Recipes and Theology

Jeanne and I have at times been dinner guests in the home of friends, and have been privileged to enjoy a particularly tasty dish. My pleasure at such an occasion is unmarred until that moment when Jeanne turns to our hostess and says, “This is delicious. Do you share your recipes?” From that time on the conversation, from my point of view, becomes altogether vain and unprofitable. It revolves around measures of this and half measures of that, spoonfuls of this and half spoonfuls of that, and so on and on, until my spirit groans within me. I just don’t like recipes.
But I do like good food, and I have to recognize that in order to have good food one must have good recipes. For that reason I try to be patient when these discussions occur.
I also try to be understanding when I meet persons who don’t like theology. Theological discussions affect some people the same way discussions of recipes affect me. These people seem to be saying, “Give me good religion, but never mind the theology.” But isn’t that a bit like saying, “Give me good food, and never mind the recipes?” How can we have good food if we don’t have good recipes? And how can we have good religion if we don’t have good theology? Are they not inseparably linked together?
Let’s take a quick look, an overview, at Seventh-day Adventist theology. All theological systems have a starting point, a basic presupposition, which sets the course of the entire system of beliefs. These beliefs must derive from the presupposition and align with it, or at least not disagree with it. These presuppositions are often simply an attempt to set forth a statement of how it is assumed that God relates to this world.
Deism, for example, which is the belief that William Miller held before he entered into his own Bible studies, starts with the presupposition that God created the world, then turned His attention to other matters and left the world largely to its own devices, to work out its problems as best it could. We would think of the God pictured by this theological system as an uncaring God.

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The various liberal or modernistic systems, which to varying degrees embrace theories of evolution and reject the doctrine of special revelation by which we understand that the scriptures came to us, seem to us to picture a God who is hardly less uncaring than the God of Deism.
The sovereignty of God systems with their decrees whereby God predestines some to be saved and others to be lost regardless of their own feelings about the matter appear to us to move beyond the picture of an uncaring God to presenting a God who is actively cruel. It must be remembered that some of these theological systems contain a doctrine of eternal punishing for the poor unfortunates who were not predestined by God to be saved.
Over and against all of these, and infinitely better, we believe, is the basic presupposition of Seventh-day Adventist theology, which is found in one short verse of scripture, 1John 4:8:

He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is Love.

May we suggest an experimental exercise. Take a large piece of paper and write down on it a series of statements setting forth everything we humans know, from our experience and observation, about love.
Your first conclusion will probably be that the list is longer than you expected. This tells us something. If we know that much about love, and if God is love, then we know a great deal about God. Whatever is true about love is also true about God. Is it not then illogical and incorrect to say that we don’t know very much about God?
Your second conclusion will require a little more thought, but is just as predictable as the first. If you will carefully examine the list of statements that you have compiled setting forth the things that we know to be true about love, it will become apparent to you that what you are looking at is simply a list of the “doctrines” of the Seventh-day Adventist church. It is actually just that simple. Every doctrine that we hold is an answer to the question, How does the love of God relate to this particular matter, or to that?
Jeanne and I have used this approach with good effect in our evangelistic meetings. We announce on the opening night that we will present 21 lectures on the love of God, and that this will by no means exhaust the subject. Then we begin each message by asking the audience to recite together

God is love
sometimes in our language, sometimes in theirs. Then we proceed to present every Bible doctrine as an application of the love of God. Let us show you a few very abbreviated examples.

