Christian Spirituality and Science Issues in the Contemporary World Volume 10 Issue 1 Chronology, Theology and Geology Article 2 2015 Trouble in Paradise: One Christian Denomination’s Contemporary Struggle Reconciling Science and Belief Ross Cole Avondale College of Higher Education, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://research.avondale.edu.au/css Recommended Citation Cole, R. (2015). Trouble in paradise: One Christian denomination’s contemporary struggle reconciling science and belief. Christian Spirituality and Science, 10(1), 23-32. Retrieved from https://research.avondale.edu.au/css/vol10/iss1/2 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Avondale Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science at ResearchOnline@Avondale. It has been accepted for inclusion in Christian Spirituality and Science by an authorized editor of ResearchOnline@Avondale. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Cole: Trouble in Paradise: One Christian Denomination’s Contemporary St Trouble in Paradise: One Christian Denomination’s Contemporary Struggle Reconciling Science and Belief H Ross Cole School of Ministry and Theology Avondale College of Higher Education Cooranbong, NSW ABSTRACT Proposed amendments to Seventh-day Adventist Fundamental Belief No. 6 represent an attempt to define acceptable Adventist understandings of creation more tightly and to exclude alternative viewpoints in a creedal fashion. In particular, there ap- pears to be an attempt to exclude anything but a young age for life. One question which may be asked is whether the proposed amendments are in fact sufficient to exclude unwanted views, since there are models which allow for a creation week consisting of seven consecutive, contiguous, literal, twenty-four days, yet which accommodate current scientific understandings in ways recent creationism finds uncomfortable. While group identity is important, a focus on the formulation of tighter belief statements as a means of defining heretics will do little to bring resolution. Such documents can all too easily become primarily instruments of power and exclusion. They indicate a shift in focus from the core of a community’s identity to its borders and that is no advance. Listening to one another may not always bring unanimity of opinion but it should both foster respect and facilitate a deeper and more productive unity than mere uniformity could ever bring. Keywords: creed, Sabbatarian, fundamental belief, contiguous INTRODUCTION define more closely the parameters of There is a long history of Christians acceptable belief concerning creation. struggling to reconcile new under- This tightening is being attempted by standings of science with traditional amending the language of its most formulations of faith. The struggle visible and authoritative statement on is not yet over. This article examines this topic, number six of twenty-eight the significance of current attempts statements of fundamental beliefs. in the author’s own denomination, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, to Seventh-day Adventism grew out of 23 Published by ResearchOnline@Avondale, 2015 1 Christian Spirituality and Science, Vol. 10 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 2 the remnants of the American Millerite They were wrong. In the 2005 General movement that had (mistakenly) pre- Conference session a new fundamental dicted the second coming of Jesus in belief on spiritual growth was voted as 1843-1844. The Millerite movement belief number eleven. It was perhaps a was interdenominational but in its presage of things to come that the addi- closing months many of its adherents tion rather than the deletion of a belief were excommunicated from their pointed to a tightening rather than a home churches. Understandably, loosening of acceptable belief. Per- these individuals were subsequently haps the denomination was ironically extremely cautious about setting up on the road to creedalism after all. creeds or confessions by which an “in- crowd” group of believers could judge, Proposed amendments to a number exclude, and persecute others counted of the twenty-eight statements of as being part of the “out-crowd.”1 It fundamental belief are currently being was nineteen years before Sabbatarian developed for consideration by the Adventists could even bring them- General Conference session sched- selves to form an organisation, but uled for July 2-11, 2015. Most of the the imperative of mission eventually amendments formulated to date are drove the majority to it. Formally little more than semantic adjustments. adopting a statement of beliefs took However, a different dynamic is at longer, but was perhaps inevitable work with the proposed amendments given the place of doctrine in defining to Fundamental Belief No. 6 on crea- the group’s identity. Early statements tion, where a narrowing of acceptable of belief were largely informal infor- options is certainly in view. mational descriptors.2 The main