A. Graham Maxwell's Contribution to Theology

Eugene Shubert

A. Graham Maxwell's Contribution to Theology
This article is divided into four sections. The first three sections cover A. Graham Maxwell's contribution to

Second Century Gnosticism
Medieval Moral Influence Theory
The New Age Interpretation of the Cross

Section 4 summaries Graham Maxwell's indebtedness to the pantheism of John Harvey Kellogg.

Gnosticism
Here are the essential points of Gnosticism:

"A rejection of all legal categories pertaining to God, leaving sin as ignorance and salvation as a healing of the mind through accurate information about God and His purposes, was the core teaching of the Gnostic movement in the second to third centuries, and is the basis for most Eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism." Richard Fredericks, Ministry, March 1992, pp. 6-10: The moral influence theory—its attraction and inadequacy: The distorted attraction of one popular theory of the atonement.

“The name ‘Gnosticism’ is given to all those different theories of the universe which professed to be Christian, but amalgamated elements of Christian belief with Hellenistic ideas regarding an intermediate world of superhuman beings between the Supreme One and men, and regarding the human soul as a part of the Divine which had fallen into the dark and evil world of Matter. Each Gnostic sect claimed to have a special ‘knowledge’ (gnosis) to communicate, by which the Soul could get deliverance from matter and win its way back to the Upper World. Most of the Gnostics represented the God of the Old Testament as an inferior Being, often a Being hostile to the Supreme God, ruling in the lower world, from which ‘knowledge’ enabled the Soul to escape.” — The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, Vol. 9, article 785: ‘Gnosticism.’

“The basic premises common to the many varieties of Gnostic belief were that since God is good and the material world is evil, he cannot have created it” (David Christie-Murray, A History Of Heresy, p. 21). The basic premise of Neo-Gnostic Adventism (and Maxwell) is that since God is good and retribution is evil, then God has nothing to do with meting out punishment in a final judgment.

“These systems were philosophical in that the problem which concerned all Gnostics was the reconciliation of the existence of evil with God who is good; religious because they offered salvation”, salvation by gnosis. (Does that sound familiar)?

Eugene Shubert

Moral Influence Theory
“The moral influence theory (m.i.th) has its roots in the teaching of Abelard (d. 1142), one of the keenest medieval minds. According to this view, the purpose of Christ’s death was in no way a substitution to meet the proper demands of a righteous God for judgment on sin but solely a demonstration to provide such a moving expression of God’s love that it would melt the sinner’s enmity against God, awaken responsive love in his heart, promote true repentance, and thus pave the way for forgiveness of sin. Reconciliation, in this theory, means only the setting aside of man’s hostility toward God” Raoul Dederen, The Sanctuary and the Atonement, p. 310.

The Focus of Socinian Theology
“A formidable attack was made on the doctrine of the Reformers by Socinus. He began with an attempt to remove the very foundation on which it was based, namely, the idea of justice in God as understood by Anselm and the Reformers. He denied the presence of any such justice in God ‘as requires absolutely and inexorably that sin be punished.’

“...He also holds that, since guilt is personal, substitution in penal matters is impossible; and that, even if it were allowable, it cannot be said that Christ bore the exact penalty of the law, since this would mean that He died as many eternal deaths as there are sinners. And yet He did not even suffer one endless death...

“Socinus never tires of saying that the forgiveness of sins is an act of pure mercy, simply on the basis of repentance and obedience. The only conditions are sorrow for sin and an earnest desire to obey the law. ...This theory establishes no direct connection between the death of Christ and the salvation of sinners. The death of Christ did not atone for our sin. ...The forgiveness of sins depends exclusively on the mercy of God. But because Christ received the power to bestow eternal life on believers immediately after His death, Socinus considers it possible to maintain that this death expiated our sins.” Louis Berkhof, The History of Christian Doctrines, pp. 184-185.

Here is just one example of the devilishly brilliant way that Graham Maxwell uses Socinianism to mock vicarious substitutionary atonement:

Eugene Shubert

A. Graham Maxwell's Contribution to Kellogg's New Age Spiritualism

Eugene Shubert

A. Graham Maxwell's Contribution to the Pantheism of John Harvey Kellogg