The Reality of the Heavenly Sanctuary: Why would it Matter for Adventism?
Keywords:
Sanctuary, Material, Time, God, HeavenAbstract
The doctrine of the sanctuary is one of the most specific fundamental beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist church. However, besides its uniqueness and specificity, this doctrine may have been seen as something irrelevant for Christian theology in general. In this article, I will attempt to show that this belief provides a solid basis for understanding how biblical Adventism builds itself in a systematical and consistent manner. Indeed, we shall see that not only does this doctrine help understand how Adventism sees both the nature of earthly realities (i.e., human beings) and the heavenly ones (i.e., God), but also how these realities relate to each other accordingly. Nevertheless, as I write within a French adventist context, this doctrine, somehow, seems to have lost its significance. This may be explained by the fact that Adventism may have unconsciously blended classical Greek philosophy (ontology) with the biblical one. As a matter of fact, this, as we shall see, may hinder the consistency of the adventist vision, its identity and its role, whether in Christendom or beyond its borders.Downloads
References
I want to express my gratitude to Dr. Raúl Kerbs for encouraging me to write this paper as well
as for going through it as he provided valuable critiques and suggestions, which contributed in
no small degree to this paper.
Ellen White, The Great Controversy between Christ and Satan during the Christian Dispensation
(Oakland, CA: Pacific Press, 1888), 423.
Jean-Claude Verrecchia, Dieu sans domicile fixe: entre autels, sanctuaires, temples et maisons
(Dammarie-les-Lys: Vie et Santé, 2013), 129.
I refer, for example, to the Desmond Ford worldwide crisis of the late 1970’s.
Moisés Silva, “Systematic Theology and the Apostle to the Gentiles”, Trinity Journal 15, no. 1
(1994): 25.
Paul Tillich speaks of the union between the knower (subject) and the known (object). He says:
“Knowing is a form of union” (Systematic Theology: Three Volumes in One [Chicago, IL: The
University of Chicago Press, 1967], 1:94).
Rudolf Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), 48
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrines (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 1994), 23.
John Caputo, Philosophy and Theology (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2006), 5.
William Horden, Speaking of God: The Nature and Purpose of Theological Language (New York,
NY: Macmillan, 1964), 78.
Emmanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Max Müller (London, UK: Macmillan, 1922),
-519.
Norman Gulley, Systematic Theology: Prolegomena (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University
Press, 2003), xxvii.
Deconstruction is a critical method that leads to the analysis of the hermeneutical presuppositions upon which one’s theological tradition is based. It deconstructs the received theological
interpretations. However, deconstruction is not an end per se, but it is an instrument that opens
the way to a new construction. See Fernando L. Canale, “Deconstrucción y teología: una propuesta metodológica”, DavarLogos 1, no. 1 (2002): 5, 9.
Raúl Kerbs explains that “the macro-hermeneutical principles are the most basic assumptions
the mind needs to be able to function and to get acquainted with reality as such”. “Philosophical
Assumptions of the Church Fathers: God and Creation”, Enfoques 26, no. 1 (2014): 36.
Millard J. Erickson, Truth and Consequences: The Promise and Perils of Postmodernism (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2001), 326
Gulley, Systematic Theology, 6.
Fernando L. Canale, “Revelation and Inspiration: The Ground for a New Approach”, AUSS 31,
no. 2 (1993): 91.
For example, Origen, one of the most prolific and influential early Christian theologian, was
strongly influenced by Platonic philosophy and the works of Philo. So were Clement of Alexandria, Justin Martyr, Ambrose, and Augustine. Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of
Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker books, 1999), 592-593.
Gulley, Systematic Theology, xxii.
Fernando L. Canale, A Criticism of Theological Reason: Time and Timelessness As Primordial
Presuppositions (Berrien Spring, MI: Andrews University Press, 1983).
“Even the eternal God does not live without time. He is supremely temporal. For His eternity
is authentic temporality, and therefore the source of all time. But in His eternity, in the uncreated self-subsistent time which is one of the perfections of His divine nature, present, past
and future, yesterday, to-day and to-morrow, are not successive, but simultaneous” (Karl Barth,
Church Dogmatics, III.2, ed. G.W Bromiley and T. F. Torrance [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson,
, 437).