body of this article will In 1980 a statement of twenty-seven examine the proposed amendments to fundamental beliefs was for the first the statement of the fundamental belief time adopted as amended by vote concerning creation and the intentions at a General Conference session. It that seem to be behind them. It will was prefaced by a qualification that then consider whether the proposed the language of these beliefs could changes are sufficient to accomplish be updated by vote of future General these intentions. Next it will explore Conference sessions as better ways the agenda behind the intentions. Fi- of expressing the Church’s positions nally it will ask whether there might were found. This qualification com- be a more productive way forward by forted those adherents who feared a which the denomination can discuss creed might indeed be under formula- the issue of creation. tion, although many doubted change would ever come. 24 https://research.avondale.edu.au/css/vol10/iss1/2 2 Cole: Trouble in Paradise: One Christian Denomination’s Contemporary St THE PROPOSED 17:24; Col. 1:16; Heb. 11:3; Rev AMENDMENTS TO 10:6; 14:7). SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST FUNDAMENTAL BELIEF The extra biblical references inserted NUMBER SIX at the end of the statement do not con- The following paragraph has been stitute a change of belief. The same developed by conflating the current cannot be said of the other proposed statement of belief on creation with the changes. In this section we will first draft of a reworded statement brought consider the intentions behind the to a committee of which the author is description of God as having revealed a member. Proposed deletions from in Scripture “the authentic and histori- the present statement of belief are cal account of His creative activity” struck out and proposed additions are rather than simply as having revealed marked in italics: in Scripture “the authentic account of His creative activity”. Secondly, God is Creator of all things, and we will explore the significance of has revealed in Scripture the au- describing the six-day creation as thentic and historical account of recent. Thirdly, we will examine why His creative activity. In six days the expression “the sea and all that is a recent six-day creation the Lord in them” replaces “and all living things made “the heaven and the earth”, upon the earth.” Fourthly, we will the sea and all that is in them" and consider why it has been felt necessary all living things upon the earth, and to qualify the creative work as being rested on the seventh day of that “performed and completed during six first week. Thus He established the literal days.” Fifthly, we consider why Sabbath as a perpetual memorial it is said that these days “together with of His completed creative work the Sabbath constituted a week as we performed and completed during experience it today.” six literal days that together with the Sabbath constituted a week as An Authentic and Historical we experience it today. The first Account man and woman were made in The description of the creation account the image of God as the crowning as not only authentic but historical is work of Creation, given dominion a tacit acknowledgment that a piece of over the world, and charged with literature can be considered authentic responsibility to care for it. When even if it is not considered historical. the world was finished it was “very On a similar disjunction, Seventh- good,’’ declaring the glory of God. day Adventists have long known that (Gen. 1&2; Ex. 20:8-11; Ps. 19:1- “real” and “literal” are not synonyms. 6; 33:6, 9; 104; Isa. 45:12; Acts Jesus is the true Lamb of God (John 25 Published by ResearchOnline@Avondale, 2015 3 Christian Spirituality and Science, Vol. 10 [2015], Iss. 1, Art. 2 1:29) but he is not a literal lamb. Ad- The Adventist prophet, Ellen G. ventist belief in the non-immortality White, periodically wrote of the Earth of the soul is thoroughly inconsistent being “almost” or “about” six thou- with a literal reading of Jesus’ ac- sand years old. She may, however, count of the rich man and Lazarus have been simply using the chronol- (Luke 16:19-31). Church members ogy of Archbishop Ussher found in recognise this as a parable, much like the margins of many Bibles of her day. Abimelech’s account of talking trees That she would have approved of the in Judges 9, and hence do not read it use of incidental references made then literally. to settle a matter of informed debate today is a dubious proposition at best.3 Nor does Gen 1-2 have to be consid- One suspects that an earlier draft revi- ered as parabolic for the point to stand. sion spoke of a six-day creation “about These chapters and maybe the whole six thousand years ago” but that this of Gen 1-11may be a sui generis of was amended to “recent” in an attempt primeval history that describes the in- to preserve White’s intent without fall- describable in common terms because ing into too strict a creedal position.