Interlogue #9 ~ Clifford Goldstein
Clifford Goldstein has served as editor of the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide since 1999. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida and master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University. During his undergraduate years, he earned the nickname “Heckle” for the colorful verbal assaults he leveled against a certain street preacher. He was the poster boy for rebellion and philosophical skepticism. But when he met God and became a Seventh-day Adventist, all that changed, and he began to use his writing talents and his intellect for God. His 1990 autobiography, Best Seller, which has since been republished as The Clifford Goldstein Story, details the story of his conversion. He has since written 17 other books and hundreds of magazine articles. He has been editor of Liberty and Shabbat Shalom, both published by the Adventist church. He is married to Kimberly and has two teenage children, Zachary and Hannah.
The first book I read of yours is your autobiography, “Best Seller.” At that time I had recently gotten a bachelor’s degree in religion but was disillusioned about God and Adventism and contemplating a career in writing or teaching literature. So your story touched me on several fronts. If you were to write a sequel or update to the book, what would be the major themes or lessons to be shared in the additional chapters?
I’d probably keep pushing on the same thing—this desire for, and love of, truth at no matter the cost. In some ways, I wish I had a book to burn every day, symbolic of my desire to follow Christ, the truth, no matter what.
Do you still wonder or daydream about writing fiction? Or is something in the works? If you were to write a great Adventist novel, how would you frame the story? What sort of characters take center stage?
Not really. I did a few year ago write another novel, kind of an SDA thing but not really. One of the SDA presses saw it, was interested but then got a little scared. Looking back, I’m glad they backed off: it probably would have been very misinterpreted. It wasn’t that good, either. I loved writing it but didn’t want to hassle actually trying to find a publisher. The fire, the passion, that burned in me as a teenager, the love of writing for writing sake, is gone. Don’t get me wrong, I still love to write, but I don’t have that fire in my belly any more that simply wants to create something beautiful with words purely for the sake of creating it. My writing now is purely didactic, that of trying to get a message across. Sure, the better written the piece the better the message gets across and so I try and do my best within the limited parameters I’m working in.
Though . . . let me take some of that back. I have for the past few years but putzing around writing poetry. I have no idea if any of it’s any good, but I love doing it. I love creating images and ideas with words. I’m having a lot of fun with it, but it’s not really spiritual or anything. Mostly metaphysical and so forth but every now and then I get an image that excites me.
In comparison to editing Shabbat Shalom and Liberty, what do you like the most about working on the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide?
I love writing, editing and teaching. The Bible Study Guides are always on different topics and so I can take a lot of different approaches. I loved Liberty, at first but (1) I read myself out of any strong position on religious liberty, (2) I just got bored. I was in my early 40s and didn’t want to spend the rest of my life bashing Jerry Falwell.
Probably the biggest rush with the Bible Study Guide is the realization that you are impacting lives all over the world. I once walked into a church in Belgrade and saw hundreds of people sitting there with the Guides open; another time I walked into a small apartment in Tokyo and there were a few people with their guides open. It’s very heavy—and humbling too.
I imagine you also get a lot more complaints and criticisms about the Bible Study Guide since it gets read far more than the magazines you’ve edited. What are the top 3 complaints you get about the “lesson quarterly,” as it’s still called in the local churches? How do you respond to each?
Well, that’s funny. The complaints are rarely ever the same. Too bad, because if they were I’d know how to change it. As it is, more often than not the one thing that someone complains about is usually the one thing that someone the next day tells me that they really like. Hard to know what to do, so I just use my judgment.
Since I have your attention now, I’d like to express one item of appreciation and two criticisms about the quarterlies. I appreciate the fact that the church is committed to one study for all—because it keeps the world church conversing on the same Scriptural stimuli each week. I think that’s a good thing. Two personal complaints. First, it seems too American in its style of presentation. Second, the diversity of thought and possibilities within Adventism is not fairly represented. How do you respond?
Fair enough. Well, the editor is an American and so it’s going to reflect that aspect of me. I can’t step out of my skin, if you know what I mean? Second, when I first was interviewed for the job I was told that the ABSG was not a place for controversial topics; that is, we just present the 28 fundamentals and the like. There’s a lot of diversity of thought in the SDA church, and there’s a time and place for those to be expressed and talked about. The ABSG, I’m afraid, ain’t one.
You personally authored the Bible Study Guide for the 3rd quarter of 2006 entitled “The Gospel, 1844, and Judgment.” There you argued that without 1844 and the investigative judgment teaching that is unique to Adventism, the church loses its identity and falls apart. There are those who argue against your position and say that every movement is in constant flux and that we can leave behind the traditional view of 1844 and still have a unique Adventist identity. You’ve intimated elsewhere that those who believe thus, if they work for the church in leadership positions, they should resign and even leave Adventism altogether. First, have I accurately characterized your position? Could you clarify and elaborate on this?
