are those who accept the fantastic claims of the Bible “by faith alone” without any need to appeal to anything other than the Bible to support the credibility of the Bible’s claims.  The same can be said for those who make the very same claims for the Qur’an or the Book of Mormon.  For these people, there is no argument beyond, “My Holy Book said it.  I believe it.  That settles it.  No discussion or further investigation is necessary.”

But is there any means by which one might rationally discern which Holy Book, if any, is most likely credible in its fantastic claims?  After all, they can’t all be true since they make conflicting claims as to the true miraculous nature of reality.   What then is there upon which one can be a Christian and believe the claims of the Bible as being most credible? without turning off one’s brain?

Of course, the so-called “higher biblical critics” argue that there is no such rational option – that the stories of the Bible are simply ancient legends or fabrications produced for various social and political purposes.  As one contributor to this forum, Abe Yonder, put it, “Of course any reasonable person knows the creation story is not literal, but fundamentalists are not reasonable, they believe everything the Bible says no matter how absurd… The book of Genesis began with Chapter two verse three. [T]he seven-day creation story was added by the Deuteronomist at Babylon during the fifth century BC (See Harper’s Bible commentary).”

If this is the true version of history, and the Biblical version is nothing more than legends and fable, what does this say about Biblical credibility regarding its fantastic metaphysical claims that cannot be tested or evaluated in a potentially falsifiable manner? – such as the resurrection of Jesus? the future resurrection of the dead in like manner? or eternal life in our future heavenly home?

For me such claims, if true, effectively undermine biblical credibility with regard to anything other than what can be explained by human imagination in the production of moral fables.  There is no more really solid hope for the future, for a better life after this one or a superhuman power to free me from my attraction to sin and self-destruction.

However, if the “higher critics” are wrong, if the Bible can somehow be shown to be reliable in those empirical claims that can be tested and investigated, then that changes everything – at least for me.

So, as just one example, let’s look at the claims of the higher critics regarding the origin of the Books of Moses, or the Torah, in particular. The view of most modern critics is still based on the well-known, still popular, and yet fundamentally flawed “Documentary Hypothesis”. “The documentary hypothesis (sometimes called the Wellhausen hypothesis), holds that the Pentateuch (the Torah, or the Five Books of Moses) was derived from originally independent, parallel and complete narratives [labeled J, D, E, and P], which were subsequently combined into the current form by a series of redactors (editors).” These editors supposedly compiled these independent accounts into one work some 500 years BC during the time of the Babylonian captivity.

Now, consider that the documentary hypothesis has been challenged, since it was first proposed in the late 1800s, quite effectively I might add, by numerous Biblical scholars. Consider, for example, the arguments of Rendsburg (1986) where he demonstrates the linguistic unity and artistry of the composer of all of Genesis. For example, the “J” and “E” sections share a large number of theme-words and linking words, puns, etc.

It becomes simply incredulous that J wrote 12.1-4a, 12:6-9 about the start of Abraham’s spiritual odyssey and that E wrote 22:1-19 about the climax of his spiritual odyssey, and that these two authors living approximately 100 years apart and in different parts of ancient Israel time and again chose the same lexical terms. Surely this is too improbable, especially when such examples can be and have been multiplied over and over. Admittedly, a corresponding word here or there could be coincidental, but the cumulative nature of the evidence tips the scales heavily against the usual division of Genesis into JEP…

The evidence presented here points to the following conclusion: there is much more uniformity and much less fragmentation in the book of Genesis than generally assumed. The standard division of Genesis into J, E, and P strands should be discarded. This method of source criticism is a method of an earlier age, predominantly of the 19th century. If new approaches to the text, such as literary criticism of the type advanced here, deem the Documentary Hypothesis unreasonable and invalid, then source critics will have to rethink earlier conclusions and start anew.

- Rendsberg, p. 104-105

It seems then like “the Documentary Hypothesis and the arguments that support it have been effectively demolished by scholars from many different theological perspectives and areas of expertise. Even so, the ghost of Wellhausen hovers over Old Testament studies and symposiums like a thick fog, adding nothing of substance but effectively obscuring vision. Although actually incompatible with form-critical and archaeology-based studies, the Documentary Hypothesis has managed to remain the mainstay of critical orthodoxy.”

For a further review of the fundamental problems with the Documentary Hypothesis here is an interesting introduction: Link

As an interesting aside, note that ‘the documentary hypothesis was originally based on the supposition that the events in the Torah preceded the invention of writing, or at least its use among the Hebrews. This is because Julius Wellhausen lived in the nineteenth-century, but nineteenth-century notions about ancient literacy have been completely refuted by archaeological evidence. The documentarians have not updated the documentary hypothesis to take this into account, so we still find them assigning very late dates to their hypothetical sources of the Torah…. Archaeology has shown that writing was common during the time in which the events of the Torah were to have taken place.’

– Kenneth Collins, The Torah in Modern Scholarship

As evidence of this, consider that the Ebla Tablets, written some 2200 years BC, prove that writing, even alphabetic-type writing, was in existence well before Moses. Some of the statements about creation found on these tablets also seem to parallel the Biblical creation narrative, suggesting that the Genesis creation story, or something very similar to it, was known well before the “Deuteronomists” or even Moses came on the scene. These tablets also speak of a flood story like that of the flood story in the Bible. The Ebla Tablets also mention the names Abraham and Isaac, suggesting that such names were known and common during this time. They also tell of two sinful cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, and mention all five of the cities of the valley in the same order mentioned in the Bible. This is in the face of “higher critics” who had claimed that Sodom, Gomorrah, Ur and other Canaan cities of the Bible never did exist. However, the Ebla Tablets showed the Bible was correct and that the critics were wrong (yet again). And the list goes on and on.

