A Curious Conference
by McLarty, John
by John McLarty, August 18, 2014
Friday, August 15, 2014, was opening day for the “International Conference on the Bible and Science: Affirming Creation.” The following description is posted on its web site:
The biblical creation is central to the message of salvation found in the Bible and the beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The purpose of the International Conference on the Bible and Science: Affirming Creation is to bring together Adventist educators to explore the creation through both Bible study and study of the creation itself. Ultimately, it is hoped that participants will leave better equipped and inspired to teach about the creation in an informed, responsible and faith-affirming way. Held primarily in St. George, Utah, this conference features Christian speakers and invitees from the global community of faith in the Creator God as revealed in the Bible.
In his opening address, Elder Ted Wilson, president of the General Conference, called on the 350 participants “to be champions of creation based on the Biblical account and reinforced so explicitly by the Spirit of Prophecy.”
This introduces one of several curiosities of this conference. Elder Wilson is quite adamant about the need for Adventist educators to adhere to and wholeheartedly advocate the Biblical account of creation. However, the details of the Adventist interpretation of Genesis 1-9 are in flux.
First curiosity: Based on the presenters at this faith and science conference, Adventists no longer believe God created the heavens and the earth 6000 years ago. Richard Davidson and Randy Younker (and by implication Elder Wilson) believe God created the heavens 14.5 billion years ago. They believe God created the material of earth 4.5 billion years ago. They disagree with science only in their dating of the phanerozoic rocks. (To be more precise, in papers presented at earlier faith and science conferences, Davidson and Younker argued that Genesis One gives us no information about the date of the creation of extra-terrestrial or pre-biological material, which leaves the conventional dates unchallenged.)
Adventists no longer believe the Flood created all the fossils. Current orthodoxy is that the Flood created only the Paleozoic and Mesozoic fossils.
Second curiosity: Elder Wilson famously urged Adventists to refrain from reading non-Adventist authors in areas that touch on theology and spiritual life. This conference features presentations by non-Adventists, including John Baumgartner, Kurt Wise, Marcus Ross, and John Whitmore. Except for these non-Adventists, all the other presenters are the old stalwarts of Adventist creationism. The only new voices are these non-Adventists.
Third curiosity: Ed Zinke, one of the organizers of the conference, scheduled himself to speak seven of the nine days of the conference. His prominence in the conference program is problematic because he has not held a pastoral, faculty or elected position in the church in years. I have to wonder how the conference participants who are actually involved in the life of the church will respond to being instructed by someone who lives and thinks completely outside the accountability structures of the church. Especially in light of Elder Wilson's strident advocacy of accountability.
Fourth curiosity: Secrecy. This from the conference web site:
Resources provided for invitees to the International Conference on the Bible and Science: Affirming Creation (ICBS) are solely for the use of those who received invitations to attend this conference from the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and actually do attend the conference. By accessing these resources you are stating that you are an invitee to the ICBS with permission to access and use them.
All resources linked to from [sic] the “ICBS – Materials for Invitees” (https://fscsda.org/icbs/icbs-program/) website remain the property of the conference presenter who provided them. They are made available solely for the private use of invited attendees of the Faith and Science Council sponsored “International Conference on the Bible and Science: Affirming Creation” held in Las Vegas, Nevada, and St. George, Utah, August 14-25, 2014. Those who are not invited attendees may not access these materials and may not be provided with either links to these materials or the passwords necessary to access them. These materials may not be redistributed in any form or via any media without the express written permission of the person who provided them to the conference organizers. By clicking on any of the links in the “ICBS – Materials for Invitees” (https://fscsda.org/icbs/icbs-program/) website, you are acknowledging reading and agreeing to these terms.
This secrecy was apparent even before the conference began. There was no general announcement that the church was going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to gather educators for this conference. In May I was in the field with an Adventist geologist and met a couple of the organizers at an outcrop in southern Utah. We spent a couple of hours together. They carefully avoided the slightest mention that they were in the area scouting sites for the Faith and Science Conference.
I will refrain from speculating about the reasons for the secrecy, but it is an “in your face” feature of the conference.
A final non-curiosity: If you wish to know the content of the presentations at the conference, all you have to do is Google the presenters. They are well-known and their views are readily available.
One possibility to consider is that Dr Zinke himself is actually a (or the) major sponsor of this conference. Since leaving his position with BRI Dr Zinke has built a very successful family business. Also he has maintained close ties with the theological "establishment" in Silver Spring. He may have left the payroll but he definitely did not leave the club.
One advantage of this kind of arrangement is that it affords the institutional leaders with plausible deniability should something amiss happen at this conference (for example one of the invited non-Adventist participants says something embarrassing to the establishment). On the other hand should something of value occur, the institutional leaders will be able to take advantage of it.
Both in government and in industry the practice of using contractors for endeavors that entail institutional risk, is well established. So why not also in the SDA church when dealing with such a risky topic?
