Chapter 9—A Theologian’s Testimonial

Theology is the intellectual reflection upon, and the articulation of, the content and experience of Christian faith. The basic reason for theology lies in the fact that believers have minds. They seek to deepen their understanding of what God wills for man, and therefore of their experience of faith. In this capacity theology has long served the Christian community. It has been the methodological tool by which individual Christians have implemented their inherent desire to understand the “deposit of faith,” and to make the content of faith more accurately accessible to man’s mind. This is the function of theology. The task of the theologian today is essentially the same as it has been in the past—to help the church acquire a deeper understanding of the Christian faith, and to mediate, to commend it to the contemporary world.WEWMM 76.1

What role does Ellen G. White play in the ministry of the Adventist theologian? A rapid glance at the theologian’s task will help answer the question. Some describe this task as creative. And it is, to a certain extent. This does not mean, however, that the theologian fashions his system out of thin air. Just as the scientist works with, and from, the given substance of the cosmos, and just as the sculptor shapes his forms from a given substance, so does the theologian. He has a given “substance” from which to work. Theology, therefore, is not just reflection on some aspects of one’s experience of the Christian faith, it is also an intellectual attempt to comprehend and express the datum—the objective information that revelation offers to man. This datum, I believe, is the Word of God. For practical purposes, since the first century this Word from God is the written Bible. This statement must not be taken to imply, as some have supposed, the supplanting of the authority of the Living Word of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, by the authority of an inanimate document of paper and ink. The authority of Scriptures and the authority of Christ are not in fact in conflict, for it is precisely the Bible that bears unequivocal testimony to the supreme Lordship of Christ.WEWMM 76.2

In that it conveys the knowledge of God’s saving deeds in Christ, Scripture plays an integral role in the divine purpose of revelation. It remains for us what God wanted it to be, the living element that continually brings new generations face to face with Christ. And the treasures theologically quarried from it are not the treasures of a lifeless object but the riches of Him who is the Living Lord. It remains the theologian’s function to see to it that the Biblical message is heard in a language that can be understood by the people among whom he works. The task is no easy one, but it is hardly avoidable.WEWMM 77.1

Where is the theologian to find fixed and final concepts wherewith to challenge the secular concepts of his contemporaries? Will he, as many so vociferously do, take contemporary experience as the norm, itself exempt from criticism, by which everything, including Christian faith, is to be judged? Will he reject, under one of several labels, the notion that the doctrinal truth consists in its agreement with objective reality, adopting a purely subjective and fluid criterion of truth? On the basis of what authority is he to discriminate permanent truth in the Christian faith from impermanent opinions? Where will he start? This is where, in my case, the ministry of Ellen G. White played a decisive role.WEWMM 77.2

Born in the Roman Catholic tradition, and trained as I was in the habits of skepticism, accepting Ellen G. White as an expression of the spiritual gift of prophecy so many years after Christ’s death, was a major stumbling block. I found myself actually repulsed by the very thought of it. That I did eventually make this affirmation of faith is to be attributed solely to the grace of God. This revulsion on my part developed, not merely in response to the strangeness of the doctrine but also in an unwillingness to succumb to sugary sentimentality before I had answered certain religious problems intellectually. I needed answers to certain questions, and I was determined not to let sentiment precede reason. The Scriptures and sound logic, I was sure, would provide me with these answers.WEWMM 77.3

It was not long before the same thirst for a fuller understanding of God’s nature and of His will for man, which had brought me to a personal study of the Bible, impelled me to seek for guidance and understanding in interpreting it. As I became more familiar with the personality and teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, I felt the need for some voice that would bring Christ closer as a person, and apply His lofty principles to our troubled twentieth century.WEWMM 78.1

While I was disillusioned with the Roman Catholic Church, Protestantism generally left me with a sense of inadequacy, by failing to insist on the inerrancy of New Testament doctrine. As for the Adventist doctrine on the gift of prophecy, I found it positively repellent. Although Adventists intrigued me, I stubbornly refused to be taken in by the miraculous elements surrounding Ellen G. White’s ministry—the loss of physical strength aspect, the no-breath sign, the upholding of an eighteen-pound Bible.WEWMM 78.2

