Yes. The pioneers of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church were Arian and semi-Arian in their Christology—many coming from a heretical sect called the Christian Connexion—a Unitarian, restorationist off-shoot. Their position only started to shift after 1888. This is one of the major red flags and evidences that their movement was not started by God. He did not use Christological heretics that resurrected ancient heresy to restore His Church.
Adventist scholarship, such as Jerry Moon and Roy Gane, have recognized this problem, such as in Jerry Moon’s The Trinity: Understanding God’s Love, His Plan of Salvation, and Christian Relationships…
More recently, a further question has arisen with increasing urgency: was the pioneers’ belief about the Godhead right or wrong? As one line of reasoning goes, either the pioneers were wrong and the present church is right, or the pioneers were right and the present Seventh-day Adventist Church has apostatized from biblical truth.
The Trinity: Understanding God’s Love, His Plan of Salvation, and Christian Relationships, pg. 190
A number of statements from these pioneers can be seen below:
Ellen G. White
God is the Father of Christ; Christ is the Son of God. To Christ has been given an exalted position. He has been made equal with the Father. All the counsels of God are opened to His Son.
Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 8, pg. 268
This is one of the clearest and plain statements from the movements divinely inspired prophetess whose writings correct inaccurate interpretations of scripture. This statement is in reference to the SDA Church’s pre-earth origin story, the Great Controversy, which is the governing paradigm within Seventh-Day Adventist theology.
The great Creator assembled the heavenly host, that he might in the presence of all the angels confer special honor upon his Son. The Son was seated on the throne with the Father, and the heavenly throng of holy angels was gathered around them. The Father then made known that it was ordained by himself that Christ, his Son, should be equal with himself; so that wherever was the presence of his Son, it was as his own presence.
The Spirit of Prophecy, Vol. 1, pg. 17
This is to say the Adventist Church believes there was an undisclosed amount of time prior to the creation of the earth involving angels in heaven where this event took place. The Father (“the great Creator”) called together the host of heaven to confer special honor upon Jesus who was made equal with himself and possess the same authority that the Father has. Such that He should be obeyed as if it were the Father himself.
This is damnable heresy. Jesus is co-equal with the Father by nature. He has always possessed the same level of authority from eternity past as Father, Son and Spirit are the One True God.
Satan in Heaven, before his rebellion, was a high and exalted angel, next in honor to God’s dear Son. His countenance, like those of the other angels, was mild and expressive of happiness. His forehead was high and broad, showing a powerful intellect. His form was perfect; his bearing noble and majestic. A special light beamed in his countenance, and shone around him brighter and more beautiful than around the other angels; yet Jesus, God’s dear Son, had the pre-eminence over all the angelic host. He was one with the Father before the angels were created. Satan was envious of Christ, and gradually assumed command which devolved on Christ alone.
The Spirit of Prophecy, Vol. 1, pg. 17
Adventist apologists have been quick to say that Ellen White claimed that this “exaltation” of Jesus led to no change in position or authority, it was simply a revelation of something that always was the case. But very clearly, Mrs. White is on record repeatedly saying Jesus was given something by nature that He didn’t always possess. The word “devolved” has to do with power being delegated from a superior to an inferior.
To say that she didn’t claim that Jesus was given something He didn’t always possess means we can’t understand the basics of language and words such as “given,” “made,” “devolved,” etc. And it was this action by the Father in this pre-earth origin story that led to Lucifer becoming jealous of Jesus, starting “the great controversy.”
The Holy Spirit is Christ’s representative, but divested of the personality of humanity, and independent thereof. Cumbered with humanity, Christ could not be in every place personally. Therefore it was for their interest that He should go to the Father, and send the Spirit to be His successor on earth. No one could then have any advantage because of his location or his personal contact with Christ. By the Spirit the Saviour would be accessible to all. In this sense He would be nearer to them than if He had not ascended on high.
Desire of Ages, pg. 669
This is heresy and shows Ellen White’s lack of understanding regarding pneumatology (the doctrine of the Holy Spirit). It also showcases that the SDA Church, to this day, does not believe Jesus is not personally omnipresent.
All of this is central to Adventist theology and cannot be denuded from it without the great controversy paradigm collapsing. Which is why the SDA Church has struggled in understanding who God is and why they have rifts amongst themselves in this area.
J.N. Andrews
The doctrine of the Trinity which was established in the church by the council of Nicea A. D. 325. This doctrine destroys the personality of God and his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. The infamous, measures by which it was forced upon the church which appear upon the pages of ecclesiastical history might well cause every believer in that doctrine to blush.
