In harmony with my assignment from the Loma Linda Sabbath Seminars, I will make this case by reflecting primarily on the second chapter of Death Before the Fall: Biblical Literalism and the Problem of Animal Suffering, which was written by Ronald E. Osborn, a young Seventh-day Adventist scholar, and published by IVP Academic in 2014.
Some General Observations
Let us begin by praising this book as superlatively excellent, so much so that, if Osborn never writes another one, he will have done enough. For one thing, his criticisms of Biblical literalism are downright devastating because he is able to nudge it into conceptual corners from which it can escape only by contradicting itself.
Another good thing is that Osborn’s close readings of the creation stories in Genesis and Job, and some other Biblical passages, help us to un-see many things that we shouldn’t and see many other things that we should. His training as a political scientist and philosopher probably helps. This is because the Bible is more of a political book than a scientific one, and it is about as political as it is a theological.
Throughout his entire book, Osborn is courteously companionable. He tells us that many of his closest friends and relatives are Biblical literalists and that he once was. He still cares for them, just as he does his former selves, and it shows.
“The Fall”
In the Bible, and throughout Christian history, the idea of “The Fall” has been developed in two different but equally important ways: (1) “Falling from” a goodness that once was and (2) “Falling short” of a goodness that will be.
In either of these versions, even more so in both, and whether one takes the stories about it literally or figuratively, the idea of “the Fall” is indispensable. This is because it says that what now is need not always be.
Far from being a gloomy or pessimistic doctrine, the idea of “the Fall” says that current ways of life can be fundamentally different and better. Without this conviction, personal growth and social change do not occur. This is why all social movements, good or bad, religious or secular, have their own versions of “the Fall” and what they are doing about it.
Because it says so little about it, at first it might seem that this book is about death “without” “The Fall” rather than death “before” it. After all, Osborn begins with an account of how much as a child in Africa he once enjoyed watching three young female lions rip apart and devour a buffalo, their “chests and muzzles soaked in blood,” in a “scene of beautiful carnage” complete with air “filled with the stench of death.” It is hard to imagine a more enthusiastic praise of predation!
Yet, we subsequently read Osborn’s apparently disapproving account of crocodiles that kill much more than they can eat. We also note his affirmations of “predation at least of a kind” rather than all the forms of predation that we see today. Toward the end of the book, he discretely discloses that he has some affinity with the second version of “the Fall.” I would like to have read more about this.
Adventism and the Two Versions of Modernism
Although many others develop their own accounts of it as well, Osborn applies to SDAism what we can call the “Nancey Murphy Thesis.” In an overly simplified manner, the result is this:
Major Premise: From its beginning, the Modern Era has been a misplaced quest for absolute certainty.
Minor Premise: From its earliest days, which started well after the Modern Era was up and about, Seventh-day Adventism has also been misguided quest for absolute certainty.
Conclusion: Therefore, from the outset, Seventh-day Adventism has been a modern form of Christianity which manifests many of the defects of the Modern Era, especially its search for absolute certainty.
This conclusion is unsettling only if one already thinks that the Modern Era, or the so-called Enlightenment Project, as it is often called today, has done more harm than good. To the contrary, my own view is that on balance it has been a positive thing because it has greatly enhanced the lives of ordinary people like me.
Although it has other parents as well, modern science is a child of the Enlightenment. So are representative democracies and the separation of church and state. Equal regard for men and women, and for racial, ethnic and sexual minorities, counts too, even though increasingly implementing it continues to be a long and difficult struggle. The worst forms of slavery have been abolished in the Modern Era.
That the Enlightenment's unbridled study of sacred texts has been a good thing is evidenced by the vicious conduct of some religious leaders in cultures with holy books that have never been subjected to this kind of scrutiny. The idea that there should be a large middle class, instead of a huge and unchangeable difference between the very rich and the very poor, is also an Enlightenment protégé. These are only some of the reasons why I think that the world has become a better place for many people in the Modern Era.
Another consideration is that it seems to me that describing the Modern Era as a misplaced quest for absolute certainty is accurate but only partly so. We have inherited at least two versions of the Enlightenment Project and their differences are important.
On the one hand, beginning with Rene Descartes, and with friends and foes right down to the present time, the Modern Era in Continental Europe has often sought an absolute certainty which is built one conceptual brick at a time upon some unquestionable foundation.
On the other hand, beginning in England, and eventually throughout the entire English speaking world, another version of the Enlightenment Project has flourished which is much more indebted to Francis Bacon.
It explicitly rejects absolute certainty in favor of more or less probability. It champions the “scientific method” which adds experimentation and repeatable public verification to Aristotle’s longstanding emphasis upon thoroughgoing observation. From the beginning it has seen no need for absolutely unquestionable intellectual foundations. Without actually saying so until very recently, it has always been more comfortable with thinking of truth as a fluttering but strongly woven web rather than a deeply grounded edifice.
If SDAism is an expression of the Modern Era,I think that it is more like Bacon’s version of it than Descartes.’ Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in its rejection of absolute certainty in favor of “the weight of evidence,” an expression that Osborn, a good SDA, often uses. The following lines attributed to Ellen White in the book Steps to Christ are representative:
God never asks us to believe, without giving sufficient evidence upon which to base our faith. His character, the truthfulness of His word, are all established by testimony that appeals to our reason; and this testimony is abundant. Yet God has never removed the possibility of doubt. Our faith must rest upon evidence, not demonstration. Those who wish to doubt will have opportunity; while those who really desire to know the truth will find plenty of evidence upon which to rest their faith.
