Education for Such a Time As This

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E.A. Sutherland Education Association

The Biblical Foundation for Adventist Education

Ed Zinke

1. The Knowledge of God in Nature

I've been looking forward to this opportunity for a long time.

What I'm going to be going through today, there will be things from technical to fairly easy.

The technical, If you just capture the overall picture, I don't care if you remember the details or not, but the overall picture hopefully will be informative.

In part, I'm going to be kind of sharing my experience.

I was educated totally within the Seventh-day Adventist Church through a Master of Divinity at Andrews and then an MA at Andrews and then went to Catholic University to work on a doctorate.

When I got to Catholic University, I discovered that my manner of thinking was not that much different from their manner of thinking.

Now the doctrines, of course, were very different, but the way we thought was very similar.

That was quite shocking to me, and I'll share that with you.

And fortunately, we have Ellen White, and she led me back to scripture, and I discovered that my way of thinking was humanistic instead of biblically orientated.

And I suspect that I'm not alone in that kind of experience.

In fact, I've discovered as I've gone around the world that It's fairly common to have been taught to think within the contemporary culture that you live in and not recognize that that manner of thinking is not necessarily a biblical manner of thinking.

And so I want to start with a few tools to try to get our thinking process going here so that we can try to understand some of the materials that are coming later.

Tell me about the artist of this piece of art.

Now we have a lot to go over today I would enjoy working a little bit longer on this particular illustration, but let me ask you, how many of you feel like you know the artist by discussing the piece of art?

If you cross paths on a path out here, you wouldn't know him or her.

Now we said he likes wood, he's a wood carver, uses hand tools, likely, it's a cultural expression.

So we know something about the artist, but we don't know the artist.

So if we wanted to know the artist, what would we do?

Yeah, so we could send him or her a ticket and he could come and address this group and tell us about himself.

We could have lunch together and so on and so forth.

Or we could give you a ticket and you could go and get acquainted with the artist and you could come back and tell us about the artist.

Okay, but by Just looking at the piece of art, we don't know the artist.

We know characteristics about the artist, but we don't know the artist, him or herself.

Very colorful, okay, so he or she or whatever likes color.

Okay, okay, So you want to tell us it's God?

And The deeper we get into this, the more detail we'll discover.

Particularly when it gets close to Valentine's Day.

The thought of the 3 things that just, because sometimes it's just moving in a panorama, but you create the things that are specifically limited.

The artist, Well, now that might be somebody else.

Okay, somebody's clipping the leaves and keeping it in order, okay, Okay.

Okay, to be enjoyed by a variety of human senses Creative and has the power to create life.

Okay, so we've talked about Enjoyment of the color appealing to the senses, appealing particularly to women.

Fine detail, bringing in some things from other groups, you know, kind of an architect, an engineer.

He loves the beautiful, loves us because he's given us such beautiful things.

The creator of life, the sustainer of life, and of course, again, if we had time, we could go on and on and on describing that the artist.

Now I'd like you to tell me about the artist of this piece of art.

We just said the creator, the giver of life, the sustainer of life, loves the beautiful, appealing to women, a designer, master designer, architect.

What do we know about the artist by looking at the piece of art?

Yeah, Well, can you really separate this piece from this piece?

So this artist, this sustainer, the giver and sustainer of life, all of a sudden we're discovering there's death that's part of that.

So there are other factors that come into play here.

2. The Authority of the Bible in the History of Theology: Pre-Reformation

Okay, and we're ready with our next presentation here.

Now, they're a little bit older than that at this point.

In fact, I want to point out, Yeah, okay.

This little gal here and this 1 here, when they were 12 years old, accompanied me along with others to the top of Kilimanjaro, 19, 334 feet.

So anyway, I want to brag about that a little bit.

It was a neat experience to have family along on that trek.

By the way, I was an old man too, so You know, you've got to give me credit as well.

Okay, so how many of you have heard about the term epistemology?

I mean, among other things, that's not the only thing.

Okay, epistemology is your concept of knowledge and your concept of how to acquire knowledge.

