No other book has aroused so much controversy in the history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church as Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine. Published in 1957 as a direct result of the dialogues between evangelicals Walter Martin and Donald Grey Barnhouse and a select group of Adventist leaders, Questions on Doctrine was hailed initially as the apology par excellence of Adventism by its writers and promoters. However, when the book came out, it created great uproar among Adventists who questioned whether it accurately represented Adventist theology and the writings of Ellen White, in particular.
For Leroy Edwin Froom, one of the authors of Questions on Doctrine, the book "completed the long process of clarification, rectification of misconceptions, and declarations of truth before [the Christian] Church and the world." But M. L. Andreasen, a theologian and author on the sanctuary doctrine, saw the book as "the most subtle and dangerous error" and "a most dangerous heresy."
Hence, historian George Knight has noted that Questions on Doctrine "easily qualifies as the most divisive book in Seventh-day Adventist history," while theologian Herbert Douglass has observed that "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."
On October 24-27, 2007, 50 years after the publication of Questions on Doctrine, scholars, church leaders, and pastors across the theological spectrum of Adventism, along with guest scholars from the evangelical world, who have given careful study to the theology of Questions on Doctrine and Adventist history of the past half-century, will convene at Andrews University for an engaging, reflective, scholarly dialogue.