This paragraph’s references to “basing” and “resting” our faith on evidence, sound more like Descartes; however, its recognition of the continuing possibility of doubt, and the importance of expecting "evidence" rather than "demonstration," are more like Bacon.
Again, unlike Descartes, most SDAs do not demand absolute certainty; for them, the weight of evidence is enough. They might be modern; however, if so, their form of modernism escapes many of the justifiable criticisms of its Cartesian version.
Adventism as More Pre-Modern than Modern
Having said all this, I wager that the overwhelming majority of SDAs around the world are actually pre-modern. They try to make their most important discussions by wisely interpreting and applying the words of the authorities they most respect. The point is not that SDAs don't think; rather, it is that appealing to authorities is the way most of them [us!] do.
Whenever they occur, pre-modern cultuers ultimately answer all questions, and resolve all disputes, by appealing to authority. In such cultures, there can be major disputes about the identity of the authority, and about how the authority’s mandates are to be properly interpreted and applied; however, the principle of appealing to authority is not questioned. This is not because this question is forbidden but because it rarely occurs.
Although it was an early omen of the Modern Era, the battles between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism, in 16th century Europe were pre-modern. In one arena, the contest was about whether Scripture alone, or Scripture as one part of the living tradition of the Church, is the final court of appeal. In another context, the battle was about whether the Pope or the King has the final right to legitimate marriages, especially royal ones, or not to do so. People high and low took different sides; however, hardly anyone thought that that the principle of appealing to authority was itself suspect.
The endless debates about the authority of the Bible, on the one hand, and the authority of the writings of Ellen White, on the other, are pre-modern. Another manifestation of SDAism’s largely pre-modern mindset is the disbelief, disdain and disgust with which many SDAs around the world reacted when they learned how a delegate at a recent Pacific Union Conference Constituency meeting raised a “point of order” that objected to how the long the President of the General Conference was speaking. How could those in California possibly do such an unthinkable thing? Didn’t they know who he is and who they are? How could they question Elder Wilson's authority, and do so in public?
Adventism’s Shift from Pre-modernism to Anti-Modernism
In recent years, a number of SDAs have moved from Pre-Modernism to Anti-Modernism and in this they have become even more staunch Biblical literalists. This has been happening in a number of other Christian denominations as well.
As recent papers by Olive Hemmings and Gerry Chudleigh demonstrate, this shift has sometimes dramatically occurred in the life of a single person. Hemmings traces, for example, how Gerhard Hasel, once the Dean of the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary at Andrews University, wrote an early scholarly paper in favor of the ordination of women only to reverse himself vehemently a few years later.
Similarly, as Chudleigh shows, despite the many objections to earlier forms of it in the writings of Ellen White and other Adventist leaders, people like Samuele Bacchiocchi have intentionally incorporated “headship theology” into SDA life and thought.
David Reed, a young SDA lawyer who is one of its current proponents, is frank about this. He tells us that that he was surprised to learn that SDAs had no “headship theology,” and that many SDAs were skeptical about it; therefore, one of his goals is to embed it in the denomination’s life and thought.
No one’s change in this regard has been more dramatic than Kevin Paulson’s. Despite his theological conservatism, or because of it he would say, he has long been a liberal [Ted Kennedy] Democrat who has favored expanded opportunities for all, including women. Consistent with this, he once favored their ordination but has reversed himself too.
These and many others SDAs who have shifted from pre-modernism to anti-modernism are candid about why they have changed and the rest of us would do well to take them seriously. Among other things, and with ample justification, they count the current President of the General Conference, Elder Ted N. C. Wilson, as one of their own.
When it comes right down to it, their primary concern is not relatively trivial questions about origins. For example, they shifted from thinking that the entire universe was created by God during the creation week of Genesis 1 to believing that only life on Earth was created then, and they made this big change with hardly missing a step.
What keeps them up at night and working tirelessly during the day, is that very influential forms of evolutionary thought are utterly destructive in their cultural consequences. They have in mind worldviews that assert the following:
- Everything that is came into being with no purpose whatsoever.
- All that we know about our lives, and everything that we can reasonably imagine about them, will someday disappear, whether by fire or ice, and then be as though they never were.
- In the meantime, there are no objective differences between right and wrong, beauty and ugliness or even, ultimately, truth and error because reality is socially constructed.
- We have no libertarian or moral freedom. The fact that we often feel that we do is an illusion which displays our ignorance of all the factors stretching way back to the Big Bang that cause us inevitably to do everything we do.
- We are obligated to others only in relationships that we have freely formed. In the end, no one is obligated to those who are in relationships that he or she did not voluntarily form.
Some reports indicate that perhaps 40% of all Americans say that they are not evolutionists but creationists. It is tempting to think that this is because they are not well educated. This is probably so in many cases; however, in many others people who can accurately explain the most influential forms of evolutionary thought still say that “it doesn’t make sense.”
By this I think that they mean that these worldviews do not account for both the joys and sorrows of their lives. Also, I think that deep down they intuitively know that no civilization in the entire history of humanity has ever attempted to flourish over long periods of time on convictions like these five.
This is what’s really eating Biblical literalists and about this they are right.