This is just one of many many examples of the credibility of the Bible being proved superior to those of its “intellectual” critics.  The scholarly critics have been shown to be consistently wrong, over and over again, in their claims regarding ancient history while the Bible has proved true.  How then can one but conclude that the Bible is by far the most accurate history book known to modern man?

So, if you’re going to go with one’s track record, who has demonstrated the most credibility over time? the Bible or its critics?

In 2010 Sergio Silva published an interesting article in the Journal of the Adventist Theological Society entitled, “Development of the Fundamental Beliefs Statement with Particular Reference to the Fundamental Belief #6: Creation.” In this article Silva explains the process of how the current wording of Fundamental Belief #6 of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, our statement of belief on creation, came to be.

In reviewing this topic also consider reading:

A New Statement of Fundamental Beliefs by Lawrence Geraty

Uncovering the Origins of the Statement of Twenty-seven Fundamental Beliefs by Fritz Guy

Preserve the Landmarks, a summary, by EdTruth Staff

According to Silva, when the language for our fundamental beliefs was first being discussed in 1980, a committee (X–1535) was tasked with proposing the wording for FB#6.  Their original proposal read as follows:

That the book of Genesis contains the only inspired, reliable chronicle of the Creation of the world, and that God [the Father], with Christ and the Holy Spirit, is the Creator of all things.  In six literal days the Lord made heaven and the earth and all living things upon it with their supporting environment.  The Lord then established the seventh day as the Sabbath, a perpetual memorial of His completed creative work.  Man was originally created in the image of God, but his fall into sin in response to Satan’s temptation in the Garden of Eden resulted in the progressive defacement of that image.  It also led to marring God’s handiwork in Creation and to the worldwide flood in the days of Noah.  Through Christ, God will eradicate sin and its results from the universe and at the close of human history restore the pristine perfection of His Creation in a new heavens and a new earth.

This recommended wording was received by the “committee of twelve” for final review. Dr. Lawrence Geraty was a member of this committee as was Dr. Fritz Guy who served as secretary. According to Guy, the language originally submitted to the committee was felt to be too specific and narrow.  So, as Guy remembers, Geraty produced the first draft of a completely new statement on Creation (Link) and, after editing by the committee and others, it read as follows:

God is Creator of all things, and has revealed in Scripture the authentic account of His creative activity.  In six days the Lord made “the heaven and the earth” and all living things upon the earth, and rested on the seventh day of that first week.  Thus He established the Sabbath as a perpetual memorial of His completed creative work.  The first man and woman were made in the image of God as the crowning work of Creation, given dominion over the world, and charged with responsibility to care for it.  When the world was finished it was “very good,” declaring the glory of God.

According to Guy, this rewrite was felt to be necessary to be more inclusive – as he explains below:

The only ‘official position’ of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is stated in Fundamental Belief #6, where the language is deliberately Biblical, and broad enough to accommodate various views about Earth’s natural history.

In other words, as Silva explains, “This means that Fundamental Belief #6, as it reads today, can be used to support any approach to the biblical account of Creation, including progressive Creationism, theistic evolution, etc.”  This is important to note since both Drs. Guy and Geraty refer to themselves as “progressive” in regard to their Adventist faith.  In short,  Dr. Guy is an open and unabashed theistic evolutionist who believes that life has existed and evolved on this planet for hundreds of millions of years (see Understanding Genesis, p. 53). Consider, for example, comments he wrote in his 2009 article, Realities for Adventist Theology in the 21st Century:

At the present time there seems to be no good reason to doubt the gradual development and increasing complexity of life over an extended period of time. The fact that this recognition complicates our theology hardly justifies discounting the overwhelming empirical evidence… [We need to start] incorporating into Adventist thinking the idea of a gradually increasing complexity of living organisms over a long period of time as an alternative to the traditional paradigm of a six-day creation less than ten thousand years ago. We need to move beyond a jig-saw-puzzle model of theology, which involves the idea of an interlocking set of convictions such that significantly changing one part destroys the whole. If that were the case, the whole would be completely dependent on each of its parts; and the credibility of Adventism as a whole would be hostage to a short history of life on planet Earth. (pages 8 & 9)

Dr. Geraty, on the other hand, is a bit more guarded in his public statements on creation, but also seems to be quite supportive of theistic ideas or at least those who are trying to promote such ideas.  Consider, for example, Dr. Geraty’s praise for the conversion of former General Conference Vice President Richard Hammill to “progressive” Adventism after his rejection of the literal creation week (Link) (It is also interesting to note that Richard Hammill happened to be the chairman of the Editorial Committee responsible for framing the Adventist Fundamental Beliefs in 1980). Such comments are very hard to overlook despite the occasional lip service that Dr. Geraty occasionally pays to the “fundamentalist” Adventist position on a literal creation week (see Link).

In this regard Dr. Geraty’s comments published in Spectrum in 2010 are most telling:

Christ tells us they will know us by our love, not by our commitment to a seven literal historical, consecutive, contiguous 24-hour day week of creation 6,000 years ago which is NOT in Genesis no matter how much the fundamentalist wing of the church would like to see it there.

Fundamental Belief No. 6 uses Biblical language to which we can all agree; once you start interpreting it according to anyone’s preference you begin to cut out members who have a different interpretation. I wholeheartedly affirm Scripture, but NOT the extra-Biblical interpretation of the Michigan Conference. Since when is salvation by correct knowledge anyway?

