OMETHING ABOUT THE WAY THE gentleman described his upcoming seminar piqued my interest. So when the time came, I joined the group sitting at his feet. Timing his buildup carefully, he came at length to what (his tone of voice suggested) was a central issue of his presentation: "Has Jesus wanted to come anytime during the past 10 years?" Sensing positive vibes to his astonishing query, he went on: "Has Jesus tried to come since 1991?" ("In connection with the fall of the Soviet Union, for example," he prompted.)

As my head swirled under the impact of this curious approach to theology, the gentleman was to startle me once again with this surprising tidbit: "I hear people say: 'Let's get back to the Word!' [He spoke as if somewhat peeved by the idea.] Well one good way of getting back to Scripture is just reading the Spirit of Prophecy."

In a sense such statements are harmless enough. How can they hurt anybody? one might reason. And it's all too easy to dismiss such talk as pointless dribble. I heard one preacher say last summer, referring to questions about the human nature of Christ, "I don't have time for that kind of foolishness."

Much as we might think the position of some people foolishness, we do well not to ignore them. Theology-whether good or bad-is never unimportant. It always produces fruit, good or bad. Sometimes the bad fruit is innocuous. Other times that same innocent-looking thing can contain harmful ingredients, hidden elements, lethal poisons. One of the most poignant lessons to emerge from the September 11, 2001, tragedy is that bad theology can have deadly consequences. It matters what we believe.

A Good Thing Happened in Nairobi
The Annual Council of the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference, meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, back in 1988, took time to discuss the theological direction of the church. And it probably had concerns similar to mine when it voted to produce a work that would provide a credible, biblical explanation of the fundamental beliefs and practices of Seventh-day Adventists around the world. The outcome was a Handbook of Seventh-day Adventist Theology (hereafter Adventist Theology), constituting volume 12 of what Adventists know as the Commentary Reference Series. Edited by Raoul Dederen, professor emeritus of systematic theology at Andrews University, the book was published in 2000 by the Review and Herald Publishing Association.¹ It's probably the most comprehensive elaboration to date of the rationale and biblical foundations of Adventist faith.

I've not finished reading the volume. And I want to say this as an encouragement to all who would heft the 1051-page heavyweight in their local Adventist Book Center, wondering when they'd ever find time in this life to read it. It's not a book to "finish reading," as such. It's a reference tool. I can see small groups, for instance, coming together in each other's homes to discuss particular chapters-perhaps spending weeks on one chapter before moving on to another.

What's in It?
The late professor W.G.C. Murdoch used to say to young seminarians in Berrien Springs, Michigan, in the middle of January: "Theology is like thermal underwear in the winter time. It keeps you warm, but was not meant to be seen." The speaker who gets up on the platform wearing theology for all to see turns me off. But the speaker who stands there, axe in hand, murdering theology, kills me too. I have a deep love for theology and am never happier than when I see people handling it right.

Adventist Theology provides a good source for Adventist members in the pew searching for solid reasons for their faith. The chapter on God by Fernando L. Canale, for instance. Intensely engaging stuff. Canale has found new ways of talking about the familiar that make his treatment entirely unpredictable and deeply absorbing. I found myself agreeing one moment, disagreeing the next. It was like "no . . . yes, yes, no, of course, not really, oh, I see . . ." That's how theology should happen. Take a look at how Canale handles subjects such as the Trinity, the meaning of God's eternity, and God's foreknowledge and omniscience. Omniscience, he says, for example, "refers to God's embracing everything in His knowledge," while foreknowledge "refers to God's capability of including in His omniscience not only past and present realities but also future realities, even the free actions of men and women" (p. 114). Next in importance to what we do in God's name is what we say about Him, and Canale's comments here provide a fitting corrective to the vacuousness of what's known as process theology.

Angel Rodríguez's treatment of the resolution of the sin problem (pp. 384-387) I found extremely helpful, especially in light of the fierce debates that raged in the church over the doctrine of the sanctuary not all that long ago. I found the segment "Transfer [of sin] and Contamination" (pp. 385, 386) particularly persuasive. It effectively answers the maddening refrain we used to hear in the 1980s: "Blood cleanses, never defiles." The discussion of tsadaq (p. 395), the Hebrew word at the center of the debate on the meaning of Daniel 8:14, is superb. His explanation of the role of Azazel (p. 387) is simple and deep, and should set to rest all charges by critics that Adventists believe the devil to be an alternative sin-bearer.

