INTRODUCTION

The basic position of the articles is that there is a great opportunity
for Adventism at present, due to the coming together of strands and themes,
that makes Adventism a very suitable vehicle to develop Christian thought.
There are also great obstacles to this development, not least the
apparently immovable weight of the administrative leadership on the
theoretical development of Adventism. Nevertheless, in the following
areas Adventism has advantages but needs to be aware of problems:
* The "movement" of Adventist thought since the 50s: Adventist theologians
seem willing to look and relook at their basic positions, and rethink if
necessary. BUT the movement has had little success and it seems any
renewal will occur only after a difficult struggle.
* The 1844 message: Adventism emphasises that an event of world historical
importance has happened since the mid-nineteenth century that needs to be
balanced against the Christian revelation. BUT the original witness of
1844 was 'ideological', not theoretical, it was expressed (necessarily)
in cultural-religious language not theological language. This terminology
has now become reified and fetishised with a whole apologetic built
around it, preventing the process of translation and communication.
* The Sabbath and the Law: this ties in with Christians looking at the
Jewishness of Christianity again, and with Jews assessing Christianity.
Adventists are potentially better placed than many to state the positive
Jewish influence on Christianity. BUT the Sabbath and the law are also
expressed in an ideological manner without any development or assimilation
with theology, ethics and philosophy.
* The Apocalypse and Parousa: the question of the End and the whole global
issue of nuclear war, the greenhouse effect, ecology etc. can be brought
under the wing of Adventist eschatology. BUT yet again the apocalypse
has remained chained within one specific mode of expression, against the
great variety of language and interpretation of the Bible and theology.
This "cheap eschatology" is unchallenging, convenient and safe, resulting
in the increasing denial in practise and simple lip service paid to this
doctrine.
* The "remnant" asks again the question of the pluralism and unity of the
Church, by reaffirming the one true Church; but what best characterises the
remnant ? a Vanguard, a research team, an elect, a pressure group, explorers,
terrorists, scientists, protesters, magicians, deep-sea divers, children ?
BUT the remnant has been seen as a minor variant in the open door/shut door
scenario. This whole problem arises due to the retention of many 'Babylonian'
ideas within Adventism when it started, one of which was the view of the
church as possessor of truth, infallible and absolute. In fact all the church
can provide are institutions for the production of truth and free dissemination
of that truth.
* The Adventist rejection of the soul opens the way to the new conception of
the subject as multiplicity, not with a single totalising essence, but
dispersal, difference, change, part of a chain, a web, produced out of
and inseparable from history and society. BUT the implications of the
no-soul doctrine have not been understood, once again 'Babylonian' ideas
predominate in anthropology and questions of the self, the will, identity
etc. resulting in an Ego-Religion, a deformed type of Christianity.
* Health obviously has strong contemporary implications: the current concern
about responsibility for our bodies and our planet, the rights of animals
to be free from experimentation, mass slaughter and factory farming and
the right of human beings to live in a healthy environment. BUT health is
still seen in commercial "lifestyle" terms, not a challenge to the whole
fallen world of environmental pollution and animal exploitation.
* Not having inherited the sexist and racist institutional structures of
the older churches, Adventism has been a platform for blacks to be able to
express themselves in non-oppressive situations. The Church must now
vigorously resist any attempts to impose sexist practises on the ministry
of women, imported straight from 'Babylon'. Mrs White has provided a
positive role model for women to be active in the church with intelligence,
wit and wisdom and not dogsbodies for men, i.e. just performing the cleaning and
cooking while men take the lead. BUT the church still does not educate against
sexism and racism in society, allowing them to enter the church unchallenged
and be seen as a respectable viewpoints within the church.
* The setting up of a network of schools and hospitals has shown that the
Church the west does have a responsibility for the whole world, and thus not
see the church in just local, regional or national terms. BUT the point of
the church (within the context of the Spirit, salvation etc.) is to provide
a healing of the subject, always aware that the subject is possessed and
occupied by numerous controls, habits, discourses, structures of power etc.
thus the church is the arena wherein the subject grows - 'learns' toleration,
wisdom, understanding, style, taste, ethics, self-knowledge etc., it should not
be a machine that creates lots of carbon-copy subjects all repeating the
same arguments and viewpoints, nor an apparatus to reinforce bigotry,
elitism, hubris, exclusiveness, philistinism and ignorance.

We need to return to the fundamentals of Adventism. Too often the actual
articulation and explanation of Adventism has incorporated non-Adventist,
pre-Adventist and even anti-Adventist ideas. This was due to the 'ideological'
nature of the pioneers' expressions (a colloquial theology), they were
unable to show the same care and attention to detail that developed
theory takes for granted, and thus opened themselves to misunderstanding.
Indeed since they themselves did not know what they were doing (the meaning
of their actions was not visible) they were just simply incapable of
articulating the theoretical implications for theology.

One interesting aspect of Adventism is the role of the ideology within
the organisation. To maintain the conceit of the membership, the church
must continue to perform a conservative, explanatory role, legitimising
and re-establishing the foundations of faith. If we were to pose an
intellectual/theoretical problem to Adventism, the organisation has
already established well planned channels of dissemination through which
is can flow (through which it can be processed and packaged). If we
were dealing with a 'pure' problem in which the implication of any possible
solution had no practical, political force (political in the sense of
challenging the existing hierarchy) we would be free to follow pure reason.
However when a problem has as one of its possible answers a radical change
in perspective (which frequently occurs within the sciences, a scientific
revolution) the whole power structure of the organisation dependent upon
repressing that form of language, that argument, those implications, that
phrasing of the question, is manoeuvred into position, and the radical
option altered before it can be clearly expressed and formulated.

