0

The

Development

of

Adventism

By

Gil Valentine

& John Rosier

1

First published in Opinion 1995

The Development of Adventism, 1888 - 1980

1888-1915

Increase in Evangelical Faith

Gospel Orientated

Leadership Felt Threatened

Justification- Sanctification

Start of Christo-centric Focus

The Holiness Movement

Eschatology

Medical-Ministerial Rivalry

Aryanism

The Trinity

'The Daily'

Appeal to Ellen White 1915-

1956

Doctrine of Christ

Traumatic Transitions: 1919-1920

The Reactionary Twenties.

The More Reactionary Thirties

Progress in the Forties

1956-1966

The Ruben Fighur Presidency and its Achievements

The Reaction

1966-1980

The Pierson Presidency

Brinsmead and Perfection

Original Sin

Justification by faith

Defence Literature Committee

The Sanctuary

Desmond Ford

Standish Brothers

Index

2

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

10

11

12

13

15

16

17

20

23

27

32

38

41

42

43

46

48

49

52

56

2

The Development of Adventism, 1888 - 1915

Introduction

Historians of theology are inclined to see nice neat patterns in the development

of doctrine over the centuries. R E Finlayson, the Scottish theologian, makes

the point that the development of Christian doctrine follows in a kind of a

logical, almost scientific, fashion, the suggestion is that this is inherent in the

Christian faith.

There are doctrines that are held from the beginning of faith, initially, but

which over the years seem to develop in a way that is almost inevitable. He

illustrates his point by talking about how first the Church focused on the Trinity,

the nature of God, then Christology. Then in the fourth and fifth centuries to

anthropology, wrestling with the doctrine of sin, grace and then soteriology1 in

the eleventh and twelve centuries and later on to the sixteenth century. A very

neat pattern, I suggest.

It would be helpful to see such neat patterns in the development of Adventist

theology and the shaping of Adventist belief I am not so sure that we can see

those nice neat patterns. Perhaps we just need a longer span of time to give the

perspective to be able to see them, but seeing these kinds of patterns is not

evident in the short term.

I am not so sure either that there is inherently within the Christian faith the

particular shape that doctrine must take, or the order in which doctrines are

formulated in an earlier stage, building upon the former shaping. I am inclined

to think that, the environment, the context and interaction between the world

around the church, has as much an influence upon the way doctrine is shaped as

tbe inherent nature of the belief itself.

Having said that it is difficult to see distinct patterns in Adventist belief. That is

not to say that there is not some kind of continuing development of Adventist

belief and that it is totally unconnected; there is a flow.

1. Soteriology: the doctrine of salvation

3

Increase in Evangelical Faith

We want to begin our journey from 1888 to 1915. That is rather arbitrary, but

they are useful markers. The unifying thing that I would like to propose, as we

look at this period, is the increasingly Evangelical nature of Adventist faith

during this period.

1888 marks the Church's first major concern with soteriology. 1915 does not

mark the end of that, but it marks the end of the ministry of Ellen White; one

who was extremely influential in the development of the theology but one

who's death marked a dilemma for the Church because there was the matter of

authority that had to be resolved.

I would like to look first of all at the major issues that arose during this period

and then try to see what factors were involved in the shaping process during

these years.

Gospel Oriented

The first evangelical influence occurred during tl1e 1880s. Adventism had been

evangelistic before this time but had not been really evangelical In fact it had

been almost totally preoccupied by the Law establishing the perpetuity of the

Ten Commandments and the perpetuity of the Sabbath and its validity.

Arguments, debates and discussions, within the church and with those outside

the church, was primarily over this issue. As a result, Adventism had a highly

legalistic approach to its understanding of Christianity

The shift toward a more Gospel oriented, evangelical understanding was

initiated by Waggoner and A T Jones. Waggoner was probably the one who

initiated the impulse. He had trained as a doctor and had gone across to

California in 1880. It was while he was attending a camp meeting two years

after that, that he had a conversion experience, an experience in which he

realised, for the first time, that God loved him personally and that Jesus had

died for him personally.

He was 28 years of age and realised for the first time, what it was to be

forgiven. That was a new experience and it began to be reflected in his writing

and his preaching. That experience of forgiveness became the lodestone for

Waggoner’s theology and the later developments.

4

Justification by Faith became his theme, He found on the book of Galatians a kind

of a exegetical base for this new emphasis that was related to the Law:

‘The law was a schoolmaster that brought us to Christ.’ 2

Not the ceremonial law, said Waggoner, as Adventists has previously taught, but the

moral law, that pointed out guilt and our failure and led each individual believer to

faith in Christ and to the receiving of forgiveness.

The reason Waggoner found that particular text useful as an exegetical base was

because of its framework of law; it put the whole issue in the context of law which

was the framework in which Adventist thought. Two years before the 1888

Conference the debate began to sharpen as the issue became hotly disputed.

Leadership Felt Threatened

Church leadership in Battle Creek, George Butler, Uriah Smith, felt very threatened,

not so much by the new evangelical emphasis but because of the exegetical base

that seemed to them to undermine the whole doctrine of the Sabbath If you said that

this law in Galatians was the moral law, in their minds it did away with the

rationale for keeping the Sabbath.

Another reason why they opposed it very heavily was that they felt that Ellen White

had previously settled the issue when she had tried to settle it between both her

husband and elder Waggoner (E J Waggoner's father) and had given the impression

that the law in Galatians was the ceremonial law. Her support now for the younger

Waggoner's position seemed an about-face. That troubled Uriah Smith and Butler.

There are other reasons that caused Opposition as well: the clash of personalities,

Jones as a preacher was a rugged, crude type of person and Waggoner did not have

a lot of social graces either in many respects.

2. Galatians 3:24

5

Then, of course, the details of prophetic interpretation provided some

complications. But in the years immediately following the Minneapolis

Conference this evangelical impasse began to spread.

The theme was given more emphasis and when W W Prescott, President of

Battle Creek College, saw the light, the movement flourished. Prescott was

arguably one of the most able speakers in the denomination at that time

probably the most academically qualified and one of the best minds. So his

support for the theme carried a great deal of weight.

Justification-Sanctification

There has been an enormous amount of debate as to just what was involved in

this new doctrinal development, whether justification was clearly understood;

whether it was justification or some unhappy mixture of justification and

sanctification. There is still an ongoing debate in the church.

But when you read the Camp Meeting sermons not from a perspective of

systematic theology but from a pastoral-revivalist perspective it is quite clear

that these men were emphasising that one could really experience forgiveness

and have assurance. You can read the interaction between the audience and the

preacher. The preacher says "You can know that you are forgiven, you can say I

am forgiven" and there are Amens resounding in the congregation, all faithfully

recorded in the transcript

So apart from all the other issues about the nature of Christ, the mix of

sanctification-justification, the pastoral perspective was that this was a matter of

confidence and assurance. That was a new experience for most Adventists.

In fact, the exegetical base upon which Waggoner built was not really secure. As

Norman Young has shown in a recent study, neither Waggoner nor Uriah Smith

were really consistent in their interpretation of the passage but Smith and Butler

were closer than Waggoner in the exegesis of the passage.

Young makes the point that in Galatians Paul is not speaking individually but

comparatively. But there is no doubt that from present truth perspective,

Waggoner, Jones and Prescott were on the right track, heading in the right

direction, in focusing the church on the need for a more Biblical theology, the

need to put Christ

At the centre of their thinking and their proclamation rather than the law.

6

Start of Cbristo-centric Focus

So the 1888 development was significant in that it began this long process of

bringing about a Christo-centric focus in the Adventist movement, displacing

the focus on law. A long painful process of reshaping was effected along the

way by significant distortions. The 1890s was a particularly intense period of

reshaping and development in Adventism.

The difficulty for those who were steeped in the Adventist way of thinking was

how to relate law keeping and works to this new experience of forgiveness, this

new assurance. In the years immediately following the Minneapolis Conference

the discussion tended to focus on the relationship of faith and works and how

that related to the Old and New Covenants. As a result of that discussion, the

emphasis began to turn away from the experience of assurance and forgiveness

to the experience of victorious living, focusing on sanctification and perfection.

Men like Prescott knew clearly the difference between the Protestant

perspective on justification by faith and the Catholic perspective. You can find

in their discussions and in their preaching that they are aware of the difference

so they are not muddying the waters in the area of systematic theology.

The emphasis slowly changed to a focus inwards. I would like to suggest that

there are several reasons for this. Firstly, in society beyond the churches, there

were significant forces at work.

This was the age of the inevitability of progress. This was in the very air that

people breathed during that period. The deity expressing itself through the forces

of culture and history, the slow progress of reform, and the emphasis on the

immanence3 of God rather than the transcendence

4 of God.

3. Immanence: indwelling 01' presence of God in the individual

4. Transcendence: surpassing human experience

7

That was the spirit of the age. As the 19th century came to an end and it had its

impact on the church, which tended to parallel that emphasis in a theistic garb.

The Holiness Movement

The second influence was the 'holiness' movement, represented in the United States

by a resurgent Weslyianism and in the United Kingdom by the Kesick Movement.

Both had a marked impact on Adventism during this period. The Wesleyan

emphasis on entire sanctification, the Holy Spirit, and its revivalism, camp

meetings and campaigns, produced a flood of literature.

Adventists were reading that literature. The book by Hannah Whitelaw Smith,

developed into one of the classics of the 'holiness movement', it was read widely,

and recommended by theology teachers. Even in the 1960's, it was advertised in the

Review & Herald.

F B Myer was a very popular speaker and often quoted by Adventists. The King’s

Messenger, an 'holiness' magazine connected with the Methodist movement, was the

most quoted magazine in the Review during the nineties.

S M I Henry, a very popular speaker on temperance and women's issues, was

clearly in the 'holiness' mode. A T Jones, who was the editor of the Review at the

time, concluded almost every editorial he wrote with the words 'Receive ye the

Holy Ghost'. When he was here in England he made a point of studying the Kesick

Movement and tried to meet some of its leaders.

This 'holiness movement' reached its peak in the 1890s. Between 1894 and 1900

there were ten new 'holiness' denominations. It was this spirit spilling over into the

early years of next century that gave birth to the Church of the Nazarenes, which

was a coming together of many different groups of 'holiness' people. It is still a

thriving church today.

This movement in Protestantism significantly influenced Adventism, in a way that

helped to focus on the inner experience, the Holy Spirit in the life and the need for

sanctification and perfection.

8

Eschatology

A third influence that helped distort the developing shape of this evangelical

emphasis within Adventism during this decade was the intense eschatological

expectation of the time. Adventism breathed eschatology5 in a very intense

way during this last decade. That was generated by a number of factors.

There was the National Reform Association that began in the late 18808. That

in itself was shaped by social changes that were taking place in America. There

had been a flood of immigrants and many of them had come from southern and

eastern Europe, primarily Catholic, and they had a different view of Sunday

sacredness, and certainly a different view of the use of alcohol. That troubled

many Americans who came from a staunchly Puritan protestant background.

The National Reform Association was a movement that tried to correct some of

these developments, reacting to the social changes. They campaigned strongly

for continuing Sunday sacredness and began to work towards having laws

enacted to preserve Sunday sacredness. William Blair was the one who did

most in this connection and there are points at which he linked forces with

Cardinal Gibbons. That connection sent shudders through the spine of every

Adventist.

That, combined with the steady countdown of the calendar toward 1900s,

intensified this eschatological expectation. Then, in 1892, Ellen White wrote an

article that appeared as an extra in the November issue of the Review, in which

there was one line that said 'the loud cry has already commenced'.

That ran like a shockwave throughout the entire church. It caught everyone by

surprise. It gelled the sense that the end is near. People were prepared to move

out to the small towns and villages, there were enormous offerings that were

given in religious meetings; people were selling their houses and giving the

entire proceeds as an offering.

5. Escatology: doctrine of last things

9

Ellen White was in Australia at the time and was caught by surprise by the

response to an article which I think: she conceded later to be too strongly stated.

She was surprised because the newspaper in Melbourne had reported on this

meeting in Battle Creek at which people had given their fur coats, their

jewellery, and the proceeds from selling their houses. In Melbourne it sounded

quite fanatical. She sent strongly worded letters back to try and correct this

development.