Okay, so if you're a teacher, Have you thought about what knowledge is and how you acquire knowledge?

And what are you teaching your students when you're teaching them in the classroom?

Whether you know it or not, you're teaching them an epistemology when you teach in the classroom.

You have an epistemology whether you know it or not.

And your students have an epistemology whether they know it or not.

And so it's extremely important for us to understand epistemology so that we can understand our own epistemology.

You begin to analyze yourself when you see how others think and ask, how is it that I think?

Okay, so epistemology is really the road you take.

And Some administrators come to me and say, Ed, how is it possible that this person has accepted in his teaching in our schools theistic evolution?

Well 30 years ago they picked an epistemology that took the left-hand road here, but ends in theistic evolution.

It's not something that happened overnight for the most part, sometimes it may, but it was a gradual process of choosing an epistemology, a concept of knowledge and a concept of how to acquire knowledge, that finally ended up in theistic evolution.

And so it's important for us to understand and to teach our students how to think from a biblical perspective instead of from a secular perspective.

And my feeling is, and I don't think this is the total answer, I think there are many, many answers.

I think you folks are doing a wonderful job answering the questions, but why do we lose so many of our students?

I think 1 of the reasons, among others, is that we have never taught them to think biblically.

And so when they go to the secular university, there's no difference between themselves and their professor.

And so they are open to what the professor has to say and open to non-Christian points of view.

So epistemology determines your concept of God, your universe, the world you live in, your existence, yourself, so on and so forth.

It's the foundation of your world view, the way you understand yourself and the world and the people you relate to.

And when epistemology changes, your concept of self, existence, world, universe, God, etc.

So now all of us live in a secular society.

We're constantly bombarded with secularism.

Every time you look at television, every time you read a newspaper, every time you look at something streaming on the internet, you are being indoctrinated not just with the specific ideas that are being conveyed, but with the manner of thinking that justifies those ideas.

So we seek a rock-solid foundation, and so we look to reason, to science, to math, to experience, even, you know, depending upon your worldview, mysticism, etc., etc., etc.

We look for some place to have a rock-solid foundation for our theology.

On human reason instead of upon God's words.

Now, that doesn't mean we don't use scripture.

In fact, if we have time, we'll see a passage later in Ellen White where she says, you know, theologians use scripture, but because they put it in their context, in their philosophical system, they misrepresent what scripture is saying.

And so humanism has become the foundation for all knowledge.

Now, there are many different kinds of humanism, but that is kind of a word that will bring many philosophical systems together.

And so, humanism gets imposed upon Scripture.

Okay, so what I'm going to do is an overview of the history of philosophy, theology, and biblical studies, highlighting lessons learned.

And the reason I'm doing this, I don't care whether you remember anything about Plato or Aristotle or Thomas Aquinas or, you know, the people we're going to go over.

What I care is that you capture the idea that their philosophical system determined their theology.

And hopefully learn the lesson that we need to start with a biblical system.

If we don't intentionally start with a biblical system, we will end up with some kind of a humanistic philosophy instead of a biblical theology.

So the biblical worldview is foundational to our understanding as where we are coming from.

A biblical worldview is the rock-solid foundation that we are seeking.

So I'm starting with some presuppositions.

Normally I would have several other people with me and we'd have 3 or 4 or 5 days together, but we don't have that and they aren't available.

So I'm going to tell you basically what they would have told you, and I'm sure you're all in agreement with this.

The Bible, God's Word, came by the will of God rather than by the will of man.

It's God's Word given through humans but guided by the Holy Spirit in such a way that God's Word got through.

So I'm assuming these 2 things as we move forward.

Okay, he wants us to take our reason as far as we possibly can go.

And he will send us the Holy Spirit to aid us so that we can go further than we could possibly go on our own.

Rationalism is that the sole foundation for my understanding of the universe is my mind.

Right, okay, so the scientific method alone is the foundation of my knowledge.

Notice the alone in there, the foundation.

Now all philosophers, no matter where they are on this chart, use reason.

Only rationalism make reason the foundation of knowledge.

