TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) CUPRINS CUPRINS ................................................................................ 1 SDA SPIRITUALITY AND BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION Zoltn Szalos-Farkas ................................................................................. 2 PAUL DE TARSE: QUELQUES LMENTS EXGTIQUES ET HISTORIQUES DE BIOGRAPHIE Gabriel Golea ........................................................................................... 40 CUCERIREA CANAANULUI N TENSIUNEA DINTRE DEPOSEDARE I ANIHILARE Barna Magyarosi ...................................................................................... 45 REGISTRELE CERULUI: UN STUDIU EXHAUSTIV AL DOCUMENTELOR CARE SE AFL N CER. Laureniu Mo .......................................................................................... 57 ARHITECTURA CMPURILOR SEMANTICE DIN IOV 28 I IMPORTANA ACESTEIA N TRADUCEREA LUI IOV 28:28 Laureniu Gabriel Ionescu ...................................................................... 78 TheoRhma 4.2 (2009): 2-39 SDA1 SPIRITUALITY AND BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION Lect. univ. dr. Zoltn Szalos-Farkas Institutul Teologic Adventist, Cernica, Romnia Abstract What is argued for in this article is that The Millerite Great Disappointment was not caused by extrinsic factors, economic, social or political, pertaining to life in nineteenth-century United States of America. Rather, it was the result of the Millerite historicist biblical hermeneutic. It is also argued that it was historicism that solved the puzzle of The Great Disappointment thus engendering the spirituality of Seventh-day Adventists. This was a historicism that Sabbatarian Adventists came to enrich by vertical typological exegesis and The Great Controversy Theme. Not only did historicist biblical hermeneutic help them understand and thus make sense of what had been religiously experienced on October 22, 1844, but it also helped them reach the truth of their distinctive doctrines which came to underlie their apocalyptic spirituality. This last point has not been dealt with in detail in the current article. Therefore, it will be the subject matter of a forthcoming article to be published in the next issue of Theorhema. INTRODUCTION The aim of the third article of a series of four to be published in this journal2 is to enquire into the question of whether there is some sort of mutuality between spirituality and biblical hermeneutic. How do they impact each other? The answer is looked for by investigating the rise and development of Seventh- 1 SDA stands for Seventh-day Adventist or Seventh-day Adventism. Sabbatarian/ism is another term used here to denote SDA. 2 See my first and second articles entitled, From Personal and Private to Communal and Public Spirituality (2008) 3/2:2-35 and Prophetess and Remnant Spirituality, Theorhema (2009) 4/1:2-38. SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 3 day Adventist spiritual life. Having said this, one has to admit that the factors responsible for the basic characteristics of a certain social entitys spirituality may be extremely complex and varied. This is especially true with respect to the religious life of Seventh-day Adventists. The fact is that SDA spirituality originated and matured within the extremely dynamic socio-economic and political context of nineteenth-century North America. But this does not automatically mean that its distinctive identity was determined by the American social, economic or political factors. These we call extrinsic factors. Our thesis is that Sabbatarian Adventists seem to have responded, to a great extent, to the influences of extrinsic factors on the basis of the worldview provided by their way of reading the Bible. This statement, however, is very general and, therefore, irrelevant without a thorough inquiry into the question of biblical hermeneutic applied by Seventh-day Adventists. But first let us consider a short diachronic review of biblical hermeneutic to see the background. Hermeneutical Background We start with a study of the history of biblical interpretation, leading up to the nineteenth century. From Spiritual to Literal Exegesis In order to obtain a reliable picture of the relationship between biblical hermeneutic and the spiritual life of Adventists, the current investigation reaches back to the hermeneutical theories and exegetical practices of Christian Antiquity. These hermeneutical antecedents will then be contrasted with relevant exegetical developments that occurred at the Reformation and in subsequent Protestantism. A discussion of how the hermeneutical traditions of the Reformation and of later Protestantism relate to the Millerite hermeneutical methodology will conclude this section. TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 4 Christian Antiquity and the Middle Ages Interpreters in the Middle Ages approached Scriptures with what is known as spiritual exegesis. This exegetical method had as its ancestor Origens interpretation of Scripture according to the anthropological model of Plato. Thus, as the human being was a composite of body, soul and spirit, so was the sense of the Bible.3 Hebrew (Jewish) history was the literal sense, or the body of Scripture. The soul stood for the typological or moral sense, applicable to the individual. Finally, the spirit pointed to the spiritual sense which was the foreshadowing of the new covenant in the old.4 Origens heavy allegorising exegesis5 tended to dominate the Alexandrian school of biblical interpretation, established on Philos hermeneutical tradition. In the transition from Origens three-sense exegetical formula to the four-sense biblical exegesis of western Middle Ages, Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A.D.) was the key figure. For Augustine, the major aim of any interpretative task was to grasp the spiritual sense of Scriptures,6 so much so that whenever a phrase allowed a literal interpretation, it was to be expected to refer to spiritual truths to enhance the purity of life or soundness of doctrine.7 3 Origen, On First Principles, IV, 2.4, (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1936). 4 Sandra M. Schneiders, Scripture and Spirituality, in McGinn and Meyendorff, eds., Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth Century, [henceforth: Christian Spirituality, vol.1], (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 12. 5 Origens term for his Platonist-Philonic allegorical exegesis is spiritual explanation; see On First Principles, IV, 2.6. 6 Schneiders, Scripture and Spirituality, in Christian Spirituality, vol. 1, p. 14. 7 Augustine, On Christian Doctrine, III.10.14, in Robert Hutchins, ed., Great Books of the Western World (London: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952). Exegesis, for Augustine, was to be governed by regula fidei, i.e., the doctrines of the Catholic faith; see III. 10.15. SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 5 In order to identify the spiritual sense, Augustine epitomised his exegetical method in one general principle. He stated that Scripture enjoins nothing except charity, and condemns nothing except lust, and in that way fashions the lives of men.8 But, to charity, in Augustines opinion, different exegetes could attain through the multiplicity of senses a particular word in the Scriptures may have. Thus the western Middle Ages testify to the development of an essentially Origenist-Augustinian biblical interpretation, looking for four senses of a word or passage in the Scriptures. This exegetical method underlay mainly medieval monastic spirituality.9 Thus, besides the literal sense there were the allegorical, tropological, and anagogical senses. These three were basically the spiritual senses, often referred to as deeper, mostly veiled or secret. It was the grasp of these three, that is, the doctrinal, the moral and the eschatological senses that nurtured the spiritual life of the interpreter-reader. Medieval spiritual exegesis, in order to lead to the apprehension of the mystical depths of meaning in the text, presupposed divine illumination, besides the scholarly work of the exegete. The Reformation and Beyond The radical shift from spiritual to literal exegesis came with the sixteenth-century Reformation. The Reformers exegesis relied 8 Ibid., III. 10.15. For Augustine, the Scriptures contained mainly spiritual language, whereby ones charity was nurtured in the form of the affection of the mind which aims at the enjoyment of God, and the enjoyment of ones self and ones neighbour. When charity, as love and sound doctrine, is not referred to in a biblical phrase, then, in Augustines view, that phrase is to be interpreted figuratively. See III.10.14; and III. 10.16. 9 For a study of the relationship between medieval biblical hermeneutic and spirituality, see McGrath, Christian Spirituality: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1999), pp. 82-84; and Schneiders, Scripture and Spirituality, in McGinn and Meyendorff, eds., Christian Spirituality, vol. 1, pp. 14-19. TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 6 on a crucial interpretative principle, which did away with earlier hermeneutical traditions. The principle was first defined and applied by Martin Luther. Exegetes should take the pains, wrote Luther, to have one definite and simple understanding of Scripture.10 The stress on one definite sense, rather than four senses, of Scriptures moved the post-Reformation exegetes interests away from the spiritual, deep, secret, mystical or hidden meaning of Scriptures. The new interpretative centre became the literal, rather than the allegorical, sense of biblical texts. Luther made it clear that the Christian reader should make it his first task to seek out the literal sense because allegory was too often uncertain unreliable and by no means safe for supporting faith.11 This was a move that led to a hermeneutical revolution to impact spirituality for centuries to come. Reformation biblical hermeneutic lay the foundations of the grammatical-historical method of biblical interpretation. This is interested in the investigation of The import of each word, and phrase, and passage in a manner perfectly accordant with the laws of language, and with the actual [historical] circumstances of the writer.12 More than anything else, the Reformers literal exegesis implied the fundamental presupposition of Reformation hermeneutic: sola Scriptura. This underlay the Reformers two fundamental hermeneutical principles: Scriptura est sui ipsius interpres and claritas 10 Luthers Works, vol. 8, p. 209,.Jaroslav Pelikan, ed., (Saint Louise: Concordia Publishing House, 1966), (henceforth: LW, vols. 8, 9, etc.). 