Well, I suppose you have basically caught where I stand. I’m not so sure anyone who doesn’t agree with our position ought to just leave, cold. I think though that those who take a paycheck as teachers or preachers, if they have problems with it, ought to not try and undermine the faith of others. These folks though whom you talk about wanting to leave behind the “traditional view” are, I think, wanting to do more than that with it. Hey, I have left behind the traditional view. Ask the far right-wingers, who have written me off as a Fordite because I have presented the judgment in the context of the gospel. I don’t have a problem with tweaking and reworking; but let’s not kid ourselves here, Julius. These folks want to toss it out entirely, not rework it a bit.
In recent years, I’ve thought that Judaism’s emphasis on “deed over creed”—that what you do together in the community is a greating binding factor than what you believe in common—is helpful in defining the Adventism of the future. That has probably something to do with that fact that I was born into Adventism, rather than converted into it like you have. The reality is that people like me and others who have a more flexible (we’d like to say, in admittedly self-serving manner, “dynamic” or “progressive”) view toward specific beliefs are here to stay. If Adventism stays as diverse or even more so, do you see yourself or others leaving Adventism to a more doctrinally homogeneous community?
Well, if it were not for Ellen White and what she says about the future, I would think that would be a possibility. But my understanding is that is not what’s going to happen. My understanding, if I understand correctly, is that those who aren’t really grounded will be leaving. After all, if being an Adventist could cost you your life, you have to be a true believer, right?
One might say that the theological diversity in Adventism is the result of postmodernism impacting the church. From your comments in the Spectrum blog, I gather that you’re highly suspicious of the postmodern ethos. What do you find to be positive and helpful personally about postmodernism?
Funny, I just wrote a column in the Review “The Mother of all Meta-Narratives”) on that very topic. In short, I love how the postmodern ethos undoes many of the -isms, including scientism. On the other hand, all relativistic philosophies are self-refuting, which means that in the end postmodernism is as well. Plus, how can you be a postmodern in a church that has the great controversy meta-narrative as kind of the foundation metaphysic behind it?
One intriguing book you’ve written in recent years is God, Gödel and Grace.” The subtitle is “A Philosophy of Faith.” That book may be an example of how you’re using a postmodern approach to turn postmodernism on its head. Could you explain briefly how Gödel’s theorem opens up possibilities for God and Adventism?
Well, the bottom line for me with Gödel is simply that, in the end, we all need to live by faith. That nothing is absolute, in the sense of having absolute proof. I mean, if Gödel showed that even number systems can’t be proven true, then I’m going to sweat it out that I can’t “prove” the three angels messages of Revelation 14? No way.
Some who read your writings, especially on matters of belief, have formed an impression of you as a dogmatic, militantly partisan, even closed-minded individual. But I’ve heard others (who have disagreed with you) describe you as a fair-minded, fun person to fellowship with. What are your critics not seeing or understanding?
Well, I think there tends to be a lot of energy and forcefulness in my writings that turns some folks off. I try and hone in on my point as sharply and strongly as I can. That gives the impression of dogmatism, I know, and I suppose to a degree it’s a fairly accurate representation, though I have mellowed with age. I think too that because I started writing as a pretty new Adventist, with a lot of zeal and fire, I got that reputation early on, and even though I have mellowed out (though folks who didn’t like “Seventh-Day Darwinians” might disagree) your past tends to follow you long into the future.
But I am, I admit, a pretty narrow-minded, dogmatic dude; I mean, “if narrow is the path that leads to salvation” and all that, then, well . . . how broad-minded can one afford to be? Plus, remember, I came out of total nihilism; I mean, I grew up believing in nothing, nothing at all, and so once you get a hold of something as solid as I believe Adventism is, you don’t take it lightly. You read my book. The faith that you were born into cost me everything to find, everything!
I understand you have two children. What challenges are you facing in your household in relating to the “converted versus socialized into Adventism” issues? How do you work through them as a family?
Please, have I learned a lot of lessons there. At this point, with two not particularly pious teenagers, I just show them unconditional love. I let them know that I love them, no matter what, and try and keep a good relationship with them, regardless of their beliefs. You know, all that postmodern fuzzy-wuzzy gooey ooey stuff.
I see you as someone who reads widely and voraciously. You may also be one who consumes a lot of films. Who have you found to be the most engaging and interesting secular authors and/or filmmakers in the world today? What about Christian authors?
Oh, please, we could go on that for hours. Yes, I do read a lot and mostly secular authors too, besides my Bible and Ellen White for devotionals.
