By Kaspars Ozolins
Theology (from the Greek word theós ‘God’) is, of course, the study of God and everything related to him. Since God created the universe, therefore, the study of theology actually addresses every facet of existence––everything which God created and continues to govern in his sovereignty. When, however, theologians specifically study the actual being of God and His attributes, they use the term theology proper. It should be obvious to us that the beginning, focus, and pinnacle of all theological study is the contemplation of God himself––as He truly is. It’s no wonder theology used to be called “the queen of the sciences.” There is nothing more important, or more pivotal, than the careful study of God as He has revealed Himself in the Scriptures.
Of course, many people in the world fail to perform this vital task. The failure to rightly study God in God’s word, however, does not mean that one is left with a blank slate about who God is. “Everyone’s a theologian,” quipped R. C. Sproul, and whether or not a human being (fundamentally created in the image of God) acknowledges this fact, he is bound to create some conception of God, or gods: either true or idolatrous. What is more, the totality of that individual’s worldview––their conceptual framework for all of existence––derives from their particular notions of God. This connection between a person’s understanding of God and one’s worldview cannot be overstated in the case of the Seventh-day Adventist church, which continues to be shaped at its very core by a thoroughly unbiblical view of God.
A recent disturbing case in point is an online blog post in Adventist Today written by Richard W. Coffen, retired vice president of editorial services at Review & Herald. The piece, published March 8, 2019, is innocently titled “An Oversimplified Account of Deity,” but reads like a theological bombshell. It is nothing less than a cynical attack on Christian trinitarianism, couched in sophisticated and ostensibly nuanced progressive language. What the author writes reveals much about how the cultic, anti-trinitarian foundations of Seventh-day Adventism continue to shape and influence its modern progressive wing (despite protestations to the contrary).
An Evolutionary Mindset
Coffen’s progressive, modernist thought is immediately apparent as he begins by listing what he terms “significant high points” in the historical development of deity. Notably, with one exception (the view that the 10 Commandments taught henotheism, or worship of one god among many),none of these high points include anything revealed from Scripture––the author does not think very highly of divine revelation (as will soon become abundantly evident). Significant historical highlights according to Coffen include the first pharaoh’s being proclaimed a god (“51 centuries ago”), Naram-Sin being the first Mesopotamian king considered a god (“42 centuries ago”), the council of Nicaea formulating a Christology (“16 centuries ago”), and the third council of Constantinople refining that Christology (“13 centuries ago”).
Coffen’s list is greatly influenced by a common evolutionary paradigm popular in secular circles which goes like this: while earlier Homo sapiens worshiped many deities, later sophisticated human sociological development led to a reduction in the number of gods and to the elaboration of complex theological concepts.
The worship of multiple gods, according to Coffen, was a reflection of mankind’s attempts to conceive of God’s infinitude. Instead of acknowledging what God’s word declares (for example in Romans 1:18ff), that the worship of multiple gods is evidence of universal human idolatry, Coffen thinks this that sort of behavior should be interpreted as a sincere attempt to understand an essentially unknowable God. In making this point, Coffen reveals part of his underlying worldview: God has not definitively spoken in his Word. Therefore, mankind is left to grope about, trying to understand who He actually is in, as Coffen puts it, “an effort … to grasp the divine immensity”.
Mishandling God’s Word
The author next draws the reader’s attention to what he terms certain “undisputed facts.” In fact, his facts reveal nothing more than a gross mishandling of Scripture. Coffen makes much of the fact that early Jewish Christian believers were staunch monotheists, and therefore “had to grapple with the identity of Jesus Christ.” According to him, they ascribed honorifics [titles of honor or respect] to Christ much like the Dead Sea scrolls and other inter-testamental Jewish literature did (in speaking of a coming Messiah). However, “[T]hese [Jewish Christian] authors would have felt appalled had someone accused them of compromising strict monotheism!”
