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Questions on Doctrine

"qod" redirects here. For the medical abbreviation, see List of medical abbreviations#Q.

Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine (often abbreviated "Questions on Doctrine", or "QOD") is a book originally published by the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1957 to help reconcile Adventists and conservative Protestants. The book generated greater acceptance of the Adventist church within the evangelical community, where it had previously been widely regarded as a cult. However, it also proved to be one of the most controversial publications in Adventist history — the release of the book brought prolonged alienation and separation both within Adventism and evangelicalism.

Although no authors are listed on the title of the book (credit is given to "a representative group" of Adventist "leaders, Bible teachers and editors"), the primary contributors to the book were Le Roy Edwin Froom, Walter E. Read, and Roy Allan Anderson (sometimes referred to as "FREDA").

In Adventist culture, the phrase Questions on Doctrine has come to encompass not only the book itself but also the history leading up to its publication and the prolonged theological controversy which it sparked. This article covers all of these facets of the book's history and legacy.

The original 1957 edition of Questions on Doctrine can be read online at SDAnet

History

Background

The publication of Questions on Doctrine grew out of a series of conferences between a few Adventist spokepersons and Protestant representatives from 1955 to 1956. The roots of this conference originated in a series of dialogues between Pennsylvania conference president, T. E. Unruh, and evangelical Bible teacher and magazine editor Donald Grey Barnhouse. Unruh was particularly concerned because of a scathing review written by Barnhouse about Ellen White's book, Steps to Christ. Unruh had sent him a copy of the book in 1949. In the spring of 1955 Barnhouse commissioned Walter Martin to write a book about Seventh-day Adventists. Martin requested a meeting with Adventist leaders so that he could question them about their beliefs.

The first meeting between Martin and Adventist leaders occurred in March 1955. Martin was accompanied by George Cannon and met with Adventist representatives Le Roy Edwin Froom and W. E. Read. Later Roy Allan Anderson and Barnhouse joined these discussions. Initially both sides viewed each other with suspicion as they worked through a list of 40 questions. Central to these concerns were four alleged items of Adventist theology: (1) the atonement was not completed at the cross; (2) salvation is the result of grace plus the works of the law; (3) Jesus was a created being, not from all eternity; and (4) that Jesus partook of man's sinful, fallen nature at the incarnation.

The most problematic topic was the Adventist understanding of the human nature of Christ. Earlier William H. Branson, Adventist General Conference President, had written that Christ "took upon Himself sinful flesh." (By 1953 the statement had been omitted from his book.) Most Adventists prior to 1950 agreed with this statement. Froom appears to have misled evangelical leaders because he gave the impression to Martin that Adventists had always believed in the sinless human nature of Christ. Despite this shortfall, what was clear to Froom and others was that they needed to articulate Adventist beliefs in language that evangelicals could understand.

By the summer of 1956 the small group of evangelicals became convinced that Seventh-day Adventists were sufficiently orthodox to be considered Christian. Barnhouse published his conclusions in the September 1956 issue of Eternity magazine in the article, "Are Seventh-day Adventists Christians? In it, they concluded, "Seventh-day Adventists are a truly Christian group, rather than an anti-Christian cult. This greatly surprised its readers, and 6,000 canceled their subscriptions in protest!

Following this announcement, Adventists were gradually invited to participate in Billy Graham's crusades.

Conflict within Adventism

In general Adventist leaders approved of the book. However in Barnhouse's article it was stated that most Adventists believed in the sinless human nature of Christ and those who did not were part of the "lunatic fringe." M. L. Andreasen, a conservative Adventist theologian, took exception to this statement.