11 Ibid., vol. 9, p. 24, Jaroslav Pelikan, ed., (Saint Louise: Concordia Publishing House, 1960). 12 Patrick Fairbairn, Hermeneutical Manual: Or, Introduction to the Exegetical Study of the Scriptures of the New Testament (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1857), [henceforth: Hermeneutical Manual], p. 67; see also pp. 68-69, where Fairbairn comments on the hermeneutical renewal of Luther, Melanchthon and Calvin. SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 7 Sacrae Scripturae. The survey of the historical development of the Reformation literal exegetical tradition begs the question of whether literal exegesis could be applied to prophetic texts, especially apocalyptic Scriptures. This leads us to the crux of the matter under discussion in this section. Namely, how did the Reformation hermeneutical tradition contribute to the formation of what is known as the historicist method of prophetic interpretation. Development13 and Definition of Historicism The historicist hermeneutic of apocalyptic prophecies had established itself as an interpretative tradition among Anglo-American Protestant exegetes from the early seventeenth century to the first half of the nineteenth century.14 Developments in historicism in this period, leading up to the time of William Millers private biblical research (1816-1831), highlight the noteworthy contributions of a number of Protestant exegetes belonging to this era. A study of Joseph Medes (1586-1638) Clavis Apocalyptica15 quickly convinces one that Mede was rightly considered to have 13 LeRoy Edwin Froom, a Seventh-day Adventist scholar, has produced a monumental, four-volume, research which traces historicism from Millers time back to the exegetes of Christian Antiquity. See Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers: The Historical Development of Prophetic Interpretation, vols. 1-4, (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1950-1954), [henceforth: Prophetic Faith]. 14 Kai Arasola has conducted an extensive study of the historicist school of prophetic exegesis, with an express focus on William Miller as the last Protestant representative of the tradition. Arasola has argued in his doctoral work that historicism had flourished in Protestantism from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century, when it came to its end with the demise of the Millerite Movement. See Arasola, The End of Historicism: Millerite Hermeneutic of Time Prophecies in the Old Testament (Sigtuna: Datem Publishing, 1990), [henceforth The End of Historicism], especially p. 24. 15 Medes Key of the Revelation was published in the nineteenth century under the TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 8 caused a Copernican revolution in the interpretation of prophecy.16 The methodology of prophetic interpretation he established became referential, and still dominated apocalyptic hermeneutic in the nineteenth century. Medes method rests on a fundamental assumption: that the prophecies of the book of Revelation, and of Daniel for that matter, predict sequences of events to unfold and be fulfilled during very extended periods of historical time. In fact, the Apocalypse, in his view, unfolds the historical sweep, over many centuries, of the Christian Era, from the time of the biblical author to the Second Coming. Thus, the two pivotal elements in his hermeneutic are the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem of the series and orders of events17 predicted in the Revelation. The former is the time from which predictions must be calculated, and this is the authors time. The latter indicates the climax of history, the glorious advent which is the ultimate boundary of the Apocalyptic course.18 The key to his calculations needs special mention. The way Mede interpreted references to time in the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation constitutes another fundamental element of the historicist hermeneutic of apocalyptic prophecies. This element is known as the year-day hermeneutical principle.19 Thus, Mede first title R. Bransby Cooper, trans., A Translation of Medes Clavis Apocalyptica (London: Gilbert & Rivington, 1833). This work has been used in this study, and it will be referenced as Medes Clavis Apocalyptica. 16 Arasola, The End of Historicism, p. 33. On the significance of prophetic interpretation within English Puritanism and hence in Protestant orthodoxy, see , Ball, W. B., The English Connection: The Puritan Roots of Seventh-day Adventist Belief [henceforth: The English Connection], (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1981, pp. 193-212. 17 Medes Clavis Apocalyptica, p. 66. 18 Ibid. 19 The exegetical rule of a symbolic day standing for a literal year did not originate SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 9 interpreted the phrase time, times, and half a time (Dan 7:25; 12:7, Rev 12:14), to mean three and a half years,20 which further transformed into days led him to 1,260 days.21 Then the 42 months (Rev 11:2; 13:5), of 30 days each, he also equalled with 1,260 days (Rev 11:3; 12:6).22 Finally, Mede interpreted a day to be a symbolic expression standing for a literal year. Thus, the aforementioned three different apocalyptic time-prophecies denoted, according to Mede,23 the period of domination of the Antichrist for 1,260 years, from the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 A.D. to 1736. Medes historicist hermeneutic was further refined and augmented with new features by British apocalyptic interpreters of the later seventeenth century to the time of William Miller. These hermeneutical developments influenced Miller, and through him the Sabbatarian Adventist apocalyptic exegesis. Added developments, in the meantime, resulted from the works of such contributors as Isaac Newton (1642-1727),24 Thomas Newton (1704-1782),25 John Gill (1697-1771)26 and George Stanley Faber with Mede. The principle was first upheld and applied in Christian apocalypticism by Joachim of Fiore (c. 1135-1202). 20 His calculation is simple: time denoted a year; times equalled two years, while half a time stood for half a year, which signified a total of a year, two years, and a half. Mede counted 360 days a year and 30 days a month. Medes Clavis Apocalyptica, p. 298. 21 Ibid., p. 2. 22 Ibid., p. 3. 23 The terminus a quo, 476 A.D., and the terminus ad quem, 1736, are specified in Medes letter to Archbishop Ussher, May 22, 1628, in Medes The Works of the Pious and Profoundly Learned Joseph Mede, vol., 2, p. 896, cited in Arasola, The End of Historicism, p. 35. 24 Besides being a well-known scientist, Sir Isaac Newton is known for his keen interest in interpreting biblical prophecy. See Ball, The English Connection, p. 194. 25 Bishop of Bristol, Thomas Newton was also dean of St. Pauls in London. His seminal work is Dissertations on the Prophecies, Which Have Remarkably Been Fulfilled, TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 10 (1773-1854).27 Kai Arasola has produced a cogent study of their contributions to the method, which has been used here to identify new elements. Such added elements to round up historicism were as follows. The book of Daniel was to be regarded as the key to all other prophecy.28 In consequence, the 2,300-day prophecy of Daniel 8:14 equalled 2,300 years, and as such was not to be applied to Antiochus Epiphanes.29 Beyond the books of Daniel and Revelation, the whole Bible came to be viewed as a harmonious chain of prophecy on the two advents of Christ.30 Both Isaac Newton and Thomas Newton believed in, and practised, what they viewed as scientific exegesis, underlain by precise mathematics. Such an exegesis was able to unfold the harmonious chain of prophecy and thus outline the history of the world, which would not exceed 6,000 years from the Creation to the parousia.31 and at This Time Are Fulfilling in the World (Edinburgh: Morison and Son, 1743), [henceforth: Dissertations on the Prophecies]. 26 Gill was a Baptist scholar, known for his familiarity with Hebrew and Rabbinic literature and biblical commentaries. See Arasola, The End of Historicism, p. 40. 27 As one of Millers contemporaries, Faber was the most voluminous religious writer of his generation, dealing with prophetic interpretation. See Froom, Prophetic Faith, vol. 3, p. 339. 28 This is Isaac Newtons thesis, in Arasola, The End of Historicism, p. 36. 29 Unlike Mede, who applied Daniel 8:14 to Antiochus Epiphanes, Isaac Newton interpreted it as a long period of 2,300 years based on the year-day principle. See Arasola, Ibid., p. 37. 30 For the identification of the harmonious chain of prophecy throughout the Bible, the books of Daniel and Revelation held the keys, in Thomas Newtons view, according to Arasola, see Ibid., p. 38. 