Here, Coffen’s link to Adventism’s deadly Arian roots begins to surface, unmistakably. Like his Adventist forefathers, the author has decided to reject the trinitarian revelation of Scripture because it conflicts with his rationalist mindset; Christ cannot possibly be truly God without invoking multiple gods. The New Testament revelation about the identity of Jesus Christ is dismissed by a facile appeal to honorific terminology.
In fact, a central pillar in Coffen’s argument is his view that the early church fathers (whom he disparages as “pre-scientific” and “Neo-Platanist”) did not even have much to go by as they formulated the doctrine of the Trinity. In fact, he deems 1 John 5:7, 8, which reads “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one” in the KJV to be the best of the few Scriptural evidences of the Trinity that exist. Unfortunately, as he points out, this particular passage only appears in a few of our very late copies of the New Testament.
Although it is accurate to state that 1 John 5:7 is a later addition that the original author did not compose, this fact is entirely beside the point since the New Testament is filled with passages that require a high Christology. By comparison, one is left incredulous at Coffen’s view that 1 John 5:7 is the best example of only a few indications of the Trinity in the New Testament.
Significantly, this very same argument has recently been advanced by another unbeliever, New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman (an agnostic).
A failure to see that the New Testament is literally brimming with trinitarian language and concepts cannot help but expose the blindness of an unbelieving heart that is unable to rightly comprehend God’s Word. In the synoptic gospels alone, Jesus does things that can only be rightly ascribed to God. For example, He stills a storm, provoking amazement in His disciples (Mt. 8:27). He quotes from the Old Testament (as do the gospel writers) in ways that can only be understood as affirming His deity. For example, Jesus cites Psalm 8 and asserts that it is entirely appropriate for little children to praise Him.
In fact, strong indications of His divinity can be found on almost any page of the gospels (let alone the epistles or Acts). In healing the demoniac, for example, Jesus commands him to go home and “declare how much God has done for you,” while Luke comments in the same verse that the man went away, “proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him.” The theme of Jesus as the sole Creator of everything that exists (echoing Genesis 1) is explained at the beginning of multiple books of the New Testament (the Gospel of John, the epistles to the Colossians and the Hebrews).
Coffen, however, only cites a few examples which he deems unimpressive, questioning whether they are “appropriately authoritative sources for theology,” since they are uttered by pagan or demonic individuals in the gospels. What is worse, he badly mistranslates the original Greek text, implying that the persons who made these statements viewed Christ merely as one god among many.
For example, Coffen cites three individuals addressing Christ, each of which he attempts to translate literally from the original Greek: the tempter in Matthew 4:3, 6 (“son of the God”), his satanic minions in Luke 8:28 (“the son of the highest God”), and the pagan centurion in Mark 15:39 (“a son of a god”).
What Coffen appallingly fails to understand is a basic grammatical feature of biblical Greek known as “Apollonius’ canon.” When a noun is modified by another noun (either to indicate possession, or some other relationship), the second noun generally agrees with the first noun in either including or excluding the definite article (ancient Greek had no indefinite article). In the example of the centurion, the lack of a definite article in “of God” (theoú) can be readily explained by its absence in “the Son” (huiós). Would Coffen be also willing to question the “authority” of the angel Gabriel, who in Luke 1:35 addresses Mary and describes Jesus with the exact same words and grammar as the centurion did (namely, huiòs theoú)?
That there is no simple one-to-one correspondence between the Greek article and its English equivalent is also demonstrated by Coffen’s literal translation of the demon’s address in Luke 8:28. He translates “the son of the highest God” when an actually literal (and also incomprehensible) rendering would be “son of the god the highest” (huiè toú theoú toú hypsístou [the articles are underlined]). The apparent exception to Apollonius’ canon in the above example and Coffen’s first citation (Mt. 4:3, 6) is due to a phenomenon in which the first noun is sometimes used in a qualitative way (i.e., almost as an adverb).
