Criticism Of The Seventh-day Adventist Church

Criticism of the Seventh-day Adventist Church includes observations made about its teachings, structure, and practices or theological disagreements from various individuals and groups.

Major critics

One of the most prominent early critics of the church was D. M. Canright, an early leader of the movement in the late 19th century who apostatized and recanted but later left and became a Baptist pastor.

In the middle of the 20th century, evangelical Walter Martin and the Christian Research Institute concluded that the Seventh-day Adventist church is a legitimate Christian body with some heterodox doctrines and stated, "They are sound on the great New Testament doctrines including grace and redemption through the vicarious offering of Jesus Christ 'once for all'." However, other scholars such as Calvinist theologian Anthony A. Hoekema, who did not agree with the Adventist view that Jacobus Arminius's theology was in line with Adventism, believed that Adventism was based on a Wesleyan/Arminian stream of theology, and grouped Seventh-day Adventism with Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Science in his book ''The Four Major Cults''.

In debates regarding the inspiration of Ellen White during the 1970s, Adventists Walter T. Rea and Ronald Numbers wrote books criticizing Ellen White and accusing her of plagiarizing vitalist authors. This revived a controversy that first emerged in the late 19th century when Conybeare and Howson sued White and her publisher for allegedly plagiarizing their 1855 book, ''Life and Epistles of the Apostle Paul'', in preparing her own book, ''Sketches from the Life of Paul''.

Church doctrine

Trinitarian views

Some Christian critics of Adventism contend that the current Adventist view of the Trinity is unorthodox or constitutes tritheism.

Some Seventh-day Adventist scholars have acknowledged that the church's view of the Trinity differs in several aspects from the traditional Christian doctrine. According to Jerry Moon, emeritus professor at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, Ellen White held an essentially orthodox view of the Trinity, but it differed in important respects from the medieval doctrine of the Trinity. In an 1893 (November 27th, para.5) article in '' Signs of the Times'', White wrote, "The words of Christ were full of deep meaning as he put forth the claim n John 10:30">John_10.html" ;"title="n John 10">n John 10:30that he and the Father were of one substance, possessing the same attributes".

Moon explains that early Adventist leaders criticized the doctrine of the Trinity because they rejected tradition as a source of doctrinal authority in and of itself and did not find the Trinity clearly taught in scripture. The view of the Trinity that they and White eventually came to is essentially orthodox, but it rejects "three of the philosophical presuppositions undergirding traditional trinitarianism: (a) the radical dualism of spirit and matter, which concluded that God could not have a visible form; (b) the notion of impassibility, which held that God had no passions, feelings, or emotions, hence could have no interest in, or sympathy with, humans; and (c) the dualism of time and timelessness, which led to the notions of 'eternal generation' and 'eternal procession'." In these three aspects, the Adventist understanding of the Trinity radically differs from the medieval version.

Contrarily, A. Leroy Moore contended Adventists reject the orthodox view; he argued that the Proto-orthodox Christianity">proto-orthodox