VISIONS AND THE WORD: THE AUTHORITY OF ELLEN WHITE IN RELATIONSHIP TO THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE IN THE SEVENTH- DAY ADVENTIST MOVEMENT

George R. Knight
Andrews Univerisity

By what authority? That is always an interesting question. But it is doubly so in a Christian movement that believes in the authority of scripture but also claims to have had an inspired prophet as one of its founders.

Such is the situation in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which, according to its current statement of fundamental beliefs, holds that the Word of God in the Bible contains the “knowledge necessary for salvation,” is the source of doctrine, and “is the standard by which all teaching and experience must be tested,” but also maintains that Ellen G. White (1827-1915) had a valid and “authoritative” prophetic gift.

Such statements may (or may not) sound all right in the abstract, but how does or should a body of believers relate the authority of a modern prophet to the authority of the ancient prophets canonized in the 66 books of the Bible? That is the topic of this paper. It is also a topic that has occupied Adventist thinkers across the 160 years of their church’s history.

Christian Connexion Antecedents
In fact, it is not too much to say that the Seventh-day Adventist movement was formed in the matrix of tension on the subject of visions versus the Word. On the one hand, Millerite Adventism (one of its major historical antecedents) had gone on record in June 1843 that “we have no confidence whatever in any visions, dreams, or private revelations.” That sentiment was reaffirmed in May 1845, some seven months after the Millerite disappointment related to the non-advent of Christ and some five months after young Ellen G. Harmon’s (White after August 1846) first vision. Millerite Adventism was a movement of one authoritative book--the Bible.

One of Seventh-day Adventism’s other theological roots had the same position on the authority of the Bible. The Christian Connexion, a restorationist group related to the Stone-Campbell movement, held to the Bible as the only rule of faith. William Kinkade (b. 1783), who studied under Barton W. Stone and became the “theologian of this group” of seven men who founded the Christian Connexion, wrote in 1829 that he had in his early years refused to call himself by “any name but that of Christian” and that he would take no book for his “standard but the Bible.”

Kinkade was certainly clear on the supreme authority of the Bible in religious matters. However, in his extended discussion of the “restoration of the ancient order of things” he claimed that he could not settle for “one inch short” of the New Testament order. And at the center of New Testament order, he argued, were the spiritual gifts, including the gift of prophecy, set forth in such places as 1 Corinthians 12:8-31 and Ephesians 4:11-16. The presence of spiritual gifts in the church “is the ancient order of things; every one opposed to this, is opposed to primitive Christianity. To say God caused these gifts to cease, is the same as to say, God has abolished the order of the New Testament church. . . . These gifts constitute the ancient order of things.” They were not temporary gifts that ceased with the apostolic age. Rather, “these gifts, as they are laid down in the scripture, compose the gospel ministry” as set forth in the New Testament.

Kinkade’s New Testament theology of the perpetuity of spiritual gifts in the context of the Bible as the only source of authority is important for understanding early Seventh-day Adventism because two of the movement’s three founders had been active in the Christian Connexion--Joseph Bates as a leading lay person and James White as a Connexionist pastor. In short, they had come into Adventism from a movement in which the most influential theologian held to both the Bible and the Bible only as a determiner of faith and practice and the continuation of spiritual gifts including prophecy throughout the Christian era as set forth in the New Testament. Kinkade did not seem to be concerned with possible conflict between the two realms of authority.

Early Adventists on Authority
The earliest Sabbatarian Adventists were quite clear on the issue of authority. James White, Ellen’s husband, stated the developing denomination’s position quite accurately in 1847 when he wrote that “the Bible is a perfect, and complete revelation. It is our only rule of faith and practice.” But, he added in harmony with Kinkade’s line of thought, “this is no reason, why God may not show the past, present, and future fulfilment of his word, in these last days, by dreams and visions; according to Peter’s testimony [see Acts 2:17-20; Joel 2:28-31]. True visions are given to lead us to God, and his written word; but those that are given for a new rule of faith and practice, separate from the Bible, cannot be from God, and should be rejected.”