I don’t know where to begin. There’s no one in particular. Right now I am reading Robert Fagles new translation of the Aeneid. I have on my shelf an old biography of Tolstoy, not to mention a bunch of his spiritual writiings. I actually was reading some of his religious short stories for part of my devotions. I have the new biography of Robert Oppenheimer that I can’t wait to tackle. I also just bought Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things. l like metaphysics and read what I can by and about Wittgenstein and Gödel. Plus I can’t wait to read Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, which is also on my shelf. Probably the funniest read I had in years was David Foster Wallace’s 1,200-page novel, Infinite Jest (I actually wrote one of my Review columns on it). I like laymen’s books on physics, especially on quantum theory. And I am always reading poetry, lots of poetry. Wallace Stevens blew my mind, and so did Anna Akhmatova. I also devoured the completed works of T. S. Eliot and Joseph Brodsky.
And yet, in all my reading, I always am thinking, what can I pull out of here that helps me understand my faith and would help me explain it to others? You see, in one sense, I really am close-minded. When I first got converted, I spend about 12 years just reading my Bible and Ellen White, pretty much mostly that. Then one day I started to get back into philosophy, but I had 12 years to get my Christian world-view firmly in place. And so now I filter everything through that. What helps me understand it, and what isn’t antithetical to it, I keep. What’s opposed to it, I reject. It’s that simple.
Funny, because I was thinking about this the other day. You read my conversion story, so you know that I was converted totally on an experience. Nothing logical, nothing rational, purely a transrational spiritual experience, about as “un-modern” as you could imagine. In other words, I didn’t get here my working my way through proofs and the like. I was given new premises, new axioms—cold-turkey through a personal encounter with God, my own la nuit de feu (excuse my French). Now my point on all this was that as I have been participating on the Spectrum blog and trying to understand the rationale behind their views (because believe me it’s very hard for me to understand where they are coming from, very hard) I realize that most of these folks have not been through what I went through. I mean many of these were folks who were reading Ellen White in academy while I was out dropping acid and popping ‘ludes. And so I have learned to try and be more sympathetic, to try and put myself in their shoes.
That new realization, I think, might help make for a “kinder, gentler” Cliff. But don’t hold your breath. Old habits die hard.
Before we end here, I’ve got to ask you. How stoked are you about Florida, your alma mater, winning the BCS College Football Championship as well as being #1 in NCAA Basketball?
No, I don’t follow college sports at all, but I was happy to hear about the Gators. I kept in touch with one of my old college roommates and we talked a little bit about it.
Finally, you’re an editor so I have to ask you this. What is one question I should’ve asked, and what would the answer to that question be?
Question: How is it that you can multiply a negative number by a negative number and get a positive?
Answer: You tell me.
That’s a lot better question than my long, pompous ones.
January 21st, 2007 at 10:41 am
I loved this interview.
For one thing, it shows how dynamic (your favorite word) faith is: A brilliant mind enters the Adventist faith on an experience. But instead of being a laid back, touchy-feely experiential churchman he pisses off people on multiple sides by actually taking positions based on his logical views (by logical I don’t mean correct or agreeable ). Here he says, “I defend the faith, but don’t assume that the denomination explanation of things fills my entire intellectual cup. I’m all over the map.” And he has teenagers who don’t experience life in the areas he might consider critical, so that tempers his life.
Here’s a question I wish you had asked: “Given your broad intellectual interests, do you find your local corporate worship service stimulating?” I find that people who have similar intellectual pursuits to his find the corporate worship boring. The average preacher (me) isn’t as smart or as well-read, and can’t talk fast enough to keep up with the minds of such people even if we were as smart as they are. (My dad used to tuck the daily crossword in a Bible for such days.) Some people are difficult to inspire because of the TV, film and internet exposure. Others are just too mentally broad and rigorous.
In addition, people who work in SDA institutions often find that their local church is just an extension of the workplace. The boss who abuses them, the gossipy secretary, the department blowhard, etc., are all there to distract from focusing on the God we are trying to connect with.
So, Cliff, care to say anything about this?
Thanks, Julius (and Cliff).
January 21st, 2007 at 4:39 pm
I’ll repeat Tim’s quesion: How does a church which wishes unfiformity throughout the world, able to speak to such a diverse group of people? Particularly, in the developed countries with such a disparate level of education with the third world countries? How can they continue to communicate if it is not on a simple faith? How can such dogmatic positions, e.g, that Cliff promotes on the literal Genesis Creation story or the IJ and 1844, continue to appeal or inspire the better educated in NAD? Should we continue to emphasize these controversial positions without accepting some plutalism?
Tim, an old friend, and his father and I were probably best called: “Seventh-day Agnostics.” He was a very wise man and I respected him greatly. I just found this site. Thanks for another forum.
January 21st, 2007 at 5:27 pm
Julian, this has been a stunning array of interviews.
