Russell Standish, M.D., an iconic figure in contemporary Adventist theological discussions, died Friday, May 2, as a result of a two-vehicle collision at an intersection near Irymple, Victoria, Australia.  Standish was traveling with a friend, Cliff Cocks, to the home of another friend.  According to Mildura Independent, a local newspaper, Standish had flown on a commercial flight from Melbourne to Mildura (5 miles north of Irymple) and arrived at 4:20 p.m., local time.  The accident occurred around 5:25 p.m.  Standish was to speak at a weekend meeting in Red Cliffs, 5 miles south of Irymple, as he had done on numerous occasions, for the independent ministry group located there.  Standish is survived by his wife, Glenice, his three sons, Stephen, James, and Timothy, and his twin brother, Colin.  (James is director of legislative affairs, public affairs, and religious liberty at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists; Timothy is a research scientist at the Geoscience Research Institute, located at Loma Linda University; and Colin is president of Hartland Institute, an independent ministry institution that supports the mission of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.)  He was 74 years old.  

A brief bio of the Standish brothers can be found in their Wikipedia entry.

Since the 1970s, the Standish brothers have offered a powerful voice representing what is known as “Historic Adventism.”  In many ways, they have helped shape the Adventist theological discussions on the doctrines of sin, atonement, human nature of Christ, salvation, and perfection.  They have co-authored more than 60 books, almost all of them geared toward their fellow Adventists, alerting them to the need for personal repentance and corporate re-direction toward a purer Adventism that is in harmony with Scripture and the writings of Ellen White.

Many of the Standish brothers’ concerns for the church centered on the unfortunate “new theology” that was introduced through the 1957 publication of Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine (QOD).  They saw the book as providing a “fertile ground for those who wished to destroy the sanctuary message and God’s claim upon the loyal obedience of His children” (Adventism Challenged, 1:52) through what they believed to be the denigration of the historic Adventist teachings on the atonement and the human nature of Christ.  A frequent refrain in their books has been the issuance of the call to their fellow Adventists to turn away from the new theology and its degenerative implications.

(more…)

This article was presented at the History of Christianity section of the American Academy of Religion Western Region Annual Meeting which was held at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, on March 29-31, 2008.

From its inception as an identifiable movement in the early 1850s, Seventh-day Adventists have regarded Ellen G. White a latter-day prophet and messenger of God. According to the church’s current fundamental beliefs statement, the biblical gift of prophecy “was manifested in the ministry of Ellen G. White” and “her writings are a continuing and authoritative source of truth and provide for the church comfort, guidance, instruction, and correction.”[1] Although the statement makes it clear that “the Bible is the standard by which all teaching and experience [including White’s writings and visions] must be tested,” it identifies the prophetic gift of White and her ministry as the work of the Holy Spirit and as evidence that points to the Adventist movement as “the remnant church”—i.e., God’s end-time movement that “heralds the approach of [Christ’s] second advent.”[2]

The twin notions that (1) White, from age 17 to her death at age 88, served as a messenger of God for the last days and that (2) her prophetic gift is one of the signs that Adventism is “the remnant church of Bible prophecy”[3] have attracted a tsunami of criticisms against her and the church she co-founded. For many Christians (especially the conservative Protestants of the nineteenth century and the fundamentalist and evangelical Protestants of the twentieth century), these two claims were sufficient to place Adventism outside the boundaries of Christianity. The critics of Ellen White, in particular, have charged that she was a false prophet and that her visions were delusions. They also accused Adventists of regarding White’s writings as equal in authority to the Bible. These criticisms, in addition to several other theological issues that many Christians had with Adventists, helped Adventism to secure a place in the catalogues of non-Christian cults that began to be circulated from the beginning of the twentieth century.