I am not personally a detractor of Dr Zinke. I have a lot of his respect for his achievements in both theological and business endeavors. Some of the early Adventist pioneers were very entrepreneurial including Joseph Bates and James White.
There is something to be said for operating a truly self-supporting ministry that earns its own way as opposed to one whose primary source of revenue is solicited donations. You have a lot fewer people to try to please. To make money you must please your customers, but if the customers are not also major stake-holders in your more risky personal endeavors you have more freedom of action and less need to justify what you are doing.
Contrast the well-konwn problem of traditional faith-based ministries that need to cultivate donors on on hand while ministering to their chosen field on the other. Often the donors and the ultimate beneficiaries have very different views and interests and demographics.
Forget about plausible deniability. After studying the online schedule of presentations and activities, it is clear that this one is on a very tight leash. Nothing can go wrong.
I am glad to learn that some "big name" Adventist theologians are conceding that Genesis 1 is compatible with a cosmos that could have arisen from a Big Bang > 10 billion years ago and that the primordial materials of the Solar System (including earth) could have formed billions of years ago from pre-existing matter and energy.
I like to think that Ellen herself, if informed of current scientific knowledge, might agree that God was not indebted to pre-existing matter when creating the cosmos, but might well have made use of pre-existing matter to give form and substance to our planet. And that a very long time may have transpired between Genesis 1:1 and Day 1. I think she would have been keenly interested in what we have found using better telescopes and microscopes. She was definitely pro-faith but she was not fundamentally anti-science.
Elder Wilson's published keynote address does not seem to make any concessions to these possibilities. I have commented in this regard on another Atoday page and will not repeat it all here. But I will note that what was published for public consumption by Wilson's support base and what actually transpires in the conference may not be entirely what is expected.
Jim. I know Ed Zinke quite well. Our family were members of the Spencerville Church where he is also a member. He never completed his PhD. He is conservative in some areas such as creation and liberal in others such as ordination of women. He holds a quasi official position with the SDA church as a Senior Advisor to the Adventist Review magazine
Well then let me apologize to those who have earned doctorates in academia (and might take umbrage), for inadvertently conferring on Ed Zinke an honorary doctorate 8-).
I think it fair to say that someone who is a Senior Advisor to the Adventist Review has not left the club? I wonder if anyone else whose name appears on the roster inside the Review cover is not on the denminational payroll?
Thanks for advice, Jim. I found a way to get in. I had been having difficulty signing in, but when I signed in at the top of the page, it worked! I submit that having a PhD or not does not establish or disqualify one from being an authority on something, and being an "authority" in some limited field does not mean one has credibility on every topic one might choose to speak. This is mostly a warning against authoritarian gullability, not an attempt to diminish the accomplishments of those who have earned advanced degrees.
Jim. Mark Finley former GC vice president now retired is also a senior advisor to the AR. And Joe, I agree. I took Daniel and Revelation from an 80 year old teacher at Newbold with no earned degree. But he was one of the most erudite and knowledable teachers I have ever had. At the same time I had more than one teacher at the Seminary at Andrews with PhDs who were as boring as could be and I learned little from them.
Presumably Mark is drawing his pension from the NAD.
I don’t ‘get’ the ‘curiosity’ about Ed Zinke. Since when does one have to “[hold] a pastoral, faculty or elected position in the church” in order to be inside “the accountability structures of the church”?
Shouldn’t membership in the church itself place one within “the accountability structures of [it]”? From what I can see, in actuality not even full time employment does this; at least not as much as one would expect based on how the current GC administration is often caricatured and perceived.
(For the record, I do not know if election to the board of trustees at an SDA institution counts as “an elected position in the church” or not; but Ed Zinke does serve with me on the Oakwood University board of trustees; and I very much appreciate his service.)
The International Conference on the Bible and Science: Affirming Creation is a most worthy theme.
Indeed, affirming creation is at the core of not just our origins. Genesis is for the living far more meaningfully the literal foundation of our eternal life.
In Genesis we find that the culmination of the Creation account is not the Sabbath, but rather the promise of redemption. Indeed the word Sabbath is not used anywhere in Genesis.
Moses wrote Genesis to encourage the wandering Israelites that they themselves individually are the seed of God’s creation but far more importantly Moses is inspired to declare them, and in turn us, to be, in light of our common plight, the object of God’s promised redemption of them and their seed, which includes us.
As literally described in Genesis 3:14-19, God promises that all of Eve's seed, all of the Creator's creatures, all of us, will find freedom from everything the Serpent is at enmity with us over. Genesis reassures us that this is the exclusive result of God's will and God's action, not ours. This is fully in keeping with our literally being creatures of a Creator … and literally destined to be saved by Grace.
The good news about the Gospel of Genesis is that it is not subject to threat by science or by those who fear science
Indeed the word Sabbath is not used anywhere in Genesis.
The Hebrew verb shabath appears in Genesis 2 verses 2 and 3. These are the first uses of this verb in the Bible. Sabbath appears as a verb before it appears as a noun. Literally, on the seventh day God sabbathed. God made the seventh day holy because on that day God Sabbathed.