With hindsight we can perhaps see that these were over-reactions, but in the

climate of the period, Adventist leaders and people took the words literally

They sensed that they were living right on the brink of eternity. That intense

sense of the end, focused attention more and more on this need to be ready, on

the need to be perfect, on the need for entire sanctification, and provided more

distortion of this evangelical emphasis.

The need to prepare for translation became very strong. They tended to over

literalise the sense of an indwelling Christ. They began to talk about how, when

the Holy Spirit comes in they were becoming more and more perfect; they

would even lose their white hair before translation and would be done with all

sickness. Matters became quite extreme and over wrought in this eschatological

atmosphere.

Medical-Ministerial Rivalry

A fourth factor that influenced the particular shape of Adventism during this period

was the rivalry between the ministerial and medical branches of the church. The

organisational structure of the denomination fostered this growth; gro'Wih in two

distinctive ministrations. Lines of authority became confused, distrust and self

interest, distorted perceptions of each other.

The Kellogg organisation would send out missionaries to a particular field and

expect somehow that the General Conference would pay their wages. Lines of

communication became very confused, rivalry and misunderstandings developed

markedly. So at the turn of the century there was a determined attempt to try and

correct this confusion and a significant organisational restructuring was undertaken

in 1901.

10

As part of that process there developed a theological- philosophical rationale

trying to bring the two branches of the church together; to effect reconciliation

between the ministry and the medical people. They developed what was called

the 'forward movement' which was designed to bridge the gap between the

medical emphasis and the ministerial- pastoral emphasis. Kellogg's book, The

Living Temple, was designed to effect that., to give written expression to it, to

provide an intellectual rationale for bringing these two things together. It was

also designed to provide an economic base for the rebuilding of the sanatorium

which had recently burnt down.

A noble idea, but it quickly floundered. Kellogg's book borrowed too heavily

from the spirit of the age. The secular-philosophical influence of the

immanence of God without an adequate balance on the transcendence of God,

really began to cause problems.

I think we would need to say, Kellogg was not strictly pantheistic, in the sense

that he did not deny the personality of God. The term pantheism was used by his

critics to address what was definitely a problem in the book. There was another

book by the same title, published just a year or two before, by a couple of

Chicago doctors. Reading that book along with Kellogg's book you can clearly

see the difference. Kellogg's book did contain some rather extreme views, that

really over-emphasised the immanence of God at the expense of God's

transcendence.

Adventism was moving toward adopting a cross less form of Christianity. The

objective historical work of Christ was in danger of being lost. Moving from this

'holiness' period towards the more secular-philosophical form that Kellogg was

using, was in danger of losing that historical nature of Christianity, which has

the cross as the centre.

Perhaps the theological distortions would have corrected themselves in the

process of time. I am inclined to think that they would have if it had not been

for the political and personal conflicts that developed and became more

prominent in the struggle with Kellogg. It really reduced all to a matter of who

was in charge.

The new organisational form the church took was a loose-tight structure, to use

modern administrative-organisational theory, whereby they were

11

devolving more and more responsibility to the local level, while taking some

aspects of authority back to a more central level. So there was a re-organisation

in both directions. Much the same as we see in the reform of Education in

Britain at the present moment where central authority is retaining control of

curriculum and devolving power down to the local schools. The same kind of

pattern was observed in 1901.

As a result, Kellogg was unable to accept the new organisational pattern. He

did not want to have to be accountable to the church, or to its ministers. The

split occurred in England over who was going to authorise the building of the

new sanatorium. Could Kellogg do it on his own or did he need the authority

of the General Conference? He had a bitter argument that led to the parting of

the ways. Kellogg finally split with the church in 1907.

Aryanism

In parallel with this crisis there was another development that had begun in the

mid 1890s that had a significant influence in shaping Adventist belief and

doctrine.

Adventist Christology, in its early years, had very strong elements of serni-

Arianism6 There were one or two who believed in the full deity of Christ, but

not many. The difficulty that early Adventists had with this concept was, how

do you explain deity dying on the cross? What happens to deity when Jesus

died?

The way they tried to solve that dilemma was by resorting to the Arian

perspective, seeing Jesus as a created being. Smith's book, Daniel and

Revelation, advocated this semi-Arian perspective His book was so influential,

most Adventists accepted it as gospel, most Adventists tended to think the

same way about Christology, so that gave to Adventism a reputation for being

somewhat sectarian.

The change in Christology began in Australia in the mid 1890s. W W Prescott

visited Australia in 1895. During the long journey he spent his time studying

6. Aryanism: a denial of the divinity of Christ, from teaching of Arius of Alexandra

12

the Gospel of John and some classic theological works, one of which was

Augustus Neander's History of Christian Dogma as well as some other books

on Christology. His particular interest was Christology, the Christological

controversies of the early centuries.

The Trinity

He was also commissioned to write a four quarter series of Sabbath School

lesson pamphlets on the Gospel of John, so he had this motivation for making a

study of the issue. During his time in Australia his preaching on Righteousness

by Faith and Justification by Faith began to reflect this enriched and deeper

understanding, of the deity of Christ and the significance of the Trinity. The

Holy Spirit, a theme of Prescott's preaching, rather than being referred to as an

It, was now, referred to as He, not as an impersonal force, but a personality.

At a series of meetings that he conducted in April 1896 at Kuranborn, he dwelt

at some length on the Nature of Christ, the Deity of Christ and his favourite

theme was the I AM. It so happened that Mrs White attended one of the

meetings along with Marion Davies. Both of them were enthused at the way he

was presenting these doctrinal understandings As a result he was invited to

work with Marion Davies in the shaping some of the early chapters of Desire of

Ages.

As a result, Desire of Ages reflected new understandings of the Trinity and of

the Deity of Christ. In 1948, M L Andreason recalled his surprise that when

Desire of Ages first came out and he noticed these strong statements on the

Deity of Christ, particularly the statement: 'In Him was life, unborrowed,

underived.'

He mentions that this troubled them but they seemed to have no alternative but

to go along with the new thrust, and development.

I would suggest that it was this new understanding of the Trinity, this enlarged,

enriched understanding of the Trinity and the deity of Christ that really was the

basis for Prescott separating from the Waggoner- Jones-Kellogg camp around

the turn of the century. As part of the 'holiness' movement, Prescott's sermons

here in England" used similar language to Jones and

13

Waggoner, in fact they all lived next door to each other and they had many

discussions about these issues.

The language that they used was the same, but just after the turn of the century

when Prescott realised that Waggoner's language and meaning was not what he

was meaning. He eventually dropped the language itself and their thought

forms. Because of this development, Prescott also recognised the danger in

Kellogg's over-emphasis, in his book, on the immanence of God.

'The Daily'

The Kellogg crisis had hardly died away when fresh theological conflict began

to surface in Adventism. This time it was a conflict over the meaning of the

phrase 'the daily' in Daniel813.

The conflict over 'the daily', revolved around whether the expression referred to

paganism, as Uriah Smith had argued, or pointed to the mediatorial work of

Jesus represented in the Sanctuary service, as Prescott, Daniels and others

argued. The latter argued that the mediatorial work had been obscured by the

papal teaching about the mass and the re-sacrifice of Jesus at every celebration

of the mass.

It was Louis Conrady who introduced this new understanding of the verse at

meetings in the British Isles in the 1890s. He was writing a Commentary on

Daniel in German and wanted to express this new understanding, so he wrote to

Ellen White. He did not receive a response so he went ahead and published it.

Because it was in German, not in English, nobody seemed to mind. That is still

a pattern in the church today.

Prescott was enthused with this new understanding of Daniel 8: 13 because it

reconciled a number of difficulties that had been experienced with interpreting

the passage, but it was too inauspicious a time to go public on the matter. So

the idea remained quiet for a number of years. Increasingly the church was

criticised over its interpretation of this particular passage in Daniel 8. Prescott

was asked to reply to the criticism. He found he was unable to adequately to

reply unless he incorporated this new understanding of Daniel 8:13.

14

By 1906,7 he felt the time had come go public and to adopt this new

understanding. The reason Prescott believed this was an important new

prophetic understanding was that it provided a prophetic rationale for this new

evangelical emphasis in the church. It provided a new mission for the church;

that here the mediatorial work of Jesus had been obscured.

It was the task of Adventism to clearly focus on Christ and the work of Christ.

Prescott saw this as a very important under girding for this new evangelical

emphasis in the church. It was particularly appropriate, he thought, to reach

American society because of the new Catholic immigration, the rate of

immigration having continued into the early part of the new century.

The conflict that developed over 'the daily' was really a continuation of the

conflict over the 1888 issue, The same traditionalists who opposed the changes

in 1888 were those who now ranged themselves against this new emphasis.

They labelled it the 'new theology'.

Appeal to Ellen White

Their reasons, then as now, were very similar: Ellen White had made

statements that seemed to clearly reinforce the old 'new' statement in Early

Writings that indicated that the old view was the correct view of 'the daily' and

in order to preach and write about this new view meant re-interpreting that

Early Writings statement The traditionalists in the church, those like Stephen

Haskell, J S Rosque, F D Star and Loughborough felt that re-interpreting Ellen

White was really undermining her authority and doing away with her influence.

They desperately appealed to Ellen White to say something publicly about

Prescott's new emphasis and to say that it was wrong, She refused to do so. If

fact, she was getting old and hardly understood the issue. This was the period

when, and I say this respectfully, senility was developing and she was not

always able to focus on things. They began pigeonholing issues so that when

she was very aler1 she could understand some things and deal with matters.

It was a difficult period for her; the church was having difficulty allowing her

to grow old. So her friends appealing to her to intervene were unsuccessful,

15

but she did say it wasn't worth arguing about. It seemed that she did not

understand the issue in the same way that Prescott did, and she did not see its

significance. But the problem became too big, so big in fact it began to disrupt

church life and deflect church life from its evangelistic task and administrative

changes were made. Prescott was transferred from his editorship of the: Review

and was hounded for the rest of the decade by the old-time Adventist!. who had

really become obscurantist in their attitude.

The issue did not go away however, it simmered for the next two or three

decades. Prescott was not able to address it with much vigour but he did turn

his attention to giving a fully Hedged Christo-centric expression to church

doctrines during the latter part of the first decade of the new century. It is

interesting that Daniels and Prescott were very close on this.

Those who were in charge, those who were at the centre of the work,

understood the issues and they were men of broad mind. It was those in the

mission field who had di:ft1culties The relationship between Prescott and

Daniels became a difficult one and Ellen White insisted, in 1910, that that

relationship be broken up. This was seen as a move to try and diffuse the

tension that was building up in the church.

It is interesting that Ellen White had been in the grave but a few months when

Prescott and Daniels were back working together again and continuing their

emphasis on making the church more evangelical, more Christo-centric. Ellen

White had supported that in 1888 so it is dift1cult to understand the issue in

1910 to 1915. But in 1915 she was no longer alive, the question of her authority

was still unresolved. In fact it became an even more contentious issue! for the

church and had a significant influence on shaping the development of

Adventism even after her death.

16

Development of Adventism, 1915 - 1956

Doctrine of Christ

Although Adventism was born in a Methodist cradle, infi.1sed with grace and

nurtured by hope, by early adolescence it had developed an almost exclusive

preoccupation with law. Moving towards a Christo-centric, grace oriented

understanding of doctrine was the major developmental task of the movement

during the first half of the 20th Century. A key influence in this development

was Professor W W Prescott.

The traditional late 19th Century presentation of Adventist teaching had been

largely an argumentative propounding of literalistic proof-texted doctrines with

an exclusive concern about 'factual' biblical rightness or wrongness. The new

post-Minneapolis approach fostered by the Prescott-Waggoner-Jones trio and

by Mrs White focused instead on the importance of a personal relationship with

Christ. The personal experience of God's grace and forgiveness was the key to

that relationship. Recognising that what was called for was a Copernican-like

paradigm? shift in the church, Prescott, more than any other Adventist thinker,

seriously addressed the need to systematise the new Christo-centric approach

and bent his considerable intellectual abilities to the task of re- interpreting and

restating the Church's doctrinal formulations in the light of the new polarity.