The question I would have asked Cliff is, If you believe in the six-day creation, can you tell me what was created on the first day? If the response is light, my follow up question would be, From what source and for what purpose? And how was there an evening and a morning for days one through three when the sun, which is the source of our evening-morning cycle wasn’t created until day four?
January 21st, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Here is the second set of questions I would have asked Cliff.
(it so happens I did ask Cliff this question via email on August 18 of 2006 but didn’t hear back. I know he’s a busy guy so I wasn’t offended, but here’s a repeat of that question)
“Looking at this quarter’s lesson study, in the reading
for Wednesday, September 27, you write:
‘Perhaps the greatest and most important point about
the 1844 pre-advent judgment is that it is a message
of assurance. It’s the promise that as long as we
remain faithful to the Lord–living in humble faith,
repentence, and obedience to Him and His commands–we
have a faithful High Priest who, indeed, stands as our
substitute in judgment…Though we are sinners, though
we have violated God’s law, though we deserve death,
we have the assurance that we will be vindicated in
the judgment because we have Jesus standing their in
our place. This is the most important message of the
1844 pre-advent judgment.’
Is that it? With all due respect, that paragraph
sounds like a pretty standard recitation of the gospel
message one could find in almost any Christian
denomination or church. This is the Adventist
contribution to Christianity, the essential
justification for our existence as a church? I have to
say it doesn’t sound really unique to me.
Or is 1844 important for other reasons?”
January 21st, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Cliff, I translated your autobiography into Korean. I liked the book. I bet it helped a lot of young people.
I just wish that you kept your mind open a little bit.
“Just leave, cold!” type speech is not you.
I hope you stop being a divisive voice in a church which is already torn.
I pray that God open your eyes and minds so that you see light in other brothers’ understanding of the Bible.
January 21st, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Cliff’s book burning comment interests me. Generally people burn books because they don’t have access to the authors. So I wish Cliff was asked which books he would most like to burn and/or authors. If he is the apologist for E.G.White why are the Three Angels Messages so hard to understand when she declares them to be the Gospel in verity?
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:08 am
Great interview. The one thing that I appreciate about Cliff is his willigness to stand for his convictions. I really admire that. Cliff is clearly a thinking Adventist who is willing to probe issues and converse with others. He is not your typical person at the GC who is more concerned about re-election and unwilling to comment about issues for fear that he or she might get pegged. I personally agree with Cliff on some points and disagree with him on others, but in the end, it is the engagement and dialgoue that I love. How many other people have you seen from the GC engage on the Spectrum blog? This commitment to dialogue is something I really appreciate about Cliff and the progressiveadventism.com web site.
January 22nd, 2007 at 4:23 am
Cliff, I hope you do respond to Glen’s questions about what is unique about the Sanctuary doctrine. I would be very helpful for me. As I read your books, as I read the 12th vol of the SDA bible commentary, the doctrine of the sanctuary by Angel Rodriguez, and other books by Adventist scholars I find the distinctive Great Controversy motif of the Sancuatry missing. That is that we must reach a state of sinless perfection before the close of probation. This is what Larry Kirkpatrick teaches, and Herb Douglass, and I could go on. So it seems that Glenn’s quote from the quarterly is accurate. So what is absolutely unique about the Adventist view?
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Folks– I will start to answer right now and do a little more later. I’m getting ready to go on a three day snowboarding vacation and then when I get back I’m off to Finland (funny, but the last time I was in Finland I got in a druken brawl with a bunch of drunk Finns, got beat up and thrown in jail! [I hope things will be a little less intense this time!]).
The first question, from Tim. The fact is that in the 26 years I’ve been in this church I’ve been bored out of mind with corporate worship service. It’s has often been the low point of my whole SDA experience. Now some churches and some pastors have been better than others, and some even pretty good, but as a whole I have gotten very little out of it. What I’ve learned I’ve basicially learned on my own, which isn’t that hard. I mean, we’re dealing with SDA theology, not Quantum Electodynamics or something. It’s not that hard.
Plus, I’ve been at the GC for 22 of my 26 years in the church and I have great followship there, so I really don’t need to worship experience on Sabbath.
I hope that answers your question, Tim and thanks for the positive comments.
January 22nd, 2007 at 11:08 pm
Kudos to Julius and Cliff for a stellar interview - that’s the kind of dialogue and substantive understanding of another believer’s perspective that we need more of in our community.
And that Infinite Jest. . .wow! I couldn’t disagree with Cliff more on the very nature of what we call truth. He sent me a copy of God, Godel, Grace and I’m knocking out an antifoundationalist review of it for the Spectrum Blog — but anyone who tackles the irony of Wallace while walking the corridors of the GC simplex deserves a star-studded crown.