It would seem from the various histories of the sciences and of organisations
(see Foucault in the introduction to "Truth, Power and Sexuality") that
great upheavals occur in every area of knowledge, this seems the natural
pattern for the development of knowledge. However if an organisation is tied
too closely with a particular stage of the development of a knowledge, it
resists the change (for example the CPSU up until the time of Gorbachev,
and still even now; the Psycho-Analytic Association; the British Cavalry
in the 1930s; the Labour Party in Britain in the 80s; the Catholic Church
with its adherence to Aristotelian science in the middle ages etc.) and it
is up to the leaders to carry through the education to the people, to
explain as best they can what the new arguments mean and what the solutions
are (in fact the relation between the people and the leaders is more complex
than this: usually the people are aware that their theory is meeting problems,
but put forward solutions based on the old presuppositions, if the leadership
only reinforce this view the crisis can only be delayed). This then leads us
to ask the question: is there a form of organisation where the leadership,
intellectuals and the people are all at one ? It is clearly an emergency
measure when Gorbachev starts to restructure the Soviet Union, why couldn't
it have been done in a more natural way ? This is the question asked in
"Bombard the Headquarters".

The 'active membership' is important within Adventism, but if kept within
specific limits it is as useful as an active classroom where the teacher
always remains in charge. What is needed is a reversal in the power roles
where the organisation is made for the people not the people for the
organisation. The active membership concept needs extending and radicalising.

When a church falls, we come out of her ('come out of her my people') for
correct theology is the starting point of all church activity. This leads
the way to the question of a post-ecclesiastical church should we judge
Adventism to have fallen.

For references and further reading I would give the following short list.
The most important philosopher today is Jacques Derrida, and a useful book
to start with is "Writing and Difference", also the essay in "Speech and
Phenomena" called "Differance". The most important theologian today is
possibly Mark C. Taylor who has two interesting books, "Deconstructive
Theology" and "Erring". Michael Foucault is also very important, see for
example, his "Order of Things" and "Archaeology of Knowledge", also see
Louis Althusser's "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus". Two final
'core texts' are Jacques Lacan's "Ecrites" and Gauttari and Deleuze's
"Anti-Oedipus".

To give a broader outline of the intellectual history going on here, I would
begin with Althusser and structuralism. Structuralism replaced existentialism
as the leading 'master theory' in the early 60s in France, in particular
Althussarian structuralism replaced Sartrian existentialism (although of
course I am horribly over-simplifying, one could argue it was Levi-Strauss
rather than Althusser who replaced existentialism, and Sartre enjoyed a
'recovery' in the late 60s, so he wasn't completely replaced). Michael
Foucault studied under Althusser and Derrida under Foucault, so you can
see the clear relationship between them. Foucault is often called a post-
structuralist and Derrida a deconstructionist but many people use Lacan,
Foucault and Derrida to complement and develop certain related themes.

'Behind' these current thinkers are a number of other thinkers: in the early
to mid-twentieth century are Freud, Saussure and Heidegger, then behind
these Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky (who are working within the
same problematic as Ellen White).

When dealing with organisations I tend to use Sartrian language: the
practio-inert, counter-factuality, praxis etc.; when analysing individuals,
texts and ideas I use Lacan and Derrida; when looking at theory and
ideology, Althusser; when analysing knowledge produced by organisations,
Foucault; for theology, Heidegger, Barth and Derrida.

There are also others of varying importance - in theology: Tillich,
Bultmann, Don Cupitt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Hans Kung; in literary
criticism: Roland Barthes, Martin Essen, Michael Baktin, Terry Eagleton;
in the philosophy of science: Karl Popper, Khun, Feyerband and so on,
but this is simply restating the fact that theory only develops in dialogue
with other theoretical discourses - to say 'yes, we agree with that', 'no,
that isn't true', 'yes, but...'

Concerning the 'being'/'Being' language, I originally cited Heidegger as
being the person to refer to on this, and although that is basically
true, of course Paul Tillich is probably the theologian who best incorporates
this sort of language into theology, and hence is probably more relevant
to the matter in hand.

Sometimes theoretical articles can appear too abstract: they aren't, of
course, since they must be rigorous rather than anecdotal, however it is
interesting to see the practise of the theory (as engineering and construction
would be an application of mathematics, we don't kick out the mathematician
because he doesn't build any impressive bridges !) For this reason I have
included a couple of pieces I wrote about Rev Don Cupitt's book "The
Long-legged Fly". I have been reading Cupitt for a number of years now,
and correspond with him on various points and arguments (it was he who
recommended Mark C. Taylor) so I felt it would be useful to express my
opinions on his latest book. In his reply, Cupitt conceded that what I
argued "was probably correct" so I felt justified in including it as an
expression of the sort of critique possible within my theoretical framework.

I'm not arguing that this is the "whole truth", that these proposals
constitute a New Adventism or neo-Adventism; certainly they are a
radical reinterpretation of the "theological" basis of Adventism (I
use the scare-quotes because I argue that Adventism’s theoretical language
is a theoretical ideology rather than a genuinely developed theoretical
practise), yet I believe they provide useful and original ways to consider
established questions and indicate the wealth and range of investigations
that could be conducted given these perspectives.