During the 1890s in his preaching and writing and informally in a variety of

other ways, Prescott sought to achieve this re-orientation. Bedevilled, however,

by the distractions of institutional development, ecclesiastical re-organisation

and the Kellogg schism and tormented by personal and domestic problems the

professor was not able to give a formal book length expression of his attempt to

restate the Church's doctrinal understanding in the light of its new Christo

centric focus until after 1915.

Published first in this manuscript form in 1917, the book, Doctrine Dj Christ,

was later issued as a hard cover College Textbook Although used widely in

Colleges it was not, however, widely accepted by the general ministry of the

church, primarily, it seems, because it advocated the controversial

interpretation of Daniel 8: 13; the 'new' view of the 'daily'. For this reason,

7. Paradigm: an example or model

17

Froom notes that in one sense the book was decades ahead of its time. What

Froom meant was that the Church changes its understanding of how doctrine

should be expressed very slowly and rather painfully.

Prescott's influence in affecting the re-orientation of the Church toward a

Christo-centric expression of its teaching was eventually successful, possibly

more because of Ius personal influence on other significant Church leaders than

through what he wrote. Prescott had developed a personal friendship with A G

Daniels and had a profound spiritual impact on him during his early years in

Church Administration in Australia and later during his years as General

Conference President.

Prescott's deep personal spirituality and his persuasive modelling of his own

personal experience of God's grace in Jesus Christ clearly shaped A G Daniells

own understanding and experience. Others like General Conference vice-

President 0 0 Montgomery, preacher HMS Richards and editor Leroy Edwin

Froom also came under the Prescott spell. Each of these were influenced and

shaped in their thinking through an encounter with Prescott. The professor,

beside being an effective preacher and teacher had a powerful personal

influence.

The slow and laborious process of re-orienting the Church's doctrinal

understanding continued through the first half of the 20th Century. We shall

briefly review, from a. 'Prescott perspective, episodes during the period 1910 -

1950 which illustrate the developmental process and that provide a context for

understanding the ongoing shaping of Adventist Theology. Understanding these

episodes throws light on why the development tended to be so slow and tortuous.

Traumatic Transitions: 1919 - 1920

In 1910, Daniells and Prescott were obliged to sever their close working

relationship. Daniells continued as General Conference President while Prescott left

his post as Editor of the Review and for a period of about five years, dropped out of

church leadership roles. He was perceived to have been too forceful an advocate of

reinterpretation of Daniel 8:13 and aged fundamentalist voices in the church

accused him of undermining confidence in Mrs White's writing. He bad been asked

by Elmshaven to help revise The

18

Great Controversy to make it more accurate on matters of historical fact and at

the same time he urged the revision of other standard Church texts, such as

Bible Readings for the Home and Daniel and Revelation so that they would be

consistent with the Church's developing perspectives on theology. This

advocacy was just too much for traditionalists like S N Haskell, F B Starr and

Lean Smith and they and others mounted a virulent campaign against him. The

sudden change in Prescott's career, the death of his wife shortly afterwards and

the vicious personal attacks on the Professor almost broke him and he took a

much lower profile in Church affairs until 1915.

Shortly after Ellen White died, Prescott and Daniels teamed up again, Prescott

being appointed the first 'field' secretary for the General Conference deputising

for the over-burdened Daniel1s on both local and overseas administrative and

educational assignments. It was during this period, 1915 to 1920, that Prescott

more fully developed his Christo-centric restatement of Adventist teaching

through articles and the development of his College Textbook. He also

presented clearer and more developed statements on the new interpretation of

'the daily,8 This was important to him because he saw in Daniel 8: 13 the kind

of prophetic mandate that would enable Adventists to be able to achieve the

new orientation.

The Reactionary Twenties

Prescott's writing and preaching continued to fuel an intense but very guarded

debate that quietly seethed throughout the church but which finally vented itself

politically in the highly explosive General Conference session of 1922. The

doctrinal debate had surfaced briefly at a Bible Conference held in Washington

in 1919 and at History and Religion teachers conference that followed

immediately afterwards. Three issues preoccupied the conferees. Prophetic

interpretation and re-identification of the 'King of the North' of Daniel 11 was

the big issue and caused much consternation. Turkish politicians were not

behaving as Adventist prophetic exegetes had expected following World War I,

thus forcing reassessment of the way

8. The Millerites saw reference to 'the daily' in Daniel 8: 13 as referring to pagans trampling

the earthly sanctuary which Christ would cleanse at His return. Subsequently the phrase 'the

daily' was interpreted as referring to Roman Catholicism obscuring and confounding the

gracious mediatorial ministry of Christ in the sanctuary.

19

Daniel 11:45 ought to be interpreted9 This in turn led to vigorous discussion of

general principles of interpretation and the need for a Christo-centric

hermeneutic.10

In the process some biblical exegetes advocated that multiple

interpretation "vas clearly involved and that Antiochus Epiphalles should have

seen as a 'first' application of the Daniel prophecies - a suggestion that made

some nervous.

The second major theme of the conference was Prescott's presentations on the

'Doctrine of Christ'. The majority of the professor' & 19 lectures at the meetings

dealt with this theme Clearly Prescott and the General Conference

administration were pursuing their agenda of educating church leaders on the

need to continue extending and implicating the theological paradigm shift that

had taken place earlier.

The third issue concerned the authority of Ellen White and how this was to be

understood in relationship to the authority of Scripture. The validity and

genuineous of Mrs White's inspiration was not challenged, but rather what was

the nature of her authority? How were delegates to define this authority in the

light of the fact that her writings had been revised and corrected by some of the

scholars in their very midst.

These three issues together created an incendiary mix so volatile it was thought

best to not circulate the transcript of the proceedings of the meetings even

though circulation of the conference papers had originally been intended as an

educational measure. It seems that Daniells was more sensitive about the

impact the discussions of the 'King of the North' would have on the church than

he was about the discussions concerning Mrs White.

Fundamentalist critics of the church who regarded the 1919 Bible Conference

as a 'council of darkness' and the breeding ground of the 'new theology'

9. The 'King of the North' (Daniel 11) was initially seen as Turkey, then later,

Russia attacking Turkey en route to the Middle East ready for battle at Armageddon

Still later il1terpretations applied the passage to Roman Catholicism.

10. Hermeneutics: the art or science of interpretation.

20

made life exceedingly difficult for Daniells who had given significant support

to Prescott and those who had adopted his viewpoint. The political fallout

resulted in Daniells being dropped from the presidency in 1922 at the San

Francisco General Conference session, undoubtedly the most 'political' the

church has ever experienced. Fundamentalist pastors had undertaken a massive

lobbying campaign prior to the session with the specific purpose of unseating

the 'apostate' Daniells.11

The slanderous vilification of Daniells by the

fundamentalist pastors traumatised him severely and it took him considerable

time to recover. But spiritual rehabilitation followed and Daniells was soon

pursuing the new Christo-centric emphasis with great deal of energy, preaching

at Camp-meetings and sessions and anywhere he could find a congregation.

Following these events, it was probably to be expected that the 1920s would be

a period fraught with tension. Two parties were clearly in contention within the

church. Daniells identified them as the 'conservatives' and the 'progressives'.

The core issue was still the theological implications of Minneapolis.

Developments outside the church tended to heighten the tension within. For

example, the creation-evolution debate of the twenties, sensationalised by the

widely reported Scopes trial focused a great deal of discussion on the 'authority'

of Scripture. The emerging 'Fundamentals Movement' with its national

fundamentalist conferences also focused attention on the question of preserving

the fundamental doctrines - an emphasis that provided a ready made vocabulary

and a stream of articles reprinted, or commented on, in Adventist periodicals,

that reinforced a strong tendency to reactionary conservatism in the

denomination and fostered a general resistance to any development at all.

11 Review and Herald employee, Claude Hohnes, by misrepresentation and deceit,

had obtained access to the General Conference archives and the Presidential

correspondence and transcribed copies of letters from Mrs White to Daniells and

Prescott. Published as a pamphlet, The Omega of Apostasy, the letters caused

enormous damage to the reputations of the two church leaders. Clearly influenced

and confused by the scurrilous campaign, delegates at the session became

deadlocked for almost a week over the election of the president and finally Daniells

was replaced by W A Spicer, with Daniels being asked to serve as Secretary.

21

A third factor influencing the reactionary climate of the 1920s was the rapidly

rising educational standards in society. This impacted the church significantly.

Adventist colleges found that they needed to seek recognition of the courses

offered and to ensure that they could continue to attract students. But students

studying under non-registered teachers in secondary school could not go on to a

college nor find a place in the emerging 'professions'.

Colleges needed to train 'recognised' teachers and grant 'recognised' degrees. In

order to offer 'recognised' degrees the faculty themselves had to have

'recognised' degrees and these were only available in non-Adventist colleges.

Church leadership were very uncomfortable with the idea. The issue raised to

the surface an underlying anti-intellectual strand of thought that George Knight

has suggested has always been present in Adventism --- a strand, it would

seem,. that is generally characteristic of a rigid fundamentalist view of the

world.

These factors contributed to an inhospitable climate for Prescott's new

'progressive' Christological emphasis, but advocates of these perspectives did

not retreat Daniels, now as Secretary of the General Conference, invested

energy in launching a 'Ministerial Association' with the aim of raising the level

of education of the ministry through a programme of continuing education. He

chose L E Froom, a man of like rnind and vision, to assist in the endeavour.

Froom blossomed as a thought leader and contributed a great deal towards

shaping the new ivfinist1:v magazine and developing ane awareness of the

need for new approaches.

The More Reactionary Thirties

The 1930s in Adventism began with a very public controversy that illustrates the

tensions that continued to characterise Adventist theology. B G Wilkinson, senior

Bible teacher at Washington Missionary College, launched a vigorous public

campaign in the in the nation's capital to discredit the recently published American

R.evised Versioll of the Bible In his widely advertised i meetings he attacked the

version and defended the King lames Version as the only reliable version. He

subsequently developed Iris thesis in a hard cover volume.

22

Wilkinson's presentations, widely reported in the media, greatly embarrassed

leaders at church headquarters because the church was portrayed as

obscurantist. The General Conference was besieged by protests from other

Adventist Colleges who did not care to be associated with this obscurantist

approach to religion.

The General Conference found it difficult to make a public response.

'Counselling' Wilkinson did not work. He was not one to take counsel easily.

Others appealed to Prescott for a response. The editor of the Signs <?f the Times

urged him to do what the General Conference wouldn't or couldn't do. Before

the year was out, Prescott was in the midst of a series of articles endeavouring

to set the record straight. Pained by the controversy and hamstrung politically,

the General Conference put pressure on the Signs to discontinue the series. The

Columbia Union Conference, already at loggerheads with the General

Conference over other administrative issues, solidly supported Wilkinson and

banned the Signs of the Times editors from its territory.

What lay behind the 'Versions' controversy was a resistance movement to the

'new theology'. This was not just an argument over which version was better.

Wilkinson and his supporters in the Columbia Union recognised that the only

way they could stop the advance of the new understanding of 'the daily' and all

that it represented in terms of its Christo-centric restatement of church teaching

was by insisting that Adventism was rooted in the King James Version of

Scripture. They felt that denying the validity of new translations would enable

them to preserve the traditional way of stating Adventist theology.

Implementation of the theological paradigm-shift was complicated by other

developments. During the 1930s subtle changes took place in the kind of leadership

appointed in the church. As the denomination continued to grow the administrative

task grew more complex and more demanding. Leaders were appointed who were

highly competent in finance, policy development and administration but they

tended to lack the breadth of vision and rigour of intellect characteristic of

leadership in the Daniells' era. Church leaders tended to be more conservative,

almost reactionary. For example, in the earlier period it had been the General

Conference leadership itself that had been progressive, open to new ideas and

fostering the possibility and desirability of change.

23

During the 1930s there was a reverse. Leadership tended to put a brah on

theological reflection and the task of development passed to College Bible

teachers and others.

