A Letter for Reflection.
In having to reissue our little book “Seventh-day Adventism,” we have judged it of the greatest interest to include in full, as a definitive chapter, these pages by Fr. Ernesto Bravo, Director of the National Secretariat for Faith and Ecumenism in his South American homeland, Ecuador. This letter was written to a Catholic from his country, summarizing and refuting in a delicate, yet clear and forceful way, the fundamental points of Adventist doctrine.
We do not doubt that our Catholic brothers and sisters, before these pages full of biblical depth, will once again admire the beauty and solidity of our faith, and will feel encouraged toward a life that is each day more truly Christian, in full harmony with the teachings of Christ and his Church.
Dear friend:
I am going to answer your last letter. The length of my reply will show you well the time and great interest I have put into carefully satisfying your questions and doubts.
In my letter, in a general way, I am going to deal with the following points:
1. The existence of the Church of Christ, only from Christ onward.
2. The commandments and the Law in relation to the Christian.
3. The abolition of the Sabbath.
In your letter you confine yourself to reporting to me the objections and doubts raised with you by a friend of yours who frequents your home, a “Seventh-day Adventist,” of course. I do not think such contact is very profitable, frankly speaking; but since you have it and perhaps can no longer avoid it, I shall say something about them.
1. The Adventists and the Church of Christ.
The Adventists date only from the last century, when William Miller (1782-1849) began his preaching and his failed prophecies announcing the end of the world for 1843 and then for 1844. His followers, instead of remembering the text of Deuteronomy 18:22:
“When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously: you need not be afraid of him,”
continued believing in his doctrines and, to make the harm complete, took refuge in another prophetess, equally mistaken, Ellen G. White (1827-1915). It was she who gave her followers this name, so strange and so Old Testament in tone, “Seventh-day Adventists”; while other groups of “Adventists” who had been with Miller separated because this seemed to them insufficiently Christian.
They affirm that the true Church of Jesus Christ has existed from the beginning of the world through the keeping of the commandments. Now, they, with their characteristic doctrines, have existed only for a century; therefore they are not the true Church of Christ.
Jesus our Lord, speaking of something future, said to Saint Peter: “You are Rock [= Cephas: Jn 1:42], and upon this Rock I WILL BUILD my Church.”
How can they say that the Church of Christ existed before Christ? At least none of the passages alleged by your friend says this: Rev 14:12; Rev 22:14; 1 Jn 2:4. In the second text, indeed, I find that the best editions read:
“Blessed are those who wash their robes,” instead of the other reading, “those who keep his commandments” (note: The Seventh-day Adventists are characterized by their obsession with the commandments and with the Law. It is an interested obsession, so as to be able to push through the Sabbath. For this reason they are, and are called, legalists or Sabbatarians.).
So reads the critical edition of the Greek original prepared by the learned Protestant Nestle; and the most recent one by K. Aland, Black and Metzger; so the Latin Vulgate; so Bover; so Nácar-Colunga; so AFEBE; so the Jerusalem Bible; so the Modern Version (Protestant). I even see that the Protestant Reina-Valera revision of 1960 has it this way.
But, in any case, even supposing that we read here “Blessed are those who keep his commandments” – as the old and antiquated translation of Cipriano de Valera has it – and, of course, with respect to the other two texts cited, my answer is the following.
2. The Commandments and the Christian.
It is curious to see how the Adventists, obsessed with the observance of their Sabbath – which for them is nothing less than “the sign” of the people of God – imagine that wherever the Bible uses the word “commandment,” it means the Decalogue, Sabbath and all. Now, is this true? Unfortunately, or better, thanks be to God, no.
I have had the patience to go through all the cases in which the New Testament uses this word “commandment” (in Greek: “entolé”) and, to your friend’s great surprise, I can communicate to you the results of my investigations. The word commandment in the Bible does not always mean “one of the ten of the Decalogue.”
Let us look at it closely. Let us put ourselves for a moment in the Adventist position: “when the Bible speaks of commandments, it necessarily alludes to the Ten of the Decalogue.” Then what do we do with texts such as the following from Eph 2:14-15, which tells us that Christ has annulled the Law of commandments? It is clear that Cipriano de Valera’s translation, an old and now outdated translation, as I have told you, arbitrarily restricts the text to “rites”; but in the translations of modern scholars we do not find such a thing: the Modern Version (Protestant); the Hispano-American version, also Protestant; AFEBE; Nácar-Colunga; Bover; and even Reina-Valera in the 1960 recension.