Fernando L. Canale, The Cognitive Principle of Christian Theology: An Hermeneutical Study of
the Revelation and Inspiration of the Bible (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Lithotec,
, 93.
From a biblical interpretation of ontology, one may say that a time that is not sequential is not a
real time, but a negation of it.
John Callahan, Four Views of Time in Ancient Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1948), 68-69.
Plato, Timaeus 37e-38b (Plato in Twelve Volumes, trans. R. G. Bury [Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1925], 9:77 [emphasis is mine]).
Ibid., 28b-c (emphasis is mine).
Millard J. Erickson, Concise Dictionary of Christian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books,
, 128
De Vita Mosis, II.xv.74 in LCL, Philo VI, 485-487 (emphasis is mine).
Richard M. Davidson, “Old Testament Basis for Sanctuary Typology in Hebrews” in Issues in
the Book of Hebrews, ed., Frank Holbrook, DARCOM, Vol. 4 (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Research Institute, 1989), 169.
Quaestiones et Solutiones in Exodum, II, 13, in LCL, Philo, Philo, Supp. II, 48 (emphasis is
mine).
De specialibus legibus, I.xii.66 in LCL, Philo, VII, 137, 139 (emphasis is mine).
Philo explicitly follows the classical Greek philosophy by endorsing the timeless interpretation
of God’s being when he says: “But God is the maker of time also, for He is the father of time’s
father, that is of the universe, and has caused the movements of the one to be the source of
the generation of the other. Thus, time stands to God’ in the relation of a grandson. For this
universe, since we perceive it by our senses, is the younger son of God. To the elder son I mean
the intelligible universe, He assigned the place of firstborn, and purposed that it should remain
in His own keeping. So, the younger son, the world of our sense, when set in motion, brought
that entity we call time to the brightness of its rising. And thus, with God there is no future, since
He has made the boundaries of the ages subject to Himself. For God’s life is not a time, but eternity,
which is the archetype and patterns of time; and in eternity there is no past nor future, but only
present existence” (Philo, Quod Deus immutabilis, in LCL, 31-32 [emphasis is mine]).
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I q. 10 a. 1 ad 4 (emphasis is mine), Fathers of the English
Dominican Province, 5 vols (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1981).
The impassibilist Rob Lister recognizes that the God of Scripture is not impassible as he says:
“Scripture never makes a direct assertion of a metaphysical doctrine of divine impassibility”
(God is Impassible and Impassioned: Toward a Theology of Divine Emotion [Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013], 190).
God is “perfect because He lacks not”, Summa Theologica I, q. 4, a. 2.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica III, q. 58, a. 1, ad 1 (emphasis is mine).
Bruce L. McCormack, “What’s at Stake in Current Debates over Justification”, in Justification:
What’s at Stake in the Current Debates, ed., Mark Husbands and Daniel J. Treier (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 107.
Ibid., p. 105
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. by Ford Lewis Battles. 2 vols. ed. John T.
MnNeill (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960).
“In eternity there can be no room for first or last”. Calvin, Institutes, 1.13.18.
Ibid., 3.21.5
James D. Hernando, Dictionary of Hermeneutics (Sprinfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House,
, 123.
Calvin, Institutes 1.11.3. It is interesting to notice that while Calvin says that God’s essence is
incomprehensible, he, at the same time, assumes a foundational comprehensive understanding
of God’s essence as being timeless.
Ibid., 2.16.16.
Ibid., 3. 20. 40.
J. H. Mazaheri, “Calvin and Augustine’s Interpretations of ‘the Father in Heaven’”, Revue d’histoire ecclesiastique 106, n. 3-4 (2011): 448-449
Calvin, Institutes, 3.20.40.
Ibid.
Kilian MacDonnell, John Calvin, the Church and the Eucharist (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), 226-227.
Every quotation will be of my own translation.
Verrecchia, Dieu sans domicile fixe, 34.
Ibid., 35.
Ibid., 42 (emphasis is mine).
NIV.
