Ponder Anew 2!

Are "Sabbathers" Jews or Christians?

Who Started the Branch Davidian Fires at Waco? Another Response to Kenneth G. C. Newport

This is the text of my response to Kenneth G. C. Newport's presentation at the Loma Linda University Campus Hill Church on November 17, 2007.  Since then I have added the material in the brackets.  For my summary of Newport's presentation, my response and the discussion that followed, please visit the Spectrum Blog.  It may be necessary to use the Archives for November 2007.

Kenneth Newport's work [The Branch Davidians of Waco: The History and Beliefs of an Apocalyptic Sect.  Oxford University Press, 2006.  xi + 379 pp.] on what went wrong at Waco is scholarship at its best.  Tediously researched, precisely written and dispassionately argued, it is an overwhelmingly positive contribution. 

Its value for Seventh-day Adventist thought and life is especially great.  I hope that many advanced Sabbath School classes around the world will discuss one of its seventeen chapters each week.  Few experiences can do more to help us understand what it means and does not mean to be a Seventh-day Adventist today.

Newport's scholarship in his book is so excellent that my understanding of its central thesis is the only thing with which I disagree.  I take this to be that "the end-time scenario at the heart of SDA thinking almost since the movement began, including such concepts as the remnant, the continuation of the prophetic gift, and the nearness of the end, provides the basic canvas upon which the distinctively Branch Davidian apocalyptic images can be painted." (41)

It is particularly in the next sentence that Newport goes further than I can.  "More broadly," he writes, "Koresh differed in degree and detail more than in kind from countless millions of his fellow Americans who, the statistics indicate, have "'no doubt' that Jesus will one day come to earth again." 

I am unable to follow Newport when he suggests that these differences were more quantitative than qualitative.  It is difficult for me to put David Koresh and Billy Graham in the same family photograph, for example.  Likewise, it is almost impossible for me to picture David Koresh and Ellen White holding hands.  Their differences strike me as more than a matter of degree. 

[They are differences in kind.  Branch Davidian theology is not an elaboration, extension or intensification of either Seventh-day Adventism or American Christianity more generally.  It is their grotesque and diametrically opposed distortion.  It retains some of the terms and themes but it turns them upside down and inside out.

Perhaps the most obvious example is that for a century and a half SDAs have typically refused to bear arms, even in times of war, choosing out of moral conviction and their community's special skills, sometimes at great personal sacrifice, to serve in the military as medics who treat wounded friends and foes alike.  David Koresh, on the other hand, had a phallic obsession with fire arms and he gathered a huge and diverse supply of them at Mount Carmel, just as he collected compliant women. This is a reversal, not a development, of SDA theology.  In conversation Newport acknowledges this; however, he gives it less importance than I do.] 

More generally, Newport attributes more of what went wrong at Waco to what the Branch Davidians believed than I can.  "Theology, talk about God, and understanding of God, and an understanding of God's purposes for the world were what made them tick.  It was for theology that these believers lived.  It was for theology too that some of them died," he writes. (16)

Although they would probably say that they lived and were prepared to die for God, not theology, many Branch Davidians would probably agree.  But perhaps this is to accept their understanding of themselves too uncritically.  My view, based on Newport's research, not mine, is that theological, psychological and ethical pathologies on both sides of the conflict converged to cause what happened.

If these three pathologies had plagued only the Branch Davidians or only the government's agents, I doubt that we would have seen Waco's flames.  Also, if in either or both sides any one of these three factors had not been present, I again doubt that we would have seen them [though about this I am less certain. In any case, as I see it, we are dealing with two sets of three pathologies, or six in all.  All six were raging out of control on April 19, 1993.  It was a perfect recipe for horror.]

Newport convinces me that the Branch Davidians probably ignited the flames of Waco. "Did the biblical text inspire this act of self-destruction?" he also asks in tonight's presentation. "I think it did, or at least I think that there was a direct relationship between the texts, what the Branch Davidians thought those texts meant, and what happened on April 19, 1993."

