Some time ago we wrote a letter to a certain author and held it over for further consideration. It had to do with a recently published book—Theology of Seventh-day Adventism, by Herbert S. Bird (Eerdmans, $3.00). We felt the price was high for 157 pages of this type of material, but we were more concerned with the way the author had rehashed D. N. Canright, E. B. Jones, Louis Talbot, and other implacably embittered men. Especially were we concerned with his use of a long-since repudiated statement by a Seventh-day Adventist minister who wrote unguardedly about sin in Christ's blood like a "caged lion ever seeking to break forth and destroy." Mr. Bird also used an old edition of Bible Readings to prove that we teach the sinful nature of Christ. He could easily have avoided these things either by checking with the right persons or by reference to modern, unprejudiced authors.
Now comes Christianity Today, March 2, 1962, with a review of this book by none other than Walter Martin, who soundly berates the author for some of the above things, for faulty research, for use of certain writers [e.g., Canright, Talbot, Van Baalen] "apparently oblivious to the prejudices and inaccuracies all too apparent in their writings," and inexcusably ignoring certain modern analyses of Adventism. He rejects Mr. Bird's charge that Seventh-day Adventists are Galatianists and corrupters of the gospel.
When Herbert Bird reluctantly admits that some of God's regenerate people are found in "unsound religious associations," even among Adventists, Walter Martin rejoins: "Just how it is possible for SDAs to be Galatianists, whom God curses (Gal. 1:8, 9), and for there still to be 'some of God's' regenerate people in SDA 'and that this need not be questioned' (p. 130) is more than this reviewer can understand as the terms are mutually exclusive in the Galation context. Apparently SDAs are not heretical enough for hell and not orthodox enough for heaven, hence their relegation to the purgatory of paradox."
Mr. Martin thinks that Bird is at his best in criticizing certain SDA exegesis in areas such as "Sabbatarianism, the Spirit of Prophecy, Conditional Immortality, Annihilationism and the Investigative Judgment."
Mr. Bird has a few senteuces worthy of our notice, such as this: "Adventism, in spite of its protestations to the contrary, makes the believer's character the ultimate ground of his acceptance or rejection by God." Page 95. Any Adventist who makes such an unqualified statement, of course, creates a wrong impression. Only by outof-context quotations and isolated comment can Herbert Bird's statement have any semblance of truth.
Seventh-day Adventists do not teach that human character is the ground of acceptance with God. They teach unequivocally that "there is salvation for you, but only through the merits of Jesus Christ" (Testimonies to Ministers, p. 97). When the grace of Christ is allowed to operate in the life, then we can claim with Paul, "The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).
The true Seventh-day Adventist believes that when divine grace brings the experience of justification by faith, the believer can cry, "Christ liveth in me." It is Christ's righteousness that saves, not man's. But Mr. Bird should also know that when the living Christ controls a man's existence, the man is, by enabling grace, obedient to the divine will. He is transformed by grace, his character is changed, his disobedience disappears, and he is submissively obedient to his divine Lord and Master. The righteousness of Christ is his by faith. Mr. Bird must not be allowed to make this mean salvation by human character, nor must we make unguarded statements capable of such an interpretation.
Mr. Bird's book ends with the hope that evangelicalism's present difficult situation will not become more confused by "acknowledging a system so riddled with deadly error as having part and lot with it." He then clearly reveals the school of evangelical thought to which he belongs, by hoping that those Protestants who have any idea that Seventh-day Adventism is a true Christian church "will look again."
Seventh-day Adventists are inured to these prejudiced attacks, but we could wish that Mr. Bird (a Presbyterian) would take a second and longer and more careful look. None of us is free from prejudice, but Herbert Bird might lighten his load if he would re-examine the beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists without the aid of some men who were disappointed and embittered, and some who were woefully inaccurate.
H. W. L.