Most philosophers use the empirical method.

Only the empiricist makes it the foundation of their knowledge.

And so those of us who start with a biblical philosophy, that doesn't mean we don't use reason.

It just means that scripture is the guide to reason.

It doesn't mean that we don't do science, it just means that scripture is the guide to science.

And so existentialism, the structure of human existence is the foundation, pragmatism, materialism, etceterism, that's my word, for the fact that there are thousands of philosophical systems, many of which have not yet been described.

There's a philosophy for each person in the room here.

3. The Authority of the Bible in the History of Theology: Reformation to Present

So, up to the time of the Reformation, the formula was the Bible and the natural world, reason, tradition, etc., etc., etc.

We're coming down to the time of the Reformation now.

With the Reformation we have a new philosophical system.

This is just a picture of the Reformers wall there in Switzerland.

The Reformation, their specific intent was to return to the Bible as the foundation of all human disciplines.

Now the Reformation was not perfect, who of us are?

But Ellen White sees us in line with the Reformation and our job is to complete the Reformation.

Remember the statement there in Great Controversy, there will be a people upon the earth who will accept the Bible and the Bible alone.

And over against science, the other churches, and so on and so forth, we will stand out accepting the Bible alone.

Okay, so sola scriptura, affirm the foundational role and something's happened to my slide there.

So, sola scriptura was their basic mantra.

Instead of the Bible and, it's the Bible alone.

Okay, the biblical, the worldview, the philosophy must come from where?

Not from Aristotle, not from Plato, not from Kant, not from Descartes.

Method for the study of Scripture must arise out of Scripture itself.

Remember, method for the study of Scripture with Plato, with origin came from Plato.

Method for the study of Scripture for Aquinas came from Aristotle.

Okay, so they said method for the study of Scripture must come from Scripture itself.

Otherwise, we are imposing an external philosophical system on Scripture, and Scripture must be its own interpreter.

Compare text with text, but not only text with text, comparing text with all of Scripture and within the philosophy of Scripture itself.

So he didn't deny that God could speak through other channels.

So God could indeed speak through Pope, church councils, church history, through the natural world, etc., etc.

Okay, the only, the sole foundation for accepting and the basis for interpreting God's revelation in other areas.

So I can gain insights from the history of Christianity, but that is not the norm.

That's not what I decide what insights are valid by Scripture itself, not by the Bible and something else." So Martin Luther, of course, there were many reformers and Martin Luther who we've just celebrated the 500 years since his nailing of the thesis to the door.

Ellen White has some very interesting comments to make about Martin Luther.

Fearlessly did Luther defend the gospel from the attacks which came from every quarter.

The Word of God provided itself a weapon, mighty in every conflict.

Notice the Word of God provided itself a weapon, not Plato, not Aristotle, not Kant, not Descartes.

The Bible provided itself a weapon, mighty in every conflict.

With that word, he warred against, I want you to notice this, he warred against the usurped authority of the Pope against the, okay, which would be Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas of the schoolmen.

The schoolmen is a code term for scholasticism, you're right, okay.

Well, they stood firm as a rock against the fanaticism that sought to ally itself with the Reformation.

Each of these, can you think of anything more radically different?

Authority in 1 man, the Pope, Authority in the heads of the schoolmen.

Authority in the excesses of the spirit of Thomas Munster.

They all set aside the Scriptures and they all put authority in humankind instead of in God's Word.

Regardless of their differences, they were the same.

So Zwingli, I like Zwingli because he had an experience very similar to mine and I'll tell you about my experience.

But basically he said, the Word of God is the only infallible authority.

No, he's not using a new method, but the old method employed by the church in earlier and purer times.

And indeed, the school...just slipped my mind.

Anyway, there was another school of thought that was developing along the lines of Reformation.

Unfortunately, the school from Alexandria became predominant and swallowed up the other school of thought.

Some people say the Reformation never would have been necessary had the other school of thought prevailed, but unfortunately it didn't.

So the more he searched the Scriptures, the clearer appeared the contrast between their truths and the heresies of Rome.

