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The Arian or Anti-Trinitarian
Views Presented in Seventh-day Adventist Literature and the Ellen G.
White Answer

by Erwin Roy
Gane

C H A P T E R   VI

CANRIGHT AN ANTI-TRINITARIAN APOLOGIST

Writing for the Review and Herald in the period from 1867
to 1878, D. M. Canright confined himself, for the most part, to a
very verbal and somewhat polemic reiteration of what his Seventh-day
Adventist predecessors had written.

CANRIGHT�S 1867 ARTICLE

In 1867 he produced an article entitled, "Jesus Christ the Son of
God." He wrote:

Christ came into existence first of all things�My
grounds for this proposition are John i:1,2; Col. i, 17; Prov.
viii, 22, 30. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. the same was in the beginning with
God." Here, the existence of the Word, or Christ, is placed as far
back as language can place it, even in the beginning with the
great God.1

Canright understood that Christ was begotten, not created in the
same sense as angels and men. We are commanded to worship the Son,
and no created being is ever worthy of worship. The Son is not to be
regarded as great as the Father for first all things are subdued
under the Son and then the Son becomes subject to the Father. Here
Canright quotes John 14:28 and 1 Cor. 15:28. Therefore, he
concludes, "The Son is subordinate to the Father."2
Christ cannot be described, as the Father can, as the "very and
eternal God." As did his predecessors, Canright assumes that
Trinitarians teach that the Father and the Son are one person, and
then proceeds to demonstrate the incorrectness of this position.
When Christ died, every part of him died otherwise the sacrifice was
only a human one.

CANRIGHT�S 1878 ARTICLES

In 1878, Canright produced a series of four articles headed "the
personality of God," greatly amplifying his views and providing
strong opposition to the Trinitarian position. He wrote, "Jesus says
that his father is the only true God. but trinitarians contradict
this by saying that the Son and the Holy Ghost are just as much the
true God as the Father is."3
Canright opposed the creedal conception of God as "without body,
part, or passion." "I do not believe," he said, "that any person,
whatever his creed may be, ever prays to God without conceiving of
him as having a body, form, and shape, and being located upon a
throne in heaven."4
He provides considerable Scriptural quotation as evidence for
his belief. He denies the usual distinction between matter and
spirit, and regards God as possessing form and parts, even though He
is a Spirit.5
"It is our opinion," he writes, "founded both in revelation and
science, that celestial beings are as material as men, only that
they are more highly organized, more refined,—matter on a higher
plane."6

In the same year, 1878, The Signs of the Times published
an article by Canright entitled "the Holy Spirit not a person, but
an influence proceeding from God." He begins:

All trinitarian creeds make the Holy Ghost a person, equal in
substance, power, eternity, and glory with the Father and Son.
Thus they claim three persons in the trinity, each one equal with
both others. If this is so, then the Holy Spirit is just as truly
an individual intelligent person as is the Father or the Son. But
this we cannot believe. The Holy Spirit is not a person. In all
our prayers we naturally conceive of God as a person, and of the
Son as a person, but whoever conceived of the Holy Ghost as being
a person, standing there beside the Father and equal with
Him?7

On the contrary Canright takes the decided stand that the Holy
Spirit is "a divine influence proceeding from the Father and also
from the Son, as their power, energy, etc."8
The Spirit is personified in the Bible only because it is the Spirit
of a person. In a similar way is man�s spirit personified.

ENDNOTES

1D. M. Canright, "Jesus Christ the Son of God,"
Review and Herald, III (June 18, 1867), 1.

2Ibid.

3D. M. Canright, "The Personality of God,"
Review and Herald, III (August 29, 1878), 73.

4Ibid., Sept. 5, 1878, 81.

5Ibid., Sept. 19, 1878, 97.

6Ibid.

7D. M. Canright, "The Holy Spirit not a Person, but
an Influence Proceeding from God," The Signs of the Times, IV
(July 25, 1878), 218.

8Ibid.

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