In the Shadow of the Sanctuary: The 1980 Theological Consultation

In the Shadow of the Sanctuary: The 1980 Theological Consultation

Spectrum magazine, vol. 11, no. 2 (Nov. 1980), pages 27-30.

by Warren C. Trenchard

Warren C. Trenchard, whose M.Div. is from Andrews University, took his doctorate in New Testament from the University of Chicago. He teaches theology at Canadian Union College.

Although it had historic importance, the 1980 Theological Consultation called to discuss the relationship of administrators to theologians was overshadowed by the meetings of the Sanctuary Review Committee, which met immediately before the consultation in the same Glacier View location with many of the same members. The 100 participants in the consultation were selected with the specific topic of the consultation in mind: administrators serving on the General Conference President's Executive Advisory Council (PREXAD), and all union conference presidents from the North American Division; theologians from the SDA Theological Seminary at Andrews University and religion departments of all the North American colleges; presidents of the Adventist colleges and universities in North America; members of the Biblical Research Institute at the General Conference; and selected pastors, periodical editors, ministerial secretaries and evangelists.

The impact of the Sanctuary Review Committee on the Theological Consultation began immediately. At the first Friday evening meeting, the platform chairman announced that instead of the scheduled vesper service, there would be a series of reports from various members of the Sanctuary Committee, whose work had ended just a few hours before. The next day, in the Sabbath morning worship service, with Dr. and Mrs. Ford in attendance, Elder Neal Wilson, president of the General Conference, delivered a moving prayer of dedication, calling especially for Desmond Ford's reconciliation to his brethren. Sunday evening, in his first presentation to the consultation, Neal Wilson issued an exhaustive report on the leaders' dialogues with Ford and the events that had transpired since the Sanctuary Review Committee had finished its work.

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The convergence of the Sanctuary Review Committee and the Theological Consultation contributed to the adoption of a key statement in the official report of the consultation:

A consensus emerged that the whole church, including laity, pastors, theologians and administrators, must be involved in the resolution of doctrinal conflicts, the definition of essential doctrines, and the ongoing quest for better understanding and proclamation of the church's message. It was clearly seen that no one group or individual could justly or safely carry on these tasks alone.

The format of the consultation involved the model of formal presentations accompanied by prepared responses. The secretary of the consultation, Arnold Wallenkampf of the Biblical Research Institute, sent most of the papers and many of the responses to the participants in advance. Although both presenters and respondents did not adhere to prearranged guidelines, and often read major portions of their papers, enough time generally remained for lively discussion. Enough time, indeed, to range widely from the topic at hand.

On the first formal presentation, Saturday evening, Charles E. Bradford, vice president of the General Conference for North America, described the church as a composite of kingdom of God, body of Christ and people of God. He characterized the church's leadership in terms of the service model, a sentiment shared by several other presenters. Bradford called for the church to see itself as a ministerium, not a magisterium. For him, the New Testament church represented the pluriform pattern that must be copied today.

One of the respondents to Bradford, Jack W. Provonsha of Loma Linda University, observed that a representative church government should be truly representative: "A healthy organization such as a church is one in which there is a perceived coincidence of actual power with the structure of power."

On Sunday morning, Norman and Dottie Versteeg, who share pastoral duties in the Garden Grove, California, Adventist Church, led in the first of the morning devotionals which they conducted daily. Niels-Erik Andreasen of Loma Linda University followed by tracing the origin, course and outcome of the tension between royal authority and prophetic ministry in ancient Israel. He compared the kings to today's church administrators and the prophets to present theologians, seeing the former concerned with continuity and the latter with discontinuity.

The recently appointed president of Avondale College, James J. C. Cox, presented a lecture, instead of a written paper, in which he demonstrated that the New Testament reflects a church committed to several central doctrinal and ethical cores. From these cores emerge a variety of theological and situational extensions that differ from place to place and from time to time. An extension becomes heresy only when it loses contact with its core.