There is also another passage that says to us:
“Thus the former commandment is abolished because of its weakness and uselessness; for the Law perfected nothing, but served only to prepare us for a better hope, through which we draw near to God” (Heb 7:18-19).
Here even the old Cipriano de Valera also has “commandment,” just like the Modern Version.
This is a text of capital importance, because it shows us the contrast between the Old Testament with the old Law on the one hand, and the New Testament on the other. Then a dilemma remains: either we stay with the old Law in the Old Testament, or we advance toward Christianity, which displays other values, and we enter the New Testament. In fact, the Seventh-day Adventists in this respect scarcely differ from the Judaizers.
I remember a woman who managed to leave the Adventists for the light of the New Testament, and when she saw this marvelous text that I have just cited from the Letter to the Hebrews, she told me that she was going to have it copied in very large letters and put it in the most visible place in her house.
3. The Great Newness of Christianity.
The truth is that we Christians have our own commandments, and that for us the Old Law is no longer an authority.
This is what the Adventists resist admitting, blindly clinging to the Old Testament, as if with Christ a new order of things had not already been inaugurated: New Testament or New Covenant (Lk 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25; 2 Cor 3:6): “and in speaking of a ‘new’ covenant he treats the first as obsolete,” as Scripture itself notes (Heb 8:13); new teaching (Mk 1:27), with new commandments (Jn 13:34; 15:12-17; 1 Jn 2:8-11; 3:23); all this is like the new wine that no longer fits in the narrow and antiquated wineskins of the Old Testament (Mt 9:17; Mk 2:22; Lk 5:37-38).
We must “walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4), guided no longer by the Old Law, “by the oldness of the letter,” Saint Paul specifies, but by “the newness of the Spirit” (Rom 7:6), because precisely the Spirit is for us the Law and “the law of the Spirit sets us free from the other law” (Rom 8:2), and “if we let ourselves be led by the Spirit, then we are no longer under the Law” (Gal 5:18).
This is “the new Man, created according to God in justice and holiness,” with which Paul exhorts us to clothe ourselves (Eph 4:24).
For us, everything has changed with the coming of Christ, and in him we are a “new creature” or “new creation” (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15).
And Christians, “after casting out the old leaven, must be a new lump” (1 Cor 5:7).
Summing everything up, Paul, with a cry of triumph, can proclaim: “Behold, all things have become new!” (2 Cor 5:17).
This is the great newness, in every order, brought by Christianity. Is it not very sad that our Adventist brothers are blind to seeing all this and live with their eyes turned toward the obsolete and abolished past of the old order, of the Old Testament?
As you see, this is decisive and of capital importance. That is why it is sad to see that, while Christ promises his own “a new name” (Rev 2:17), they have taken refuge in an old name, from the Old Testament, and call themselves “Seventh-day Adventists.”
4. The Reasons for the Sabbath.
– Thus, to the Adventist preachers who want to oblige us to observe the Sabbath, alleging that it is like the seal of the Covenant between God and his people (Exodus 31:13, 16, 17; Ez 20:12, 20), we can answer that we are no longer under the Old Covenant, but under “the New one, which is better and is established on other terms and on better promises” (Heb 8:9).
– If they claim that Sabbath observance belongs to the commandments, we shall answer that we have our own commandments, those of Christ, which form a New Law, the Law of the Spirit (Rom 8:2), or the Christian “Law of Faith” (Rom 3:27), or simply the “Law of Christ” (Gal 6:2). Thus “we are not without God’s Law, but under this Law of Christ” (1 Cor 9:21).
– If they affirm that the Sabbath is the remembrance of the completed Creation, for us Christians the Resurrection of Christ has inaugurated a “new creation” (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15).
And finally we shall exhort them to be new leaven and not old ferment, and not to put their Christian energies – new wine – into the old wineskins of Judaism.
5. The Christian Commandments.
But let us come to the commandments of the Christian. Christ Our Lord clearly tells us:
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (Jn 14:15).
“If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love” (Jn 15:10).
He is not speaking of the Decalogue; he says very clearly: “my” commandments, that is, the norms and prescriptions specifically his own. Immediately afterward, he himself makes this more concrete:
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12).
And the best commentary for the texts of Revelation and for those of the letters of Saint John is given to us by the sacred author himself when he says: “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment: that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. He who keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him” (1 Jn 3:21-24).
In summary, what is asked of us is Christian faith and Christian charity.
You will tell me that perhaps this approach constitutes, for you yourself as a Catholic, something like a revolution in the commonly accepted concepts, even among many Catholics. I have no difficulty recognizing this. But you have seen how everything I have said is backed by Scripture.