I agree; however, I doubt that by itself their reading of these texts would have caused the Branch Davidians to light the fires.  In addition to this theological pathology, very serious psychological and ethical pathologies probably made their contributions too.  Otherwise, why is it that out of millions of Seventh-day Adventists around the world and many more millions of other Christians in North America, less than a hundred of them died at Waco?  [Humanly speaking, this is a huge loss; however, statistically speaking it is insignificant.] 

[What caused this difference?  I think that Newport might have given this question more attention.  If he had, I think he would have placed much more emphasis upon the many points at which the line of thought from Victor Houteff to David Koresh fundamentally changed its theological inheritance.  It is notoriously difficult to discover why things are different by concentrating upon how basically similar they are.]

Both sides exhibited theological pathologies [on April 19] in that they both tried to force the hand of God in human history.  "In God we trust," declares the civil religion of the United States.  Among other things this means that neither the nation as a whole nor any group within it is authorized to usurp the role of divine providence.  Also, at our best, though we must concede that we are often at out worst, we Americans trust God, not the AFT or FBI, and certainly not the guns of David Koresh.  Forgetting this is a huge theological problem.

Neither David Koresh and his followers nor those in the government who managed things on April 19 were dysfunctional psychotics.  About this Newport is certainly correct.  This does not mean that they all deserved a clean bill of psychological health, however. 

A quick look down a list of psychological disorders gives one pause.  Here are some possibilities that I would like to discuss with a fully qualified professional:  Acute Stress Disorder, Antisocial Personality Disorder, Anxiety Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Dependent Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Paranoid Personality Disorder and Sleep Terror Disorder.

It is unlikely that everyone on both sides of the conflict suffered from one or more of these pathologies.  It is even less likely that only a few of them did.  My view is that we cannot understand what went wrong at Waco unless we take such psychological factors into account.

Both sides exhibited serious ethical pathologies.  Two of the most common temptations are sloth, living like less than a human being, and pride, living like more than one. 

I think that the Branch Davidians at Waco gave in to the temptation of Sloth.  In important areas of his personal life David Koresh lived like an animal and his followers did little or nothing to stop him. 

I think that the representatives of the government gave in to the temptation of pride.  They did not want to be humiliated, shamed or held to scorn by their apparently unmanly inability to bring the stalemate to a close [after the better part of two months], most particularly not on the grasslands of Texas!  Faced with the prospect of sacrificing either their sense of honor or the lives of the Branch Davidians, they made their choice.

Does this mean that we Seventh-day Adventists can avoid all responsibility for what wrong?  My answer to this question is "no."

The proof-text method of studying Scripture can cause problems by allowing one to combine a verse from here with a verse from there and both of them with yet another text in a third location, all taken out of their settings, in order to prove anything.  Koresh was the king of proof-texting and a few--very few-- SDAs and others were wrongly impressed.  Even one is too many.

Another problem is the high value some in our circles place upon deference to religious authority.  We know that we are supposed to be "thinkers and not the mere reflectors of the thought of others;" however, sometimes we are very hard on those who think for themselves.  This, too, is a big problem.  Every time we squelch someone who questions or proposes something by demanding uncritical obedience to arbitrary authority, we throw fuel onto the fires of [the next] Waco.

We should always think for ourselves but never think by ourselves!

I close with an expression of my gratitude to Kenneth Newport.  We can only hope that all former Seventh-day Adventist professors who become Anglican priests and academic administrators will serve us so well! . 

Kenneth Newport Explains the Fires of Waco

The Branch Davidians themselves started the fires in which they died on their compound, Mount Carmel, in April 19,1993 near Waco, Texas and they did this because they belived that this is what the Bible told them to do.  Kenneth G. C. Newport contended for these conclusions in a presentation at the Loma Linda University Campus Hill Church on the evening of Wednesday, November 14.  For my summary of his remarks and my response, please visit the Spectrum Blog.