Dederen's chapter (pp. 538ff.) deals with the meaning of the church, one of the most neglected areas of theology in our independent-minded times. Under a series of evocative images (body, bride, temple, people of God, etc.), the chapter brings out the richness of the biblical concept of the church; and it counteracts the contemporary tendency to look down on the body of believers as simply a social phenomenon answering to the needs of weak-minded people. There are all kinds of reasons that Adventist leaders today should be calling the attention of members to the issues in this chapter.

Under the heading "Biblical Apocalyptic" (pp. 784ff.), William Johnsson skillfully handles a number of delicate matters, such as conditional prophecy, the year-day relationship in prophecy, divine foreknowledge, and the validity of the traditional Adventist approach to prophetic interpretation. The purpose of apocalyptic, Johnsson argues, is to bring hope to God's people. Thus the messages of Daniel and Revelation, both written during times of deep crisis, provided assurance to the faithful that "contrary to all appearances, God was still in control of history," that "ultimately the divine purpose would triumph, God's people would be vindicated, and the divine kingdom established" (p. 787).

George Reid's chapter, "Health and Healing" (pp. 751ff.), provides an excellent treatment of the subject, often bringing to the fore obvious facts long hidden in plain view. He notes, for example, that although the biblical record of the early patriarchs "includes hundreds of details, there is no report of illness among the antediluvians and precious few prior to the Exodus." Then he draws this inference: "While such evidence may not be conclusive, it is compatible with the premise that the stamina of the original humans was transmitted in a declining pattern from generation to generation. The pattern of ages at death among the patriarchs supports this suggestion" (p. 757). In terms of its broad foundation and comprehensiveness, and in the way it streamlines the issue to get to the essentials, the chapter is a winner. With the secular mind always in view, it provides a model of how to present questions of faith to modern people.

Space precludes a critique of every chapter read thus far. The above is simply a sampling, designed to whet the reader's appetite for more of what the book has to offer.

Did I Agree With Everything?
The chapters in the book are structured (however loosely) around what we Adventists call "the 27 fundamentals." This means that all Adventists in good standing will be comfortable with the basic positions articulated. In the words of editor Dederen, "what is presented [in the document] is broadly representative of mainstream Adventist theology and biblical scholarship as they are practiced throughout the worldwide Adventist Church" (p. xi).

But Dederen is under no illusion that every single Adventist in the world will completely concur with every single position taken in the book. "Some will deplore that something was left out, something was given too much attention, or something was given the wrong emphasis." "More than once," Dederen conceded, the supervising group "wished that more discussion could be given to important scriptural, historical, or Ellen G. White statements" (ibid.)

I take this as indirect recognition that while all Adventists in good standing agree on the fundamentals, equally loyal Adventists may differ over the way some detail of doctrine is nuanced by a particular author.

And I did have difficulty here and there, mainly (though not altogether) in regard to methodology. The approach in the chapter "The Law of God" (pp. 457ff.), for example. I found the general thrust too strongly sectarian, if that's the proper term. There does not seem to be enough of that broad, shall I say philosophical, underpinning designed to break the ice, to commend the idea of law to those who might come to the issue with a somewhat skeptical orientation. Instead, Scripture is poured on good and plenty from the word go, without enough effort to engage the questioning (not to say cynical) mind.

By contrast, in "Stewardship" (pp. 651ff.) Charles Bradford endeavors to lay a broad conceptual foundation, preparing the critical reader (Advent-ist or non-Adventist) for what the Scriptures teach on the subject. To me, that approach is a must in our jaded times. "Spiritual Gifts" (pp. 610ff.) is another that gave me trouble. The author announces first off his intention to give the shortest shrift to the gift of tongues. Why? Because "the [New Testament] makes it clear that other gifts are more important to the well-being of the church"-a statement that seems to ignore the context of Paul's negative comment. The approach also fails to grapple with the meaning of the genuine gift of tongues and its potential in our contemporary multilingual milieu. In a world with hundreds of languages and thousands of dialects-and thousands of population groups having no Christian (let alone Adventist) presence in them-we learn that the gift of tongues is not important to the mission of the church! Instead our attention is called to prophecy only, with one single identifiable manifestation in the past 150 years, and with nary an inquiry as to why there haven't been more. Clearly we need to rethink that approach.

I found other parts of the chapter helpful, however. The section under the heading "Gifts Identified and Ranked" (pp. 614, 615), for example, will prove very useful to readers. Perhaps for the first time, many will see a complete listing in one place of all the gifts. And they will benefit from the author's very valuable explanation of Paul's distinction between spiritual gifts and spiritual ministries.