In White’s statement we see the delicate balance followed by several early Adventist thought leaders. The central idea is that the Bible is supreme, but that it indicates that God will send visions and spiritual gifts during the last days of earth’s history to guide His people back to the Bible and through the shoals of the end-time crisis. Thus White points out that Peter’s use of Joel 2:28-31 in his Pentecost sermon of Acts 2 did not exhaust the fulfillment of that prophecy. God would send His Holy Spirit again at the end of time and “your sons and your daughters shall prophesy” and see visions before the Second Advent. White also quoted 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21, where Paul says: “Despise not prophesyings. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.”

James White and the other early leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church had no doubt that the Bible taught that God would pour out the prophetic gift during the last days, and that individuals had a responsibility to test by the Bible criteria those who claimed to be prophets. Adventist leaders also had no doubt that any such gifts must be subordinate to the Bible in the life of believers, and that whenever they were not subordinated they were being used wrongly.

Thus James could write in 1851 that “the gifts of the Spirit should all have their proper places. The Bible is an everlasting rock. It is our rule of faith and practice.” He went on to assert that if all Christians were as diligent and honest as they should be, they would be able to learn their whole duty from the Bible itself. “But,” James noted, “as the reverse exists, and ever has existed, God in much mercy has pitied the weakness of his people, and has set the gifts in the gospel church to correct our errors, and to lead us to his Living Word. Paul says that they are for the ‘perfecting of the saints,’ ‘till we all come in the unity of the faith’ [Eph. 4:12, 13].--The extreme necessity of the church in its imperfect state is God’s opportunity to manifest the gifts of the Spirit.

“Every Christian is therefore in duty bound to take the Bible as a perfect rule of faith and duty. He should pray fervently to be aided by the Holy Spirit in searching the Scriptures for the whole truth, and for his whole duty. He is not at liberty to turn from them to learn his duty through any of the gifts. We say that the very moment he does, he places the gifts in a wrong place, and takes an extremely dangerous position. The Word should be in front, and the eye of the church should be placed upon it, as the rule to walk by, and the fountain of wisdom, from which to learn duty in ‘all good works.’ But if a portion of the church err from the truths of the Bible, and become weak, and sickly, and the flock become scattered, so that it seems necessary for God to employ the gifts of the Spirit to correct, revive and heal the erring, we should let him work.”

In a similar vein in 1868 James White cautioned the believers to “let the gifts have their proper place in the church. God has never set them in the very front, and commanded us to look to them to lead us in the path of truth, and the way to Heaven. His word he has magnified. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are man’s lamp to light up his path to the kingdom. Follow that. But if you err from Bible truth, and are in danger of being lost, it may be that God will in the time of his choice correct you [through the gifts], and bring you back to the Bible.”

At this juncture it is important to recognize that just because the early Adventist leaders believed that Ellen White’s gift of prophecy was subordinate to the authority of the Bible, that did not mean that they held her inspiration to be of a lesser quality than that of the Bible writers. To the contrary, they believed that the same Voice of authority that spoke through the Bible prophets also communicated through her.

We find a careful balance here. Even though early Adventists viewed her inspiration as being equally divine in origin with that of the Bible writers, they did not see her as being the same in authority. Ellen White and her fellow Adventists held that her authority was derived from the Bible and thus could not be equal to it.

As a result, her authority was not to transcend or contradict the boundaries of truth set forth in the Bible. As Ellen White so aptly put it in 1871, “the written testimonies are not to give new light, but to impress vividly upon the heart the truths of inspiration already revealed” in the Bible.

Ellen’s understanding of the gift harmonized with that of her husband. Thus in 1851 she could write in the conclusion to her first little book, “I recommend to you, dear reader, the Word of God as the rule of your faith and practice. By that Word we are to be judged. God has, in that Word, promised to give visions in the ‘last days;’ not for a new rule of faith, but for the comfort of his people, and to correct those who err from Bible truth.”

