This post is a slightly modified version of the last chapter of a term paper I wrote for a class taught by Prof. Fernando Canale at Andrews University Theological Seminary in the fall of 1996. It represents an early experimentation with constructive (systematic) theology. The paper was entitled “‘Crisis’ in Seventh-day Adventist Theology: A Research Essay” in which I analyzed references to a theological and ecclesiastical crisis that various Adventist writers were making at that time.

Where is Adventism headed? Where is Adventist theology going (if we can still speak of it as a systematic unity)? Observers of the present “crisis” across the spectrum of the church are all agreed that some sort of rethinking and reforming is in order.

I believe that in order for the Adventist church to survive the present theological-ecclesiastical crisis as an organic unity it must approach its theology from the perspective of wholism. This principle is one that can be gleaned from Scripture and is implicitly present already in Adventist theology. By “wholism,” I am referring to the approach which arises from the belief that all of God’s revelation and all of life are integral parts of the whole. This approach views revelation and life as a harmonious totality, not as loosely related series of individual ideas and experiences. If God’s ideal for human beings was indeed to be one unto themselves (Gen 2:7), with his beloved (Gen 2:24), with other believers (John 17:11), with God (John 15:4; 17:21) and all God’s creation (Gen 1:28; Ps 24:1, 2; Isa 45:18), our understanding of self, human life, the world, and God must also reflect that one-ness, or whole-ness. This one-ness goes beyond internal coherence of logic or vague presumption that all are somehow connected. Because of its affirmation that “[t]he earth is the Lord’s and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein” (Ps 24:1) and that God “has established the world by His wisdom, and stretched out the heaven by His understanding” (Jer 51:15), Adventist theology must seek to gain further glimpses of the wisdom and understanding which provide a wholistic integration of the universe.

The principle of wholism is ubiquitous in Scripture and in nature, which Adventists believe to be the two media of divine revelation. I believe that a crisis occurs in a church when this wholism is not fully captured and is neglected at the expense of a particular aspect of the whole.

The wholistic understanding of the human nature is familiar to Adventists. We have rightly stressed that the human nature is not only an indivisible whole in composition, but also an integral unity in function. For this reason, we have maintained that health, happiness, and holiness are absolutely inter-dependent. When the wholism of the human nature is taken seriously, Adventists should have less problems with unbiblical and impossible perfectionism. If we accept the biblical assertion that humanity will need to endure the sin-infected body to the end of time, we should also be ready to accept that the mind and the spirit will be affected by sin for the equal duration.

It might be considered superfluous to describe wholism found in the Godhead. However, there are signs that this principle is taken too much for granted to the point of being neglected by some. The wholistic integrity must be vigilantly maintained in these most foundational premises. A wholistic approach to understanding the Godhead will not allow for the essential subservience of the Son and the Spirit to the Father. It affirms vigorously the co-equality of the Son and the Spirit with the Father and the individual personality of the Spirit—two aspects which are often neglected in popular thinking. When rigorously maintained, the wholism of the Godhead magnifies the power of the cross by showing that the entire Godhead—the founder and foundation of the universe—suffered for humanity. It erases the notion that Christ was merely a sacrifice and a priest at the cross–while the Father and the Spirit stood by to receive the offering. We find the whole Godhead involved both individually and wholly from the preparation of the victim to the acceptance of the sacrifice, from the shame and suffering of the cross to the glory and grandeur of the resurrection.

The phenomenon of Scripture is another manifestation of the principle of wholism. The nature of Scripture, along with the nature of the incarnate Christ, is the most mysterious subjects to understand, because it represents a union of two whole natures without causing any disharmony. Because of our faithful adherence to wholism of God and humanity in the formation of Scripture, the Adventist understanding of Scripture must stand uniquely apart from other doctrines of the Bible which have arisen with contributions from dualistic views on the human nature. While recognizing that revelation is given by God and comes to humanity in a propositional form, we affirm the co-equal wholistic integration of the divine and the human in the realization of Scripture. Union and cooperation between God and humanity can be seen beyond the process of producing the original document. Through the continuing work of God, revelation is made alive anew in the reading of Scripture by each believer. The Word become flesh once again, and God and the human reader are bound as one once again. Further, by uniting with God through the Word, the reader is united with other believers who have for centuries experienced personal incarnations of the Word. When such a view is held of Scripture, the unbiblical and impossible perfectionism that we ascribe to Scripture is held in check.

