The Adventist prophetess—Ellen G. White—who the SDA Church believes was divinely inspired no differently than the biblical writers and that her interpretations of scripture correct inaccurate interpretations—claimed that God the Father is all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and is invisible to mortal sight. She also taught that the God the Father has a physical body just like Jesus added unto Himself in the incarnation. When the SDA Church uses the term “person” in the context of the Godhead, they mean a physical, bodily form.
God the Father is not the fullness of the Godhead bodily, Jesus is (Colossians 2:9). Jesus is not the Father (John 7:28-9, 20:17) and the Father does not have a physical form by nature. God is spirit (John 4:24) and Jesus made it clear that spirits do not have flesh and bone (Luke 24:39). Jesus uniquely added unto Himself a physical body by incarnating, but He did not have that physical body from eternity past. He is unique and one of a kind.
To defend this, the SDA Church, like other false groups that have heretical views of the Godhead, point to places like Daniel 7:9 to say that Daniel saw the Ancient of Days seated on the throne and Jesus approaches Him. But this doesn’t mean that ontologically the Father is contained to a physical body. Daniel is in vision, which presents it’s own set of nuances, but God manifests in physical form all throughout redemptive history, such as in Genesis 18:1 and Exodus 33:18-20. This doesn’t mean that God ontologically has a physical body. It means that He has the freedom and ability to manifest in the physical to interact with His creation.
For God to have a physical form by nature would mean that physical matter is eternal because God is eternal (Deuteronomy 33:27, Psalm 90:2) and immutable (Malachi 3:6, James 1:7). Physical matter is created, not eternal. Scripture is clear that God the Father is over all and through all and in all (Ephesians 4:6). The heavens and earth cannot even contain Him (1 Kings 8:27) and He is not a man (Hosea 11:9). He is not contained to a physical, corporeal body.
Furthermore, the selective appealing to certain passages in literality, but ignoring others, such as God in the Psalms being depicted with feathers and wings (Psalm 91:4) and having hands big enough to hold the depths of the earth (Psalm 95:4-5), is inconsistent.
This attribute of God that transcends the physical creation is why this platform is against depicting or making any sort of image of one of the persons of the Godhead. It cannot contain Him in His glory and takes away from that (Exodus 15:11, Isaiah 42:8).
Ellen White contradicts the Bible by saying the Father is fullness of the Godhead bodily. She also claimed that “whatever contradicts God’s Word, we can be sure proceeds from Satan,” that her writings never contradict God’s Word, and they bear the test of investigation. We’ll let you connect the dots.