31 Ibid., pp. 35, 38-39. Mede also spoke of 6,000 years as the total sweep of world history. See, Ibid., p. 34. SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 11 Definition of Historicism Having surveyed the development of the historicist school of prophetic exegesis, a core definition of the method is now possible. The main premises and characteristics of the method are the following. First, the apocalyptic books of Daniel and the Revelation contain prophecies, the fulfilment of which span and outline human history from the biblical authors time to the End of the world. Second, the chronological decoding of apocalyptic time-prophecies leads the exegete to the literal sense of such Scriptures, that is, literal historical periods, events, persons and institutions. Third, human history is divinely foreseen and its periods are, therefore, outlined and thus controlled by God. Fourth, the literal sense of apocalyptic prophecies was not intended primarily to address the biblical authors contemporary readership. Rather, the meaning of apocalyptic prophecies regarded first and foremost a later, in some cases End-Time, audience. Fifth, the year-day rule is the cornerstone of historicism. It is the key to establishing the exact duration of extended prophetic time periods. Sixth, non-temporal apocalyptic symbols and types were also to be interpreted to refer to historical realities, events and personal entities. Seventh, historicism identified the Papacy as the Antichrist.32 Eighth, At the foundation of the method, its distinguishing feature was the creation of a coherent system of interdependent synchronizations between prophecies. The method included a desire to place every prophecy into an elaborate 32 Besides the Papacy, historicism saw Islam as an eastern antichrist. See, for instance, Medes interpretation of the fifth and sixth trumpets (Rev 9:1-21) as being Mohammedism or Islamism and the Ottoman empire, in Medes Clavis Apocalyptica, pp. 173 ff.; cf. Fabers reference to the Papacy and Islam as the western and eastern antichrist; see Arasola Ibid., p. 41. TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 12 millennial timetable.33 Ninth, historicism could, at times, extend chronological exegesis beyond the strictly apocalyptic texts in the Bible. The reason for this was the view that non-apocalyptic Scriptures could provide the key for interpreting certain apocalyptic terms and passages. Conversely, the books of Daniel and Revelation were the key for dating the whole span of human history to 6,000 years. In sum, the historicist method delineated above was built upon the hermeneutical presupposition and principles of the Reformation literal exegesis: Sola Scriptura, The Scripture is its own interpreter and Perspicuity of the Scriptures. And this was also the historicism William Miller inherited and applied in his interpretation of the Bible. Immediate Background In this section, it is intended to survey the hermeneutical tradition which bore directly upon the shaping of Seventh-day Adventism religious life. This was the Millerite way of reading the Bible, especially the prophecies. Millerite Historicism Once this matter is made clear, the Sabbatarian method of exegesis and historicism will be easier to assess and describe. The current investigation will, therefore, enquire into the question of the crucial features of Millerite historicist hermeneutic. This is necessary because these features played a decisive role in bringing about Millerite spirituality. However, Millerite historicism and spirituality are only the concern of the present study inasmuch as they are related to the main issue under discussion. That is, to see how Sabbatarian biblical hermeneutic and historicism bore upon 33 Arasola, Ibid., p. 29. SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 13 the mode in which Seventh-day Adventists came to make sense of their religious experience and thus live out their faith in the context of nineteenth and early twentieth century America. Millers Hermeneutic William Miller (1782-1849) was a Baptist lay person (from Low Hampton, New York State). He turned to Deism before becoming an apocalyptic revivalist. Millers re-affiliation34 with his Christian tradition, but most importantly, his turning to apocalyptic revivalism was occasioned by a fifteen-year (1816-1831), private search of the Bible.35 The numerous sources give a reasonably detailed account of the development, during this period, of his hermeneutical method. This allows one to state that Miller became a self-trained lay exegete, with a considerable degree of rigour and consistency in his biblical interpretation. As such, he launched his lectures on apocalyptic prophecies in 1831, which resulted, by the late 1830s, in the Second Advent Movement, with a corresponding 34 Miller had been a Deist from about 1804 to 1816, and was an avid reader of Voltaire, Hume, Paine, and Ethan Allen; see William Miller, Wm. Millers Apology and Defence (Boston: Published by J. V. Himes, 1845), [henceforth: Apology and Defence], pp. 3-5. On his reliance on Scottish Common-Sense realism in his methodology of biblical interpretation, see Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart, Seeking a Sanctuary: Seventh-day Adventism and the American Dream (New York: Harper & Row, 1989), [henceforth: Seeking a Sanctuary], pp. 23-24. 35 Autobiographical and biographical sources have fairly detailed accounts of his early years, his military career in the 1812 War with Britain, and subsequent abandonment of Deism and turning to Christianity, as well as his role in the Second Advent revival of 1831-1844. See Miller, Ibid; also Joshua Himes, Memoir of William Miller, in Himes, Views of the Prophecies and Prophetic Chronology, Selected From Manuscripts of William Miller With a Memoir of His Life (Boston: J. V. Himes, 1845). The most comprehensive biographical work on Miller written by Sylvester Bliss, one of his principal ministerial associates in the revival, has not been available for this research. TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 14 form of apocalyptic piety and devotion.36 The hermeneutics underlying this form of spirituality needs, therefore, scrutiny in order to identify its precise relation to the spiritual life of the community it engendered. The survey of Millers fourteen exegetical rules has highlighted three very important points regarding his manner of studying the Bible.37 First, it has made it clear that Miller formulated all his exegetical rules within the framework of the earlier- mentioned Reformation literalism, with its two foundational hermeneutical principles and presupposition. Second, his exegetical method was employed to interpret what, for Miller, seems to have been of unequalled importance for human beings to understand. This was biblical prophecy, especially apocalyptic. Third, proof-text exegesis served Miller to identify sufficient scriptural evidence to support his rules of biblical interpretation, especially of apocalyptic prophecies. As such, his exegetical method was the result of an inductive mode of reasoning. This, in turn, lay at the root of Millers historicism. What this historicism meant for him and how it shaped his spirituality is best expressed by what I call: Teleological View of History From his various expositions of apocalyptic and non-apocalyptic texts it becomes clear that Miller was deeply concerned with what he perceived as time-related biblical passages. The way he interpreted them allows one to conclude that Miller perceived human history in teleological terms. That is, history marched towards its telos. This was a divinely ordained goal whose precise 36 For an overview of the essential features of Millerite spirituality, see Szalos-Farkas Zoltan, The Rise and Development of SDA Spirituality: The Impact of the Charismatic Guidance of Ellen G. White (Cernica: Editura ITA, 2005), [henceforth: The Rise and Development], pp. 115-119. 37 Miller, Apology and Defence, p. 6. SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 15 identity lay revealed in Scriptures and, consequently, calculable. Chronological exegesis, therefore, was to seek for the goal of history, which Miller found to be the Second Coming to mark the End of human history.38 A major interest for him represented the time-prophecies of the book of Daniel and the Apocalypse. But he also could find chronological predictions in the Pentateuch and other non-apocalyptic books of the Bible. Miller, thus, found fifteen different ways39 to prove that the End as Second Coming was the purpose of human history and that its time could be calculated. The point that is extremely obvious from the analysis of these fifteen proofs is that they indicate the year 1843 to be the year of the parousia. Everything else that takes place in human history is judged from the vantage point of the End. Thus, the chronological interpretations identify important years and periods, with their respective events, that took place within history, leading to the year of the End to occur in 1843. These years that feature as crucial moments in the divinely outlined human history are 508 A.D., 538 A.D., 1798 and 1840. The crucial importance of the first three dates resided, for Miller, in their marking either the beginning or the end of the western, persecuting power of the papal Rome. The year 1840 also indicates the demise of the eastern religio-political power, the Turkish Ottoman Empire. These religious and political entities, historical events and dates also feature in the traditional Protestant interpretations, as noted in my doctoral thesis.40 All that is new here is Millers chronological exegesis that lay at the foundation of his 38 Miller, Apology and Defence, pp. 11-13; and Miller, Time Proved in Fifteen Different Ways, an original document entirely reproduced in Appendix V of Arasolas, The End of Historicism, pp. 222-25. 39 Miller, Time Proved in Fifteen Different Ways, in Ibid., p. 222. 