This shift and tensions that accompanied it is illustrated by some of the

difficulties that Prescott experienced in the mid 1930s, When visiting Australia

in 1929, Daniells discovered that W W Fletcher, a respected senior church

administrator, had begun to be exercised by questions concerning the church's

'sanctuary doctrine' and the book of Hebrews. Daniels advised him to discuss

the matter with Prescott before he talked to his colleagues or other church

leaders. He felt sure that Prescott would be able to assist him with answers and

ways of handling complexity and ambiguity, Prescott had worked with A F

Ballenger over similar issues 25 years earlier.

The problem posed by Fletcher was soon compounded for church leadership by

the departure of Louis Conradi, long-time European leader, and by P L

Thompson, President of Union College who within the space of two or three

years withdrew from the church over similar theological difficulties.

Although several attempts have been made to find satisfactory resolutions to

some of the specific theological difficulties raised. Apparently Prescott and

others felt that the responses thus far were not entirely adequate, E E Andross

had written a book in 1911, A More Excellent Ministry, in response to the

difficulties that Ballenger had raised. According to Daniels, many 'thinking

ministers' who felt that the theological responses offered by Andross were

actually worse than the problems themselves,

Prescott felt much the same about The Atoning l-York of Christ, written by

General Conference President, C H Watson in the mid 1930s. In order to

provide what was felt to be an adequate response to the problems identified by

Conradi, Fletcher and Thompson, the Church tended to revert back to a pre-

1888 theological perspective. Prescott was bold enough to write a manuscript

critique of Watson's book, an undertaking that consequently brought him under

considerable suspicion, These tensions continued to retard the adoption of the

theological paradigm shift.

24

The ongoing tensions are illustrated by an episode during Prescott's last

teaching assignment. Although well past retiring age, Prescott had been

pressured into taking the role of Head of the Bible Department at Emmanuel

Missionary College to assist them with their accreditation problems. Colleges

generally were having difficulty attracting quality teachers because of the

general air of critism and suspicion concerning theology teachers in the church.

Capable Bible teachers like H Camden Lacey, for example, preferred to stay in

pastoring positions rather than expose themselves to constant harping criticism

from students or church members and little understanding or support from

church administrators.

Prescott attempted to discuss with administrative colleagues some of the

theological difficulties he felt needed addressing and was subsequently

embroiled in a tangled web of conflict with his General Conference peers. He

withdrew from his teaching role

Leroy Froom commented on this era:

'A wave of reactionism has swept over our movement. We are in an era

of fear of men who think, .... Not a few of our leaders prefer the hard

dogmatism of the Wilkinson school'

Expressing his concern over moves in the church during this period to

established rigid! church manuals and doctrinal formulations that would tend to

preserve the status quo, he argued:

'The' positions which have to be protected by ecclesiastical legislation

and popular sentiment and prejudice are weak indeed, and such

policies are unworthy of this· remnant movement, 12

Froom was greatly concerned that the church resist the temptation to codify

and credalise its doctrinal formulations.

Progress in the 1940s

Although tensions continued during the 1940s, hampering the accommodation of

the theological shift that had occurred in 1888, development also continued as the

church slowly developed mechanisms and structures to facilitate theological

25

reflection and growth. Unresolved theological difficulties raised by Fletcher lay behind

the request from Australia in 1932 for the General Conference to organise a Church-

wide Bible Conference. Scarcity of funds in the depression years of the mid 1930s

prevented the General Conference responding favourably to the request.

In the meantime James L McElhany had been appointed leader of the denomination.

Although a devout Adventist Christian and an able administrator he was not of broad

intellectual ability. Increasingly leadership in theological development passed to the

Colleges.

In the interim, Bible teachers found that they could not leave issues undiscussed or

unresolved. Subsequently, after an official denominationally organised meeting of

teachers in North America in 1940, a group of Bible teachers in California set up a small

Bible Teachers Fellowship group to serve as low-key, low threat forum for discussion of

relevant issues and concerns and for the exchange of viewpoints. Issues that continued

to agitate pastors and teachers were still "the daily', prophetic interpretation and the

soteriological issues such as the' covenants'. Furthermore, as Ray Cottrell has observed,

increasing difficulties were being experienced as more and more teachers during the

1930’s modified their methods of Bible study, laying aside simplistic 'proof text'

approaches to Biblical studies in favour of historical-linguistic-contextual method s,

During the 1940’s the Bible Fellowship continued to meet the needs of teachers for

professional growth and development and spiritual nature and it steadily grew in the

number of participants, Although, obviously not able to attend, overseas participants

were welcomed as 'corresponding' members. It was on that point that the Bible

Fellowship ran into difficulties. It crossed denominational/administrative lines.

Denot11inational protocols were not being strictly followed and for policy conscious

church leaders this created tensions.

The largest difficulty, however, was theological. Louis Were, (another Australian

pastor), had been advocating around his churches the new interpretation of the 'king of

the north' of Daniel 11. Later while attending a meeting of the Bible Fellowship in

California he discovered that most of the Bible teachers were teaching a similar

viewpoint.

26

Back in Australia, Were shared his 'discovery' as an endorsement of his position. Even

without the aid of facsimile machines, word quickly got back to the General Conference

and a strong argument was put that the Bible Fellowship must be stopped for it was

getting out of hand, undercutting the church's teachings and it's becoming disloyal Thus,

pressure was exerted by the General Conference on the Bible teachers to disband their

fellowship,

Discussions over the disbandment, however, achieved an agreement that the General

Conference would call an 'Ecumenical' world-wide Bible Conference for the discussion

eventually occured in 1952, A tightly controlled meeting, it allowed little time for

discussion and questioning, Apparently planners had the objective of trying to correct

some of the perceived negative influence of the Bible Teachers' Fellowship, To the

chagrin of traditionalists, however, the presentation on the 'king of the north' by the

respected British scholar, W E Read, advocated the same position as that made by most

of those in the fellowship

The 1952 Bible Conference and the preceding Bible Fellowship led to other significant

developments, The General Conference itself finally felt the need to establish the

Biblical Research Institute to undertake the study of Biblical problems Although

motivated significantly by the need for control of the process, the move was

nevertheless a positive and enabled the General Conference to at least be involved in the

necessary process of theological growth and development.

The second development that was facilitated by the 1952 Bible Conference was the

provision of resources and structures and a climate of readiness for the development of

The Seventh day Adventist Bible Commentary project. A major innovation in this

development was that the publication had the objective of not just providing set answers

or interpretations on difficult issues but represented a variety of viewpoints; The

Commentary also represented a major step forward in further integrating in a systematic

way in the expression of Adventist doctrine the earlier Christo-centric paradigm shift.

With this kind of groundwork in place, and a preliminary systematisation finally

achieved with regard to its theological understandings, Adventism was much better

prepared to engage in serious dialogue with the world of Biblical and theological

scholarship beyond its denominational borders. This opportunity occurred in the

mid 1950s.

It had been a journey accompanied by a great deal of pain and tension along the

way. But what journey isn't?

27

Development of Adventism, 1956 ~ 1966

Introduction.

Since the late 1880s, Adventism has been faced with two contending positions.

The first is Traditional and reactionary, the second is searching and

progressive. The first tends to believe that the all essential truth came to the

Adventist people in the 1840s and 50s, and especially through the writings of

Ellen White; the second takes the view that there is more to understand and that

maybe what was once thought to be true might, in the light of Biblical research,

have to be re-evaluated, adjusted and even abandoned altogether. It has been

along this divide, especially in the area of the Gospel, Christology, and the

1844 sanctuary teaching, that the conflict over the very nature and soul of the

S-d A Church has been fought

The drama and the twists and turns of the course of Adventism between the

mid 1950s, when Questions on Doctrine was published, and the content of

Desmond Ford's address to the Adventist Forum in October 1979, would tax

the writer of fiction. These years are really the next stage in the dramatic

struggle that has been pulling within Adventism since Minneapolis General

Conference Session of 1888. And they set the stage for the crisis that beset

Adventism from the early 1980s to the present day.

The Ruben Fighur Presidency and its Achievements, 1956 ~ 66

The first part of our account begins in 1956 when a decision was made which

was to be of considerable significance for the Adventist Church. According to

the testimony of Dr Walter Martin, speaking in 1982 on the Ankerberg Show,

in the year that the Christian publication, Eternity, co-edited by Donald

Barnhouse and himself, turned its attention to the Adventist Church in an

article entitled, 'Are Seventh-day Adventists Christians?' At the same time, the

book, 'The Four Major Cults', which placed Adventists in the same camp as

Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christadephians, was in preparation for

publication

The possible negative content of the article provoked a reaction within the

General Conference as a result of which contact was made between the editors

of Eternity and the General Conference to give information for the article and

to set the record straight concerning the true lineage and Christian identity of

the Adventist Church.

28

From this contact a series of meetings were held between the evangelically

minded editors and such men as Froom, Heppenstall, Murdoch and Anderson,

under the general leadership of Ruben Fighur. These discussions had the

official blessing of the General Conference and led to a shift in the thinking of

those around that table, both in regards to the true nature of Adventism, as

interpreted by these men, and the faith of Christ and the Apostolic community,

as taught in the New Testament.

For example, in one meeting that Walter Martin cited on the Ankerburg Showl3

,

he remembered the group agreeing, from a study of the Greek text of Hebrews,

that Christ entered the Most Holy Place at His Ascension, not on October 22nd

1844 as Adventists had traditionally taught. If the Evangelicals were, by the

logic of the New Testament, able to question some of the doctrinal positions of

Historic Adventism, then they were also to be assured that the Adventist

Church did not officially hold any longer to the 'sinful nature of Christ', nor to

the idea of an incomplete Atonement at the cross, except for a few eccentric

'wild-eyed' 14 individuals on the fringes of the Denomination

The most significant shift in the Denomination's position was over the nature of

Christ and the Atonement. There was also a move towards an

acknowledgement of the doctrine of Original Sin and the total depravity of

Mankind. But in the area of salvation and grace, the Church remained

ambiguous where the Gospel of Salvation, and Justification by Faith ,vas

concerned. Questions on Doctrine did not entirely solve the problem, because,

for the most part, the position taken still subordinated justification to

sanctification, and embraced an Augustinian view of grace. While rejecting

salvation by law and works, so turning from the intense perfectionism as taught

by Andreason and Branson, the committee did place emphasis on the

indwelling power of Christ's life as being an essential part of personal

salvation. That is:

13. The Ankerburg Show featured the Adventist Church and its problems in

1982. Walter Martin, ex-Editor of Eternity, spoke of the background to his

involvement in the discussions of 1956-7 with the GC. The most interesting

exchange between Waiter Martin and William Johnson, at the time Assistant

Editor of the Review.

14. This expression was used by Froom and was attacked by Andreason in

Letters to the Churches Nr 1 p 12, pub 1959

29

'That one is justified, not by obedience to the law,but by the grace that is in

Christ Jesus. By accepting Christ, man is reconciled to God, justified by

His blood for the sins of the past, and saved from the power of sin by His

indwelling life.'15

The key to salvation lay in 'the honour and merit of this wonderful

transformation which belonged wholly to Chdst.'16 It was not far removed

from the position taken by Waggoner and Jones in 1888, that the believer relied

on Christ's righteousness which was supplied to or infused into, the believer, so

that he could become a true law keeper,17

In other words the teaching of

infused or imparted righteousness on the grounds of faith, rather than imputed

forensic righteousness alone on the grounds of faith, remained the position,

Froom later spoke of 'initial justification' which was not far removed from the

previous position of 'mere justification' As Paxton comments:

'The soteriological inadequacy of Questions on Doctrine concerning

righteousness by faith is reflected elsewhere in the period. For all the

good intentions of A Flame for God, it did nothing to enhance Adventism

as being a great exponent of justification by faith. 18

Another area of agreement between the committee and the editors of Eternity

was that of the authority of the Bible. It was firmly established that Adventism

was a Sola Scriptura Communion in the Protestant and Reformation tradition,

and that Ellen 'White's contribution did not have the same authority as that of

Scripture, Indeed, Froom argued that the Adventist Church was the heir of the

Reformation and had been raised up to continue the work of the Reformation.