The truth is that the Catholic, walking by the hand of the Church, walks securely and knows these things, even if perhaps he does not know how to explain or formulate them. That is why he does not keep the Sabbath, and in the Decalogue he has admitted the Christian modifications that distinguish him from Judaism. In this sense, catechisms and prayer books continue to preserve the scheme of the ten commandments; but if one looks more closely, one sees how they are now filled with the new Christian content that befits disciples of Christ.
6. The Law and the Christian.
Your Adventist friend has also cited to you – as one could already expect – the famous text, so often brought up by Adventists, and which they believe definitive in this order of ideas that we are examining. Christ our Lord says:
“I have not come to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to destroy but to fulfill” (Mt 5:17).
Here, again, the obsession with the Decalogue and the Sabbath makes the Adventists believe that when Christ says “Law,” he can refer only to the Ten of the two old Sinaitic tablets. (And “the Prophets”?)
Let us do here also what we did before. Let us adopt the Adventist position that tells us that, since it speaks of Law, it must necessarily refer to the Decalogue. Let us transcribe other biblical texts and see the result, a result that must overturn the Adventist position and open to us the new Christian horizons.
“The Law and the Prophets end with John; since then the Good News of the Kingdom of God is preached” (Lk 16:16).
“You are no longer under the Law, but under grace” (Rom 6:14).
Do not think that these are the only texts. I have gathered a good number of biblical passages which affirm that for the Christian the Law of Sinai has ceased to have force. Of course this can give rise to falsified interpretations, and could lead one to draw twisted and absurd consequences; but to avoid this inconvenience I have already transcribed for you the text of Saint Paul in which, after affirming that he is not subject to the Law, he explains that he is not therefore without Law, since he has another Law, that of Christ (1 Cor 9:20-21). And he also refers to the “Law of Christ” in other passages (Gal 6:2).
As for the other Law, that of Moses, he says to us:
– “I have already died to the Law” (Gal 2:19).
– And we are, according to the same Saint Paul, “as free from the Law as the woman is free once her husband has died” (Rom 7:1-4).
– Christ abolished the Law of commandments formulated as decrees (Eph 2:14-15).
– The Law was “a ministry of death”; Paul is no longer a preacher of that Law, but of the Law of the Spirit (2 Cor 3:6-7).
– “The Law was imperfect and perfected nothing, and served only to introduce us to a better hope” (Heb 7:18-19).
– “The Law contained only the shadow of the good things to come in the messianic age” (Heb 10:1).
– “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law” (Gal 3:13).
– “God sent his own Son, born of woman, subjected to the Law, to redeem those who were subjected to the Law” (Gal 4:4).
– “We know well that whatever the Law says is for those who are within the Law” (Rom 3:19).
But “you, brethren, are not under the Law but under grace” (Rom 6:14).
“Guided by the Spirit [that is the proper Law of the Christian, and the Spirit acts in the Church], you are no longer under the Law” (Gal 5:18).
I beg you to read and reread each text, meditating on it well, since the subject is so serious.
In the face of this overwhelming accumulation of texts, we have no alternative but to admit the definitive abolition of the Old Law.
Regarding the Gospel text, Mt 5:17, we must realize that Christ says that, although he “did not come to destroy,” he did come “to fulfill”; and when one fulfills or perfects something, many obsolete and useless elements necessarily fall aside. This is what has happened with the Old Law.
Do not forget, in that same text, “the Prophets.” Not rarely do the Adventists conveniently forget that term, even though “Law and Prophets” does not mean Decalogue, but “the Bible as a whole,” “the whole order of the Old Testament.” See this in the following citations, which you should look up in your Bible; I give you only the free but exact equivalent:
– Acts 13:15: “after the reading of the Old Testament.”
– Jn 1:45: “the one announced by the Scriptures.”
– Mt 7:12: “all the Scriptures are summed up in charity.”
– Acts 24:14; Rom 3:21; Mt 22:40 give us the same equivalence (note: It is well known how the Jews regarded their Bible (that is, the Old Testament) as formed by three collections: a) the Law or Torah; b) the Prophets (or Nebiim), and c) the other Writings or Hagiographa (Ketubim). A reflection of this tripartite division is the text of Lk 24:44, or also the Prologue of Sirach, which presents it as many as three times. But at times they were content with a bipartite mention: “the Law and the Prophets,” to designate the whole Old Testament, as is seen from the cases cited above in the text. Indeed, at times only the first element, “the Law,” could designate the whole Old Testament, as is seen in Jn 10:34 and 15:25.).