Dr. Geraty has also personally challenged the world-wide nature of the Noachian Flood, arguing that the author(s) of Genesis are most likely talking about a local flood.  In the book, Understanding Genesis: Contemporary Adventist Perspectives Dr. Geraty wrote:

“Was the Genesis flood worldwide? There is no evidence for that as of now, but it certainly covered the world known to the author.  It is the opinion of most experts, and little reasonable doubt remains (although some would dispute this) that the events of Genesis 6-8 must have taken place within a limited though indeed a vast area, covering not the entire globe, but the scene of the human story of the previous chapters.”

Dr. Geraty stands here in direct and very open opposition to the historical position of the SDA Church on this issue.  He also, at the same time, challenges the SDA understanding of the inspiration of Mrs. White who clearly claims that she was shown by God that the Noachian Flood was indeed world-wide in nature and was responsible for the formation of much of the geologic an fossil records.  In short, what Dr. Geraty does here is fling the door wide open for the mainstream interpretation of the fossil record as representing millions of years of life existing and evolving on this planet.  How he can then claim, before certain audiences, to be opposed to theistic evolutionism and actually supportive of literal six-day creationism is difficult to understand if not downright deceptive.  His mixed messages, depending upon his audience at the time, seem to me to be politically driven rather than a matter of true personal conviction (see the following Link for further discussion of Dr. Geraty’s views on creation).

It is also interesting to note, in this context, that both Drs. Guy and Geraty were presidents of La Sierra University and brought in science, and even religion, professors to teach there who also happen to reflect their own “progressive” views on Earth’s history.

In any case, when originally brought to a discussion on the floor of the General Conference Session of 1980, Ariel Roth expressed his concerns with the wording of FB#6 proposed by the “committee of twelve”, suggesting the need to include thoughts from the Spirit of Prophecy.  E. J. Humphrey, who inquired about the possibility of including the words “six literal days,” which would clearly distinguish Seventh-day Adventists from many other denominations.  In support of the latter, John V. Stevens stressed that one of the purposes for rewriting the fundamental beliefs and including a statement on Creation was to make what Seventh-day Adventists believe “more easily understood by those not of our faith”; thus, adding the words “six literal days” to that statement “would certainly let the world know what we believe.”

Despite these suggestions from the floor, the statement created by Dr. Geraty was voted upon and became the official statement of the SDA Church on creation.  And, this more open statement has born fruit, to include the current situation at La Sierra University where long ages for life existing and evolving on this planet are taught as the true story of origins to our own sons and daughters.  As David Asscherick originally observed in his now infamous letter to church leadership:

It is a matter of incontestable fact that naturalistic evolution is being taught at La Sierra University. This is not in and of itself a bad thing. Evolution should be taught at our denominational universities.” He continued, “But it should be taught as a competing and inimical worldview to the biblical worldview. (read more…)

The situation at LSU, and some of our other schools to a lesser degree, remains essentially unchanged since Asscherick’s letter was written (April, 2009).  Despite the heated nature of the controversy, most of the professors of science, and even of religion, at LSU continue to support and promote within their classrooms modern evolutionary theories of life existing and evolving on this planet, in a Darwinian manner, over hundreds of millions of years.

However, some good has come from this discussion.  At the very least the membership of the church at large are more aware of what is taking place in our own schools and what is being taught as truth to our sons and daughters who are being sent, at great expense and sacrifice, to supposedly “SDA” schools that advertise true “Adventist” education.  Also, it was most encouraging to see Ted Wilson, our new General Conference President, propose an effort to reword FB#6.

Certainly unexpected by many was the motion brought to the floor by Dr. Ted N. C. Wilson, the newly elected president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. On the one hand, Wilson’s motion was in part a response to various requests to clarify the Fundamental Belief #6 as requested by some voices in the International Faith & Science Conferences (2004), the Faith and Science Council, the Michigan and Northern California Conferences. On the other hand, his motion reflected his comprehensive vision for the church’s mission and his life of service to the church.

Wilson’s motion included a request to approve the statement “A Reaffirmation of Creation,” which more clearly stated the Adventist understanding regarding origins, based on the interpretation of Genesis 1-11. In addition, his motion included a request that the General Conference Administration initiate the process of integration of Fundamental Belief #6 and the statement “A Reaffirmation of Creation.” The motion was enthusiastically carried and strongly supported.

In summary, it is not an overstatement to say that Wilson’s motion voted on the floor of the General Conference in Atlanta, GA on June 30, 2010 is a remarkable development to be remembered in Seventh-day Adventist history as part of the great leap forward, leading us to a new reformation.

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By Sean Pitman:

There are many people who think that the “Fundamental Beliefs” of the Seventh-day Adventist Church have turned into a kind of creed or unchangeable set of doctrinal beliefs or Biblical interpretations that supersede the Bible itself in importance and authority.  It has therefore been suggested that the Adventist Church is in danger of falling into the same trap that other Christian denominations and religious organizations have fallen into, of making human interpretations and traditions superior to the Bible as its own creed and interpreter.

