Gane, Erwin R.

English

Andrews University

420 SEMINARY STUDIES by this imagery, and substituted light-giving lamps on a lampstand for the light-giving lunar crescent on a standard. This reviewer finds Keel's inter- pretation unsatisfactory and difficult to accept. The  reader of this book in which a tremendous amount of comparative material is collected may occasionally disagree with the interpretations presented, but he cannot avoid being challenged and stimulated. Every student of the Bible will profit from reading it and will gain insights about the imagery of the ancient world which in turn will help him to understand the contemporary imagery of the Bible writers that sometimes seems strange and alien to us 20th-century people. Pleasant Hill, California SIEGFRIED H. HORN Paxton, Geoffrey J. T h e  Shaking of Adventism. Wilmington, Del.: Zenith, 1977. 172 pp. $6.95. While the author, an Anglican clergyman, regards the Seventh-day Adventist Church as a genuinely Christian body and rejects the charge that it is a mece sect, he raises questions concerning the claim that the Adventist movement is a perpetuation, extension, and final completion of the sixteenth-century Reformation. He argues that the heart of Reformation faith was the doctrine of justification which Luther, Calvin, and other Reformers defined as God's forensic act of pronouncing the believer righteous on the basis of Christ's merits. Any concept of justification as making righteous is relegated by Paxton to the category of medieval and Tridentine Roman Catholicism. Here is the basis of his major critique of Seventh-day Adventism. He feels that to a greater or lesser extent most Adventist authors, with the exception of a few contemporaries, have regressed to Roman Catholicism either by defining justification as the act by which God makes righteous, or by incorporating sanctification into the sola fide doctrine, regarding it as a vital aspect of God's saving work for man. "For the Reformers, Christ alone meant Jesus Christ the God-man, and not Christ's indwelling the believer by the Holy Spirit" (p. 42). I t  should be pointed out that although Ellen G. White and other Adventist authors have depicted Adventism as an extension of the Reforma- tion, they have consistently maintained the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Scripture, not Reformation theology, is stated to be the sole authoritative source of their faith. Insofar as the Reformers are regarded as Scripturally sound, their teachings are accepted; otherwise they are rejected. Paxton's critique would have been far more pertinent if it had stemmed from an exegetical study resulting in evaluation of Adventist biblical exegesis. Never once does he attempt to exegete any Bible passage, even though he invokes Paul's authority for his theology of justification. Not only has Paxton failed to apprehend that the Scriptures, not the Reformers, are the ultimate authority for Adventists; he has also failed to grasp a true understanding of the Reformers' view of justification. In ignoring the inner work of the Holy Spirit as an integral part of God's justifying act, Paxton overlooks a major Reformation motif. Luther con- BOOK REVIEWS 421 tradicted Faxton's thesis in T h e  Disputation Concerning Justification (1536) by asserting that "this movement of justification is the work of God in us, to which our propositions refer" (Luther's Works, .4m. ed., 34: 177; herein- after cited LW). In the same work he explained his teaching that God's righteousness is outside of us. "To be outside of us means not to be out of our powers. Righteousness is our possession, to be sure, since it was given to us out of mercy. Nevertheless, it is foreign to us, because we have not merited it" (LW, 34: 178). Luther insisted that the righteousness of Christ is "in us but is entirely outside of us in Christ and yet becomes our very own, as though we ourselves had achieved and earned it" (LW, 24: 347; cf. 26: 26, 130, 151). This righteousness is bestowed by the Holy Spirit (LW, 27: 172, 238, 332; 13:5; WA 39/1: 435, 483, 383, 388). It  is both complete and partial; complete since it is participation in Christ's iighteousness, partial since man in his human nature remains a sinful being (LW, 32: 227-228, 232). Despite his opposition to Osiancler, John Calvin taught as did Luther on this issue, Paxton notwithstanding. Calvin rejected the Scholastic notion of a habitus created in the soul of man by the Holy Spirit (Institutes, iii.ll.5). Nevertheless, he understood justification (imputation) as involving a "mystical union" with Christ, by which he meant "the residence of Christ in our hearts" (ibicl. iii. 11.10). "Hence we do not view him as at a distance and without us, but as we have put him on, and been ingrafted into his body, he designs to make us one with himself, and, therefore, we glory in having a fellowship of righteousness with him" (ihid.; cf. iii. 1.1, 3; iv. 17.10; i. 1.1; Comm. on John 17:21). Paxton seems unable to distinguish between righteousness bestowed by the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life and the Scholastic and Tridentine