Christianity and Particularity

Here is something I posted on the current Spectrum Blog discussion of "I'm an Adventist because....."  The Spectrum Site is worth visiting too!

Several of us have commented on the differences between being a Christian and being a Seventh-day Adventist, usually indicating that the first is prior in some way to the second. In many ways this makes sense.

Yet I doubt that it is possible entirely to separate these chronologically or experientially. When anyone becomes a Christian he or she necessarily becomes one of some sort. No one gets to become a Christian as such.

When we become Christians we do so either as SDAs, Roman Catholics, Baptists, Methodists.......or some mix of these. We might deny this but this is usually because we are unaware of the pedigrees of the types of Christianities we embrace.

There are no birds as such, only particular kinds of birds. There are no horses as such, only particular kinds of horses. There are no flowers as such, only particular kinds of flowers. True, these all may have mixed pedigress; however, none of them is wholly without one.

We might call this the principle of particularity. Nothing exists unless it exists in some specific way.

This is why I am not ashamed that I am a Seventh-day Adventist Christian. At least I know part of my pedigree!

"Adventist Today" Comments on the Andrews University "Questions on Doctrine" Conference

For reports and commentaries on the Andrews University Questions on Doctrine Conference by Ervin Taylor, Arthur Patrick and Robert Johnston, please visit Adventist Today.

The "Questions on Doctrine" Conference: Heading to Andrews University

It is 4:39 a.m. California time on Tuesday, October 23, and my wife and I are on our way to Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan for a three-day conference celebrating the 50th anniversary of the book Questions on Doctrines (Washington, D. C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1957).

This book undoubtedly has caused more controversy within the Seventh-day Adventist Church than any other the denomination has published.  Authored by a small group of leaders in response to inquiries to Donald Barnhouse and Walter Martin, two very conservative Protestants, it is widely credited for making Adventism more credible in the eyes of such Christians while also creating much division within it.  This theological discord has continued for half a century.

Some summarize the debate as one over whether the human nature of Jesus Christ was like that of Adam and Eve before the Fall [prelapsarianism] or after the Fall [postlapsarianism].  This seemingly arcane question continues to be debated outside the denomination as well, albeit without a literal reading of the stories of the "first parents" of all human beings, with theological giants as influential as Karl Barth and Wolfhardt Pannenberg taking sides.  Both are postlapsarian.

Philosophical and theological differences are often like points on a compass.  If one is traveling short distances their variations hardly matter.  But the further away from the compass one goes, the more the lines established by its different points diverge.  They can eventually be so great that a difference in only five or so degrees can cause one to miss the destination if it is thousands of miles away.  Likewise, in the short run theological differences have negligible consequences. In the long run they can matter a great deal.

In this case the difference between the prelaspsarian and the postlapsarian views of the human nature of Jesus is an unimaginably small variation on the theological compass, so tiny that within the last couple of weeks, Jan Paulsen, the denomination's world-wide leader, a theologian himself who earned his doctorate at Tubingen University in Germany, stated in public that he doubted the value of the upcoming conference partly because he can't imagine that the contesting doctrines would be of any interest to a postmodern person in Europe, a business man in Asia or a farmer in Africa. 

This comment has itself become a matter of further discussion with some agreeing, others disagreeing and still others thinking that this new debate about Paulsen's remark not worth anyone's time and energy!

Because for years my position has been very much like Paulsen's, I am surprised that I have been invited to the conference and even to present a paper.  My recently deceased father was very active in these debates, especially during the last fifteen years of his life; but as far as I can recall this is the first time I will have commented on them in public because I have felt that I have more important things to do.  Some at the conference may be surprised that my father and I have both been postlapsarian all along because his reputation for being traditional is as great as my reputation for being the opposite.

This demonstrates that it is not the case that one of the positions is "conservative" and the other "liberal," even though some may try to frame the issues this way.  We are talking about overlapping but somewhat different paradigms within which there are more and less traditional stances.