A contentious claim that was then, as now, in

15. Shaking of Adventism p 90 Baker Book House 1977

16. Ibid P 90

17. Waggoner E J, Christ and His Righteousness p 51 RH Press

18. Paxton p 91

19. This argument over the Reformation claim for the Adventist Church

was largely rejected by Andreason as it is by the Historic Adventist.

The idea of the Adventist Church being a totally separate Communion

with a new message which neither the Apostles, nor the Reformers,

could have taught, still prevails among some Adventists,

30

Initially, we find here a group of men gradually succumbing to what Froom

described as the eternal verities of the Christian Faith. While it is true that there

remained difficulties, the 1844 doctrine, for example, remained in place, even

if in a modified form, the two-phase ministry M Christ's intercessory and

judgement activity being one such innovation, people like Walter Martin and

Bamhouse were satisfied that their assessment of the Adventist Church would

have to be revised. Waiter Martin, on the strength of these meetings, wrote his

book The Truth About Seventh-day Adventism and the Denomination published

its fonnal response to the discussion in Questions on Doctrine.

Further to this, in a crucial article for the February edition of Ministry in 1957,

Froom argued his case and defended the conclusions of the Committee's

findings. In this article he dispensed! with A T Jones' initial view of Christ's

nature as 'being sinful'; Christ was, he wrote, 'exempt from inherited passions

and pollutions that corrupt the natural descendants of Adam'. He placed the

canon of Scripture as the final authority for Adventists in matters of doctrine

and practice, asserting:

'We are fundamentally Protestants taking the Bible only as our sole rule of

faith and practice.'

On the question of the Atonement, Froom wrote in the same article:

'The sacrificial act on the cross is a completed, perfect and final atonement

for man's sin'.

They also found material from Ellen White to support these views, for Ellen

White, certainly in her letters of the 18805 and 90s, could be shown to be

moving to an evangelical position regarding some of these questions. Certainly

she was the only one of the Pioneers to come to the idea that Christ's

Atonement on the cross for sin was a complete Atonement. So it gave support

to the committee's assertion that these views had always been intrinsic, even if

not explicit, to the corpus of thinking within historic Adventism.

These years were also crucial because they were open enough to begin, even if

tentatively, an official examination of the Church's position in relation to the

31

Christian Gospel and Biblical study Alongside this also came a move for open

scientific research.

These two aspects of the Fighur presidency led to the establishment of two

bodies: the General Conference Biblical Research Committee and the Geo-

Science Research Institute. The latter was established to consider scientific,

issues openly and frankly, especially in the field of Geology. Initially both

bodies had an open mandate to search and discover the truth wherever it led. It

was a brave mandate, and one which, had it been allowed to continue beyond

Ruben Fighur's presidency,. would probably have led to further changes in

Adventist thinking about Doctrinal as well as geological and scientific

matters.20

A third aspect of these years was the movement of the Communion towards the

World Council of Churches. Although we never joined, but remained

observers, as we have to this day, along with the Roman Catholic Church,. a

considerable dialogue was entered into between the Communion and the rest of

Christendom. It was the opening of doors, and the making of overtures towards

the Denominations of the Christian world.

What can be concluded from this period was that between 1956 - 66 the basis

of what many saw as traditional Adventism was under serious review and

discussion at the highest level. For example, the sanctuary question and the

official interpretation of Daniel 8:14, occupied the specially convened Daniel

Committee for five years in the early 60s, although unfortunately, they

disbanded in disagreement publishing nothing officially.

However, some of the evidence collected from that committee and used by Or

Ford in his Glacier View document reveals that many of the scholars they

consulted, including Dr Tuland, whose evidence to the committee is well

documented, did not believe that the interpretation of Daniel 8: 14, regarding

the cleansing of sin, to be sound and that much of what had been devised from

it was also unsound.

20. For an interesting discussion on the setting up of the GRI, see the chapter

on it., origins in Hammill’s autobiography.

32

In his submission Tuland argued that the word for 'cleansed' Was associated

with 'cleansing from pagan defilement' not 'cleansing from sin'. However, he

did believe that the eschatological implications of Daniel 8: 14 to be sound.21

The division of opinion within the Daniel Committee rested on the Sola

Scriptura issue. From a Biblical view point it was agreed that there Was no

evidence for the 1844 sanctuary teaching; the only reason for its acceptance

being that it was taught in The Great Controversy. This, and other problems

discussed by the theologians of the time, was later confirmed, in the wake of

the Glacier View Conference, by Raymond Cottrell, a member of the Daniel

Commtttee.22

The sola scriptura issue, which divided the committee, and the

crisis of authority in doctrinal matters, which it implies, is of some significance

when considering what was to develop during the 1970s and the outcome of the

Glacier View Conference itself.

The Reaction

To trace the present crisis back to its trickling source, one has to examine the

rising reactions against the new thrust of thinking which took place in the late

1950s and early 60s.

If the General Conference thought that it could lay to rest the ghost of the

Pioneers of the 184081, it was mistaken. The defence of Traditional Adventism

came in the guise of M L Andreason, pastor, Bible teacher and author, whose

influence was considerable through the 1930s and 40s. He read Froom's article

with increasing disquiet. He had been aware of the discussions between the G C

c:ommittee and the editors of Eternity and had managed to read some of the

material coming from those discussions. He began to privately air his

displeasUlre by writing to those on the committee. His questions and views

were ignored which led to further irritation on Andreason's part. Then came the

February edition of Ministry which only served to increase his worst fears.

21. Ford D, Glacier View Document pp 63-65

22. Cottrell discussed this issue in Open Forum in 1980, where he

confirmed that the questions raised by 'Ford had been the concerns of the

Daniel Committee of the early 1960s and still remained Unresolved.

33

The leadership had, in his view; abandoned True Adventism, embraced the

heresies of Calvinism and sold the Church down the river23

In his Letters to the Churches, published in 1959, he openly accused the

brethren of apostasy, and demanded their resignation.24

In these letters he set

about tearing at the heart of the discussions, which he saw as an affront to the

Adventism he had taught in the classroom, defended in the pulpit and

propagated in print.

Essentially the main charge was that the S-d A Church had succumbed to the

doctrines of Calvin and Luther and this was in opposition to the view held by

the pioneers and Ellen White herself and which the Denomination had

traditionally held for over 100 years By that yardstick he made a very pointed

assault upon the conclusions of the committee both in Froom's Ministry article

and especially over the contents of Questions on Doctrines.

Andreason rejected the idea of a sinless Christ, declaring, in his opening letter

that the 'new teaching' was against the plan of redemption. He wrote:

'That God exempted Christ from the passions that corrupt men, is the

acme of all heresy. It is destruction of all true religion and completely

nullifies the plan of redemption. 25

He rejected as heresy the idea of a completed Atonement at the cross26

He refuted the notion that the Adventist Church was in the Sola Scriptura

Protestant Reformation tradition27

23. Andreason M L, Letters to the! Churches Nr 2. This view is also held by

The Historist Adventists in ll11 article by Ralph Larson in the publication

Our Firm Foundation vol3 Nr 9 pp 8-11

24. Andreason, Letters Nr 1 p 14, Nr 3 pp 5,6

25. Ibid, Letter Nr 1 p 8

26. Ibid, Letter Nr 4 pp 1-5

27. Ibid, Letter Nr3 p 8

34

In essence he also rejected any move, however tentative, towards imputed

righteousness and the doctrine of Original Sin, both of which he saw as

Calvinistic heresy. Declaring on page 14 of letter 5 of his Letters to the

Churches the Pelagian position of the fallen nature of man:

'As Adventists we do not believe in Original Sin. 28

The sinful nature of Christ and the possibility of being given the power to do as

Christ did, overcome all sin before the end of probation, was for Andreason the

central core of the 1844 Judgement message, and the solution to passing

through the Investigative Judgement and surviving the period of time in

between the end of Christ's intercessory ministry and His coming.

The argument, which Traditionalists still support, is that Christ in the flesh

means Christ as fallen man, and that means that He was able fully to be human

in the sense that we are. If unfallen, Christ could not be fully human as we are

and so could not be tempted as we are and then would have been a useless

Saviour.

It also meant that if a person had to rely on grace alone for salvation then by

implication the all essential here and now sinless condition required by the last

generation was impossible, even if not exactly stated in Questions on Doctrine.

Such implications, he argued, negated the validity of Adventism and the 'last

day message' .

Andreason rejected the notion that salvation and our righteous standing with

God as being exclusively dependant on what Christ had done. Such negated the

Traditional teaching that, with God's help, we can achieve for ourselves what

Christ achieved, a perfect sinless character. After all, in a letter to Ellen White,

September 25th 1900, Haskell made a hair-splitting distinction between Christ's

fallen nature and His perfect character, arguing that they were not the same

thing but distinct, the former not affecting the latter.

28. While officially the Adventist Church has accepted the doctrine of Original

Sin, many in the Traditional camp maintain a Pelagian and perfectionist stance

by downgrading the real effect of the Fall on man's capacity to achieve moral

worth in God's sight (In the 4th century, Pelagius was condemned! for rejecting

Original Sin.)

35

Andreason also understood all too' clearly the implications of what Froom had

written on the Atonement. If Christ made a final and perfect atonement at the

cross and that the day of crucifixion was the true Anti-Typical Day of

Atonement and of final Judgement, then there was no Atonement and

Judgement to come ID 1844. Therefore Adventism and its main message was,

by this teaching, repudiated and made null and void.29

What he could not bring himself to accept was that what he had believed,

defended and taught for years, was untrue. Which is virtually what he was

being asked to accept if he was to give approval to the position assumed in the

Ministry article and as printed in Questions on Doctrine.

Not only that, but it cast serious doubt on the validity, inspiration and authority

of Ellen White's writings, which he had used to support his teaching of

Adventism He was not prepared to admit that she could have been w1'ong. For

Andreason, her writings constituted the heart and soul of Adventism and

validated its message. To argue for a sola scriptura position was, for him, a

clear rejection of the authority of 'The Spirit of Prophecy' where the teaching of

Adventism were concerned; this too, was a position he was unable to accept.

Indeed, before developing his case against a sola scriptura position, he

published a reply from one of the officers of the General Conference affirming

that Adventist distinctive teachings and authority were solely based on Ellen

White's writings and that she constituted Adventism. He then asked the

question, that if this is the real position in the General Conference how could

they make statements in support of a sola scriptura position, when it \vas

clearly not believed?30

However, his challenge to the committee in response to

Froom's article, was ignored and, knowing his views, they refused to give him a

hearing.

What is also clear from these letters is that Andreason was able to bring to his

aid a plethora of General Conference bulletins, official publications and many

29. Andreason Letter Nr 3 P 4

30. Ibid, Letter Nr 3 p5

36

more Ellen White quotes to counter the Ellen White quotes and evidence used

by t.he committee in support of their positions, as being historically kosher. He

argued that the committee was being very selective, and in their submissions to

the editors of Eternity somewhat economical with the truth. A point which he

demonstrated by quoting from official publications, such as the 1916 and 1944

editions of Bible Studies for the Home Circle, where the fallen nature of Christ

is affirmed in a footnote on His humanity.

Andreason’s rejection of the Bible as the final authority in matters of doctrine

and practice came from his view that the Bible and its message had, for the

Adventist, been superseded by the testimony of 'The Spirit of Prophecy' in the

guise of Ell en White. He further argued that the last-day message, which only

Adventists possessed, could not be found by the other Churches because they

had to come to the writings of Ellen White to find it. It was not, therefore,

essentially Biblical in the sense that Froom and the committee were claiming,

although there were texts and passages of Scripture, which if understood and

interpreted in the Adventist light could be found to support the perspectives of

historical Adventism.

For example, his book on Hebrews used 2:14 to give weight to the teaching of a

sinfull Christ in His humanity. As indeed, the whole thrust of the book,

especially the sanctuary chapters, were, in his own study of the epistle,

interpreted in the light of the 1844 message; this message being the benchmark

for all interpretation of those New Testament passages where the heavenly

sanctuary and Christ's intercessory ministry was concerned. This approach

insisted on the Bible being interpreted in the light of 'The Spirit of Prophecy' ,

or at least by a body of Adventist tradition.

