Once there was an alt.nationalities.english list. All the people on the list were proud of being English and often had debates with people of other nationalities about whether English was Best.

For the people on the list, "English" meant Empire, Discipline, Cold Showers, Eton, Stiff upper-lip, "jolly good show old boy" and all those traditional "English" characteristics.

Then one day someone came along and joined the list who also claimed to be English. But to him "English" meant the birthplace of Democracy, the land of Wat Tyler, Tom Paine and people who championed freedom, it meant the mother of Parliaments, a land of multi-culturalism which has always welcomed exiles and those being persecuted.

"Wait a minute", said the non-English people on the list. This isn't what "English" means! This new chap is just weird and making it all up. We know what "English" is, its what we've been discussing until this new chap came along: its Empire, Discipline, Cold Showers, Eton.. etc etc.

Some history.

There have always been different streams of Seventh-day Adventism (the DSDA group left in the 1930s for example) but more recently within Adventism, since perhaps the 1950s, there have been developing a number of streams of thought, prompted by a dialog with evangelical Christians such as Walter Martin. One of the strengths of Adventism has been its emphasis on education, and when in the 1950s evangelical Christians began asking Seventh-day Adventist theologians to clarify where they stood on key Christian doctrines, these brilliantly educated theologians produced classic "orthodox" answers. These answers were published in a book called "Answers to Questions on Doctrine" and Martin - an acknowledged expert on cults at the time - amazed the evangelical Christian world by declaring Seventh-day Adventism was not a cult.

Martin's book, "Kingdom of the Cults" contained detailed arguments supporting his claim that Seventh-day Adventism be accepted as an orthodox Christian denomination, much of his argument being supported by quotes from "Answers to Questions on Doctrine".

However a number of Adventist leaders realised that the theologians had produced doctrines which contradicted classic Seventh-day Adventist teachings - and put pressure on the church leadership to withdraw the book. They succeeded and soon after it was published the book was withdrawn. However the "new theologians" were not happy with this and began putting forward their own theological interpretation of Seventh-day Adventism - as a part of orthodox Christianity - in their own books and papers, and where possible in church magazines and articles. During the 60s the leadership tended to adopt a "live and let live" attitude, in spite of their withdrawl of the "Answers to Questions on Doctine" book, and sometimes magazines would have articles by new theologians and old traditionalists side by side with no reference to the fact they contradicted each other!

However in the early 1970s one of the Adventist "new theologians" Robert Brindsmead, split from the church. Brindsmead was a brilliant theologian who was an expert in reformation theology and had gone to Europe for a number of years to do specialist work in this area. He began publishing critical articles showing the flaws in traditional Seventh-day Adventist theology and showed in startling detail differences between reformation theology and traditional Adventism (upsetting Adventism's claim to be "heirs of the reformation"). This had the effect of shifting the leadership against the new theology and political struggles took place at Adventist universities to identify the new theologians.

One theologian to come before the new "inquisition" was an Australian theologian, Dr Desmond Ford. Ford had actually published a series of articles on prophecy in the SDA magazine for ministers _The Ministry_ but now he was charged with holding heretical views on prophecy. Ford wrote a lengthy paper defending his "apotelesmatic principle" for interpreting prophecy. This sees the "historicist" method (traditionally the SDA method of understanding prophecy) as only one valid method, other methods such as futurist and preterist (understanding prophecy as applying to the time of the Bible or the time of the End) were argued to be equally valid. His arguments were rejected and he was dismissed.

However rather than stopping the new theology these actions only seemed to encourage it. From out of the universities it spread to the churches and ministers, and a whole group of "Evangelical Adventists" organised themselves to hold to an orthodox Christian version of Seventh-day Adventism. By the early 1980s there were thousands of "Evangelical Adventists" with their own publications and various organisations. Yet as these new theologians began to question Seventh-day Adventism they found more and more they disagreed with. One Adventist scholar, Walter Rea, published a critical book on Ellen White called _The White Lie_ arguing she was guilty of plagiarism, Robert Brindsmead published _Judged by the Gospel_, arguing Seventh-day Adventism had seriously misunderstood the gospel. Journals such as "evangelica" and Brindsmead's "Verdict" all published articles critical of traditional Seventh-day Adventist doctrines. These books and journals were widely read by Evangelical Adventists and many of them simply left the church. Some remained, but not as an organised group.

Whilst this was going on, there was another group of theologians developing in the universities. These were not evangelical Adventists but liberal Adventists. These scholars had read modernist theologians such as Tillich and Bonhoeffer and had no particular liking for conservative reformation theology. While the leadership were clearing out evangelical Adventists from the universities the liberals were only too happy to take their place. Whilst many evangelical Adventists would still be creationists and believe in the literal inspiration of the Bible, liberals accepted the findings of modern critical Biblical scholarship (such as redaction criticism) and understood creation has a saga to be accomodated within the reality of evolution.

This time it was the turn of the traditionalists to organise. Fighting agains the liberalisation of the church new organisations such as "Our Firm Foundation" sought to move Adventism back to its original teachings, back to its "cultic" status if necessary. Books such as Standish's "Keepers of the Faith", Ron Spear's "Waymarks of Adventism" and M.L. Andreasen's "Letters to the Churches" identified areas where they believed the influence of evangelicals and liberals had altered the church's teachings. They argued for perfectionism, Christ having a fallen human nature and the clear teaching that the Seventh-day Adventist church was God's Remnant church, all others being part of Babylon.

What Lessons?

The clear lessons to be drawn from these experiences are that Adventism needs to develop its own theology. It cannot be faced with the choice of either going back to the past or accepting non-Adventist teachings. Instead it is necessary to rediscover the essence of Adventism - to intensify Adventism - and to be led by God into new truth. Christian history shows us truth is always renewing itself, its time to have faith in the future.