Generally speaking, the prolapsing position emphasizes the differences between Jesus and the rest of us and thereby the importance of God's forgiving graciousness.  Some say that it eventually leads to moral irresponsibility.  The postlapsarian emphasizes the similarities between him and us and therefore the significance of God's empowering graciousness.  Some say that it leads to legalistic perfectionism.  The first sees him more as "Saviour" and the second more as "Lord." 

My view is that the unattractive implications that each side attribute to the other are exaggerated.  I also believe that both sides have shared certain unpersuasive premises that have resulted in what theologian James Gustafson, who long taught at Yale and the University of Chicago and then Emory University, in another context called "a misplaced debate."

So, we're off!  This should be an interesting weekend! 

Sigve Tonstad on God's Coercive or Persuasive Power in the Book of Revelation

Last night faculty and friends of the Loma Linda University School of Religion discussed a book by one of its newest professors.  Published by T &T Clark in its Library of New Testament Studies series in 2006, the revised St. Andrews University doctoral dissertation is titled "Saving God's Reputation:  The Theological Function of Pisits Iesous in the Cosmic Narratives of Revelation."  Sigve Tonstad, a physician and Biblical scholar from Norway, is its author.

As indicated by the Greek words in its title, Tonstad's book examines the meaning of the expression "faith of Jesus" as found in Revelation 14:12.  Over the centuries, commentators have tried to clarify the meaning of these words in several ways.  Tonstad makes an unusual case for understanding them to mean "the faithfulness of Jesus," and thereby God, to others rather than the other way around. I think that the phrase therefore becomes analogous to the exclamation of some Psalms that "God's steadfast love endures forever."

Because he cannot make it on linguistic grounds alone, Tonstad buttresses his case by providing a detailed study of the entire book of Revelation and this is where things get more interesting and controversial.  Most commentaries these days on the last book of the New Testament make the conflict between the first Christians and the Roman empire its foreground and the cosmic conflict about the way God governs the universe its background.  Reversing these, Tonstad holds that the imagery of cosmic conflict is primary. 

In addition, even if it is qualified by some commentators, there is a widespread impression that in the Book of Revelation God conquers all foes by violently abolishing them.  Tonstad reverses this as well. He holds that the book's imagery of the victory of the "slaughtered lamb" suggests that God prevails by using persuasive rather than coercive power. 

Either one of these major revisions would have been provocative.  Taken together they constitute a major challenge to most interpretations.  Tonstad avers that his case is a "complementary and partly contrary" alternative.  This puts it gently!

One might anticipate that responses to his book would probe both his emphasis upon the theme of "cosmic conflict" and his proposal that in the book of Revelation God wins by using persuasive power.  These are exactly the directions last night's discussion headed with one addition.  This is that we explored not merely what the ancient document says but what we should say today about its central question:  If God is as good and powerful as so many say, why do we see so much evil around and within us? 

This question always expresses the greatest possible objection to Biblical faith, whether Jewish, Christian or Islamic.  It is the problem of theodicy, or the "justice of God."  When it comes to monotheism, in the end it is the only question worth discussing.  If we believers answer it in ways that are at least partially satisfactory, much falls into place.  If we fail here, nothing else matters.

Although in this volume Tonstad does not engage his Biblical scholarship with contemporary philosophical theology, I hope that in time that he or others will bring them together in mutually fruitful ways.  I believe that his emphasis upon God's persuasive rather than coercive power in the Book of Revelation should be interesting to process theologians and vice versa, for example.

It will be tempting for these to square off against each other as to whether this is how God chooses to act (Tonstad, I think) or is compelled by the inescapable nature of reality to do so (process theology).  I hope that this does not happen because I think it more important for them to collaborate against other positions in providing an alternative to what Alfred North Whitehead called "the deeper idolatry." 