On these grounds he could argue that a sola scriptura position, as understood in

the Reformation sense, for the validation or otherwise of Adventist teachings,

undermined the Testimonies and the authority of 'The Spirit of Prophecy' We

were not a Sola Scriptura Communion where our final authority was concerned.

Further to this, he maintained that there Was no point in discussing points of

doctrine with the Calvinistic Evangelicals, because they had nothing to offer

the Adventist Church and nothing to say to us. AJI they were doing was

bringing in error,. confusion and heresy.

37

It was not a question of being seen as a fanatic or an extremist. It is important

to realise that Andreason believed totally in the Adventism of the 19th century

and in the writings of Ellen White as being a corpus inspired of heaven, as

indeed did thousands of Adventists. He was an intense perfectionist, a purist,

who held sincerely to the traditional picture of the sanctuary in heaven, the

1844 sanctuary/judgement message, and the continuing atonement of Christ for

sin, in the heavenly sanctuary.

He, of course, also believed that after probation the saints would go through a

time of trouble without a pleading intercessor and would have to stand in their

own personal righteousness if they were to be counted worthy of heaven.

Andreason’s perfectionism is intensely reinforced in these letters, as is his

unquestioning support for the distinctives of Adventism, which he saw as

containing the true saving faith and message for our time, and which he

defended as being under attack from within the Church.

Because the positions in Questions of Doctrine remained officially in force, all

opposition, and Andreason was not alone, was certainly side tracked. While

Froom went on to make great claims for the Adventist Church as being the

custodian of the Reformation and Apostolic faith, Andreason’s protesting voice

that the Adventist Church had nothing to do with either and was being

betrayed, was virtually ignored. He was never called to formally demonstrate

his opposition to the positions taken by the General Conference. And on this

count he accused the Committee of behaving no better than Rome.

Essentially, he could be ignored, firstly because he was an old man whose

influence was waning; secondly because, unlike those who were to follow in

his steps later, he did not have the well-monied power base behind him to

disrupt the Communion. And perhaps he would have been too loyal to the

Movement as a whole to cause the type of disruption and debate that was later

to result in great splits in congregations, or, even inspire, as in the present crisis

Hope International, a situation approaching total schism.

But what needs to be recognised is that Andreason fired the opening shots of

the great and painful debate within Adventism; a debate that in one form or

another has been rumbling on ever since. That is, the tentative emergence of

Evangelical Adventism on a collision course with Traditional Adventism. The

Andreason protest was a small indication of a greater crisis to come.

38

Development of Adventism, 1966 - 1980

The Pierson Presidency

In the mid 1960s two significant events took place: the first was the election of

Robert H Pierson to the General Conference Presidency; the second was a

further theological controversy caused by the emergence of Robert Brinsmead

and the' Awakening Movement' .

In 1966, Ruben Fighur retired, and Robert Pierson was elected President.

Pierson was a throwback to Butler in the 1880s, or Adventism's answer to

Archbishop Fisher. He had a very high view of the General Conference and his

own office in regards its authority. He also came from the mission field, and

found himself in a theological and scientific world not entirely to his liking.

One could say that he was a triumphalist and a traditionalist, who believed in

the authority of the Church in matters of doctrine and practice and came very

close to a papal view of the Presidency and of those who were members of the

General Conference 'family'.

In a morning worship address to those in this 'family', published in the Ministry

in 1976, he declared:

'When you and I joined the General Conference family, something happened

to us. When we began to work in the General Conference office we became

part of what inspiration describes as "God's Highest Authority on earth". All

of us are something special in God's sight. Our relationship to our Church, to

the world field, to one another, and to the work entrusted to us is unique. We

are part of the highest authority that God has on earth.'

That last sentiment is repeated again toward the end of his address.

If the above is Robert Pierson's view of how he saw the General Conference,

then it is not surprising that he found the mandate given to the Geo-science

Research Institute, that is, to follow the truth wherever it led and that same

mandate for the Biblical Research Committee, impossible to sustain.

Essentially, under Fighur's mandate, it left Biblical investigation and the

formation of positions in the hands of those outside the control of the General

Conference This was especially so in the case of the Geo··science Research

Institute, headed by Dr. Ritland, where on Held trips, Pierson discovered, that

39

millions of years were mentioned for rock formations, rather than being

ascribed to the Genesis flood and all being neatly fitted into the official 6000

year cosmology.31

Pierson's attitude was that the Church is the arbiter of all truth and as such,

Adventist science ought to be re-enforcing the Church's official position, and

what inspiration told us concerning the age of the earth, not flouting it Despite

the fact that the S-d A Bible Commentary, with the demise of McCready Price,

had already begun to take a more liberal view of these matters, the mandate

changed, as it did also for the Biblical Research Committee. No longer were

they to confuse matters by searching for the truth wherever it led, the Church

had the truth and it was their task to enforce it.32

Equally, the historical-contextual method of working with Scripture, which

had been used since the 1930s by Adventist Biblical scholars was not looked

on with favour, although it continued to be used openly by our scholars. So

long as the scholars dialogued between themselves in theological jargon, most

of it never reaching the flock or too incomprehensible for the laity to

understand, there was nothing to fear. But where the person in the pew was

concerned, or what Pierson once called 'the peanut gallery', the 'proof text'

method with the more traditional approaches and interpretation was favoured.

Nothing was to be permitted to rock the boat. The idea was to have a 'tidy ship'

in which everyone knew their role and place and deference to the 'Highest

Authority next to God on earth' was maintained.

It was, as Raymond Cottrell in his Forum address in San Diego said, the period

of 'theological obscurantism33

By that he meant that, faced "with the

31. For this information I am indebted to a article in Opinion, vol 8, issue

2, by Sydney Rose

32. See Hammill's autobiography in which he has a full chapter on the

origins and demise of the Geo-science Research Institute as a

legitimate vehicle for open investigation and discussion on scientific

issues under Pierson

33. In his San Diego address on the development of S-d A theology,

Raymond Cotterell saw the Pierson presidency as one of refusing to

accept that there were Serious theological problems facing the

Communion. Further to this, the GC rejected the historical-contextual

method of Biblical investigation and criticism., so leading to an increasing

rift between many of the scholars of the Communion and the GC. In 1969,

he similarly undermined the open and investigative nature of be Biblical

Research

40

evidence of theological problems, Pierson preferred to ignore it and declare it

non-existent Listening to Cottrell’s analysis is similar to Gali1eo's struggle

with the Roman Church over what he saw through his telescope. The Church

condemned as untrue what he was clearly able to see and the telescope through

which he saw it was an instrument of heresy. The General Conference at this

time operated a very similar mentality towards the theological and scientific

questions.

Another factor of the Pierson Presidency was his lack of real enthusiasm for the

continuing dialogue with the World Council of Churches. If the Adventist

Church was the true Remnant of Biblical prophecy, then why bother to carry on

a dialogue with apostate Christendom? The dialogue continued, of course, due

to the strident and continuing efforts of Dr B B Beech and others, but the drive

from the centre was beginning to slow down.

However, if Robert Pierson thought that after these changes in policy he could

settle down to an untroubled and becalmed existence he was to be

disappointed. A brooding and very dark cloud was moving from Australia and

it was to dog, in one guise or another, the whole of his Presidency. That cloud

began initially with an ex-Avondale student called Robert Brinsmead and the

so-called Awakening Movement of the late 1960s and early 70'S, and gathered

towards a storm, as Brinsmead retracted his perfectionism and converted to

Reformation/Gospel theology.

It further darkened as the Traditionalist and Perfectionist orientated 'Concerned

Brethren' of Australia initiated in the early 70s what was to become a growing

and very potent assault upon Evangelical Adventism, the Avondale Theological

Department and Desmond Ford's teaching in particular

One of the reasons why the Perfectionist traditionalists lost their grip on the

Church throughout the 1960s was due not only to the official Christological

shift of the later 1950s, but because the Communion became so pre-occupied

with Brinsmead's ' Awakening Movement'.

Committee by reversing the Fighur mandate and placing administrators and

what were termed 'other non-scholars' on the Committee. (see the article

'Vignettes of Seven General Conference Presidents', by Raymond Cottrell,

Adventist Today, July-August 1995, p 15).

41

In many ways the Brinsmead controversy in the 1960s is somewhat clouded in

mystery, partly because finding someone at the time who understood what he

was saying, even after attending one of his meetings, was difficult, and partly

because his ideas became distorted and attacked by the Church through official

publications, which tended to devalue the discussion to that of a personal

nature.34

Nor did the design of some of his publications aid the clarity of his

thought.35

To understand something of Brinsmead's thought one has to consider an

incident that took place [n the classroom at Avondale and that impressed him

mightily, Some years later he recounted36

how his teacher, while explaining the

status of a saint until the end of probation, took an object and covered it with a

cloth. The object was the believer, the cloth Christ's covering. At the moment

of acceptance be was covered, but at the moment Christ's ministry finished, the

covering was removed, Brinsmead realised that the believer was at that point as

much on his own and just as vulnerable after the close of probation as he had

been before he had accepted Christ, The logical conclusion was that the

believer, to survive between the end of probation and the second coming, must

have achieved, somewhere or somehow, the necessary righteous perfection

required to carry him through that time, It was therefore crucial that the

believer build a righteous character if he was to survive at that moment,

34. In 1969 the Messenger published an article by Dr B Seaton, then BUC

President, which made a personal attack on Brinsmead and especially the

nature of his departure from Avondale and his academic competence.

Nowhere could one find in Seaton’s article a serious attempt to either state

or answer Brinsmead's theological positions, One of the mast notable

features of any discussion coming from the official church papers was

their capacity to indulge in character assassination bordering on slander

35. Brinsmead did not help his cause by publishing books which had a text by

Edward Heppenstall on one page and his own reply to Heppenstall on the

opposite page. Such a method muddied the issues and forced the reader to

either read the whole work through twice, or to read each page whilst

trying to hold the argument of each simultaneously, Considering the

complex and obstruce nature of the argument, this was a mental feat that

the average layman would not have willingly entertained even if

interested in what Brinsmead was trying to say.

36. This account can be heard on Brinsmead's tapes distributed by Verdict

Publications.

42

Considering his experience regarding the teaching of judgement as taught at

Avondale in the 1950's. He later wrote:

'Back in the 1950s I came to the settled conviction that this general view of

reaching perfection was impossible and futile, whether one looked at certain

statements of inspiration or history or experience. Because of the doctrine,

which was still being taught when I went to college in 1955, very few people

that I questioned had any real buoyant hope of being able to pass the scrutiny

of the soon coming judgement of the living. It is no exaggeration to say that

most lived in fear and dread of the judgement, having no way of knowing

how to be ready except to "try harder by God's grace" and to hope that such

judgement would not come too soon. 37

Brinsmead also discovered the doctrine of Original Sin, which taught the total

depravity of man. That is, that mankind through Adam's guilt has no

righteousness of his own nor can he survive in any judgement in his natural

fallen estate. This teaching went counter to the idea of building a perfectly

righteous character here and now. Brinsmead set about finding a synthesis or

balance between the teaching of Original Sin and the perfectionist teaching

regarding the sinless condition of the end time generation.

The problem was that if man is inherently guilty because of the Sin of Adam,

then no one could become perfect. The logic of this is that if perfection was the

final requirement then none of the last generation could enter heaven, since the

only righteousness that counted for the guilty saint was that of Christ And that

covering, of course, according to his understanding, had been at this crucial

point in time, removed .

His solution was ingenious. While accepting that man was born in Sin as a

fallen being and incapable of achieving sinless perfection here and now, he

finally argued that at the end of time God would have to, by a gracious act,

infuse the necessary seal or mark of righteousness into the believers, so that all

could stand in the final moments of earth's history sinless and perfectly

37. Quoted by Paxton in The Shaking of Adventism

43

righteous in their own right. "What is called, imparted eschatological

perfection.