Segments of the (otherwise excellent) chapter on the sanctuary (pp. 375ff.) left me surprised and disappointed. The author, in some sections, proceeds as though we've learned nothing as a church over the past 150 years. One of his main burdens seems to be to prove the idea of a two-part heavenly sanctuary and that Christ did not enter "the Most Holy Place" of that sanctuary upon His ascension. Such insistence-an attempt to somehow superimpose the typical on the antitypical-is as unhelpful as it is unnecessary. Many recent Adventist writers, equally staunch on the doctrine of the sanctuary, have tried to show that one does not need to engage in any special pleading with the New Testament evidence to defend the fundamentals of Adventist sanctuary theology. My own study confirms me in the view that the challenges raised against the sanctuary teaching in the 1980s have left it stronger, not weaker. The Adventist doctrine of the sanctuary stands solid, and there's no need to major in minors to defend it.²

The above critique is not meant to denigrate in the least the contribution made by the chapters in question. Each is filled with a wealth of good stuff that space will not allow me to mention here.
Theology Drives Us

I look around me in the world (what follows I must say carefully) and see a region that's been torn apart by unending violence stretching back decades, with attacks and counterattacks, reprisals and counterreprisals. I see countries in which systematic corruption is the order of the day. I see a place where frightened little children are taunted by adults and pelted with rocks on their way to school. I see a "fraternity" (I must be even vaguer here) in which the molestation of children (little boys, in particular) has reached epidemic proportions, with hundreds of millions paid out in settlements-in court and out of court. I know of a country, at the bottom of the barrel for poverty, in which for decades people would simply disappear in the dead of night at the hands of government-sponsored killers whose dreaded name (I can't mention here) struck terror in the hearts of citizens. There are countries in which people are not free to believe the way they please or worship the way they please, in which women are degraded -countries that breed citizens who're prepared to blow themselves up and take hundreds of innocents down with them. In each of these cases, behind the rhetoric and the politics, lies theology-warped, twisted, lethal.

Bad theology is never completely harmless, not even the kind of esoteric speculation that claims to know exact times in the past when Jesus "wanted to come." That's why I applaud the publication of Adventist Theology.

Its purpose, of course, is not to address-let alone exhaust-every area of theology. A whole world of theological and philosophical issues lies beyond the parameters of the book, a thought that came forcefully to me in the wake of the terrorist tragedy last September. The unexpected atrocity had the effect of bringing out of the woodwork some of the most incomprehensible theological piffle I've seen for a long time. And it provided firsthand evidence that as a church we've yet to grapple with some of the heavy stuff-the Christian response to terrorism and war, for example. In the period immediately following the attack, secular people as a whole made more sense to me than religious people as a whole. Many Christians (fellow Adventists included) displayed a theological softheadedness that was almost completely impractical and useless. (Incidentally, if you want to read a well-reasoned Christian response to that crisis, take a look at Mark Galli's article in the October 22, 2001, issue of Christianity Today. It's what I call theology in the real world-not a world of make-believe. And it's the kind of work we'll need to do as Adventists, once we move beyond the parameters of the fundamentals.)

Adventist Theology was not designed to go there, of course. Within the limits of its assignment, it does its work well, providing every serious Adventist a foundation on which to build. And that foundation is solid. Adventist theology is safe. It poses no threat to anyone, anywhere, anytime. If we can imagine a world in which Adventist theology was accepted and seriously practiced by everyone-including Adventists themselves-it would be a world of peace. A world without immorality or corruption. A world without terrorism, bloodshed, or war. I'm profoundly grateful for this shining heritage. Produced under the auspices of the Biblical Research Institute of the General Conference, Adventist Theology lists on page v the names of those who constituted that committee as the document went to press. I was struck by the fact that of the 66 persons mentioned, at least 22 have now retired, and at least three are deceased. Give another 20 to 30 years (should time last), and where's the entire committee? We know the answer.

For those who understand the transitoriness of human existence, theology cannot be some intellectual game we play, pandering to the whims of the current mood. No, we're grappling with questions of destiny. Fundamentally, the aim of Adventist Theology is to strengthen people in "the faith . . . once delivered" (Jude 3) and fix their gaze on eternal realities. For here we do not have a "continuing city, but we seek one to come" (Heb. 13:14).

That's the ultimate destiny to which the whole creation moves, and to which all good theology points.

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¹ Located in Hagerstown, Maryland. Price: US$37.99.
² I've tried to address some of these issues in my book, The Sanctuary: Understanding the Heart of Adventist Theology (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1993). See especially chapters 3, 4, 5, and 7.

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Roy Adams is an associate editor of the Adventist Review.