Review and Herald, March 6, 1855
This is wholly incorrect as the doctrine of the Trinity actually establishes and affirms the personality of the Father and the Son will maintaining the true divinity of both without confusing them for one another. It also wasn’t established at the Council of Nicea. That was simply when the church put a formal statement of the doctrine together in the face of the Arian heretics creeping into the church. The doctrine was taught well before the Nicene Creed was written.
And as to the Son of God, he would be excluded also, for he had God for his Father, and did, some point at the eternity of the past, have beginning of days. So that if we use Paul’s language in an absolute sense, it would be impossible to find but one being in the universe, and that is God the Father, who is without father, or mother, or descent, or beginning of days, or end of life.
Review and Herald, September 7, 1869
This is damnable heresy. Jesus had no beginning and “begotten” doesn’t mean Jesus was brought into existence or had a beginning at a point in the past. It means Jesus eternally proceeds from the Father which is why a rightful title of the Word is that He is God the Son.
Uriah Smith
God alone is without beginning. At the earliest epoch when a beginning could be,—a period so remote that to finite minds it is essentially eternity,—appeared the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” John 1:1. This uncreated Word was the Being, who, in the fulness of time, was made flesh, and dwelt among us. His beginning was not like that of any other being in the universe. It is set forth in the mysterious expressions, “his [God’s] only begotten Son” (John 3:16; 1 John 4:9), “the only begotten of the Father” (John 1:14), and, “I proceeded forth and came from God.” John 8:42. Thus it appears that by some divine impulse or process, not creation, known only to Omniscience, and possible only to Omnipotence, the Son of God appeared. And then the Holy Spirit (by an infirmity of translation called “the Holy Ghost”), the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the divine afflatus and medium of their power, representative of them both (Ps. 139:7), was in existence also.
Looking Unto Jesus, pg. 10
This is christological and pneumatological heresy. Jesus never had a beginning that is so far back into the past it can essentially be called eternity. We also see how the SDA pioneers didn’t believe the Holy Spirit was actually a person, but a divine medium or power representing the Father and the Son.
When Christ left heaven to die for a lost world, he left behind, for the time being, his immortality also. But how could that be laid aside? That it was laid aside is sure, or he could not have died; but he did die, as a whole, as a divine being, as the Son of God, not in body only, while the spirit, the divinity, lived right on; for then the world would have only a human Saviour, a human sacrifice for its sins; but the prophet says that “his soul” was made “an offering for sin.” Isa. 53:10.
Looking Unto Jesus, pg. 23
This is insight into how the SDA pioneers definition of divinity doesn’t align with scripture. God/divinity cannot die. Which is why understanding the hypostatic union and the two natures of Jesus Christ is so important. The Adventist Jesus was only a man while on earth.
James White
The “mystery of iniquity” began to work in the church in Paul’s day. It finally crowded out the simplicity of the gospel, and corrupted the doctrine of Christ, and the church went into the wilderness. Martin Luther, and other reformers, arose in the strength of God, and with the Word and Spirit, made mighty strides in the Reformation. The greatest fault we can find in the Reformation is, the Reformers stopped reforming. Had they gone on, and onward, till they had left the last vestige of Papacy behind, such as natural immortality, sprinkling, the trinity, and Sunday-keeping, the church would now be free from her unscriptural errors.
Review and Herald, February 7, 1856
Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort you that ye should earnestly contend for THE faith which was once delivered unto the saints…” (Jude 3, 4)…The exhortation to contend for the faith delivered to the saints, is to us alone. And it is very important for us to know what for and how to contend. In the 4th verse he gives us the reason why we should contend for THE faith, a particular faith; “for there are certain men,” or a certain class who deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ…The way spiritualizers have disposed of or denied the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ is first using the old unscriptural Trinitarian creed, that Jesus Christ is the eternal God, though they have not one passage to support it, while we have plain scripture testimony in abundance that he is the Son of the eternal God.
Review & Herald, January 24, 1846
This is evidence that the SDA pioneers did not understand what they criticized. Scripture is chalked full of evidence that Jesus is indeed the Almighty God. This does not take away from His eternal begetting from the Father. The same Jude that James White cites from explains in the very next verse (Jude 5) that Jesus was the one who led Israel out of Egypt. Deuteronomy 5:15 and Hosea 13:4 makes it clear that the Lord God, the Almighty, did this. Which means that, in Jude’s mind, Jesus was that Almighty God.
