Ellen White’s & Adventist Pioneers Faulty Trinitarian Theology

Seventh Day Adventism historically has rejected the Trinity, this is was because of the misunderstanding of the Pioneers concerning the Trinity and their metaphysical presupps about the ontology of God. Even though this reality is good enough to reject the Adventist Church as a false Church. The Adventist Churches “divinely inspired prophet” also rejected the Trinity, recreating her own concept called the Heavenly Trio. Which includes teachings such as God having a corporeal body and that God is not one in essence (ousia) but rather in mission. Jerry Moon, a prominent Adventist scholar admits that what Ellen G. White taught regarding the Trinity was not the Trinity that was rejected by Early Advent Fathers. Thus proving that Ellen White departs from the orthodox understanding of the Trinity in her “Heavenly Trio”.

Even as recently as 2006, there has been a wave of Anti-Trinitarians within
Adventism who “have advocated for the semi-Arian position of some early Adventist
leaders.”5 The history of Adventism attests to the notion of rejection of the Deity of Christ, and has only been until recently that Adventism affirms the Trinity. Which could be argued as just an equivocation of the word Trinity, in order to masquerade as an Adventist concept. Jerry Moon states that “Ellen White’s view did change [on the Trinity]—she was raised trinitarian, came to doubt some aspects of the trinitarianism she was raised on, and eventually came to a different trinitarian view from the traditional one.”6 Also, Moon argues that the Trinitarian doctrine that the Pioneers rejected is not the same doctrine that Ellen White teaches pertaining to the Trinity. Moon states that “It appears, therefore, that the trinitarian teaching of Ellen White’s later writings is not the same doctrine that the early Adventists rejected.” The Pioneers rejected “creedal Trinitarianism”, which mirrors the Cappadocian Formation of the Trinity. Because Ellen White’s ‘trinity’ concept is not what the Pioneers rejected (i.e. Cappadocian Trinity). This would only logically follow that Ellen White does not teach the Cappadocian understanding of the Trinity, since she can not affirm what the Pioneers rejected according to Moon. Other issues such as the Pioneers metaphysical presuppositions such as God needing to have a physical tangible body in order to be a personal God further proves that Adventism has drifted away from the Orthodox understanding of the Trinity—simply equivocating on the term “Trinity”.

The Adventist Jesus, Faulty Physicalism Metaphysic, Modalism, and semi-Arian Atonement Model in Seventh-Day Adventism

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