It is important to realize the Ellen White believed that her visions were for the guidance of the Adventist community rather than the Christian church at large. Writing to Adventist believers in 1871 she noted that “if you had made God’s word your study, with a desire to reach the Bible standard . . . , you would not have needed the Testimonies [i.e. her counsel]. It is because you have neglected to acquaint yourselves with God’s inspired Book that He has sought to reach you by simple, direct testimonies, calling your attention to the words of inspiration which you had neglected to obey, and urging you to fashion your lives in accordance with its pure and elevated teachings.”

The theoretical statements on the relation of the authority of the Bible to that of Ellen White were quite consistent. But, we need to ask, did the early Adventists practice what they preached on the topic? More specifically, did Ellen White’s visions have a significant role in doctrinal formation and how did her writings relate to the interpretation of the Bible?

The second point is the most easily addressed, since in the first decades of Adventism Ellen White’s writings were not thought of as interpreting the meaning of scriptural passages. As to doctrinal formation, James White wrote in 1855 that “it should be understood that all these views as held by the body of Sabbath-keepers, were brought out from the Scriptures before Mrs. W. had any view in regard to them. These sentiments are founded upon the Scriptures as their only basis.”

That statement is found in the context of a discussion of Seventh-day Adventist doctrine being a “‘vision view’” rather than a “Bible view.” That accusation was a popular one among the denomination’s detractors. Miles Grant, for example, argued in 1874 in the World’s Crisis (a leading Advent Christian periodical) that the Sabbatarian’s understanding of the heavenly sanctuary doctrine had come through Ellen White’s visions.

Uriah Smith vigorously responded to that accusation. “Hundreds of articles,” he stated, “have been written upon the subject [of the sanctuary]. But in no one of these are the visions once referred to as any authority on this subject, or the source from whence any view we hold has been derived. Nor does any preacher ever refer to them on this question. The appeal is invariably to the Bible, where there is abundant evidence for the views we hold on this subject.”

Of course, it is one thing to make such claims as those cited from Smith and James White, while it is quite another to substantiate them. The interesting thing about Smith’s assertion is that any person willing to go back into early Seventh-day Adventist literature can either verify or disprove it. On the subject of the heavenly sanctuary Paul Gordon has done that and has verified Smith’s claims in his The Sanctuary, 1844, and the Pioneers. On a broader scale, extensive research by Merlin Burt, Rolf J. Pöhler, and George R. Knight has demonstrated that Adventism’s various doctrines were originated and fleshed out by several individuals, none of whom became Seventh-day Adventists. The Adventist contribution was in integrating the various doctrines they had accepted through Bible study into an apocalyptic theology. But even that was a contribution by Joseph Bates rather than Ellen White. Her early visions tended to be visions of confirmation of Bible study or related to building unity in matters of detail.

Early Seventh-day Adventists appear to have been a people of the “Book.” They seem to have been consistent in theory and practice in their view of the Bible as the only source of doctrinal authority and their acceptance of a modern prophet. But that would change.

The 1888 Era and Authority
The transformation in Adventism’s usage of Ellen White’s writings in relation to the Bible cannot be pinpointed with complete accuracy. It may have begun in the late 1870s but it is openly evident in the 1880s. That was particularly true as the denomination approached its 1888 General Conference session. That session would be one of the most significant in Adventist history. At stake was the understanding of gospel and law and how they should be related. Side topics were the definition of the law in Galatians and the 10 horns of Daniel 7.

In the struggle over the various topics the question of religious authority came to the forefront. Swerving from the earlier Adventist position on the absolute primacy of scripture, the denomination’s second generation leadership sought to solve their theological and biblical issues through the use of human authority related to expert opinion, authoritative position, Adventist tradition, and majority votes. The reforming element that was pushing for a more Christ-centered theology rejected all appeals to human authority in solving theological and biblical issues. Ellen White, the only remaining founder of the denomination, stood firmly with the reformers in their primacy of scripture position.

But the official leadership of the denomination not only sought to use human authority to shore up what they saw as threats to traditional Adventist theology, but also the authority of Ellen White. In the eyes of General Conference president George I. Butler an authoritative word from the pen of Ellen White would solve both the biblical and the theological issues facing the church.

