Abstract

The Seventh-day Adventist Church espouses the Three Angels' Messages of Revelation 14 as its raison d'etre. In its view the special mission of its members is to take these messages to the entire world. Yet about twenty-five percent of the church's financial worth and a much higher percentage of its paid employees are involved in the healthcare enterprise. Does this fact represent a dichotomy in the church's mission, or is it theologically defensible?

This investigation submits that the denomination's involvement in healthcare and training in the healing arts is theologically defensible and does not represent a departure from or a dichotomy in its mission. To demonstrate this the study proposes a theology of health that is inherent in and therefore consistent with Revelation 14.

The main features of this theology have their roots in the Biblical concept of creation and their fruits in the gospel of salvation. What is asserted is that the God who is Creator of heaven and earth is actively involved in caring, saving, and restoring His creation. His creative activity and His saving and restoring activity through the gospel are essentially one in the sense that it is the Creator, who is one, that affects both. These activities are one also in the qualitative sense that His creative activity is not just an historic event by which the world came into being, but also a continual activity by which His creative hand is ever present in the world to give it being, to care and to sustain it. It is out of this general attitude of caring and creative sustenance that the gospel brings salvation-healing as the most sublime and powerful expression of the creative love and wisdom of God. The salvation inherent in the gospel involves deliverance from sin, the fundamental disintegrating principle in the universe, and restoration to its pristine grandeur the entire creation, including the whole human person--body, mind and spirit.

The commission to preach the everlasting gospel is at once a commission to work, through faith, for the restoration of that part of God's creation that has been broken and debased--a work in which the Creator Himself is always engaged.

Moreover, though one may repudiate all others who claim worship, one cannot truly worship the Creator of heaven and earth while at the same time disregarding or further debasing that which is the constant work of His hand and object of His care. That will be a cosmic contradiction. People of faith, therefore, who worship the Father in spirit and in truth will hold as normative for their lives nothing less than the character of the Father, fully expressed in the Son, who always comes to His creatures with "healing in His wings."

Thus, the extensive involvement of the denomination in health care, while the actual operations of such care must be carefully and critically examined from time to time, is essentially a magnificent expression of the truths of creation and salvation embraced in the gospel in the context of a broken and almost chaotic world. It is, moreover, a validation of authentic worship.

LLU Discipline

Religion

Department

Religion

School

Graduate School

First Advisor

A. Graham Maxwell

Second Advisor

Dalton D. Baldwin

Third Advisor

Jack W. Provonsha

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Degree Level

M.A.

Year Degree Awarded

1981

Date (Title Page)

3-1981

Language

English

Library of Congress/MESH Subject Headings

Holistic Health; Seventh-day Adventists -- Health and hygiene.

Type

Thesis

Page Count

iv; 122

Digital Format

PDF

Digital Publisher

Loma Linda University Libraries

Usage Rights

This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has granted Loma Linda University a limited, non-exclusive right to make this publication available to the public. The author retains all other copyrights.

Collection

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Collection Website

http://scholarsrepository.llu.edu/etd/

Repository

Loma Linda University. Del E. Webb Memorial Library. University Archives

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