Trinity concepts between orthodoxy and Adventism: Unitarianism

by koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

11 October 2009

Adventism worked with a Trinity concept already since the early days of the pioneers. Some leaders were skeptical of the Trinity concept but we find it with Ellen White in Spiritual Gifts IV as early as 1858. This is much earlier than the usual 1890 that is allocated to her role in historians like Richard Schwarz and freelance historians like George Knight. Eric Claude Webster in his doctoral dissertation of 1984 done at a non-SDA Calvinistic Seminary in South Africa, has actually indicated that the date 1890 is too late for a consideration of this topic in Adventism and the research of Erwin Roy Gane focused only on literature after 1890 (E. Webster, Crosscurrents in Adventist Christology [Berrien Springs, Michigan: Andrews University Press, 1984; 1992], 72 footnote 25). In his excellent presentation of denominational history, Richard W. Schwartz, Light Bearers to the Remnant (Boise, Idaho: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1979), 167-168, dealt with the concepts of Trinity among the early pioneers. What Webster (1984) said [about resources after 1890 only] for Gane (1963) can be said about Schwartz (1979) also. Although James White may have said in 1848 that the Trinity is "unscriptural" (Schwartz 1979: 167) Webster indicated that by 1877 in an article James White saw Christ as equal with the Father (published in Review and Herald).  Ellen White said it already in 1858 (Webster supra). Schwartz listed Bates, White, Canright, Loughborough, Smith, Waggoner as well as Stephenson as advocating Arianism. Arianism is the ideology among scholars that the Trinity as described in the Bible is not actually such but should be supplanted by a concept of one God only. What we have here is that the Old Testament concepts of the Trinity was overlooked or bypassed by early Judaism and that is why they rejected Jesus and now in Protestantism of the early 19th century, it was done again, namely to ignore the similar strong statements of a Trinity in the New Testament and circumvent those texts with psychological and philosophical arguments. In essence, we have a return to the Middle Age scholastics [between Augustine and Aquinas] again when they tried to explain the being-trinity with all kinds of mathematical speculations and analogies. The Christian says, lets make the two testaments Trinitarian since texts are supporting it and the Jew insists that the Old Testament is only one God and rejected the New Testament. Some Christians through the ages wanted to follow Judaism's approach by placing the Judaistic one-God concept from the Old Testament [ignoring the Trinity indicators] and place it over the New Testament [trying to explain away the strong Trinity indicators in that part of the Bible]. Other Christians, including Adventists, have no problem to recognize the Trinity also at work in the Old Testament. Ellen White recognized it also that way and not only she but some Church Fathers as well. So for example churchfathers and Ellen White recognized that the person that was in the oven with Daniel's friends was Christ. Ellen White said that it was Christ that visited Abraham in Genesis 18. In fact, the book of Hebrews by Paul in chapter 11 says explicitly that Moses knew Christ.

When we thus approach this chapter, we have to realize that our pioneers were Baptists, Methodists, Christian Connection and other churches before they joined the movement. They came with a baggage from former protestantism with them. They had libraries to keep them updated with the latest developments in Theology. Furthermore, they were also reading literature and pamphlets that was distributed and circulated by different movements. One such a movement is the Unitarian movement.

Our source for the study of Unitarianism is the great work by John Hurst on a critical investigation of Rationalism between the Reformation and 1865 (John F. Hurst, History of Rationalism [New York: Charles Scribner & Co, 1865]). This is exactly the kind of source that we need to investigate some aspects, in this case, the Trinity, in the cradle of Adventism, thus, the source is very near to the time we need to investigate. What Gerhard Hasel is for Adventism from 1978-1994 is John Hurst (1865) for Protestantism between 1820-1865. The passion was to define a truthful approach and to demarcate the error, in both cases, Rationalism and all its children. This is the second reason why we utilize this book, since the ideology and approach is correct. Adventism and Hurst thinks in the same lines, to protect the scriptures, to work with a Hermeneutics of Affirmation rather than Suspicion, to affirm miracles, the veracity of the Word of God, its infallibility, its Divine origin, to approach it with faith rather than

reason although reason on its knees is also welcome.