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:29 am
“…The fact is that in the 26 years I’ve been in this church I’ve been bored out of mind with corporate worship service. It’s has often been the low point of my whole SDA experience. Now some churches and some pastors have been better than others, and some even pretty good, but as a whole I have gotten very little out of it…”
I wish Cliff would tell us how he really feels. All this bottling up of his emotions and opinions is just a recipe for disaster.
Seriously, I appreciate this sort of brute honesty. At one of my previous churches, thousands of miles from here, many, many years ago, what bugged me was having a very good pastor but having a hard time sitting through the 45 minutes+ of announcements, offerings, hymns, etc of pre-sermon filler until we could get to him.
Now, about those Sabbath School lessons…
January 24th, 2007 at 2:56 am
I had never paid attention to the real people behind the Review articles. I saw Cliff on the Hope channel, and was initially annoyed by him. But then I began to appreciate his sharp thinking. I love it when someone does the hard reading for me and extracts the essence, as I heard him do with Nietzche (unsure of the spelling). I haven’t attended church for almost 20 years, and it’s refreshing to hear logic combined with intelligent faith - real faith - and presented in a way that makes you respond, “Yes!”
I liked this article. I found it while searching for Cliff’s conversion story. I hope it’s online, as I’ll never be able to buy the book. Cliff, we may never meet, but you have lifted my heart and mind towards God on many occasions now, and I am so grateful. Never let go of God.
January 24th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Dez-
Thanks for the comments. Things like that make all the hassle worth it.
In regards to the question that Glenn asked about the first days of creation, my answer is that I don’t know.
But think about this for a moment. Let’s assume, as I do, that Moishe (Moses) wrote Genesis. Or whoever wrote it. Don’t you think that he knew that morning and evening were determined by the rising and setting of the sun? I mean, no matter how supposedly primitive the author was, he was certainly smart enough to link light and darkness and days and evening with the sun. And yet he wrote what he did, anyway?
Why?
Well, that was what was revealed to him. Why else would someone write something so, at least from our perspective now, and no dbout from his then, so contrary to what our senses tell us?
Just a thought.
Cliff (trying to answer what I can before I leave)
January 24th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
“In regards to the question that Glenn asked about the first days of creation, my answer is that I don’t know. ”
I actually think this is a very good answer. A little more uncertainty on the part of believers (I guess that’s sort of ironic) would probably go a long way in helping all of us understand each other a bit better.
“But think about this for a moment. Let’s assume, as I do, that Moishe (Moses) wrote Genesis. Or whoever wrote it. Don’t you think that he knew that morning and evening were determined by the rising and setting of the sun? I mean, no matter how supposedly primitive the author was, he was certainly smart enough to link light and darkness and days and evening with the sun. And yet he wrote what he did, anyway?”
This is a good answer, too. It’s hard to believe primitive man hadn’t made that connection. I’d be interested to know what the author’s contemporaries in other societies believed about this, i.e. what the other creation myths were.
Day 2 presents another problem where the author says a firmament was set up to separate the waters above from the waters beneath the heavens. But there is no water “up there”. To the ancients, however, “up there” was where the rain came from so it must have seemed reasonable to them to picture a large body of water above them that opened up every once in a while. The notion of an “above” and “below” the heavens also reflects what appears to be a “flat earth” understanding of the world.
Far more troubling to me than the science implications of what’s in the Bible are the casual statements by Biblical authors attributing to God all manners of bizarre acts and commands. In Genesis 38 we’re told that “God” killed Onan for not marrying or impregnating his deceased brother’s widow. What if Onan was already married? If this is the word of God, how do we know this rule about impregnating the brother’s widows doesn’t still apply? In Leviticus 12, “God” says women are unclean after childbirth, requiring blood sacrifices to appease God and rectify their condition. What’s worse, the women’s time of uncleanness varies according to whether the child born is male or female: and seemingly “God” displays his preference for male babies by declaring the time of uncleanness for the woman greater when a female child is born. In Leviticus 27 we’re told…you probably get the point. The problem with these passages is the Bible directly says that this is what “God” says. It wasn’t something dreamed up by Moses. And while it’s easy to want to dismiss Leviticus, SDA’s place a great deal of reverence and authority on the previous chapter’s clean and unclean meat distinctions. And if all of the Bible is authoritative and inspired, then what do we make of this stuff? (I can’t recall ever hearing sermons on these passages so they must bother pastors and theologians, too).
The point of all of this isn’t to scorn the Bible. I still love the Bible. I especially apreciate the prophets, Job, Psalms, the Gospels, and Revelation. In fact, it’s somewhat ironic that as I’ve grown more skeptical of the Bible as a literal, authoritative guide for living, I’ve become more appreciative of it. But the way we as a church talk about the Bible needs to change. If statements, stories and commands like these appeared in the Koran, I doubt we would take them seriously as authoritative.