Thanks Jim
So, are you in the main still good with my comment that Moses gives preeminence to the Gospel in Genesis in comparison to God taking a rest?
Because you've raised a fine point, I'll take my turn. It is commonly believed that there are, indeed, two tellings of the creation story, one in Genesis 1 and the second in Genesis 2. While some point out that the sequence of what happened and when is not exactly parallel. However, that difference is not really an issue to the Genesis assertion that humanity is God's handiwork.
A more significant point to me is that only one of the two tellings references God taking a rest after finishing creation. Apparently, to the author(s?) the overriding point is that we are God's creation.
God taking a rest may be the author's attempt by personify God for the readers. Scripture is clear that God is not a person and does not become weary.
If I may be more direct. I believe that spending a week and two weekends wandering the canyons of southern Utah in an effort to anchor the Sabbath of Seventh-day Adventists to one of two Genesis creation accounts by somehow validating as a scientific error all explanations other than a 6-day creation 6,000 years ago is to have already left behind the Gospel in Genesis it feels like to me. Of course, that may not be what is going one. Thought Elder Wilson's keynote didn't seem to invite other conversations.
Bill,
I have re-read what you wrote and I am not sure I get the distinctions you are trying to make. So rather than agree or disagree with something where I am not entirely clear, let me explain how I think these things are connected.
First I want to say that a serious problem for many Biblical literalists is that in their zeal to assert the literal truth they often overlook the symbolic truth. These are not necessarily mutually exclusive – many things in the Bible have both literal and symbolic meanings. So rather than debating with you or others how much of what we see was created in six literal days, I want to discuss some of the symbolic meaning. I want to zoom-out from the trees if you will and take a look at the forest.
One of the important connections between the two creation stories in Genesis is how they end. God's last creative act at the end of Day 6 was to bring the man and the woman together. Simply put, on the seventh day God sabbaths. Meanwhile on the seventh day Adam and Eve do what every healthy married couple do on the first day of their marriage – they are naked together, joined together and not ashamed. This connection between marriage and the Sabbath was not lost on rabbinical commentators and it should not be lost on us. In the absence of shame there is no conflict between marital fellowship and fellowship with God.
In my entire life I have only once heard a sermon on this subject. It was preached by my eldest son (a SDA pastor) the day before the wedding of my youngest son, at a private Sabbath service for all of the wedding guests. Renae and I preached this sermon in a different way when we decided to have our wedding during church on Sabbath morning, in my SDA pastor father's church. My mother thought good Adventists should not get married on Sabbath. I told her that if Adam and Eve could marry on Friday evening then certainly we could marry on Sabbath morning.
Now what pray tell is the spiritual significance marriage and the Sabbath for Seventh-day Adventists? Zoom out even farther from the forest to the cosmic. Leap to the other end of the largest chiastic structure in the Bible – the last two chapters of Revelation. God creates new heavens and a new earth. The spiritual bride and the spiritual bridegroom are joiend together. They celebrate their eternal Sabbath in the Holy of Holies. They tabernacle together in the same chamber of the same spiritual tent. The bride and bridegroom do not just sit together (the mesage to Laodicea) and eat together (the message of several parables) – they sleep together.
From the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation marriage is used as a symbol for the intimate fellowship God desires to have with humans. And from the beginning to the end the Sabbath is used as a symbol of the time of this intimacy. This is the reason why "Seventh-day" and "Adventist" are bound together in my own spiritual identity.
It is finished. I AM the First (alpha) and the Last (omega), the Original (protos) and the Final (eschatos), the Source (arche) and the Purpose (teleos). The third Biblical "it is finished" in Revelation book-ends the first Biblical "it is finished" in Genesis.
There is another Biblical "it is finished" in the middle of this chiasm – the X (Greek chi) crosses at the Cross. Here also the "it is finished" is uttered on Friday afternoon and ushers in a Sabbath rest.
Throughout the Bible the weekly Sabbath, the Sabbatical Year and the Year of Jubilee (Sabbath of Sabbaticals) are symbols of completed Creation and Redemption and Restoration. You can find this in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, the Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, the Gospels, Hebrews, Revelation to name a few.
In my youth I was a fairly good chess player (1200 level for those who keep score). In chess there is the opening, the middle game and the end game. All three are important but the good chess players are always thinking ahead to the end game. Too many Adventists are fixated on the opening rather than the middle game or the end game. Too many evangelicals are fixated on the middle game, rather than the opening or the end game. In the cosmic game of chess, God is the grand master of the opening and the middle game and the end game. And from the opening God already visualizes the end game.
Excellent commentary, Jim, thank you.
Very creative and justifyably inspiring way of experiencing scripture, Jim.
I like what you write a lot. Just like you wrote it.
Very well done.
Thank you for not being overly distracted by my comments. Truly!
John,
Rather than secrecy, what you quote sounds like concern for the copyrights held by the presenters. Anyone can distribute the material all they want as long as they get permission from the presenter who the material belongs to.