Is this true? Has the Adventist Church truly diverged from the foundational protestant statement, “We have no creed but the Bible”?  Are the efforts of those of us who manage this website to promote, within our own schools and churches, the teachings and authority of the basic fundamental goals and ideals of the church, as an organization, way off base? – at conflict with the concept of the Bible as its own interpreter for each individual?  There are those who think so. Consider, for example, the following comment recently posted to this forum:

I am happy for the church to state what they believe as well, but the minute the church starts to do what Educate Truth is advocating, demanding orthodoxy as a test of fellowship and employment, then you have crossed over the line. The church no longer believes the “The Bible and the Bible Only”, because it is usurping the role of the Holy Spirit to interpret the Bible to each individual, and to bring conviction. Instead of allowing the Bible to be broadly interpreted as needed to meet peoples need, the creed limits the Bible to one narrow understanding which may not be where the Holy Spirit is going in some people’s lives. At the very least, the church is putting itself in the place of God by attempting to coerce thought and belief. Coercion is Satan’s tactic, not God’s. (Link)

This individual is not alone in his concerns over this issue.  This was also the basic concern of the founders of the Adventist Church.  Many of the founding fathers, and mothers, of our church had been active and devoted members of other protestant churches.  When they had come upon what they believed to be new light from the Bible, which happened to conflict with the creeds of their own churches, they were removed from fellowship with the church families that they loved.  They therefore originally thought of creedal statements, and even church organization, as entirely evil and fought very hard to prevent the early Adventist movement from organizing or forming official creedal statements of belief.  This feeling has continued within our church to one degree or another and is often cited as a basis for allowing fundamentally divergent views to be preached and taught within our churches and schools.

For example, in support of allowing paid SDA representatives to teach fundamentally diverging opinions, Randal Wisbey, current president of La Sierra University, has quoted J.N. Loughborough in his 1861 statement regarding the issue of Church order and government:

J.N. Loughborough

The first step of apostasy is to get up a creed, telling us what we shall believe. The second is to make that creed a test of fellowship. The third is to try members by that creed. The fourth is to denounce as heretics those who do not believe that creed. And, fifth, to commit persecution against such.(¹⁾

The problem, of course, is that Wisbey and others who reference the founding fathers of the church with regard to church order and government fail to reference Loughborough’s 1907 work, The Church, Its Organization, Order and Discipline.  Although originally opposed to such constraints, it was John Loughborough, together with James White, who first started to realize the need for some sort of internal enforcement of Church order and discipline – i.e., an actual Church government.

      As our numbers increased, it was evident that without some form of organization, there would be great confusion, and the work could not be carried forward successfully. To provide for the support of the ministry, for carrying on the work in new fields, for protecting both the church and ministry from unworthy members, for holding church property, for the publication of the truth through the press, and for other objects, organization was indispensable.⁽²⁾

Of course, those who were not considered to accurately represent the views of the early Adventist Church did not receive “cards of commendation”.  And what was the attitude of such persons? according to Loughborough?:

     Of course those who claimed “liberty to do as they pleased,” to “preach what they pleased,” and to “go when and where they pleased,” without “consultation with any one,” failed to get cards of commendation. They, with their sympathizers, drew off and commenced a warfare against those whom they claimed were “depriving them of their liberty.” Knowing that it was the Testimonies that had prompted us as a people to act, to establish “order,” these opponents soon turned their warfare against instruction from that source, claiming that “when they got that gift out of the way, the message would go unrestrained to its `loud cry.’ ”

One of the principal claims made by those who warred against organization was that it “abridged their liberty and independence, and that if one stood clear before the Lord that was all the organization needed,” etc… Upon this point, when church order was contested, we read: “Satan well knows that success only attend order and harmonious action. He well knows that everything connected with heaven is in perfect order, that subjection and thorough discipline mark the movements of the angelic host. . . .  He deceives even the professed people of God, and makes them believe that order and discipline are enemies to spirituality; that the only safety for them is to let each pursue his own course. . . .  All the efforts made to establish order are considered dangerous, a restriction of rightful liberty, and hence are feared as popery.” (³⁾

When those who back in the “sixties” [1860s] witnessed the battle of establishing church order now hear persons, as conscientious no doubt as those back there, utter almost the identical words that were then used by those opposing order, it need not be wondered that they fear the result of such statements as the following: “Perfect unity means absolute independence, – each one knowing for himself. Why, we could not have outward disorganization if we all believed in the Lord. . . . This question of organization is a simple thing. All there is to it is for each individual to give himself to the Lord, and then the Lord will do with him just what he wants to, and that all the time. . . . Our only safety, under God, is to go back to the place where God is able to take a multitude of people and make them one, without parliamentary rules, without committee work, without legislation of any kind.” – General Conference Bulletin of 1899.

Superficially considered, this might seem to be a blessed state, a heaven indeed; but, as already noted on a preceding page, we read of heaven itself and its leadings that “the god of heaven is a god of order, and he requires all his followers to have rules and regulations to preserve order.” (²⁾

Yet Wisbey, and others, often quote Ellen White, of all people, in support of “progressive” Adventism where the maintenance of internal church doctrinal standards is viewed as quite harmful to growth, akin to what the Catholic Church did to Galileo:

     There is no excuse for anyone to take the position that there is no more truth to be revealed, and that our expositions of the Scripture are without error.^{(1, 4)}

 

Such “progressive” individuals fail to note that although Ellen White does indeed use the phrase “unity in diversity,” (⁵⁾ and stated that “Instructors in our schools should never be bound about by being told that they are to teach only what has been taught hitherto,” (⁶⁾ she also maintained that the landmarks and pillars of Adventist truth were to remain.  Concepts that impact the science of geology which she “was shown” to be  identified as permanent include the concept of six literal, empirical,  historical 24-hour days of creation, culminating with a literal 24-hour Sabbath day of rest, and that life on earth was non-existent before the literal creation week described in Genesis.⁽⁷⁾

She also writes that no one is to go ahead or fall behind the current leading of God in the understanding of the Church as an organized body and expect to remain a recognized part of that body.