Butler and his colleagues took two approaches to having Ellen White solve the theological/biblical issues. The first was to have her provide a written statement on the controverted topics related to the interpretation of Galatians and Daniel. Between June 1886 and October 1888 the embattled president wrote Ellen White a series of more than a dozen letters requesting, and at times demanding, that she use her authority to settle the controversial issues.

Significantly, Ellen White refused to let Butler and his colleagues use her writings to settle the theological/biblical issues dividing the denomination. She even went so far as to tell the delegates to the 1888 General Conference session on October 24 that it was providential that she had lost the one writing in which she had purportedly identified the law in Galatians. “God,” she asserted, “has a purpose in this. He wants us to go to the Bible and get the Scripture evidence.” In other words, she rejected the position of Butler and others that sought to use her writings as an inspired commentary on the Bible.

The second strategy of the Butler coalition in the 1888 era was to use Ellen White’s published writings to establish the “correct” interpretation of the controverted issues. In regard to the interpretation of the law in Galatians, for example, they quoted from her Sketches from the Life of Paul (1883) to arrive at the correct understanding. Once again, she rejected their maneuver, asserting: “I cannot take my position on either side until I have studied the question.” She was not willing to let her writings be used to settle the interpretive issue. For her scripture was supreme. While her writings might be used to apply scriptural principles to her context, they were not to be used authoritatively to give the final word on the meaning of scripture. And to make sure that they would not be used improperly to solve that particular issue she had the quotations on the law in Galatians removed when she revised the book some years later.

No one pounded home the primacy of scripture principle more vigorously and more often during the 1888 era of Adventist history than Ellen White. “We want Bible evidence for every point we advance,” she wrote to Butler in April 1887. In July 1888 she published in the leading Adventist periodical that “the Bible is the only rule of faith and doctrine.” And in August she wrote to all the delegates of the forthcoming General Conference session that “the Word of God is the great detecter of error; to it we believe everything must be brought. The Bible must be our standard for every doctrine and practice. . . . We are to receive no one’s opinion without comparing it with the Scriptures. Here is divine authority which is supreme in matters of faith. It is the word of the living God that is to decide all controversies.”

The struggle over authority at the 1888 meetings apparently made an impression on the denomination’s ministry. W. C. White, Ellen’s son, wrote at the end of the General Conference session that “many go forth from this meeting determined to study the Bible as never before.”

The lessons on religious authority related to the 1888 General Conference session are crucial for evaluating the authority of the Bible in relation to prophetic authority in Seventh-day Adventism. Ellen White herself had held to the position of early Adventism. But many of the second generation leaders and ministers had moved from that well defined position and had sought to use Ellen White’s prophetic authority to settle theological and exegetical issues.

A. T. Jones Sets the Stage for Problems with Authority in the Twentieth Century
One of the unfortunate developments in Adventism related to authority is that all too many Adventists in the twentieth century would take the position rejected by the founders of the denomination and by Ellen White. The leader in the move, strangely enough, was Alonzo T. Jones, one of Ellen White’s reforming associates during the 1888 era. In his widely read week of prayer reading for 1894, titled “The Gifts: Their Presence and Object,” Jones pointed out that the Holy Spirit is the only interpreter of the Bible and that the Spirit’s “interpretation is infallible.” From that proposition he moved to the role of Ellen White’s testimonies, correctly using her statements that the purpose of her writings was not to provide new information, but to lead her readers to the Bible itself.

Up to that point his argument seemed to be solid enough, but then he veered off into a line of thought that contradicted both biblical principles and Adventism’s historic position on the relation between Ellen White’s gift and the Bible. Jones wrote: “The right use of the Testimonies, therefore, is not to use them as they are in themselves, as though they were apart from the word of God in the Bible; but to study the Bible through them, so that the things brought forth in them we shall see and know for ourselves are in the Bible; and then present those things to others not from the Testimonies themselves, but from the Bible itself. . . . This and this alone is the right use of the Testimonies, whether used privately or publicly. . . . This of itself will make us all ‘mighty in the Scriptures.’”

