4. Debate about Revelation and Inspiration within Adventism
5. Towards a Biblical Interpretation of Revelation-Inspiration
6. Biblical Model of Revelation-Inspiration
Fernando Canale
How do these ideas affect Adventists today? Perhaps Edward Heppenstall properly described the general way in which most Adventist writers approach the study of R-I by saying that “this church has no clearly defined and developed doctrine of revelation and inspiration. We have aligned ourselves with the evangelical or traditional position.”5
In this section our aim continues to be very modest, attempting only to describe from an overall perspective the main models of R-I that Adventist theologians have adopted.
Early in the history of our church Adventists used verbal inspiration as an apologetic argument against Deism.6 This trend intensified after the death of Ellen G. White when Adventists faced modernism.
During the first half of the twentieth century, Carlyle B. Haynes, for example, addressed the issue in two chapters of his God’s Book.7 His implicit adoption of the verbal theory of inspiration appears when he affirms that “revelation is wholly supernatural, and altogether controlled by God.”8 “Whether dealing either with revelation or with facts within his knowledge,” explains Haynes, “the Bible writer required inspiration to produce a record preserved from all error and mistake.”9 Absolute inerrancy follows total control of the human agent by the Holy Spirit; God is totally in control of the process of writing, and the human agent is a very passive instrument. This concept may still be the default understanding of R-I held by most Adventists who have not yet explicitly considered the issue.10
Unknowingly, then, the verbal inspiration theory, embraced by conservative Adventist theologians, draws from the Augustinian-Calvinistic understanding of philosophical hermeneutical presuppositions derived from a particular Greek view of reality. While the verbal theory affirms a high view of Scripture, de facto it denies its revelatory supremacy (the sola scriptura principle) in the task of practicing Christian theology, since the theory itself is not built on biblical foundations.
Ellen G. White strongly influenced Adventist thought on R-I. By her example and teachings, she pointed away from both verbal inspiration and encounter revelation. This did not discourage some Adventists, however, past and present, from adopting such views. Attempting to understand R-I by taking clues from Ellen G. White’s teachings and prophetic experience, many Adventists have adopted the idea called “thought inspiration,” convinced that their representation of this view properly reflects her views on inspiration. Thus, by “thought inspiration” we mean, specifically, the theological reflection of some Adventist scholars on R-I, supposedly based on the views of Ellen G. White on inspiration. These comments, therefore, not only affirm that the thoughts of the prophets were inspired but that in a very particular way, in the words of Ellen G. White, the “men” themselves were inspired.
One of the earliest expressions of thought inspiration among Adventists took place in 1883. It affirmed “We [Adventists] believe the light given by God to his servants is by the enlightenment of the mind, thus imparting the thought, and not (except in rare cases) the very words in which the ideas should be expressed.”11 On the basis that inspiration acts on biblical writers’ thoughts, not on their words, this marks a clear departure from verbal inspiration. This initial statement was a sign along the way, not a theory.
Eighty-seven years later, Edward Heppenstall articulated this insight within a broad theoretical profile. Heppenstall’s work came as both an alternative to encounter revelation and a departure from verbal inspiration. Correctly rejecting the non-cognitive basis of encounter revelation, Heppenstall proposed that divine revelation took place at the level of the biblical writer’s ideas, concepts, and teachings in the mind of the writer.12 Unfortunately he did not specify the means through which such conceptual revelation was formed. Also inspiration, says Heppenstall, took place in the mind of the writer. He suggested that in inspiration the Holy Spirit took control of the mind of the human writer in order to guarantee “the accuracy of that which is revealed.”13 “Inspiration is co-extensive with the scope of what is revealed and assures us that the truths revealed correspond to what God had in mind.”14 In both revelation and inspiration God operates on thought, not on words. Through revelation ideas are generated in the mind of the prophet and through inspiration those ideas are faithfully communicated. However, uncertainty is introduced on the basis that “one of the unknown factors in inspiration is the degree of the Holy Spirit’s control over the minds of the Bible writers.”15 Heppenstall’s position implied that divine inspiration does not reach to the words of Scripture. Consequently, he advances to what could be called “thought inerrancy.” Only biblical thoughts, not words, are inerrant.