Sunday afternoon, C. B. Rock, president of Oakwood College, addressed the question, How can the church be "at once truly meaningful to contemporary man and meaningfully true to its historic determinants?" He answered with the word "renewal," by which he meant maturation. According to Rock, this condition "whereby an institution maintains relevance without loss of purpose or mission, is possible only when that people hold in strictest equipoise the twin principles of absolute commitment and rigorous criticism."

According to Ron Graybill of the Ellen G. White Estate, one of the most important questions confronting the church today is "How much and what kind of authority Ellen G. White should have." However, Graybill did not attempt to answer this question; rather, he reviewed several conflicts in Adventist history in which Ellen White played a role. He noted that although she claimed not to have settled early doctrinal disputes, she did at times endorse one interpretation over another. Graybill also gave examples of Ellen White's changing her position on a theological matter and siding with those who interpreted her writings contextually. However, she stood by what she considered to be a normative pioneer experience and the valida- 28] tion of her visions in the face of the Ballenger challenge.

In the lead-off presentation on Monday morning, Walter Douglas of Andrews University reviewed the transition from theologian to administrator made by several reformers of the sixteenth century. Douglas showed that in the latter role these reformers entrenched in their newly formed church organizations many of the abuses which they had condemned in their former roles of confrontation.

Charles Teel Jr., of Loma Linda University, offered a lengthy critique of former Genral Conference President Robert Pierson's valedictory appeal made upon his announcement of retirement. Pierson had called for church leaders to resist the internal forces that would move the denomination from sect to church, a shift which he considered negative. Teel rejected Pierson's assertion that Adventism had been moving from sect to church, as well as any generalization that always sect is positive and church is negative. Instead, Teel proposed that Adventism become a prophetic remnant, expressing the content of its beliefs in the ideals of the other world, while carefully attending to the structure of its machinery in this world.

In the afternoon session, Raoul Dederen of Andrews University discussed elements of a theology of the church, the concept of church authority, teaching authority in Adventism, and the relationship between teaching authority and the task of theology. He called for the actualization of the Adventist ideal of a representative form of church government.

On Tuesday morning, Fritz Guy of Andrews University presented a paper centered on two theses: that "theology is an essential task of the church"; and that "theology is the task of the whole church." Guy portrayed the role of the theologian in the latter as one of assistance in hermeneutics, methodology, issue identification, resources and discussion initiation.

In a response to Guy, General Conference Vice President Lowell Bock recognized that administrators and theologians "have not been functioning totally in concert." He suggested that church administrators "should take the lead in creating a climate for mutual understanding, trust and creativity."

Another General Conference Vice President, M. C. Torkelsen, addressed the role of the church administrator. Among the many characteristics which he saw necessary for success in leadership, Torkelsen identified servant consciousness as the most vital. He called for a representative study committee that would seek solutions to the confidence gap between leaders and the led.

In a companion paper, Fred Veltman, then chairman of the Pacific Union College theology department, noted that the tension between administrators and theologians is neither new nor confined to Adventists. He called for "making the future more productive of common good than trying to locate the causes for our past failures." For Veltman also the servant model should characterize both administrator and theologian.

Willis J. Hackett, who had recently retired as vice president of the General Conference, made the final formal presentation of the consultation. On the basis of his understanding of the meaning of church in scripture and in Adventism, Hackett concluded that one may expect "a basic doctrinal unity among the believers and members of the church today." He attacked the "historical-critical method of Bible interpretation" practiced by many Adventist biblical scholars as "threatening the very unity of our teachings, if not the structured unity of the church." In place of this methodology, Hackett proposed a three-point program to achieve doctrinal unity: first, a return to the pioneers' "straightforward acceptance of Scripture"; second, "an acceptance of the writings of Ellen G. White as God's divine message given to the church"; and third, a utilization of "the church's organizational structure with its representative form of government."