See, these other systems submitted themselves to a philosophical system.

Is the Word of God the only sufficient infallible rule?

He saw that it must be its own interpreter.

He dared not attempt to explain Scripture to sustain a preconceived theory.

You don't start with Aristotelianism or Platonism or any other ism.

But he held it his duty to learn the direct and obvious teaching out of Scripture, sought to avail himself of every help, attain a full and correct understanding of its meaning, and he invoked the aid of the Holy Spirit, which would, he declared, reveal it to all who sought it in sincerity and truth.

Now, in fairness, Thomas Aquinas also invoked the aid of the Holy Spirit, but nonetheless, he was still doing that synthesis instead of relying on Scripture and the power of the Holy Spirit for his theology.

Okay, so, didn't accept the preconceived ideas, invocated the Holy Spirit, who would reveal it to all who sought it in sincerity and truth.

So how is it that we understand Scripture?

The Holy Spirit who gave us Scripture is there to guide us in the understanding of Scripture.

The Scriptures, said Zwingli, come from God, not from man.

How do you know that the Bible's the word of God?

And even that God who enlightens will give you to understand that the speech comes from where?

So it's not because I found a foundation to put underneath Scripture that I can accept it as the Word of God.

It's because God is the 1 who enlightens us to understand that it comes from Him.

So it goes on, the self loses itself, it forfeits itself.

Then moving down halfway, I began to give myself wholly up to the holy scriptures, philosophy and theology, scholastic, by the way, that's Ellen White's parenthesis, which always suggests quarrels to me.

I thought, you must let all that lie and learn the meaning of God purely out of His own simple word.

Then I began to ask God for His light, and the scriptures began to be much easier for me.

Now, I had an experience very similar to that.

As I mentioned, I was raised in the Adventist church through a Master of Divinity at the seminary and an Old Testament masters at the seminary.

I was in contact with theologians all over the world.

And nonetheless, I was using a humanistic system rather than a biblical system.

So I wrote a paper on the history of method of theology.

Some of the materials we've been dealing with came from that.

And it was an individual project with my professor.

We were going over my paper 1 day and I had a little summary at the end saying, not just reviewing theological systems but then giving my own concept of what theology was.

And I said, the task of a theologian is to take the truths of the natural world and the truths of Scripture and synthesize them together.

And my professor, I considered him kind of a guru.

His specialty was 19th century religion in America, so it kind of fit with the period in which our church arose.

He had a beard, and occasionally you would see a smile come behind his beard and then a little twinkle in his eye.

And when you saw that, you knew a gem of truth was coming.

So I saw the smile, I saw the twinkle in his eye, I knew a gem of truth was coming.

He leaned back in his chair a little bit, and he said, Ed, you're a good scholastic theologian.

Now, with a feather he could have knocked me off my chair.

He could have told me that I had stage 4 cancer.

4. History of Methods in Biblical Study

So, this next section is going to be the last theoretical section, and I'm going to get into biblical materials and biblical worldview.

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Series

The Biblical Foundation for Adventist Education

2. The Authority of the Bible in the History of Theology: Pre-Reformation

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

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Recorded

Attachments

The Biblical Foundation for Adventist Education

3. The Authority of the Bible in the History of Theology: Reformation to Present

53m

The Biblical Foundation for Adventist Education

5. Principles for Biblical Thought

40m

The Power of God's Word

4. Letting the Word Speak

59m

God of the Philosophers or God of the Bible?

How to Know the God of Scripture and Detect the “God” of the Philosophers

1h

The Biblical Foundation for Adventist Education

1. The Knowledge of God in Nature

32m

We Believe

Secrets of Ancient Scrolls, Part 2

1h

Yes, Creation!

Theistic evolution and the end of Adventism

22m

GYC 2011 Seminar: Revelation, Inspiration, and Interpretation - Keys to Understanding Scripture

Are We Reading the Same Book?, Part 1

59m

How to Interpret Scripture

How to Interpret Scripture: Do Historical Matters Really Matter? Reconciling the Bible with Science

1h 10m

Sound Doctrine