Articles by David J Hamstra
Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 2022
The question of which rituals in the Torah should continue to be practiced was disputed in the ap... more The question of which rituals in the Torah should continue to be practiced was disputed in the apostolic church. This research finds that the (1) Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:19–29) and (2) 1 Peter 1:14–17 indicate two categories of ritual abstentions Christians should continue to practice: (1) resident foreigner abstentions (Lev 17:8–13, 18, 20:1–5, 24:16; Exod 20:10; Deut 5:14) because the church is a community in which Gentiles reside with Jews (Acts 15:14–18) and (2) national corresponding-holiness abstentions (Leviticus 11, 19:1–3, and 20) because the church is sojourning holy nation (1 Pet 2:9–11). Both categories of overlap on three out of five dimensions of abstention each—from idolatry, working on the seventh day, and sexual immorality—and each category has a dietary abstention—from (1) blood and (2) unclean meat. The other abstentions are from (1) blasphemy and (2) spiritualism. All but blasphemy are meaningful on terms established by God at humanity’s origins for our relationship with him. The salvation historical continuity of these abstentions should prompt reflection on how they can be practiced in ways that are meaningful for Christians today, and Christians who practice them should not be regarded as compromising Christian or Jewish identity.
Andrews University Seminary Student Journal, May 11, 2018
For Christians who interpret the seventy weeks of Daniel 9:24-27 by correlating the coming of the... more For Christians who interpret the seventy weeks of Daniel 9:24-27 by correlating the coming of the messiah with the arrival of Jesus Christ, the question of whether Jesus could have been identified as the predicted messiah at the time of fulfillment is theologically significant given biblical claims of prophetic intelligibility. There is a consensus among scholars affirming the view that interpretation of the seventy-weeks prophecy led to a climate of messianic expectation among certain sectors of first-century Jewish society. This position is supported by the explicit connection of the seventy weeks to the anticipated arrival of a messiah in Melchizedek (11Q13). Josephus provides an independent line of circumstantial evidence that dates this expectation to the first century. This warrants the theological conclusion that the prophecy was, in principle, intelligible to those among whom it was fulfilled.
Kerygma, 2019
From the apocalyptic kingdom sequence and Nebuchadnezzar’s madness narrative in Daniel, Ellen G. ... more From the apocalyptic kingdom sequence and Nebuchadnezzar’s madness narrative in Daniel, Ellen G. White developed a cosmic-conflict account of divine judgment in human history: God’s character is revealed through the moral principles of governance by which he judges the nations. Drawing on OT prophetic oracles against the nations, Steven J. Keillor discerns divine judgment in US history, not only in calamitous events, but also in historical processes that “sift” the righteous from the unrighteous. The 2016 U.S. presidential elections and their outcome fit both patterns of divine judgment, yielding the provisional, working conclusion that they were the culmination of a sifting judgment that humbled and revealed moral defects in the right-, center-, and left-wing factions of American politics. In response to a sense of being under divine judgment, American Christians should be taught to align their political loyalty to God instead of political factions so as to form characters fit to govern with Christ in the age to come.
Andrews University Seminary Studies, 2019
Arguments made for and against affirming same-sex marriage in Christian communities rely on typic... more Arguments made for and against affirming same-sex marriage in Christian communities rely on typical moral background precon-ceptions about immanent and transcendent goods identified by Charles Taylor in A Secular Age. Arguments made only in terms of marriage's immanent goods have the potential to diminish the plausibility of a uniquely Adventist way of imagining the transcen-dent good: apocalyptic consciousness focused on the imminent-immanent restoration of Eden by Jesus Christ following the second coming. Comparing marriage to divergent sets of Sabbath-keeping practices-those that provide benefits exclusive to this world and those that aim at goods beyond this world-foregrounds the availability of a moral background for Seventh-day Adventist ethics that is closed to transcendent goods. However, practices that entail giving up immanent goods for the transcendent good of Eden-restored can be authentically sustained through communal recognition. Advent-ism should develop such practices of recognition both to alleviate losses incurred by gay, lesbian, and bisexual Adventists who make sacrifices for traditional marriage as a transcendent good and to reinforce the fuller sense of meaning found in self-denial for the sake of the soon-coming Savior.
Book Reviews by David J Hamstra
Andrews University Seminary Studies, 2018
Andrews University Seminary Studies, 2016
Paper Presentations by David J Hamstra
This paper will trace the contours of the theology of history that emerges in Hugh of St. Victor’... more This paper will trace the contours of the theology of history that emerges in Hugh of St. Victor’s (c. 1096–1141) writings and relate it to his sacramental conception of reality. Hugh’s sacramental theology is mystical in the sense that the believer’s ability to comprehend God in contemplation is restored through sacramental symbolism. Hugh called this form of contemplation “speculatio.” Created reality as a symbolic representation of the Creator, and thus amenable to speculative contemplation, is the sacramental ground on which Hugh was able to build his theology of history. Allegorical and tropological interpretation controlled by the literal-historical reading of the text is how Hugh’s speculative interpretation of reality is structured when applied to Scripture. From this method, Hugh determined the history was the ordering principle of God's creative and restorative acts, the primordial condition of human existence, and the foundation of doctrinal exposition. Hugh’s theology of history begins with God’s ordering our existence historically so that we might seek Him, takes the fall as a disordering of our time through a disruption of our ability to see God represented in reality, moves through a historical succession of sacraments, formal and speculative, that put humanity on the track of reformation, and culminates in the union with God that was humanity’s original telos.
