(concluded)
By Loren Seibold
(July 12, 2004)
The Biblical support for the Israel restorationists seems to orbit around Romans 11, with its hints of a continuing special role for the Jewish people. Yet read in context, even Romans 11 can’t easily be made to support the dispensationalists’ advocacy for national Israel. For one thing, Israel as a political entity is never mentioned. For another, Paul’s olive tree metaphor that "some branches have been broken off" allowing Gentile branches to be grafted in refutes any claim that God is willing to give the Jews a special pass into salvation simply because they are Jews. In saying that "they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith," Paul makes it clear that faith remains the only way of salvation for Jew or Gentile.
Most importantly, dispensationalists have failed to distinguish between Paul’s differing uses of the word Israel. Although Israel can be the Jews, or the nation of the Jews, Paul redefines Israel as not only "the adherents of the law," but rather all those who share more broadly in "the faith of Abraham, for he is the father of us all" (Rom. 4:16), for "not all are children of Abraham because they are his descendants" (Rom. 9:7).
Jesus declares "The kingdom of God will be taken away from [the Jews] and given to a people who will produce its fruit" (Matt. 21:44)—an unmistakable replacement of ethnic/national Israel with spiritual Israel.1 So the phrase "And so all Israel will be saved" (Rom. 11:26) indicates not a special dispensation of salvation for Israel, but simply that all those who accept Christ will be saved.
One additional reason this theology exists is because it gratifies the Calvinist sense that what God has predestined, he will not alter. Consequently, dispensationalism results in a more significant reaching back into the Old Testament, and giving contemporary legitimacy to the sayings of the Hebrew prophets, than the majority of Christians have generally felt comfortable doing. It is this reaching back into the Old Testament that has made nondispensationalist Christians uncomfortable with the dispensationalists.
Here we Seventh-day Adventists share some common ground with the dispensationalists. For it is also our reaching back into the Old Testament that has made many other Christians uncomfortable with Seventh-day Adventists, though we refer there for rather different reasons.
In the new believer’s class I teach in my church, I always begin with the statement that "95 percent of what we Seventh-day Adventists believe we share with most other Protestant Christians." (Actually, my percentage swings between 90 percent and 99 percent, depending on how ecumenical I happen to feel at the moment.) Since most of my class members have come from other churches, they usually ask me what comprises that differing percentage. "Of course, the Sabbath," I reply. "The state of the dead. Clean and unclean meats. The 2300-day prophecy." (At one time I could have said "The second coming of Christ," but aside from a few unusual eschatological features the Second Coming—even an imminent Second Coming—is hardly a unique Seventh-day Adventist doctrine any more.)
I then turn to the Bible for texts to support these beliefs: Exodus 20:8–11, Ecclesiastes 9:5, Leviticus 11, Daniel 8:14. It occurred to me one day that the strongest text I had to support each of these unique Seventh-day Adventist positions was from the Old Testament. I realized that it was necessary to explain why a Christian who had made the case that we are under the reign of the grace of Christ rooted his distinctive beliefs in the writings of pre-Christian Judaism.
No Christian tradition can ignore the Old Testament, of course. But most would acknowledge that it is the writings of the New Testament that make us Christians. Though the Hebrew Scriptures make a case for the need for a savior, orthodox Christian doctrine maintains that the Old Testament is in essential respects superseded by the New. The cross of Christ stands at junction of Old and New, regulating the theological traffic, so that only that from the Old Testament that was not made of no effect by the cross is applicable to the New Testament era.
Both Adventists and dispensationalists argue that their application of the Old Testament isn’t inconsistent with the New. Yet we find dispensationalists’ claims of a separate salvation for Israel, one that nearly ignores the Christ event, and that ends with such far-fetched notions as breeding the perfect red heifer for the restoration of the temple, quite a departure from the preponderance of New Testament evidence about the process of salvation.
Seventh-day Adventists are in one way in a safer theological position, for there is no particular conflict between keeping the Sabbath and the New Testament, or not eating pork and the New Testament—unless you regard them as the means to salvation, in which case they suffer from the same conflicts with Paul’s soteriology as does dispensationalism. (That some Seventh-day Adventists actually do act as though these observances are means to salvation isn’t a fatal flaw; we are hardly alone among Christians in practicing a salvific piety that conflicts with what we preach.)
Our difficulty seems to lie in that we have never really learned to teach our most-loved teachings as New Testament doctrines. In practical usage, we Seventh-day Adventists tend to support these doctrines from the two testaments almost interchangeably, with relatively little said about the proper way of construing the Old Testament in light of the New. We take our Old Testament proof texts at face value unless we are shown that they ought not to be, rather than showing why each Old Testament citation we use should apply to Christians.
Here the dispensationalists have it all over us, for they at least have a clear understanding of why they are continuing to hold God accountable for major Old Testament expectations. Our Old Testament hermeneutic is generally limited to the observation that at least some of the Old Testament rules—those having to do with sanctuary worship and festivals that pointed to Christ, or civil rules that make no sense outside of the theocracy—don’t seem to apply anymore. Yet other items, sometimes in the same passages, apparently do; and like the clean and unclean meats teaching, may end up foundational points of Adventist teaching without a single substantial New Testament citation to back them up.
Until we clarify our hermeneutic so we can talk as New Testament Christians about those doctrines that we have generally rooted in the Old Testament, we will remain by thoughtful Christians of other faiths under suspicion of breeding our own red heifers. It is my opinion that our most well-known distinctive doctrine, the Saturday Sabbath, can survive a New Testament soteriology (though some might still want to argue with us about whether it is essential for salvation). Other teachings may survive, but require us to write new evangelistic sermons. It is a task that needs to be done (and is being done, on a local scale, by thousands of gospel-oriented Seventh-day Adventist pastors.)
On the other hand, some might argue that it is not worth the risk. Our theological construct appears to be standing, and though we can feel it tremble, and we occasionally lose a shingle or two when the wind blows from certain directions, it is home and we are at peace with it. Though it suffers hermeneutically, it retains incredible evangelistic vigor. That is our option.
Still, I would think we should want to distance ourselves from anything that resembles the dispensationalists’ testamental confusion. Red heifers can’t save us, and we have enough challenges without being burdened with their care and feeding.
1. As for any special role for a rebuilt temple, the biblical evidence is even less substantial. Jesus pronounced the irrelevance of the temple when he said, "Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate" (Matt. 23:38)—God isn’t in it anymore.
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