Verrecchia, Dieu sans domicile fixe, 94 (emphasis is mine).
Ibid., 118.
Ibid., 122 (emphasis is mine).
Ibid., cf. Jean-Claude Verrecchia, Ce que croient les adventistes (Dammaries-lès-Lys: Vie et Santé,
, 314.
Ford assumes the platonic dualism: temporality/spatiality and timelessness/spacelessness as he
speaks about the being of God. Indeed, like Aquinas and Calvin, he sees God as being spaceless
(incorporeal), and therefore timeless. Commenting the book of Genesis, he says: “We have never known an omnipotent God, who is an omnipresent Spirit, to use vocal cords and condescend
to the activities of a surgeons, a gardener, a walker, and a seamstress. But all these are to be found
in Genesis chapter 1-3. God is a spirit to John 4: 24. […] Therefore he has no vocal cords of
physical parts such as we know – hands, feet, buttocks, etc”. See Desmond Ford, Genesis Versus
Darwinism: The Case for God in Scientific World (n.p: A&S, 2014), 146.
Verrecchia, Dieu sans domicile fixe, 173.
Ibid., 205 (emphasis is mine).
Ibid., 133.
For more details about the biblical Adventist ontology, see, Canale, Timelessness As Primordial
Presuppositions; Gulley, Systematic Theology; Elmer A. Guzman, “The Collateral Effects of the
Delay of Jesus’ Parousia on the Message, Mission, and Worship of the Church”, in Scripture
and Philosophy: Essays Honoring the Work and Vision of Fernando Luis Canale, eds., Tiago Arrais, Kenneth Bergland, and Michael F. Younker (Berrien Springs, MI: Adventist Theological
Society Publications, 2016), 475-490; John C. Peckham, “Divine Passibility, Analogical Temporality, and Theo-Ontology: Implications of a Canonical Approach”, in ibid., 32-53; John C.
Peckham, The Concept of Divine Love in the Context of the God-World Relationship (New York:
Peter Lang, 2014).
For example, Gordon J. Wenham observes that the term “walking” (hitpa‘el participle of the
root halak) in Genesis 3,8, points to a horizontal movement as God walks in the Garden of
Eden (Genesis 1-15, WBC [Dallas, TX: Word, 1998], 76).
“For God’s project has never been to let sin separate him from humanity, but on the contrary to
meet it, whatever its situation may be, whatever its faults” (Verrecchia, Dieu sans domicile fixe,
John C. Peckham, The Love of God: A Canonical Model (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,
, 60
Jacques B. Doukhan, Hebrew for Theologians: A Textbook for the Study of Biblical Hebrew in
Relation to Hebrew Thinking (Lanham, ML: University Press of America, 1993), 202.
Fernando Canale, “Absolute Theological Truth in Postmodern Times”, AUSS 41, no. 1 (2007):
-96.
This does not mean that all Adventist kept on doing theology upon the Hebraic-Christian biblical realism. Very early in its beginning, some Adventists left this philosophical ground. For
instance, John H. Kellogg and his panentheistic view of the universe is an example.
H. P. Owen, Concepts of Deity (New York, NY: Herder y Herder, 1971), 1. See also Alister E.
McGrath, The Genesis of Doctrine: A Study in the Foundations of Doctrinal Criticism (Oxford,
UK: Blackwell, 1990), 4-5. In the same vein, Roger E. Olson explains that the history of Christianity has strongly been influenced by philosophy, and especially Greek (Hellenistic) philosophy
(The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition and Reform [Downers Grove,
IL: InterVarsity, 1999], 51).
Aristote, Œuvres d’Aristote: Traité du Ciel, Livre I, Chapitre V, trans. Barthélemy Saint-Hilaire
(Paris: Librairie Philosophique de Ladrange, 1866), 29.
In order to have an overview of Jesus’ current heavenly ministry. I recommend Jiri Moskala’s article “Toward a Biblical Theology of God’s Judgment: A Celebration of the Cross in Seven Phases
of Divine Universal Judgment (An Overview of the Theocentric-Christocentric Approach)”,
JATS 15, no. 1 (2004): 138-165
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