by David Larson

I am grateful for Kenneth Newport’s book, Richard Mouw’s review, and Julius Nam’s invitation to write a response. Concentrating primarily on the reflections of Richard Mouw, the President of Fuller Theological Seminary, I hope my remarks will be (1) appreciative, (2) defensive, and (3) collaborative. I write as one who is happy to be an American and a Seventh-day Adventist.

Appreciation. It is difficult to exaggerate the value of Kenneth Newport’s patient and painstaking scholarship. No one else will ever write a book like this one on Waco because no one else will attempt and accomplish so much. Also, Newport is honest and fair. People who live in Liverpool, England, as he does, and in Loma Linda, California, as I do, cannot help but see things somewhat differently. Nevertheless, we all see much more with far greater clarity because of Newport’s superb scholarship.

Richard Mouw’s reflections are both thought provoking and generous. He refers to his Adventist “friends.” He understands how frustrating it can be to be identified in the eyes of the public with people and positions one disavows. He concedes that he has struggled against the suggestion that Calvinism was partly responsible for apartheid, something I doubt especially if we stick with Calvin’s Institutes. He allows that Adventist thought, like that of ever other religious movement, changes over time such that contemporary Adventists need not always be made responsible for everything their theological grandparents believed. And he invites Adventists to participate in a much needed effort to clarify how we should understand and apply Scripture. We Adventists cannot ask for more.

Defensiveness. It irks me that Kenneth Newport claims that David Koresh’s views “differed in degree and detail more than in kind from countless millions of his fellow Americans who, the statistics indicate, have ‘no doubt’ that Jesus will one day come to earth again” (page 41). Contrary to this claim, I believe that the differences between Koresh and, let’s say, Billy Graham, are not merely quantitative. They are qualitative. Newport, an Englishman, in this regard inaccurately portrays much of North American Christianity, not merely Adventism. This bothers me more than it should.

I almost hear my theological heritage in Mouw’s words about the “time of trouble” we Adventists expect, but not quite. Some of us are more riveted to particular depictions of these difficult days in the future than others; however, all Adventists believe that there have been moments in the past when Christians have suffered much persecution and that such ordeals are by no means entirely behind God’s true people in all denominations.

I do not recall being taught as a child growing up in the home of a Seventh-day Adventist minister and an English teacher that God would bring these troubles upon us in order to cleanse or purify us or for any other reason. Neither do I remember being taught that we were to participate in violently pouring out God’s wrath upon the wicked. I do know that I was taught that, no matter how difficult things become, God would see us through. This did not mean that none of us would suffer or die. But it did mean that nothing could separate us from God’s love. This was, and is, the basis of our hope for a new era in which God will be honored and death will no long be victorious.

Like many Adventists, I harbor a suspicion of all fusions of religious and political power. We have long been anti-Constantinians and we often regard today’s influential post-Constantinians as the new kids on the block. One reason we celebrate the Sabbath on the seventh-day of the week is that we remember that Constantine had a lot to do with making Sunday the universal day of worship for his “Christianized” empire. The transition from the seventh to the first day of the week was much more complicated than this, of course. But we think that this is an important part of the story.

We Adventists do not dislike the United States; if anything, we regard it with much too much gratitude and affection because it allows us to live as we see fit. But we are wary of amalgamations of the institutionalized church and the government. Our wariness may not be entirely out of place today.

I do not know what more we Adventists could have done before Waco to disavow the Davidians, Branch Davidians and Living Waters Branch Davidians. They returned the favor a thousand times over by announcing that before anyone else God would slaughter and let lie in our own blood everyone one of us who rejected their messages. We experienced them as launchers of frontal and often vicious attacks that were aimed at us. How ironic that we should be identified with them.

For all of our faults and failures, and we have many, no Adventist in good and regular standing has ever come within a million moral miles of doing anything like the Branch Davidians did. We don’t incinerate men, women and children! We build hospitals and clinics, orphanages and convalescent homes, primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities, and publishing houses and vegetarian food factories every where we go. We don’t destroy things. We build them.

Do I sound defensive? I hope so!

Collaboration. Mouw graciously invites those of us who are Adventists to join other Christians in an attempt to understand and learn from the fires of Waco. I suggest that the one of the biggest problems is the interpretation and application of Scripture without regard to each passage’s literary, historical and theological contexts.

We Adventist have too often taken one verse from one portion of Scripture, combined it with another, and given the combination of texts a meaning that neither originally possessed. This is a false and dangerous way of reading Scripture, as we saw at Waco.

More than anything else, I believe, this so-called “proof-texting” method, which we Adventists have often used, was basic to the colossal errors of the Davidians. This is not a trivial matter. How we read Scripture can mean the difference between life and death. We Adventists need our brothers and sisters in Christ to help us read Scripture wisely.

Some of us who are Seventh-day Adventists join Christians of other persuasions who fear that some (not all!) “postmodern” ways of reading Scripture run the risk of plunging us all back into the dark and dangerous abyss of proof-texting. It is not only silly to read texts of any sort without sensitivity to the intent of their authors in their settings; it is hazardous.

This does not mean that the ancient texts must remain stuck in antiquity. Whenever the context of a particular passage possesses genuine parallels to our current settings, we should reapply the lessons of the past to the needs of today. But let us ever remember that these are reapplications and that we need the whole of Scripture, plus many other things, when all are led by the One who works for good in every moment of every life, to make sense of the First and Second Testaments today.

Thank you, Kenneth Newport! Thank you, Richard Mouw! Thank you, Julius Nam!

David Larson is professor of Christian ethics at Loma Linda University Faculty of Religion, specializing in theological and philosophical ethics and biomedical ethics. His review of Kenneth Newport’s book, The Branch Davidians of Waco, will be published in the next issue of Spectrum. His website is PonderAnew.com.

Comments on this post and the review by Richard Mouw posted earlier may be made at the Forum.