     God is leading out a people, not a few separate individuals here and there, one believing one thing, another that.  Angels of God are doing the work committed to their trust.  The third angels is leading out and purifying a people, and they should move with him unitedly. Some run ahead of the angels that are leading His people; but they have to retrace every step, and meekly follow no faster than the angels lead… ⁽⁸⁾

The Word of God does not give license for one man to set up his judgment in opposition to the judgment of the church, neither is he allowed to urge his opinions against the opinions of the church. If there were no church discipline and government, the church would go to fragments; it could not hold together as a body. There have ever been individuals of independent minds, who have claimed that they were right, that God has especially taught, impressed, and led them. Each has a theory of his own, views peculiar to himself, and each claims that his views are in accordance with the Word of God. Each one has a different theory and faith, yet each claims special light from God. These draw away from the body, and each one is a separate church of himself. All these can not be right, yet they all claim to be led of the Lord. The word of inspiration is not yea and nay, but yea and amen in Christ Jesus. (9)

How are those who think themselves so “progressive” in advance of the foundational pillars of the organized SDA Church on such basic fundamental issues going to be remotely capable of “bringing our young people home at the end of the day?”,(¹⁰⁾ as Elder Paulsen put it, if they don’t really believe in or see evidence for the home message to begin with?  Ultimately, is there to be no real accountability to the organized SDA Church for what is presented as “truth” from either pulpit or classroom? – by paid representatives supported by God’s own monies in the forms of tithes and offerings?

Such a perspective does not lead to growth, but to chaos and anarchy and eventual fragmentation of any organization.  For any organization to remain viable, internal order and discipline must be maintained.  This is not the same situation as occurred between the Catholic Church and Galileo where the Church thought to take on political and civil powers over all peoples.  That is never a good idea and is the very reason for the need of separation between church and state.  People should always be free to join or to leave any religious organization at will without any repercussions under civil law. However, this isn’t to say that internal government within the churrch is also dangerous or that it is unnecessary.   To the contrary, without the enforcement of internal order and government upon certain core principles and ideals, no organization of any kind could exist.  The order and government of the Adventist Church is itself inspired by God and in keeping with the general harmony and order that is displayed in Heaven.  God is a God of order and government.  He is not a God of chaos and anarchy.

The viability of the SDA Church, as an organization inspired by God, and the developing minds of a generation of SDA young people, is in our hands.

1. Dwyer, Bonnie. In the Eye of the Storm. 4, s.l. : Spectrum, 2009, Vol. 37.

2. Loughborough, JN. Testimonies for the Church. No. 32, p. 30.

3. Loughborough, JN. Testimonies for the Church. p. 650. Vol. 1.

4. White, Ellen G. Counsels to Writers and Editors. p. 35.

5. Nichol, Francis D. SDA Bible Commentary, 7 vols. plus supplement. Washington, D.C. : Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1970. p. 1083. Vol. 6.

6. White, Ellen. G. Silver Spring, MD : Ellen G. White Estate, 1888.

7. —. Spiritual Gifts, 4 vols. Battle Creek, MI : Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1858, 1860, 1864. pp. 90-93. Vol. 3.

8. —. Testimonies for the Church. Vol. 1. p. 207.

9. —. Testimonies for the Church. Vol. 1. p. 428, 429.

10. Paulsen, Jan. An Appeal. Adventist News Network. [Online] 2009. [Cited: December 21, 2009.] http://news.adventist.org/statements/an-appeal.html.

By Sean Pitman

Ervin Taylor

Ervin Taylor, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California, Riverside. He is also a long-time supporter, executive publisher, and contributor to the “progressive” journal Adventist Today and is a fair representative of the face of “progressive” Adventism in general. As an ardent progressive Adventist, he has been a fairly active antagonist against some of the historic pillars of Adventism to include the efforts of this website to support and promote the stated goals and ideals of the Adventist church as an organization within our own schools – especially regarding the church’s position on origins.

It has never been a secret that Dr. Taylor is adamantly opposed to the Church’s position on a literal six-day creation week a few thousand years ago, promoting instead the mainstream evolutionary view of the origin of life over billions of years on this planet, or that he openly questions many of the other “fundamental” doctrinal positions of the Adventist Church.  At one of his lectures a few years back he was asked what he would tell his own granddaughter if she were to ask him for evidence of God’s existence, to which he replied, “I don’t know.”  Just yesterday he essentially repeated this very same agnostic perspective in one of his comments within this forum:

I have always been attracted to the position of Christian agnosticism. (Many, many years ago, at PUC I gave a talk with that title, as I recall, during a week of spiritual emphasis.) (Link)

What does it mean to be a “Christian agnostic”?  or an “Adventist in good and regular standing” when one believes in very few of the “fundamental” goals and ideals of the organized church?  And, perhaps more importantly, why would our own Adventists leadership invite a “Christian Agnostic” to come and regularly lecture our own young people, at schools like PUC and LSU, on the virtues of agnosticism?  to promote Christian ethics without promoting the promise and sold hope of Christ?  and the future reality of our world made new as it was originally intended to be (without the use of the evils of pain and death employed by natural selection or the ‘survival of the fittest’)?

Of course, when presented with specific questions regarding his various beliefs that directly undermine the fundamental positions of the church, Dr. Taylor, and others like him, argue that they believe in the “family model” of Adventism whereby one need not believe in or support the doctrinal positions of the church in order to be considered a good member or even an official representative of the church.  Evidently, one does not even need to be all to sure as to the evidence supporting God’s very existence to be a good “Adventist”.

Yet, when pressed, Dr. Taylor says, perhaps for political reasons in certain settings, that he does actually believe in God and in Jesus as the Son of God, born into this world from a virgin woman and raised from the dead after three days to ascend to heaven to intercede for us with the Father.  It seems strange to me, therefore, that Dr. Taylor and those like him seem so eager to accept the fantastic metaphysical claims of the Bible when it comes to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, but reject much of the rest of what the Bible claims regarding historical realities which seem to disagree with their own understanding of mainstream science.  How is the Bible remotely credible on the one hand while being so far off base on the other?