To assert that the sayings of the Son and his apostles are the commandments of the Father, is as wide from the truth as the old trinitarian absurdity that Jesus Christ is the very and Eternal God. And as the faith of Jesus embraces every requirement peculiar to the gospel, it necessarily follows that the commandments of God, mentioned by the third angel, embrace only the ten precepts of the Father’s immutable law which are not peculiar to any one dispensation, but common to all.
Review and Herald, August 5, 1852
Again, as can be seen from Jude and Deuteronomy, Jesus gave Israel the Law. It isn’t only the Father’s law. This was influenced by James’s wife, Ellen, who said:
The Son of God was next in authority to the great Lawgiver. He knew that his life alone could be sufficient to ransom fallen man. He was of as much more value than man as his noble, spotless character, and exalted office as commander of all the heavenly host, were above the work of man. He was in the express image of his Father, not in features alone, but in perfection of character.
The Spirit of Prophecy, Vol. 2, pg. 9
In her pre-earth origin narrative, she distinguished Jesus from the Father who was the “great Lawgiver.” This is further insight into how the pioneers did not understand that Father, Son and Spirit are the One True God—the Almighty.
In his exaltation, before he humbled himself to the work of redeeming lost sinners, Christ thought it not robbery to be equal with God, because, in the work of creation and the institution of law to govern created intelligences, he was equal with the Father. The Father was greater than the Son in that he was first. The Son was equal with the Father in that he had received all things from the Father. The reader may now look upon the Father and the Son, to use a common figure, as a great creating and law-instituting firm.
Review and Herald, January 4, 1881
Here we see that James would later go on to claim the law was given by both Jesus and God the Father. But he speaks of the supposed pre-earth exaltation of Jesus that His wife claimed to be shown in vision saying that this exaltation demonstrates that the Father was greater than the Son. They were not co-equal with one another. This statement was made the final year of James White’s life.
J.N. Loughborough
The Spirit of God is spoken of in the Scriptures as God’s representative—the power by which he works, the agency by which all things are upheld. This is clearly expressed by the Psalmist, when he inquires: “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.” Ps. 139:7-10. We learn from this language that when we speak of the Spirit of God, we are really speaking of his presence and power.
Review and Herald, September 20, 1898
This is pneumatological heresy and a rejection of the personhood of the Holy Spirit. This is what the SDA Church was teaching until 1898 when Ellen White claimed to be shown in vision that the Holy Spirit is a person.
Q: What serious objection is there to the doctrine of the Trinity?
A: There are many objections which we might urge, but on account of our limited space we shall reduce them to the three following: 1. It is contrary to common sense. 2. It is contrary to scripture. 3. Its origin is Pagan and fabulous. These positions we will remark upon briefly in their order.
1. It is not very consonant with common sense to talk of three being one, and one being three. Or as some express it, calling God “the Triune God,” or “the three-one-God.” If Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are each God, it would be three Gods; for three times one is not one, but three. There is a sense in which they are one, but not one person, as claimed by Trinitarians.
Review and Herald, November 5, 1861
This is more evidence the pioneers did not know what they were criticizing. Trinitarians don’t believe that God the Father, Son and Spirit are one person, but three persons simultaneously. They believe God is one single being expressed in three persons. Which is why it is important to recognize the distinction between person and being, something the SDA Church rejects. The Trinity is also not pagan in origin.
Joseph Bates
My parents were members of long standing in the Congregational church, with all of their converted children thus far, and anxiously hoped that we would also unite with them. But they embraced some points in their faith which I could not understand. I will name two only: their mode of baptism, and doctrine of the trinity….Respecting the trinity, I concluded that it was an impossibility for me to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, was also the Almighty God, the Father, one and the same being. I said to my father, “If you can convince me that we are one in this sense, that you are my father, and I your son; and also that I am your father, and you my son, then I can believe in the trinity.
The Autobiography of Elder Joseph Bates, pg. 204
Mr. Bates, like the other pioneers, did not understand the difference between person and being. Because of this, he rejected that Jesus is the Almighty. This is heresy.
W.H. Littlejohn
Q: Will you please favor me with those scriptures which plainly say that Christ is a created being?
