The Spectrum Blog rises again
30 November 2007
The Spectrum Blog rises again
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Greetings all:
I've been away on a bloggin' vacation due to the holiday break and traveling down to San Diego for the Adventist Society for Religious Studies meetings. Plus, sometimes it just feels really good to leave my computer off.
After the ASRS fun, I attended the American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature conference and heard bracing talks by N. T. Wright, Judith Butler, Cornel West, and S. Brent Plate. I also picked up Alister McGrath's new history of Protestantism, Christianity's Dangerous Idea. (One of the benefits of the conference is that all academic publishers sell their books with healthy discounts.)
I'm about half-way through it now and am marking the margins for a forthcoming blog post. McGrath, who teaches at Cambridge, spins off some really fascinating observations about the authority and causes of Protestant beliefs, all through the lens of the Reformation's "dangerous" leveling of all authority to subjective interpretation. Especially interesting is the fear that kings felt toward this democratizing (remember the English Levelers?) tendency. Perhaps the relativity of "postmodernity" has always been with us?
It's also pretty clear that while Seventh-day Adventism really is a rich mix of Christian traditions, we are most strongly shaped by the Anabaptism, the radical wing of the Reformation.
But more on that later. I just wanted to check back in with all you good folks, wish you a happy and less-consuming holiday season and get in gear for more scintillating conversation.
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Comments
Whoo whoo! Glad you're back--I was starting to have withdrawal symptoms : )
I sure do love scintillating conversation! I'm glad the Spectrum blog is back in the swing of things!
Can't wait to hear more about about the meeting of Adventism and Anabaptism.
Scintillating, you say? Here goes: I recently bought historian Dave MacPherson's bestselling book "The Rapture Plot" at Armageddon Books. I soon realized, while going through 300 pages of recently uncovered 19th century "pre-tribulation rapture" documents unearthed in libraries in Britain, that this has to be the greatest and most damaging exposure of the dispensationalism which has long characterized SDA's as unbalanced "cultists." For example, the author backs up his claim that the same pretrib rapture (the most popular aspect of dispensationalism) has been riddled with dishonesty since its birth in Scotland in 1830, and he includes an appendix revealing embarrassing amounts of plagiarism (with side-by-side quotes) in well-known prophecy books by the late Falwell, LaHaye (of "Left Behind" fame), Ryrie and Tan of Dallas Seminary, and other leading dispensational evangelicals. The book's focus is on a little known 19th century theologian who, after John Darby's death, quietly made hundreds of changes while ostensibly airing early rapture documents in order to steal credit for pretrib rapturism away from the Irvingites (followers of heretical London preacher Edward Irving) and wrongfully credit Darby with it - the "mother of all revisionisms" which strangely has never even been hinted at in all books before 1995, according to MacPherson. But I dare not reveal the plotter's name; readers will have to find out for themselves! This is a riveting book that SDA's can well employ when wishing to silence pervasive anti-SDA criticism. Truly a must read! Jon
Thanks all.
Sounds interesting, Jon. Those who attack Adventism for weird histories and appropriated ideas haven't read much Christian history.
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