SDA Educational Challenges

[Gregory Matthews]

SDA education today clearly faces challenges. The following article has clarity on specific, important aspects of those challenges.

https://spectrummagazine.org/views/2022/ecclesiastical-adventism-and-truth-telling-can-our-universities-fill-void

[Kevin H]

Very powerful. I'm glad that I attended a college that was open to Mrs. White's humanity as well as inspiration. I see the big problem with the three issues mentioned (Ellen White and her copying, Young Earth and Gender roles) can all be wrapped up in the issue of Fundamentalism.  While they talked about the horrible 2015 General Conference, 2015 is only second to 1922 and grows out of the errors that were planted in the church in 1922. If we can correct 1922 then we can move about correcting 2015 and other issues that stem from 1922.  As a few of my college professors lamented "For some reason Seventh-day Adventists have a neurotic need to prove to the world that we are good Baptists."

The church has at least two books on the abiding gift of prophecy over history, but the potential prophets of the past are suggested in a overly cautious context. This of course comes from accepting the myth of what a prophet should be that we get from Fundamentalism. Our historians can study more how God has lead the church and how he tried to lead the church over history if we were not so fearful of not meeting the Fundamentalist views. Most likely, all true prophets end up falling like flies when we try to fit them into the Fundamentalist mode, and we continually try to force Mrs. White into this mold despite her not fitting; and we pay little more than lip service to the abiding gift of prophecy when we are terrified of giants in church history who may have had visions, but not fit our myth of what a prophet should be. 

For the age of the earth, there is ample room in at least Mrs. White for an old, old universe, as well as hints in the Bible. And for this earth we find hints in Mrs. White, but evidence in the Bible in terms such as translated "Without forms and void" studied in the ancient context, and Genesis 2: 4-6  

⁴ These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,

⁵ And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

⁶ But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

which also gives evidence to a history of earth prior to that special week which we can have in the fairly recent past, while even Elder Person and those involved with his attempts to cleanse the church of all "liberal" ideas came to ask those working with him to try to at least limit the age of the earth to 10,000 or 12,00 years (they came to include scholars that go back as far as 21,000) which they call "about" 6,000 years. 

It would be wise to see God doing something special within memory in one way or another, while not trying to squeeze it into Usher's chronology, but to have room for a time summarized in the terms "without form and void" from Genesis 1 and Genesis 2: 4-6, and how this earth plays a role in God working long with Lucifer in Mrs. White's thought.  prior to creation week, and how the careful inclusive genealogies  only began in classical Greece. Ancient genealogies skip generations and mention only the important people in the line, and if there are periods of time where a child is named after his paternal grandfather, thus several generations of repeats of two names, the names are only mentioned once.

I completely disagree with the author when he says that our views of gender roles is based on the Old Testament and how our leadership is thinking that we are still living in those times. While many of the pagan nations had these gender roles, there is evidence that the Old Testament it was not so much. In Abraham's day many of the important wealthy families did not want their daughters to be the second class citizens that women held. In those cases the man who was to become her father-in-law would adopt her and she would become legally her husband's half sister, daughter of his father but not of his mother. While Sarah MIGHT have been Abraham's biological half sister; we need to be open that the term could be her legal status (and nothing says that she could not have been both) in which case the wife is the equal of the husband. 

In places such as Jeremiah 31:22 indicate that traditionally in Israel/Judah the husband and wife would mutually encompass each other, but that in Babylon, where there was male headship and the man was ONLY to encompass the woman, and the woman only submit, that a sign that they were called out of Babylon and living in the messiah, that God wanted to make it up to them by giving a period where the women not merely regain their equality that they lost when sent to Babylon, but where the men would be willing to allow the women to encompass them.  While the Bible is not loud on the topic, and sadly did have a difference between wives and concubines (wives more equal and concubines the second class citizens that most women had in say Babylon) the little evidence we have points to a more equality for women. It is a myth that the Old Testament has the male headship that the author complained about. Our leaders are not trying to live in the Old Testament, they are trying to live in Babylon and reject the sign of being called out of Babylon. 

Events that coalesced around 1844 has opened the door to deeper Bible study. Prior to 1844 knowledge of the history, geography and all the implications symbolized in the words that the Bible writers choose to share the message God gave them, had become severely limited. Starting in the mid 1800s everything changed and has been growing ever since. Could Mrs. White's description of how people worshiped God in the holy place, but then moved with the Father and Son into the most holy place be talking about how prior to the mid 1800s much of the Bible study was read the words and use imagination to fill out the details of what the words mean, and how we now live when we can use more evidence and less imagination for a deeper understanding of the sacred words. 

Have we replaced the investigative judgment with our neurotic need to prove to the world that we are good Baptists, good Fundamentalists, and cling to pre-mid-1800s approach to the Bible, keep us from the blessings that God is trying to give us in what we call the investigative judgment? If we could give up Fundamentalism, and seriously study the Bible with the tools that we have been getting over the past century and three quarters, these three issues would fall into place. If we allow Mrs. White to be who she was and to focus on her framework and message, and be aware of the copying, but how that copying was part of the popular press of her day (and the Bible is also full of copying) and to have an attitude towards the applications with the idea that while the law of God is absolute, the applications are not absolute; instead of trying to codify each and every application the way some Rabbis tried to codify every application of the Old Testament, especially trying to smooth over were the applications completely contradicted each other, and were limited to the culture of the time. Mrs. White tells us how she wanted to be used and how she did NOT want to be used. We have people trying to minutely follow what she teaches, but completely reject her guidance in how she wanted and did not want to be used, and try to force her to fit the myth of what a prophet should be.