What Brinsmead did was to balance between what Paxton calls Protestant style

justification and a second experience of perfection, Wesley-Adventist style.38

With this in hand he rejected here and now perfection, declaring:

'We therefore utterly reject any here and now perfectionism. We clearly

perceive that it is impossible within a believer's probationary life, except in

Jesus Christ.39

He was also able to bring to his aid, quotes from the Testimonies, despite the

fact that some criticised him for teaching that one could pass the judgement on

'On the coat-tails of Christ's personal righteousness.40

But none of this criticism

deterred Brinsmead. He saw the judgement of righteousness as a joyous thing

once he had abandoned the idea of here and now perfection.

But on the other side of the coin, despite serious criticism, he remained

committed to the idea that something happened at the moment probation ended.

He was still under a perfectionist influence and believed in his version of the

time of trouble, through which the believer, having attained perfection, would

have to pass. With unerring logic he expanded his idea that if perfection was

'unattainable' before the close of probation, then at the close, or the point of

eschatological judgement. God would graciously bestow as a gift, the

necessary experience and righteousness via a final atonement coupled with the

outpouring of the latter rain to see them through. Here lay his error. What he

did not seem to realise at the time was that his Reformation stance on the

Gospel of Justification by faith, that is, Righteous while yet a sinner, could not

be balanced with his eschatological perfectionism. It was either one or the

other.

Brinsmead travelled round the world with his ideas and published one booklet

after another, including a study of the famous 1888 Minneapolis G.C. Session.

38. Quoted by Paxton in The Shaking of Adventism

39. lbid

40. Ibid

44

And he also published books with his ideas down one side of the page and

those of Edward Heppenstall, who opposed his eschatological perfectionism,

down the other. It made hard reading for the uninitiated and to my mind only

served to confuse the issue for the layman. Essentially it became, as many of

these events do, a theologian's battleground encumbered by a confused, divided

and squabbling laity, And squabble they did, especially in the Australasian

Division.

As 'The Defence Literature Committee', set up to reply to the 'Awakening

Movement' and to make a critique of Brinsmead's conclusions, because

embroiled in countering his ideas and restoring some balance in those parts of

the world where the 'Movement' had made divisive inroads. Dr Edward

Heppenstall, veteran of the 1956 discussion of the Fighur Presidency, and at

this time Head of Theology at Andrews University, entered the debate with his

own contribution.

Heppenstall questioned Brinsmead's timing of perfection.41

He argued that

there was no possibility of the believer gaining perfection until the Second

Coming, In other words, the believer remained a sinner, yet saved, until the

moment of Christ’s return. Perfection was not on offer at any stage during this

lifetime, His security was by grace through faith in Christ's righteousness

alone, right to the end. He declared that Brinsmead's last day infusion of

Righteousness was unbiblical.

This was an extraordinary declaration and a definite shift towards the

Reformation position, which showed that there was in Adventism, howbeit

among certain theologians, a recognition of the doctrine of Original Sin and a

clear understanding of Righteousness by faith alone, and with that

understanding a rejection of sinless perfection prior to the Second Coming. Put

this alongside the position of a sinless Christ, and one can see that there

41. By at least 1962, Heppenstal1 had already rejected the idea that it was

possible for sinless perfection to be attained this side of !the Second

Coming, For Heppenstall 'Eschatological Perfect' came at the first

resurrection and not before. He was therefore in a very good position to

challenge Brinsmead’s two main ideas: first that 'Eschatological Perfection'

was attainable; second that it became attainable by an infusion of

righteousness via a Divine act after Christ's heavenly ministry ceased,

immediately prior to His Coming.

45

was in certain theological circles an attempt to embrace Pauline theology

and to return to the 16th century Protestant position.42

In an article entitled Is Perfection Possible ?, Heppenstall wrote:

'It is fatal to believe that if only we would become totally surrendered

to Christ, the sinful nature would become eradicated. The law of sin

and death continues to operate within us.'

He further writes:

The basic doctrine of the Christian faith is salvation by grace alone.

Salvation by grace alone means that absolute perfection and sinlessness

cannot be realised here and now.43

Considering the underlying perfectionist nature of Adventism these are

radical statements. One of the most interesting points about the 1960s is

that ironically the Brinsmead conflict acted .as a catalyst for the theology of

Grace, which bloomed in the Church's major theological centre. But to

argue that this showed signs that there was about to be a massive shift in

thinking by the Church as a whole regarding the Righteousness by faith

would be a gross exaggeration.44

42. The issues raised by Brinsme.ad were: important because they reflected a

wider theological debate within the Community over the nature of

salvation, and the relationship between faith and works, Justification and

Sanctification. This debate began to intensify in the 1970's, as it had in the

1880's, and is still a contentious issue within Adventism.

43. Quoted by Paxton in The Shaking of Adventism

44. One point that could be made here is that with the Leadership embroiled

with its battle with Brinsmead, the theology of Grace and anti-

perfectionism, was able to be taught to the next gt.'l1eration of ministers

without too much conflict or opposition from within the Communion. The

positive side of the Brinsmead controversy of the late 1960's was that, for a

time at least, in some Adventist Seminaries, the teaching of law··orientated

salvation was supplanted by salivation by Grace alone, However, officially,

the Church remained in a more legalistic mode regarding these matters. Its

antagonism against Brinsmead appears to have been more Administrative

and Constitutional than theological.

46

Heppenstall's position was a minority one,' even if effective in countering

Brinsmead's erroneous position, it was: not general. While the Head of

Theology at Andrews University added weight to the notion that salvation is of

grace and faith in Christ alone, The Defence Literature Committee still tended

to see judgement as a scrutiny of the saint's life in an Investigative Judgement,

and that the believer must be accounted worthy of salvation; in terms of the

judgement then, the position was still perfectionist in tone.

So the two virtually incompatible positions within the Church, one from the

official committee set up to answer Brinsmead's perfectionism continued side

by side. Here were two completely different signals coming from the Church

on the matter as to how the believer is saved at the end of time. It also showed

the confusion and weakness of the Church's own platform even as early as the

late 1960’s in being able to disarm any independent perfectionist movement

raging within its own congregation.

One of the reasons the Church did not see the immediate significance of

Heppenstall's writings was that The Literature Defence Committee was looking

elsewhere and spending much of its time complaining about Brinsmead being

an 'off-shoot' leader, leading to an 'off-shoot' movement. "While allowing

damaging accounts of Brinsmead’s background, motives and academic

competence to abound in the official Church periodicals.45

We told the

membership nothing of what he was actually saying,

In effect, the doctrinal challenge of Brinsmead was never adequately explained,

nor countered to my knowledge, in any official publication read by the laity.

Certainly not in Britain, despite the fact that Brinsmead's ideas had taken root

in some of the churches in the south west of this country. The people who saw

the significance of what Brinsmead was saying and who made an intelligent

response to him were those like Drs Heppenstall, Ford and LaRondelle, rather

than officialdom. And it was they, especially Heppenstall and Ford, who finally

persuaded him of his error.

45. This is commented on by Paxton in The Shaking of Adventism. Peter James

book on The Everlasting Gospel has much to say on the drift towards

sinless perfection and quotes from similar sources to that of Paxton. Both,

from different directions, saw the Review position on Righteousness by

Faith as seriously flawed.

47

Indeed, by the early 1970s, Brinsmead, already half way along the Damascus

road of Reformation theology, had been persuaded of his error and had

completed his Damascus conversion to the Gospel. He openly confessed his

error in print. But if the Church thought it was finished with Brinsmead,

Brinsmead was not finished with the Adventist Church. Ironically, this

conversion began in part, I believe, a trail that led to the rise of the Concerned

Brethren and the present crisis with Hope International, Shepherds Rod, the

many Remnant Prophecy based groups and in England Gazeley centred and

trained groups and then Ford to eventually find himself at Glacier View.

Brinsmead's syntheses and last day perfectionism was far less dangerous for

the Adventist Church than he became after accepting the Gospel and

Justification by faith alone. His pilgrimage took him firmly into the

Reformation camp of cross and Christ centred theology, and the doctrine of

free Grace. Nor did it take him long to see the significance of Paul's writings in

Romans and Galatians concerning Justification and forensic imputed or

vicarious righteousness being all the believer required for eternal life, and from

there to make the connection with the sanctuary argument in Hebrews, and

with it the realisation that as Medieval Romanism was broken by the Gospel in

the 16th century, so that same Gospel applied would break Adventism's law

orientated perfectionism and last day judgement teaching.

With this Gospel in hand he began to put Traditional Adventism under its light

and he found it lamentably wanting. Nor was the situation helped by the fact

that as Brinsmead abandoned his perfectionism the Church began moving into

reverse gear theologically and was slowly sliding back towards an ultra-

perfectionist position.

Andreason was dead by this time, but his ideas were still in circulation,

ironically some of his writings having been propagated by the 'Awakening

Movement' to support Brinsmead's notion of eschatological perfectionism. The

first signs of this shift came in editorials and supporting articles in the Review

by Kenneth Wood, Herbert Douglass, George Vanderman, Mervyn Maxwell

and others, which had a perfectionist emphasis, especially where the last

generation was concerned. The trend continued in a special issue of the Review

on Righteousness by Faith, contributed to by George Vanderman and Mervyn

Maxwell whose views were a return to the idea that Righteousness by faith

meant that one could overcome sin and be sinless. That is, that Justification

48

and Sanctification were virtually synonymous, rather than mutually

exclusive.46

Then in 1977, a year after the Palmdale conference convened to discuss the

issue of Righteousness by Faith, came the SS Quarterly Jesus the Model Man.

Herbert Douglass was the writer and the whole of that study returned to the

idea that Christ primarily came to show us how to keep the law, and by taking

our fallen nature, gave us a model, or example, by following which we could

become sinless, just like he became. While it is true that the lessons caused

some protest, especially from Australia, and some alarm among the leading

theologians, the fact that the Sabbath School Committee allowed such a study

in the light of the gains in Christology and the Gospel made in the 50s and 60s,

revealed that the Church was in effect returning, through the influence of

Herbert Douglass to the Andreason/Branson type perfectionism.

The 19705 became from one point of view, the decade of the re-emergence of

Traditional Adventism. The Traditional Right was fighting back. But from

another point of view it was also a decade of warnings from those such as

Desmond Ford, who had himself embraced the salvation teaching of the

Epistles and who, much to the alarm of a group of verciferous laymen in

Australia, who called themselves 'The Concerned Brethren', had been teaching

for some years, a similar Reformation theology of salvation to that of

Heppenstall, and now of course, latterly, Brinsmead. Throughout the decade,

these two irreconcilable perspectives in Adventism, were gathering momentum

along a collision course.

Brinsmead's own role in the drama lay in systematically picking to pieces the

1844 Sanctuary/Judgement which was sacrosanct and all essential to those

holding to Traditional Adventism and which still existed in a modified form in

Questions on Doctrine. As one steeped in Adventism and its Judgement

message from his Awakening days, Brinsmead was well qualified to make this

onslaught. As before, he began the lecture trail and with the aid of cassette

began to disseminate tapes of these lectures. In his magazine, Present Truth,

changed later to Verdict, and later on in such works as 1844 Re-examined,

46. Quoted by Paxton in The Shaking of Adventism

49

Judged by the Gospel, a Critique of Adventism, and to a lesser extent, The

Pattern of Redemptive History, he re-enforced his conversion to the Apostolic

Gospel and Reformation theology, while at the same time taking Traditional

Adventism apart.

As he himself said of his perfectionism, he was like a dog running around with

a bone in his mouth and the moment he dropped it the Church picked it up and

began running around with it. But I would argue that the Church had never

really lost its perfectionism, it always remained underneath the surface waiting

for its day to return, and that day it seemed had now arrived. His own reaction

to the Review articles was to be published in a brochure entitled A Statement to

my S d A Friends. In this he laid out the Pauline position on Righteousness by

Faith and countered the Review articles.

Desmond Ford's entry into the debate came in 1975 when his wife, Jillian,

published a paper called The Soteriological implications of the Human Nature

of Christ. Desmond Ford contributed an appendix to the paper dealing with the

various related questions on the issue. The fact that Ford himself made a

contribution associated its content, in the minds of many, with the positions

held, and therefore taught, in the Theology Department of Avondale The

content of the paper only served to fuel the opposition from the 'Concerned

Brethren' for its pages only confirmed what they suspected all along, that the

historic Adventism was being undermined at Avondale. It also fatally linked

Ford with similar positions now taught by Brinsmead. It was in retrospect, a

link that was to prove fatal for Ford's position in the Theology Department at

Avondale.