Unitarianism

There is the online information about Unitarianism that is overall well written and provides a good overview of their modern presence. In modern times, due to their diversity focus, their pluralism, ecumenism, a-theological sophistry, their creedless approach, their religiosity without religion, their rejection of any theological jargon, their liberal stance and evasiveness to be associated with liberalism, their humanism and their evasiveness to be linked to humanism, they are strong supporters of the objectives of the World Council of Churches. Under the name UU or Unitarian-Universalist they operate through a number of agencies trying to be instrumental to bringing various religions together for dialogue and interaction. Their objectives are fully described online.

Here we wish to stick to the description of Unitarianism as was described by John Hurst in 1865.

Boston and New England was the hotbed of Unitarianism (Hurst 1865: 537). A loose view of the Lord's Supper developed under Stoddard in 1708 and this is seen as the seed of Unitarianism in America. Hurst indicated that Rationalism destroyed the faith in Europe in the 18th century but in the USA it was Unitarianism that was associated with Rationalistic tendencies (Hurst 1865: 537).

It is clear that the attitude was a sense of looseness, a sense of reaction against strict adherence to doctrines, and people were encouraged to "forget that the Son of God, and the Spirit, have anything to do with man's salvation" (Hurst 1865: 538).

One may question whether Unitarianism is a denomination or rather an obstinate religious attitude against nominal Christianity.

In the First Episcopal Church of New England in Boston, the reverend James Freeman in April of 1783 was influenced by Unitarianism and he dropped the doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ from liturgy to correspond with Samuel Clarke's Revision of the Liturgy of the Church of England. On the 18th of November 1787, James Freeman became the first ordained Unitarian minister in the United States (J. E. Beard, Unitarianism in its Actual Condition [London: 1846], 1-4). It is better for us to see it similar to saying, "and was ordained the first gay-minister". It is an attitude to Scripture, or doctrine or to spirituality, not a theology or a church.

Ware at Harvard

At Harvard University, an avowed anti-Trinitarian, became professor of Theology in the place of Tappan. Also at Cambridge an Unitarian scholar was given lectureship and professors Ware and Andrews Norton spread their Unitarian views.

Channing

Ellery Channing wrote at Boston in 1815 a pamphlet under the title of American Unitarianism in which many of them left orthodox Christianity in all its forms and made a separate organization. He is a representative of what is called "Evangelical Unitarianism". "He felt it his duty to aid in the revival of what he deemed a more liberal faith" (Hurst 1865: 541).

Channing spoke on a variety of topics but it was clear that Channing derived from Kant the concept of the deeper reverence for essential powers of man, from Schelling he took over the role of the universal agency of God and from Fichte he got the assertion of the grandeur of the human will (Hurst 1865: 542). All three scholars were key players in Rationalism and operated with the hermeneutics of suspicion. The strongest influence on the Unitarian Channing was Wordsworth with his Excursion. Piety and heroism were mixed, humanity and earnest aspirations, greatness under lowliest disguises, sweet sanctions around every charity of social life, longings to see reverence, loyalty, courtesy and contentment established on earth (Hurst 1865: 542).

Channing was against the theology of a God who is more important the human dignity. He emphasized the greatness of Human nature "intellectual energy which discerns absolute, universal truth in the idea of God, in freedom of will and moral power, n disinterestedness and self-sacrifice, in the boundlessness of love, in aspirations after perfection, in desires and affections which time and space cannot confine ...It is truly an image of the infinity of God..." (E. Channing, Works, Introductory Remarks viii).

Channing felt that religion should start in ourselves, thus from below, very similar to Bultmann's ideas of the 20th century later: "We must start in religion from our own souls, for in them is the fountain of all divine truth" (Channing xviii-xix). "The only God whom our thoughts can rest on and our hearts can cling to, and our consciences can recognize is the God whose image dwells in our own souls" he said. This is very similar to the hermeneutics of suspicion model of Schleiermacher.

Innate knowledge is placed on a pillar by Channing in the following way: "Many indeed think that they learn God from marks of design and skill in the outward world but our ideas of design and skill of a determining cause, of an end or purpose, are derived from consciousness, from our own souls" (Hurst 1865: 544). The ideas correspond with what we find later with Martin Heidegger and Rudolph Bultmann and compare with what one find with Fichte and Schleiermacher earlier. All belonging to the hermeneutics of suspicion and proud of it.