40 See footnote no. 38 in my The Rise and Development, p. 102. TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 16 teleological perspective of history, which lent such tremendous importance to the doctrine of the End as Second Coming. The fact that besides the books of Daniel and Revelation, the Pentateuch, the major and minor prophets, the epistolary literature of the NT, as well as the gospels contained time-prophecies 41 for Miller, leads to the following conclusion. Such an approach to the Scriptures is indicative of the crucial role and implications of Millers historicist hermeneutic would have for the spirituality of the Movement engendered by it. This was a role whose magnitude must be judged from the unprecedented social scale of the hope for Gods promised future to be installed by Christ at his imminent return. In other words, his chronological exegesis resulted in a spirituality of hope. And also, the force of this sort of biblical exegesis is to be appreciated from the massive interest in the apocalyptic prophecies outlining the sequential order of history until the End. How could historicism be so effective? Partially, the answer is to be found in Millers and the Millerites revivalist techniques. The enquiry into these techniques has led to the following crucial discovery which may explain the public appeal of their spirituality. The Public Nature of Exegesis It is of tremendous significance to note that Millers exegetical practice was not restricted to the workshop phase. Worded differently, exegesis extended beyond Millers private study room. One specific dimension, then, of the Millerite revival tends to be often overlooked by scholars. Namely, that Miller did not consider 41 Such time-prophecies to prove that the End will occur in 1843, were: Exod. 31:13-17; Lev. 25:8-13; Deut. 15:1-2; Jer. 34: 14; Hosea 6:1-3; Luke 13:32; Heb. 4:9-11; however, most of Millers chronological exegesis targeted time-prophecies from the apocalyptic books of Daniel and Revelation. See Miller, Apology and Defence, pp. 222-23. SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 17 exegesis as a private practice of ones private spirituality. Following in his footsteps, the Millerites, and later the Sabbatarians, viewed historicist exegesis as a public spiritual exercise. It had to serve the public. This public dimension of exegesis, however, was not merely the message it engendered. Rather, the Millerite exegesis behind the Millerite message dominated the pulpit phase of his revival. Millerite revivalist preaching was, therefore, also a lay instruction in exegesis and historicist hermeneutic. Thus, message and hermeneutical method cannot be separated in Millerism. Being inherently interwoven, both came to expression during the Millerite public lectures. Consequently, both appealed to the public. This fact must have its weight when one studies the relationship between spirituality and biblical hermeneutic when it comes to either Millerism or Seventh-day Adventism. The tremendous import of the Millerite chronological exegesis comes to the fore in its potential to translate biblical time-prophecies, apocalyptic and otherwise, into the most effective spiritual nourishment. We need, at this stage, to remind ourselves of the definition of spirituality used in our study. Spirituality is the longing of the human spirit for God. It is search for God. Millers exegetical practice fulfilled this desire in that it brought into perspective the imminent encounter with God in the person of Christ at his Second Coming. This is how historicist exegetical practice nourished, sustained and shaped a form of spirituality that was the antecedent of: Sabbatarian Historicism and Spirituality One would have expected Millerite exegesis to be brought into utter disrepute by the October 1844 Great Disappointment since this was caused, in a way, by the failure of the historicist method. But this did not take place. At least it did not fall into disrepute TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 18 within certain circles of Shut-Door Adventists, such as the Sabbatarians.42 Therefore, Ellen White could state, in 1884, that Those who are engaged in proclaiming the third angels message [Rev. 14:9-12], that is, the Seventh-day Adventists, are searching the Scriptures upon the same [hermeneutical] plan that Father Miller adopted.43 As will become clear below, White had her share and assumption of responsibility for the Millerite historicisms survival after 1844. The reasons for the survival of the historicist hermeneutic are varied and complex. One reason, however, stands out. This is the indispensability of the method for a particular form of the Christian spiritual life. It needs mention that the great bulk of the disappointed Millerites had abandoned key aspects of their historicism after The Great Disappointment. They had been gradually assimilated into the mainstream of American Protestantism. But those who were not willing to renounce their teleological view of history continued to make sense of their religious experience. This is to say that they continued to search for explanations of The Great Disappointment by the use of historicist 42 The thesis Arasola argues in his doctoral dissertation is that the historicist method did come to an end within Protestantism at large with the demise of Millers Movement after October 1844. He seems to maintain his thesis in spite of the fact that Seventh-day Adventism, as a denomination of Millerite origin, still relies heavily on the historicist hermeneutic of biblical prophecy. His thesis, logically, raises the question of whether Adventism can be considered Protestant. The present dissertation has found sufficient evidence to uphold the thesis that Adventism belongs to the Protestant tradition precisely on account of the fact that historicism did not come to an end with the demise of Millerism. For the conclusions reached here with regard to the spiritual identity of Seventh-day Adventism, considering also the developments beyond 1915, see my The Rise and Development, pp. 267-301. For Arasolas thesis, see The End of Historicism, pp. 1-2. 43 White, Notes of Travel, Review and Herald, November 25, 1884, p. 738; cf. Damsteegt, (1993), Ellen White on Theology: Its Methods, and the Use of Scripture, Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 4/2:115-36. SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 19 exegesis. It is reasonable to say that historicism established itself as the interpretative means for making sense of religious experience. And by making sense, it became relevant to the Millerites particular circumstance of extreme anguish and disillusionment. Historicism eased their spiritual crisis by the responses it offered. How these responses shaped their spiritual life makes the survey of Sabbatarian biblical hermeneutic a necessity. White and her associates, mostly lay exegetes, were the ones to take over Millerite historicism. They also developed it into a specific hermeneutical system with two major dimensions, not present in Millerism. These were vertical typology and The Great Controversy Theme. Vertical Typology A definition of vertical typology will be given having in view of two things pertaining to the Sabbatarian context. First, the Seventh-day Adventist understanding of vertical typology is only definable in relation to its Millerite horizontal counterpart. Second, Sabbatarian Adventists defined vertical typology from the book of Hebrews. Thus the book of Hebrews rendered the Levitical sanctuary structures and sanctuary services, along with the Mosaic religious festivals, highly meaningful for the Seventh-day Adventist spiritual life. In fact, the exegesis of vertical types became the nub of Adventist historicism. This had become well established by the time of the official organisation of the church in 1863, and provided the lifeblood of their religion, devotion and piety ever since. As evidenced in my doctoral research, in Millerite terms, horizontal typology, applied to apocalyptic prophecies, outlined a continuous historical sweep until the End as Second Coming. Of outstanding importance was the historical sweep delineated by the Levitical spring and autumn festivals. These brought into focus the First and the Second Coming of Christ. Structured between the two Comings were the respective historical periods and events that were predicted by Daniel and the apostle John. Vertical typology, on the TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 20 other hand, emerged in Sabbatarianism as a hermeneutical device to complement horizontal typological exegesis. What this complementation meant will be presented below. A final remark is necessary before giving a definition of vertical types. Vertical typology occupied the centre stage of Sabbatarian exegesis throughout the period under investigation in my research project, that is, 1844-1915. Initially, vertical typology assisted Sabbatarians in their accounting for The Great Disappointment. Soon after, it assumed an additional, crucial role and function. Vertical typology became the exegetical basis of their distinctive articles of faith known as the Present Truth. This features in the next and final article of the series. Definition of Vertical Types Sabbatarians identified, in the OT Scriptures, cultic structures, rituals and personnel as pointers to an earth-to-heaven directionality. Expressed differently, vertical types prefigured, and also reached their fulfilment in antitypical facts and realities located in heaven.44 These facts and realities were heavenly persons, structures and events. 44 The form of typological exegesis in general and vertical typology in particular, that had been practised from the Reformation to the mid-eighteenth century, came under the criticism of, and was rejected by, J. D. Michaelis and S. S. Semler. This form of exegesis was revived in the first half of the nineteenth century just to decline again by the end of that century. In nineteenth-century Lutheranism, Franz Delitzsch (1813-1890) was one to uphold vertical typology. See Rad, Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament, in Claus Westermann, ed., Essays on Old Testament Interpretation (London: SCM Press, 1960), pp. 22-23. Rad, along with other representatives of critical scholarship, has rejected vertical typology, on the grounds of its being a sort of mythological-speculative typology almost entirely foreign to ancient Israel (p.19). He also dismissed Delitzsch for working with vertical typology that was untenable because of its underlying philosophy of history; see Arasolas quoting Rad in footnote entry no. 53, The End of Historicism, p. 163. Recent Adventist scholarship has argued against SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 21 Sabbatarian Hermeneutical Synthesis James White, Uriah Smith (1832-1903) and John Nevins Andrews (1829-1883) scriptural expositions are to be seen as the synthesis of the Sabbatarian historicist hermeneutic.45 However, Ellen Whites contribution led to its final shape. The whole process of hermeneutical synthesis took place in a highly polemical context, and had been completed by 1863. The Sabbatarian Adventist interpreters polemics with two other ex-Millerite groupings engendered a considerable number of articles. These were published in the main organs of the three respective Adventist groupings. The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald46 was the Sabbatarian representative periodical. The other two non-Sabbatarian publications were the Advent Herald and the Worlds Crisis. Both displayed a certain degree of departure from the the modern idea that vertical typology in the book of Hebrews is an expression of the Platonic-Philonic dualism of the eternal and material worlds. Vertical typology, according to Adventist studies, instead of being Hellenistic, or a foreign vestige of mythic cosmic analogy, must be seen as an integral part of Israels understanding of the relationship between earthly and heavenly sanctuaries within the unfolding linear-historical plan of God. See Richard M. Davidson, Typology in the Book of Hebrews, in Frank B. Holbrook, ed., Issues in the Book of Hebrews (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Research Institute, 1989), p. 148. 