Therefore, when the Lord speaks of “the Law and the Prophets,” he is referring to the whole of Scripture as a whole; that is, Jesus here designates the complete body of the Old Testament.
Now, the Adventist brothers know very well that many things of the Old Testament are already annulled. For example, circumcision, bloody sacrifices, exclusive worship in the Temple of Jerusalem, and so many other things. They should not, therefore, press that text too much; or, citing it complete, “Law and Prophets,” they will see that it must not be understood in the rigorist way they pretend, but in the tempered way required by the context. Otherwise “the Law and the Prophets,” that is, the complete Old Testament, would bind Christians with all the observances of the strictest Judaism.
7. The Sabbath and the Christian.
I know very well that my position may seem vulnerable from a very widespread point of view, one which the Adventists usually do not neglect, but rather exploit greatly. They say and repeat that the Decalogue in fact contains the norms of the natural law and that, for this reason, although it was given to the Israelites at Sinai, in reality it was addressed to humanity as such; therefore, to every man.
What could we answer to all this? Is the Decalogue identical with the natural law? I think that, taken as a whole, it is true. The Decalogue, generally speaking, represents the clearest and most precise expression of the requirements of human nature, and in that sense it is eternal and indestructible law.
But is this truly applicable to all the commandments of the Mosaic Decalogue? No.
Notice how, by deficiency, the Decalogue (Ex 20:1-17; Dt 5:6-21) does not contain a prohibition against lying, although outside the Decalogue it was in Lev 19:11. The Catholic Church added it to the eighth commandment, because it was needed.
Moreover, the sixth Mosaic commandment (or, according to the Protestant division, the seventh) prohibits only adultery, and not the other external acts of impurity. Here also the Church has completed and perfected, as Christ (Mt 5:27-30) and the Apostles taught us, and this can be seen in any Catholic catechism.
By excess, on the other hand, or better, for reasons of a circumstantial and transitory order, it forbids making images. This is not a matter of natural law. Note well that I do not mean idolatry, for that certainly is against the natural law; I mean simply making representations, whether for adornment, for instruction, or even for worship – I do not say adoration: this evidently is not against the natural law, and yet God judged it necessary to impose this prohibition on the Israelites because of the special circumstances in which they were, surrounded by idolatrous peoples, newly come out of another terribly idolatrous people, and themselves a rough and materialistic people (note: If the prohibition of making images were a requirement of the natural law, God would not have authorized the Israelites to make images, as he did with the cherubim that adorned the Ark of the Covenant (divine command: Ex 26:18-22; execution: Ex 37:7), with decorations of various kinds that were in the Temple of Solomon (1 Kings 6:27; 7:25; 10:19-20; cf. Ez 41:18-20). And even a bronze image endowed with a wondrous power, made by God’s command (Num 21:6-9). Christ our Lord did not hesitate to compare himself with this saving image (Jn 3:14).).
We can say the same thing about the Sabbath. Some day must be dedicated to the special worship and adoration of God: this is clear and natural; but precisely Saturday?
Here too, this is a particular prescription given to the Hebrews, a specification of the natural law, which Saint Paul later takes it upon himself to tell us has already passed and has no validity for us.
Look at the texts, which are very clear.
Gal 4:9-11: For Saint Paul in this passage, observing the Sabbath, once Christ has come and once the Gospel has been accepted, is like turning back and renouncing the Christian faith; it is to make preaching useless.
Read the Pauline text and note the enumeration well: “days”: the weekly Sabbath; “months”: the celebration of the new moons, or neomeniae, that is, new moons, three synonymous words to designate the same thing; “times” or “seasons,” the agricultural feasts that came with them, such as Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles; “years,” finally, are the sabbatical jubilee years.
Col 2:16-17: These Jewish feasts are nothing but the shadow of what was to come. No one has the right to condemn or criticize us because we do not keep them. Christ was the reality that they prefigured.
When this reality has already come, how lamentable it is to remain attached to the shadows! Observe here the inverse order of the enumeration: “the feasts” (annual), “new moons” or “novilunes” (monthly), “sabbaths” (weekly). Thus you will see, in passing, how trivial and unfounded it is to try to apply these sabbaths merely to the sabbatical years, as the Adventists sometimes pretend, in order to escape before a text so clear and one that brings down one of the fundamental bases of their religious organization.
There is no doubt: according to Saint Paul, the Jewish Sabbath is definitively abolished, and having resurrected it constitutes, in the Adventists, a regression to Judaism and a denial of true Christianity.
