Doing It Again

Four weeks into this quarter’s lesson study, one of the most faithful members of my local Sabbath School class butted in from the start, "We did the book of Daniel two years ago. Why are we doing it again?"

Anticipating the faulty memory of the rest of us and our need for proof, he had brought along his Bible Study Guide. Sure enough, a mere two years ago the topic was Daniel. Why, as my friend was asking, are we doing it again?

My friend has not been a lifelong Adventist, but he has been a pillar of support in my attempts at public evangelism, sometimes using Daniel as a starting point. He is thus no newcomer to Daniel, and he is not hostile to the book. But his question nevertheless implied that another foray into Daniel, involving the entire global community of Adventists, overexposes the book, unfairly prioritizing it over other worthy biblical books and topics.

So why are we doing it again?

Perhaps we are doing it again because Daniel is exceptionally important to the Seventh-day Adventist identity and witness, more so than other books in the Bible. Perhaps Daniel cannot be done too often, given the premise that it addresses the end-time, the end-time being our time. Perhaps, too, contrary to the claims of the present study guide, some matters in Daniel are not easy and must be repeated not only because they are important but also because many people in the church find them exceptionally difficult, 1844 being one of them.

On a more speculative note, assuming that we are not doing Daniel in response to popular demand, the topic may have been selected because some people feel strongly about it, notably the people who wield decisive influence on what is to be presented to the world community of Adventists.

It is worth noting that the present Bible Study Guide in one striking respect is different from the one we had two years ago. This time, the biographical narratives in Daniel are omitted. This gives the prophetic chapters broader exposure, but the omission carries a risk. In my work with audiences less attuned to the nuances of the text than those of us who attend Sabbath School regularly, I have repeatedly said: "If you do not understand the prophetic parts in every detail, do not despair. The values that are promoted by the prophetic parts are embodied and exemplified in the historical narratives." Thus understood, the prophetic parts reinforce the narratives, making the narratives an adequate poor man’s substitute for prophetic acumen.

And the narratives, by way of a reminder, show us Daniel and his friends in captivity, retaining their personal and spiritual identity in hostile territory even as they enroll as students at the Harvard and the Oxford of their time, playing a role at the highest level of society in the empires of Babylon and Persia, managing to be people in demand right down to the time when Daniel alone is the person who is able to decipher the writing on the wall. If this sounds like I have missed the narratives in the current Bible Study Guide, I probably have.

The Most Important Message?

What do we get in return for making the effort to understand Daniel, with particular emphasis on the theme of judgment in Daniel 7 and the cleansing of the sanctuary in Daniel 8?

Judging from the discussion in the class I have attended, we will not achieve uniformity of opinion on some matters. The other week some people in our class, one a young lady and the other a man approaching middle age, demanded to know the relevance of this topic for us, particularly the relevance of the date1844. Both of these individuals would be severely traumatized if anyone had told them that their questions are proof that their Adventist identity is in danger. Wisely, no one in the class hinted as much.

The Bible Study Guide is explicit as to what it wishes to make the take-home message of this quarter’s study.

Perhaps the greatest and most important point about the 1844 pre-Advent judgment is that it is a message of assurance.…Though we are sinners, though we have violated God’s law, though we deserve death, we have the assurance that we will be vindicated in judgment because we have Jesus standing there in our place. This is the most important message of the 1844 pre-Advent judgment (116).

This is reassuringly simple and unequivocal, increasingly so as the statement above unfolds because the "perhaps" of the first sentence, hinting equivocation, has been dropped in the last sentence. Given that "assurance" is "the most important message of the 1844 pre-Advent judgment," at least two questions come to mind. If assurance is the most important message, is the lesson perhaps delinquent in not pointing out that assurance has not been what many Adventists have taken away from this message in the past?

The second question is this: The lesson hails 1844 and the pre-Advent judgment as the only truly distinctive Adventist teaching (see page 2). However, on the strength of the statement quoted above, the conclusion must be that the most distinctive Adventist insight leads to an affirmation that is as ecumenical as anything. The date 1844 aside, most Protestants and many Catholics have assurance of salvation because they picture Jesus "standing there in our place" as the basis for assurance. As with the absence of assurance in our past dealings with 1844, might it not have been well to point out that although Adventists travel a lonely and tortuous road to the above conclusion, the conclusion itself has been reached by many others, traveling different paths?

Parting Comments

From my point of view, this quarter’s lesson has been worthwhile, revisiting a beloved book. And yet some parting comments seem in order. Eighteen forty-four is certainly a distinctive Adventist teaching, but it is dwarfed by orders of magnitude by the cosmic conflict theme as the framework of the Adventist theological narrative. This framework is acknowledged in the first lesson, but it carries little explanatory power after that.

As a second point, the lesson’s emphasis on judgment as a specific event in time seems too narrow and one dimensional to do justice to the notion of judgment within Daniel, not to speak of the broader biblical notions of judgment. In the Bible, even within the context of Daniel, judgment is also a process playing out in history, a process that has a revelatory character. What is affirmed in the final lesson, important as it is, catches me as mechanical, dogmatic, and a bit flat-footed compared to the conflict that is raging in Daniel.

Thirdly, the legal framework insistently pursued in this lesson falls short in failing to alert the reader of the limitations of all the models we use in order to explain redemption. On this point a statement by D. E. H. Whiteley has been helpful to me. Affirming that "the wrath of God" is not like the wrath of a capricious pagan deity, Whiteley says that

if the notion of the wrath of God has been transformed, the notion of propitiation must be transformed pari passu. The recoil of God against sin must not be quenched, or God will cease to be Holy. God’s hatred against sin can be "propitiated" only by the abolition of sin. Christ deals with sin, not by throwing a cloth over the eyes of God but by setting us, at the cost of his own life, in a relationship within which sin can be done away. The New Testament speaks of Christ as a sacrifice of a transcendent nature. It is a mistake to recognize the transcendence of Christ over the old sacrifices and yet to retain the rationale of the old sacrifices in explaining his work. Christ was a new and living sacrifice, and if we are to explain his work, we must invoke a new and greater theory of sacrifice (The Theology of St. Paul [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974], 147).

To the person who is not as enticed by Daniel as are others, the Bible speaks to us with a diversity of voices "that is brought out to meet the necessities of varied minds" (Ellen G. White, Selected Messages 1:22). Daniel is not the only voice of the Bible or the only voice through which the Adventist message of hope can be grasped.

Nevertheless, now that we have done it again, we did not get to do all that can be done with Daniel. Before long, we may be doing it again, exploring paths not yet traveled.

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