45 The present author has drawn heavily on Damsteegts historical survey of the formation of the Sabbatarian doctrine of the Sanctuary, entitled Continued Clarification (1850-1863), in Holbrook, ed., Doctrine of the Sanctuary: A Historical Survey (1845-1863) (Silver Springs, MD: Biblical Research Institute of Seventh-day Adventists, 1989), [henceforth: Doctrine of the Sanctuary], pp. 57-117. All the works of the Sabbatarian exegetes referenced in the footnotes of the present sub-section have been cited in Damsteegts above-mentioned survey. Beside the three main Sabbatarian expositors, other exegetes will also be considered in this section. 46 All references to this publication in the current dissertation use its shortened title: Review and Herald. For a detailed discussion on the importance and history of Sabbatarianisms main organ, see my The Rise and Development, pp. 183-85, 190-97. TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 22 Millerite historicist hermeneutic. However, the interest here is the Sabbatarian position that can be summed up in a number of points as follows. First, the basic elements of the historicist hermeneutic of earlier traditions, those presented above, constituted the foundation for the Sabbatarian exegetes. Specifically, the view that the apocalyptic prophecies delineated a continuous sequence of historical periods and events spanning from the time of the biblical author to the Second Coming was strongly upheld. The year-day exegetical principle proved to have been the yard stick for their chronological calculations based on the apocalyptic time-prophecies.47 In the Sabbatarian expositors opinion, to account for The Great Disappointment one needed to retain the Millerite hermeneutical tradition. Thus, especially significant were the interpretative data of the 70-week and the 2,300-day prophecies (Dan. chs. 8 and 9) furnished by the late Millerites, like Samuel Snow and George Storrs, and the early Sabbatarians, in the person of O. R. L. Crosier and Hiram Edson. Based on the Millerite tradition, the 8th and 9th chapters of the Book of Daniel, with their 47 Andrews articles on the sanctuary within the context of the 70-week and 2,300-day prophecies of Daniel 8 and 9 are convincing examples of historicist hermeneutic based on the year-day key to the chronological interpretation of these prophecies. See Andrews, Reply to Mary A. Seymour, Review and Herald, March 2, 1852; and The Sanctuary, Review and Herald, December 23, 1852. However, an exhaustive and standard work in Seventh-day Adventism, published in the late 1860s and early 1870s, of applied historicist hermeneutic is U. Smiths, The Prophecies of Daniel and the Revelation, rev. ed., (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1944), [henceforth: Daniel and the Revelation]; for his argument on the year-day principle, Smith appeals, beside the biblical proofs of Miller, to such authorities as Joachim of Fiore and Sir Isaac Newton, see p. 144. Joseph Mede, Isaac Newton, and Thomas Newtons historicist method was also at the heart of Smiths interpretation of prophecy; see pp. 54, 121-22, 151-53, 362-63. SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 23 respective prophecies, were held to be complementary, with the initial period of 490 years being cut off48 (Dan. 9:24) from the 2,300 years. The respective termini (a quo and ad quem) were also retained. These were 457 B.C. (terminus a quo) and October 22, 1844 (ad quem).49 Second, without vertical typology, however, there was no adequate interpretation of the Great Disappointment. Vertical typology was the key to interpreting the crucial element of the 2,300-year prophecy, that is, the cleansing of the sanctuary. Thus, the earthly tabernacles of Moses, Solomon and Zerubbabel, with their services, were types of Gods sanctuary in heaven, as well as of Christs ministry therein. Andrews repudiated the idea of the Levitical sanctuary being a metaphor rather than a vertical type to denote the existence of a real (literal) antitype in heaven.50 Third, thus vertical typology became the quintessence of Sabbatarian literal exegesis. That is, the earthly, typical sanctuary pointed in detail to the architectural structure of the antitypical tabernacle in heaven. Sabbatarians, therefore, could speak of a real 48 Andrews employs earlier Millerite references to the different Hebraists rendering of the Niphal of the Hebrew root hatak, used in Daniel 9:24, with cut off, rather than determined of the English versions of the time. See Andrews, The Sanctuary, Review and Herald, December 23, 1852, pp. 122-23; cf. J. White, Sanctuary, Review and Herald, July 21, 1863, p. 60. 49 Andrews, Reply to Mary A. Seymour, Review and Herald, March 2, 1852, p. 102; also The Sanctuary, Review and Herald, December 23, 1852, pp. 122-23; and Sanctuary Question, Review and Herald, May 12, 1853, p. 204; cf. his Under the Necessity of Choosing, Review and Herald, November 8, 1853, p. 141. 50 Andrews, The Antitypical Tabernacle, Review and Herald, July 7, 1853, pp. 25-26; also Andrews, Sanctuary, Review and Herald, January 6, 1853, pp. 129-31. Cf. Smith, History of the Worldly Sanctuary, Review and Herald, August 21, 28; September 4, 11, 18, pp. 124, 132, 140-41, 148, 156, 160. The crux of their exegetical argument is that the Mosaic sanctuary was a figure, pattern or image, which they understood in typological terms as pointing to a real celestial sanctuary as the antitype. TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 24 structure in heaven, with two apartments: the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. There were two categories of sacerdotal services of the typical Aaronic priesthood, linked with the two respective holy places. The daily ministration took place throughout the year, involving the ordinary priests services in the Holy Place. The yearly ritual occurred on the Day of Atonement. It involved the high priests ministering within the Most Holy Place. These structures along with their respective priestly services, and the Aaronic priesthood itself, were also vertical typologies.51 Fourth, the typologically (exegetically) founded earth-to-heaven directionality had a significant impact upon the overall spirituality of Adventists. This impact is best understood from the manner in which vertical typology was found to explain the remission and removal of sins in the Christian Era. Levitical rituals explained for the Sabbatarians the transfer of sins from the Israelite sinner to the wilderness sanctuary. Transfer occurred through the blood rituals of the daily services. This made the cleansing of the wilderness sanctuary a necessity. The cleansing ritual on the Hebrew Day of Atonement was an act of removal, or blotting out, of sins. Both the transfer of sins and their yearly removal were vertical types, for the Seventh-day Adventist exegetes. These vertical types prefigured the antitypical transfer of sins from repentant sinners to the heavenly sanctuary through the ascended Christs priestly ministration of his own blood. Therefore, as Sabbatarians viewed it, the antitypical transfer of sins made the cleansing of the celestial tabernacle relevant and necessary. This cleansing involved Christs high priestly service on the antitypical (eschatological) Day of Atonement. Thus the Sabbatarian interpreters spoke of Christs two-phase ministration involving the two compartments of the celestial tabernacle. Starting 51 Andrews, Sanctuary, Review and Herald, February 3, 1853, pp. 145-46; also Smith, Sanctuary, Review and Herald, March 28, 1854, pp. 77-78. SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 25 in the Holy Place on his ascension, Christ continued his intercessory ministry for repentant sinners until October 1844. The second phase commenced within the Most Holy Place on October 22, 1844, and was to be continued until the Second Coming.52 Fifth, the nature of Christs second-phase ministry was both intercessory and judicial, for the Sabbatarians. They reasoned in terms of vertical typology, as follows. On the typical Day of Atonement, the Aaronic high priest wore the breastplate of judgement with the names of the Israelites written on it. Similarly, Christ, the Mediator, represented Gods people within the context of the judgement. Adventist expositors associated this judgement with the apocalyptic Son of Mans being taken before the Ancient of Days to participate in the judgement (Dan. 7:9-10, 13) during the antitypical Day of Atonement, that is, the Time of the End starting on October 22, 1844. The same judgement they associated with the apocalyptic message of the first angel: Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come (Rev. 14:7a).53 This judgement, which targeted only the house of God (1 Pet. 4:17), according to the Sabbatarian understanding, was described as an investigation, or a final review, of the lives of the children of God who will have ever lived during human history.54 The purpose of such a judgement was the cleansing of the celestial 52 Andrews, Sanctuary, Review and Herald, February 3, 1853, pp. 146-48; Smith, The Sanctuary, Review and Herald, January 9, 1855, p. 157; March 28, 1854, p. 78; Smith, Synopsis of the Present Truth, Review and Herald, February 25, 1858, p. 124; cf. J. White, Sanctuary, Review and Herald, August 25, 1863, pp. 100-101. 53 The two most important Sabbatarian expositors of the judgement theme are John. N. Loughborough (1832-1924), evangelist and writer, and J. White. See Loughborough article, The Hour of His Judgement Come, Review and Herald, February 14, 1854, especially p. 30; The Judgement, Review and Herald, November 19, 1857, pp. 9-11; Smith, The Cleansing of the Sanctuary, Review and Herald, October 2, 1855, pp. 53-54. 