January 26th, 2007 at 8:40 am
GLEN I do hope that Cliff will answer your question about the Sanctuary teaching. He pled lack of time becuase of leaving for vacation but he seemed to have plenty of time to answer all the other questions. I hope that he will answer when he comes back. Otherwise his silence will say a lot.
January 26th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Glenn
If I didn’t answer your question by e-mail I just must have not gotten it because I generally answer all that come.
In a sense you’re right–the sanctuary message is a presentation of the gospel. Period. How can you even have the concept of the gospel, (”good news”) without some kind of final judgment, because what’s the good news about? That we don’t face condemnation (Romans 8:1). Now, how could there be any kind of condemnation without some sort of judgment, right? Even courts of law don’t do that. Thus, I would argue that the very concept “gospel” contains within it the idea of judgment.
So, in that sense the IJ is not that different from the standard gospel message. We tried in the final week of the quarterly that I wrote to talk about the important of the IJ, that it was a waymark, telling people that sure it’s been a long time since Jesus promised to return but this is an event that has to preced it. It help us understand the reality of God’s law, the reality of Christ’s ministry, the reality of the what it would mean to stand in judgment without a substitute.
Hey, for me the absolutely best explanation of the IJ is 5T, “Joshua dn the Angel.” She covers it all.
Anyway, I hope that helps. We have taught it for years in an anti-gospel manner, but please, who needs 1844 or Adventism to see the that NT is filled with texts about judgment? We, through the santuary, should help people see it in the context of the gospel, the only way it can be understood.
I’m going to try and post on here later tonight a column I wrote in the Review on this last month. I hope it will help.
Cheers.
And hello, David, my former pastor. How are you?
cliff
January 26th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
here’s my column from about a month ago:
Into the Holy of Holies
If you were a Hebrew during the wilderness wanderings, you would learn about the plan of salvation from the portable tabernacle, because here—through the sanctuary service–the gospel was presented to Israel (Hebrews 4:2). Suppose, though, that your understanding of the plan of salvation was limited only to the death of the animal; that is, you knew only the part of the service that centered around the sacrifice (Lev. 4:4). If nothing else were explained to you about the ministry of the priesthood with the blood of the slain animals brought into the sanctuary (Lev 4:5-7), would you not have a more limited understanding of salvation than someone who understood not only the death of the animal but the ministry in the tabernacle with that animal’s blood, and particularly the ministry on the Day of Atonement, when the High Priest once a year went into the Host Holy place to perform the work of cleansing the sanctuary (Lev 16)? Who would have a larger grasp of salvation, the one whose focus, knowledge and interest ended with the death of the animal (symbolic of the cross), or the one whose understanding encompassed the entire sanctuary ritual, starting with the death of the animals and culminating with the Day of Atonement, when the sanctuary itself was cleansed by the blood of that slain animal (symbolic of the judgment)?
The answer’s obvious. In the same way, those whose understanding of the plan of salvation is limited only to the cross (Col 1:20) without all that happens afterward Hebrews 8:1,2), including the judgment (Heb 10:30), have a truncated view of the cross. You can’t fully understand the death of the animal without understanding the service that followed it, just as can’t fully understand the cross without understanding the ministry that follows it, which includes the judgment, as typified by the Day of Atonement ritual.
Here’s the question: Was there any tension, much less contradiction, between the death of the animals, which symbolized the cross, and the ministry of the High Priest in the Most Holy Place on the Day of Atonement, which symbolized the judgment? Were these two actions–i.e., the death of the animal, the ministry in the second apartment– opposed to or in contradiction to each other? Of course not. As two parts of the whole, both were crucial aspects of the plan of salvation.
If a person’s understanding, therefore, of what happened with the death of the animal were tension, or in contradiction, with that person’s understanding of the Second Apartment ministry, then that person misunderstood either the death of the animal, the ministry in the Second Apartment, or both. In the same way, if a person’s understanding of the cross (symbolized by the death of the animal) were in tension, or in contradiction, with their understanding of the pre-Advent judgment (symbolized by the Second Apartment ministry), then that person misunderstands either the cross, the judgment, or both.
Unfortunately, many Adventists have struggled with the pre-Advent judgment, seeing it as something not just in tension with the cross but in contradiction to it. Yet how could be, if both are parts of God’s one plan of salvation?
The answer can be found in the earthly type of the Day of Atonement, Leviticus 16, symbolic of the judgment. Did the high priest every enter into the Most Holy Place on the Day of Atonement without blood? Of course not, for that would be death.
And here’s, I think, the crux of the problem: As Adventists, we have taken our people into the Most Holy place (that is, teach them about judgment) without the blood,
In the earthly model of The Day of Atonement, everything happened with blood, and not with the law, because this is the Day of Atonement and only blood, not the law, atones for sin.