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At the very top of our list of things known about love would be the observation that it takes two to love, and that love rejects separation and solitude and wants togetherness. A God of love would surely be lonely with no one to love and no one to love Him. Thus, insofar as it may be appropriate to think of beginnings when we think of God, we would reverently visualize a loving and lonely God creating free beings in order to solve the problem of loneliness for Himself as well as for themselves.
Our first statement about love leads immediately to the second, that love requires freedom and cannot exist without it. There can be no automated, computed, mechanized, or programmed love. God made His created beings free, dangerous though such an action certainly was, in order that they could love and be loved. We call this the vitally important doctrine of free will.
We observe that love communicates with conversations, long letters, long, long telephone calls, even telegrams and the exchanging of gifts. Here we see the doctrine of the Holy Scriptures, the Holy Spirit, and the angels.
Love warns. Even birds and beasts use warning cries to alert loved ones to the approach of danger. Love does not leave the loved one to stumble into dangerous circumstances without giving an advance warning, if that is possible. Here we see the doctrine of Bible prophecies, which contain a predictive element that is in some cases clearly a warning.
Love takes time for the loved one. We see nothing in our heavenly Father that would be like those earthly fathers of whom some children complain, “He gives me everything except himself.” God takes time for us. We call this the doctrine of the Sabbath.
Love fellowships with the loved one by walking together, talking together, doing things together. Here we see the doctrines of worship and communion.
There is hardly a word in any language more appealing to the human heart than the word for home, and hardly any desire more universal than the desire for a home. In spiritually minded persons this instinct reappears in the desire for a spiritual home, a place where one can be spiritually loved, nurtured, instructed, and have a sense of belonging. Men in love provide homes for their families, and God in love provides a spiritual home for Christians. We call this the doctrine of the church.
We see love going to great exertions in order to provide the best possible future for the loved one, even though this may require changing jobs, changing locations, or even changing countries. As the love of God relates to this matter, we see the doctrines of heaven, the new earth, and everlasting life.
We observe that love forgives, forgets, and restores, and here we are looking at the doctrine of justification.
Love exerts itself to provide the fullest possible happiness for the loved

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ones. Here we see the doctrine of sanctification and the law of God. Did you ever consider that the commandments dealing with human relationships are simply the provisions whereby two or more people can be happy while living on the same planet? How can both be happy if one lies to the other, steals from the other, or takes advantage of the other in any way? The ten commandments are love’s happiness code.
Love is never unfair or overdemanding, expecting what cannot be freely given. Here we see the doctrine of God’s empowering grace, according to which the apostle Paul could say, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” Phil. 4:13. All of the biddings of the God of love are enablings.
Love withholds that which is harmful. A loving parent will never permit a child to play with a loaded gun or a sharp knife. Here we see the doctrines of healthful living and the Christian life style as expressions of God’s love.
We observe that love can be very defensive of the loved one, even to the point of firm rejection of those who will not cease to afflict, injure, and threaten the life of the loved one. Here we see the doctrine of the final eradication of sin.
Sadly, we observe that love can be rejected. The one who loves is sometimes forced to say, “I have done all that love can do. I can do no more. I will have to accept your rejection of my love.” Here we see the doctrine of the unpardonable sin, best illustrated in the experience of Satan himself.
Satan’s rebellion and false accusations against God made abundantly clear an attribute of the love of God that had not previously been so apparent, the attribute of self denial. In response to Satan’s question, “Wherein does God deny Himself?” the God of love provided all the answer that was needed in what we call the doctrine of the incarnation, which brought Jesus to this earth in the form of fallen man.
We observe that the ultimate in human love is sometimes demonstrated in self-sacrifice, even to the giving of one’s own life for the loved one. This attribute of the God of love was abundantly demonstrated in the greatest act of self-sacrifice that the universe has ever known. Paul writes in Romans 5:7, 8:

For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die.
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Today we speak of this as the doctrine of the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ.
We could go on. But this should be enough to demonstrate that it was no idle statement to suggest that a list of things we know about love

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is simply a list of the doctrines of the Seventh-day Adventist church, a series of answers to the question, How does the love of God relate to this? Seventh-day Adventist theology begins with the basic presupposition that God is love, and ends with the conclusion that God is love. Witness the last paragraph in the book, The Great Controversy:

The great controversy is ended. Sin and sinners are no more. The entire universe is clean. One pulse of harmony and gladness beats through the vast creation. From Him who created all, flow life and light and gladness, throughout the realms of illimitable space. From the minutest atom to the greatest world, all things, animate and inanimate, in their unshadowed beauty and perfect joy, declare that God is love.

A theology that begins with “God is love” and holds firmly to that basic principle to its very end cannot accept any doctrine that is out of harmony with that principle. When a theological opinion is presented, we immediately test it for its love content, and if it fails to pass this test we have no further interest in it. A doctrine that represents God as uncaring, unloving, overdemanding, or even actively cruel is not acceptable to Seventh-day Adventists.
Satan was the first to advance the idea that God is actually not a God of love because He had given a law, the Ten Commandments, that was beyond the ability of His created beings to obey. This accusation initiated the great controversy between Christ and Satan. Christ undertook to demonstrate to the watching universe that Satan’s charge against God was false. He would prove that God never fails to supply His created beings with all of the power they need to obey His law.

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