8. The Sabbatism of Heb 4:9.
Once Saint Paul clearly tells us that the Sabbath is not in force for the Christian, what need was there to deal with this text? Nevertheless, you see the inexcusable superficiality into which our Adventist brothers have fallen, since they do not cease to allege such a passage, at first sight decisive: “There remains, then, a sabbath rest for the people of God” (Heb 4:9). And for this reason they – the “Adventist people,” as they call themselves – because they observe the Sabbath believe they are the only legitimate “people of God.”
In fact, it is enough to examine the context to realize what the sacred Author means. Read from Heb 3:7 to 4:11 and you will see that there it speaks of three rests, as of so many opportunities that God placed within reach of the children of Israel:
1. That of the Sabbath, or weekly rest, as a remembrance of completed creation (Heb 4:4-5). This was like the first opportunity, but the Israelites wasted it. It has now passed definitively.
2. The rest of the Promised Land, into which Joshua introduced them (Heb 4:5-8). This was like the second, but it too was frustrated; for this reason David continues exhorting in the Psalm (95:7-11), which gives the Author occasion for the commentary.
3. It is the rest of the Kingdom of God into which we are exhorted to enter (Heb 4:9-11). It is the new opportunity that God offers, seeing that the two previous ones have failed. It is the rest of entering the Church of Christ, and it is also the definitive rest of Heaven once all the works of this life have ended. But in no way does it refer to the observance of the weekly Sabbath. It is the definitive hope of rest that is shown to us, not a commandment imposed on us.
It is sad to see how isolated texts of Scripture are abused in order to prove absurd things, when, placed in their context, perhaps they teach precisely the opposite.
9. Final Summary.
I cannot go on at greater length. Even so, the letter is already long. In any case, let us make a brief summary of what has been set forth.
We have seen that the Adventists proceed from Miller and from Ellen White, and only since 1843. Let them not claim that the hope of Christ’s coming unites them with all those who have desired it since Adam, because this is not the only point of their doctrine; there are many others that are due only to William Miller and Sister White and their visions.
The Church of Christ, with its own doctrine, its own commandments and its organization as he wished to establish it, exists only from Christ our Lord onward. This fact inaugurates a new order of realities which, by perfecting the old ones, annuls them and renders them definitively obsolete.
Concretely, the Mosaic Law is annulled, replaced by a superior Law, “the Law of Christ,” the Legislator of the New Law, who repeatedly told us: “You have heard that it was said to the men of old; but I say to you…” (Mt 5:21; 5:33).
The Sabbath, in particular – which in no way belongs to the natural law – has been declared useless and past, because it was only a shadow destined to disappear when the blazing Light of Christ was manifested.
The Sabbath was given to the Hebrews as an opportunity to draw near to God. To us, on the other hand, the Church or Kingdom of God on earth is placed before us so that we may show our adherence to God by adhering to it: thus we shall attain the supreme and final rest.
It would remain to explain why the Catholic Church and all the Christian churches – except the Adventists – keep Sunday. The fundamental reason is that it was on Sunday that Christ rose; we, in fact, are no longer the synagogue, which depends on Moses, but the New Israel whose point of departure is not the liberation from Egypt, but the Redemption of Jesus Christ, who comes forth victorious from the tomb (note: The name that “Sunday” has in the Slavic languages is very beautiful and significant, as in Russian, where they call it “Voskrecienie,” literally, “resurrection.”).
Instead of commemorating the first creation, we commemorate the new creation inaugurated precisely with the Resurrection of Christ.
The day of Christ’s triumph was taken up by the Apostles and received the name Sunday, which, derived from the Latin “dies dominicus,” means the “day of Christ” or day of the Lord Jesus. Just as in Greek, from the Apostles (cf. Rev 1:10) to our own day, it is called kyriaké hémera, that is, the day of the Kyrios or risen Lord.
Sunday (or “the first day of the week,” as it was called at first, until it was given the proper name it has preserved until now) is also the day of Christian assemblies, the day of the Eucharist (Acts 20:7 and probably also 1 Cor 16:1-2).
I would have to lengthen this further in order to set forth fully for you the Christian reasons for Sunday. But I would have to write you another letter as long as this one.
I believe that with this I have given a broad answer to your questions. Be persuaded, my dear friend, that the doctrine of Holy Mother the Catholic Church, as it was taught to you and as you profess it, is the true doctrine of Christ. “He who hears you hears me” (Lk 10:16). With reason she can say like Saint Paul:
“If anyone preaches to you another Gospel, different from the one you have received, let him be anathema!” (Gal 1:9).
All yours in the Lord,
Author: Fr. Ernesto Bravo, SJ
Source: Apologetica.org
