`Ello me lads! Mouse here, fresh off a long holiday to the American continent. That mustard did come out of me tie eventually.
The Impossible Burger
After a brief jaunt through Corona California, my search for a bit of non-caffeinated tea took me to Dos Lagos (my advice to fellow Adventists is never be friends with someone who doesn’t drink tea ((non-caffeinated of course)). There I stumbled upon an impossibly good sandwich, the Impossible Burger at an appropriately-named Yankee restaurant called Fatboys. ‘Twas impossibly good, a fine discovery for my foreign wanderings. I shall look for this splendid repast in south London when I return to God’s country, along with a bib to limit the spot of mustard that dribbled on my tie while dining—a failure in personal hygiene. But, I digress.
Impossibly Dangerous Teachers
I must call your Yankee attention span—roughly the length of a gnat’s hiccup—to another impossibility, that of permitting foxes to guard the old Adventist hen house.
I am referring to a presentation by Warren Trenchard at the Adventist Society for Religious Studies meeting in Boston. It was a ghastly bit of modern doubt, marinated with horseradish of unbelief, and served up as an hors d'oeuvre of higher criticism of the Bible. This chap would be far better off criticizing himself, than the Good Book “Which liveth and abideth forever.”
Here is his abominable ASRS presentation on Sola Scriptura, with a few critique notes from brother Wagoner (a far right extremist hate-monger according to SDA Pop-liberals).
Warren Trenchard, La Sierra University—Five Hundred Years of Reformation: Five Hundred Years of Sola Scriptura.
Trenchard’s apparent goal in this presentation is to undermine faith in the Word of God as a reliable guide, and Sola Scriptura as the animating principle of Adventism. A few snippets from his doubt-infested monologue:
Furthermore, unlike biblical scholars, scientists often have the benefit of proof in the practical application of their theories and laws. Thus, while the Bible may normatively reveal God as the source of the universe and its contents, it is science, as the window into natural revelation, that normatively reveals how and when God went about this creative activity. This makes sola scriptura meaningless.
That the Bible is not normative regarding the natural world is also evident by the bad science that it often displays. Without addressing the issue of biblical miracles, I simply note two examples of untenable science in Genesis:
• The firmament contains the sun, moon, stars, and birds (1:14-18, 20).
• Jacob breeds animals in front of striped rods to produce striped offspring (30:37-42).However, in none of these regards should the Bible be taken as normative. For example, if we wish to establish the content or chronology of one or more events of the past, we must consider the evidence from historical analysis and archaeology.
While the Bible may help us pose questions of history, it cannot determine the answers. Only the disciplines of historical analysis can cut through the cultural conditioning of the Bible to find genuine answers to historical questions. Thus, sola scriptura has no validity.
Furthermore, the Bible is not normative as revelation concerning the natural world, which is the revelatory purview of science. Whether sola or prima, the Bible is still culturally conditioned and often obsolete, still full of internal contradictions, and still often unhistorical and unscientific.
This type of liberal criticism of the Scripture—devastating to an adult—is even more devastating to a college student. Many are shipped off to a liberal ‘Adventist’ University by their naive parents. They return home four years later with their biblical faith surgically removed, as veggie-link consuming functional atheists, steeped in the new liberal Adventist paradigm—social justice. After all, you don’t need faith in the Bible to function as a veggie-link SJW.
What is Needed?
Accountability. People who teach Adventist youth that the Bible is unreliable should be sacked. Fired. Let go. Terminated. Begone with ye. And why not?
We apparently have no trouble terminating individuals such as Bible teacher Ingo Sorke—who was let go from Southwestern Adventist University in 2018 for espousing anti-trinitarian beliefs—but we have an illogical tolerance for individuals like Trenchard who openly market their unbelief to vulnerable Adventist youth. These liberal wolves among the sheep are a protected species, lounging in the shadow of a dominating liberal Division. These smell-feast rakefires need to be driven out of the flock, after we read the riot act to the North American Division for allowing such theological mafflards to exist in our schools.
It may be time for a new Adventist educational paradigm, a new conservative network that remains true to the Word of God and the Advent Message that arises from it.
Cheerio!
ChurchMouse