Dr. Taylor suggests that those who actually believe all of what the Bible claims about historical realities are living in Alice’s Wonderland.

If a belief in the what the Bible says about about the origin of life on this planet is like living in Alice’s Wonderland, then so is a belief in the far more fantastic metaphysical claims of the Bible regarding the origin of Jesus, born of God the Father to a virgin woman, raised from the dead after three days, and taken to Heaven to commence with the rest of the Plan of Salvation for those who claim to believe in such fairytale nonsense! – like Dr. Taylor!

Why do those like Dr. Taylor claim to live within one Wonderland, full of irrational baseless nonsense, but laugh at those who accept all of what the Wonderland Book has to say about the place?

I suggest that such individuals, as brilliant as they think they are, aren’t being consistent with themselves. They’re trying to fit within two “incommensurate worlds”. It simply doesn’t work… Mr. Hatter.

First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come… But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.

For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.

2 Peter 3:3-6; Isaiah 5:21; Proverbs 26:5; 1 Cor. 1:18

By Wesley Kime M.D.

St. Faith and Dr. Evidence have gone to the blogs, duking it out for custody of LIKE and DISLIKE.  You two seem as separated as East and West and never the twain shall meet except at Armageddon. You seem to think you’re apples and oranges growing in separate groves continents apart, incapable of cross-pollination, brought to proximity only by UPS Air Freight and Trader Joes, or Spectrum or Educate Truth.  Each proclaims he holds the keys to the kingdom and the other the keys to hell.

Break it up, you two!  Very unseemly. You’re supposed to be married, a marriage made in heaven, remember?  And you’re Adventist, remember?  Alas, Another Adventist divorce, and not an amiable one.

It’s time you two got some serious counseling.  I’ve been waiting for that to happen.  Alas, it hasn’t.  I’ll try.

I’ll try by parables, not by syllogistic vectoring or fusillades of quotes.  And the parable I give is physiology.  For to me, being an MD (parabolic of the health professions), physiology is the most immediate and compelling parable of how Faith, by whatever name, and Evidence, by whatever name, work.  It is what I’ve studied for a lifetime, and — since announcing it seems important nowadays, even in the pulpit — have my doctorate in.  Also parabolic is the research laboratory, where I spent a couple of years of my life.

Physiology is the parable of how, in His image, we are fearfully & wonderfully made.  Right now physiology might well be even more informative than theology or academia.

Faith and Evidence: you are organs in the same organism, integral and integrated, afferent and efferent: you are the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, the frontal cortex and brain stem.  You are systole and diastole, the left and right ventricles, one balancing and empowering the other.    The left ventricle can’t eject until the right ventricle empties into it.

You are male and female, and what God hath joined together, thus and thus only to be fruitful and multiply, let no man put asunder.

It works very like human physiology with enzymes and hormones, cells and organs, bone and stromal jelly all working together in the same person.  Or like the separate kingdoms, animals breathing carbon dioxide out and oxygen in, and plants taking carbon dioxide in and producing oxygen.

When thinking of separate organisms, it’s most like symbiosis.  Symbiosis, as per favorite professorial PowerPoint, is when two beings or creatures, like fungus and intestine, or fungus and orchid, not merely assist each other but depend upon each other for mutual survival.  The very excrement of one is food for the other, food the other gets nowhere else.

Where does Evidence end and Faith begin?  Ideally one can’t tell: it’s seamless.  But sometimes Evidence seems to have abandoned Faith, a sore trial. Alas, Faith is sometimes the one that weakens, falters, faints.  Evidence and Faith are designed to work as fail-safes, backups, as reserves so that when one chokes out the other kicks in.  It’s normal and physiological for one to be active and the other not.  So it’s diastole and then systole., diastole-systole, forever.  If both ventricles are active simultaneously that’s arrhythmia and you’re sick; if neither, that’s cardiac arrest and you’re dead.

With Faith and Evidence working together like that, there’s no room for philosophical detours into servitude or blind Faith, a term which, it will be happily noted, is not herein used.  Except that it brings us to commensalism and our next PowerPoint.  That’s when two beings or creatures or living entities simply coexist on the same planet, or in the same organism, but are functionally oblivious of each other.  Then Faith is dead blind; Evidence is a dead-end.  By the way, when they coexist on the same blog they tend to be hostile and oblivious.

That’s all very poetic and beatitudinal but now for the nitty-gritty, the lab.  Popular wisdom and scientific myth to the contrary, the lab is not the model of Evidence supreme.  It’s more the model – in the lab we have experimental “models,” not parables — of total, constant interdependence of Faith and Evidence, sometimes a tense and sweaty relation, interested or disinterested, manipulated or liberated.  Mountains of Faith are required before Evidence ever comes on the scene, or can: first by the investigator, overarching Faith in the hypothesis he sets out to prove, not infrequently against already existing proof to the contrary.  Faith by the university in the investigator’s record and his spiel.  For grant funding by the NIH or whatever governmental agency or parochial foundation, the grantor will have to have Faith that the conclusions accruing from the investigation will be totally objective even if unwelcome or quite the opposite, friendly.  Finally the lab proceeds by Faith in hiring techs and engaging research fellows and expensive analytical and data processing equipment and experimental animal cages, and likewise exercising their own kind of Faith, Animal Rights Activists who somehow are in the process.

Then and only then come the data, the closest science ever sees of pure Evidence.