Very conveniently, for the sake of apologetics against biblical and scientific criticisms of scriptural contents, the believer can argue that errors and inconsistencies are due to imperfect language, not to imperfect thought or truth. In brief, according to thought inspiration, divine R-I operates in the truth behind the words but falls short of affecting the words. Hence, in Scripture we have infallible truth presented in fallible language. Scripture, therefore, contains errors in matters of detail which do not affect the revealed thought.
Working from Ellen G. White’s classical statement on thought inspiration, some scholars have concluded that thought inspiration works on the thinking process of biblical writers but stops short of reaching their words. They also assume a dichotomy between thought and words. Thoughts are independent from words. In Scripture, then, we have perfect truths or thoughts conveyed in imperfect fallible words. On this basis they suggest that Scripture presents a limited verbal errancy in matters of detail at the level of words. Scripture’s salvific message, however, remains inerrant.
In 1991, coming precisely from the perspective of biblical studies, Alden Thompson elevated the issue of biblical inspiration to the forefront of Adventist discussion.16 A year later, a group of Adventist theologians published a critical response to his proposal.17
Thompson distinguishes between revelation and inspiration. Revelation is the supernatural communication of thoughts and truth to prophets, “some kind of special input from God, a message from Him to His creatures on earth.”18 Divine thought is communicated by means of supernatural interventions, such as visions, dreams, a voice from heaven, miracles, words written on stone, and Jesus Christ. Inspiration, however, becomes a very fuzzy and subjective “fire in their bones”19 that moves prophets and apostles to write and to speak from the presence of the Holy Spirit. Far from claiming that inspiration transforms the words of the prophets into the words of God, Thompson thinks inspiration means, “God stays close enough to the writers so that the point comes through clear enough.”20 Note that through inspiration God works on neither the prophet’s thoughts nor his words. Inspiration is a divine presence that the prophet senses in the bones, not in the mind.
The question is, who is originator of the point that comes through “clear enough” in the words of Scripture? At this point another feature of Thompson’s view on R-I comes into view. While the entire Scripture is inspired (the divine presence felt in the bones of the writer) only some portions are revealed (that is coming from divine thought, propositions and miraculous actions). Thompson argues this point by asserting, incorrectly, that “the Bible does not say that all Scripture was given by revelation.”21 Reacting against this notion, Raoul Dederen concludes that “to hold that all is inspired but only part—i.e., a small part—is revealed and on that basis address and attempt to solve the apparently contradictory statements in Scripture remains unsatisfactory.”22
In fact, because Scripture does not assume the technical distinction between revelation and inspiration that we use to probe into the understanding of the origins of Scripture, Paul claims that the entire contents of Scripture originated in God. Thus, according to Scripture, the entire Bible is both revealed and inspired.
From where then, according to Thompson, do other portions of Scripture come? He correctly argues that many portions of Scripture originate from research and experience. Such contents, however being of human origin, can hold only authority when based on inspiration. Yet, if biblical writers experienced inspiration neither cognitively nor linguistically but subjectively as a fire in their bones, we are left with the unavoidable conclusion that large portions of Scripture present fallible human ideas.
Thompson’s use of thought inspiration for exegetical purposes shows how the historical-critical method may be used in Adventist theology, namely, by circumscribing the biblical materials that fall outside the reach of thought inspiration.
Advantages and Difficulties of Thought Inspiration. Thought inspiration, as reflected by Adventist theologians noted above, involves positive and negative points. On the positive side, for instance, it provides a middle way between modernistic non-cognitive encounter revelation and absolutely inerrant classical verbal inspiration. Thought inspiration also has the positive effect of directing the interpreter’s attention to the weightier matters discussed in Scripture and away from minutiae. Finally, this view of inspiration has the obvious advantage of accounting for biblical phenomena that do not fit within the verbal inspiration theory.
However, those reflections on thought inspiration have certain disadvantages. The thought-words dichotomy leads to the claim that inspiration does not reach the words of Scripture. Unfortunately, this claim and the thought-words dichotomy are not supported by Scripture, Ellen G. White, or philosophical analysis. Although thought inspiration accounts better for the phenomena of Scripture and Ellen G. White’s experience in writing her books than does verbal inspiration, a radical understanding of it fails to account for the clear biblical claim that inspiration reaches the words (2 Tim 3:16).
