which, if you think about it, is an extreme understatement. They were emotionally crushed.
Emerging from the painful and humiliating ordeal, a core group of believers continued to passionately study the Bible together. Because they were from various denominational quarters, their theology was a mixed bag of different perspectives. But they all had at least one thing in common: they didn’t want to mindlessly follow any ecclesiastical creed. They were fired up about stripping all assumptions away and studying the Bible for themselves. All they wanted was to humbly search the pages of Scripture to discover its unadulterated teachings. They were a group of theological nerds with a minimalist orientation on a quest to steer clear of imposed belief systems. “The Bible, and the Bible alone,” was their only creed.
This process of personal and group study gradually produced a general consensus of shared beliefs on a handful of theological issues. The group discovered exciting and powerful biblical truths that had been lost sight of during the Dark Ages. Eventually, these believers became known as “Seventh-day Adventists,” due to their belief in the seventh day as God’s Sabbath and their cherished hope in the second coming of Christ.
A Specific Concern
This diverse group of Bible students, as would be expected, had divergent views on various theological topics. The majority of these individuals, who would later be regarded as the “pioneers” of the Advent movement, were semi-Arian.1 That is, they believed Christ was in some manner brought into existence by the Father. Therefore, they rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. But, as we will discover, they rejected a specific framing of the Trinity doctrine, and did so for a particular reason. Following the specific concern of the Advent pioneers to its logical conclusion, we will see that the Seventh-day Adventist Church eventually rejected Arianism and adopted a theologically rich version of trinitarianism that answered the concern of the pioneers.
In recent years, there has been a resurgence of anti-trinitarian interest in some pockets of Adventism, although forthrightly rejected by the Seventh-day Adventist Church as a whole. Those who lead the anti-trinitarian movement turn for support to the Advent pioneers. But they shouldn’t, for reasons that will soon become evident. While many of the Adventist pioneers were anti-trinitarian, most of them were not anti-trinitarian in the same sense as is the current anti-trinitarian movement. The theological concern of the Adventist pioneers had to do with a particular truth they regarded as vital, and it was this:
the personhood of Christ distinct from the personhood of the Father.
Once we actually take the time to read what the pioneers wrote on the Trinity, we discover that they were against a particular view of the Trinity called “modalism,” which is “the doctrine that the persons of the Trinity represent only three modes or aspects of the divine revelation, not distinct and coexisting persons in the divine nature” (Oxford Online Dictionary). Modalism is essentially a Christianized version of ancient Greek monism, which is “the doctrine that only one supreme being exists” (Google Dictionary). Modalism rules out any notion that God consists of three distinct personal beings who are one in nature and character.
Ironically, in a plot twist that the current anti-trinitarians are apparently unaware of, we will discover that their view hails from pagan roots and is actually a version of the view the Advent pioneers were against. The Advent pioneers, even with their blind spots regarding the Sonship of Christ, exist in the theological lineage that produced the current doctrine of God held by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Contrary to what has been claimed, they are not the theological forefathers of the current anti-trinitarian movement hanging around the edges of Adventism. Thanks in significant part to the concerns of the Advent pioneers, the view settled upon by the Seventh-day Adventist Church is most emphatically not a modalism framing of the Trinity. It is, by contrast, what might be called “Covenantal Trinitarianism,” which paints the most beautifully relational picture of God imaginable.
In this chapter, we will examine some of the strongest anti-trinitarian statements made by the Advent pioneers. As we do so, their specific theological concern will become evident. All of the statements we will consider here were written by pioneers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, with the exception of E.J. Waggoner, the son of a pioneer and an influential second-generation theologian in early Adventism. Please read their statements at a pace that will allow you to process exactly what they were saying, giving special attention to the sections I have emphasized in bold type. A consistent pattern of thought will be evident.
J.N. Loughborough
Let’s begin with J.N. Loughborough. One of the earliest non-trinitarian statements to appear in Adventism, the following was published in The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald in 1861. We begin with this statement because it is one of the clearest representations of the core concern of the Advent pioneers:
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.
It is contrary to Scripture. Almost any portion of the New Testament we may open which has occasion to speak of the Father and Son, represents them as two distinct persons. The seventeenth chapter of John is alone sufficient to refute the doctrine of the Trinity. Over forty times in that one chapter Christ speaks of his Father as a person distinct from himself. His Father was in heaven and he upon earth. The Father had sent him. Given to him those that believed. He was then to go to the Father. And in this very testimony he shows us in what consists the oneness of the Father and Son. It is the same as the oneness of the members of Christ’s church. “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one.” Of one heart and one mind. Of one purpose in all the plan devised for man’s salvation. Read the seventeenth chapter of John, and see if it does not completely upset the doctrine of the Trinity.
To believe that doctrine, when reading the scripture, we must believe that God sent himself into the world, died to reconcile the world to himself, raised himself from the dead, ascended to himself in heaven, pleads before himself in heaven to reconcile the world to himself, and is the only mediator between man and himself. It will not do to substitute the human nature of Christ (according to Trinitarians) as the Mediator; for Clarke says, “Human blood can no more appease God than swine’s blood.” Com. on 2 Samuel 21:10. We must believe also that in the garden God prayed to himself, if it were possible, to let the cup pass from himself, and a thousand other such absurdities. J.N. Loughborough, The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, November 5, 1861
Please hear what Loughborough is arguing against and what is he advocating for.
He is against making God out to be “one person.” Let that register clearly, because it will become increasingly important as we proceed. Loughborough is against a doctrine of God that would erase the fact that Jesus and the Father are “two distinct persons.” He wants us to understand that there is an actual relationship within God’s intrinsic reality, not merely the projection of a relationship that isn’t really there. The Father and the Son are not two manifestations of one person, but rather two persons who are of “one heart and one mind.” Loughborough’s view was, therefore, a theological precursor to what eventually became the official position of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He was trying to affirm the distinct divine personhood of both the Father and the Son, defining their “oneness” as a oneness of heart, mind, and purpose.
Loughborough was in process, however. He was a young Bible student formulating thoughts in a young movement. He knew two things clearly, but was fuzzy on the theological solution. The two things he knew clearly were that (1) the Father and the Son could not possibly