Further hostilities broke out between Andreasen and Froom in February 1957 after Froom published an article on the atonement in Ministry magazine. In this article Froom argued that the atonement was a "full and complete sacrifice." He furthermore asserted that "the sacrificial act on the cross [is] a complete, perfect, and final atonement for man's sins." Froom's articulation of the atonement was in stark contrast to Andreasen's beliefs. Andreasen articulated a three-phase understanding of the atonement. In the first phase Christ lived a perfect life despite having a fallen nature. During the second phase the death of Christ on the cross occurred. And finally, during the third phase (the focal point of his theology), Christ demonstrates that man can do what He did. Satan was not defeated at the cross but would be defeated by the "last generation" in its demonstration that an entire generation of people could live a sinlessly perfect life.

Questions on Doctrine inflamed the tensions over these issues because it defined the death of Jesus as a complete work of atonement and asserted that Jesus possessed a sinless human nature. It thus reflected Froom's theology while contradicting Andreasen's.

As a consequence, Andreasen embarked on a campaign against QOD. He published a series of responses to Froom in 9 papers written in 1957/1958 and in a series of booklets entitled Letters to the Churches (1959). On April 6, 1961, Andreasen's ministerial credentials were suspended by the church because of his ongoing public protests against church leadership. He died on Feb. 19, 1962. On March 1, 1962 the General Conference executive committee revoked its earlier decision.

Evangelicals Divided Over Questions on Doctrine

In 1960, Walter Martin published his own response to Questions on Doctrine, entitled The Truth About Seventh-day Adventism, which had wide circulation. The book carried with it a disclaimer that only those Adventists whose theology agreed with Questions on Doctrine were true members of the body of Christ. From June 1960 till July 1961 Adventist magazine Ministry published a long series of responses to Martin's book, which are available online. These articles were reprinted in the book Doctrinal Discussions. Other evangelicals besides Martin who argued for the acceptance of Adventism as an evangelical Christian group were Donald Barnhouse, E. Schuyler English, and Frank Mead.

Many evangelicals disagreed with Martin and Barnhouse's positive assessment of Adventism. The leaders of this view included the Calvinist evangelical writers Donald Hunter, Louis Talbot, M. R. DeHaan, Harold Lindsell, Herbert Bird, John Gerstner, Norman Douty, Russell Spittler, J. Oswald Sanders, Jan Karel Van Baalen, Anthony Hoekema, Gordon Lewis, and Irvine Robertson. Calvinist-Arminian differences were a major part in the debate (Adventism is Arminian), but Martin did not regard Calvinism as a test of orthodoxy. In 1962 Norman Douty published Another Look at Seventh-day Adventism and Herbert Bird, Theology of Seventh-day Adventism, both of which argued that Adventists were still a cult. Anthony Hoekema grouped Adventism together with Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Science in his 1963 publication The Four Major Cults. In this book Hoekema praises Adventists for moving away from Arianism, but argues that Questions on Doctrine failed to truly repudiate the doctrine of Christ's sinful nature, and similarly failed to remove ambiguities and inconsistencies regarding the atonement.

However over time, most came to agree with Martin's view, since 1971 with the publication of Froom's book Movement of Destiny.

Legacy

Questions on Doctrine has proven to be the single most divisive event for Adventists in the latter half of the twentieth century. Church historian George R. Knight has written that "Official Adventism may have gained recognition as being Christian from the evangelical world, but in the process a breach had been opened which has not healed in the last 50 years and may never heal." Conservative Herbert Douglass agreed, "most, if not all, of the so-called 'dissident' or 'independent' groups of the last 45 years are direct results of the explicit and implicit positions espoused by [Questions on Doctrine] on the atonement and the Incarnation.

According to Jon Paulien, Adventist beliefs have been "developing and fragmenting" throughout the history of the church. While this "became public knowledge" with the controversy around the book, it has been apparent since early diversity in the church newsmagazine (now the Adventist Review) and at the 1919 Bible Conference.

