Monthly Archives: October 2020

Sigve Tonstad

I don’t know him as a intimate friend, but I know him well enough to say that he is a pleasant and inspiring person, and over time I have read enough of what he has written to conclude that he is a creative and competent scholar. I first met him when I lived in the UK and worked for the European regional office of the church. I met him from time to time during visits to his home country Norway. At that time he worked as a medical doctor and also served as a pastor in Oslo. Years later I had the pleasure of staying for about a week in his home near Loma Linda University, where he continued to be active in his original field of medicine, but served most of his time as a theology professor in the School of Religion of Loma Linda University. Since then we have met occasionally. He had, in the meantime, earned his doctorate in theology from the St. Andrews University in Scotland. He is one of the thinkers in Adventism for whom I have a great admiration. I am referring to Sigve Tonstad.

Sigve has written a number of though-provoking books. His most notable publications are a book on the Sabbath (The Lost Meaning of the Seventh Day) and a commentary on the Book of Romans (The Letter to the Romans: Paul among the Ecologists). But he also writes lots of articles (notably in Spectrum) and is active on Facebook, where he frequently publishes poems.

When, in 2009, I edited (together with the late Danish Borge Schantz) a Festschrift for former General Conference president dr. Jan Paulsen, I also invited Sigve to contribute a chapter. He responded with a surprising but very insightful article entitled “The Nimble Foot”. Therein he told the story of the Rosenborg soccer club in the Norwegian city of Trondheim, with just 180.000 habitants, which even beat some of the top clubs in Europe, as e.g. A.C. Milan. Their success was to a large extent due to their unique team spirit and the determination to help other members of the team to play well. This piece should be required reading for anyone who is enrolled in a leadership course or attends a leadership seminar!

Writing this blog about Sigve Tonstad resulted from reading his latest book Revelation, which has been published in the Paideia Commentary Series (Baker Academic, 2019). It had been on my stack of “to-read” books for some time. But beginning to read a commentary from cover to cover usually takes some determination. However, once I had started I was hooked on it.

Many Adventist readers will wonder whether Tonstad has written an Adventist commentary. I believe he has. He shows how the great-controversy-theme is the thread that runs through this entire Bible book. He does not follow one of the traditional models for interpreting the Revelation, applying it either to the first century, with the Roman Empire as the great villain, or to the end of time with some monstrous Antichrist as the world’s ruler. And he shies away from the view that sees the prophecies of the Apocalypse fulfilled in the course of history, and that puts the papacy in a sinister “beastly” role. That certainly is a break with Adventist tradition. In doing so he follows a path where many of his scholarly colleagues in the church still fear to tread. Openly denying the historicist approach to the Revelation usually spells trouble for Adventist theologians who want to work within an Adventist academic environment, even though many of them have their doubts about the validity of many of the traditional explanations of the prophecies of Daniel and the Revelation.

Tonstad has had the courage to read the Revelation with new eyes. The book he has written gives evidence, page after page, that he has read widely in the relevant literature. After carefully weighing the different viewpoints he proposes his own interpretations. I do not have the expertise to judge in all cases whether Tonstad’s standpoints are fully defensible. However, I applaud any attempt by any Adventist scholar who is prepared to take a fresh look at this part of the Bible that is so important to our faith community.

We can only hope that this part of the Bible continues to speak to us as we dare to engage with it in a new and creative way. With this new commentary, through which the cosmic conflict between Good and evil runs as a red thread, Sigve Tonstad has made a great contribution to Adventist thinking about the last Bible book. Many theologians and church leaders in the conservative segment of the church will not appreciate Tonstad’s conclusions, but it will no doubt help many others to find new meaning in the Apocalypse. This was certainly my experience. I hope it will stimulate many fellow-believers to try to look with fresh eyes at old views and traditions, and gain a new understanding that is relevant for their spiritual journey in the twenty-first century.

Urk

Do you know why people in Urk don’t buy Ikea furniture? Because they are not supposed to swear during the assembly process. I read that joke in an extensive review of a recent book about Urk, written by the Belgian journalist Matthias M. R. Declercq. He gave it the title: The Discovery of Urk. I have not yet read it, but I’ve put it on my reading list (as well as the voluminous biography of the Dutch politician Hans Wiegel that also appeared this past month.) The fact that there is a joke about Urk in the book doesn’t mean it is not a serious book – on the contrary.

As is well known (at least to the Dutch readers of my blog), Urk is an enclave in the Noordoostpolder. Before this polder was reclaimed from the sea (in 1942), Urk was an island in the IJsselmeer. Until 1932, when there was no Afsluitdijk, the Urker fishermen had a direct connection to the North Sea. Urk still has the largest Dutch fishing fleet, but most ships are fishing far away and come to Urk only occasionally.