N. T. Wright has defended the historical methodology behind his theological project from apocalyp... more N. T. Wright has defended the historical methodology behind his theological project from apocalyptic critique by building on Charles Taylor’s conclusion that the natural/supernatural distinction in modern ontology is a plank in the immanent frame that makes sense of skeptical epistemology. But Wright does not also take up Taylor’s axiological account of the sources of those development. When applied to Wright’s theo-historical method, a Taylorian axiological critique reveals that Wright is uncritically relying on immanent presuppositions about the human good for his account of epistemology, which are then carried through to his eschatological and ethical conclusions about the moral meaning of history.
Commentators have recognized that removal of “iniquity” (און) in Zech 3:4, 9 alludes to the Day o... more Commentators have recognized that removal of “iniquity” (און) in Zech 3:4, 9 alludes to the Day of Atonement. However, this intertextual study goes further by demonstrating that Zech 3 specifically references the rituals of Lev 16 with three key words—“before” (פני) (Zech 3:1, 3; cf. Lev 16:12-13), “clothes” (בגדים) (Zech 3:3-5; cf. Lev 16:4, 32), and “iniquity” (און) (Zech 3:4, 9; cf. Lev 16:21-22)—in a vision of the high priest in the Most Holy Place, contaminated by the very kind of evil his rituals are intended to remove. Other intertexual references in Zech 3 support and develop atonement/judgment themes related to Lev 16 and 23:27-32. These include the identity of the Messenger of the LORD, the need to remove moral "filth," renewal of priesthood and sanctuary, the heavenly council scene, and the presence of Satan. Zech 3 culminates in the promise of an eschatological Day of Atonement, which the priests symbolize but God alone is able to accomplish. This ultimate Day of Atonement/judgment is a historical process, beginning with the messianic Branch and ending on the day all iniquity is finally removed. Through this process, God answers implied questions of his justice in forgiving his people’s iniquity.
Poster Presentations by David J Hamstra
Ethical trajectory hermeneutics describe the underlying unity of the manifold ethical injunctions... more Ethical trajectory hermeneutics describe the underlying unity of the manifold ethical injunctions in Scripture as the progressive elevation of the ethical standards of God’s people, but are unable to provide standards for God’s people today in the absence of a definition of the trajectories’ telos. The hermeneutic of τυπος-formal typology describes the unity of Christ’s saving work in history as a progressive realization of God’s Kingdom, but has limited applicability to the formation community standards in the absence of a historically defined ethical dimension of Kingdom realization. A synthesis of the two approaches could resolve their lacunae. Ephesians 4:13–15 suggests that eschatological conformity to the pattern of Christ’s historical instantiation of the divine pattern entails His people’s collective ethical development throughout salvation history. In his Sermon on the Mount and discourse on divorce, Jesus appealed to God’s acts as creator/sustainer as a pattern in order to elevate community standards by making explicit what was previously implicit in OT law. The eschatological consummation of τυπος-formal typology could offer the fullness of Christ as the telos for ethical trajectories, while the elevation of the standards plotted by ethical trajectories could reveal the ethical dimension of Kingdom realization and the next steps toward its ethical appropriation.
Papers by David J Hamstra
Kerygma, Mar 16, 2020
From the apocalyptic kingdom sequence and Nebuchadnezzar's madness narrative in Daniel, Ellen G. ... more From the apocalyptic kingdom sequence and Nebuchadnezzar's madness narrative in Daniel, Ellen G. White developed a cosmic-conflict account of divine judgment in human history: God's character is revealed through the moral principles of governance by which he judges the nations. Drawing on OT prophetic oracles against the nations, Steven J. Keillor discerns divine judgment in US history, not only in calamitous events, but also in historical processes that "sift" the righteous from the unrighteous. The 2016 U.S. presidential elections and their outcome fit both patterns of divine judgment, yielding the provisional, working conclusion that they were the culmination of a sifting judgment that humbled and revealed moral defects in the right-, center-, and left-wing factions of American politics. In response to a sense of being under divine judgment, American Christians should be taught to align their political loyalty to God instead of political factions so as to form characters fit to govern with Christ in the age to come.
The purpose of this paper is to explain the tension between institutional and charismatic authori... more The purpose of this paper is to explain the tension between institutional and charismatic authority in early Christianity (100-250 C.E.) and Sabatarian Adventism (1844-1915) and how both movements resolved that tension. This paper will argue that early Christianity and Sabbatarian Adventism had a similar tension between charismatic and institutional authority, yet resolved the tension differently. The early Christian church institutionalized charismatic authority by assimilating the charism of prophecy into the office of bishop, while the prophet and elders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church institutionalized charismatic authority by establishing an authoritative corpus of prophetic writing. It is hoped that, for Seventh-day Adventists, this study will highlight the importance of maintaining institutional separation between the elders entrusted with institutionalized prophetic gift and the elders who administer the Adventist Church as well as the danger of expecting to always have a prophet.
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Articles by David J Hamstra
Book Reviews by David J Hamstra
Paper Presentations by David J Hamstra
Poster Presentations by David J Hamstra
Papers by David J Hamstra