BY ED CHRISTIAN

recommend to you the study of church history--not only Adventist history but also Christian history. Many of us assume that Adventists have always believed what we believe today and that most Protestant Christians believe what we believe about most doctrines. Not necessarily so.

My favorite book on church history is by evangelical scholar Harold O. J. Brown, entitled Heresies.* Order a copy today. It's a hard book to put down.

The Bible is a collection of stories, poems, and letters. It's not a systematic analysis of doctrine. Christian beliefs may be based on the Bible, but in some cases it took the Christian church centuries to decide what the Bible actually says about these things.

These decisions were not made calmly. Leaders from throughout Christendom met in grand councils, but sometimes those who disagreed too loudly were murdered or imprisoned. (Imagine that happening at General Conference sessions!) Orthodoxy sometimes shifted from year to year, according to who had the emperor's ear. A Christian bishop could be powerful one year, then excommunicated by his fellow bishops the next.

Adventists know about the three horns plucked out by the little horn in Daniel 7:8, know these horns stand for three European tribes wiped out in the fifth and sixth centuries, and perhaps know that these tribes believed in the "Arian heresy."

Do Adventists realize, though, that these "heretics" were Christians--called heretics because they disagreed with the majority decision on the nature of Christ? They believed Jesus was the only-begotten Son of God, born of a virgin, but they believed He must be in some way subordinate to His Father. They denied the doctrine of the Trinity, so they were killed. Were they heretics or martyrs?

It's interesting that James White and Uriah Smith held similar beliefs. The Seventh-day Church of God, a nineteenth-century offshoot of Adventism, still holds this position. Were White and Smith heretics?

I know people who, because of a few comments in Ellen White's book The Great Controversy, have a great fondness for the Albigensians (or Cathars), who were also considered heretics. Many were killed for their faith. These Cathars were very different from the Waldensians. They believed that Jesus was an angel, denied Jesus was really a man who died and was resurrected, and believed the Old Testament came from Satan. They discouraged marriage. They were in their day what David Koresh's Branch Davidians are in ours. Were they heretics or martyrs? Could they be both?

If the Roman Catholic Church were starting out today with the beliefs it has, it would be called a cult. Some Christians consider Adventism a cult. (Most Adventists are not cultic in doctrine, but some are.)

Because I read church history, I get uncomfortable when Adventists call one another heretics. Traditionally, heretics have been killed, you know.

Of course, there are some who call themselves Adventists yet deny many fundamental Adventist beliefs. Sometimes they can be disruptive, or even do the church a lot of harm.

The odd thing is that I've met several of these people. Some are mean-spirited, but others are godly. How can a real heretic be godly? Maybe some of these people aren't really heretics. Is anyone who disagrees with church beliefs a heretic, or should we reserve that title for those who deny God and scoff at godliness?

I received about 50 e-mails regarding a recent column. Ninety percent were positive. One man, however, asked how I dared to "sully the pages of the Review" and announced that I was now excluded from salvation. Am I a heretic? In his eyes I am. In God's eyes, I think, I am not.

There are some beliefs I would die for. I can't think of any beliefs I would kill for. What about you?

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*Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1998). I also recommend Roger E. Olson's work, The Mosaic of Christian Belief: Twenty Centuries of Unity and Diversity (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2002).

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Ed Christian teaches English and biblical literature at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. E-mail: [email protected]