Vague doctrines of Unitarianism

G. Ellis published in 1857 a book, Half Century of the Unitarian Controversy (Boston: 1857) in which he indicated that they had no fixed doctrines. Even in an online article in 2004 they are proud of the fact that they resisted any formulation or creed of their beliefs. Said Ellis: "Unitarianism is loose, vague, general, indeterminate in its elements and formularies".

However, there are a few points which they accepted:

1. Antagonism of orthodoxy. "Away with orthodoxy. It fetters us to forms and creeds, makes us blind devotees to system, converts us into bigots, and dwarfs reason into an invisible pigmy".

2. They held to the inspiration of Scriptures but "reverence for the Scriptures is rapidly on the decline among Unitarians, the direct result of the influence of the German and English Rationalism" (Hurst 1865: 546-547). The call orthodox believers "bibliolaters".

Their theory is summed up by their own words in 1863: "[We] regard Scripture as credible though human, as inspired not in its form, but in its substance, of various and, in many cases. of unknown authorship, and representing different stages of culture. We cannot accept all its documents as of co-ordinate authority; nor in every one of its statements can we recognize a product of inspiration. We do not conceive ourselves bound, therefore, to defend the geology of Moses, or to admire the conduct of Israelites in the extermination of the Canaanites; or to infuse a recondite spiritual meaning into the amatory descriptions and appeals of the Song of Solomon" (Orr, Unitarianism in the Present Time[Boston: 1863], 54, 58, 59).  

3. God and Christ not equal. They further claimed that God is the universal Father. He is a God of one person, not of three, and the doctrine of the Trinity is nowhere hinted at in the Bible, but is of Platonic origin. The Christian Fathers did not contend that it was contained therein. They also said that the view of three persons in on God is "self-contradictory, opposed to all right reason, positively absurd" (F. A. Farley, Unitarianism Defined [Boston: 1860], 24).

4. Christ is subordinate. They regard Christ as subordinate to God. He is God in the same sense as the angels, Moses, Samuel, the Kings and Judges of Israel. They were gods in one respect because the Word of God was spoken to them. Christ is the chief one "to whom the word of God came" (F. Farley 1860: 26). They felt that in the New Testament Christ is uniformly kept distinct from the Father and the attributes that he possessed, wisdom, knowledge, and power were endowments from God (Hurst 1860: 548).

5. Holy Spirit not a person. They claimed that the Holy Spirit is not a person, but merely sent from the Father, or proceeds from Him. They felt that the presence of the Holy Spirit in Jesus' farewell discourse is only a personification resulting from the peculiar nature of the Greek language and the necessity of its syntax (Hurst 1865: 548). Not being a person, the Holy Spirit by them is not regarded as God and is therefore, not self-existent, underived, and unoriginated. Wherever it is described as a person, they claimed, it is only the writer of the New Testament's striking form of speech. It is only the manner and style of writing as we find for wisdom, law, scripture, sin and charity (Farley 1860: 122, 123, and 136).

Many young people in those days, thought that this is a higher form of Christianity since it is liberally minded and refuse to follow or be bound by creeds or doctrinal restraints. They honored infidelity [liberal protestantism or progressive protestantism] as one can see from their speeches in those days (Hurst 1865: 555-557). Said Henry Frothingham, "the only infidelity to be feared, the only real infidelity which is a sin in the sight of God, is a disbelief in the primary faculties of the human soul...who deny the plenary inspiration of that elder Scripture [conscience or man's reason] written by the finger of God upon the human heart..." (H. K. Frothingham, Religious Aspects of the Age  131-132, op. cit. Hurst 1865: 558).

In 1865 there was an important Convention in which scholars tried to conflate some Evangelical concepts with Unitarianism but it did not work out and the conclusion of the research of Hurst in that year showed that "American Unitarianism is numerically decreasing" (Hurst 1865: 560 footnote 1).

Conclusion

It appears as if Unitarianism was considered to be a kind of elitistic "theology" although empty of theology, at least from a biblical perspective. This attitude and spiritual awareness crying against orthodoxy and their outcries against new movements, could have been a sympathy tank from which our pioneers from time to time in their fatigue with their own problems with orthodoxy, drank. It is maybe from this nerve that the anti-Trinitarian ideas in early Adventism originated with the pioneers.