Seventh-day Adventists have a decided advantage in understanding the wholistic principle at work in the process of revelation and inspiration thanks to the ministry of Ellen White. We have found through White that divine revelation passes through a human cognitive filter which gives it a form readily discernible by an ordinary human mind. We have also seen that revelation and inspiration are given not to certain individuals, but through these individuals to a community. Revelation is neither truly fulfilled nor made complete without a community to receive it. This fact leads us also to recognize a further need to understand the community and the church to which God revealed Himself, if we want to better understand the phenomena of revelation and inspiration. A wholistic approach to the phenomena of Scripture (and the Spirit of Prophecy) will not merely study the authors or the text; it will also examine the community to which the revelation was given. The whole-ness of the phenomenon of Scripture affirms that Scripture is a joint project of God, the individual author, and the community.

The principle of wholism must now extend to the roaring debate on the human nature of Christ, the eternal Word. We must not further fragment the nature of Christ as to distinguish the divine from the human and the moral-spiritual from the physical. We must re-affirm the wholistic co-existence of the divine and the human natures of Christ and the necessary wholistic composition of the body, mind, and spirit within His human nature. There is a dangerous tendency toward dualism in contemporary Adventist debates on the human nature of Christ where vehement arguments are made on behalf of either the pre-fall or post-fall nature of Christ’s humanity (more so in the eclectic approach of assigning Christ’s moral-spiritual nature as pre-fall and His physical nature as post-fall). We must remember that “the Word became flesh” and that this transformation was real, not merely virtual. No discussion on the nature of Christ can focus on just one of the naturest—the human, as Adventists have been doing for the past forty years—but the whole of Christ—both the divine and the human. Concurrently, we must be ready to re-examine the ancient creedal description of Christ’s nature as fully human and fully divine (the popular 100%+100% equation), while supposedly remaining unpermeated in each nature. Further investigation must be conducted into the exact meaning of this assertion and the implications it has on our wholistic understanding of the human nature. Otherwise, we run the risk of inadvertently portraying the incarnate Christ as a metaphysical schizophrenic.

Though Adventists have not labeled it as “wholistic,” their understanding of the history and the prophecies, replete with types and antitypes, betrays the same principle. We confess that history is not merely a succession of “new” events but is an integral part in the unfolding of the plan of redemption for humanity in the framework of the great controversy between God and Satan. Each moment in human history is either typically or antitypically related to God’s outworking of salvation for humanity.

In light of such an understanding of wholism in the history of redemption, the same approach must also be the guiding force in the Adventist discussions on the atonement and salvation. The traditional method of describing the process of salvation as conversion, justification, sanctification, and glorification, though helpful in many ways, must come to an overhaul. We must admit that the human proclivity to imbalance has resulted in an immoderate emphasis upon either justification or sanctification. Our view of salvation must reflect the overall dynamic and wholistic view of the atonement as, I believe, correctly held by Ellen White. She has indicated that the atonement is what God did, does, and will do for the salvation of humanity.
She seems to understand the process of the atonement not in terms of stages distinct from one another, but as a continuation of God’s perfectly atoning work for humanity each of which is complete in itself but integrative with previous and forthcoming events in the aspects of His work.

Correspondingly, our understanding of salvation must reflect the whole work of God’s atonement in our individual lives. In each step of our spiritual lives, God’s atoning work comes to us in toto, and not in incomplete pieces. We must remember that the work of salvation is not completing a mystery puzzle, but growing in an increasingly fulfilling relationship with God as described beautifully by Ellen White in Christ’s Object Lessons. A wholistic Adventist soteriology sees justification and sanctification in sinners as both synchronic and diachronic phenomena, not merely diachronic. Though spoken of in different terms, they are an inseparable part of God’s singular—yet continuing—act of salvation in and for individual sinners. Also, these concepts are comprehended as after-the-fact abstractions of God’s wholistically salvific work, rather than contemporaneously identifiable events of human experience.