There is, however, a dimension to White’s work that served to temper the marginalizing impact of her visionary claims and the distinctive teachings of Adventism that she endorsed. Especially in the latter half of her public work, White made pronounced efforts to revise some of the original teachings and emphases of Adventism and set the church in a trajectory that would ultimately result in Adventists viewing their movement as a part of, rather than being apart from, mainstream Christianity. In other words, the very person who was the reason for and the force behind the marginalization of Adventism from the mainstream of American Christianity was also the engineer behind the theological re-direction of her community toward the mainstream.

(more…)

Notes for the University Student Forum Sabbath School class of the Loma Linda University Church that I’ll be leading the discussion for, along with Andrew Roquiz (1st med student at LLU), later this morning.  It comes from my lecture notes for “Introduction to Philosophy” and “Doctrinal Studies” classes at Pacific Union College.

1. Existence of God: Theistic Arguments
   1. Ontological argument: deductive; a priori (begins with an assumption and then proceeds to prove that assumption)
      1. Ontos = being/existence
      2. Anselm of Canterbury (11^th C): “If we could conceive of a Perfect God who does not exist, then we could conceive of someone greater than God himself which is impossible. Therefore God exists.”
      3. Rene Descartes (17^th C)
         1. God, by definition, is that being that is absolutely perfect.
         2. It is more perfect to exist than not to exist.
         3. Thus, to conceive of God (a being that is absolutely perfect), it is necessarily to conceive him as existing (because to conceive of God as not existing is self-canceling).
         4. Thus, to say “God does not exist” is to contradict oneself.
         5. Thus, the sentence “God exists” is necessarily true.
      4. David Hume’s response (18^th C)
         1. It’s always illegitimate to move from a pure definition to a statement of fact about reality.
         2. Definitions are only about the relation between meanings and as such are purely representations of logic and of linguistic conventions.
         3. Statements of fact are always based on observation.
      5. Immanuel Kant’s response (18^th C)
         1. Being is not a real predicate.
         2. Illustrations of “the guessing game” & the “imagine the rose”
         3. Thus, “God exists” doesn’t say anything.
      6. Conclusion: Ontological proof, as an exclusively a priori argument, is completely based on thought. It doesn’t require any experience or observation. As such, it may convince one of its logical consistency, but will not necessarily produce faith.

(more…)

The following is an excerpt from a presentation I made at the English Ministry of the Loma Linda Korean Seventh-day Adventist Church on March 8 on “Adventism in the Changing World.”

Ellen White received her “Great Controversy” vision in March 1858 and began writing what turned out to be the four-volume work entitled Spiritual Gifts.  Then in 1870, she revised this set and re-titled it Spirit of Prophecy.  Then in 1888 to the end of her life, she revised the four volumes of Spirit of Prophecy into the five-volume Conflict of the Ages series. 

The first chapter of the first volume of each of the three sets contains the account of the fall of Lucifer.  Each tells the basic story of how Lucifer rebelled, deceived many other angels, and was expelled from heaven.  But how God relates with Lucifer in each of the three accounts is radically different.

(more…)

The following is a synopsis of the first of the three-part presentation I made for the English Ministry of the Loma Linda Korean Seventh-day Adventist Church on March 7-8.  The theme of this weekend seminar was “Adventism in a Changing World.”  The title of this presentation was “Change: The Adventist Constant.”  The other two were:  “Ellen White: The Embodiment of Change” and “Change: Adventism’s Gift to the World.”

Introduction

I understand your church has been engaging in a lot of discussion about the Adventist identity with the idea of reclaiming the Adventist identity and reviving the original zeal for mission.  I think it is very important to know why we are who we are and why we do what we do.  I think it is also important to be clear about our identity, because it has much to do with our mission and calling in the world.

The difficulty with trying to reclaiming our historic identity, though, is locating the “when” of that identity.  When we try to “reclaim” our identity, how far back are we supposed to go back?  Was there a “golden age” in Adventist identity that we need to emulate?  What exactly do we mean by the Adventist identity, to begin with?

(more…)