And finally, the – ta dah! — conclusion!, hopefully (Faith is already back) reflecting only, and honestly, and intelligently, the data.  “From the foregoing data it can be concluded that…” is the required, so familiar way The Journal of Clinical Investigation or Nature or Lancet put it, whereupon the rebuttals and counter experiments, the counter-conclusions, the rancor, the ardor, the hubris settles in.  Again.  I’ve been there.

Meanwhile back at our big tent, big enough for every diversity of culture, every worship- and lifestyle, ideology, theology and theodicy, ethic and ethnic, thus big enough, surely, but apparently questionably, for both Faith and Evidence.  By the way, I’m so old I remember when the big tent was for evangelism; now, more like a flea market.

We all have attaché cases bulging with proof texts for either Faith or Evidence – either or.  To me, all those texts prove neither.  They prove both.  Like John 20:7, where Christ instructed Thomas to “reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side,” for proof. In the next breath He blessed those who didn’t require such proof, but didn’t curse Thomas either, but gave us Thomas’s experiential proof for our own Faith.  And John 10:38 where He says, even though you “do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.”  Which immediately confronts us with the consummate circular interaction: “No man can come to Me except the Father … draw him,” but “no one cometh unto the Father but by Me.”  John 6:44; 14:6.

And do we SDAs not understand – perhaps it is peculiar to and distinguishing of Adventists – that the whole Great Controversy is the story of God presenting proof to the universe, consummated by the Evidence of His crucifixion, of His character, and proof that Satan lied?  God, we believe, we know, could have simply proclaimed both those things and commanded that the universe simply believe it.

As Adventists, what happens when, as foretold in Matthew 24:24, St. Faith does the St. Vitus Dance and Dr. Evidence is operating without a license, behind a mask behind a mask – so that if it were possible the very elect will be deceived?  Then, only those who have stocked up on both will survive.

For an Adventist, where do Evidence and Faith end and God begin?  From the beginning and throughout.  Without Him central, this whole essay, never meant to be heavy, would be foolishness.  If Faith cannot survive without Evidence, neither of them exist without God.  Directly or indirectly, everything comes from Him.  In the end, at bottom, always, that’s what Faith and Evidence are all about, God.  To prove Him, confirm Him; to serve Him; to worship Him, praise Him, which is why we were created.  As described in Genesis 1, where Faith and Evidence first embraced, and were first put asunder, whereupon Cain bashed Abel to pulp.

For the Evidence and Faith of Adventism, Genesis 1 is Ground Zero.

by Sean Pitman:

In their new book, God, Sky, and Land, Drs. Bull and Guy (former president of La Sierra University) argue that, “The ancient Hebrews were operating with only two explanacepts, God and Humans. Therefore, any humanly unexplainable phenomenon was by default attributed to God.”  They go on to suggest that Genesis must be read through this and other limited perspectives and therefore cannot be taken literally from the modern perspective.  For example, they discuss what they claim is the ancient Hebrew concept of a flat Earth and a solid metallic or crystalline half-dome covering the Earth. Certainly these concepts cannot be accepted by the modern reader and therefore the text of Genesis simply cannot be taken to be a literal historical account in any empirically-trustworthy or factual sense of the word.

Brian Bull

Fritz Guy

At least part of the problem with the thesis proposed by Bull and Guy is that, contrary to their assertion, the Biblical authors did seem to have a rather good concept of “chance” occurrences outside of the direct action of either God or man – i.e., the Biblical authors had a concept of natural laws that function independent of the direct actions of either God or man.

For one example of this understanding, consider the experiment described in the Bible where the Philistines put the Ark of God into a cart to send it back to Israel.

Now then, get a new cart ready, with two cows that have calved and have never been yoked. Hitch the cows to the cart, but take their calves away and pen them up. Take the ark of the Lord and put it on the cart, and in a chest beside it put the gold objects you are sending back to him as a guilt offering. Send it on its way, but keep watching it. If it goes up to its own territory, toward Beth Shemesh, then the Lord has brought this great disaster on us. But if it does not, then we will know that it was not his hand that struck us and that it happened to us by chance. – 1 Samuel 6:1-12

Notice that the concept of random chance events or natural law was well established in the mind of this biblical author.

Randall Younker

Another problem with the arguments presented by Bull and Guy is in regard to the supposedly Hebrew concept of “raqi’a” as an inverted metallic or otherwise solid half dome covering of a flat Earth. According to Randall Younker (Andrews University):

“The idea that the ancient Hebrews believed the heaven(s) was a solid vault appears to emerged for the first time only during the early 19th century when introduced as part of the flat earth concept introduced by Washington Irving and Antoine-Jean Letronne. Scholars who supported this idea argued that the flat earth/vaulted heaven was held throughout the early Christian and Medieval periods, and indeed, was an idea that goes back into antiquity and was held by both ancient Mesopotamians and Hebrews. However, more recent research has shown that the idea of a flat earth was not held by either the early Christian church nor Medieval scholars. Indeed, the overwhelming evidence is that they believed in a spherical earth surrounded by celestial spheres (sometimes hard, sometimes soft) that conveyed the sun, moon, stars and planets in their orbits around the earth. Moreover, research of ancient Babylonian astronomical documents shows that they did not have the concept of a heavenly vault. Rather, this was erroneously introduced into the scholarly literature by a mistranslation of Enuma Elish by Peter Jensen.

A review of the linguistic arguments that the Hebrews believed in the idea of a flat earth and vaulted heaven shows that the arguments are unfounded. The arguments derive from passages that are clearly figurative in nature. Indeed, one of the great ironies in recreating a Hebrew cosmology is that scholars have tended to treat figurative usages as literal (e.g. Psalms and Job), while treating literal passages such as in Genesis as figurative. The noun form of raqia is never associated with hard substances in any of its usages in Biblical Hebrew; only the verbal form raqa. And even the latter cannot be definitely tied to metals, etc. Rather it is understood as a process in which a substance is ‘thinned’ – this can include pounding, but also includes stretching. The noun raqia is best translated as expanse in all of its usages.”

