RICHARD FOSTER | Former Adventist Interested in Biblical Theology
Scripture is sufficient! When Christians talk about the sufficiency of Scripture, what do we mean? What we mean is that the Bible, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, contain everything we need to know for doctrine, for life, and for godliness. In the Bible God has spoken everything that He wishes for us humans to know about Him and His will for our lives.
In the Old Testament God spoke through the prophets. We see from the historical records in Genesis that God originally spoke to Adam and Eve face to face. But once sin entered, face-to-face communication presented a problem: sinful people could not face a holy God and live.
After the fall God would speak to His people sometimes audibly, as we see with Abraham’s interaction with God. Sometimes God would reveal Himself and speak from what’s referred to as a theophany, which was God appearing to one of His people, but in a veiled form so that they might not be consumed by His holy glory. Most notably this happened with God appearing to Moses in the burning bush.
We also see God speaking audibly from heaven to Israel at Mount Sinai. Reading in Exodus 19, though, we learn that the voice of God was accompanied by such an awesome display of His power, that it terrified the people. Beginning with Moses, God’s spoken word began to be recorded in written form. We learn from Scripture that God spoke to the Old Testament prophets through dreams and visions (Numbers 12:6). We learn from 2 Peter that the holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit:
“Know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes by one’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever made by the will of man, but men being moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.”—(2 Peter 1:20-21 LSB)
Once all of the books contained in the Old Testament were written, some 400 years later Christ came. Hebrews 1:1-2 tells us that in times past, God spoke through the prophets, but in these last days God has spoken through His Son. Jesus was the incarnate Word (John 1:1, 14), the full revelation of God to humans—God manifest in the flesh (1 Timothy 3:16). He came and taught His disciples profound things, which they wrote down for the church in what we call the New Testament.
How blessed we are to have the historical record of Jesus, as well as what He taught while on earth, as well as the things He revealed to His apostles. Furthermore, all of these things are recorded for our benefit in the 27 books of the New Testament. So Jesus, the full and final revelation of God to man, came to earth, and His acts and His teachings are forever preserved for us in the writings of His Apostles.
As Scripture testifies, the church is built upon the foundation of the prophets (Old Testament revelation) and the apostles (New Testament revelation), with Christ Himself being the cornerstone (Ephesians 2:20), the chief prophet, the chief apostle, our great high priest. In summary, the church is built upon the inscripturated word of God in the Old and New Testaments.
Dreams and visions we don’t need; latter day prophets we don’t need; miraculous signs we do not need…
Though the prophets and apostles are no longer alive on the earth, and though Jesus has ascended to the Father, we have an objective, inerrant, and infallible guide for our lives as Christians. It is God’s gift to us that we may know Him and His will. God has spoken to us and continues speaking to us through His written word, and this written word is enough for us to know everything we need to in this life. Dreams and visions we don’t need; latter day prophets we don’t need; miraculous signs we do not need; still small voices we do not need; impressions we do not need, and so forth.
If we want to know God, His gospel, and His will, we have that truth in the Bible through which we may be complete.
“All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be equipped, having been thoroughly equipped for every good work.”—(2 Timothy 3:16-17 LSB)
This is what it means that Scripture is sufficient. The Bible is enough for knowing God and trusting Him. God knows how to help each individual understand HOW to apply His word to his or her life, but ultimately people’s personal prayer lives are subjective and are not the sure and objective foundation of Scripture. The Bible is our only tangible, objective source of truth and reality.
After leaving Adventism it is essential that we understand this fact. Though Adventism spoke highly of believing the Bible, though Adventism quoted from the Bible, though Adventism even claimed the Bible as the ultimate standard, Adventism did not teach the sufficiency of Scripture.
Here are multiple ways in which Adventism deviates from the sufficiency of Scripture.
- Ellen White’s writings
- Anecdotal stories that suggest Adventism is true.
- Appeals to miracles.
- Denial of verbal inerrancy.
The writings of Ellen G. White being given the status of “prophetic authority” (Fundamental Belief 18) is perhaps the most obvious way in which Adventism strays from the sufficiency of Scripture. And as many former Adventists are all too aware, having Ellen White as an additional source of revelation besides Scripture has caused devastation to Adventism and its members. It is obvious that Scripture is not enough if God had to give additional revelation through Ellen White. Unfortunately, the “revelation” from Ellen White has created a mass of confusion in the religion she co-founded.
Contrary to being the “infallible interpreter” (Review and Herald June 3,1971) of Scripture, Ellen White has created problems for interpreting Scripture far beyond any difficulty that is seen in historic Christianity. In the first place, there’s clear evidence that she often didn’t provide a sound interpretation of a given passage. Yet Adventists who see this problem end up in a catch 22 because of it. They cannot properly exegete any given passage because the “infallible interpreter” didn’t see it the way context would direct.
