Starting with this issue we will try to describe current trends in Adventism and focus on challenges that the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist Church faces. The subsequent article is a general introduction to this topic.

Current trends in Adventism: An introduction

Challenges to established church doctrines are to be expected. To a certain degree this may be beneficial, because people have to wrestle with biblical and theological issues and better explanations must be formulated. Oftentimes, challenges have led to further research and have confirmed and strengthened the position of the church. However, we also detect negative sides. If major doctrines of the church are attacked, church members may be led astray, pastors and theologians are occupied in an undue way, and the church may be distracted from its mission.

Adventists do not live in a vacuum. Society and its philosophies as well as other churches and religions exert their influence on us. Some of these trends affect us directly. Others are felt when we have to deal with theological challenges from within the church.

I. Theological and Quasi-Religious Influences Outside the Adventist Church

1. Influences in Western Societies

Before we move to theological influences, we need to turn to current trends and philosophies shaping societies, especially in the West. The problem is that these philosophies are seldom directly promoted or discussed. Yet, we are confronted by them and may accept them subconsciously. These current philosophies and trends of our society include the following:¹

1. Individualism. People are interested in their own world only, driven by the desire to be absolutely autonomous. Norms and regulations imposed on them by others are routinely despised or rejected. Radical individualism contributes to the lack of interest in biblical doctrines, biblical standards, and theological topics which we observe today.

2. Pragmatism. What is feasible, doable, and what benefits the individual counts no matter what. There is, for instance, the danger of applying non-Christian models and methods to the church because they seem to work, without studying whether or not Scripture allows for them.

3. Materialism. People want to fulfill all their wishes and are willing to sell “their souls” for money and material goods. In addition, whatever cannot be grasped with the human senses is considered irrelevant.

4. Consumerism. Our generation lives for the purpose of enjoying life to the fullest and being entertained. Christians go to church to get something from it rather than to serve God and others. Worship becomes a show.

5. Tolerance. Although tolerance has positive aspects, sometimes it becomes merely a cover for indifference, and at times it goes so far that all religions are declared equal and no value judgment can be passed on any lifestyle. When tolerance is turned into an absolute, those who claim that Christianity is unique are considered intolerant and must be opposed. Oftentimes, tolerance goes along with ecumenism and the notion of political correctness.

6. Pluralism. It claims that all religions lead more or less to the same god or a similar desired outcome. Everyone is correct. The church must accept all views.

7. Relativism. According to relativists there is no absolute truth. Nothing is certain. Nobody can claim to have found the truth.

8. Ecumenism. The combination of relativism, tolerance, and pluralism allows for full-fledged ecumenism, in which unity becomes more important than truth.

9. Emotionalism. What counts is personal experience. Emotionalism profoundly influences Christian worship and lifestyle. Decisions are made on the basis of what feels good, not on the basis of what may be right or true. Biblical positions are less important than personal feelings.

10. Patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism and nationalism coexist with individualism and strongly influence people and their world views. This has not only led to the creation of new and independent nations, but also reinforces the trend toward somewhat independent national churches within the larger body of an international church.

2. Theological Influences

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, liberal Protestantism succeeded in dominating theology. The biblical understanding of revelation and inspiration was virtually rejected, and Scripture became a purely human product. Miracles and resurrection were unacceptable. The History of Religion School proposed that the Bible consisted of Babylonian myths, ideas derived from Hellenistic mystery cults, or influences of the Roman emperor worship, which had been reworked. The question of the historical Jesus was raised, who supposedly differs widely from the biblical Jesus. Apocalyptic prophecy and end-time events were regarded as irrelevant and strange. The social gospel was popularized.

Neo-Orthodoxy succeeded Liberalism and attempted to recover insights from the Reformation. Its most famous representatives were Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, and Rudolf Bultmann. But Neo-Orthodoxy also introduced the idea of revelation as encounter. Scripture is seen as the report of encounters that took place between God and humans. It was written down from the human perspective and is not really the Word of God. It may become the Word of God for an individual if this person individually has an encounter with God. For Brunner most of the OT was mythological. Therefore, he rejected a literal Paradise, Adam and Eve as historical persons, and opted for evolution. NT history has also undergone profound changes according to Brunner.² Thus, even neo-orthodoxy was not orthodox in the real sense of the word but followed certain presuppositions of liberalism. Bultmann was so radical as to suggest that we demythologize the NT. For him most texts attributed to Jesus were not authentic, but the product of the early church. He was also one of the founders of form criticism, one of the tools of the historical-critical method which is still the dominant method used today to interpret Scripture. In the document “Methods of Bible Study” the Adventist Church distanced itself even from a moderate use of this method.³

Today we find a plurality of theologies such as process theology, secular theology, radical theology, the theology of hope, the theology of history, the theology of evolution, situation ethics, liberation theology, feminist theology, and evangelical theology. Most of them follow the liberal tradition.

As an example we will take Heinz Zahrnt, a theologian whose books were published in the 1970s, who describes many of the basic elements that we find in certain Adventist circles today. He talks about the necessity of theology to be a contemporary theology of experience. Scripture is the original translation of the Christian feeling and must be reinterpreted. He supports the historical-critical method. For him the patriarchs did not exist. Most of the NT letters have an author other than the one claimed in them. The authority of the biblical canon is questioned, because the Bible supposedly contains serious flaws and contradictions. Not all of it is God’s Word, and it cannot be taken literally. The Bible is not a book containing teachings but a book for life, a human book of remembrance. Even the NT does not rest on facts. It is a book of faith. Inspiration is reinterpreted, and the claim is that it happens today. Refusal to add or delete anything of the biblical message is compared to primitive religions and little children who insist that a story must be told always in the same way. Zahrnt favors instead a present day “continuation” of the biblical message as present truth. That means that we may need to make statements that “in spirit” follow Scripture, although they may be quite different from Scripture. Scripture contains much straw and little wheat, he claims. Jesus was a man and a man only, who completely relied on God. He probably never called himself Son of God. The death of Christ is described with many different and contradictory images which today are no longer intellectually acceptable. Zahrnt also opts for a kind of pluralism.⁴ Because the historical-critical method has cast doubt on the biblical Jesus, the virgin birth, Jesus being the Son of God, his crucifixion, resurrection, the empty tomb, ascension, and second coming, the real question is whether God exists at all.

This is the social and theological milieu in which we live and by which we are influenced. So far, Adventists have chosen Scripture as the revealer of God’s will and of doctrines. Next time we will turn more specifically to theological influences within the Adventist Church.