This is the tendency of Christians and others to depict God as a capricious dictator rather than the loving parent for whom Jesus of Nazareth lived and taught.  Because it is the case that in the long run we become like those we worship, the future of human civilization rests in part upon which form of power we most prize.  We have magnified our reliance upon coercive power beyond measure and we can see the results.  Perhaps it would be helpful to try another approach.  It is difficult to imagine that the outcomes would be worse.            

Cultural and Culinary Diversity: Some Parallels

A social event it was my priviledge to attend earlier this week prompted me to think again about the parallels between cultural and culinary diversity. Organized by the Intercultural Dialogue Student Association at the University of California at Riverside and sponsored by Pacifica Institute, it consisted of a splendid dinner, group discussions and several speakers. The theme of the evening was "Diverse Traditions, Shared Values." The purpose of this annual gathering is to encourage more positive relationships among Jews, Christians and Muslims. Once again this year's meeting was a success.

The three primary speakers were John W. Webster of La Sierra University, Atilla Kahveci of the Pacific Institute and Howard K. Wettstein, of UCR. Kahveci spoke first. As a Muslim he contended that all three Abrahamic religions share important values such as honesty, generosity, compassion and kindness. We should build on these, bringing unity out of diversity without destroying it, he held.

Webster, a Christian, contended that first of all Jews, Christians and Muslims must overcome some mutual misunderstandings. Once they do this they will recognize that they have enough in common to collaborate, even on matters of public policy.

Wettstein reflected on his life and work as a Jewish Zionist who is ethically uneasy about Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands. He also spoke about his experiences teaching in Palestine and about religion's great power for good and evil. He agreed that it often takes religion to make good people do bad things. It often takes religion to make bad people do good things, he added.

Webster distinguished between "experiential expressivism," on the one hand, and "cultural linguistics," on the other. The first holds that at bottom all people experience life basically the same way even though they express themselves diversely. The second holds that the differences among cultures are so thoroughgoing that finding experiential common ground beneath them is difficult.

The intercultural stratigies of these two groups differ correspondingly. The first attempts to identitfy views and values people share and build upon them. Regarding this as an unsuccessful and undesirable enterprise, the second attempts to find methods by which people can interact in mutually acceptable patterns even though they experience life in fundamentally different ways. Diversity, even in this radical form, should be viewed as something positive, he held.

It is at this point in such discussions that my mind returns to cultural and culinary diversity and how they might be analogous. The number of different things people around the world eat is incredibly vast, so much so that we might be tempted to think that we can eat anything can get away with it. Yet we know that this is not so.

It is true that there are some things that some of us can eat and others can't and vice versa: nevertheless, whether they do so slowly or swiftly, if we eat them some things will kill each and everyone of us without regard to factors such as race, religion and society. Although we ingest nothing that is fataly toxic, we will also die if we our diets do not include certain basic nutritional necessities. Culinary diversity is great and good, but it is not limitless. At some point it stops. This is a description, not a prescription. It is the way things actually are whether or not we think they ought to be.

We can say some similar about cultural diversity. It is incredibly and delightfully vast; however, speaking descriptively, it has its limits. Cultures can arrange their lives in self-destructive ways, as the study of human history amply demonstrates. Also, there are certain fundamental human needs that all cultures must provide. If they don't, these societies will die just as certainly as those whose diets do not provide their basic nutritional needs.

Over long periods of time we have learned what each culture must avoid and what it must provide, just as we have learned what we must not eat and what we must. All cultures need to develop ways for different generations to relate to each responsibly and respectfully. They must figure out how to identify and protect property. Although they differ in how they define unjustifiable homcide, all cultures must find some way to protect human life. Likewise, they must figure out how to encourage people to speak truthfully, especially about issues of great significance. And they must learn how to prevent envy from escalating into destructive class warfare. This usually means that they must not let the gap between the rich and poor get too wide.

We know what at minimum each culture must and must not do to survive and flourish. We know that these requirements have long been summarized in ethical mandates such as the Ten Commandments. We also know that it is dangerous for any individual or group to ignore these basics needs. The parallels between cultural and culinary diversity are almost exact.