However well-intentioned, many have taken our people into the Most Holy Place without the blood, and without the blood there’s only the law, and to stand before the law, without the sprinkling of the blood, guarantees condemnation and loss in the judgment.
The bottom-line: if the High Priest never went into the Most Holy Place without blood–then how dare we?
January 27th, 2007 at 5:54 am
“If nothing else were explained to you about the ministry of the priesthood with the blood of the slain animals brought into the sanctuary (Lev 4:5-7)…”
“Was there any tension, much less contradiction, between the death of the animals, which symbolized the cross, and the ministry of the High Priest in the Most Holy Place on the Day of Atonement, which symbolized the judgment? Were these two actions–i.e., the death of the animal, the ministry in the second apartment– opposed to or in contradiction to each other?”
Cliff,
Leviticus 4:5-7 says that when THE HIGH PRIEST sins, the blood from the sacrifice is brought into the Holy Place and sprinkled on the horns of the altar of incense. When an INDIVIDUAL in the community sinned, the blood from the sacrifice was applied to the horns of the altar of burnt offering OUTSIDE the Holy Place and the rest of the blood from the INDIVIDUAL sacrifice was poured out on the ground. It never went into the Holy Place. And no record of the INDIVIDUAL’s sin was apparently made in any books of record. Leviticus 4:31 goes on to say that at this point the INDIVIDUAL’s sin and person were atoned for.
Your two statements I’ve referenced above continue the traditional SDA practice of blurring this distinction. On the Day of Atonement no individual sacrifices were offered. It appears to have been strictly a collective day of ritual. That is, while the congregation was commanded to “afflict itself” (16:29), there was no opportunity for an individual to offer a sacrifice. And since no blood from the INDIVIDUAL sacrifice throughout the year entered the Holy Place, the Holy Place would not have to be cleansed from it. The Day of Atonement ritual–which is never described as occuring anywhere in the Bible (it is described only in type here in Leviticus 16)–appears to have been a collective, end of the year ritual for the people as a whole, not a time for individuals to remember again the sins they committed and which were atoned for (4:31) and to confess them again (without the benefit this time of a blood sacrifice).
All of this is to say, I think there are a number of typological problems with the traditional SDA understanding of the earthly sanctuary and its fulfillment at the cross.
Which brings me to this troubling statement:
“In the same way, those whose understanding of the plan of salvation is limited only to the cross (Col 1:20) without all that happens afterward Hebrews 8:1,2), including the judgment (Heb 10:30), have a truncated view of the cross.”
This is, no offense, an awful statement. For Paul the cross was IT. It was the power of God. True, Christ ever lives to make intercession for us, but there’s no indication in Paul’s writings that the cross was not the centerpiece of salvation history, the one world-changing event.
I appreciate your attempts to balance the traditional SDA teaching of the sanctuary by showing that the High Priest didn’t enter the Most Holy Place without blood, thus tempering the traditional focus on the law or on books of record.
But again, I point out that the earthly Day of Atonement was a collective ritual, not a process of revisiting individual sins throughout the year.
I agree with you that there are New Testament verses (many of them in Matthew) that discuss the judgment. But it’s far from clear that this should be understood as an investigative judgment or in what sense born again Christians “stand” in it. They certainly don’t do so in person. And if as 1 Thessalonians says, that at the second coming we will be taken into the air to meet the Lord it would seem hard to figure when or where this judgment of the saints would take place. The traditional SDA understanding has been that God is pouring over books of record in heaven (maybe He’s using cd’s now??) and our names might come up at any time. So we had better be scared. And this is indeed what one finds in EGW’s Facing Life’s Record chapter in the Great Controversy.
In a much more general sense, though, do you think Jesus wants us to dwell on the judgment (whether a prolonged investigative or a one-day executive judgment)? Is this liberating for us? Does this free us to love God and want to to do His will? Does that seem to be the focus at all of the apostle’s writings? In other words, if this is a unique Adventist contribution, is it a good one?
Best,
Glenn
January 27th, 2007 at 9:58 am
One further thought.
As I’ve dialogued with former SDA’s turned Calvinist on one side, and with traditional SDA’s on the other, a number of things stand out. There are disagreements about the roles of law and grace; justification and sanctification; completed atonement, conditional atonement. At the center of these disputes I believe is how we relate to the Cross.
In SDA theology, the Cross is primarily cosmic and eschatological in meaning. For the Calvinist evangelical, the Cross is historical, present and individualistic.
While I take issue with many of the typological elements in traditional SDA sanctuary theology, what I do share with most SDA’s is the emphasis, as our name suggests, on the Second Coming, the Advent. With this emphasis, the Cross and salvation is seen not merely, or even primarily, in what Christ has already done for us, as critical as that is, but in what Christ intends to do, not only for me, for the entire world and cosmos. This distinction and emphasis may help to explain why traditional SDA theology has placed such an emphasis on the sanctuary (although again I believe the specifics are flawed) and in particular, the quote from Cliff that I originally took such an issue with.
