With approximately 22 million members, the Seventh-day Adventist church is one of the most widespread Protestant denominations in the world.¹ The church’s roots go back to the 1840s, to the Millerite movement which flourished at that time, mainly in the north-eastern United States.² Although it started as a movement whose members considered structural and explicitly ecclesiological issues secondary to the urgency of declaring their message, the church today—much larger than in its early years—needs to face questions related to its communal identity.

Increasingly, the denomination’s scholars have become aware that a more thorough ecclesiological engagement is necessary if the Adventist community is to retain its global unity , maintain its relevance in the world at large and participate in a more fruitful and meaningful interaction with others. During the last two decades, Adventist theologians have been working on articulating a balanced and distinctive ecclesiology . Since this focus is relatively recent, no comprehensive account of the church has yet been developed.

This book is intended to facilitate this recent Adventist ecclesiological quest by proposing ways of reaching a more rounded and systematically articulated concept of church from an Adventist perspective. Since Adventist systematic theology—and specifically, ecclesiology —is still in the making, it has not been possible for me to work towards a mature expression of what the church is by consulting only the existing Adventist publications. I have, therefore, found it necessary to venture into the wider field of contemporary ecclesiology , and engage with the ideas of some of the most eminent Christian theologians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The aim has been to discern whether certain aspects of their ecclesiological synthesis could be used to enhance Adventist thinking about church.

The most widespread and highly acclaimed theoretical framework, known as communio ecclesiology , appears particularly useful for this purpose. Firstly, it offers resources for improving on conventional Adventist communal self-descriptions, which typically operate with just one dominant metaphor. Secondly, it complements the existing Adventist functional definition of the church as a herald, with an added emphasis on the ontological aspects. In other words, it proposes ways in which the Adventist ecclesial discourse, which has traditionally focussed on what the church does, can be widened in order to also include reflections on what the church is. Thirdly, it enriches the Adventist notion of truth by viewing the community of believers not only as a messenger but also as itself an organic part of divine revelation . This makes ecclesiology central to the theological enterprise, intrinsic to the grounding of theological claims and the interpretation of biblical texts. Finally, the recent focus by communio scholars on developing a richer interpretation of the Spirit’s activity in the church is one of the key prerequisites for a fuller, more nuanced Adventist account of the church’s participation in the life of the triune God.

The highlighting of these four aspects of communio ecclesiology and their potential significance for Adventists and the presentation of tentative solutions to some ecclesiological problems form the principal contribution of this monograph. But this is not all that I would like to submit to Adventist scholars for further consideration. Adventists need to do more than adopt and modify certain isolated claims made by communio authors. If they are to articulate a more rounded and systematically developed concept of church, they should seek to create their own interpretation of ecclesial koinonia , in which they will analyse and develop more fully their idea of the church as remnant (hence, the title—‘Remnant in Koinonia’).

This study might, therefore, be rightly considered one of the first inquiries into the possibility of an Adventist version of communio ecclesiology . Perhaps Adventists can accept the prevailing contemporary consensus that the ‘the church is the communio of the faithful’ as a formal theological principle, while at the same time, like other Christians, making additional specifications in line with their own distinctive theological heritage and priorities. Moreover, the elements of overlap and difference here will open up the possibility of meaningful and critical dialogue between Adventists and other Christians on ecclesiological matters. Such an enhanced ecclesiological perspective might, in turn, help the Adventist church to maintain its global unity and vitality in the twenty-first century, as well as to establish more fruitful and meaningful interactions with other Christians and indeed with non-Christians.

Any attempt to describe and categorize the core of the Seventh-day Adventist communal identity against the backdrop of wider Christianity is a complex and perplexing task. Customarily, various sociologists of religion and experts on nineteenth-century apocalyptic movements have endeavoured to define this religious denomination by examining the most exposed aspects of its communal life, namely, its visible practices or public statements of faith, known otherwise as the Twenty-eight Fundamental Beliefs. While this kind of investigation is important, it does not reveal the cardinal allegiances of this particular community of believers. When a denomination is as misunderstood as Adventism often is, a much wider assessment is needed.³ In his doctoral thesis, Marko Lazić claims that if one is to really understand Adventism , one must move

beyond the surface of doctrinal conclusions and explore the most fundamental layers of a system, the theological and philosophical meta-structure and methods which are not only providing a support for the doctrinal end-product, but which brought those doctrines about in the first place.⁴

There are many merits in having work, such as this, done by somebody who has a finger on the pulse of this denomination and whose perspective is shaped by regular interaction with Adventist ‘members of all ranks, over a longer period of time, in a variety of milieux’.⁵ At the same time, the downside of an insider doing this kind of work is the lack of objectivity. Subconscious efforts to vindicate the movement might result in biased conclusions and allow unquestioned assumptions to thrive and cloud one’s assessment.

It is precisely to avoid these kinds of mental blindspots that I decided to conduct my doctoral research in a non-Adventist academic setting (the University of Oxford), supervised by a Catholic theologian (Dr Philip Endean), and engage with the ideas of some of the most able twentieth- and twenty-first-century ecclesiologists, who did not have any significant prior exposure to Adventist values and subculture. I believe that my decision to work towards advancing the Adventist theology of church in a remarkably diverse (and even conflicting) academic context has contributed positively towards my intention to ‘steer a middle course between the Scylla of special pleading and the Charybdis of cynicism’.⁶

The argument of this book is developed over eight chapters that fit broadly into three major parts. Part I: Church as Remnant sets the stage by offering a basic introductory statement of what Seventh-day Adventism is and why it currently needs an ecclesiology (Chap. 2). It traces the history of explicitly and implicitly ecclesiological reflections among Adventists from the time of the denomination’s inception to the present day (Chap. 3) and highlights the inadequacies of its standardized conceptualization of the church as remnant (Chap. 4).

Part II: Church as Koinonia enhances the theoretical framework of Adventist remnant ecclesiology by exploring the possibility of developing an Adventist version of communio ecclesiology . It outlines what the various mainstream Christian communio ecclesiologies hold in common, in the expectation that this material, with appropriate adjustments, might contribute an ecclesiology that is genuinely Adventist . Having highlighted the theological grounds for adopting the concept of koinonia as ...