One of the respondents to Hackett, Earl W. Amundson, president of the Atlantic Union Conference, delivered one of the most penetrating responses of the consultation. According to Amundson, the development of "mature Christians" is more important [29] than the provision of "more controls." On the issue of free discussion of varying views, Amundson responded to Hackett's question about the degree of toleration that could be permitted, by asking, "How can we ever survive without discussion and study?" Amundson suggested that while our beliefs may be nonnegotiable, our interpretations of them must always be negotiable. He observed that the pioneers employed a proof-text method of biblical interpretation, which is unacceptable today, and that scholars can use the contemporary critical tools within the context of commitment to the Bible as God's authoritative word. In what he considered a "delicate issue," Amundson expressed concern over Hackett's apparent assignment of authority "to Ellen White, even over the Bible." His final appeal called for "the unifying spirit of love, rather than the unification of all of the details of our beliefs."

Preliminary to his scheduled Tuesday evening presentation on his aspirations for the church in the decade, General Conference President Neal Wilson addressed himself to two questions that had emerged in the discussion during the consultation. The first question was, What has prevented the Ellen G. White Estate Board of Trustees from making available all the Ellen White material? Wilson reviewed some of the typical objections, which included: the reluctance to release confidential correspondence; the contention that a total release would not contribute to more truth; the fact that all the material has not been indexed and researched by the White Estate personnel; the notion that we already have enough material; the realization that the cost would be huge; and the apprehension of some trustees. In responding to these objections, Wilson suggested that unless better answers can be found than these, the board of trustees will have to give careful consideration to arranging for the publication of all the Ellen White material.

The second question that Wilson treated was, What does one do if 12 theologians agree on a biblical interpretation against Ellen White's interpretation of the same biblical material? Wilson responded that one would have to consider the importance, nature and extent of the issue. He would advise the assembling of a representative group of scholars to evaluate the situation. Wilson then presented two possible scenarios. If scripture was not explicit and Ellen White did not contradict scripture, the church would support Ellen White. If scripture was explicit and Ellen White did not agree in the view of the church, the church must stand by scripture. One must remember that this question was posed as a hypothetical question with no specific reference or example offered, and Wilson's answer must be read in that light.

For the few who remained until the end, the last event of the consultation was the consideration of the report by the summation and resolution committee delivered on Wednesday morning. The committee distilled the contributions of the presenters and respondents, along with concepts that had emerged from the discussions, into a statement of the characteristic ideas of the consultation. In addition to this, the committee presented to the group for approval a list of recommendations concerning the implementation of ideas generated during the consultation and suggestions on the format and frequency of future consultations.

According to the summation statement, the consultation was "designed to increase understanding and trust" among administrators and theologians. This, of course, presupposes that such understanding and trust has not always existed, at least to the extent desired. Most participants, in fact, admitted that this condition existed. For example, Raoul Dederen, a theologian, recognized that although there is a "growing collabora- [30] tion between some theologians and some leaders, the mutual relationship between the two groups is still fraught with misunderstanding, tensions, distrust and occasional bitterness." Lowell Bock, an administrator, echoed the same sentiment when he observed the existence of "an element of suspicion between our theologians and church administrators" and called for the elimination of this "debilitating condition."

Most observers of, and participants in, the consultation would have predicted that in these meetings administrators and theologians would quickly flee to their respective corners of the ring. The former would play the role of preservers in the right corner. The latter would act as provocators in the left corner. For the most part, the theologians performed as expected. Most called for the continuity of a creative tension between preservation and provocation. However, the administrators were not nearly so predictable. Although some approached the issues from a preservation perspective, not all administrators reflected that position. Some offered more intense criticisms of the preservation mentality than did certain theologians.

While this consultation did not achieve any significant concrete results in terms of major policy recommendations or theological consensus statements, it did succeed in bringing administrators and theologians face to face into amicable dialogue. This achievement must not be underestimated. Before two groups can work together, they must learn to talk together. Before they can enter the crucible of contemporary challenges, they must forsake the security of their isolated domains. Therefore, this initial step toward eliminating the suspicion must be applauded, although the walk must also continue.