54 Smith, Ibid., p. 53. TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 26 tabernacle by the final removal of the sins of the repentant sinner through Christs ministration of his atoning blood. What one is here faced with is a pre-Second Coming (pre-Advent), preparatory judgement, different from the final, executive, judgement of the wicked.55 The preparatory judgement came to be articulated, in 1857, by James White, and became the doctrine of the Investigative Judgement, a correlate and integral part of the doctrine of the Sanctuary.56 Finally, the synthesis of vertical and horizontal typological exegesis was conducive towards a strong sense of denominational identity. That is, horizontal typological exegesis applied to the festal ritual of the Hebrew Day of Atonement aided the Sabbatarians to acquire their strong sense of ecclesiastical identify. Their exegesis looked at the community of the Israelites, while this was gathered around the typical sanctuary on the Day of Atonement, as being a horizontal type. Also typological was the Sabbatarian approach to the Israelites being requested to display a spirit of solemn self-examination and contrition during the Day of Atonement. The rationale for the Israelites solemnly to examine themselves on this particular day also proved important for the Sabbatarian exegetes. The rationale consisted in the Israelites knowing that the Aaronic high priests atoning cleansing targeted both the defiled sanctuary and the repentant individual. As stated above, cleansing was interpreted to mean judgement. 55 Loughborough, Is the Soul Immortal?, Review and Herald, December 11, 1855, p. 82. It was Roswell F. Cottrell (1814-1892), a Sabbatarian writer and minister, who made a distinction between the preparatory judgement, calling it judicial judgement, and the final one which he called, executive judgement. See Damsteegts footnote entry 105, in Continued Clarification (1850-1863), in Holbrook, ed., Doctrine of the Sanctuary, p. 86. 56 J. White, The Judgement, Review and Herald, January 29, 1857; see p. 100, where J. White uses the term investigative to denote the preparatory judgement to take place from October 22, 1844 to the Second Coming. SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 27 Taken as horizontal typology, Sabbatarian exegetes viewed the people of Israel, participating in the feast of the Day of Atonement, as typifying the Seventh-day Adventist community. It was this community, for the exegetes, that had been constituted to rally, in faith, around the heavenly sanctuary, while Christ would participate, as their Mediator, in the Investigative Judgement. The spiritual condition of the Sabbatarian community had become, by the mid-1850s, such as to offer justification for J. White to identify the community with the church of Laodicea (Rev. 3:14-21).57 He stated that Laodicea signifies the judging of the people ,58 and fitly represents the present state of the church, in the great day of atonement, or judgment of the house of God, while the just and holy law of God is taken as a rule of life.59 Thus, both the Levitical Day of Atonement and the apocalyptic imagery of the Laodicean church featured as types to meet their fulfilment in the horizontal realm of ecclesiastical history, from October 22, 1844 to the Second Coming. The Consequences on Spirituality of Sabbatarian Historicism At this stage, the following conclusion may be drawn. The Sabbatarian exegetes approach to the Scriptures, especially to apocalyptic prophecies, had contributed to the emergence of a fixed historicist hermeneutic by 1863. From early on until the death of Ellen White in 1915, one can find evidence of strong commitment to this hermeneutical tradition. Accordingly, Adventist expositors worked with a parallel typological scheme. Such parallelism gave priority to heaven where Adventists 57 See the discussion on Laodicea in my The Rise and Development, pp. 84-86. 58 J. White referred to a loose translation of the Greek Laodikea as either the judging of the people, or a just people. See his, The Seven Churches, Review and Herald, October 16, 1856, p. 189. 59 Ibid. TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 28 envisioned a real, literal sanctuary structure and a real (literal) sanctuary ministry therein. Thus, vertical directionality fixed ones eyes on what was predicted to take place in the supra-historical, celestial realm. Things of human history and society in general and of the antitypical Laodicea, that is, the Sabbatarian community in particular belonged to the horizontal realm. Vertical typology was thus indicative of what was to transpire in heaven. Horizontal typology, in turn, predicted the occurrence of terrestrial events along a historical continuum. Certainly, for Seventh-day Adventists, there was a mutual and reciprocal relationship between the celestial and the terrestrial realms. The very emergence of the Sabbatarian community after October 1844 was the most powerful evidence, in Adventist thinking, of such a relationship between heaven and earth. What becomes also very obvious from the above survey is that this sort of exegesis brought about a strong consciousness of Gods being in control in the parallel worlds of heaven and earth. Apocalyptic prophecies thus gained a renewed interest among Sabbatarians. Their interest was triggered by the awareness of a new dimension of the apocalyptic: the existence of parallel worlds in communication. It was a dimension that came to the fore through the decoding of what was deemed to be horizontal and vertical types in the Pentateuch and the book of Hebrews. The exegetical method that brought this awareness of the new dimension of biblical apocalyptic became the hermeneutical norm among Seventh-day Adventists. From the perspective of their spirituality, the significance of the above hermeneutical norm was enormous. In the light of our survey of data, it is quite reasonable, therefore, to say that the American socio-economic and political factors to impact upon the identity of Sabbatarian Adventist spirituality are only secondary in importance. Their hermeneutical practice proved itself to be the primary factor to make the transition from experience to understanding of what has been experienced. Thus, the study of SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 29 Sabbatarian biblical interpretation is necessary if one aims at an objective assessment of the making and shaping of the spirituality of Seventh-day Adventists. This is so because as soon as Adventists made sense of the Great Disappointment through their exegetical practice, the distinctive tenets of their faith also appeared. These epitomised the End-Time will and purposes of God. The question arises: how did Adventists pursue Gods End-Time will and purposes in their subsequent history? For a cogent answer one needs to assess the manner in which believers sought to live up to the demands of the End-Time will and purposes of God expressed in their distinctive doctrines. For this aim, the study of the hermeneutical factor has continued to be a decisive point of departure. It has helped to confirm my initial hypothesis that the socio-cultural and politico-economic factors accumulated their notable significance for their spiritual life through the application of the historicist method of prophetic interpretation. How this is to be understood warrants further discussion. Hermeneutic and Spirituality Spirituality, from a Sabbatarian perspective, came gradually to be defined as the lived experience of the distinctive beliefs of their faith community. One of such beliefs was that history had been outlined, with precision, in biblical prophecy in order that one may come to know Gods will and purposes. This belief was foundational for the spirituality of Seventh-day Adventists. And this was so because they developed the idea that Gods will and purposes were such as to fulfil the spiritual needs of people living in a certain segment of human history outlined in apocalyptic prophecy. Such an understanding featured the Time of the End, rather than the End itself, the segment of history to retain the full attention of the Sabbatarians. They believed that Gods End-Time will and purposes had become accessible through a historicist hermeneutic of biblical prophecy. They also believed that American Protestantism had lost TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 30 its interest in biblical apocalyptic. Therefore contemporary Protestants could not claim accessibility to Gods End-Time will and purposes. Furthermore, there were doctrines that later Adventism believed to have been overlooked by contemporary Protestantism, but which the world needed to know. As will be noted in the forthcoming article, these doctrines constituted the matrix of Sabbatarian spirituality. The doctrinal matrix of their spirituality was derived from biblical apocalyptic through the application of their specific historicist hermeneutic. The hermeneutical specificity itself may be viewed as responsible for the Adventists particular view of history, which, in turn, could revive the corporate desire for a face-to-face encounter with God at the parousia. Stated differently, history, in its unfolding, contained for them the portents of hope for an unmediated and literal encounter with the Divine. These portents might have been adverse economic, social, political, or even natural phenomena. These were signs of the times which retained their importance in that they could validate the correctness of their findings via the historicist interpretation of apocalyptic prophecies. But these phenomena (signs) in themselves were powerless to raise Sabbatarian interest in, and concern for, serious issues pertaining to the social, political, economic or natural (environmental) spheres. What they did succeed in doing was to gather potential for inflaming, at times, the Sabbatarians anticipation of the imminent and cataclysmic End as Second Coming. However, the initial intensity of the Sabbatarian spiritual longings and eschatological aspirations for an unmediated encounter with the Divine tended to fade with the passage of time. A new concept appeared in their theological