In her paper, Jillian Ford argued for a sinless Christ as being essential for our

standing with God. She also argued for a proper understanding of the Pauline

doctrine of Justification by Faith alone, in relation to Christ's sinless nature and

His once for all Atonement for Sin. The paper denied the possibility of a here

and now perfection and placed the sole emphasis on the vicarious work of

Christ alone as being of any value to the believer, in the Judgement.

It caused a reaction because it was striking at the very heart of what many saw

as the central message of Adventism. The fact that it was met with such

hostility gives us some idea as to how far by 1975 the Church was moving into

the Traditionalist's camp. One critic of the paper was F A Basham, who in a

paper against Jillian Ford's position" concluded that the position was very clear.

50

I quote:

'If the position taken by the MS sent out from the Theology Department at

Avondale is right, then the historical position of the Adventist Church is

wrong. These two points are irreconcilable. 47

Basham was right of course. The battle lines were being firmly drawn.

It was during this time that the attacks on Ford began in earnest, from 'The

Concerned Brethren', partly because they linked this theology with what

Brinsmead was delivering over Righteousness by Faith, the sinless all-

sufficient Christ and the Cross as being a final Atonement. All of these

teachings they began to challenge and repudiate.

Meanwhile, as the General Conference could see more trouble brewing from

Australia, it was decided to have a conference to consider the question of what

the Church officially ought to believe and teach about Righteousness by Faith.

This took place at Palmdale in 1976

The conference revealed a definite· division of opinion over what Paul's

teaching meant and the question of Christ's human nature. Ford gave them a

study as to what Paul meant in Romans. Apparently he returned to Australia

convinced that the conference conceded to his study and exposition and had

agreed to the Biblical understanding that Righteousness by Faith as being

forensic, and distinct from Sanctification, The issue caused considerable

discussion in Australia and it led to a polarization between those who thought

that Ford was right and that Adventism was at last coming of age, and, those

who thought that he had destroyed all that the Adventist Church had believed

and stood for. Indeed, some regarded it as the ultimate omega apostasy.48

In the Review report all was finally revealed, showing that the leadership did

not hold to Ford's view. Kenneth Wood and Robert Pierson made the position

clear that what Palmdale had supported with clarity was the original

47. Quoted by Paxton in The Shaking of Adventism

48. Ibid

51

view as expressed in the S-d A Encyclopaedia. Kenneth Wood continued to

argue that Sanctification and Justification were virtually one and the same

thing. That is that Justification was both imputed and the experience of the

believer giving the believer the power to overcome sin. Robert Pierson

threw his weight behind the Review's position by declaring:

, ... that the Sod A Church accepts the two phases, or steps, in the

experience of righteousness by faith. One step is the instantaneous

experience known as Justification, which is the imputed Righteousness

of Jesus .... The second phase is the lifelong experience of Christian

living.

Palmdale, far from being a breakthrough, effectively re-enforced the status

quo. The Roman, Tridentine, position of faith and experience as being of

equal merit remained as the Adventist definition of Righteousness by Faith.

That definition, cited again in Neal Wilson's contribution to the 1988 Week

of Prayer Readings, to my knowledge, has not changed. If Indeed, in a

recent Ministry, there was an article bemoping the fact that there are four

different versions of the Gospel in Adventism. 49

Another strand in this tangled story, which we have already touched upon,

is the agitation and contribution made by those who call themselves 'The

Concerned Brethren'. This was a group of concerned Adventists of the

49. The 1988 Week of Prayer readings, which looked back to the 1888

Minneapolis GC session on Righteousness by Faith, did nothing to show

that the Communion had moved from the position held by the Review in

1976. The confusion between Justification and Sanctification was set by

Neal Wilson's opening article. While Ralph Larsen's contributions to those

same readings took a very legalistic position where salvation was

concerned.

50. In 1993 the Ministry ran a Viewpoint section where the crisis over the

Gospel in Adventism was aired. The writer argued that there were four

different Gospels taught in Adventism, only one of which, in his view,

came near to the Gospel taught by Christ and the Apostolic community. It

is a point re-inferred by William Johnson in The Fragmenting of

Adventism. Johnson rightly argues that if the Adventist Church does not

know what the Everlasting Gospel is supposed ID be, then how can it fulfil

the commission of Revelation 14:6, which it claims to be doing?

52

Perfectionist school of thought in Australia led by Dr Russell Standish and his

brother Colin. Their opposition to Ford's position over Righteousness by Faith

and the Christology of Questions on Doctrine became more intense as the

1970s moved on. The stand, of what became known as 'Hope International',

was virtually the same as that of Andreason. They saw the truths of Adventism

as under threat in Avondale.

These truths being the sinful nature of Christ, the 1844 Sanctuary/Judgement

message, and Righteousness by Faith as being forgiveness for past sins and

enabling the sinner to overcome all sin, so as to be sinless by the time the

judgement turns to the cases of the living and, for the last generation, at the

time of the Lord's coming. They opposed Original Sin, which they believed to

be inimical to the true distinctive message of 1844, while embracing

eschatological perfection and law centred judgement theology, the core of late

1840's Adventism.

Russell and Collin Standish, according to their account of matters given

between 1979 and 1980 51

went before the Biblical Research Committee to

complain about the intrusion of the 'new' Reformation theology into the

Church, and about Dr Ford in particular. They complained that the heresy of

Original Sin, and Reformation Calvinistic theology with its emphasis being on

the final Atonement for sin being at the Cross. Its idea of forensic imputed

Righteousness alone being sufficient for salvation, so undermining the

Adventist teaching of obedience to the law, and sinless perfection, was

creeping through the Church and ought to be resisted by every concerned

Seventh-day Adventist. Quite early on there was also a threat to set up a

counter institution which would teach the Traditional Truths of Adventism

even if the Church's Theological Institutions would not.

What Standish really objected to was an exclusive emphasis on Christ and a

Cross-centred approach to Adventist theology and Salvation. Indeed this

becomes very clear in Adventism Vindicated and from articles later written for

51. This three part account written by Colin and Russell Standish concerning

the theological controversy from 1950-1974 was given in the S d A hospital

in Bangkok 17 March 1919. The Standish brothers rejected Righteousness

by faith alone as giving the believer any efficacious standing with God.

53

Our firm Foundation, edited by Ron Speare, where in one such article he

declared that Christ's meritorious life was not all sufficient for salvation and

the final judgement, and that those who believed so were being led astray. 52

The issue of Judgement was the Law and Christ's insistence on its perfect

keeping by the believer if he is to pass the judgement test. This, he declared in

the a11icle, cannot be overstated, the perfect keeping of the law is crucial in

the judgement stakes.

The implications of such a statement are quite extraordinary. For Russell

Standish was dispensing with Paul's central argument in Romans, Colossians,

Galatians and Ephesians. In Adventism Vindicated he rejects Paul's argument

that God justifies the wicked. From a text in Leviticus he argued that God only

justifies the Just or righteous law keepers. This rejection of Paul made room for

the doctrine of here and now perfection. Here then lies the great divide that we

began with. We have virtually come full circle

Pierson retired from the General Conference Presidency in 1978 and far from

leaving a tidy ship he bequeathed to Neal Wilson a divided one with a very

messy deck full of groups of passengers in direct conf1ict with each other.

Wilson took over as the storm clouds were gathering from more than one

direction.

As for Neal Wilson himself, if Robert Pierson could be described as an

.Archbishop Fisher, then Neal Wilson was closer to an Innocent Ill. He, like

Innocent, faced with two and half decades of tempestuous theological debate,

aspired to have church unity and a single authoritative view at whatever cost.

He was just over a year into his Presidency when the storm broke.

With Brinsmead attacking Traditional Adventism from all directions, or as one

commentator put it, 'blowing the lid off 1844' and the 'Concerned Brethren'

52. Russell Standish later articulated the above in Our firm Foundation 1988,

where he argued that any Adventist who relied exclusively on Christ's

merits for salvation, but fail to provide evidence of a law keeping

performance will not pass the judgement. He spoke of Adventists being

beguiled into believing that faith in Christ's merits would save them. In

other articles in the same periodical he argued for a law orientated mode of

salvation and the development of sinless perfection. One can find similar

positions held in Adventism Vindicated.

54

countering any attempt to unhinge Traditional Adventism as they saw it and

savouring some success at having helped to dislodge Ford from Avondale to

PUC. Ford having been finally denied by the General Conference the clear

promise of a committee to give serious attention to the Sanctuary question, 53

decided to speak out at the Adventist Forum meeting in October 1979.

He had received many letters, especially after the Hebrews lesson study in

1977, from ministers in the field, some still active and from others who had

resigned and from concerned members of the laity. Whether he realised that he

was about to give one of the most remarkable addresses of his career, and

would at the same time light a fuse which is still with us. Had he been a

politician instead of an honest theologian filled with conviction, he would have

drawn back from the task. Within an hour, Australia's most famous Adventist

Theologian, had, via the exposition of Hebrews 9, struck at Traditional

Adventism's heart and by doing so had tossed a burning brand into the powder

keg.

It was to lead to his suspension, the famous 1000 page defence thesis and

Glacier View. It also brought to the surface, divisions among the laity and the

ministry. The turmoil led to a cycle of rebuttal tapes, from Arthur White and

various members of the General Conference; attacks from Kenneth Wood in

the editorials of the Review, as well as from a variety of lay groups, both in

print and on tape, one of which was the obscure Final Century Research

Foundation of Oregon led by a brother Miller, who, after declaring that Ford

was an ignorant man who had misread Hebrews 9, accused the Church's

Institutions of teaching 22 doctrinal errors.54

But the question for many, who recognised much sense in Dr Ford's

deliberations, was to see what the Church would do officially. Would it listen,

53. Cottrell comments 011 this assurance in his Forum tape, as does Hammill

in his account of Glacier View. Hammill, however, is not persuaded that

Dr Ford was given any meaningful assurance concerning discussions on

the Sanctuary issue prior to his appointment to PVC ..

54. This was stated in a tape by Miller in 1980, disseminated under the

auspices of the Final Century Research Foundation based in Oregon. After

dealing \\iththe Hebrews 9 issue, Miller accused the church of teaching

such errors as the sinless nature of Christ, imputed Righteousness on the

grounds of faith alone, etc.

55

deliberate and change, or close ranks around Traditional belief for the sake of a

unified view? Despite the excitement and positive expectations of many, that

question was answered in part by the 1980 General Conference Session and the

re-constituted statement of belief, the 27 Articles, and totally answered by the

end of the Glacier View Conference in August. All positive expectations of

change evaporated.55

Commenting on this shift in 1982, Waiter Martin told William Johnson that to

the same questionnaire originally sent to the General Conference in 1956, the

answers received in the wake of Glacier View were significantly different from

those received in 1956. Some questions even being left unanswered.56

In effect, between 1956 and 1980 the Church began to move from a

perfectionist stance and a faulty Christology towards doctrinal reform and the

establishment of a Biblical Christology as well as to some accommodation, be

it a minority one, with the Gospel of Grace and Justification by Faith, only to

begin to retreat back through the 1970s into its Traditionalist Perfectionist

stance. By 1980 the Church had come almost full circle and was, certainly in

the view of many, reneging upon the gains of the 50s and 60s and reverting to

historic type .

55. The account of Glacier View,' and its implications given in both Spectrum

and in Hammill's autobiography makes dire reading. What is clear from

both is that the 'Consensus document' which had been put together was

virtually discarded by a small committee of GC men, who had been

secretly set up to monitor the conference. Hammill speaks of this and while

theologically, no friend of Dr Ford, considers that what happened at

Glacier View to be a betrayal of them all.

56. This revelation was made on the Ankerburg Show by Walter Martin in the

presence of William Johnson. Martin was very concerned as to the

direction the Adventist Church was taking in the light of his 1956-7

discussions which had resulted in Questions 011 Doctrine, and his own

work The Truth About Seventh-day Adventism.

56