In the 1970's the Seventh-day Adventist church found itself facing a theological challenge, created by the insistent and aggressive teaching of certain Bible teachers and ministers that it is not possible for Christians, by themselves or with divine assistance, to stop sinning. It followed, as they saw it, that justification, i. e., forgiveness, was the hope of salvation, since sin would continue in the Christian life until it was miraculously removed by divine power at the moment of entry into the Heavenly Kingdom. Justification was seen as an act of God for the benefit of man, in which man himself had no part.
This Calvinistic teaching was accepted by some and rejected by others. The tension increased until, at the celebrated Glacier View conference in Colorado in 1979, church leaders rejected the teaching, according to some reports; or more or less by-passed it while defending the doctrine of the sanctuary, according to other reports.
In any case, there is a significant number of Seventh-day Adventist ministers today who are concerned, and who feel ill at ease over the whole situation.
They are suffering from the tension of being asked to embrace two propositions that are mutually exclusive.
1. Christ came to the earth in the human nature of the unfallen Adam. He was therefore exempt from all those weaknesses, tendencies, hereditary handicaps, etc., with which we must contend in order to live without sinning.
2. Nevertheless He was tempted in all things as we are, and has given us an example that we should imitate by living without sin as He did.
The glaring contradiction in these two incompatible propositions may best be seen by examining a description of the handicaps that we have, according to this view, and that Christ did not have.
The description of man:
This state of sin into which all men are born is ... an inherited disposition to sin ... (The act of sin springs from this disposition) ... Actual sinning on man's part is the natural expression of this alienation ... We come into the world a depraved species ... As concerning all other men (except Christ), they are born without God ... The specific condition to which Adam brought all men, is original sin ... Ours is a fallen nature. This fallenness involves all our desires and susceptibilities.
The description of Christ:
The connection of all other men with Adam has produced in them a fallen, human nature with tendencies to sin. Christ is the one exception ... His desires, inclinations, and responses were spontaneously and instantly positive to righteousness and automatically negative toward sin. There was nothing in Him that responded to sin. ...[1]
To thus describe man, in contrast with Christ, and yet to maintain that Christ had no advantage over us is manifestly ridiculous. What one of us would not gladly trade his nature for a nature that is spontaneously and instantly positive to righteousness and automatically negative toward sin? To maintain that a person with such a nature was tempted in all things as we are is preposterous.
Something has to give. Either the view that Christ came to earth in the human nature of the unfallen Adam must be held together with its logical corollary , that He was so different from us that we cannot be expected to overcome as He overcame; or the view that Christ came to earth in the human nature of fallen man must be held together with its logical corollary, that we can, by using the same methods that He used, (faith, trust, God-dependency) overcome as He overcame.
To intermingle these two views is to set up a tension in logic that will, sooner or later, become unbearable.
Glacier View has by no means solved the problem. As long as our seminary and our colleges continue to teach that Christ came to the earth in the human nature of the unfallen Adam, we will continue to see an increasing number of our ministers and members abandon the historic faith of the Adventist church and embrace the doctrine of modern Calvinism, that it is not possible, by any means, for man to overcome.
We must in fairness recognize that historic Calvinism was somewhat different from modern Calvinism in its teaching on this point. In the famous Westminster Confession of 164 7 , a statement of faith that is widely regarded as being the most comprehensive and valuable of the early Calvinistic confessions, and from which large portions have been carried over into other creeds, there is a section on the law of God in which we read:
VII. Neither are the fore-mentioned uses of the law contrary to the grace of the gospel, but do sweetly comply with it; the Spirit of Christ subduing and enabling the will of man to do that freely and cheerfully which the will of God, revealed in the law, requireth to be done.[2]
However, modifications of this view appeared early in the post-reformation years, and were the occasion of much disagreement between Protestants. Arminius of Holland was among the first prominent opponents of the "Justification only" theology of the modified Calvinism, hence the term "Arminian theology" which is used by scholars to describe the school of thought that stood over against "Calvinistic theology. "
To adequately discuss the differing opinions of the two theological schools would require another volume at least as large as this one, but perhaps a brief outline would be helpful.
The Calvinistic school of thought looks back to Augustine for some of its major pre-suppositions, and to Calvin and Luther in Reformation times. (It must be remembered that Luther was as firmly committed to the doctrine of predestination as Calvin was, although the name of Calvin is more commonly associated with that doctrine in our time.) The Calvinistic School has been represented since Reformation times (generally speaking) by the Anglican, Reformed, Presbyterian, some Congregational, and some Baptist churches. In our time probably most of those Christians who call themselves evangelicals would prefer to be thought of as Calvinistic in their theology, rather than Arminian.
The Arminian School looks back to the Ana-Baptists for many of its pre-suppositions, and to Erasmus, Zwingli, and Arminius in Reformation times. Since then it has been represented by the Methodists, some Congregational, and some Baptist churches, and by the Seventh-day Adventist church.
The outline that follows is necessarily over-simplified, for the sake of brevity, and does not describe the nuances of difference within schools of thought, such as the various concepts of predestination among Calvinists, or of sanctification among Arminians, but is a rough and general classification.
General Features of Calvinistic Theology: