Questions on Doctrine

The book generated greater acceptance of the Adventist church within the evangelical community, where it had previously been widely regarded as a cult.

However, it also proved to be one of the most controversial publications in Adventist history[1] and the release of the book brought prolonged alienation and separation within Adventism and evangelicalism.

In Adventist culture, the phrase Questions on Doctrine has come to encompass not only the book itself but also the history leading up to its publication and the prolonged theological controversy which it sparked.

Martin was accompanied by George Cannon and met with Adventist representatives Le Roy Edwin Froom and W. E. Read.

By the summer of 1956 the small group of evangelicals became convinced that Seventh-day Adventists were sufficiently orthodox to be considered Christian.

Barnhouse published his conclusions in the September 1956 issue of Eternity magazine in the article, "Are Seventh-day Adventists Christians?

[5] In Barnhouse's article it was stated that most Adventists believed in the sinless human nature of Christ and those who did not were part of the "lunatic fringe.

"When Adam Came from the Creator's hand, he bore, in his physical, mental and spiritual nature, a likeness to his Maker—God created man in His own image.

But a few months later on March 1, 1962, after Andreasen died on Feb. 19, 1962, the General Conference executive committee revoked its earlier decision on his ministerial credentials.

[11] In 1960, Walter Martin published his own response to Questions on Doctrine, entitled The Truth About Seventh-day Adventism,[12] which had wide circulation.

[13] From June 1960 till July 1961 Adventist magazine Ministry published a long series of responses to Martin's book, which are available online.

Differences associated with the Calvinist-Arminian dispute were a major part in the debate (Adventism is soteriologically Arminian), but Martin did not regard conformity to Calvinism as a test of Christian orthodoxy.

Dutch Calvinist theologian Anthony Hoekema grouped Adventism together with Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Science in his 1963 publication The Four Major Cults.

"[17] Conservative Herbert Douglass agreed, "most, if not all, of the so-called 'dissident' or 'independent' groups of the last 45 years are direct results of the explicit and implicit positions espoused by [Questions on Doctrine] on the atonement and the Incarnation.

[13] Throughout the following decades, the two Adventist camps—those who supported and opposed QOD respectively—continued to struggle with the issues it brought up which was not eased by "the ambiguous stance taken by General Conference leadership on Questions on Doctrine".

In 1978, Dr Ralph Larson published a short pamphlet entitled "The Fraud of the Unfallen Nature", in which he painstakingly dissected out the clauses pasted together by Froom and decisively demonstrated that in almost every instance the excerpts taken from her writings, in context, said exactly the opposite.

She had simply warned Baker to be careful how he described the human nature of Christ, lest people were to believe that He was a created being, and therefore take the position that He was a sinner.

Larson later published "The Word Was Made Flesh" in which he devoted a chapter to the misquoting of Ellen White on Christology (available at https://www.amazon.com/Word-Was-Made-Flesh-Seventh-Day/dp/1572580321).

The keynote speakers were conservative theologian Herbert Douglass, Adventist historian George Knight, and Biblical Research Institute director Ángel Rodríguez.

Presenters included Roy Adams, Arthur Patrick, Jon Paulien, Richard Rice, A. Leroy Moore and Woodrow Whidden.