[1] (method of interpretation). A “spiritual,” or nonliteral, view, as a principle of philosophy or religion. The term was used at first by the pioneer Seventh-day Adventists in the sense of a spiritualized interpretation of Scripture, and was applied to the doctrine of a “spiritual” Second Advent instead of a literal, personal coming. This kind of “spiritualism” had nothing whatever to do with the movement that began several years later in the 1848 Rochester “rappings” of the Fox sisters, and that afterward became known as Spiritualism ( see Spiritism ).
The terms spiritualizers and spiritualizing had already been used by the Millerites, and by other premillennialists, to describe the postmillennialists, who held that the millennial reign of Christ is to be a spiritual reign, a glorious triumph of the church, and that the Second Advent is either figurative or deferred to the end of the millennium ( see Premillennialism ). After 1844 these terms came to be applied to one of the splinter groups of the Millerite movement.
“Spiritualizing” Millerites After 1844. A part of the minority who still held, in opposition to Miller, Himes, and the majority group, that the 1844 movement had been valid and that October 1844 had marked a fulfillment of prophecy, became known as “spiritualizers,” or “spiritualists.” These were the extreme ex-Millerite wing; they insisted not only that the time had been correct but also that the expected event had taken place; that is, that the Second Advent had occurred. Christ had come, they contended, not literally, personally, and visibly, but “spiritually,” in the person of His saints.
Joseph Bates, who wrote his first little book, The Opening Heavens (May 1846), “to correct, or ‘rebuke’ the spiritual views . . . in respect to the appearing and kingdom” of Christ, spoke in his preface of many “who have been looking for the personal appearing of the Lord Jesus from heaven in these last days,” but have in their disappointment “given up the only Scriptural view and are now teaching that he has come in spirit and this is all we shall ever see of him here.” These “spiritualizers” claimed that they had already entered the kingdom, spiritually, of course, and were to execute judgment. Some of them professed sinlessness; some refused to work, since they were in the millennial Sabbath, some embraced celibacy, while others claimed “spiritual wives”; numbers of them soon went over to the Shakers (including Enoch Jacobs, editor of the Day-Star , who had formerly opposed the spiritual views). The “spiritualizers” never formed a cohesive or permanent group.
Apparently it was some of the “spiritualizing” fanatics, who claimed that the Second Advent had already occurred, whom Ellen White encountered in New England and described as follows: “In the period of disappointment after the passing of the time in 1844, fanaticism in various forms arose. Some held that the resurrection of the righteous dead had already taken place. I was sent to bear a message to those believing this. . . . I went into their meetings. There was much excitement, with noise and confusion. One could not tell what was piped or what was harped. Some appeared to be in vision, and fell to the floor. Others were jumping, dancing, and shouting. They declared that as their flesh was purified, they were ready for translation. This they repeated again and again. I bore my testimony in the name of the Lord, placing His rebuke upon these manifestations” ( 2SM 34).
“Spiritualism” Opposed by Seventh-day Adventist Pioneers. The Adventist founders belonged to the opposite minority class of the ex-Millerites who held to the validity of 1844; like the “spiritualizers,” and unlike the main body, they said that their prophetic interpretation had been correct as to the time. But unlike the “spiritualizers,” they admitted that they had been mistaken as to the event expected; that Christ had not come to this earth in any sense. Instead, they held, He had entered another phase of His ministry in heaven, typified by the Day of Atonement, which would be followed by the Second Advent, a personal, literal, visible event. Holding the median position between both extremes, they charged the “nominal Adventists,” the majority group, with abandoning the 1844 movement and denounced the “spiritualizers” for their fanaticism and their denial that the Second Advent was to be the literal, bodily return of Christ.
Here we find the background of James White’s letter of 1846 insisting on the literal personality of the Father and Son and denouncing the “spiritualizers” and their “modern spiritualism” ( Day-Star 9:25, Jan. 24, 1846), and of Joseph Bates’s protest against “all the Spiritualisms” of that day and his insistence “that the second coming and kingdom of Christ will be as literal and real, as . . . the first Advent” (The Opening Heavens, p. 22).
Note Ellen White’s statement of 1851 “relative to spiritualism”: “I have frequently been falsely charged with teaching views peculiar to Spiritualism. But before the editor of the Day-Star [Enoch Jacobs, in 1846] ran into that delusion, the Lord gave me a view of the sad and desolating effects that would be produced upon the flock by him and others in teaching the spiritual views” (Experience and Views, in EW 77).
Her accusers, apparently of the majority party, failed to distinguish between the spiritualizing and nonspiritualizing divisions of the minority and were inclined to class together all who held that the seventh-month movement was in any sense a fulfillment of the prophecies. They assumed that anyone who still held to the validity of “the time” must hold that the expected Advent had occurred; consequently they attributed to the Whites and the middle party the fanaticism of the “spiritualizers” and their “spiritual” coming of Christ (see B. C. Bancroft, letter, Day-Star 8:44, Dec. 6, 1845; cf. reply to Burlingham, Day-Star 5:8, Feb. 25, 1845). As this controversy passed and the “spiritualizers” disappeared as a party, this meaning of the term was forgotten. Simultaneously the word was becoming familiar as meaning spiritism. See also Millerite Movement .