This understanding of salvation is distinct from the bifurcated understanding of salvation that seems to be held by some within Adventism. Some seem to separate justification and sanctification as separate (and antithetical) works of God. Some tend to over-emphasize justification, whereas others stress sanctification at the expense of justfication. It seems to me that only a wholistic approach to the understanding of salvation will provide a proper balance between justification and sanctification and bridge the soteriological tendencies and eschatological tendencies within the Adventist church.

Wholism may also provide assistance to the current state of the Adventist ecclesiology and church polity which are in deep crisis. Though the Adventist church has traditionally styled a “democratic-representative” form of polity based on the principle of the priesthood of believers, it is apparent that the church has become a hierarchy based on clericalism. The division between the clergy and the lay has brought about the deactivation of the latter. As committees of professional clergy and “experts” make important decisions for the entire church, the lay often remain uninvolved and uninformed. The quinquennial General Conference sessions where major substantive decisions of the church used to be made have become a bureaucratic showcase where substantive discussions are impossible (much like the party conventions of the American politics).

In light of the current situation, a wholistic re-emphasis in ecclesiology can aid in the reconciliation of the gap between the clergy and the lay. A re-orientation of the church structure is needed. As the church re-orients its structure, it must constantly seek ways to make all leadership opportunities open to the lay in substantive ways (beyond token efforts) so that the whole of the church can have access to the decision-making process. Specifically, as the church considers the theology of ordination in relation to the ordination of women to pastoral ministry, I would like to urge the church to consider a complete reassessment of the present criteria for ordination. Ordination must be distinguished from both the idea of promotion and denominational employment as a pastor. It cannot be made to depend exclusively academic training in theology, either. To paraphrase Lincoln, the church must, in form and substance, be by the whole, of the whole, and for the whole.

Yet another significant problem related to the present “crisis” in ecclesiology is the relegation of theological activities to theologians. The bureaucratic compartmentalization of the church over the past half-century has led to divisions between the administrators and the theologians and the theologians and the laity. Thus, neither the administrators nor the lay are theologizing any longer; they are increasingly becoming indifferent, even hostile, to theology. There was a time in the Adventist church when Sabbath School classes in local churches were the primary ground for theologizing, but now this important task has been reined in under denominational college religion departments and seminaries and such entities as the Biblical Research Institute.

A wholistic approach to ecclesiology empowers the lay to exercise its right and responsibility to theologize. We ask the theologians of the church to give back to the whole church their monopoly on theology. The current crisis in Adventism seems to be as much about doctrinal disagreements as the struggle over the seat of theological authority. Certainly, theologians must continue their technical formulations of theology. However, the theology produced by the rest of the church—not the consensus of few professional theologians—must provide the substance of what we call Adventist theology. A wholistic view of the church will awaken Adventism to the important task of theologizing as a whole and reveal a true picture of the church as a community not only of priests but also of theologians.

Finally, the theological enterprise itself must indeed reflect the principle of wholism. Beginning with the publication of the book, Questions on Doctrine, in 1957, a notable change in the Adventist theological method took place. Adventists began to represent their beliefs in the language and categories adopted from the evangelical Christian theology. Adventists must be more critical of its adoption of the methods and ideas that they encounter. Perhaps the most representative expositions of Adventist theology in recent years, Seventh-day Adventists Believe. . ., follows the classical method of theological presentation: from objective doctrines (doctrine of revelation, theology proper, Christology, anthropology, hamartology) to subjective doctrines (soteriology, ecclesiology, and eschatology)—without suggesting how the doctrine fit together as a whole. Though many have suggested various principles and themes as the organizing principle of Adventist theology, a wholistic and systematic theology of Adventism remains yet a challenge for the present and the future.

Seventh-day Adventists can more fully exploit the principle of wholism implicit in Scripture and in their theology. It is my firm conviction that (1) approaching all the doctrines and issues of the church according to this principle and (2) resisting the temptation to polarize the discussions or the community itself are the two most important approaches to take toward the current “crisis” in Adventist theology.

Where is Adventism going in the midst of this present crisis? Wherever it is going, but I would like to challenge the church to move, live, breathe, do theology, relate with one another, interact with the world, and worship God in humble recognition that we are merely a part of the whole and that we are in a constant pursuit of that wholeness.