Jones’ argument, while intended to maintain the primacy of the Bible, actually subordinated it to Ellen White’s writings. Thus, for Jones and those sharing his logic, her writings came to be viewed as a divine, infallible commentary on the Bible. That, of course, was the very position that Ellen White had rejected in the theological struggles surrounding the 1888 meetings.

The divine, infallible commentary use of Ellen White’s writings, an approach that gave Ellen White the final word on the meaning of scripture, was one of several problems related to authority that the influential Jones bequeathed to twentieth-century Adventism. In 50 years the position of many Adventists on the authority of Ellen White in relation to that of the Bible had been totally transformed from the position of the denomination’s founders.

Adventists and Religious Authority in the Twentieth Century
The A. T. Jones approach to the authority of Ellen White in relation to the authority of the Bible took firm hold of large sectors of Adventism early in the twentieth century, even though there were influential voices arguing against it. The first major struggle in the new century on the authority issue was stimulated by a controversy over the identity of the “daily” of Daniel 8. In that struggle, those who advocated the older interpretation held that the new one would subvert the denomination’s theology because a statement in Ellen White’s Early Writings supported the traditional Adventist interpretation. The leader of those advocating the older interpretation argued that to make any change in the established position would undermine Mrs. White’s authority. He was quite explicit on his view of the relation of her writings to the Bible. “We ought to understand such expressions by the aid of the Spirit of Prophecy [i.e., Ellen White’s writings]. . . . For this purpose the Spirit of Prophecy comes to us. . . . All points are to be solved” in that manner.

Ellen White disagreed with the argument. She requested that her writings “not be used” to settle the issue. “I entreat of Elders Haskell, Loughborough, Smith, and others of our leading brethren, that they make no reference to my writings to sustain their views of ‘the daily.’ . . . I cannot consent that any of my writings shall be taken as settling this matter.”

Thus in both the struggles over the daily and the law in Galatians, Ellen White took the position that her comments were not to be used as if she were an infallible commentator to settle the meaning of the Bible.

W. C. White also provides us with an interesting insight into the issue of his mother’s relationship to the Bible. “Some of our brethren,” he wrote, “are much surprised and disappointed because Mother does not write something decisive that will settle the question as to what is the ‘daily’ and thus bring an end to the present disagreement. At times I have hoped for this, but as I have seen that God has not seen fit to settle the matter by a revelation thru His messenger, I have come more and more to believe that it was the will of God that a thorough study should be made of the Bible and history, till a clear understanding of the truth was gained.”

Her refusal to function as an infallible Bible commentator should not have surprised anyone. She had not assumed that role in the past, but had always pointed people to their need to study the Bible for themselves. Never did she take the position that “you must let me tell you what the Bible really means.”

In spite of Ellen White’s clarity on the topic the battle over the identity of the daily rumbled along for more than two decades. The topic of the daily itself wasn’t all that crucial. The real issue was Ellen White’s authority as a divine commentator on scripture. Such titles as Have We an Infallible “Spirit of Prophecy”? reflect the sentiments of those who were so concerned with the topic that in 1922 they utilized the issue of Ellen White’s authority to overthrow Arthur G. Daniells, who had been president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists since 1901.

The authoritative role of Ellen White was not just a preoccupation with denominational dissidents. Leaders at the center of the church also espoused it. Thus F. M. Wilcox, influential editor of the denomination’s Review and Herald, could claim in 1921 that her writings “constitute a spiritual commentary on the Scriptures.” And in 1946 Wilcox asserted before the General Conference session that Ellen White’s writings were “far above all other commentaries” because they were “inspired commentaries, motivated by the promptings of the Holy Spirit. . . . The one who fails to make this distinction reveals that he has little if any faith in the doctrine of spiritual gifts in their application to the church today.”

By mid-century the Wilcox position had become by far the dominant one in the church. So much so that the extensive Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (1953-1957) had a section for unpublished and out of print Ellen White remarks at the end of each volume and a list of references to her published usages of various texts after the discussion of each biblical chapter. That very arrangement led people to see her writings more than ever as an inspired commentary on the Bible.

