By Colleen Tinker
Last week’s blog, “Does God Have a Body?” generated a surprising number of responses, some of which were posted online and others which came via email. There was a consistent theme to the push-back letters: if God doesn’t have a body, then how are we in His image?
As I kept encountering this question, I realized that in spite of the fact that Adventism does not publicly state that it believes God has a physical body, this idea is powerfully taught by implication in Adventist school curricula and in Sabbath School lessons. Even more, this idea is reflected in the Adventist belief that man is only material and does not have a spirit.
“Cradle Adventists” generally grow up with a sometimes unspoken assumption that we humans are created physically in God’s image. In many cases, the instruction is overt; I remember being told in Adventist elementary school that the human body looks like it does because God made it in His own image.
Ellen White strongly suggested that not only Jesus but also His Father had physical bodies. Here are two of her quotes establishing her belief that Jesus Himself told her God has a body:
I have often seen the lovely Jesus, that He is a person. I asked Him if His Father was a person and had a form like Himself. Said Jesus, “I am in the express image of My Father’s person” (Early Writings, p. 77.1).
In February, 1845, I had a vision of events commencing with the Midnight Cry. I saw a throne and on it sat the Father and the Son. I gazed on Jesus’ countenance and admired his lovely person. The Father’s person I could not behold, for a cloud of glorious light covered him. I asked Jesus if his Father had a form like himself. He said he had, but I could not behold it, for he said if you should once behold the glory of his person you would cease to exist (Letter published in Broadside 1, April 6, 1846, par. 7).
Because of Ellen White’s revelations from God, Adventism has been comfortable perpetuating the belief that God certainly has a body because He passed on His physical image to us. Nevertheless, Ellen’s statements were vague and poorly developed. She gave no explanation for this belief other than seeing God in vision.
There is a little-known fact, however, that Adventist founder James White, Ellen’s husband, wrote in detail his belief that God has a body—and explained his philosophical reasons. James’s writings are available, but most people do not know about them nor do they know that he established the Adventist materialist view in the very earliest days of Adventism.
Our friend Steve Pitcher told us that James had written in detail about this subject, and he loaned us the second of a two-volume collection called Collected Writings of James White published by the Adventist Pioneer Library in 2008.
White’s pamphlet, entitled Personality of God and published in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1861, is also available online here.
White equated atheism with belief in immaterial spirit
Reading James White on this subject made me see why it was so hard to come to understand that we literally have immaterial spirits. He is the one who developed the argument that belief in immaterial spirits is demonic. He wrote:
Immateriality: This is but another name for nonentity. It is the negative of all things and beings—of all existence. There is not one particle of proof to be advanced to establish its exisenece. It has no way to manifest itself to any intelligence in heaven or on earth. Neither God, angels, nor men could possibly conceive of such a substance, being, or thing. It possesses no property or power by which to make itself manifest to any intelligent being in the universe…In short, it can exert no influence whatever—it can neither act nor be acted upon. And even if it does exist, it can be of no possible use. It possesses no one, desirable property, faculty, or use, yet, strange to say, immateriality is the modern Christian’s God, his anticipated heaven, his immortal self—his all!…
The atheist has no God. The sectarian [a Christian who believes God is immaterial spirit] has a God without body or parts.…they both claim to be the negative of all things which exist—and both are equally powerless and unknown.
The atheist has no after life, or conscious existence beyond the grave. The sectarian has one, but it is immaterial., like his God…Their faith and hope amount to the same; only it is expressed by different terms.
Again, the atheist has no heaven in eternity. The sectarian has one, but it is immaterial in all its properties, and is therefore the negative of all riches and substances. Here again they are equal, and arrive at the same point.
What is God? He is material, organized intelligence, possessing both body and parts. Man is in his image.
What is Jesus Christ? He is the Son of God, and is like his Father, being “the brightness of his Father’s glory, and the express image of his person.” He is a material intelligence, with body, parts, and passions; possessing immortal flesh and immortal bones.
What are men? They are the offspring of Adam. They are capable of receiving intelligence and exaltation to such a degree as to be raised from the dead with a body like that of Jesus Christ, and to possess immortal flesh and bones. Thus perfected, they will possess the material universe, that is, the earth, as their “everlasting inheritance.” With these hopes and prospects before us, we say to the Christian world who hold to immateriality, that they are welcome to their God—their life—their heaven, and their all. They claim nothing but that which we throw away; and we claim nothing but that which they throw away. Therefore, there is no ground for quarrel or contention between us.
