Where Seventh-day Adventism and Evangelical Christianity Agree

Before the critique, the charity. This is not a formality. It is a theological requirement, because a tradition that agrees on the essential things must be evaluated differently from one that denies them, and because the individual human beings within the tradition deserve to know that their faith in the risen Christ is not being dismissed.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church formally and substantively affirms the following:

The Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as one God in three persons. This is not an afterthought or a nominal concession. Adventist hymnody, prayer, and worship are thoroughly Trinitarian. The creed's formal language is orthodox.

The Incarnation. "God the eternal Son became incarnate in Jesus Christ. Forever truly God, He became also truly human, Jesus the Christ. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary." This is the confession that matters above all others. It is given without qualification.

The bodily resurrection of Christ. Affirmed explicitly in the Fundamental Beliefs and central to Adventist proclamation.

Justification by faith. The Fundamental Beliefs state that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ, not by works. There are significant tensions between this formal statement and the Investigative Judgment doctrine, which we will examine. But the formal affirmation is present and genuine.

The Second Coming. Literal, personal, bodily, visible, worldwide. The Adventist tradition has held this with unusual vigor, and the quality of Adventist mission work flows in significant part from genuine eschatological urgency.

Mission. The Great Commission is taken seriously in this tradition in a way that deserves recognition. The global Adventist mission network is not a marketing operation. It is the expression of genuine evangelical conviction.

These are not small things. The person within the Adventist tradition who believes in the Christ born of the virgin, crucified, risen, and coming again — who trusts His finished work for their standing before God — that person is not outside the kingdom of God because of their Adventist affiliation. The Spirit works where He wills.

The question this document asks is not whether individual Adventists can know Christ. They can and many do. The question is whether the Adventist distinctives — the doctrines that make Adventism specifically Adventist — point toward or away from the John 17:3 knowing that eternal life is.