Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
@Bill Sorensen: “I don’t know if anyone has really been able to follow your thinking…”

A tad, a smidgeon, just slightly overstated maybe? Just a tad, just a smidgeon, at the cost of not a few dislikes? Well, I for one do follow it. And with great admiration. Great.

Changing the Wording of Adventist Fundamental Belief #6 on Creation
Mainly for the joy of crafting figures of speech, I’ve wanted to drop a couple onto this thread dealing with re-re-rewording our FB#6 – #6 got fritzed and our ever-bigger tent guy-wired – but that wouldn’t go over too well with anybody, even, I don’t suppose, Sean. And rightly so. I’d be rather lonely. Anyway, it isn’t what needs to be said.

What I needed to say is that, Like Sean, I have been a tad surprised, at least upon first reading, at the lack of enthusiasm, by EduTruth’s sympathizers, for rewriting #6. Sean seems to be rather alone around here. So I wanted to assure him he isn’t. I for one stand with him, no ifs, ands, buts, or synecdoches. Rewrite #6 (even if that sounds like a bumper stocker).

That said, I’ll have to say that, upon second reading, I can understand the loyal objections, and sympathize. (I can also apprehend instantly the expected disloyal objections and shall dismiss them without ado.) Rewriting #6 to the same degree of granite-hard certainty as the tables of stone upon which God’s own finger etched His commandments as clearly as anything ever written on anything, or even as clearly as LSU’s new construction bonds constructed of concrete, would hardly slow down those hellbent upon hermeneuticizing the starch out of it, or for that matter all the rest, 27 I believe, so why bother?

It should be rewritten anyway. Sean’s reasons as presented in his lead essay and his rejoinders, and those of the GC resolution mandating the rewriting, are already diamond hard and crystal clear, gems that can stand alone, warranting only admiration and affirmation, not anticlimactic and necessarily inferior recapitulation.

I need but add my amen – amen! – and, if I may, an appendix, to wit: So why FB#6 in the first place? Paul has the answer, again: Gal 3:19 ESV (one word paraphrased): “Why then the FB#6? It was added because of transgression.” And then of course Paul can’t resist a figure of speech (love his figures of speech): It is our teacher.

Plus this: it wasn’t necessary, certainly not God’s ideal, that Israel have a king, but He agreed, and Israel got Saul, who had to be rewritten, and David, who wrote psalms replete with figures of speech (the Lord is my shepherd), whom God loved. In that spirit let the church rewrite #6, this time not as an toy balloon that can be blown big and let loose phritz-z-zing into the big tent, but as settled matter, like a rock, written correctly and accurately and unmistakably and purposefully, just as Dr. Pitman writes his pathology reports. No figures of speech but a lot of prayers, much praying and fasting (a figure of speech, if you must), praying and pleading for the Holy Spirit, more necessary than any committee’s re-word processor, and without which any rewriting, however solid, is a house built upon sand.

But all this rewriting won’t be for my benefit. I didn’t even know FBs existed or that there was a moot #6, or how it had been rewritten, or why, until I learned of it here. I’m not an FB man (either Fundamental Belief or FaceBook). (I’ve never gone ballistically catechistic, may I say.) I’ve always gone to the source, to Genesis 1, or the Commandments, the KJV or (as I currently favor) the ESV, and EGW, which are clear enough and good enough for me, thanks not a little to their exquisite figures of speech.

Beyond the Creation Story – Why the Controversy Matters
@Ken: Ken, re. yours of May 31, 15 12:42 pm: … those standing up for FB28 have every right to do so…until they [presumably the FBs, not the communicants, although either could be changed in a twinkling of any eye] are democratically changed.”

FB28? What’s that? You probably know better than I. Genesis 1 I can quote; FB28 I can’t. And won’t bother to check. I couldn’t even tell you where to find those FBs. I read what you say more assiduously than the FBs. (What’s FB? FaceBook?)

In the first place I think you’ve got Adventism wrong, or at least Adventism as I know it. Well, maybe you haven’t, the postmodernist kind anyway. I’m pre-catechistic, ergo prehistoric, alas. I’m that old.

FB28 or whatever it is, if it WERE changed, democratically or otherwise, dramatically or creepingly, by evolution or edict, even if expunged and expurgated in the interest of big-tent accord, which seemed on the verge of happening pre-T. Wilson, and may yet, I wouldn’t even know it until I saw it here. You’d know before I would.

With or without and despite FB28 or whatever, or EduTruth, I’d still honor Genesis 1. I’d honor it, A, by faith, because the Bible, i.e. God, says so. A validated faith validated by B, The evidence, good scientific falsifiable evidence. And C, the consummate cosmic multi-vectored syllogism. Everything fits.

Seriously, though, discussion has to start somewhere and be referenced by something, for convenience if not citizenship. But I’d prefer to start, if granted “every right,” with Genesis 1, at the beginning.

Dr. Ariel Roth’s Creation Lectures for Teachers
@Ken: “something Dr. Kime said struck a very strange chord in me: that a Chair in ID at Harvard would be a quantum leap (forward – my edit) while such a Chair would be a step backward at LSU. I’ m very sorry Wes, but for me to honestly investigate reality, such double standard is not acceptable. …[therefore] I think I’m coming to the end of my Adventist journey.”

I can, of course, dear friend, understand why, and respect that, you would see the two directions of leaping, forward and backward, by Harvard and LSU, as a double standard.

But might it also be seen as simple Einsteinian Relativity? It all depends on from whence you’re starting or observing. Two venues, Harvard vs. LSU, two vectors, not two standards. At any rate, a parting of our ways. The Chair did it. A very unlucky ill-omened Chair, from the start.

Parting — that indeed is sad, especially this parting. I grieve too. In sadness we are agreed. That’s not double speak; only you could I say that to.

For these several years you, and your courteous ways, even your questions, have been most fascinating, even endearing, inspiring to both poetic and, I now regret, rasping response. I’ve so much enjoyed your postings, always looked for them first, and appreciated your uncommon patience and politeness, and our camaraderie in the bomb shelter and on the grandstand. Too bad the Chair, our double bed, didn’t work out.

As benediction, maybe we can all get together again, somewhere. Meanwhile, the Mizpah, which I think I should be the one to deliver, seeing it was, you say, my one-liner that was the last straw, for which I’ll get heck all around, and rightly so: “The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent one from another.” Genesis 31:49.

What the heck, have some popcorn for the road. And don’t forget your cyber plaque. You will be remembered, appreciated, thought about, prayed for. Do come back soon.

Until then, your jousting friend, W

Strumming the Attached Strings
@Phillip Brantley: Excellent! I shall quote you: “learn something from Sean Pitman.” Indeed, indeed — there’s so much to learn from that man.

What does it take to be a true Seventh-day Adventist?
@Ervin Taylor: Out of purely poetic symmetry of rhetoric, Ervin, your trademark whimsical “…I guess someone who rejects…” is asking for — I was waiting for it! — a Pitman’s “I guess someone who accepts…” Lovely diptych, ping and pong.

An apology to PUC
@Spencer Johnson:
re.: You seem to be trying to make a point! One cannot simply scroll on by; one drops everything and runs to Wikipedia to find out who you are. You couldn’t be the Spencer Johnson of “Who Moved My Cheese?” fame, “one of the world’s most respected thinkers and beloved authors,” could you?