Seventh-day Adventist Theology - Shared Protestant Doctrine

Shared Protestant Doctrine

Seventh-day Adventists uphold the central doctrines of Protestant Christianity: the Trinity, the incarnation, the virgin birth, the substitutionary atonement, justification by faith, creation, the second coming, the resurrection of the dead, and last judgment.

In Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine (1957), four authors outlined the core doctrines that they share with Protestant Christianity.

"In Common With Conservative Christians and the Historic Protestant Creeds, We Believe—

1. That God is the Sovereign Creator, upholder, and ruler of the universe, and that He is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.

2. That the Godhead, the Trinity, comprises God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

3. That the Scriptures are the inspired revelation of God to men; and that the Bible is the sole rule of faith and practice.

4. That Jesus Christ is very God, and that He has existed with the Father from all eternity.

5. That the Holy Spirit is a personal being, sharing the attributes of deity with the Father and the Son.

6. That Christ, the Word of God, became incarnate through the miraculous conception and the virgin birth; and that He lived an absolutely sinless life here on earth.

7. That the vicarious, atoning death of Jesus Christ, once for all, is all-sufficient for the redemption of a lost race.

8. That Jesus Christ arose literally and bodily from the grave.

9. That He ascended literally and bodily into heaven.

10. That He now serves as our advocate in priestly ministry and mediation before the Father.

11. That He will return in a premillennial, personal, imminent second advent.

12. That man was created sinless, but by his subsequent fall entered a state of alienation and depravity.

13. That salvation through Christ is by grace alone, through faith in His blood.

14. That entrance upon the new life in Christ is by regeneration, or the new birth.

15. That man is justified by faith.

16. That man is sanctified by the indwelling Christ through the Holy Spirit.

17. That man will be glorified at the resurrection or translation of the saints, when the Lord returns.

18. That there will be a judgment of all men.

19. That the gospel is to be preached as a witness to all the world."

All of these doctrines, with the exception of item 11 (regarding the premillennial return of Christ), are widely held amongst conservative or evangelical Protestants. (Different Protestant groups hold varying views on the millennium.)

Regarding salvation, a major statement was the 1980 "The Dynamics of Salvation".