In addition to this confusion, there’s the added problem of interpreting Ellen White’s statements. Many Adventists cannot agree on what her teachings were on certain issues. Thus controversy arises from trying to interpret the “infallible interpreter”!
That there are difficult passages to understand in Scripture, the interpretation of which Christians disagree on, is freely granted. But what good is an “infallible interpreter” that’s supposed to clear up the difficult things of Scripture, if that interpreter requires an interpreter? It is absurdity! And not only that, but EGW becomes a replacement for the Holy Spirit. Her writings function as a replacement for digging deeply for treasures contained in the word; she is a replacement for educating oneself in principles of interpretation, as well as for consulting the historical Christian Church on what they thought the meaning of the text was.
Worst of all, Ellen White’s teaching confuses and destroys the gospel!
Personal Experience
Secondly, we see that anecdotal stories are often used as evidence that Adventism is the truth. I’m sure I was not the only Adventist who heard stories when I was in it about someone praying to God to know the truth, and then shortly after the prayer, that person came into contact with Adventism. Doug Batchelor has even made this claim in his testimony story, saying that he was looking at multiple churches trying to figure out what was the true church. Then he prayed to know what the true church was, and he was shortly thereafter connected with Adventism. While it is fully true that God hears our prayers and answers them, these stories are not unique to Adventism. There are people who would say they were led to Adventism’s object of scorn, the Roman Catholic Church, after praying to find the truth. No doubt there are many religious organizations whose members make the same claim that many Adventists do. Praying for God’s guidance is good, but if one didn’t test by God’s word what one thought was the answer, it’s likely that the person just assumed his or her “insight” was the answer to his prayer, when in fact it could have been the exact opposite. And this is just one example of numerous anecdotes that Adventists will share, which supposedly prove Adventism must be true.
Praying for God’s guidance is good, but if one didn’t test by God’s word what one thought was the answer, it’s likely that the person just assumed his or her “insight” was the answer to his prayer…
Thirdly, we consider that Adventists have often appealed to miracles as proof that Adventism is true. One of the most famous accounts is the story of Ellen White holding a heavy family Bible in her hand with an outstretched arm for many minutes. This would be a feat that even most large, muscular, weight-lifting men could not pull off. Yet it is said that this physically small and weak woman did such while in “vision”, an obvious miracle of God! In the first place it is entirely possible that this miracle and many other Adventist miracles were quite simply made up, or perhaps it was a story that was greatly embellished by witnesses. But even if the miraculous feat took place, that still proves nothing of Adventism. Adventists themselves admit that there’s a demonic side of things, a reality which is capable of working miracles for purposes of deception. In light of these things, such miracle stories prove nothing as to whether a certain theological system is true. Only the Bible can determine that.
Fourth, we consider Adventism’s denial of the verbal inerrancy of the Scriptures. In short, verbal inerrancy means that the words of Scripture in the original autographs were the exact words that God led the human authors to write. Scripture is literally every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, just as Jesus said when tempted by Satan (Matthew 4:4). Not just thoughts or ideas were inspired by God, but the actual words expressing those thoughts and ideas. Adventism believes, though, that only the thoughts and ideas of Scripture are inspired. They teach that God gave ideas and thoughts to the human authors, who then wrote those thoughts and ideas in their own chosen words. Thus in Adventism the words of Scripture are not inspired, only the thoughts and ideas. This means that the words of Scripture were selected by the human author alone, and may or may not be the best word choice for expressing a given idea. Thus an element of human fallibility is injected into Scripture. This contributes to the “need” to have extra Biblical revelation to help interpret and explain Scripture within Adventism.
By contrast, the understanding set forth in the Scriptures themselves is that God inspired not just thoughts and ideas, but words. As Jesus said when quoting Scripture,
“It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’ ”—(Matthew 4:4 LSB)
This passage is far from being the only text that affirms Scripture’s inerrancy, but it does make it clear that the Lord Himself taught that Scripture represents words proceeding from the mouth of God, not just thoughts, and that we are to live by every one of them.
In Adventism, though, the sad reality is that Scripture had to be downgraded from verbal plenary inspiration to thought inspiration because of the need to preserve Ellen White as a prophet, equally inspired as the prophets of the Bible. Further, it was understood by Adventist leadership since at least the 1919 Bible Conference, that there was simply no way to make the case for Ellen White being verbally inspired.
Adventism’s approach to Scripture, therefore—in spite of the words they use to try to affirm it—is a very, very sad case of lowering Scripture in order to prop up and maintain Ellen White’s writings. †
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Thank you so much for this article.
It really helped me get into the mindset of an Adventist on scripture. I am not Adventist, but my husband is. Now, because of this article, I understand that Adventist believe the words of Paul for instance, where his and not the Lords. I had my husbands pastor tell me one time when questioned on this, “well you know Paul”
God is not the author of confusion but EGW is. This is very sad. The Lord gave us the instruction manual already.
Again, thank you for shedding some light on how Adventist view scripture.