Denver, Colorado, United States …. [Mark A. Kellner/ANN]
An estimated 135 Seventh-day Adventist scientists, professors, theologians and church leaders will convene in Denver on August 20 for a final session in a series of “Faith and Science” conferences that have examined the relationship between Adventist doctrine and science.
The meeting “is the conclusion of a three year series of conversations on theology and science and the ways in which they contribute to or challenge the church’s understanding of origins,” said Pastor Lowell Cooper, a general vice president of the world church and chairman of the meeting.
The sessions aren’t designed to reshape church doctrine, said Cooper and L. James Gibson, director of the church’s Geoscience Research Institute in Loma Linda, California, secretary of the event’s planning committee. Dr. Gibson said the meetings were designed to “take the temperature” of current discussions about faith and science, and also to help members understand the Adventist viewpoint.
He added that the meetings would begin with a review of previous sessions, and then address a range of topics.
“We will start out by more or less reviewing what the issues are,”
Gibson told ANN in a telephone interview. “Then we will take a look at the significance of the creation doctrine to Seventh-day Adventist theology and doctrinal structure, and then we will also look at some of the issues in how does the church relate to the academy,” as the educational field is sometimes known.
No official statement of doctrine will emerge from the meeting, the two leaders said. Rather, an eight-person planning committee appointed by world church president Pastor Jan Paulsen has convened the various sessions and will assemble a final report for Paulsen’s consideration.
Paulsen attended the initial conference in 2002, and told delegates then that the church is firm in its convictions on origins.
“As a church we don’t come to these discussions with a neutral position,” Paulsen said in remarks to the 2002 conference. “We already have a very defined fundamental belief in regard to creation. We believe that earth and life on it was created in six literal days and that the age of earth since then is a young one.”
According to Cooper, the 2004 conference will build on earlier
sessions: “We expect out of this to prepare a report that will be presented to the [world church] president. We will be looking at things that heighten our awareness of the reasons for the church belief and a heightened awareness of the challenges that can be raised, from the science community or from other theological interpretations.”
Adds Gibson, “The underlying issue is that there’s a discrepancy in the way people perceive scientific information and the way they perceive scriptural information. For us to admit that discrepancy shouldn’t be a problem. We have never based our doctrines on science, and we’re not about to now, and to learn that science doesn’t support our doctrines is useful to know, but I don’t think it will effect our doctrines, or that it should affect our doctrines. But it might have the effect of encouraging people not to make reckless statements that are not substantiated.”
It’s estimated that 90 of the delegates will come from the North American region, while 45 others will arrive from other places in the world. Along with the initial meeting, other conferences have been held throughout the world during the past few years, gaining input from Adventist academicians and scientists.
Copyright (c) 2004 by Adventist News Network.
