Mark, since this doesn't seem like the right thread to discuss the atonement, I'm responding to the following comment in the Atonement thread:

Quote:

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As far as the views of the ancients go that is no concern of ours. As Luther taught, the scripture is to be used to interpret the church Father's not the other way around.

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Tom you were asking for specific rules. Rules are good at setting out a principle but they are only helpful as guidelines. We're asking people not to keep their letter but their spirit.

The crux here and in John's recent post is to ask whether our spirits are submitted to God and to each other. We can only answer that as individuals, but what a crucial question! It's an ongoing examination that only stops at the return of Christ. One of the main reasons I started the thread is to challenge ourselves with that very question - are we submitting our entire beings to God? Are we allowing the Holy Spirit to do His work?

Going back to the spirit of the rules, anyone can claim to be an orthodox Adventist. But the test is in how well the views of the individual harmonize with scripture. It is not whether you're an elder or a pastor or church leader that counts. If you claim to believe the Bible but post interpretations that conflict with it what good is your leadership position. Apparently the church you belong to does not find anything seriously wrong with what you teach. But you can ask the memebers of the forum and the staff if they find your many of your views in harmony with scripture. I think you know already what most if not all of the moderators and administrators think. So my request is to stay within the spirit of the rules.

I'll be going on vacation later today for a couple weeks and have no web access. When I come back I'll review Rosangla's progress with you on the atonement and if she is not finished, in consulation with her and the staff the forum give you a summary of the forum's findings on your views of the atonement and she can at the same time pursue that issue further with you if she chooses. I think you've already said quite a bit on your view of substitutionary atonement. We should be able to make a statement on that when I come back.

Tom you were asking for specific rules. Rules are good at setting out a principle but they are only helpful as guidelines. We're asking people not to keep their letter but their spirit.

Which is what? What exactly is it that you are wanting me to do? What specific rule am I not acting in harmony with the spirit of?

Going back to the spirit of the rules, anyone can claim to be an orthodox Adventist. But the test is in how well the views of the individual harmonize with scripture. It is not whether you're an elder or a pastor or church leader that counts.

The point I was making is that you are taking issue with my views as being unorthodox, but my views are less unorthodox than yours. You were questioning my position on the basis of orthodoxy, and I was defending myself on the same basis that you were challenging me.

Of course the bottom line is how things harmonize with Scripture. I believe my views harmonize with Scripture, and you don't. Similarly I don't believe your views harmonize with Scripture, but mine do. Isn't this going to be the case with any subject on which we disagree? Isn't the whole point of forums like this to stimulate discussion, so we can discuss things and learn from each other?

But you can ask the memebers of the forum and the staff if they find your many of your views in harmony with scripture.
I think you know already what most if not all of the moderators and administrators think. So my request is to stay within the spirit of the rules.

When you pick as moderators those who agree with the positions that you hold, why wouldn't they agree with you?

When you say to stay within the spirit of the rules, what rules are you talking about? What is it you wish me to do?

I've already several times that I'm willing to do whatever you ask me to do. It's your forum. You can run it however you want. I've just asked you to be specific in what you're requesting me to do, and to not have some special standard which applies only to me.

I'll be going on vacation later today for a couple weeks and have no web access. When I come back I'll review Rosangla's progress with you on the atonement and if she is not finished, in consulation with her and the staff the forum give you a summary of the forum's findings on your views of the atonement and she can at the same time pursue that issue further with you if she chooses. I think you've already said quite a bit on your view of substitutionary atonement. We should be able to make a statement on that when I come back.

My view on the atonement are the same as Waggoner's. If you're going to make a "finding," please include him in your finding. What do you think of *his* views of the atonement? I'm nobody.

Is there some problem in what Tom has posted?
If so I cannot see where.
Are we not directed in the Bible(KJV) to bring our arguments before one another?
If we do not bring things to one another and show the differences how can we grow in understanding?
How can there be correction from the word of God.
I see many who write things here that are trying to sound as if they have some great theological understanding, while they over look a plain those saith the lord.
Remember we are warned about having “intellectual philosophy” by Sister White. 1SM 204-205

I may not agree with everything that everyone post and except for “Darius” where is the problem?

Why should there be a veiled censoring of Tom?

Peace and Grace
David

David, there is a problem with Tom's teachings. This thread is not the problem though. On this thread, Tom is following what Adventism has taught for many decades. I am the one here who is trying to show that our understanding of the nature of man in Adventism needs to be revisited; that man is/has a spirit. Our teaching on the non-immortality of the soul is correct, but in our efforts to uphold that doctrine we have held out our hands to steady the ark and made extreme statements on the nature of man that are not scriptural and that deface man into a non-spirit being whereas scripture teaches that were are formed in the image of God with both a body and a spirit.

Tom's teachings that the forum objects to have been discussed in many other threads in several forums and more recently in the New Light forum in the threads on whether God directly punishes and in the thread on the Atonement. We are very sensitive here to the need to promote free discussion of ideas. But let me ask you and the forum this: If Ellen White, who bore long with Kellogg and did not vigorously oppose him until the Lord directly told her to 'meet it' (meet Kellogg’s errors head on); if she had not said “this is false and must be rejected,” giving her reasons and calling on the church to take a stand, what kind of church would we have today? I can tell you it would be one that you would not be able to recognize. She knew that taking a stand would result in a division and that many valuable souls would fall under the influence of Kellogg's doctrines and not recover. This is probably the main reason she waited for so long for directions from God while the apostasy grew: She wanted as little collateral damage as possible.