language by the end of the nineteenth century. And this was the delay of the Second Coming. All that has been concluded above, points to one crucial characteristic of the relationship between hermeneutic and spirituality in Seventh-day Adventism. From the perspective of the prophecies of biblical apocalyptic, exegesis pointed the believers to SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 31 a continuous historical-chronological unfolding of the will and purposes of God. Thus the divine will and purposes testified to the divine control over the realms of the natural and supernatural, the historical and supra-historical, the earthly and heavenly. The same historicist exegesis whereby Sabbatarian expositors approached apocalyptic was also applied to other biblical corpuses in the Old and New Testament. As a consequence, then, of their hermeneutic, the Pentateuch and the book of Hebrews, along with the apocalyptic corpus of the Canon, became foundational to Sabbatarian spirituality. Moreover, the historicist method accounts for the placement of the celestial sanctuary at the very heart of Seventh-day Adventist spiritual life. The connection is obvious. Sabbatarian exegetes added vertical types to the Millerite historicist hermeneutic. Their new way of reading apocalyptic texts determined the heaven-ward directionality of their spirituality. In other words, it was in heaven rather than on earth that the Adventists identified the sacred space of their spirituality. This was the celestial sanctuary where the ascended Christs mediation took place. The foregoing brings one to the last aspect of the present enquiry into the development of the Sabbatarian hermeneutical tradition and its impact on the churchs spiritual life within contemporary America. In the centre stage of the next part of our discussion will, therefore, be the second major augmentation of the Millerite hermeneutical method by the Sabbatarians. The Great Controversy Theme Ellen Whites hermeneutical contribution has not been dealt with so far. The aim here is therefore to analyse and describe her hermeneutical contribution and the way this impacted the spiritual life of the believers. The most significant evidence of Whites hermeneutical import was the development of The Great Controversy Theme. A core definition of the Theme would state that the Bible presents a divinely inspired account of a cosmic conflict between good and TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 32 evil, that is, between Christ and Satan. Moreover, human history and society has become the stage where this cosmic battle unfolds from the Fall to the End. Therefore, the study of the Scriptures would only give reliable results if one applied a historicist biblical interpretation, especially to the prophetic texts. The term historicist does not feature in her vocabulary. Nevertheless, her hermeneutical references clearly imply this terminus technicus. She stated that In the history of nations the student of Gods word may behold the literal fulfillment of divine prophecy.60 In references to the apocalyptic texts of the book of Daniel and Revelation, her historicism emerges even more clearly. She interpreted the symbol of the apocalyptic scroll with seven seals of Revelation chapter 561 to mean Christs revelation of the prophetic history of nations and the church and the history of all ruling powers in the nations.62 White also asserted the sequential nature of historical fulfilment of prophetic periods. Accordingly, the sequential view of history, in her thought, allows the exegete to trace in the Bible Gods outline of the history of salvation. This was human history per se within which the confrontation between Christ and the Devil unfolds. Thus, White could speak of the Great Controversy in terms of Millers idea of the age of the earth, lasting 6,000 years. To cover the entire history of The Great Controversy, from the Fall to the 60 White, Prophets and Kings (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1993), p. 501. 61 White interpreted the symbolical scroll with seven seals of the book of Revelation to mean the apocalyptic book of Daniel, which was unsealed by Christ and thus made accessible, along with the book of Revelation, to end-time readers. See White, The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, vol. 7, (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1980), p. 971. 62 White, Letter 65, 1898, pp. 6-9, 12, in White, Manuscript Releases, vol. 9, (Silver Spring, MD: E. G. White Estate, 1990), p. 7; cf. White, Letter 65, 1898, in Manuscript Releases, vol. 12, (Silver Spring, MD: E. G. White Estate, 1990), p. 296. SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 33 Second Coming, White produced an extended interpretative corpus in five volumes, generically entitled The Conflict of the Ages Series. Her strong belief in the teleological nature of history is strikingly evident in these writings. Christs final victory, at the End of history, will cause Satans power eventually and definitely to be broken.63 The most influential version of The Theme to impact Adventist spirituality is that which White expounded from a specifically apocalyptic perspective in the last volume of her Conflict of the Ages Series. The fifth volume White considered her magnum opus. Entitled, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan: The Conflict of the Ages in the Christian Dispensation,64 the book appeared at the top of Whites ratings of all her works. That she appreciated it above silver and gold65 was justified on her part with the remark that in The Great Controversy the last message of warning to the world was given more distinctly than in any other of my books.66 Hermeneutical Breakthrough The nub of her argument in The Great Controversy is that the Reformation itself laid the groundwork for a radically new exegetical tradition in Christianity. As a consequence of this, Christ won a decisive battle over Satan in The Great Controversy. It was a victory grounded in the new biblical hermeneutic at the foundation of which lay the hermeneutical axiom: sola Scriptura.67 The human 63 White, The Great Controversy, (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1993), p. 673. 64 In bibliographical references, this book is always cited as The Great Controversy. 65 White, Letter 56, 1911, in White, Colporteur Ministry (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1993), p. 128. 66 White, Letter 281, 1905, in Ibid., p. 127. 67 White asserted the sole authority of the Bible when she called her own writings the lesser light which God gave to the Adventists to lead them to the greater light. These metaphors affirmed the derivative and secondary authority of her TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 34 instrument behind this victory, Luther, is of immense interest for White. Her perception of the Reformation as being hermeneutical before it was doctrinal and ecclesiastical in nature, needs also to be noted. Only if this aspect is properly considered can one account for Whites unusual pains to trace the historical antecedents of this hermeneutical breakthrough. Her backtracking reached pre-Reformation movements such as the Waldenses. In her assessment, the greatest contribution of the Reformation to Adventist spirituality was its groundbreaking hermeneutical principle, which reached them via the Millerites. This principle, as she worded it, was as follows: The language of the Bible should be explained according to its obvious meaning, unless a symbol or figure is employed.68 White demurred at the idea of an allegorico-spiritual exegesis of the Bible. She appears to have criticised the spiritual exegesis69 of the Middle Ages on the grounds of its presuppositions regarding the Scriptures. One of these assumptions, she claimed, was the idea of the Scriptures having a mystical, a secret, spiritual meaning not apparent in the language employed.70 own works in relation to the Bible, in Review and Herald, January 20, 1903, cited in White, Selected Messages, book 3, p. 30. 68 White, The Great Controversy, pp. 598-99. 69 It is difficult to give an accurate assessment of whether White was familiar with the Platonist grounds of the exegesis of Augustine of Hippo. However, judged on the basis of the close literary context of her hermeneutical statements in The Great Controversy, it may be argued that she repudiated the allegorical exegesis for the same reasons she so radically opposed, although not explicitly identified as, the Platonist idea of the immortality of the human soul. See Whites critical assessment of the doctrine of Hell and of Spiritualism, which she argues to have been based on the concept of mans possessing an immortal soul, in The First Great Deception and Can Our Dead Speak to Us?, in The Great Controversy, pp.531-6; cf. The Scriptures a Safeguard, in Ibid., pp. 593-602. 70 Ibid., p. 598. SDA spirituality and biblical interpretation 35 For White, the obvious was the literal or grammatical sense of a word or of a passage. This principle was equally to be applied to the interpretation of apocalyptic prophecies in the Bible. Symbols, metaphors and typological language were first to be decoded in order that one may identify their true meaning. Thus, figurative language in apocalyptic prophecy always pointed to literal events or realities either in human history or divine supra-history. Literalism and historicism thus lay at the basis of the exegetical method that sustained Adventist spirituality in its complexity. In sum, Whites contribution in establishing the method should not be underestimated. She considered literalism, as did Luther and Miller,71 as well as historicism to be the only sound principles of interpretation applicable to Biblical research, in general, and to the study of apocalyptic prophecies,72 in particular. In fact, by thus arguing, White viewed Adventist spirituality as an outgrowth of the Reformation, on hermeneutical basis. The Time of the End: Whites Evaluation of Millerite Hermeneutic In this section attention will be given to Whites evaluation of the Millerite hermeneutical tradition. The aim here is to highlight her role in rooting Adventist spirituality in Millerite historicism which she modified by elaborating on The Great Controversy Theme. She argued that after the hermeneutical revolution of the Reformation came, as its consequence, another crucial interpretative breakthrough, that of the Sabbatarians. This marked 71 On the literalism of Luther and Miller, see my The Rise and Development, pp. 96-97 and footnote no. 54 on p. 107. 