Here is that quote again–
“In the same way, those whose understanding of the plan of salvation is limited only to the cross (Col 1:20) without all that happens afterward Hebrews 8:1,2), including the judgment (Heb 10:30), have a truncated view of the cross. You can’t fully understand the death of the animal without understanding the service that followed it, just as can’t fully understand the cross without understanding the ministry that follows it, which includes the judgment, as typified by the Day of Atonement ritual.”
So my apologies Cliff if I in my initial response I misunderstood you. But I think the common bond between us, conservatives, traditionals, liberals and progressives is the belief that the Cross carries not just individualistic salvation implications, but has a far deeper meaning for the entire universe and future. The problem comes in when SDA theology muddies the water and minimizes the Grace of God through the Cross. But I agree with the idea that the Cross and Salvation should be viewed as both individualistic and cosmic in significance. This is where I think Adventism has been at its strongest, and paradoxically, at its most vulnerable.
January 27th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
Glenn–
Good thoughts . . . let me dwell on them a bit. My point was simply to show that we really can’t deny the reality of what Christ is doing for us now in heaven, however much we might muddle up our attempts at explaining it, me especially.
Cliff
January 27th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Glenn and Cliff,
I have pondered over the difference between the term “investigative” and “pre” judgment and “judgment.” I would assume Christ would know who was saved or lost before He came for us (maybe before we were born?). These words seem meaningless to me as far as controversy is concerned. Am I missing something Important?
Since God is outside of our time and our space, why even question where or when this happens? I have never for a minute worried about when “probation” closes. Hearing it for the first time in Bible class at age 17 shortly after baptism, it just never struck me as relevant. It seems like we are so concerned over these details that are only a symbol of reality as God knows it. It seems more important to know what the sanctuary means rather than if it actually exists in heaven or is the sanctuary in heaven just a name for where God resides (bodily?).
I think to know that the event of the Cross is what saves us and that makes Christ our High Priest (as symbolized iby the HP in the OT sanctuary) is all that is necessary. Going beyond that is speculation (as a theocrat’s hobby) at the least and adding confusion to the event at the worst.
PS Cliff: I really liked your last column in AR concerning postmodernism–its pros and cons.
January 28th, 2007 at 4:42 am
Cliff, if you ever publish your poetry, you’ve got one buyer.
January 28th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
CLIFF You asked how I was doing very well. The Goldsteins were one of my favorite familes in the church I pastored before New Hope. I have always enjoyed your incisive thinkiing and that you are not a status quo man. I also appreciate your willingness to dialog with those who are against your positon.
January 28th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Marvin– are you Jonathan’s dad, one of my hoceky buddies here at the GC? ( if so, did he tell you about the time i wacked him across the face with my stick while shooting on goal. I missed the goal but gave him five stitches across his nose)
Cliff
January 28th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Jonathan’s father is James Brauer, the president of the Rocky Mountain Conference. His uncle, who works at the Review and Herald, was a member of Damascus Grace when we were both there.
February 25th, 2007 at 11:21 am
Tim Mitchell commented:
“A brilliant mind enters the Adventist faith on an experience. But instead of being a laid back, touchy-feely experiential churchman he pisses off people on multiple sides by actually taking positions based on his logical views…”
Cliff entered Christianity based on an experience, but he entered the Adventist church based on logic. This is an interesting distinction that may have a lesson for us.
February 25th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Cliff’s own comments in the Feb. 22nd Review:
“More thann 26 years afteer I was first shown Daniel 2, the prophecy remains for me what I believe it was always meant to be: powerful rational evidence not only for God’s existence but for His foreknowledge as well…..The Bible proves that God’s knowledge of the future is as absolute as it is of the past.”
As a secular Jew, it would seem to imply that he was captivated to Adventism by the prophecy of Daniel 2. Surely, he did not believe in Jesus as the Messiah before Adventism, but there is no mention of that as the drawing power for him, but rather the prophetic fulfillment of a writer that many scholars date between 158-165 B.C., which would preclude any prophecy, but only a recounting of things that had occurred or would very shortly occur in the temple desecretaion of Antiochus Epiphanes.
May 30th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Dear Mr. Cliff…
In 1997 for first in my life readed your’s books, “Best Seller” in Spanish, my language is Spanish, actually I study English, actually I live in EU, my English is little bit, sorry, but, my dreams is to learn English, for read your books in English.
You is my favorite autors the Seven Day Adventist Church and the seculars autors and books. I like read the history the “Holacust” and the story of the survivors the Holocaust…for example, history the Simon Wiesenthal, the five chimenes by Olga Lengyel and others..
Please write for me…
Thank you Mr. Goldstein