Far different, however, was the effect of my exploration of her writings. I read extensively in this branch of Adventist literature and I discovered that man in our day can regard the supernatural, the miraculous, as a fact of experience without having to apologize to anyone for this conviction. I discovered that faith and prayer can penetrate beyond the confused surface of philosophy and scholarship to the realm where the powers of light and darkness clash in unceasing strife.WEWMM 78.3

If anyone contends that in order to accept the Adventist faith one must first be attracted to the logic of its doctrines, he will have to explain me away. In fact, through the ministry of Ellen White I was brought face to face with Jesus Christ, as He was and still is. It was no abstraction of theology, no reasoned dissertation about the logical consequences of the Incarnation that confronted me there, but the Incarnation itself, the living and breathing warmth of the person of Jesus Christ. Christianity was Christ, and my questions had found their answers.WEWMM 78.4

I soon felt the need to express my faith, to find the means by which I would be able to make its content more accessible to the mind, my own as well as the mind of others with whom I wanted to share it. Theological reflection was burgeoning. But where does one find the master key that opens the Scriptures to a more systematic unfolding?WEWMM 79.1

We have it on good authority that the theologian, well instructed in the things of the kingdom of heaven, is “like ... an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things both new and old” (Matthew 13:52). Well and good. In his reflection the theologian will enlist all the resources of human reasoning. He will try to grasp the truths, opinions, and questions that the Spirit stirs up in the people of God, and he receives no little help from the Spirit, to whom he must pay heed. But how can he make sure that what he hears from others and even what he thinks the Spirit is saying to him rightly reflects the intent of the Scriptures? How, in his attempt to make the Christian message the good news for contemporary man, will the theologian know whether he is expounding the faith in its integrity, or simply handing back to the world its own beliefs and assumptions adorned with a Christian label?WEWMM 79.2

Amid the theological pluralism derived from the various philosophies and systems of thought that our contemporaries employ in their attempt to expound and explain the Christian faith, the same prophetic ministry, which brought me face to face with Jesus Christ by enlightening the Bible, also dispelled darkness around me.WEWMM 79.3

Yielding to Ellen G. White’s counsel, I went back to the Scriptures again, believing in order that I might understand. The words of Scripture now rang with undeniable truth. The book I had found closed and remote I suddenly studied with eagerness and delight. Dull and dry-as-dust to the eye of unbelief, to the eye of faith the Bible came alive, the dynamic and authoritative Word of God, the key and criterion to its own interpretation.WEWMM 79.4

Any writing that proceeds from God’s Spirit is a veritable mine of wisdom, an inexhaustible source of truth. With renewed diligence I studied both volumes, the Scriptures and the writings that had called my attention to the supreme authority of the Bible. The more I examined, the more I was impressed with the consistency of Ellen White’s testimony. There was no attempt on her part to place her writings on a par with the Bible, much less above it. She was ever pointing to the Scriptures as the one source of truth and light, reminding me as a theologian that the Bible should be the Christian’s first source of spiritual instruction. Christianity, to be sure, is Christ; it is essentially encounter with Christ, an encounter that upsets the whole existence of man and calls him to a decision, to a commitment of his whole person. This Ellen White had been emphasizing from the very start.WEWMM 80.1

But faithful to the realism of the Incarnation, she also explained that such an encounter with Christ is effected only through hearing the apostolic witness consigned to Scripture. It is no wonder she insists that we take the Bible as it is, as God’s voice speaking to us, as the end of all controversy and the foundation of all faith, as surely as though we had a personal audience with the Infinite One. Even the work of the Spirit on the human heart is to be tested by it.WEWMM 80.2

At a time when the sickness of theology is largely attributable to the increasing extent to which it is becoming infected with the arrogance of human self-sufficiency, Ellen White’s inspired meditation of the Christian faith, with its reverence for the Living and Written Word, and its dynamic doctrine of the Holy Spirit, has, more than any other influence in my life, helped me to restore the right balance between the supreme honor of God and the dependent dignity of man, whom God created in His image and for a personal relationship with Him.WEWMM 80.3

Berrien Springs, Michigan
July 1972