72 White, The Great Controversy, p. 411. TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 36 the very final phase in the history of The Great Controversy between Christ and Satan. The survey of Whites appraisal of Millers revivalism in its relation to the Sabbatarian Movement has relied on her book The Great Controversy. The survey has furnished enough evidence to support the following points.73 First, White contended that Millers historicism was to be preserved as a Reformation heritage in Seventh-day Adventism. Second, with the demise of the Millerite Movement, the conditions for a new exegetical breakthrough were created. It was the Sabbatarian exegesis of horizontal and vertical types that White considered as being this major hermeneutical breakthrough. Third, the results of the breakthrough were to be seen, according to White, in both the emergence of Seventh-day Adventism and its Present Truth doctrines. The detailed discussion of these doctrines on her part has evidenced the fact that White reinforced the Sabbatarians conviction that typological parallelism was an appropriate way of interpreting certain biblical types and antitypes. Furthermore, parallelist typological exegesis, in her view, was an integral part of historicist and literalist hermeneutic. Fourth, one outstanding result of the above-mentioned exegetical method was the new understanding according to which The Great Controversy between Christ and Satan entered its final phase after October 1844. It was the phase of the antitypical Day of Atonement, denoting a linear extension of history viewed as the Time of the End. During this Time, according to White, the human race was granted a final period of probation, to be confronted with the Remnants Present Truth message and mission. A final word is due before concluding this article. The above-described two hermeneutical contributions to the historicist 73 These points have been made here based on an analysis of The Great Controversy, pp. 317-678. Conclusions 37 exegesis bore powerfully on the spirituality of Seventh-day Adventists. They engendered a specific type of End-Time spirituality, both on a personal and collective level. The church was taught that they lived in a solemn period of time. In other words, the Time of the End was a sobering period of human history. This was the time of the Investigative Judgement. Christ, as High Priest, ministered his saving blood for the benefit of those living on earth and who in faith would decide to become part of the Remnant during the Time of the End. CONCLUSIONS From our study it has become clear that The Millerite Great Disappointment was not caused by extrinsic factors: economic, social or political. Rather, it was the result of the Millerite historicist biblical hermeneutic. It has also become clear that it was historicism that solved the puzzle of The Great Disappointment. This was a historicism that Sabbatarian Adventists came to enrich by vertical typological exegesis and The Great Controversy Theme. Not only did it help them understand what has been experienced on October 22, 1844, but it also helped to reach the truth of their distinctive doctrines. Based on the above, it is reasonable to say that the all-determining factor underlying the distinctively apocalyptic identity of SDA spirituality is historicist hermeneutic. The Sabbatarians regarded the Bible as the authoritative source of both their hermeneutical principles and the doctrines arrived at by the use of such hermeneutic. The study suggests that it was Ellen Whites contribution that led Sabbatarians to acquire a conviction of the appropriateness of the historicist method for their spirituality. What is meant here is as follows. The Sabbatarian Adventists were in dire need of re-affirmation and re-assurance that they still could count on Gods favour and that God was still in control of their destiny and of human history in the aftermath of the 1844 Great Disappointment. Historicist TheoRhma 4.2 (2009) 38 exegesis of vertical types along with apocalyptic prophecies, especially of the books of Daniel and Revelation, proved fully effective in providing them with the needed re-assurance, thus dissipating their acute sense of uncertainty. White positively supported the findings of such exegetical practice. Thus, historicism forcefully assisted Seventh-day Adventists in the accumulation of a strong perception and conviction of their prophetically pre-ordained destiny. Destiny came to be viewed in close connection with the Adventist mission and message. In the final analysis, the historicist biblical interpretation unilaterally underlay their spirituality of hope for a face-to-face encounter with God in the imminent, but indeterminate, future. So, it was due to historicism that SDA came gradually to understand spirituality as the pursuit of the End-Time will and purposes of God in the hope of an unmediated encounter with him at the parousia. The End-Time will and purposes of God Adventists believed to be prophetically outlined. Society, secular and religious, also needed, in their view, to know the prophetic outline of the divine will and purposes. As such, the End-Time will and purposes of God were historically to be actualised in the spirituality of the Remnant church. The idea of actualisation came increasingly to inform their mission strategies in a way which prompted Adventists to raise social consciousness as to the truth of the so-called pillar doctrines underlying Adventist spirituality. Finally, it follows from the current investigation that spirituality for the Sabbatarians increasingly became a matter of living out their own message while also proclaiming it to the world. It also follows that Seventh-day Adventism may best be characterised as a lay spirituality that thrived on a generalised historicist reading of the Bible by its clergy and lay members. Historicist reading was applied prevalently to interpret biblical apocalyptic along with sanctuary typology, vertical and horizontal. This, in turn, led to the crystallisation of the Adventist concept of message, and of its correlate, the Adventist mission. The message comprised four Conclusions 39 basic Sabbatarian articles of faith: the matrix of Seventh-day Adventist spirituality. This doctrinal matrix will constitute the concern of the last article of this series to be published in the forthcoming issue of the current journal. TheoRhma 4.2 (2009): 40-44 PAUL DE TARSE: QUELQUES LMENTS EXGTIQUES ET HISTORIQUES DE BIOGRAPHIE74 Dr. Gabriel Golea Pastor Frana Abstract The purpose of this brief article is to identify the main stages in the life of Paul of Tarsus for a better understanding of the apostles personality. These bibliographical lines are necessary for an introductory research on Paul. The first source available for the exegete and the modern historian is Pauls own letters that were written before the destruction of the Temple (70 A.D.) and other corpus belonging to the period subsequent to 70 A.D. The main stages of the apostles life (his youth as a Pharisee, his calling to the apostolate, his martyrdom in Rome) are comprised mainly within the time span of his mission in Antioch (crucial to the formation of its theology), Corinth and Asia Minor, to which the controversy with Judaizers in Galatia and the ultimate confrontation with the Judeo-Christians in Jerusalem belong. Notre brve note se propose didentifier les principales tapes de la vie de Paul pour pouvoir mieux comprendre la personnalit de laptre. Ces lignes dintroduction se veulent une fiche biographique telle que nous pouvons lesquisser partir de ses propres crits ou dautres tmoignages disponibles. Daprs certaines sources accessibles lhistorien moderne nous sommes en mesure de pouvoir fixer quelques repres biographiques sur la vie de Paul de Tarse. La premire source disponible est donne par ses propres lettres qui ont t crites 74 Le prsent article est la forme modifie dune partie de notre travail en vue de lobtention du Diplme dEtudes approfondies de lEcole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, 2001-2002. Paul de Tarse: quelques lments exgtiques et historiques de biographie 41 avant la destruction du Temple (70 de notre re) auxquelles sajoutent dautres sources de la priode avoisinante (proche)75. Sur Paul, n Saul, un presque contemporain de Jsus, de par ses propres tmoignages et partir de quelques sources ds le dbut de notre re, nous apprenons les informations suivantes76 : Paul est n en Cilicie, Asie Mineure (Ac 21,39), dun pre artisan et qui tait citoyen romain (Ac 22,26-28 ; cf. 16,37). Sa famille connaissait la pit (1 Tm 1,3) et tait attache la tradition et aux pratiques pharisiennes (Ph 3,5-6). Jrme (347-420), De viris illustribus 5 et In epistula ad Philemonem 7,672 ( partir de quelles sources ?) nous dit que les parents de Saul taient dorigine de Giscala, une bourgade de Galile et quils amenrent Paul Tarse lorsque Giscala fut capture par les romains. Certainement ce dtail est un anachronisme, mais lorigine galilenne de sa famille nest pas improbable. Appartenant la tribu de Benjamin, Paul reoit, lors de la circoncision, le nom de Saul. Ce nom tait certainement trs commun lpoque car il faisait cho la mmoire du premier roi dIsral (voir Ph 3,5). En tant que citoyen romain, lauteur des ptres portait galement un autre nom, latin, celui de Paul. A lpoque il tait de coutume pour les Juifs dassocier les deux noms (un latin et lautre grec), des noms ayant une certaine assonance et tant relis la manire dont lauteur des Actes le fait, Ac 13,9 : Eouo. koi Houo. En mission parmi les Gentils, il tait 75 Voir N. S. Hecht B. S. Jackson S. M. Passamaneck et al., ds., An Introduction to the History and Sources of Jewish Law, Oxford, University Press, 1996, p. 37. 76 Pour une synthse des indications sur la vie et les crits de Paul, voir, par exemple, H. Balz, Houo, ou, dans Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament. Vol. 3, toioce e|cio. Edited by H. Balz and G. Schneider, Grand Rapids, W. B