The most famous example of this exception is John 1:1, so often twisted by other cults. In positioning the word “God” (theós) in the front and without an article (kaì theòs ḗn ho lógos, literally: “And God was the Word”), John was not attempting to communicate that Jesus was “a god” (among many), nor was he trying to state that Jesus was somehow lesser than the Father. Instead, he intended precisely to demonstrate that the Word had all of the qualities and attributes of deity!
Coffen’s dismissal of the testimony of the Word of God is even more blatant in the case of the Old Testament. He claims that “[t]o interpret certain Old Testament passages as proto-trinitarian is anachronistic eisegesis and would never have convinced any of those early learned rabbis.” The author apparently does not care to consider the numerous “angel of the LORD” passages in the Old Testament, nor does he take into consideration Jesus’ quotation and interpretation of Psalm 110. He also does not appreciate that the language Isaiah uses of the suffering servant (Isa 53) is identical to that ascribed to Yahweh in Isaiah 6 (let alone the fact that the New Testament explicitly claims that Isaiah saw Christ’s glory; cf. John 12:41).
As with the previous examples, Coffen fails to take what God has revealed in his Word seriously.
A Profound Cynicism Concerning Church History
In his article, not only does Coffen badly mishandle Scripture, he also has a reprehensible attitude toward church history. Part of his rejection of the testimony of the early church fathers has to do with what he describes as their lack of “modern biological understandings to help them articulate their conclusions.”
Bizarrely, yet in keeping with his physicalist Adventist roots, Coffen regards the theological study of God––who is spirit (John 4:24)––as a matter that must receive the input of the physical sciences. Theologically, however this belief is entirely consistent with mankind’s repeated attempts to fashion a god in its own image; a god that bears no resemblance to the true and living God of Scripture.
Coffen rightly points out that most Adventist pioneers (he mentions Joseph Bates, Uriah Smith, J. H. Waggoner, and James White) rejected the Trinity outright, yet tellingly, he offers no objection to their view. In fact, our author has already repeatedly hinted that he agrees with their basic assessment: the Bible does not substantiate the doctrine of the Trinity.
In fact, Coffen denigrates this doctrine in various ways. First, he does not acknowledge that the intricate debates and discussions in which the early church fathers engaged as they strove to understand the full testimony of Scripture with regard to the doctrine of the Trinity were ever settled. Rather, he views those discussions as still ongoing and subject to question. Even more tellingly, Coffen describes orthodox trinitarianism (to the degree that he even understands it) as a “hand-me-down Roman Catholic christology.” In using such anachronistic terminology (the Roman Catholic church did not exist until many centuries after the doctrine of the Trinity was established), this progressive author succumbs to another old Adventist argument against the Trinity––one that is blatantly ahistorical.
Finally, as though driving home the point, Coffen sums up his dismissive attitude as follows: “Despite protestations to the contrary, most people in the [Adventist] pew are, for all practical purposes, tritheists and not monotheistic trinitarians. They/we are not conversant with the ancient arguments, and even when such are known, these rationalizations don’t hold much meaning for those of us with today’s scientific mindset.”
Indeed. One stands amazed at the author’s candor about the true nature of Adventism and his simultaneous willful ignorance and rejection of historic orthodox Christianity.
Flavors of Anti-Trinitarianism in Adventism
As if to illustrate (and acknowledge) the current doctrinal confusion in the Adventist church, Coffen next lists several varieties of “perspectives within contemporary Adventism.” This list is intended to lay the groundwork for his own outlandish proposal: convening a new church council (about which more below).
The first category he names is “Historic Adventists.” These ally themselves with the views of their Adventist forefathers. In fact, their very existence in the church today, as Coffen points out, indicates that “some form of Arianism may never had [sic] died out among Adventists.” Nevertheless, the author’s designation of them as “our brothers and sisters” leaves no doubt as to whether he has any theological concerns about such heresy.
Next, “Subordinationist Adventists” argue for a Christ that is subservient to and lower in rank than God the Father. This group argues for this position in order to fight against women’s ordination, an issue presumably very precious to a progressive like Coffen. The author therefore seems to have the most differences with this perspective, though yet again, he affirms those who hold it as “brothers and sisters.”