The denomination by and large hadn’t learned much from its history. Nor had it learned the lessons of Ellen White’s refusal to let her writings be used in commentary fashion in such struggles as those over the law in Galatians and the identity of the daily.

Up to her death in 1915 she sounded the same message on the relation of her writings to the Bible that she and her husband had at the beginning of the Adventist movement. In 1903, for example, she wrote that “little heed is given to the Bible, and the Lord has given a lesser light to lead men and women to the greater light.” All through her ministry she held that a major function of her writings was to lead people to the Bible.

As to the authority of the Bible, she continued to hold the position that the Adventist pioneers had inherited from the William Kinkade tradition. “In His word,” she noted in 1911, “God has committed to men the knowledge necessary for salvation. The Holy Scriptures are to be accepted as an authoritative, infallible revelation of His will. They are the standard of character, the revealer of doctrines, and the test of experience. . . . The Spirit was not given--nor can it ever be bestowed--to supersede the Bible; for the Scriptures explicitly state that the word of God is the standard by which all teaching and experience must be tested.” She went on, as had Kinkade and the early Adventist leaders, to indicate that “after the close of the canon of the Scripture” the Holy Spirit still continued his rightful work, including the gift of prophecy, and would do so until the Second Advent.

Others may have drifted from the position of early Adventism on the authority of Ellen White in relation to the Bible, but she appears to have kept on course. And she was not the only one. The denomination’s 1919 Bible conference of church administrators and religion teachers is remarkable for its openness on the topic. C. L. Benson, for example, pointed out disapprovingly that many Adventists put more emphasis on Ellen White’s writings than the Bible. And A. G. Daniells, the denomination’s president, was much closer to James and Ellen White and the other pioneers of Seventh-day Adventism than he was to some of his contemporaries when he remarked that “we are to get our interpretation from this Book [the Bible], primarily. I think that the Book explains itself, and I think we can understand the Book, fundamentally, through the Book, without resorting to the Testimonies to prove up on it.” W. E. Howell, education director of the General Conference, noted that “the spirit of prophecy says the Bible is its own expositor.” To that comment Daniells responded: “Yes, but I have heard ministers say that the spirit of prophecy is the interpreter of the Bible. I heard it preached at the General Conference some years ago [by A. T. Jones], when it was said that the only way we could understand the Bible was through the writings of the spirit of prophecy.” J. M. Anderson added that “he also said ‘infallible interpreter.’” Daniells responded by observing that that “is not our position, and it is not right that the spirit of prophecy is the only safe interpreter of the Bible. That is a false doctrine, a false view. It will not stand.”

Daniells went on to note correctly that the Adventist pioneers “got their knowledge of the Scriptures as they went along through the Scriptures themselves. It pains me to hear the way some people talk, that the spirit of prophecy led out and gave all the instruction, all the doctrines, to the pioneers. . . . That is not according to the writings themselves. . . . We are told how . . . they searched these scriptures together and studied and prayed over them until they got together on them.” He then expressed his dismay at those Adventists “who will hunt around to find a statement in the Testimonies and spend no time in deep study of the Book.”

Daniells and his colleagues in 1919 may have had a correct position on the relation of Ellen White’s writings to the Bible, but their timing couldn’t have been more disastrous. The 1920s would see the fundamentalist crisis over biblical authority reach an explosive climax and Adventism would be drawn into the vortex of a struggle that for them entailed not only biblical issues but also issues related to Ellen White’s authority. Those who spoke openly at the 1919 Bible conference, including the denomination’s leader, would lose their jobs. Meanwhile, the minutes of this very open meeting were purposefully locked up “in a vault” where they were lost for six decades. The conference was forgotten along with the position on authority held by Ellen White and the founders of Seventh-day Adventism.