And then James ends with a poem of his own composing. The second stanza reveals clearly his and early Adventism’s material worldview and its disdain of spiritual reality:
An immaterial God they choose,
For such a God we have no use;
An immaterial heaven and hell,
In such a heaven we cannot dwell.
Implications
First, James White wrote this pamphlet on the personality God in 1861, two years before the official formation of the Seventh-day Adventist organization. The founders already had a following, however, and James had established the press which became the Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association at Battle Creek, Michigan, and he was producing volumes of material to educate the fledgling group.
Importantly, James White came to the Adventist movement from the Christian Connexion which was an anti-trinitarian group. He co-founded Seventh-day Adventism as a non-believer in the triune God who also denied the spiritual nature which God claims for Himself in His word.
Further, James’s words reveal the shocking fact that he equates the classic Christian belief in God who is spirit with atheism. In fact, he makes three accusations that ought to horrify Christians. First he says that the atheist’s “no God” is the same as Christianity’s “God without body or parts” and concludes, “Both are equally powerless and unknown.”
Second James equates the atheist’s belief that there is no existence beyond the grave with the Christian’s belief that there is one—but he characterizes the Christian belief as one that is “immaterial, like his God,” and claims that “both are negative, and both arrive at the same point…expressed in different terms.”
Third, James equates the atheist’s belief that there is “no heaven in eternity” with the Christian’s belief in heaven. He makes this comparison by assuming that the Christian believes heaven “is immaterial in all its properties, and is therefore the negative of all riches and substances.” Thus, James concludes, atheists and Christians actually believe the same things; they just express them in different ways. James contends that the belief in immaterial spiritual reality is a fiction that is no more real than is the atheist’s belief in no spiritual reality at all.
James betrays his unbelief in Scripture and his lack of knowing the Lord in saying the Christian’s belief in the spiritual nature of God is no different from the atheist’s belief that there is no God. The Bible is explicit that God is spirit, and furthermore, it states that we also have spirits that can know and worship God (Jn. 4:24). Furthermore, Jesus said that in order to see the kingdom of heaven, we must be born again, born of water and of the Spirit (Jn. 3:3–6). We must be born of God (Jn. 1:12) who is spirit.
In proclaiming that God and all His heavenly reality are material—physical—and not immaterial in any way, James White established the materialist foundation of Seventh-day Adventism that also teaches humans are only bodies that breathe. Man does not have an immaterial spirit, they say, that continues after death or which is divisible from the physical body.
This belief contradicts God’s word which declares that when we die we are absent from the body and present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:1–9), a condition which, Paul says, is “very much better” than remaining in the body on earth (Phil. 1:22–23).
False gospel
James White’s treatise on a material God also includes a statement that betrays his utter ignorance of the biblical gospel. He said that men “are the offspring of Adam” and are “capable of receiving intelligence and exaltation to such a degree as to be raised from the dead with a body like that of Jesus Christ.”
This statement is utterly false. No amount of intelligence can lead one to eventually rise from death and have a glorified body. In fact, this statement of James White’s reveals Adventism’s belief that spiritual things are discerned in the brain, that if the brain is healthy, it will understand spiritual things better, and that those with compromised brains, such as developmentally disabled people, will be unable to comprehend the gospel. These people, Adventists believe, will die and become as if they never existed.
Intelligence plays no role whatsoever in a person’s hearing, believing, and trusting the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and His atoning work of death and resurrection.
Furthermore, White says above that people may receive “exaltation” to such a degree that they will be raised from the dead. This notion is utterly unbiblical. The Bible never speaks of humans being exalted except in Christ when they are born again and seated at the Father’s right hand in Jesus (Eph. 2:6; Col. 3:3). Only Jesus was exalted to the Father’s right hand after completing His work of atonement.
Resurrection and glorification, of course, are not linked in any way to intelligence and exaltation. The way people “qualify” to be resurrected to glory with bodies like that of the Lord Jesus is through believing in Him and His finished work for the forgiveness of our sins and thus being born again, passing at that moment from death to life (Jn. 5:24) in which we, our born-again spirits, never die, even though our bodies do (Jn. 11:25–26).