doctrine of essential righteousness. It  is the former view, thoroughly germane to Reformation theology, which many Adventist authors (including Ellen G. 1Yhite) have consistently maintained. There is a veritable plethora of recent scholarly literature, not cliscussed by Paxton, which soundly contradicts his interpretation of the Reformation from either an exegetical or an historical point of view. After a lifetime of study, Paul Althaus in his Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia, 1966), p. 231, is able to outline Luther's concept of justification as definitely as this: "Christ is the righteousness of men and to this extent this righteousness is outside of us. But Christ is my righteousness only if I appropriate him and make him my own. Only the Christ who is appropriated in faith, that is, the Christ who lives in my heart through faith is my righteousness. Christ is not only the 'object' of faith but is himself present in faith. Through faith Christ is present with and in a man." A41thaus discovers both a forensic and an experiential element in justification as defined by the early and the later Luther (ibid., pp. 226, 235). Hence, he contradicts Paxton's distinction between Luther's early and later works dealing with justification (Paxton, p. 37). According to Althaus, Luther argued that in justification a man becomes "righteous in himself" because "God's Holy Spirit is poured into the heart" (pp. 234-235). Significantly, Paxton incorporates Althaus's book into his bibliography but nowhere discusses his interpretation of Luther. Many other Luther specialists agree with Althaus. (See Robin Leaver, L,uther on Justification [St. Louis, 19751, p. 62); Heinrich Bornkamm, 422 SEMINARY STUDIES Luther's World of Thought  [St. Louis, 19581, p. 170; Regin Prenter, Spiritus Creator [Copenhagen, 19761; Gordon Rupp, Luther's Progress to the Diet of Worms, 1521 [London, 19511, pp. 35, 40-41; Rupp, T h e  Righteousness of God, Luther Studies [London, 19531, pp. 171-184; Franz Hilderbrandt, From Luther to Wesley [London, 19511, pp. 19-24; Jared Wicks, Man Yearning for Grace [Wiesbaden, 19691, pp. 104- 108.) Earl F. Gossett, T h e  Doctrine of Justification in the Theology of John Calvin, Albrecht Ritschl, and Reinhold Niebuhr (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1961), pp. 70-89, convincingly demonstrates that which Paxton denies regarding Calvin's understanding of justification as involving unio mystica. Walter E. Stuermann, Critical Study of Calvin's Concept of Faith (Tulsa, 1952), pp. 181-196, interprets Calvin's concept of justification very much as Gossett does. So also do Wilhelm Niesel, T h e  Theology of Calvin (Philadelphia, 1956), pp. 122-138, and Franqois Wendel, Caluin: T h e  Origins and Development of His Religious Thought (New York, 1950, 1963), pp. 233-263. One could have expected that a thesis such as Paxton's, purporting to criticize Adventist theology on the basis of Reformation teaching, would at  least have taken adequate cognizance of well-known works dealing with the thought of Luther and Calvin. From the exegetical point of view, the whole tenor of Gottlob Schrenk's discussion of dikaios and dikaiosund theou in TDNT, 2: 182-225 (see esp. pp. 205-206), provides very competent validation of the contention that Rom 1:17 and other passages in which Paul uses these words have reference not merely to a divine forensic declaration, but also to a subjective work of the Spirit of God as part of the act by which the believer is justified. Schrenk represents justification as invohing an impartation of righteousness to the believer. (For corroboration see Hans Conzelmann, A n  Outline of the Theology of the Nezu Te~tanzent  [New York, 19681, pp. 213-220, and Giinther Bornkamm, Paul [New York, 1969, 19711, pp. 136-141). Significantly, H. W. Heidland in his article on logizomai (TDNT, vol. 4 )  recognizes in the Pauline use of the term the allotment of righteousness to the believer (p. 291) SO that "he becomes a new creature through God's logizesthai. Hence Gal 3:2-6 can equate justification with the receiving of the Spirit and quote Gen 15:6 in support of justification" (p. 292). Finally, Paston would do well to heed Gordon Rupp's warning that, not only is Luther "the least typical of Protestants," but also he is incompre- hensible to those "who pick out" from his works "elements of Protestant or Catholic orthodoxy and dismiss the rest as muddle" ( T h e  Righteous?less of God, pp. 81, 256). Such a partisan approach to the Reformation is hardly a valid basis for criticizing the theology of Seventh-day Adventism. Pacific Union College *\ngwin, California Reist, Benjamin Theology in  Red,  White,  atzd Black. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975. 203 pp. $7.50. Reist's sensitivity to the times has led him to put forth this Theology in  Red, White,  and Black. The  movements for black and red liberation and 

The Shaking of Adventism [review] / Paxton, Geoffrey J.

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The Shaking of Adventism [review] / Paxton, Geoffrey J.

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