Randall Younker, The Myth of the Solid Heavenly Dome: Another Look at the Hebrew [raqia], pre-published version, July 2009

If the writer(s) of Genesis believed that the raqi’a was a solid structure, it seems odd to me that God would be quoted as defining it as “sky” – a place within which birds can also fly (Gen. 1:8, 20 and Deut. 4:17). Now I know that some argue that the description is of birds flying across, not within, the raqi’a (in possible conflict with Deut. 4:17). However, everything seems to fit better, as far as I can tell, if this term is understood as an expanse – similar to the space or raqi’a that contains the sun, moon, and stars (Gen. 1:14).  Consider also that the psalmist spoke of God’s “sanctuary’ as being “in the firmament” or raqi’a (Psalm 150:1).

It seems like the context in which this word is used needs to be taken into account before one automatically assumes that the author(s) were clearly talking about some solid crystalline or metallic dome-shaped structure. In context, this doesn’t seem clear at all – and was probably why the original NIV translators used the word “expanse” instead of definitively indicating something more solid.

Now, I understand that this is an attempt by many to undermine a literal view of the Genesis account – despite the fact that the author(s) of this account clearly intended it to be taken literally. The problem is that you don’t have to be a scientist to be a good witness in describing what you saw in the language that you understand. It is very difficult to misinterpret something as basic and easy to understand and describe as “evenings and mornings”. In other words, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice “evenings and mornings”. It also wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to understand God if God had said, “By the way, it took me a bit longer than one week to make everything on Earth . . .”

Really, if God doesn’t actually speak to us in language that we can understand when he is talking about our origins, why even bother? Why say that it took a “week” when it really took hundreds of millions of years? Why even bother describing evenings and mornings in such detail and in such consistency? – so much so that the authors themselves believed in the literal interpretation of their own work? It would only hurt the credibility of the metaphysical claims of the Bible to find out that its physical claims, especially those that are so easily investigated, aren’t actually true.

God knows this. In fact, he often uses physical evidence to support his metaphysical claims within the Bible – just read the story of the healing of the paralytic in Mark 2:9 – “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, take your mat and walk’?…” Clearly, the falsification of the physical claim says something about the validity of the metaphysical claim as well . . .

Suffice it to say that there are plenty of scholars on both sides of most of these issues. One has to somehow weigh the evidence on a personal basis rather than blindly go along with the consensus view of the so-called “experts” all the time.

By Dr. Arthur Chadwick and Sean Pitman

It used to be that the debate between religion and science was primarily over naturalistic evolutionism vs. Biblical creationism. No longer. Theistic evolutionism, once in the backseat in these discussions, has come to the forefront in no small part because of the efforts of Francis Collins. Collins was the director of the Human Genome Project, and is currently serving as the director of the National Institutes of Health, so he is no lightweight in science. Also, Collins claims to be an evangelical Christian. When a person of his caliber speaks on the relationship between science and faith, people sit up and listen.  And, in his 2006 best selling book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, Collins argues that anatomically modern humans emerged from primate ancestors perhaps 100,000 years ago—long before the Genesis time frame—and originated with a population that numbered “something like 10,000, not two individuals.”

In response to the theistic evolutionism of Collins and other prominent Christian scientists coming to the forefront, Al Mohler, President of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said:

“The moment you say ‘We have to abandon this theology in order to have the respect of the world,’ you end up with neither biblical orthodoxy nor the respect of the world.”¹

So, why are conservative evangelical Christians like Mohler and others like him so upset by the challenge of theistic evolutionism? Perhaps it is because Dr. Mohler knows more than the average person about the relationship between science and faith?  Of course, Mohler isn’t the only one who sees efforts to mix any form of modern evolutionism with Christianity as misguided at best.  Consider, for example, the view of Richard Dawkins regarding this effort.  In his fairly recent book, The God Delusion, Dawkins suggests that the whole Gospel story of Jesus and the reason for his life and death fall apart if the Genesis account of Adam and Eve is not literally true:

“Oh, but of course, the story of Adam and Eve was only ever symbolic, wasn’t it? Symbolic? So, in order to impress himself, Jesus had himself tortured and executed, in vicarious punishment for a symbolic sin committed by a non-existent individual? As I said, barking mad, as well as viciously unpleasant.”²

For such reasons Dawkins pulls no punches when dealing with Christians who want to also hold to modern evolutionism:

“I think the evangelical Christians have really sort of got it right in a way, in seeing evolution as the enemy. Whereas the more, what shall we say, sophisticated theologians are quite happy to live with evolution, I think they’re deluded. I think the evangelicals have got it right, in that there really is a deep incompatibility between evolution and Christianity … ”³

It seems that, given his starting premise, Dawkins makes very good sense here.  The effort to mix modern evolutionism with Christianity will end up destroying the very basis of Christianity.  It really does make Jesus appear to be the lunatic Dawkins makes him out to be.  The Gospel hope of Christianity, with regard to the futuristic claims of Jesus and the meaning of his life and death, simply don’t hold together in a rational way if the literal nature of the Genesis narrative is undermined.

1. Haggerty, B.B., Evangelicals question the existence of Adam and Eve,

………. NPR, 9 August 2011.

2. Dawkins, R., The God Delusion, p. 253, emphasis in original, 2006.

3. Howard Condor interviewing Richard Dawkins on Revelation TV, Feb 2011;

……… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfe4IUB9NTk.