False God
Finally, James White betrays that the material god he worshiped—the god which he taught the first Seventh-day Adventists was the true god—is not the God of Scripture. He taught an idol, a false god that has no power and which has its basis entirely in the mind of man. His words near the end of his pamphlet are chilling:
We say to the Christian world who hold to immateriality, that they are welcome to their God—their life—their heaven, and their all. They claim nothing but that which we throw away; and we claim nothing but that which they throw away. Therefore, there is no ground for quarrel or contention between us.
With these declarations, James White established three things about Seventh-day Adventism that became part of Adventism’s self-identity until the present day—things which are still true about Adventism even though most people have long forgotten that James White, co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist organization and the husband of Adventism’s prophetess, wrote these things to the “little flock” as the Adventist organization was forming. (It must be noted that Ellen White never corrected James with any message from God about this subject. Instead, she endorsed the doctrines that stand on the materialist foundation James set forth.)
- Seventh-day Adventism is not part of the stream of Christianity. James White clearly distinguished between Christianity and its belief in an immaterial God and Adventism which believes God is material. Although the church does not officially declare they believe in a material God today, neither do they state He is not material. The unspoken assumption that human beings are in His image because we somehow look like God remains a shaping influence in Adventism.
- Seventh-day Adventism has a different god than does Christianity. From the beginning, the doctrines of Adventism grew out of the foundational belief that God is not spirit but rather material. James White not only established a materialist worldview for his fledgling “church” but actually mocked the biblical teaching that God is spirit and that man has a spirit that must be made alive through belief in the finished work of the incarnate God the Son.
- James White actually declared that the early Adventists “throw away” the immaterial reality of God (and thus also of humans) and claimed for Adventism a false god and a false view of humanity. This materialist view established from the beginning a false view of sin and salvation. With this belief comes the notion that salvation is attained by intelligence, smart choices, and physical obedience to external rules (the Ten Commandments).
Adventism has updated its public image as the decades have passed. Today it claims to be a Protestant denomination; it calls itself “Christian”, and it seeks to share ministry and values with Christian churches. Under the whitewashed surface, however, Adventism’s doctrines and practices are still firmly rooted in a materialist worldview. It’s health message is based on the belief that spiritual insight depends upon a healthy body; longer life through healthy eating is the way to postpone ceasing to exist in death. Moreover, abortion on demand is provided in Adventist hospitals and is done by Adventist doctors—because a fetus is merely physical, and before it breathes, it is not a living soul.
Seventh-day Sabbath-keeping is the sign of being loyal to God, and this act, not the seal of the indwelling Holy Spirit, is the Adventists’ last-day mark of those worthy to be saved.
The materialist view of God and of creation that James White taught has become the warp and woof of the Adventist worldview. Even without knowing where this understanding originated, Adventists see reality in an unbiblical way. They have succeeded in suppressing the details of their materialist viewpoint from the public, but in reality they have defined their god by refusing to believe His own self-revelation in His word. In limiting their god, they have misdefined themselves as well, and they deny they are immaterial spirits dwelling in mortal tents (2 Cor. 5:1–4).
Because Adventism is wrong about the nature of God and the nature of man, it is also wrong about the nature of sin and of salvation. Thus, Adventism teaches a false gospel, and it completely eclipses the biblical teaching of the new birth and our need to be born of the Spirit.
Modern Adventism may not teach its members the blatantly anti-gospel doctrines James White taught the early Adventists, but it still bears the legacy of his materialist views that betray his unbelief in the God of the Bible. Only by submitting one’s mind and spirit to God’s eternal word can an Adventist discover the subtle error that imprisons him. Only in the crucified and resurrected Christ is there a way out of the despair of Adventism’s materialism.
Further reading:
- Personality of God, by James White (Husband of Adventism’s Prophet Ellen G. White
- “Abortion in Adventism”—Why Seventh-day Adventism Supports Abortion
- “Are Humans More Than Living Bodies?”
- We Got Mail - October 31, 2024
- November 2–8, 2024 - October 31, 2024
- We Got Mail - October 24, 2024
For what it’s worth, my personal opinion as to the meaning of man being created in God’s image, it doesn’t mean our body somehow looks like God’s unlikely form. It only means that, the same way God named several of the things he had created (in whatever language he chose to communicate the relevant detail) (Gen 1:5, 8, 10), Adam had the same power, since he gave their name to animals (Gen. 2:20) and to the female companion God created for him (Gen 2:23).