The middle decades of the twentieth century found Adventists more and more using Ellen White’s writings to both settle biblical issues and to do theology. Few would have openly admitted that they were putting Ellen White’s authority above that of the bible, but their writings and discussions indicated that all too many Adventists (if not most) were spending more time with Ellen White than with the Bible. She had for most of them become the final word on any biblical passage that she had utilized and a doctrinal authority. A word from Ellen White tended to end discussion. The official position of the denomination may not have changed but practice certainly had. By the 1960s the new practices had become firmly entrenched and it appeared to most Adventists that that is how their church had always utilized Ellen White’s authority.

Toward a Healthier Perspective
Those days of historical innocence began to crumble in 1970 when Spectrum (an Adventist publication independent of the church) and a new generation of academically trained historical and biblical scholars began publishing articles on Ellen White calling for a critical reexamination of her writings. In the next decade and a half nearly every aspect of her work was rigorously examined, including her role in doctrinal formation in early Adventism and the relationship of the authority of her writings to the Bible. Between the early 1980s and the late 1990s the historic pattern of that relationship as outlined earlier in this paper was becoming more well known among significant sectors of the leadership, clergy, and reading laity of the denomination.

Significantly, in 1981 Robert Olson, director of the Ellen G. White Estate, faced the problems inherent in the infallible commentary approach when he wrote that “to give an individual complete interpretive control over the bible would, in effect, elevate that person above the Bible. It would be a mistake to allow even the apostle Paul to exercise interpretive control over all other Bible writers. In such a case, Paul, and not the whole Bible, would be one’s final authority.”

Olson went on to note that “Ellen White’s writings are generally homiletical or evangelistic in nature and not strictly exegetical.” In fact, she often accommodated the words of a text to her own homiletical needs. Thus she could derive quite different meanings from the same passage, depending on her purpose. Olson does note correctly that she sometimes interprets texts exegetically, even though she “generally” spoke homiletically. But that fact does not imply that she ever claimed to be a divine commentary on scripture.

In the early twenty-first century mainline Adventism has a healthier understanding of the relationship between Ellen White’s authority and that of the Bible. Its theologians and biblical interpreters have a better grasp of the biblical position and that of the founders of the church, including Ellen White herself. In practice that means that she is neither a determiner of doctrine nor the final word on the meaning of scripture. But old habits and ways of thinking die hard for some, even when they know the facts. And there are many mainline Adventists who haven’t even caught up with the facts yet. But when all is said and done mainline Adventism is light years ahead of where it was in 1980 in its understanding of Ellen White’s authority.

The same cannot be said for sectarian Adventism. The perfectionistic, fundamentalistic sub-denominations within the denomination still largely rely on Ellen White for their theology and have no problem viewing her as an infallible commentary on the Bible. This sector of Adventism has even developed an Ellen White Study Bible that has Ellen White notes and marginal references. Such a Bible would have been totally rejected in early Adventism. Even though the Study Bible is published by an independent group it is unfortunately marketed by the main denominational publisher. Some years ago I persuaded the publishing house administration to drop its marketing of the Ellen White Study Bible on the grounds that Ellen White would vigorously object to it from what we know of her principles historically. But after some months the publishing house president phoned me, notifying me that they were reversing their decision because there was a demand for the Study Bible and it sells well. So much for higher principles!

Sectarian Adventist groups are critical of mainline Adventism for its “betrayal” of the prophet and often consider themselves in one form or another to be the true historic Adventists. Unfortunately, their understanding of history focuses on the period from the 1920s through the 1950s and the approach to Ellen White’s writings set forth by A. T. Jones in the 1890s. They have failed to capture the biblical understanding of the founders of the denomination, including that of Ellen White herself.

I mentioned at the beginning of my paper that the question of religious authority was doubly interesting in a Christian movement that believes in the authority of scripture but also claims to have had an inspired prophet as one of its founders. It certainly has been so in Adventism in the past and it looks like it will continue to be so in the future. Overall, Adventism since the 1880s has done better in relating the two in theory than in practice. But the founders, including Ellen White, managed to be consistent in both theory and practice. Those Adventists who understand their history on the topic are in an advantaged position to harmonize the two today. But those who remain innocent of that history will most likely continue the problematic approach of the mid-twentieth century, all the while proclaiming that they have it right.