A: You are mistaken in supposing that Seventh-Day Adventists teach that Christ was ever created. They believe, on the contrary, that he was “begotten” of the Father, and that he can properly be called God and worshiped as such. They believe, also, that the worlds, and everything which is, was created by Christ in conjunction with the Father. They believe, however, that somewhere in the eternal ages of the past there was a point at which Christ came into existence.They think that it is necessary that God should have antedated Christ in his being, in order that Christ could have been begotten of him, and sustain to him the relation of son. They hold to the distinct personality of the Father and Son, rejecting as absurd that feature of Trinitarianism which insists that God, and Christ, and the Holy Spirit are three persons, and yet but one person. Seventh-Day Adventists hold that God and Christ are one in the sense that Christ prayed that his disciples might be one; i. e., one in spirit, purpose, and labor.
Review and Herald, April 17, 1883
Yet another pioneer that erroneously equated Trinitarians as teaching that God is three persons yet one person. We also see, yet again, a misunderstanding of the word “begotten” and what it means in scripture.
John G. Matteson
Christ is the only literal Son of God. “The only begotten of the Father.” John 1:14. He is God because he is the Son of God; not by virtue of his resurrection. If Christ is the only begotten of the Father, then we cannot be begotten of the Father in a literal sense. It can only be in a secondary sense of the word.
Review and Herald, October 12, 1869
This outright contradicts Romans 1:4 which plainly says that Jesus was declared to be the Son of God by virtue of the resurrection. The resurrection demonstrated that Jesus was who He said He was—God in flesh—and not a liar. Had he not resurrected, it would have shown that He was a sinner like any other person who dies.
J.H. Waggoner
Many theologians really think that the Atonement, in respect to its dignity and efficacy, rests upon the doctrine of a trinity. But we fail to see any connection between the two. To the contrary, the advocates of that doctrine really fall into the difficulty which they seem anxious to avoid. Their difficulty consists in this: They take the denial of a trinity to be equivalent to a denial of the divinity of Christ. Were that the case, we should cling to the doctrine of a trinity as tenaciously as any can; but it is not the case. They who have read our remarks on the death of the Son of God know that we firmly believe in the divinity of Christ; but we cannot accept the idea of a trinity, as it is held by Trinitarians, without giving up our claim on the dignity of the sacrifice made for our redemption.
And here is shown how remarkably the widest extremes meet in theology. The highest Trinitarians and lowest Unitarians meet and are perfectly united on the death of Christ—the faith of both amounts to Socinianism. Unitarians believe that Christ was a prophet, an inspired teacher, but merely human; that his death was that of a human body only. Trinitarians hold that the term “Christ” comprehends two distinct and separate natures: one that was merely human; the other, the second person in the trinity, who dwelt in the flesh for a brief period, but could not possibly suffer, or die; that the Christ that died was only the human nature in which the divinity had dwelt.
The Atonement In The Light of Nature and Revelation, pg. 165
Once again, an SDA pioneer that didn’t understand what they were criticizing. Trinitarians do not believe Jesus dwelt in flesh for a brief period. He possesses His physical, glorified body that He resurrected in and will for eternity. Trinitarians are not gnostics.
Furthermore, to equal Trinitarianism with Socinianism is almost hard to take seriously. Socianianism was a 16th century heretical sect that rejected a number or foundational doctrines of the Christian faith, including the deity of Christ. But Mr. Waggoner did not understand that Jesus’s divine nature not dying does not mean his sacrifice was still not of divine value. And that’s the key. Divinity cannot die by definition. Which is why Jesus’s human nature did, but that human offering, unlike a mere creature or another human, was of divine value because He is God in flesh.
This categorically distinguishes Trinitarians from Unitarians when it comes to the atonement. This is trinitarian theology 101 and tells us a lot about how the SDA pioneers were very confused.
E.J. Waggoner
While both are of the same nature, the Father is first in point of time. He is also greater in that he had no beginning, while Christ’s personality had a beginning.
Signs of the Times, April 8, 1889
Another influential pioneer and SDA thought leader teaching damnable heresy. The same individual that is often pointed to by Adventists to say played a role in the SDA Church coming to a true understanding of the gospel at the 1888 Minneapolis General Conference. Not only is this incorrect, but Mr. Waggoner couldn’t have understood the gospel correctly when he was affirming a false Christ (Matthew 24:24). The true gospel is Jesus Christ’s gospel (Galatians 1:12).
This is only a sampling of the theological issues put forth by the SDA pioneers over decades of time leading to their current position which is still not orthodox Trinitarianism but is a unique concept to their movement branded as the Heavenly Trio. It is one of the many things that puts Adventism outside of the bounds of Christianity.
For a comprehensive deep dive on this subject, watch our super stream on it.