The name of Urk already appears in medieval documents. Later it was owned for some time by the city of Amsterdam. With its 21,000 inhabitants, Urk is an independent municipality in the newest Dutch province: Flevoland. The place is known for its many strict Protestant-Christian churches that belong to about 25 different denominations, and the closed character of its population. But nowadays Urk also often gets publicity because of the misbehavior of the (often alcohol- and drug-addicted) youth.

Occasionally I visit Urk. It is about three quarters of an hour’s drive from where we live. If we want to take a ride with guests, we sometimes go to the Noordoostpolder and visit Schokland, the other former island, and then Urk, fifteen kilometers further away. Schokland offers an interesting small open-air museum, with a nice restaurant that serves excellent coffee and cake. In Urk you can stroll through the narrow streets, past the historic shipyard with historic boats and, of course, the monument dedicated to the 368 fishermen who through the years have nor returned from their work at sea.

You could say that I have a reasonable idea of what Urk is, but I can’t say that I know Urk and the people of Urk. This, however, can be said of Matthias Declercq. In 2009 his Flemish newspaper sent him for a day to Urk to write a news story about a notorious murder case. That visit fascinated him so much that he decided to return to discover Urk in more depth. Ten years later he finally made it, but then he stayed there for six months. He rented accommodation in the old part of Urk and participated in daily life in every possible way. In the book announcement I read: “Declercq lives as a stranger in the heart of the town and goes fishing, praying and drinking. Step by step reality reveals itself. Declercq observes a pleasant and God-fearing people, but also discovers a shadowy and tragic world, with youthful mischief, fishery fraud and drugs. A world in which nothing is what it seems. In this personal quest Declercq has succeeded in uncovering the identity of the country’s seemingly most closed and misunderstood community.” I will have to read the book before I know if I can fully agree with this characterization.

Most of us tend to have rather quickly an opinion about a population segment, a country or a religion, but often that knowledge is very superficial. Declerq reminds us that we can only “discover” the true character of a culture, a place, a country, an ethnic or religious group, if we really immerse ourselves in it. Preferably, “discovering” means an extensive personal acquaintance, with intense conversations and participation in all kinds of activities. Only then can we form a sound judgement. Of course, such an extensive process of discovery is not always possible. We usually cannot, as Declercq did, go somewhere for six months. That does mean, however, that, as long as our knowledge is superficial, we have to be careful when making a final judgment.

I am often annoyed when I meet people who have made very little effort to find out what my church believes and how my church thinks about all kinds of theological and social topics, and yet feel they can have a solid opinion. I believe, they only have the right to voice their opinion if they have studied it more than superficially. But—in all fairness– people in my own church should also be careful not to immediately have an opinion about other believers if they have never entered into dialogue with them and gone on a trajectory of discovery.

The Apostolic Society

Until a week ago I knew absolutely nothing about the Apostolic Society. I had no idea where this religious community originated, what “apostolic” people believe, and how their philosophy impacts on their daily life. But that changed after I read Renske Doorenspleet’s recent book entitled Apostelkind (literally: Apostle’s Child). The subtitle of her book expresses exactly what it is about: In the grip of a closed community. The author, a political scientist who now lives in England, bade farewell to the faith community in which she had been raised and to which she had vowed her loyalty. However, gradually she began to feel so claustrophobic, that she began to distance herself more and more from the thinking of this community, until she finally decided to leave. But only many years later was she able to look back and put her experiences on paper.

Often books written by former members of religious communities are full of bitterness and resentment about what they
experienced in their church or group. They tend to urge others to take the same step and free themselves from the spiritual straitjacket that kept them imprisoned for such a long time. Some started a foundation to assist others who also want to leave. This is clearly not the intent of Renske Doorenspleet. But throughout the book one senses her regret and amazement: How in the world could I stay in this oppressive club for so long?

In the Netherlands the Apostolic Society has about 30,000 members. Strangely enough, for a very long time they remained almost completely under the radar. They didn’t get publicity because of sexual or financial scandals. Occasionally the name “apostolic” surfaced, for example in connection with Volkert van der Graaf, the murderer of the Dutch populist politician Pim Fortuin. Volkert was a member of the Apostolic Society.