Moreover, a detailed study of Ellen G. White’s thought on inspiration seems to suggest that, according to her, divine inspiration does reach the words and assures the “total trustworthiness of the biblical record.”23 The classical Ellen G. White quotation that Adventist proponents of thought inspiration use to persuade others of their view reads: “It is not the words of the Bible that are inspired, but the men that were inspired. Inspiration acts not on the man’s words or his expressions but on the man himself, who, under the influence of the Holy Ghost, is imbued with thoughts. Nevertheless, the words receive the impress of the individual mind. The divine mind is diffused. The divine mind and will is combined with the human mind and will; thus the utterances of the man are the word of God” (1SM 21). Unfortunately, they leave out the last sentence of the paragraph in which Ellen G. White clearly says that inspiration reaches the words of the prophets. Ellen G. White clearly says that divine inspiration—which includes our technical revelation and inspiration—works not on the words (as the verbal theory affirms) but in the formation of the writer’s thought. Nevertheless inspiration reaches the words of the prophets, which “are the words of God.” In numerous passages, Ellen G. White refers to Scripture as “the inspired word,” or “words” of God (Ev 269; 1SM 17; SC 108), and “words of inspiration” (LS 198; 2T 605). It seems clear that Ellen G. White would not support “thought” inspiration as many understand it at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Consequently, it appears misleading to use one aspect of her complex view on inspiration to give authority to a theory she would not approve.
Although as Adventists we do not believe that the words of Scripture were inspired, i.e., they were neither dictated nor do they represent the divine language per se, the process of R-I nevertheless reaches the words of the prophets. In other words, the Holy Spirit guided the prophets in the writing process, ensuring that the prophets’ own words expressed the message they received in a trustworthy and reliable form. Sometimes Ellen G. White did not know how best to express what she was shown; “as my pen hesitates a moment,” she wrote “the appropriate words” came to her mind (1MCP 318; 2MR 156-157).
Philosophical reflection suggests that “language and thinking about things are so bound together that it is an abstraction to conceive of the system of truths as a pregiven system of possibilities of being [thoughts] for which the signifying subject [biblical writer] selects corresponding signs [words].”24 Thought and words belong together. A thought with no word or words to be communicated perishes in the mind of the thinker.
Another problem is that, for all practical purposes, thought inspiration as defined above reduces inspiration to revelation. We should explain. Technically, revelation deals with the formation of ideas in the mind of biblical writers and inspiration as part of the process of communicating revelation in written or in oral formats. When thought inspiration claims that divine assistance to the prophet does not reach the words it is thereby limiting divine intervention to revelation. The practical problem with this view is that we have no access to prophetic thought, which died with the prophets leaving only their fallible, human words.
Finally, a thought-word dichotomy creates a disjunction between history and salvation that finds its ground not in biblical but Platonic thinking. Since theological content is not tied strictly to the words of Scripture, exegetes and theologians end up using their imagination and presenting it as the theological content of the text. Not surprisingly, some Seventh-day Adventist theologians and scientists, trying to accommodate the biblical account of creation to evolutionary scientific teachings, use thought inspiration in the form discussed above to justify their approach.
But if the separation between thought and words makes room for small errors, why should it not also make room for substantial errors in theological teachings?
NT scholar Herold Weiss’ well-argued article, published in 1975, represents another way of making room for the use of the historical-critical method in Adventist theology. Weiss believes revelation takes place as a non-cognitive divine human encounter. “I do not understand revelation,” he explains,
“to be essentially the communication of divine information given by the Spirit to the writers of the Bible; nor do I consider faith to be the acceptance of this information. Revelation, rather, is first of all, a divine disclosure that creates a community in which life expresses this revelation in symbols of action, imagination and thought under the guidance of prophets.”25
What, then, is the source of the concepts and words of Scripture? Not God, but the prophets and apostles. This view produces a dichotomy between faith and belief. While belief belongs to the realm of history and is verifiable, faith belongs to the realm of the divine transcendence and is not verifiable. Scripture as a written work represents the thoughts and words of the prophets, not of God. The goal of this exercise is not to find truth but to delineate the nonhistorical, non-cognitive mystical experience with God in order to inspire our own life experiences.
Summing up these points, we can say that presently Adventist scholars work by assuming three different interpretations of R-I. The differences reveal different theological schools and paradigms. They decidedly influence the entire task of exegetical and theological research even to the point of dividing Adventists into distinctive schools of thought across the world.