Around 138,000 to 147,000 copies of QOD were circulated, but the book was so controversial that attempts to reprint it were blocked after 1963. Throughout the following decades, the two Adventist camps—those who supported and opposed QOD respectively—continued a bitter struggle which was exacerbated by "the ambiguous stance taken by General Conference leadership on Questions on Doctrine" under Robert Pierson and successive presidents. According to Julius Nam, the mainstream majority came to see Adventism as part of "the larger flow of biblical Christianity and to regard themselves as evangelical" while the traditionalist heirs of Andreasen viewed these developments as "the beginning of the end-time apostasy".

Meanwhile, evangelicals were concerned that the withdrawal of QOD signified a doctrinal retreat by Adventists and called for the book to be reprinted. In an interview around 1986 with Adventist Currents, Martin himself said

"If the Seventh-day Adventist [Church] will not back up its answers with actions and put Questions on Doctrine back in print... then they're in real trouble that I can't help them out of; and nobody else can either

QOD was not republished until Andrews University Press independently chose to reprint the book in 2003 as part of their " Adventist Classic Library" series. This new edition contained annotations and a historical introduction by George R. Knight. The text of the original book had also been available online for several years prior to this republishing, through a private website.

"It's a very positive and aggressive statement of Adventist beliefs", according to George Knight. "This book played an important role in the history of the Adventist Church", according to Gerhard Pfandl. Questions on Doctrine generated a vocal minority theological movement which backs the theology of Andreasen and opposes the teaching set forward in the book. These "historic Adventists" perceive Questions on Doctrine as representing a major departure from traditional Adventist teaching, and believe that its publication has been harmful to the church. Other Adventists feel that Questions on Doctrine represents a courageous and insightful restatement of Adventist theology, while acknowledging that the book is not free from fault. For instance, it is clear that the authors pushed the facts too far with regard to Adventism's historic understanding of the Trinity, and present data about the human nature of Christ in a way that presents a false impression.

Evangelical Kenneth Samples has described four unique perspectives of Walter Martin given by Adventist friends of Samples. A more evangelical Adventist told him, "I really like Walter Martin. He stood up for us." A more liberal Adventist said, "Who's Walter Martin that he should ever question our orthodoxy?!" A more fundamentalist Adventist said, "Walter Martin poisoned our church." A cultural Adventist friend said, "Who's Walter Martin?"!

Walter Martin considered his impact on evangelical's perception of Adventism one of the highlights of his career.

50th anniversary conference

A scholarly conference marking the 50th anniversary of the book's publication was held from October 24–27, 2007 at Andrews University in Michigan. It was precipitated by Julius Nam's 2005 doctoral dissertation on the book. Scholars, church leaders and pastors from widely varying positions on the Adventist theological spectrum gathered with non-Adventist evangelical scholars interested in Questions on Doctrine for dialogue. Prior to the event, General Conference administrators including incumbent president Jan Paulsen had voiced reservations and even outright opposition to the conference, fearing that it might reignite a firestorm of controversy within the denomination. In spite of this, the conference was hailed as a success by participants from all sides, and was felt to have promoted "healing".

The organizers of the conference were Julius Nam, Michael Campbell and Jerry Moon, Adventist scholars specializing in Adventist history. Three institutions co-sponsored the event: Andrews University, Loma Linda University and Oakwood College. The keynote speakers were conservative theologian Herbert Douglass, Adventist historian George Knight, and Biblical Research Institute director Ángel Rodríguez. "Mainstream" presenters included Roy Adams, Arthur Patrick, Jon Paulien, Richard Rice, A. Leroy Moore and Woodrow Whidden. The "conservative" position was represented by Larry Kirkpatrick, Colin and Russell Standish as well as Douglass. In addition there were contributions from non-Adventist scholars Kenneth Samples and Donald Dayton.

Online materials from the conference include entries on the Spectrum Blog and commentaries available on the Adventist Today website. A report by Rick Ferret was published in the Record. Julius Nam's paper is available on his website. Various presentations are currently available on an independent website, and all conference papers are available on the official QOD conference site along with podcasts of the speeches.