The picture sketched in the book is oppressive. The Dutch branch of the organization is led by an apostle, to whom (at least until recently) a kind of semi-divine status was attributed. He is assisted by an elaborate network of men and (nowadays also) women who diligently perform a range of precisely prescribed tasks. The word of the apostle is law and his weekly letters have more authority than the Bible. Although Christian in origin, little is left in the Society of the Christian faith. The hope for an afterlife has been completely abandoned. The members are indoctrinated and have to live in such a way that they become a kind of leaven in the world, through which it can become better and better. How that can happen when the members do not tell others about their ideals has remained a mystery to me, even after reading this book.

What probably struck me most was that the members of this Society live in two completely separate worlds – the world inside the Society and the world outside. Those two worlds hardly, if at all, meet. Renske Doorenspleet describes in detail how all-absorbing her world was during her time in the Society, but how she tried to keep it hidden from her friends and in her everyday life. And this was true for all fellow-members of the Society. This raises the question of the value such faith commitment can possibly have. If you have found an ideal in which you invest a lot of emotion, time and energy (and also a lot of money!), it would seem obvious that you want to share this ideal with others. And you may expect to be encouraged to convince others to follow that same ideal! Moreover, how that ideal is developed and expressed must certainly be influenced by what is going on in the wider world and by what the members of the community experience in their daily life! This applies not only to members of the Apostolic Society but to every faith community. Life inside a faith community and life outside that community must be communicating vessels. The content of what the group believes and how it is practiced must have meaning for everyday life. And, conversely, experiences in life in the wider world must be brought inside the group, so that it continues to deal with things that really matter to its members in their daily lives.

Thank you, Renske Doorenspleet, for your book which so clearly illustrates this vital point.

(Renske Doorenspleet, Het Apostelkind: In de greep van een gesloten genootschap. Publisher: Uitgeverij Balans, 2020. Paperback, € 22,90.)

Does EGW have the final say?

It has become a tradition during a General Conference session of the Adventist Church to ask the delegates to vote on a statement regarding the church’s confidence in Ellen G. White. It is the intention that this will also happen next May when the world church holds its (postponed) world congress in Indianapolis (which may actually be, at least in part, virtual). One may ask why it is necessary to go through this quinquennial ritual of formally emphasizing the church’s continued trust in the ministry of Ellen White. Is this a sign that church leaders worry that confidence in the ministry of Ellen White is slowly eroding, and that there are concerns about the world-wide distribution of, and interest, in her extensive oeuvre?

There are a few lines in this new “Statement of Confidence in the Writings of Ellen G. White” that greatly trouble me and that actually seem to contain some serious internal contradictions: We believe that the writings of Ellen G White were inspired by the Holy Spirit and are Christ-centered and Bible-based. Rather than replacing the Bible, they uplift the normative character of Scripture and correct inaccurate interpretations imposed upon it, derived from tradition, culture, mere human wisdom, and personal experience. They also help us to overcome the human tendency to accept from the Bible what we like and distort or disregard what we do not like.

To say that the writing of Ellen G. White were “inspired” has, through the years, caused a lot of discussion, since there remain many questions as to how her “inspiration” should be defined. And recent scholarship has shown that the genesis of much of what Mrs. White wrote is not as straightforward as has long been assumed by most readers. However, let’s skip this issue for the moment. It is good to see the affirmation that the writings of Mrs. White do not replace the Bible and uplift the “normative” character of the Holy Scriptures. However, what follows seems to contradict this “normative” status of the Bible. For, we are told, that the writings of Ellen White “correct inaccurate interpretations.” I can only read this in one way: the “norm” for interpreting the Bible is found in what Ellen White has written. This, in fact, raises the authority of Ellen White to a level that supersedes even that of the biblical prophets. Is this really what I, as a Seventh-day Adventist, am supposed to believe?

Not only is this view highly questionable, but is raises some other serious questions. One of these is how we determine what Ellen actually thought and said about numerous issues. She herself repeatedly said people should not expect her to have a ready-made answer to all dogmatic topics the other leaders were wrestling with. On several issues she changed her mind as time went by. Her thinking developed and matured as she grew older. Moreover, she did not live in a timeless vacuum, but was part of 19th century American culture and carried a lot of, in particular methodist, baggage with her. So, who will determine what Ellen White’s “correct interpretations” are, and how they should be applied in today’s context? Is this the task of the church’s theologians or the church’s administrators? I rather fear that the church’s administrators, who are mostly no theological experts, increasingly feel they are the protectors of sound doctrine, and that they may well go against the majority views of the church’s prominent theologians.

We can only hope that this statement will not be accepted during the upcoming world congress of the church. It would probably be too much to hope that the document will be outright rejected. But perhaps it can, at least be referred to a committee for further study! (After all, that is also a revered Adventist tradition.)