I agree that we must have tolerance. Diversity of opinion is a sign of a healthy church. But we need divine wisdom to discern when a teaching is fundamentally at odds with the Word. Zwingli, for example, was bold in the Spirit to abolish the notion that the Lord’s Supper was anything but symbolic. Catholicism had taught for three centuries that the Priests reproduced the actual body and blood of Christ in the Mass. Luther didn’t see the need to take the issue that far. We agree with Zwingli today, but we respect Luther’s scruples and can see the perhaps God chose not to enlighten Luther on that point because the German people were not ready to take the step the Swiss did and if Luther had followed Zwingle’s example his influence would have been compromised at a time when it was needed to consolidate the Reformed church in Germany. But on primary points, on the essentials of the atonement, they were completely agreed.

Contrast this with Kellogg’s case. Kellogg’s doctrine was called the Alpha apostasy by Ellen White and it was a New Age variant. It struck at the root of the Christian economy by spiritualizing everything and thus nullifying the atonement. Adventism’s confrontation with Kellogg's Pantheism seems to have cured the church of its mystical tendencies in the same way that the Jews were cured of Paganism by their Babylonian captivity. In fact, we were ‘over cured’ not only rejecting the idea of a spirit residing in physical nature, but also of a spirit being imparted to man. It was the same with Jews. They were also ‘over cured’ and it wasn’t long before the Jews fell into the ditch of Will worship on the other side of the road. Tom’s teaching is a variant form of the Moral Influence theory (you can learn more by Googling that term) which to Adventism is a more formidable heresy than Kellogg’s mysticism, and is a variant on Will worship. I hope to be able to summarize my reasons for saying so in the Atonement thread in the New Light forum in the next week. For those with no access to that thread, after the staff reviews the issue I am hoping we will post a clear statement on Tom’s views of the atonement in a more public forum.

The view I am presenting of the atonement is the same view that E. J. Waggoner presented during the time when he was being endorsed by Ellen White.

For example, Waggoner wrote the following regarding Romans 3:24

A propitiation is a sacrifice. The statement then is simply that Christ is set forth to be a sacrifice for the remission of our sins. "Once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." Heb. 9:26. Of course the idea of a propitiation or sacrifice is that there is wrath to be appeased. But take particular notice that it is we who require the sacrifice, and not God. He provides the sacrifice. The idea that God's wrath has to be propitiated in order that we may have forgiveness finds no warrant in the Bible.

The view I have been presenting was also held by other pioneers as well. For example, George Fifield, a contemporary of Ellen White's, held it. I strongly suspect A. T. Jones and W. W. Prescott held it as well, although I haven't been able to verify that as well. Given that they taught justification by faith the same as Waggoner did, and given that justification by faith and the atonement are so closely related, I would be greatly surprised if they differed from Waggoner's view of the atonement.

Here's Fifield (1897 GCB)

Every passage of Scripture that refers to the reconciliation or atonement, or to the propitiation, always represents God as the one who makes this atonement, reconciliation, or propitiation, in Christ; we are always the ones atoned for, the ones to be reconciled. For us it was done, in order that, as Peter says, he might bring us to God.

The only way to do this is by destroying sin in us. He took our sins upon him in order that he might bring us to God. It was that he might break down the high middle wall of partition between human hearts and God, between Jew and Gentile, between God and man; that he might make us one with him, and one with one another, thus making the at-one-ment, or the atonement. In Christ Jesus we who were sometimes afar off were made nigh by the blood of Christ, so that we are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth into an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit." This is as near to the Lord as we can get. This is the at-one-ment; this is why he bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, that he might do that for us by breaking down all those things which separate hearts from hearts, both human and divine. Notwithstanding this, we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. That was what we thought about it. We said, God is doing all this; God is killing him, punishing him, to satisfy his wrath, in order to let us off. That is the pagan conception of sacrifice. The Christian idea of sacrifice is this. Let us note the contrast. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." That is the Christian idea. Yes, sir. Indifference keeps, hatred keeps, selfishness keeps, or gives, if at all, but grudgingly, counting the cost, and figuring on some larger return at some future time. But love, and love only, sacrifices, gives freely, gives itself, gives without counting the cost; gives because it is love. That is sacrifice, whether it is the sacrifice of bulls and goats, or of him who is the Lamb of God. It is the sacrifice that is revealed throughout the entire Bible. But the pagan idea of sacrifice is just the opposite. It is that some god is always offended, always angry, and his wrath must be propitiated in some way.

It is a great mistake to characterize this view as a variation of the Moral Influence Theory. It isn't. If someone would like to start a thread on it, we can discuss how Waggoner's view of the atonement differs from the Moral Influence view.

I would like to close by asking two questions. One is if there is any disagreement as to my claim that I am presenting Waggoner's view of the atonement. The second question is if there is doubt that Waggoner's view of the atonement, presented during the time Ellen White was endorsing him, is not Scripturally sound, or in harmony with the basic tenants of Christianity.

Regarding's God's punishing people, this is not a subject I originated, and I declined to post on this for quite a long time, several months anyway. However, I was repeatedly asked to post on this, so I eventually responded. The current thread on this subject, which has been inactive as of late, is not one I started.

Also I should point out an error in the characterization of the issue. It's not a question of *if* God directly punishes, or destroys, but *how*. There is no question that God takes a direct interest in our lives, and in the Universe as a whole, and that God disciplines the righteous, and punishes and destroys the wicked. It should be clearly understood that I have never said otherwise.

Difficulties arise when one doesn't take care to carefully consider what a person is actually saying, and what they actually mean by what they say.

The idea that man has or is a spirit and body being sounds strange to me. If the "spirit" cannot exist independent of the body what is the point?

Could you clarify, MM? It makes sense to say man has a mind, even though the mind does not exist apart from the body. Why wouldn't the same thing make sense in reference to "spirit"?