As a graduate student in the early '60s, you shared Herbert E Douglass a term paper in which he and his fellow students at the Pacific School of Theology should read and discuss modern theologians in Berkeley, California.

Several times the class racked its brains over apparently irreconcilable contradictions between leading theologians. But Douglass kept coming up with an argument that the whole class recognized as the solution to the problem.

At first, fellow students thought Douglass was just theologically gifted. But as the pattern repeated, some came up to him and said, 'You must be getting your insights from somewhere. What literature do you read besides what is recommended to us?'

In response, Douglass pointed to the writings of the co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church Ellen G White there. One of his classmates then read White's book Desire of Agesand said, "Now I understand you. Because this author makes up her own mind.«

Douglass, who mentioned this experience to me personally and in emails, placed Ellen White at the center of the theological system he built during his lifetime. He concluded that if Adventism is truly the truth and White was used of God to help develop genuine biblical theology, White's writings must contain the necessary insights for each problem. Understanding their writings in depth was the goal of his life, which only ended when he died after a long illness on December 15 at the age of 87.

To appreciate the passion Douglass, a leading 20th-century Adventist theologian, had for Ellen White, one must first understand the turbulent world of Adventism he experienced as a young pastor in the 50s.

What do I mean by that?

How Adventists forgot about reform

One of the core values ​​Adventists inherited from the Protestant Reformation was the idea that, because of human convenience and regression, the church that wants to remain Reformed has only one path to take: to keep reforming. The weak point of any religious movement was the self-image of being "reformed" and therefore eventually stopping the ongoing process of reformation. White repeated several times, "We are reformers," and the early Adventists understood their commission as heirs to the Protestant Reformation to continue in preparation for Jesus' return.

A major objection to church organization in the 1850s was that it would stall the ongoing Reformation. The Advent pioneer and husband of Ellen White countered: The Spirit of Prophecy is the God-given tool for the ongoing reformation of the church.

In fact, the Advent story can be understood as a story of conflict between sinful human nature and God's call for a complete reformation, a reformation that would culminate in the latter rain of the Holy Spirit bringing the gospel work to a conclusion in this world.

Unfortunately, some leading evangelists in the 1860s and 1870s focused on doctrinal disputes and neglected the personal relationship with Jesus. So there were more and more church members who, like them, were convinced of the right doctrine, but who lacked a conversion to a close daily connection with Jesus.

By the 1880s, Adventism was finally ripe for the rediscovery of the living experience of righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ alone. the Conference of 1888 brought about the necessary correction, but personal animosities and theological rivalries prevented God's work from being completed as He had planned. In 1892 Ellen White wrote, "The loud cry of the third angel had already begun with the revelation of Jesus' righteousness," but by 1896 she concluded that Satan had largely "successfully" prevented the message from reaching its divinely ordained end .

Thus, Adventists entered the 20th century without a sufficient understanding of Jesus' righteousness. Most of the time, they were unaware of their lack of knowledge. Most other Protestants regarded it as a legal denomination, if not an outright sect.

A polarizing book appears on the scene

A General Conference session in 1950 attempted to respond to the call for revival and reformation. But the understanding presented was based on a mere legal view of justification and not on the whole "new creature" Paul envisioned in 2 Corinthians 5,15:17-XNUMX, which Ellen White also supported.

Two young Adventist missionaries in Africa protested this deviation, but church leaders felt offended. Then, in 1955, the Adventist church leadership also felt pressure from outside when some evangelicals took the Adventists to task because they were not quite on the level of Christian orthodoxy. This led to the publication of a new book in 1957, Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine, in Review and Herald Verlag.

Questions on Doctrine says right at the outset that its goal is not "to be a new creed," but to explain Adventist beliefs "in a technical language that is currently used in theological circles."

But the questions raised in the book polarized the faith community. Le Roy Edwin Froom, who authored much of the book, wrote in his 1971 book Movement of Destiny, Questions on Doctrine as an opportunity for "Providence" to correct "the distorted caricature of our faith" and to polish "the scratched image of Adventism."

Branded on the other side Milian Lauritz Andreasen, a professor of theology Adventist Seminary, who had just retired when Questions on Doctrine appeared, this book as "waste" in a series of open letters to the whole faith community.

Before 1957, lay ministries within Adventism were privately funded local organizations focused on health or educational missions. But the argument about Questions on Doctrine gave rise to a new breed of independent ministries, centered not primarily on mission but on theological issues.

Douglass enters the stage

Into this explosive situation came the young Adventist minister Herbert E. Douglass. His ministry spanned more than 60 of the most tumultuous and controversial years in Advent history.

In 1953—Douglass already had six years of pastoral experience—that called him Pacific union college as a teacher and then financed his studies on Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary.

