During the recent Autumn Council of the General Conference—the annual meeting of the full executive committee with representatives from the entire world field—a statement was voted about the role of Ellen G. White and her writings. This statement will be submitted to the delegates to the General Conference session of next year, with the intention that they, through their adoption of this statement, will reaffirm their conviction regarding the crucial role of Ellen White and her work in the Adventist Church. It has almost become a tradition that the delegates to a GC session adopt such a statement. One might well ask why it is deemed necessary to each time vote such a document about this element of our Adventist beliefs. Is there a fear that confidence in ‘the spirit of prophecy’ is slowly but surely ebbing away? But, if, so, does it really help to once again vote some official statement? Why would we then not also adopt a statement that Adventists must continue to value the seventh-day Sabbath and why is there no vote during the session which appeals to the worldwide membership not to slacken in their expectation of the second coming of the Lord?

Besides the questions whether such a statement is really needed, there is the problem of its content. The full text of the statement may be found on:
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The paragraph that for me raises a red flag is:
We believe that the writings of Ellen white were inspired by the Holy Spirit and are Christ-centered and Bible-based. Rather than replacing the Bible, they uplift the normative character of Scripture and correct the inaccurate interpretations imposed upon it. They also help us to overcome the human tendency to accept from the Bible what we like and distort and disregard what we do not like.

The first sentence of this paragraph leaves us with the question how the concept of inspiration is to be defined. However, for now I will not pursue this topic. It is, in particular, the second sentence that bothers me. It contains a most serious internal contradiction. On the one hand it states that the Bible is the norm by which all ideas must be tested. So far so good. However, it immediately ads that there is another authoritative source (i.e. the oeuvre of Ellen White) which tells us how we should interpret the Bible. With such a view we seem to ignore the fundamental protestant principle of sola scriptura (the Bible alone) and come dangerously close to the Roman Catholic teaching that only the church is capable of interpreting the Bible correctly, and that only the church can protect the believer against wrong interpretations. The idea that Ellen White has the last word in the interpretation of the Bible puts her work in fact above the Bible. This approach is totally opposed to other statements of the Adventist Church that clearly underline the principle of ‘the Bible alone’. See, for instance, point one of the 28 Fundamental Beliefs. (The Holy Scriptures are the supreme, authoritative, and the infallible revelation of His will. They are the standard of character, the test of experience, the definitive revealer of doctrines . . .). Ellen White herself quite often emphasized that the church should not expect from her that she has the final word about issues of theology and biblical exegesis!

It is my firm conviction that this statement about the role of Ellen White (if, indeed, there must be such a statement) must go back to the desks of those who wrote it. But I would also like to see in the statement (again, if there must be such a statement) that far more attention be paid to the results of the extensive Ellen G. White research of the last few decades. Providing the church members with that information would help them to arrive at a much more balanced view as to who Ellen White was, of what she has meant for the church and what her continuing significance can be.