By Zane Yi
(January 18, 2007; reprinted from the fall 2006 issue of Spectrum magazine)
"What about Adventists? Aren’t they like the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses?" an earnest redheaded woman in the back of class inquires.
Immediately, I am at rapt attention. What would my professor say? I am sitting in a systematic theology class at Fuller Theological Seminary. The class is comprised of about forty students from various Christian backgrounds—Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, and so forth. My professor, Marguerite Shuster, is a Presbyterian minister. As far as I can tell, and unknown to anyone else in the class, I am the only Adventist student in the room.
The reactions I’ve gotten from being an Adventist in a non-Adventist seminary are mixed. For most of my peers, I’m the first Adventist they’ve ever met. Some of them are curious about what I believe; mine is one of many denominations represented at the school. Others can’t hide their surprise; they wonder what I am doing at an evangelical seminary.
In the class, we have been working our way through one of the great creeds of the church, the Nicene Creed, trying to understand what it says and why it is important. The Nicene Creed is unfamiliar to most Adventists—we do not traditionally subscribe to any creed—but many Christians recite it corporately on a regular basis, sometimes weekly.
"We believe in one God the Father Almighty," the creed begins, "Maker of heaven and earth." It continues and affirms that Jesus is, "the substance of the Father, God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten not made, of the same substance with the Father.…" Forged during the time of the Arian controversy, the crafters of the creed robustly affirm Jesus’ divinity, explicitly pointing out that Jesus was "not made," that is, Jesus is an uncreated being, in essence sharing the "substance" of God.
In the third century, Arius, a well-intentioned church leader, wanting to protect belief in one God, taught and convinced many people that that the Son was a special and exalted, but ultimately, created being. Arius’s teaching survives today. Professor Shuster has just explained that this idea separates sectarian groups from orthodox Christianity. For example, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses believe in Jesus, but believe he is a created being.
This brings us back to my classmate’s question: "What about the Adventists, are they Christians?" Professor Shuster pauses and considers the question while I hold my breath.
"Adventists have always affirmed the divinity of Jesus and are Trinitarian in their theology. Therefore they should not be categorized as a sect," Professor Shuster explains. She continues, "I’m not so sure what to make some of their other beliefs and of their eschatology, but when it comes to their Christology they are right on and therefore are considered Christians."
"Whew!" I breathe a sigh of relief—but before I fully exhale a hand shoots up from the front of the class. It belongs to a former missionary who lives in Redlands, a small city near Loma Linda, California. She objects. She has encountered and ministered to many ex-Adventists. She explains that Adventists have a false prophet (Ellen White) and hold numerous other non-Christian views. She insists that Adventists are not Christians.
"Uh oh," I think. "What now?" I anticipate the worst. I’m terrified at the prospect of having to raise my hand and offer some weak and complicated apologetic; however, remaining silent in the face of misunderstanding seems craven and disingenuous.
Professor Shuster smiles warmly as she responds seriously. "If we were to look in all our denominational histories, we would discover people who in the end are all too human. Things are claimed and said that later we may find embarrassing. We need to remember this and be as charitable as possible in dealing with the histories of others."
My classmate, who later becomes a friend (although I’m not sure if she ever found out I was an Adventist), isn’t really satisfied with that answer, but the classroom discussion winds down and the lecture continues.
At the end of the class, I walk up to the front of the class to thank Professor Shuster. She’s talking to my suspicious classmate, who honestly thinks the professor has made some sort of mistake about Adventism. Professor Shuster is patient, gracious, and kind. She repeats and expands on her comments from class.
When it’s my turn, I tell Professor Shuster that I am an Adventist. I thank her for her charitable and respectful comments about my church. I feel she has described Adventism in the fairest terms. In fact, as a long-time member of the Church, I can’t imagine doing a better job myself. She smiles and states that some of her best students and colleagues have been Adventists.
"I never had a negative experience with Adventists and the denomination," she recounts. Occasionally, it turns out, she writes for Ministry magazine, a journal for pastors published by the Adventist Church. "And theologically," she adds, "when it comes to the central issues (Jesus), Adventists have got it right." Then she adds with a twinkle in her eye, "If that’s the case with any church, all the peripheral issues work out in the end."
I wasn’t too sure what Professor Shuster meant with her last comment. I learned from her as the quarter progressed that one’s beliefs about Christ are closely linked to one’s views of salvation. When one affirms the divinity of Christ, they end up affirming that God himself took the initiative in order to save us, that he came into a fallen and helpless world proclaiming the kingdom of God, teaching its principles, and manifesting its power, and that ultimately he died on a cross.
Practically speaking, Arian views usually result in the view that humans must do something to add to what Jesus has done; the chasm between a perfect Creator and fallen creatures has yet to be bridged. In other words, it results in a legalistic mindset and makes salvation something humans earn rather than something that a gracious God gives to powerless sinners.
I learned a lot about Christian theology from Professor Shuster that quarter. The class raised a series of interesting questions with which I am still wrestling. What is Adventism’s relationship to the great Christian creeds? What is the central doctrine of Adventist theology? Should we place emphasis on the distinctive doctrines we hold or the commonalities we share with other believers? How should we relate to other Christians?
Aside from these questions and sophisticated nuances of systematic theology, I think I learned more about Christianity from Professor Shuster’s demeanor and actions than from anything she said. That morning it would have been easy for her to portray a faith tradition not her own in a less sympathetic light. Instead, her response epitomized Christian love and grace. She not only represented my beliefs accurately, she also gave them the most charitable interpretation possible.
In the end, what impressed me most was not her orthodox Christian theology, but her genuine Christian practice of gentleness and love. This approach is one that I, as an Adventist, hope to model in my dealing with others.
Zane Yi recently moved to New York City after finishing a master’s degree at Fuller Seminary, in Pasadena, California.
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