In those days stood the Seminary, the headquarters of the General Conference, and the publishing house of the Review and Herald Side by Side in Takoma Park, Washington, DC Discovering that Douglass was an unusually gifted scientist, the Review and Herald invited him to be part of the editorial team for Volumes 6 and 7 of the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentaryto become. This gave him a ring seat from which he could easily follow the developing controversy.

In 1957 when Questions on Doctrine appeared, Douglass graduated from seminary and returned to Pacific Union College as a teacher of theology.

One of the doctrines around which the book debate centered concerned the relationship between Jesus' sacrifice on the cross and His ministry in the heavenly sanctuary. Questions on Doctrine delineated Jesus' atonement as something "perfected on the cross." The high priestly service of Jesus is merely the "application of the merits" of this reconciliation concluded on the cross. The practical effect of this teaching, however, was to emphasize present salvation and the assurance of salvation while downplaying the sanctuary doctrine that final and full atonement also includes blotting out every trace of sin from the universe.

On the other hand, the opponents of seemed Questions on Doctrine to give the impression that believers should not expect any certainty of salvation in the here and now, since Jesus' high priesthood is still ongoing. (Of course, that would be in direct contradiction to Hebrews 7,25:XNUMX, where assurance of salvation is derived only from Jesus continuing to do this ministry.)

The truth is that both Jesus' sacrifice on the cross and his subsequent high priesthood are absolutely critical in the plan of salvation. To emphasize one at the expense of the other teaches a false gospel.

Another doctrinal dispute Questions on Doctrine revolved around the kind of human nature that Jesus took on in His incarnation. In Jesus, the Benchmark of Humanity (1977), Douglass and his co-author Leo Van Dolson argued that Jesus was not only God but also fully man, although He never sinned.

Douglass recognized early on that arguments about atonement and the nature of Jesus alone could not solve the real problem. The bigger problem was the actual conflict between the basic assumptions of evangelicals Calvinism and the Adventist form of Arminianism. Douglass likened this conflict to the tectonic collision of two tectonic plates which, when they rub against each other, triggers an earthquake. But this insight alone could not solve the problem either. Because the Calvinist-Arminian debate is 400 years old and is perceived by many as a hopeless dead end.

Douglass found answers in Ellen White

Douglass turned to Ellen White for solutions to the deepening divisions in Adventism. He continued to research their writings when he became Dean of the Faculty of Theology in 1960 Atlantic_Union_College was, as a doctoral student at the Pacific School of Theology, where he received his doctorate in 1964 and when he returned to Atlantic Union College as dean and later president.

At this college he was as 1970 Kenneth Wood, editor of Review and Herald (now Adventist Review) invited him to become co-editor of the general parish newspaper. This provided Douglass with the time and opportunity to publish articles and books on the understanding he had developed over the years of teaching on various subjects. In addition to hundreds of articles, he eventually wrote 30 books on the end times, sanctuary, faith, life and ministry of Ellen White, and the Adventist health message. his textbook Messenger of the Lord(1998) was the most comprehensive book on White before the publication of the Ellen G. White Encyclopedia (2013), on which he was also a lead author.

Douglass found the starting point for his theology in the biblical narratives of the conflict between good and evil and in White's commentaries on those narratives. The origin of sin, Satan's accusations against God's character, and the unfolding of God's plan of salvation as a comprehensive answer to all of Satan's accusations exposed the weaknesses in most modern theologies.

White's focus on God's character as the fundamental issue in the great conflict became the bedrock of Douglass' theological system. He was not the only Adventist theologian to contribute to this development, nor was he the only one to use White's theme of the great conflict in this way. But for 40 years he published an almost uninterrupted stream of publications that built and expanded this theological system.

The theme of the great conflict exposed and resolved the false dilemma between Jesus' sacrifice on the cross and His ministry in the heavenly sanctuary. The purpose of the atonement was to heal the alienation that sin had created in God's universe. So the cross was obviously the center but not the end of the atonement. Jesus' sacrifice on the cross was perfect, complete, sufficient, and once for all. But on the morning of the resurrection, there was still work for Jesus to accomplish in the universe that only he could do.

The fullest expositions of Douglass' theological system are found in three* books published quite late in his life: God at Risk: The Cost of Freedom in the Great Controversy (2004) The Fork in the Road (2007)* and The Heartbeat of Adventism: The Great Controversy Theme in the Writings of Ellen G. White (2011)

In short, Douglass was a giant, a legend, even during his lifetime to thousands of Adventists who read his writings and applied his insights to their daily lives. Whether he was right will continue to be debated. But even those who disagree with him can hardly deny that through his writings he will remain one of the most influential Adventist theologians of the 20th century.

Translation and publication with kind permission of the author

*Deviation from the first publication in English requested by the author

Aus: Adventist Review, 22. December 2014

http://www.adventistreview.org/church-news/herbert-e.-douglass’-greatest-contribution-to-adventist-theology