So-called “Traditional Adventists”, he says, wish to “preserve the tried-and-true Trinitarianism spelled out in the historic creeds.” Here Coffen is perhaps more inaccurate and contradictory than anywhere else in his piece. As even the author has previously admitted repeatedly, there is nothing “traditional” about the Adventist doctrine of the Trinity from a Christian perspective. In no sense do the 28 Fundamental Beliefs teach an orthodox view of the Trinity. Rather, Adventism couches its true beliefs in carefully-crafted yet deceptive language. Even with all their word-smithing, however, Adventists are unable to completely make their official statement sound orthodox: God is emphatically not a “unity of three persons.”
Coffen’s “Neo-orthodox SDAs” do exactly the thing that best describes the previous category (“Traditional Adventists”): that is, they remove the meaning from words, phrases, and statements that orthodox Christians use in order to insert their own definitions. This practice of establishing private definitions is one of the hallmarks of a cult.
It’s worth quoting Coffen’s own remarks here at length: “[W]hen original non-Adventist neo-orthodox theologians talked of the resurrection, they sounded orthodox. However, they did not mean a raising of Jesus’ corporeal human body from a state of death. Likewise, when neo-orthodox Adventists speak of the urgency to emphasize ‘righteousness by faith,’ they still cling to what most of us would understand as works righteousness. They speak of the necessary equivalency of both faith and works to propel us to heaven.”
“Iconoclastic Adventists” are said to have a contrarian stance against all traditional Adventist doctrine, including its views of the Trinity. Coffen offers no further explanation of what in particular this group rejects regarding the Adventist Trinity. To judge from Coffen’s characterization of them as having not “outgrown their teenage rebellion,” such doctrinal nihilism is not the best way forward for the church.
Finally, “Agnostic” Adventists admit that they don’t know what to believe regarding the Trinity. Perhaps Coffen sees himself in this group more than in the others, as his summary comments about the groups indicate. In his view, one becomes “obnoxious” whenever one claims to know truth (as though the author himself has not already made numerous truth claims in this piece!). The actual truth of the matter is that progressive Adventism is inherently contradictory. On the one hand, the progressive dismisses strong truth claims (especially in the area of doctrine), yet on the other, as we have seen, his views and worldview already are inherently shaped by specific teachings inherited from the earliest days of the Seventh-day Adventist movement.
Concluding Comments
Coffen begins to conclude his piece by advocating, incredibly, for a new church council (presumably for Adventists). In the author’s view, “[c]ontributing members of this council should consist primarily of Biblicists, systematists, biologists, linguists, and, perhaps, astronomers (no administrators, please!).” Although Coffen has already stated his views on honorifics in the New Testament as a way to explain away the deity of Jesus Christ, he again repeats this suggestion here. This diminishment of Scripture’s repeated statements of Jesus’ identity as God calls into question whether such a council is really needed for Coffen, who has already made up his mind to believe in another Jesus.
The ultimate irony is that Coffen tosses his own suggestion at the very end with an “Oops!” postscript (whether in jest or seriously is not clear to the reader), and with that, he returns to his original concept of the unknowable god. Coffen concludes with the following words: “Surely, claiming that we have the Trinity figured out (even partially) manifests high hubris, and we need to be reminded that we are not like the Most High. Maybe, then, we should just tape shut our theological mouths lest we fail to ‘walk humbly with . . . God’ (Micah 6:8).”
The sad reality is that Coffen, and progressives of his ilk, have decided to follow a false Jesus who cannot save. Therefore, any pretense to “walking humbly” with God is negated when one considers the direct statements of Scripture: “Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father” (1 Jn. 2:23). The words Jesus told the Jews are equally applicable to any individual (whether Adventist or not) who doubts the clarity of the Bible’s explicit claims: “I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins” (Jn. 8:24). May God raise up Christians to lovingly share the true Jesus with their Adventist neighbors.
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So well done by Kaspars. I hope to see much more.